The way to save the Marvel Cinematic Multiverse is already available

By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 1 hour ago

You can instantly make many Marvel fans cringe with one word: multiverse. The multiverse was meant to add 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 completely abandon this storytelling crutch, 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 films set in other universes.

Make my multiverse

In other words, my suggestion for the Marvel multiverse going forward is that we should have a “Variant” of the What if…? television series applied to movies. Like the comics that bear the name, that show presents how a familiar universe would be very different if something different had happened to change the timeline. However, I don't believe that MCU should be limited to only “what if?” cartoon stories and should instead take a page out of Sony's book by creating the live-action equivalent of the Spider-Verse movies.

To keep things simple, Marvel He could only look to his own publishing history for ideas about what multiverses would make for fantastic movies. The low-hanging fruit would be adapting the original Ultimates comic line that featured different, updated versions of the iconic heroes 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 heroes like Iron Man while remaking them as needed… after all, it was these comics that originally gave us a Black. Nick Fury (modeled after Samuel L. Jackson, no less). Plus, like the original comics, such movies could take what fans and writers loved about the old universe while giving it all some much-needed modernization.

So Many Marvel Multiverse Options

But the Marvel comics gave us other multiverses that could make great movies, including Earth-65, the original home of a Spider-Woman (Gwen Stacy) who meets an evil version of Matt Murdock. Of course, making a live-action Spider-Gwen film would mean that Marvel would need to collaborate again with Sony, but both studios could use a win. At this point, Marvel hasn't done anything good lately other than that Deadpool and Wolverineand Sony's only major superhero hits have been They come and the Spider-Verse movies. Frankly, a live-action movie focused on Spider-Gwen (a known quantity to fans) could be a much-needed hit for both studios.

As a longtime Marvel comics nerd, there are other multiverses that I think need the big screen treatment, including the one with Squadron Supreme (they're like the Justice League but cool). Plus, while we need to get the MCU X-Men proper before we can get multiverse mutant cinema, the Age of Apocalypse and the Powers of X comics represent, respectively, old and new takes on multidimensional mutant storytelling . Heck, if Marvel can get over its moratorium on solo Hulk movies (where's our live-action Planet Hulk film, cowards?!?), a Future Imperfect film would be, well… perfect.

In addition to giving Marvel fans great new movies to enjoy, this approach keeps the MCU infinitely fresh. New actors could be cast for old roles even as current actors could act against type as wild versions of familiar characters. Disney writers would have carte blanche to adapt the best of the multiverse comics or just create something completely new from scratch. What I am saying is that it is time for a very special one What if…? adventure: what if Marvel stopped worrying about preserving its own Sacred Timeline and could just tell the kinds of cool, standalone stories that won it so many fans in the first place?

The ball is in your court, Marvel. And if you need a creative consultant to give you this really obvious advice on the rule, my fees are quite reasonable. Especially compared to Plan A, which continuously brings loads of cash to Robert Downey Jr. whenever you are worried that your franchise will fail.