The Boys Creator Thinks The Marvel Cinematic Universe Is Dangerous

When you think of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there are many adjectives that spring to mind, but ‘dangerous’ is not one of them. If anything, the franchise has come under criticism on numerous occasions for playing it too safe, resulting in a severe lack of dramatic stakes and any sort of tension, because everyone knows the villain will be vanquished and the good guys will win in the end.

The Boys, while not exactly dangerous itself, exists at the entirely opposite end of the spectrum of comic book adaptations. Dark, violent, gruesome and hilarious in equal measure, Eric Kripke’s jet-black deconstruction and subversion of the genre has found a massive audience over the last two seasons, becoming one of the most popular streaming exclusives on the planet, with the hype already beginning for its third run.

Kripke isn’t above taking shots at Hollywood’s superhero obsession, though, as season 2 proved in more than a couple of scenes, and in a recent interview, he revealed that he thinks the MCU is dangerous, which are interesting comments coming from the man responsible for some of the most insanely gory set pieces that the genre has ever seen.

“It’s a little dangerous to train an entire generation to wait for someone strong to come in and save you. That’s I think how you end up with people like Trump and populists who say, ‘I’m the only one who can come in, it’s going to be me’. And I think in the way that pop culture conditions people subtly, I think it’s conditioning them the wrong way, because there’s just too much of it. So I think it’s nice to have a corrective, at least a small one in us, to say, ‘They’re not coming to save you. Hold your family together and save yourselves’.”

Kripke did admit that he’s a big fan of the franchise, so it isn’t a case of him having a superiority complex, he just feels as though the MCU has become so oversaturated that it might actually turn out to be a bad thing in the future. Bringing politics into it is an entirely different matter, though, especially when you consider that the primary target audience for Kevin Feige’s blockbusters aren’t exactly part of the same demographic that The Boys is being geared and marketed towards.