The Marvel-Less Marvels

Everyone's favorite Avenger is back.

Well, after a month and a half and many, many hours of writing and reading about dolls, I figure the best way to settle back into some degree of normalcy is to write about some current events while I sit and ponder which, if any topic, is cut out to be the next multi-part epic. I find myself already eager to dive into another, though, I’m not entirely sure I have the mental energy to do so. So, I’m going to force myself to abstain for the time being.

Unfortunately, however, I found that my month-and-some-change sabbatical from largely not paying attention to current events actually did wonders for my headspace. It’s not like I’ve been unaware of what’s been going on - for a myriad of reasons, that just… wouldn’t happen, not in 2023, where the powers that be have a very vested interest in beaming an unceasing stream of horrors and chaos directly into your eyeballs - but… well, everyone remembers the scene from Spider-Man 3 when Peter Parker is infected with the symbiote and he acts like a dick, but fewer people seem to remember the superior scene from the superior movie, Spider-Man 2, when Peter Parker is going about his daily life after giving up on being Spider-Man and actually has a good day for once in his life.

I don’t think superhero movies ever actually got better than this. That being said, there’s a valuable lesson in this little slice of cape-kino. Sometimes, you see some crazy shit going down -

And the only appropriate response is -

I have a lane, and Middle Eastern Geopolitics is not it. Pulling into it seems like drifting out of my lane in one of those dinky smart cars and right into the path of a Mack truck with the driver asleep at the wheel. And broken brakes. And military grade explosives in the trailer. Besides, there’s no insight into the conflict that I could offer that other commentators here have not already offered, and more eloquently than I ever could, at that.

All I’ll say on that topic is, could you imagine how radically different things might be if American politicians cared even a fraction as much about the country they’re supposed to represent as they do Israeli Lobbyist Money the people of Israel?

Why, I reckon if Pelosi and McConnel and the rest of the peanut gallery gave roughly one one-millionth of a quarter of a damn about every single American citizen as they do about every Israeli citizen, something might actually be done about the continued epidemic of deaths of despair¹, the economy might not be in the shitter, a McDouble and fries might not be fifteen bucks, and grocery stores might not look like this in some places:

But that would require these people to actually, you know, do something that might actually benefit their constituents and make life for Middle Americans better in some small way, and, as they’ve proven time and time again, almost every single person in an elected seat of power in the country would sooner go on live television and commit mass, ritualistic suicide than pass a single law that might raise the standard of living by even the slightest degree.

Outside of the fiasco currently engulfing the Middle East, other matters elsewhere aren’t all that much better.

The Ukraine Cinematic Universe seems to be slowly but surely sputtering to an end, not with a bang, not with a whisper, but with the kind of undignified wet fart that should probably warrant a trip to the bathroom. Now that Big Daddy America has gotten the call from his girlfriend asking where the fuck he’s been for the past two years, Ukraine, like any side-ho, is about the learn what it’s like to eat nothing but insta-ramen from the microwave once they’re on the skids.

And Zelensky…

Ouch. Talk about being left in the lurch. I have a feeling that he’s gonna learn the hard way what Kissinger meant when he said, It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.

Outside of geopolitics, there was also the saga of Indi Gregory, which, frankly, is one of those things that brings your piss to a boil when you read about it.

The thousand-yard stare in the father’s eyes really says it all. That’s the look of a man gripped by a sense of anger that transcends yelling and screaming.

It’s too much for me to get into, so if you really want to ruin your day,

Max Remington

wrote a good piece on the case and it’s greater implications that’s worth reading. Fair warning, though - it’s profoundly upsetting, and by the time you’re done with it, if you don’t believe that the bureaucrats in positions of authority in the west are actually, literally possessed by demons, nothing will short of them sprouting horns and pointed tails.

After saying all that, it seems a bit crass to follow up with Let’s talk about Disney! But, ultimately, I’m a culture critic - or, at least, I like to think I am - more than a political critic, and, if there’s one thing that can always spark a bit of cathartic delight deep in my heart, because, yeah - I’m a hater.

It’s easy to be a hater when almost everything put out by the largest entertainment outfits on Earth sucks hard enough to get a baseball through a bendy straw.

