One of the most frustrating tropes of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has always been the franchise’s unerring reliance on the fake-out death. When you’ve seen so many heroes and/or villains killed off or annihilated only to return sooner rather than later, all it does is lessen the dramatic and emotional stakes whenever a character really does bite the dust.
If the superhero series hadn’t cultivated such a reputation for death meaning absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things, then maybe we wouldn’t have had to put up with rumors touting the likes of Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man and Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow for a comeback from the second Avengers: Endgame was released, but Avengers: The Kang Dynasty writer Jeff Loveness has nonetheless promised murder and mayhem when Earth’s Mightiest Heroes are reassembled.
Speaking to The Playlist, the scribe behind the wildly underwhelming Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania teased his vision for how to depict Jonathan Majors’ titular antagonist as a threat worthy of getting the all-star bad back together, and a homicidal rampage would definitely do the trick.
“We really just wanted to focus on the character. Who is this actual guy? Before we get to big multiverse things, Avengers murders, cameos, and time-travel stuff. The idea of him being this exile or prisoner… Doing that for a guy named Kang the Conquerer seemed kinda interesting. And to make it feel like he had all of this backstory that we haven’t heard. And to make it feel like he’s in the middle of something we don’t know yet.”
After previously admitting he was falling behind on the screenplay, Loveness then laid his cards on the table to finally show a hint of self-awareness when reflecting on the size of the challenge in front of him being ridiculous in size, scale, and expectation.
“It’s the biggest challenge in the world. It’s comedic how big this challenge is. Literally, there’s no bigger pressure, no bigger movie, no bigger canvas, no bigger fanbase, no bigger expectations. The enormity of that isn’t lost on me. But I also feel like this is insane and wonderful, and I get the chance to take the biggest swing at the biggest movie in the world.”
He might have tried his hardest to defend Quantumania despite the apathetic response to the Phase Five kickoff, but it goes without saying that The Kang Dynasty is an altogether different proposition that simply cannot fail in the eyes of the fandom.
