The collaboration between the merc with a mouth and the clawed crusader has to work hard to mashup the alternate realities, but it could open portals to a lot of multiversal fun
It is somewhat ironic that just when the Marvel Cinematic Universe is entering its most intriguing phase, with the introduction of the multiverse and superheroes jetting in from all sorts of weird and wonderful corners of the Hollywood studio system, it has also begun to deliver its biggest duds. Chloé Zhao’s Eternals and Nia DaCosta’s The Marvels, Peyton Reed’s Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania all seemed dull and listless compared to the endlessly colourful and imaginative episodes that populated the comic book macro-saga’s earlier phases.
Is it any coincidence that these movies only lightly tinkered around the edges of multiversal goings on, while two of Marvel’s more successful episodes of recent times, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Spider-Man: No Way Home, doubled down on the concept of alternate realities? It is almost as if Marvel has become so enamoured of the creative possibilities introduced by other universes (who could blame them when it’s possible to port in Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin or Patrick Stewart’s Professor X with just a flick of one’s magical, multiversal wrist?) that its film-makers struggle to get out of first gear when there is only one boring old single reality to play with.
