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Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is everything you'd expect from a Marvel movie: fast, funny and full of action.

I loved it, but I also understand that it lacks what most Marvel movies lack ... a sense of consequence and emotional weight.

Which is why the end isn't that memorable.

But – in classic SMB style – let's contrast it with something else, from Captain Beaky and his Band.

P.S. Here's the full text of the poem I mentioned.

NEARLY FOUR

by Jeremy Lloyd

A teddy bear sits on a mattress

One glass eye and threadbare paw

Looking at a cuckoo clock

Which shows it's ten to four.



Four o'clock is teddy's teatime

Lots of friends and fancy cake

Although it's only pretend eating

Oh how long ten minutes take.



Shadows grow on distant hillsides

Orange sun on glassy sea

All in his amber eye reflected

And still ten minutes left 'til tea.



The mattress, striped, is old and broken

Rusty springs through stuffing show

The cuckoo clock is also broken

But how's a teddy supposed to know?



Unaware he's been discarded

That this is not the nursery cot

The hills and sea just glass, old papers

On a disused rubbish plot.



A telephone that no one answers

Empty tins that once held tea

The clock that still says nearly teatime

Where can all the children be?



For ages now he's lain unwanted

Saluting with his threadbare paw

He'll never know he's been abandoned

'Til the clock reads after four.



Don't tell him that the clock is broken

For as long as teddy doesn't know

It'll always soon be teatime

As it was so long ago.

Episode home:

https://StoriesMeanBusiness.com/podcast/731:-Shang-Chi-and-the-Legend-of-the-Brown-Bear