Anyways - for years now, there’s been a popular refrains echoing through the halls of pop culture critique of fandom; just how long can this Marvel thing keep going?

It may be difficult to remember, given their recent… missteps, shall we say, but there was a time - and not even all that long ago - where Marvel Studios was banging out back-to-back billion dollar block-busters left and right. When people say they’re just silly cape-shit movies… well, they are, but that’s also being rather reductionist about the fact that these movies quite literally set the entire course of American cinema for over a decade. Many imitators have tried to duplicate their success, whether it be copying the interconnected cinematic universe style, quippy writing, or both. None have succeeded.

But, all run-away successes share a similar fate; eventually, they run out of gas. And Kevin Feige’s comic book hit machine looks to finally be going silent.

The newest Marvel movie, The Marvels, released over the weekend with all the grace and aplomb of me attempting to perform the role of Odette in Swan Lake - which is to say, it went to do one of those fancy ballet jumps and ate shit on the cold, hard-wood floor of the stage. It seems that public interest in the movie is about on par with what it would be for watching me headline a production of Swan Lake - which is to say, it only made a dismal $47 Million for it’s opening weekend. For reference, the second lowest opening for a Marvel Movie - The Incredible Hulk, starring Edward Norton - was $55 Million. And that was in 2008. There’s a lot of cope in the Marvel Stan’s camp over this. You see, Captain America, Thor, Ant-Man - their movies didn’t gross that much more on their opening weekends.

Okay. Fair enough. But these movies predated Marvel taking it’s position as the biggest movie franchise on planet Earth. The Marvels does not. If these numbers are anything to go by, I think it’s safe to say that it’s becoming abundantly clear to Disney what was already obvious to anyone who didn’t have a nice, fat Christmas bonus riding on the continued success of the MCU - when it comes to the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s time as the undisputed heavyweight champion of the box office, it’s all over but the crying.

You might not have known The Marvels was even coming out, because, despite a marketing blitz over the past few months, none of the headlining stars could do the usual publicity runs due to the SAG-AFTRA strikes, which is still limping along as the last few sticking points are hammered out, and, even if they could, you still probably wouldn’t have cared.

Again - a Marvel-cel might try to use the numbers from Guardians of the Galaxy 3 to refute this claim. After all Guardians of the Galaxy 3 made a tidy sum of $845 million at the box office. Just ignore the fact that it was supposed to turn a billion, and that, despite being one of the MCU’s stand-out properties, Guardians had to limp to that final number after a disappointing opening weekend, no doubt caused by damaged trust in the brand’s reliability to provide decent end products. This is also, of course, ignoring the disastrous release of Ant-Man: Quantumania, which not only was one of the first Marvel movies to be roundly, loudly, and universally panned, but only grossed a meager $476 million on a budget half as big. Since public budgets for films often do not include the cost of marketing, and marketing can often double the cost of a film, especially when it’s a Disney production… well, you do the math. There’s reason to believe that the stinking pile of refuse that was Ant-Man: Quantumania was one of the reasons that people were hesitant to see Guardians 3. I know it was one of the biggest reasons I stayed away until I heard enough positive news through word of mouth to give it a chance.²

Even still, comparing Guardians to The Marvels is less like comparing apples and oranges and more like comparing a fresh-grilled cheeseburger to a steaming turd. Think about this.

Guardians’ star-studded cast was headlined by Chris Pratt. Mr. Pratt, despite controversy over his Christian beliefs, is still one of the most bankable stars currently working in Hollywood - the Super Mario Bros. movie, in which he played the eponymous plumber, was the second highest-grossing movie of 2023 behind…

I just can’t get away from you, can I, Barbara?

The reason Chris Pratt continues to print money for studios at the box office is simple - he just seems like a likeable, down-to-earth guy. Maybe it’s all just posturing - I don’t know the guy personally - but if it is, he does a damn good job at selling it.

If you haven’t seen his acceptance speech for an award that got him labelled as a Christian zealot, I’d recommend you’d watch it. Apparently, just being grateful and saying that God is real and that you should pray is controversial these days.

