Murphy's Multiverse

Tag: Theory Time

  • THEORY: Wonder Man Will Make His MCU Debut in ‘Thunderbolts’ 

    THEORY: Wonder Man Will Make His MCU Debut in ‘Thunderbolts’ 

    Wonder Man is coming to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and his arrival might be a lot sooner than expected. The Hollywood Reporter revealed on Thursday that Community writer Andrew Guest and Shang-Chi director Destin Daniel Cretton will team up to give Simon Williams his own series on Disney+. Cameras are reportedly set to begin rolling in 2023, meaning fans can likely expect the character to make his live-action debut sometime in the following year. Although, should Marvel be inclined to have a little fun with the character’s origin, it’s possible audiences actually see Wonder Man in theaters by the end of next year.

    Early reports indicate the Wonder Man series will focus on his well-known career in Hollywood, an aspect of the character that has been a staple since it was introduced in the early 1980’s. At the time, after years of internal conflict and uncertainty about his future, Williams took his talents to Los Angeles and began an acting career, becoming known for performing dangerous stunts that only his invulnerable body could withstand. Despite this intriguing turn of events, however, Wonder Man has decades of material to work with pre-Hollywood. The character has existed since 1964, when he was introduced in The Avengers #9 as a new member of the Masters of Evil.

    Before he was a hero, Williams was the son of industrialist Sanford Williams, a rival of the world-famous Tony Stark. After his father’s death, Simon is outmatched by Stark and fears he’ll lose his family’s business, an anxiety that results in an ill-advised embezzlement scheme brought on by his villainous brother, Eric (a.k.a. the Grim Reaper). As it goes, Williams is caught, and is sent to prison with a hatred for Stark and his “bodyguard” Iron Man. Seeing an opportunity, Baron Zemo and the Enchantress, the two leading members of the Masters of Evil, spring Williams and offer him a deal – they turn him into a being with enough power to vanquish Stark and the Avengers, and he saves his company and gets revenge on the man who wronged him. Williams accepts, and an experimental procedure turns him into the ion-fueled superbeing known as Wonder Man.

    Of course, Williams quickly sees the wrong in this and reforms, but the brief antagonistic period of his life is perhaps among his most compelling eras. It would be a shame for the MCU to skip over this origin and jump straight to his days on the big screen. Luckily, a major project announced just days ago could very well be hiding its own Wonderous secret that allows for Simon’s story to be told in full. Thunderbolts, a film based on the team of supervillains who masquerade as heroes, was announced as being in development last Thursday by Variety. This is relevant to the Wonder Man conversation for one big, charming, fan-favorite reason: Baron Helmut Zemo, bad guy extraordinaire.

    As previously mentioned, Zemo played a big role in the creation of Wonder Man. He was the man responsible for the whole ion-human ordeal, and decades later, he would also be the person responsible for founding the anti-heroic Thunderbolts. It’s expected that Daniel Bruhl will reprise his role as the MCU’s take on Zemo in Thunderbolts, potentially leading a team comprised of members recruited by Julia Louis-Dreyfus‘ Contessa Val over the course of multiple Phase Four projects. The names linked to the Thunderbolts thus far give away a possible link to another team of Marvel characters assembled in the late 2000s, known as the Dark Avengers. That group, formed by Norman Osborn, was also a team of supervillains pretending to be good guys, but had each member take over the mantle of a pre-existing Avenger. For example, Venom took on the Spider-Man role while Bullseye wore Hawkeye’s classic costume. With Florence Pugh‘s Black Widow and Wyatt Russell‘s U.S. Agent already on the payroll, it seems completely believable that the MCU’s Thunderbolts might be some kind of amalgamation of the original comic book team and the Dark Avengers concept.

    Running through the potential roster, the MCU Thunderbolts already have their own Captain America and Black Widow, a Hulk in Tim Roth‘s Abomination, and probably even a Vision replacement with Hannah John-Kamen‘s Ghost. Regardless of all this, they lack an equivalent to the most powerful current Avenger, Brie Larson‘s Captain Marvel. In the same way the Masters of Evil once had Simon Williams infiltrate the Avengers with malicious intent, the MCU could have Zemo and Val offering a disgruntled Williams the chance to shine by succumbing to a new, experimental procedure that might turn him into Captain Marvel’s equal. In case anyone is confused at this point, the suggestion here is that audiences may very well see Wonder Man’s origin play out in Thunderbolts before he makes the jump to his own spin-off series.

    The timing of the two projects’ filming lines up well enough. It’s not confirmed when Thunderbolts will start production, but if Jake Schreier‘s project starts filming in Summer 2023, it would be on track for a mid-2024 release. As is often the case, the turn-around time on television projects tends to be quicker than with film, so if Wonder Man also begins filming around this date, or even slightly after, it could work out that the latter releases just after Thunderbolts and acts as a direct spin-off. The two could even film in tandem, as a way to more effectively utilize the time of some very busy leads like Bruhl and Pugh.

    This could also be a way for Marvel to include more characters from its larger repertoire. Wonder Man’s comic origin heavily features the original Enchantress, and if Marvel Studios wanted to follow suit, they could bring Sophia Di Martino‘s Sylvie into the fold as the Thunderbolts’ Asgardian representative. On top of this, Wonder Man will almost certainly feature Eric Williams in a supporting role, and the baddie brother of the Williams family could pop up alongside Simon in Thunderbolts initially, before terrorizing the world as Grim Reaper later. Maybe it’s an encounter with Zemo or Val in Thunderbolts that gets those Villainous wheels turning in the first place. Either way, the potential for an easy, world-building crossover is there, and it seems too good for Marvel Studios not to capitalize on while the getting is good.

    Special shoutout to Maggie from Collider for helping to build out this theory!

