What if? vs the MCU
Correcting the Sins of MCU Phases 1–3
The one thing I do admire and applaud the What if? series for the most is that it is (partially) correcting the injustices of the first 3 MCU phases in which there were no women or minority figures headlining the films. I say partially because I think Disney knew these stories would be derided as cheap and hollow fan service to these groups if most of the original actors did not reprise their roles for this series. Providing the voices of the original actors in these stores carries a heavy weight of legitimacy, but that can only go so far. In many ways it only serves to re-highlight the sins of white male dominance in the main line films.
But the re-imagining runs into a serious comparison problem. Thus far only 2 episodes have been released. One where Agent Carter is re-imagined as Captain Cater, and the other has t’challa (Black Panther) stepping into the shoes of Star Lord from Guardians of the Galaxy. having seen the original films and watching the What If? episodes its easy to declair that Carter and t’challa are better heroes than their white male counterparts. Not that that was a hard stretch, Agent Carter was a highly trained super spy, and Steve Rogers was a skinny asmatic with a heart of gold. t’challa was Wakandan royalty and Peter Quill is your average slacker with a semi-noble birthright of his own.
The What If? problem
I fear that reliving the story beats of the original material is a mistake on a fundamental story level for this show. If you change the hero, the villain needs to change accordingly. Different heroes have different lessons to learn, which facilitates that they need to face different challenges and take different actions than what was presented to the original character, which in turn facilitates a different villain needs to be present to challenge them in a way that allows them to learn their lesson.
Carter being a 1 for 1 replacement of Captain America vs Red Scull suffers from this problem the most. Her fight is more against sexism, and her lack of acceptance in a male dominated society. And Red Scull does not challenger her on that front. So the fights against Hydra are hollow in that regard. The portal jump into the future doesn’t even begin to tackle other potential issues of who took credit for winning the war, and were her contributions acknowledged by the writers of history. So her story suffers in that the meat of her conflict, had nothing to do with her ability to throw a punch, and therefore her villain was not up to the task. Maybe if Red Scull had also defected to the U.S. and Captain Carter would have to wage a war on the home front to combat the internal threat to society and the women in it than resisting sexism in a largely inconsequential way, while fighting hydra in a thematically meaningless way. Captain Carter’s challenges are especially meaningful and relevant to society today which makes them especially interesting. I like her story a lot, but the incistence of adhering to the source material made Red Scull completely inept to the task of challenging Captain Carter in a way that mattered.
t’challa’s story did better in that “The Collector” and Yondu are different antagonists than Ronin the Accuser. But like Captain Carter, only Yondu’s emotional challenge provided any growth. The Collector as stand in for Ronin or Thanos depending on your interpretation of the story, is again more hollow flashy derring do than substantive character growth. Also the show spends considerable energy in its short 30 minute run time highlighting t’challa’s accomplishments which comes as a reminder to what Peter Quill did not accomplish across his 4 movie appearances. Especially since his group are actually called the “Guardians of the Galaxy” a title they live up to only on occasion rather than the norm, in the 2nd movie they were more like low level mercenaries scraping by paycheck to paycheck. They save the galaxy when directly tasked/paid/forced to do so. And the character of Peter Quill is already suffering in the cultural zeitgeist for letting the snap happen in Infinity War. t’challa’s Guardians of the galaxy actually save the galaxy in a non-mercinary way, and actively try to solve injustice on a societal level in a way the movies have yet to. This distinction is more profound than one may realize at first. t’challa’s success is not in his ability to wage violence or coerce others, it's in his ability to reason with people he disagrees with. That is a profound concept that deserves a movie to explore further.
Is this good enough?
I do say that the stories so far in What if? are good, sometimes when watching them I was bemoaning that we didn’t get this story in the theaters. I just wish they were more distinct from their mainline MCU stories to make them their own heroes, and not just re-imagine standing for what came before. Re-mixing the old stories on one level does partially ammend the white male dominace of the past. But still highlights its main problem. The MCU pantheon is still dominated with films of white male heroes, while female and minority alternatives to this pantheon have been relegated to the television and animated mediums. Miles Moralles has 1 animated film under his belt with 1 more on the way. Peter Parker has 2 live action films down and one on the way. Even Eddie Brock has a live action film with another in the works.
The MCU phase 4 with its inclusion of the Multi-verse has a real opportunity to fix 1–3 by creating more variety in its hero pantheon. But short form animated fair is not going to be the fix to this problem. The MCU needs to do a far better job of including Women and Minority heroes that stand on their own films. This problem is only exacerbated by COVID and Disney+’s chilling effect on ticket sales to which Black Widow has already fallen victim to and Shang-Chi is becoming an “experiment.”
In this reguard James Cameron is either a genious or lucky. The fact that Avatar 2 and 3 are largely complete but are not being released until at least late 2022 is un-mistakably brilliant. For audiences to see Avatars 4 and 5, the second and third films need to make money. Cameron’s ability to hold off the release of his films much further down the line show more forsight on his part than Christopher Nolan did with Tenet, or Denis Villeneuve with his Dune films. While Tenet is most likely a one off, Dune is not, and it’s future is in serious jeopardy because of the situation to which it is finding itself being released. We may never get his vision of Dune part 2, or the other books if the first doesn’t make money. Disney may have the resources to eat one or two botched releases and give these heroes a second chance at life. Warner Brothers and it’s fecklessly shifting parent companies may be another story. But the fact that Black Widow’s release was so badly hamstrung by the virus and streaming, and the principle actress’s revenue stream was not compensated for the streaming offset. Or that Shang-Chi is an “interesting experiment” to Disney executive rather than something that should be too big to fail, due to the importance of the character to members of the asian community seeking to see themselves in the marvel pantheon, only serves to show that Disney sees these women and minority heroes as disposable. A risk they have not taken with their white male superheroes since phase 1.
Representation or Commercialism?
That being said this is commercialism, and maybe women and minorities do not need to see them selves be marketed to for a super-conglomorate’s profiteering. Especially if Shang-Chi or Black Widow’s success means putting lives at risk to attend a movie premiere to quantify diversity amongst super hero films. I personally think streaming is a good compromise even if I think Disney+’s $30 premium access on top of the subscription fee is exhorbited. I also think actors and content creators need to be compensated for their success on those platforms. And that streaming services need to be far more transparent about the viewership numbers. Withholding that data weakens both groups because they cannot measure their success or use that data to justify what they are worth or what the next project should cost. I would love to go see these films in the theater, but I disagree with risking my life to be entertained. I am willing to watch them on a streaming service, I just wish that service treated it’s world class talent better.
On another level, maybe all this is meaningless in the face of broader societal recognition of how we owe these demographics more recognition for thier contributions to our progress as a society. Is this a tree, or is it the forest, or what if it’s somewhere in-between?