I’d also like to point out that Paul Rudd is equally charismatic as a leading man and that, like Pratt, was able to take a Marvel D-lister and turn them into a household name. Unfortunately for him, though, Ant-Man: Quantumania was a hot mess from beginning to end that his presence alone couldn’t make tolerable.

Compare and contrast with The Marvels headliner.

Here’s a hot take for you; I don’t think that Brie Larson is actually a bad actress. Everything I’ve seen her in that wasn’t a Marvel movie, she’s been fine in. However, where as Pratt and Rudd radiate charisma, Larson does the exact opposite. Pratt and Rudd seem like guys you would and, under different circumstances, probably could sit down and have a beer with.

Despite his best efforts, even Paul Rudd can’t pretend to be excited to drink an alcohol-free beer.

We’re not drinking Heineken, though. Sorry, Paul.

Larson, on the other hand, seems like a deeply unpleasant person to be around. At 34, she simply radiates the aura of the proto-typical late-Millennial woman - snarky, sarcastic, always ready with a complaint, even in the best of circumstances, and very obviously papering over a profound insecurity with a thin veneer of self-assured narcissism. Again - it could all just be posturing. She could be lovely when she’s away from the cameras. I don’t know her personally, I can’t say. But, from what I have seen of her, I would go so far as to say that she has anti-charisma, as in she’s the kind of person you’d dread having to take a prolonged car trip with.

I’m not going to comb through her many, many instances of her whinging about white people and men and white men in particular - just watch this.

Her interview alongside Chris Hemsworth and Don Cheadle - some of which is included in the video above - is infamous for being one of the most hilariously uncomfortable eight minutes you’ll ever see, with Hemsworth clearly up to his tits with Larson and poor Don Cheadle just sitting there listening to them trade passive-aggressive barbs with one another like -

There are scads of compilations of Larson firing her mouth off. I probably don’t need to tell you that she has a reputation for being quite difficult to work with on set. By all accounts, being a prickly, unapproachable, narcissistic pedant with a chip on her shoulder and a neo-liberal political bent makes her perfectly cut out for the character of Captain Marvel/Carol Danvers, who, over the years, has been pushed as the new big thing in Marvel comics. I think she’s a lesbian, now. I don’t know at this point and, frankly, I don't care, but, from what I understand, she’s really, really annoying in those, too.

She has short hair. That means she is a strong.

In a comic industry that has basically been commandeered by political ideologues by the left, this kind of strong wymyn who don’t need no man with the bad pixie cut and smart mouth might fly, but, among general movie-going audiences with a wider political spectrum, this was just not a formula that was ever going to make money. The thing is, Chris Evans and Mark Ruffalo - Captain America and the Hulk, respectively - are very vocally progressives and have both said quite vile things in their time about everything from Trump voters to gun owners and, basically, just about everyone to the right of Obama. Despite this, they still have that magic quality - the charisma - to not turn off audiences. When you watch them on screen, it’s easy to forget how partisan they are. But… they still don’t seem like they’d be assholes if you just met them on the street.

With Larson, however, her contempt bleeds through the screen. It’s pretty obvious she sees the entire affair as beneath her. Again, say what you want about Evans and Ruffalo - they genuinely seem to enjoy playing their Marvel characters and get a kick out of the entire thing. They also seem to appreciate the fans for enabling them to live lavish lives of luxury and elevating them to Hollywood demi-gods. I’m pretty sure Chris Evans dresses up like Cap for the hell of it.

Chris Pratt does a lot of Make-a-Wish foundation type work for sick kids out of costume, but Chris Evans seems to jump at the opportunity to get into the suit for them, which is admirable.

Larson, on the other hand, seems like someone who wants the prestige of being in a high-budget, culturally important superhero flick, but without all the gross, dirty nerd shit that comes with it. I’ve never seen her do any Make-A-Wish visit a sick kid work, either, but I also don’t think there’s many ill children out there clamoring to see Captain Marvel, of all characters, at their bedside, when they could get Star Lord or Captain America.