  • THEORY TIME: Russell Crowe May Be Playing the Villain Grim Hunter in ‘Kraven the Hunter’

    THEORY TIME: Russell Crowe May Be Playing the Villain Grim Hunter in ‘Kraven the Hunter’

    Sony is now three movies into is shared universe of Marvel Characters, and for the most part, they’ve all been pretty much the same thing. In Venom, the title character learns to control his abilities and accept his destiny while doing battle with a more sinister version of himself. In Venom: Let There Be Carnage, the title character once again learns to control his abilities and accept his destiny while doing battle with a more sinister version of himself. Finally, in Morbius, the title character learns to control his abilities and accept his destiny while doing battle with a more sinister version of himself. After spending several full minutes studying this pattern and dissecting what may come to be known as “The Sony Formula,” only a single conclusion could be truly reached. In Kraven the Hunter, the title character will likely learn to control his abilities and accept his destiny while doing battle with a more sinister version of himself.

    The real question surrounding the next big Marvel-Sony project is who that “more sinister version” of the anti-hero Kraven will be to fight the titular character. Aside from the Venom sequel’s inevitable use of Carnage, the SonyVerse has had to make a couple deep pulls to materialize antagonists for its solo Spider-Villain movies. The symbiote-heavy stories at least have a handful of “Venom but worse” baddies to choose from, but Morbius literally had to create it’s own original character in order to satisfy the “Sony Formula” developed in the studio’s screenplay labs. As if further proof is needed of the plot recipe’s existence, Matt Smith was originally announced as playing the very minor comic malefactor Hunger before his role was morphed into something that more closely resembled Jared Leto‘s protagonist. So, if one were to try a guess at who the currently-unrevealed villain of Kraven is, they would probably be best off looking for an obscure Spider-Man criminal with a power that reflects the lead’s own skill set. Enter: Grim Hunter.

    In the comics, Sergei Kravinoff is somewhat of a family man. He spawned four children with his lover Sasha, all of whom grew up to be problems for either Spider-Man or Kraven himself. The oldest son and firstborn child, Vladimir, aspired to be as good of a hunter as his renowned father, and eventually dabbled with an experimental elixir enough to make it almost all the way there. Once at full power, he named himself the “Grim Hunter” after a legendary warrior he was told stories about as a boy, and went after Spider-Man. He would ultimately be killed in battle by Peter Parker’s clone Kaine, revived decades later by his mother in the form of a humanoid lion-like creature, and then be killed again by his father for not living up to the family name. It’s a lot to take in, but it’s probably just enough for Sony to use as the basis for a solo Kraven film.

    The problem is that story doesn’t make Sony’s “bad guy who’s also sort of good” come off in the best light, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson seems a little young to be a guy with a fully grown son. This is where Russell Crowe comes in. Back in February, the famed actor was cast in a mystery role for Kraven the Hunter that The Illuminerdi claimed would be Nikolai Kravinoff. Though whether or not this is true remains to be seen, having Crowe as the father of the eponymous Hunter would help to fill in a few blanks where the movie’s antagonist is concerned. While he was never a major player in any specific comic book stories, Nikolai was instrumental in shaping who Sergei would become. He was an abusive dad, who tormented Sergei and his half-brother Dmitri (a.k.a. Chameleon, set to be played by Fred Hechinger in the movie) before dying and leaving the boys orphaned. This life aspect seems like an easy inclusion for the writers trying to make their hero sympathetic, and the recent casting of Levi Miller, who looks an awful lot like a young Taylor-Johnson, suggests that fans might be treated to some flashbacks over the course of the film.

    Of course, Sony wouldn’t get someone as talented as Crowe for a few simple flashbacks, which indicates Nikolai could potentially have a bigger role in the plot than comic book history implies. In fact, it seems likely that Sony could take the comic relationship between Sergei and Vladimir and flip it on its head, casting Nikolai as the legendary “Grim Hunter” and Sergei as the firstborn son trying to live up to his father’s legacy. Doing this would give Taylor-Johnson‘s Kraven a reasonable motive to become the world’s greatest hunter, and the unavoidable climax in which Kraven defeats his crazed poppa and vows to be a Hunter with more honor than him would do wonders in portraying the titular character as more anti-hero than a straight villain.

    The one broken cog in this theory is Christopher Abbott‘s The Foreigner. Recently announced as a villain in the film, the character fits the bill of “wildly obscure Spider-Man villain with abilities similar to the protagonist.” He’s a master assassin in peak physical condition and an expert martial artist. And unless that character is also dramatically altered, there isn’t much there in the way of emotional conflict between him and Sergei. Perhaps they are both after the same target, but even that seems like a weak central conflict. Imagine instead that Crowe‘s Nikolai is pulling the strings in the background, using Foreigner as a test of his son’s might before using the elixir Vladimir used in the comics and taking the stage himself for a grand final duel. Maybe Foreigner is even reimagined as another child of Nikolai, alongside Sergei and Dmitri, dramatically revealed to the audience just before the Grim Hunter coldly kills him for failing to outdo Sergei.

    Obviously, absolutely none of this is confirmed and is almost entirely fun conjecture. It’s a theory that’s been stewing in my brain for a while that I thought would be fun to get out there. It’s very possible none of this comes to fruition, but it would be very entertaining if even an ounce of it turns out to be true. In the spirit of this article, I’ll leave off on one more little theory nugget, throwing out what seems like an entirely plausible post-credits scene based on what we’ve seen Sony do in the past. Chameleon is already confirmed for the movie, and in the comics, is the one who tells Sergei about Spider-Man’s existence in the first place. It feels like this would be something Sony might want to capitalize on. Probably.

    Sources: Marvel, Comic Book, Variety, CBR