I noticed this week a stage production of The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe is being revived in London. I remember seeing it a few years ago and being absolutely floored. There is something about that wardrobe. A gateway, a portal, a doorway, a time-machine, a bridge between there, and elsewhere. As a narrative device, it has simply never been topped, in any literature or film. Audiences love that sense of escape, of pushing through nervously, and emerging from the darkness into the landscape of an unfamiliar and magical world. Most of the movies and tales I have discovered, loved and returned to again and again, feature a similar ‘wardrobe’ motif; be it a souped-up DeLorean, a Time Bandits’ map, a Tardis, a Stargate, Neo’s red pill, or a Subtle Knife that cuts through time and space.
For millions of cinema goers, the movie equivalent of that wardrobe; transporting the viewer to another dimension, has been the Marvel logo graphic, unfolding across a cinema screen. Now, unostentatiously, called the Marvel Cinematic Universe (‘MCU’), the production studio, has now clocked up some 29 films since 2007, with at least 11 more in various stages of development. These titles have already grossed nearly USD30billion. The films ‘transport’ two sorts of the viewers though; the casual cinema goer, often fairly new to these characters, super-heroes and fantastical worlds, and a second smaller segment (including me) who bought and devoured the comics in the 1980s, on which much of the world-building is based. For these aficionados, crossing into the MCU from the world of the comics, is not a trivial, or passive experience. Their regard for those original comics is held with a kind of religious fervour. They call it ‘canon’ and you mess with it at your peril. The starting point for any fandom is a mild form of fanaticism, often formed in younger years, when emotions and reactions are most visceral. The best of the MCU movie makers have adopted a sense of responsibility in adapting comic to screen, from costume design, to dialogue, to character arc, and casting choice, which for the comic-book fans are profoundly important decisions. When the Directors have nailed it, the outcomes at the box office are astounding. When the Russo Brothers directed the two-part Avengers saga Infinity Wars and Endgame, they collectively made over USD5billion, with Endgame becoming the highest grossing movie of all time.
But after nearly 30 films, it seems something is going awry. Film forums, fan groups, and online discussion boards are in meltdown. The problem for the Hollywood producers is that if you transport a modern audience into the comic world of the 1980s, it now somehow doesn’t work: returning to a culturally alien landscape that feels awkward, patriarchic, not just patriotic, where female characters are (often) sexually objectified by the cartoonist, not drawn as self-determined, independent, fully formed characters. So, here on the 21st Century side of the Marvel wardrobe, the women take the lead; Thor and the Hulk become female, Iron Man is killed off; the lead titles are Widows, Women, and to their critics, overtly Woke. Marvel has suddenly stumbled (or deliberately hurtled, depending on your view) into the modern culture wars, of identity, sexuality, and diversity. Which is in some ways no surprise, when the original comics were written by men for boys, full of machismo heroics, masculinity, power, strength and wars. For more articulate insights on this transformation, there are much better sources than mine, with everyone from The Guardian, to The New Yorker, The Telegraph and others, taking a relatively high-minded perspective on the cultural tensions being played out. Or you could look up former comic book retailer, Gary Buechler, whose online show Nerdrotic, garners half a mission subscribers, whom I guess agree with him that the MCU is now a Disney owned woke-promoting media monster from hell.
So in a most extraordinary plot-twist in this emerging ‘conflict’ came to our screens this spring. MCU recently released Doctor Strange and The Multiverse of Madness. Now, any title as convoluted as that bodes ill for any sense in the telling of the tale, and having watched it, it is indeed an over-wrought, complicated, CGI over-heavy nonsensical mess, that has little heart, purpose, or surprise (other than the antagonist being a nasty badass version of a character we have cheered for in pervious MCU films). In contrast, the Russo Brothers, MCU’s most successful directors, have produced their own non-MCU movie, Everything Everywhere All At Once, which was released almost simultaneously.
Directed by another creative pair (monikored ‘Daniels’), theirs is one of the best films I have seen for years. Like the Doctor Strange movie, it is a story about a hero’s ability to be transported to different ‘multiverses’, places where there are different versions of the self, each with different traits, powers and purposes. But while the MCU movie is a dud, Everything Everywhere All at Once is an absolutely belter; imaginative, funny, sad, thought-provoking, and head-spinningly odd. The hero is a middle aged Chinese laundry-mat owner struggling with the exhausting demands of her tax-defaulting business, amidst broken relationships with her father, divorce-seeking husband and errant daughter, who has fallen in love with a woman. I will not even attempt to do a full review, please just see it and be genuinely wowed. I have not seen anything as imaginative, bar Christopher Nolan’s recent run of escapism movies, or the original The Matrix made over 20 years ago. Empire gave it 5/5, Rotten Tomatoes has it 95% and IMDB at 8.2…for a movie about a failed laundromat owner having a bad day. It’s that good you will want to tell everyone you know about it all at once.
Post-Credit Scene
Meanwhile, MCU’s most recent slate seems to be faltering. The title that achieves a billion dollar gross seems long gone. Recent releases have none of the gargantuan take of the Russo’s Avengers’s franchise. The movie press and rumour mill is rife that MCU’s head Kevin Feige is desperate to get the Russo brothers to return and make movies for them again. When asked what they would want to do, if a deal could be struck, they said Secret Wars; a story full of shape-shifting violence, insurrection and a macho dystopian war. Comic book fandom would go nuts. It will be interesting to see if Feige signs the cheque. It will be a pay day to top all movie paydays and a return to an alternative universe few thought we would see again.