Combine her off-putting demeanor with a piss-poor script written by a committee of talentless hacks, and you have a recipe for disaster. I saw the first Captain Marvel movie, and I am not exaggerating when I saw that her take on Carol Danvers has all the personality and charm of an pit viper that someone had stepped on. Captain Marvel made over a billion dollars at the box office, but if it weren’t for it being wedged between Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame - quite literally two of the biggest fucking movies of all time - it would have done decent, but not spectacular numbers. And, if the movie hadn’t also starred a digitally de-aged Samuel L. Jackson and the return of Clark Gregg as Agent Coulson, it would have been borderline impossible to sit through.

The thing about The Marvels is that it is, for all intents and purposes, Captain Marvel 2, but even Kevin Feige, for all his questionable decisions as captain of the S.S. Marvel Cinematic Universe, wasn’t deluded enough to think that the controversial Brie Larson could carry a second solo movie alone, especially without back-to-back Avenger’s flicks to anchor it and guarantee interest and profit. If it isn't the cringe-worthy ad campaign attempting to invoke the specter of Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man, the three re-shoots, four changes in release dates, or years in development turmoil, the fact that it was butchered in post-production to be the shortest Marvel movie yet betrays the fact that the studio had no faith in this movie whatsoever.

Industry chatter says that the concept of Captain Marvel 2 was reworked several times, including one idea in which Tom Holland’s Spider-Man is thrown in a co-lead to add some much needed charisma to the whole affair.

However, Spider-Man is a character that is deep in the legal weeds between Sony and Disney, and they either couldn’t get Sony to let them use him in the movie, or Tom Holland couldn’t do it, so, rather than anchor the film with one of the most beloved and easily-marketed heroes in the Marvel roster, they settled for throwing in two alternatives to help take the pressure of Larson for The Marvels, by taking two characters that also operated under the title of Captain Marvel or Miss Marvel³. There’s a couple Captain Marvels running around at any given time in Earth-616. Look, it’s capeshit comics - if you think three concurrent Captain Marvels is confusing, you’d have a stroke if you tried to catalogue all the different Spider-Guys swinging around these days.

The first of these Marvel ladies is Teyonah Parrish as Monica Rambeau. She’s the generic strong woman of color character that was shoe-horned in at the end of Marvel’s first television outing, Wandavision. Not because she had anything to do with the plot, but they just kind of needed to get her name out there so they wouldn’t have to introduce her in The Marvels.

I’ll be honest - I don’t know a damn thing about Teyonah Parrish, and, when she showed up in Wandavision, she was… fine. She didn’t really do enough in it to be good or bad. Critics are lauding her in The Marvels as the best of the three main characters, even going so far as calling in a star-making turn, but… Ms. Parrish has a certain je ne sais quois about her that I think means that critics have to say that about her.

Just a hunch. But, again - I don’t want to cast aspersions against her, since I haven’t seen the movie to judge her performance, and, from everything I’ve seen, both in pre-release clips of The Marvels and Wandavision, she seems… perfectly serviceable in the role. She feels a hell of a lot more cut out to be a Captain Marvel than Lashana Lynch, who plays Monica’s mother, Maria Rambeau. They really want Lynch to be a thing in these movies, and, man… if you, like me, thought Larson was as dry as a saltine cracker playing Captain Marvel, Lynch’s take on the character is the acting equivalent eating one of those silica-gel packs.

There’s also Zawe Ashton playing the generic bad guy who wants to kill Captain Marvel because something something revenge and to get a magical MacGuffin to end the universe, because all these movies are about collecting magical tat these days. I wanted to mention her because someone described her Emilia Clarke if you ordered her off Aliexpress. Which… yeah, I see it.

“We have a Khaleesi at home.”

Again, I don’t want to cast aspersions against her because I haven’t seen the movie and, in other projects, she may be great for all I know, but I know her role as Generic Baddie #4 in The Marvels is being panned as one of the worst parts of the film. She steals water from other planets to support her own planet, which has no water. Why does she have to get water from a planet with people already on it? Why doesn’t she just… go find a planet that has water and no people on it? Because she’s evil, of course.

This isn’t all that surprising, though. One of the most persistent complains of the Marvel movies is a lack of compelling villains. Even the ones that are compelling tend to not make it through the movie to show up again.

What is surprising, however, is the treatment being given to the third member of The Marvel’s core triumvirate.

