Marveling at the future

At Comic-Con this year, Marvel laid out its plans for films in the post-Endgame era. (I have yet to see Endgame, but I am well aware of all spoilers.) I think there are a couple things that approach the concept of intriguing, one real oddball, and then a lot of business as usual.

Black Widow: Given the events of Endgame, this has already been revealed to be a prequel, set in a time when Black Widow was a spy... but for which entity? If they're suggesting that the Widow is much older than she looks and we're hearkening back to the Cold War, where she was an eventual defector from the Soviet state, OK. That's the most interesting period for this kind of espionage tale and could certainly drag along on the coattails of things like HBO's Chernobyl miniseries (among the best things ever done by that network.) However, putting her in the transition era of the 90s, when no one really knew who they were supposed to be spying on, as the USSR crumbled into the CIS and then finally Russia and associated allies, would be almost as interesting. Either of those scenarios would be able to incorporate the already-revealed Red Guardian (the Soviet version of Captain America) in some capacity, but the overall package is still kind of lacking. That is, unless they go full-bore and bring in people like Red Dynamo, Ursa Major, and Darkstar. But that sounds like too much baggage for what seems to be a Scarlett Johansson vehicle, given that she had input on picking the director. I'm lukewarm on it.

Thor 4, Black Panther 2, Guardians of the Galaxy 3: Blah blah blah... I just can't. Rumor has it that Thor: Love and Thunder is going to retain the comedic turn of the third film, which was quite welcome, if occasionally kind of disjointed. But the rest of it just sounds like status quo superhero stuff which I think we've all had enough of by now...? No. Fine. Whatever. Knock yourselves out.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness: aside from having the most awkward title of any film in the Marvel cinematic universe, is also supposed to be veering closer to being an actual horror film, which... OK? Points for trying? They've already taken a sex-and-profanity turn with the Deadpool films, so at least they're trying to veer away from the exclusively heroic explosions. (One awaits the Spider-Man romcom with bated breath. Into the Puberty-verse?) In that same vein (ahem) is...

Blade: A reboot of the Wesley Snipes version, which was outside the purview of Marvel Films (1998), one assumes that the typical genre of Blade material (vampires, shooting people with silver spikes and watching them disintegrate) would leave that safely in the horror field, as well. It'll only really be successful if they get Kris Kristofferson to reprise his role as the gruffest man alive, however.

By far the oddest of announcements, though, is Shang-Chi: Master of Kung Fu. Shang-Chi was created in the mid-70s by Steve Engelhart (legendary for his run on Batman/Detective around that time and later for Coyote) and Jim Starlin (likewise legendary for his work on Dreadstar, The Death of Captain Marvel and, incidentally, the creator of Thanos.) Marvel was attempting to secure the rights to the David Carradine series, Kung Fu, for a comic adaptation and, when they failed to do so (because Kung Fu's owner, Warner Communications, was also the owner of primary rival, DC Comics...), found that Shang-Chi was popular enough that they could carry on with it into the early 80s (125 issues.) Given the original creative team and intent of the book, it shouldn't surprise anyone that Shang-Chi was a somewhat more thoughtful character than the rest of Marvel's chopsocky output of that time (Iron Fist, et al.)

But the announcements have carried across the idea that the primary intent is to not only have a Marvel film with an Asian lead, which is commendable, but also a mostly Asian cast, which is also commendable, except... Is that really the best reason to make a film, especially one based around a pretty minor character who was always- ALWAYS -out of place in the cosmic-powered Marvel Universe? Yes, yes, I know. Daredevil, Luke Cage, the Defenders, yadda yadda. I get it. There can be low-powered people in Marvelworld, too. But those people are still all equipped with super powers, be it radar sense for the blind man or bulletproofiness for the bartender. The obvious comparison is being drawn to Black Panther and its Afrocentric cast and story, which is fine. But that character had a history of exactly that in the comics. No creative chasms had to be jumped in order to bring that story to life. Shang-Chi? He's a guy. If the intent is to show that Asian people are part of the Marvel U, too, wouldn't it be better to go with someone like Sunfire and be able to tie in the X-Men (fellow mutants) and all that? I don't know, man.

And, yes, there's also The Eternals. Ugh. What a long story that is. (deep breath) So, famed co-creator of the much of the Marvel Universe, Jack Kirby, had a falling out with fellow creator Stan Lee and the rest of Marvel management in the early 70s and decided to switch sides in the comics cold war and join up with DC. What he brought them was a story called The New Gods. This was a titanic struggle between cosmic beings of light and darkness who inhabited the worlds of New Genesis (good guys) and Apokolips (bad guys; subtlety was not always Jack's strong suit in terms of naming conventions.) Carried along with that was an Oedipal scenario, where the battle commander of New Genesis, Orion, was leading their forces against his own father, Darkseid (case in point; it's pronounced just how it looks: "darkside"), ruler of Apokolips. Kirby had intended the whole story to be kind of a novel in comic form, such that it was intended to run for a finite period and then come to an end; a rarity in comics of the day, but typical for the vision of Kirby, who was usually looking to try new things with the medium.

DC, of course, constantly hamstrung by the corporate outlook, wanted the newly-popular books (New Gods, Forever People, Mr. Miracle) to run in perpetuity and also to drop in all kinds of guest stars from the rest of the DC Universe. This, as you might expect, neither worked well nor pleased Kirby at all. In the end, the books got distorted from their original vision and came to an end, anyway, because of faltering sales. Frustrated, Kirby eventually made his way back to Marvel. What he brought with him was kind of a re-envisioning of the New Gods saga in which these two collections of cosmic beings, the Eternals and the Deviants (seriously...) were fighting their little war under the uncaring vision of even more powerful entities known as the Celestials. Just to bring this full circle, when Starlin created Thanos, he picked right up on Kirby's wavelength and decided to make him the misshapen son of the leader of the Eternals, Mentor; looking far more like a Deviant than the generally perfectly-formed good guys. Incidentally, the starbase/town that the Guardians of the Galaxy operate from in both comics and films is the skull of a dead Celestial, so the planning has, like usual, been in place for a while.

As you can probably predict, The Eternals as a comic lasted a very short time because Kirby's grand visions were either perceived as repetitive or just not in tune with the zeitgeist of the late 70s. They and the Celestials would, however, go on to become part of the fabric of the Marvel sprawl. And now they're going to be a movie of some kind. I guess that's interesting? A lot of Kirby's characters in his later days were basically a bunch of square-jawed, thick-fingered dudes that didn't have a whole lot of... well, character. They basically just showed up and punched people while wearing even more outlandish clothing than what is typical for the Marvel setting. So, I'd like to add it to the "intriguing" list, but it sounds like another excuse to blow stuff up. Guess we'll see.