HOW TO FIX THE MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE BY RANDALL P. GIRDNER

#1 - It’s Saturday morning and I am jet-lagged. My sleep schedule is entirely off, which means that I get extraordinarily tired at random times of the day and barely know which end is up. Yesterday, we were walking around a mall and out of nowhere, I could barely utter a sentence I was so tired. I came home, managed to stay awake until 9:30 PM and then gave in and went to bed. I woke up, fully-rested and ready to go…

…It was 11:30 PM.

The older I get, the worse the jet-lag gets. When I first lived overseas, it used to take me a couple of days to get over it. But time has passed and the amount of time it takes to recover seems to be stretching further and further. Now, it takes at least a week for me to feel normal again. It’s not fun.

#2 - I saw Spider-Man on Thursday. One of the glories of living in the Middle East is that movies that open on Friday in the rest of the world open a day earlier here. So, I went to a 9 AM showing.

People sometimes forget that we lived through a glorious era of cinema with the rise of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Whether you think that the Marvel movies were “cinema” is up for debate, but one can’t deny that they were a cultural touchstone that captured the imagination of the entire world.

Some readers of this newsletter will remember when I took them all to see The Avengers at Wanda Plaza in Shanghai. There were about twenty of us there, including my young daughters. My students and my family enjoyed seeing something on screen that I never thought I would see: Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Black Widow, the Hulk…all together in one movie. The idea that this came into existence was mind-blowing to me. We all know them now, but none of these characters were ever actually all that popular prior to the movies and the story of how the Marvel movies came to be is a fascinating one for another time. The MCU became a phenomenon…so much so that everyone knows what the letters MCU actually mean!

But all things must come to an end and that is just as true of the Marvel films. The height was Infinity War. Everything after that has been a let down, with the occasional film hanging on after that. It’s been disappointing. But we still tried! Over the summer, we rewatched all of the “new” Spider-Man movies to prepare for “Brand New Day” and try to rekindle the glory of the past.

So, we went to see the new one. I enjoyed the movie, but it had many, many problems. Basically, it played out like a television show. The storytelling was all over the place and there were some major plot holes and loose threads and underdeveloped (and overdeveloped) characters. It was really, really long.

The bottom line with all of this is that the movies just don’t work anymore. The continuity issues, the need to attach everything together from different films, the gigantic set pieces…it doesn’t work.

But I have a solution…turn them into TV shows.

I know, I know…you’re telling me that they already have and failed. This is true. But they’ve done all the TV shows with secondary characters, the b-team of super-heroes that nobody cares about (and probably the b-team of creators as well).

I want to see a Spider-Man TV show. I want them to take their time with the characters. What made the Spider-Man films so enjoyable was the camaraderie between the main characters. I think people couldn’t care less about the gigantic, CGI-laden set pieces of the films. They’re all boring and the same. What we care about are the characters. I enjoy spending time with Peter Parker and Ned and MJ. I like their banter and playfulness. So, give me more of that.

The first caveat to this is that…yes, I know…you could never get Tom Holland and Zendaya to star in a long-running TV show. So, find someone else who is willing to do it. But give these characters a chance to breathe. Let them be characters as opposed to caricatures. Let us get to know them in the quiet moments and not just quiet moments shoe-horned into action scenes.

In this day and age, we want to hang out with people we like. Because of the internet and streaming, this seems to be happening mainly at home, so very few people have genuine interactions with each other (especially teenagers). People want to sit on their couch after a long day and spend time with characters they know and love on a TV show. So, give us that!

Marvel is going to move into the next phase of all of this with the X-Men, which I assume they are going to reboot. The X-Men need a TV show.

When I was in high school, I started writing an X-Men TV show. I have no idea what happened with it, but my basic premise was that you did a season of the X-Men (which, back in those days, was 24 episodes). The idea was that you could slow-walk the origin story of the X-Men and spend your time getting to know each character and how they interacted with each other. And throughout the season, you would build the bad guy…letting us get to know them and showing the threat that they presented. It would allow everyone to breathe and become friends with all of the people in the X-Men, both the good guys and the bad guys.

Then, you would “finish” the season with a movie!

That way, you wouldn’t have to waste time “introducing” the characters and their motivations. Everyone would already be in love with all of the people in it, and the stakes would be high. You could do all of your gigantic, CGI-laden set pieces in the film. It could be wall-to-wall action. It would be the “event” of the year. You spent 24 episodes with these characters, and now you’re going to see what happened to them! Some will live! Some will die! But you won’t know until you go to the theater and find out!

That was what my 17-year old brain came up with.

But here’s the thing…that works. It worked then, and it would work now. At least, as long as you add some quality storytelling to the whole thing. I don’t care how many X-Men comics have been written…there are no good X-Men stories. There are good ideas, but putting the stories of some geeky comic writer from the 80s on screen that people in their 40s and 50s have nostalgia for is a recipe for disaster. Case in point: Remember Kang from the Marvel movies? Of course you don’t, because they abandoned that story. Why? It was terrible!

What we like about the Marvel movies are the characters. So, let’s tell some new stories with the characters we love. Stop trying to tell some random-assed cosmic story from the early 80s (Secret Wars? PLEASE! That was a fun idea, but an absolutely terrible comic half-written by an editor who was (rumor has it) kind of a crappy person…why would they make that? No one knows what it really was!). Give us the characters we love with new stories and new relationships. Make me fall in love with them and want to be around them.

And no one really wants to get out of the house to see movies nowadays when there is streaming. You have to make the movies an event! This is how we do it.

I enjoyed Spider-Man: Brand New Day, but I would have enjoyed it more if it was a long mini-series that took its time so that we could spend some longer moments with these wonderful characters. I would have enjoyed an entire episode featuring no one but MJ. I would have enjoyed an entire episode about Ned. And I would have enjoyed an entire episode where Peter Parker never put on the Spider-Man costume. Hell, I would have enjoyed three or four episodes of that.

But hey…I’m just a guy. I’m a film teacher who works with teenagers the world over. I’m not some nepo-baby whose parents support him in a writing room and has no life experience.

Not to toot my own horn, but the world is really missing out on the Mr. G Marvel Cinematic Universe. I could have done some really cool things there…

Here’s the next part of the Maurice comic! You can read Part 1 here, and Part 2 here (subscribers only…no fees! Just subscribe to the newsletter). Enjoy Part 3!