Kamala Khan occupies an interest space in the Marvel pantheon.

One that I think deserves it’s own investigation. Ooh - spoilers, perhaps?

As a brief introduction, Kamala Khan is a Pakistani-American living in the third world hellhole known as North Jersey. She’s awkward. She’s quirky. She’s just like you, random teenage girl who might be interested in Marvel comics now that the movies back when they were making more money than God. She had an unhealthy obsession with superheros and was a terminally online Tumblr-gurrrl posting fan-fics of Captain America and Iron Man getting intimate and getting into flamewars over which one of Spider-Man’s spider-undies outlined his butt the best until - gadzooks! - she became one!

In the comics, Kamala’s powers - as you can see in the illustration above - are similar to Luffy from One Piece, or the mom from The Incredibles. She can also grow, shrink, and enlarge parts of her anatomy, which… uh… hm…

Let’s just say I think there’s a reason they changed Kamala’s powers in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and gave her the generic magic - sorry, quantum bracelet that goes generic quantum things (that are effectively magic). And I don’t think it’s just because they would have had to spend dump trucks of money on visual effects to translate scenes like this onto the big screen:

Just ignore the fact Netflix, on a fraction of a budget of the average Marvel dumpster-fire, managed to make it work without looking too bad in their recent - and surprisingly decent - live-action adaptation of the manga One Piece.

A lot of what made it work in One Piece was careful cinematography and shot blocking, all of which is far above what the current crop of Marvel-ites are capable of.

Now, Kamala Khan’s superhero nom de guerre in the comics is Miss Marvel, because the name was just lying around and no one was using it after Carol Danvers decided Captain Marvel, like, less sexist, or something. Thus - she is the third Marvel of The Marvels.

And everything I’ve seen about her from the critics is that she’s annoying as fuck.

That probably isn’t a shock. When you look at the marketing material for the movie, Kamala Khan looks like the annoying comic relief that was tacked on to be haha, so funny, so #relatable! for the Marvel fangirls, which I’m pretty sure are the only people still watching this stuff.

But… I kind of doubt it. As the token comic relief character, Kamala was always destined to attract a lot of ire, especially from people who are looking for this movie to fail and hoping that it does. But, even though I will admit - I may fit into that camp - I have a hard time believing Kamala is the worst part of the movie.

In the MCU, Kamala Khan is played by Iman Vellani, which, frankly, is unacceptable. Kamala, in the comics, is Pakistani-American. Iman Vellani is Pakistani-Canadian. This is an oversight in accurate representation that I take deep offense with. More to the point, though, Iman Vellani is… well, from some angles, she looks like she could reasonably fit the part.

From others…

Not so much. Look, I try not to resort to unwarranted ad hominems, really, I do, but let’s just say that she doesn’t look like she does much jumping across rooftops in a single bound. In her defense, however, her debut as Kamala Khan came in the made-for-Disney+ series, Miss Marvel, which dropped in January of 2022 - two full years after it was filmed, the release pushed back due to COVID delays. In the intervening years, while I wouldn’t say that Vellani looks as if she’s gonna be going toe-to-toe with Thanos, but she definitely looks as if she shaped up some. It probably didn’t help that Miss Marvel was filmed on the cheap. You could make the argument that her costume in the show is supposed to look cheap, since she cobbled it together in her room like Peter Parker did his original suit, but the cheap, ugly, Spirit Halloween-tier costume was the least of that show’s visual issues, with some truly God awful instances of bad CGI.

Also, I really like this image.

She looks like a young cosplayer that just got arrested for throwing hands at a Comic-Con in a middling-size city.

Again, I can’t say she exactly looked the part, but her performance was pretty much spot on from what I would expect of a Kamala Khan. Awkward, gawky, emotionally volatile and predisposed to autistic hyper-fixations - I think she actually did a pretty good job. She reminded me a lot of the girls I used to hang out with in high school. And most of the ones I still do. So, maybe she is annoying and I'm just inoculated to spergy nerd girl antics. Like I said before - I have a type. Regarldess, I thought her performance was one of the better parts of Miss Marvel. That’s probably the hottest take I have for you today; I actually think Vellani is fine as Kamala Khan. In fact, with better writers, I think she could actually be… good.

