The Film that Marvel Studios Needs to Make

As of writing, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 has grossed around $660 million at the global box office and is still going strong. While Marvel fans everywhere are breathing a sigh of relief, I, for one, am not convinced that they are out of the woods yet.

 

 

Obviously, the issue audiences had with the last few Marvel movies was never really the so-called "superhero fatigue" and it was always clear that people would come to see a movie if it was good, i.e. if it told a compelling, entertaining story. That said, it has to be acknowledged that superhero movies, particularly those of the Marvel variety are prone to several tropes that can often limit the filmmaker’s ability to tell the best story possible. Whether it's the overabundance of humor, generic villains or the perception of low stakes, the presence of one or more of these tropes often makes it hard to convince viewers that Marvel isn’t telling a story as much as they are selling a product. Guardians transcended that with some pretty well-written and hard-edged storytelling that, among other things, managed to convince the audience that the characters were in actual peril.  Almost all of the marketing focused on how this film was the “last ride” of the Guardians, with the implicit threat that one—or even ALL—of them could die before the movie was over. After all, Marvel had already killed off a couple of its marquee characters in Avengers: Endgame. This created an urgency to watch the movie, and infused the story itself with a bit of urgency.  Not all of Marvel’s upcoming movies are going to be like this, and it’s probably safe to say that most of them won’t be like this.

 

Now, emphasizing a character’s mortality is far from the be-all and end-all of engaging storytelling. There are plenty of terrible movies out there in which important characters die left and right. That said, when a storyteller creates likeable, relatable characters, then introduces the very real possibility that they won’t make it to the end of the story, then it becomes that much easier for the audience to get invested in these characters’ fates.   To be fair, Marvel has shown willingness to kill off some of its key characters, albeit under specific circumstances, like big event movies like Avengers: Endgame.  

 

Here's a thought, though: What if, at the very outset, Marvel told a story which introduced likable, relatable, compelling characters who were not guaranteed to make it to the end of the movie? To make it even more extreme, what if the question Marvel posed was not which of the characters would die before the end of the film, but rather, which of would actually live to see the end?  What if I told you all that there is a thirty-plus year old Marvel comic book out there that has told stories exactly like this, solidly entertaining but with the added element of impending peril for its heroes?

 

Strikeforce Morituri, created by Peter B. Gillis, Brent Anderson, and  Whilce Portacio was a monthly series published by Marvel comics from 1986 to 1988 which featured an alternate Earth that was distinct from the “616” Earth that is regarded as the mainstream Marvel Universe. In this version of the Marvel Universe, the usual Marvel superheroes only exist as fictional characters, and the Earth has been conquered by marauding aliens known as the Horde.  The planet’s only hope is a select group of people who have been endowed with fantastic powers through a process developed by a Finnish scientist which, morbidly enough, has been dubbed, the Morituri process. Unfortunately for these brave volunteers, within roughly a year from the time they get their superpowers, they are destined to die because of them. 

 

You read that right: this book tells the story of characters whose deaths are basically guaranteed.  When one looks at all of the characters on the cover of the comic book, the question that comes to mind isn’t whether or not any of them will die, but how long they’ll make it before the Morituri process claims their lives.

 

Now, Gillis didn’t create these characters to be glorified Star Trek red shirts or eventual zombie victims in the Walking Dead.  Each character gets their due. There isn’t a lead character who serves as the story’s anchor while everyone around them drops like flies. No, to Gillis’ credit, he gives each and every member of the team defined characteristics well beyond their superpowers and the certainty of their deaths.

 

The first six members of the team in the early issues are a remarkably diverse bunch for a  comic book was spawned in the 80s, back when the word “woke” referred to getting someone out of bed.  They are Harold Everson, aka Viking, Lorna Raeburn, aka Snapdragon, Louis Armanetti, aka Radian, Jelene Anderson aka Adept, Robert Greenbaum aka Marathon, and Aline Pagrovna, aka Blackthorn. This, clearly, is not a male-heavy group (or one with especially inventive codenames). Other characters would eventually be introduced as members of the original six would die off one by one as the story lived up to its premise.  

 

Ironically, this comic book was a commercial failure; its publication run lasted under three years, and apart from three collected editions of its thirty-tree issues, it’s gotten very little love from Marvel on the whole. It’s never even been rebooted. To my mind, however, the reason why it failed as a form of serialized storytelling is the very thing that makes it potent material for a film adaptation: its characters’ stories inevitably end.

 

Imagine not having to lock actors into multi-film contracts or having to figure out how to retire characters when a big storyline ends. Imagine being able to just focus on the here and now of telling a gripping story about heroes fighting off an alien invasion.  Marvel could actually focus purely on telling the story, without having to worry about what comes next. And as Marvel stories go, this one is full of richness and nuance, like the very best that 80s comics had to offer.  Between the heroes' constant struggle with their accelerated mortality to the fact that the aliens have actually become Earth pop-culture junkies, there are amusing commentaries on consumerism and the military-industrial complex. There's even a little bit of geopolitical commentary mixed in there somewhere, and all without the beat-you-over-the-head self-indulgence of much of today's "woke" storytelling.  

 

It may not be the most kid-friendly storytelling, but Marvel’s core demographic of 18 to 34 year-old males will almost certainly eat all of this up if the movie is directed by the likes of the Russo Brothers or James Gunn.  Also, thanks to the whole multiverse concept that Marvel has now embraced, there won’t be any problem telling a story set in a separate reality from the one viewers are familiar with, and it wouldn’t affect the bigger MCU.

 

It's not all good news, though. From a visual perspective, the story and characters would require quite a lot of reworking, and not just because this story was created in the 80s. The costume design and overall look of the heroes is generic at best, but the real problem is the design of the pink-skinned horde aliens, each of whom walks around with what appears to be a very prominent scrotum for a chin. Suddenly, that joke from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 doesn’t seem quite so ridiculous anymore.

 

At the end of the day, the fact remains that Marvel needs new material, and I, for one, hope they show willingness to think outside the box. 

In my humble opinion, a film or series of films based on this short-lived series could help Marvel get back to their roots and rediscover what has made their films a global phenomenon.