from Chris Snelgrove
| Published
You can give many Marvel fans instant goosebumps with just one word: multiverse. The multiverse was meant to add some flavor and spice to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but it soon became a storytelling crutch that emphasized fun cameos over actual storytelling. Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness is the biggest offender in this regard. Many fans want Marvel to ditch this storytelling crutch entirely, but I have a different recommendation, true believers: instead of focusing on endless multiverse cameos in the main universe, Kevin Feige and his team should give us entire movies whose action takes place in other universes.
Make Mine Multiverse
In other words, my suggestion for the Marvel Multiverse moving forward is that we should have a “Variant” of What if…? television series attached to feature films. Like the comics it’s named after, this show represents how incredibly different a familiar universe would be if something different had happened to alter the timeline. However, I don’t believe that MCU should limit itself to “what if?” animated tales and instead take a page from Sony’s book by creating a live-action equivalent of the Spider-Verse movies.
To simplify things, Marvel might just look to his own post history for ideas of what the multiverse would make for great feature films. The low-hanging fruit would be to adapt the original Ultimates line of comics, which features different and updated versions of iconic characters as a way to attract new readers who might otherwise be intimidated by decades of comic book lore.
A movie, or even an entire series of movies set in this universe, would provide the perfect excuse to bring back dead MCU characters like Iron Man while retooling if necessary… after all, it was those comics that originally gave us Black Nick Fury (modeled after Samuel L. Jackson, no less). Plus, like the original comics, such movies can take everything that fans and writers love about the old universe while giving it all a much-needed bit of modernization.
So many options for the Marvel multiverse
But Marvel comics have given us other multiverses that could make great feature films, including Earth-65, the original home of Spider-Woman (Gwen Stacy), who faces off against an evil version of Matt Murdock. Of course, making a live-action Spider-Gwen movie would mean that Marvel would have to work with Sony again, but both studios could win. At this point, Marvel hasn’t done anything good lately except Deadpool and Wolverineand Sony’s only major superhero hits are Poison and Spider-Verse movies. Honestly, a live-action movie focusing on Spider-Gwen (a known amount to fans) could be a much-needed hit for both studios.
As a longtime fan of Marvel comics, there are other multiverses that I think need the big screen treatment, including the one with the Squadron Supreme (they’re like Justice League, but awesome). Plus, while we need to get a proper MCU X-Men before we can get multiverse mutant cinema, the Age of Apocalypse and Powers of X comics represent, respectively, an old and a new take on multidimensional mutant storytelling. Hell, if Marvel can get past its moratorium on solo Hulk movies (where’s our live-action Planet Hulk movie, cowards?!?), the Future Imperfect movie would be, well… perfect.
In addition to giving Marvel fans great new movies, this approach will keep the MCU endlessly fresh. New actors may be cast in old roles, even as current actors may act against type as wild versions of familiar characters. Disney writers would have carte blanche to adapt the best of the comics for the multiverse or simply create something new entirely from scratch. What I’m saying is, it’s time for something very special What if…? adventure: what if Marvel stopped worrying about preserving its own Sacred Timeline and could just tell the kinds of great, stand-alone stories that won so many fans in the first place?
The ball is in your court, Marvel. And if you need a creative consultant to give you that really obvious advice on a regular basis, my prices are pretty reasonable. Especially compared to Plan A, which keeps bringing Robert Downey Jr. lots of cash when you’re worried your franchise is failing.