See? I don’t hate everything.

But I can't say that Miss Marvel was good overall. I didn’t finish it - the series, while passable in the first half and relying heavily on interplay between Vellani and the supporting cast of her family and friends, sputters out in the second when Kamala goes to Pakistan, when almost all the supporting cast exits the plot and it devolves into another generic, grinding Find the Magical MacGuffin plot, which seems to be a crippling problem for most recent Marvel projects. Either they start off with a unique, fresh idea and turn into a magical MacGuffin hunt, or they’re just a straight dog-water magical MacGuffin hunt the entire time. Even the best MCU show in my opinion - Loki - is strictly so-so and, despite being really cool half the time, can't seem to stop being… not cool the other half of the time.

I’d actually say it’s more like a 70/30 split between cool and not cool.

Like Loki, though, the failings of the show doesn’t fall on star Tom Hiddleston’s shoulders, nor does the shortcomings of Miss Marvel land squarely on Vellani. Even Hiddleston, who’s superb every time he takes on the role of the God of Mischief, can only do so much to elevate some stunningly bad writing, and Vellani is both twenty years younger and less experienced than Hiddleston.

Still, the important thing is that I watched several interviews with Vellani and, unlike Larson, she seems quite personable. Her excitement to be part of the MCU is very apparent - probably because she’s a self-proclaimed Marvel fangirl herself, which, in that case… spot on casting, fellas. Maybe get some writers that have the same talent as your casting crew. I can’t say that I’d choose to hang out with Vellani over Chris Pratt or Paul Rudd, but, I also wouldn’t say no.

And, well… Miss Vellani, I know you like to Google yourself and get into anonymous fights on Twitter and Wattpad over Marvel movies, so, on the off-chance you’re reading, I just want you to know everything I’ve said up until this point has all been a joke, it’s all been for the sake of comedy, loved you in Miss Marvel - great show - I’m sure you’re fantastic in The Marvels, and if you ever wanna go out, get some cocktails, talk a little shop or somethin’, you just let me know in the comment section down below. My people will call your people. We’ll set something up. It’ll be a good time, alright?⁴

I look a lot like Robert Downey Jr. Just so you know.

This is all to say that there’s a lot of chatter by the critics that Vellani is the worst part of the movie, and - I dunno, man. Based on everything I’ve seen, I just don’t believe it. And, even if she is, I’d say that, if you’re one of the incredibly shrinking pool of Marvel fans, you’d better get used to her, because I don’t think she’s going anywhere.

Once upon a time, Brie Larson as Carol Danvers was being queued up to take the spot of Tony Stark and Captain America as the de facto leader of the Avengers. This was no secret, given the way she was poised back around the time of her introduction. By the time Endgame rolled around, however, Larson had proved so divisive among the fans that the entire finale of the movie had to be rewritten to limit her presence. It was pretty clear where Carol Danvers’ position was in the revised Avengers Totem Pole when this happened in the big barn-burning finale of Endgame:

Gotcha, bitch!

By all accounts, Larson has not been happy with being side-lined as the once promising new leader of the Avenger team. Even if it just dumb cape-shit movies in her opinion, it was still a lucrative paycheck, and, if handled right, she could have been the face of the next phase of another billion dollar cycle of Marvel schlock.

But - coulda. Shoulda. Woulda.

Rumors among industry insiders suggest that Larson is actively and excitedly looking to be done with Marvel Studios. The commitment she made to play Carol Danvers is not a small one, and, given the intensive demands to be available at Lord Feige’s beck and call, she’s no doubt had to sacrifice potential roles in other films that wouldn’t get her tarred and feathered by comic fans. I’m not sure what her contract with the House of Mouse looks like, but I can’t imagine she’s got a third Captain Marvel outing in her, and, even if she does, depending on how the box office for The Marvels ends up playing out, they might not even want her to.

But what about Iman Vellani?

Well, here’s a spoiler warning for The Marvels. If you care. Which I know you probably don’t, but, if you’re, like, the one person who’s reading this who might, fair warning - turn back now, or Carol Danvers gets bodied by budget!Emilia Clarke and dies, Teyonah Parris kills the bad guy, and when Kamala Khan beats some goons for the first time she does the default Fortnite dance.

Just kidding! But I got you, didn’t I?

No, in the post-credit sequence, the multi-verse bullshit that Marvel has been playing at since the start of the newest cycle kicks into overdrive as Teyonah Parris’s character is transported to an alterantive timeline, where - again - they’re trying to make Lashana Lynch as her character’s mother a thing. But, more importantly… Kelsey Grammer, of all people, reprises his role as Beast from the original X-Men movies, which means Disney is finally desperate enough to cash in on the X-Men the X-Men are back.

I don’t actually care about the X-Men. I was never the biggest fan of the cartoon, the movies, or even the characters in general. I always thought Rogue was hot, though. Maybe it was the Southern accent.

She could be my Mississippi Queen any day.

No - I don’t care about the return of the X-Men - or are they the X-People now? - I just think it’s cool that, rather than go for Hugh Jackman as Wolverine or James Marsden as Cyclops or Patrick Stewart as Professor Xavier… they went with Kelsey Grammer as the big blue dude that most people probably don’t remember. Which is actually awesome, because I like Kelsey Grammer. Frasier is great.

That has nothing to do with Iman Vellani or Kamala Khan, though. No - she gets the second post-credit scene, because it worked so nice that they do it twice, these days. In the second post-credit scene for the Marvels, Kamala Khan goes and visits… oh, that’s right; it’s none other than Hawkeye.

Wait. No - not that Hawkeye, silly. Even if Jeremy Renner hadn’t pretty much all but retired from the role, I don’t think he’ll be in any position to be reprising it any time soon.⁵ No - the Hawkeye I’m talking about is Kate Bishop, played by Hailee Steinfeld.

I actually liked her turn as the character in the Hawkeye Disney+ series. She did a good job. Even though I like Loki more for personal reasons, on a technical level, I have to admit - Hawkeye is the best show under the MCU banner on pretty much every technical level. That’s neither here nor there, though. In an embarrassing retread of old material loving call-back to the first Iron Man movie, Kamala tells Kate…

For those unaware, in the Marvel comics, Kate Bishop is more or less the Tony Stark-cum-Nick Fury of a group that’s called the Young Avengers. They are, as the name would imply, Avengers, but young.

And they have quite an interesting history themselves. It’s worth noting that Kamala Khan isn’t a core member of the Young Avengers team. She does show up to say hi every now and then, but she’s largely separate from their escapades, and to replace Kate Bishop as the team’s leader with her… well, I hope Hailee Steinfeld wasn’t betting all her chips on her role as Kate Bishop.

It appears that the Young Avengers is the direction that the Marvel Cinematic Universe is taking a hard-turn into, since many of their other properties are failing to return dividends. The Multi-Verse Saga - the blueprint that defines the current phase of the project - has been characterized by misstep after misstep, from the nonsensical, contradictory, sloppy, boring and bland characters made to fill out the now empty roster of Avengers, and a lackluster big bad for them to fight, Kang the Conqueror, who’s very future in the series is in serious question after Kang’s actor, Johnathan Majors, faces major criminal accusations of domestic abuse that seem to be corroborated by a history of unsavory behavior both on other projects and in his days at Juliard.

He’s also just… not that good. I’ve never quite understood what he’s been doing with the character, ever since his first appearance.

With both Majors’ Kang and the multiverse being some of the most consistently criticzed aspects of the new cycle of the MCU, I wouldn’t be surprised if they keep the entire schtick around long enough to use it as a means of introducing the X-Men, Fantastic Four, and other Marvel properties that have been acquired by Marvel Studios over the past few years, before being dropped entirely. Perhaps the Young Avengers is going to be crucial in this sudden and violent redirection. Again - you may not think it’s important, but if Marvel, unlikely as it may seem does get a second wind upon course correction, and the hail Mary passes pay off?

Enjoy another decade of every movie studio in America taking another swing at the MCU forumla.

Of course, there’s no small chance that a Young Avengers film never materializes, and just like our friend in Kiev, Iman Vellani is left holding the bag once Big Daddy Disney finds some new sugar baby to heap their money on. But, there’s also the chance that Iman Vellani becomes the Robert Downey Jr. or the next Avengers cycle, and succeeds where Brie Larson failed.

There’s a joke here. I’m not going to make it.

I think she’s got the enthusiasm for the project, if nothing else, that gives her a chance.

I suppose it depends on how The Marvels ultimately performs. Feige and the entirety of the MCU have really worked themselves into a corner that I don’t think will be easy to claw their way out of. As an outsider looking in, it looks as if they have two hail Mary passes primed and ready to go - the X-Men, and Young Avengers. I don’t think either is a particularly safe bet.

Why?

When it comes to the X-Men, even though I’m really not the biggest fan of the movies -

Did you know that Hugh Jackman almost lost the role of Wolverine because he’s 6’3 and Logan is canonically a whole foot shorter?

You’re just never going to do better than this cast. It was pretty much perfect. James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender did respectably as a younger Charles Xavier and Magneto, respectively, but they never did quite nail down the rest of the X-Men line-up in the prequel series. Given the current state of Hollywood and Marvel Studios, I have absolutely zero faith they’ll be able to scrounge together an even half-way decent cast to fill out the roster. Also, given Disney’s vehement hatred of red-heads, I’d be willing to put some serious money on the bet that Jean Grey is going to get the Ariel and Mary-Jane Watson treatment.

I’m betting they cast Zendaya as Jean Grey. I know that Zendaya is already the MCU’s Mary-Jane Watson, but given that Zendaya is being cast as fucking every major female lead these days, I’m willing to bet they’ll let her be Jean Grey, too.

As for the Young Avengers? They aren’t exatly the most popular crew on the block. I think there’s actually a reason that other young guns in the Marvel roster like Kamala Khan and Miles Morales never really do more than rub elbows with them. It’s debatable how much Avenging these Young Avengers actually get up to. If anything, I think this cover art Bryan Lee O’Malley of Scott Pilgrim fame tells you exactly what the Young Avengers spend most of their time doing, and what issues are of particular importance in their storylines.

But… that’s a story for another day.

Until then, face front, True Believers.

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Post Script Edit: As I sat down to publish this, I saw news that Jeff Loveness - Rick and Morty alumni, head writer of the disasterous Ant-Man: Quantumania, one of the chief architects of Marvel’s multiverse saga - is apparently longer in the employ of Marvel Studios.

He also looks like Jake Gyllenhaal if you ordered him off Temu.com.

He and fellow Rick and Morty writer, Michael Waldron, are considered to be the (smooth)brains behind the latest turn of the Marvel wheel. Given the constant multiversal hijinks of Rick and Morty, it makes sense as to why these two would be tapped to make a multiverse story. At the same time, given Rick and Morty’s radically nihilistic, irreverant, and dipshit community college stoner sense of humor, I still don’t think they were ever actually a good fit for Marvel Studios⁶. Given that Johnathan Majors’ Kang was, again, the lynch-pin of this entire saga, one of the leading architects being relieved of duties from the project only lends more credence to the industry rumors that Marvel Studios is currently in a panic trying to find a new direction that leads away from Majors and the multi-verse.

The Blue Man Group’s newest hire just… didn’t work out like they thought he would.

I’m sure there’s a caravan of semi-trailers loaded with gold bars that are currently en route to Patrick Stewart’s house in hopes of getting his geriatric ass back in the X-wheelchair ASAP as I type this.

1. Did you know that there were an estimated 82,998 overdose deaths alone in the United States in 2022. That comes out to 227 per day. Neat, huh?

2. For the record, Guardians of the Galaxy 3 turned out to be what might be the best Marvel movies, or certainly one of the best under the banner, too.

3. Which was Captain Marvel’s original superhero name, from a less enlightened time.

4. This offer also extends to Mr. Rudd and Mr. Pratt, should they see this as well.

5. This isn’t a joke, by the way, what happened to him was actually pretty fucking terrible, especially when it happened because he was trying to do something nice for someone.

6. Given Rick and Morty’s own slow decline in quality, why you’d give such a big project to two of the chumps that were only involved after it’s best days is beyond me.