Listen, Kevin. We’ve taken a lot of your guff over the years ⏤ put up with a lot of your malarkey and your fiddle faddle. Most of the time, we take it in stride, but if you try to tell us that anyone besides The Bear and The Iron Claw star Jeremy Allen White intends to play one of the following five characters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, well, that’ll be a bridge too far. We won’t stand for it, you hear?
Yes, White has been plenty busy acting alongside Zac Efron and getting some personal affairs in order this year, but you know what? He’s a Golden Globe Award-winning actor with an impressive compendium of performances to his name, and now that he’s survived Chicago’s most treacherous kitchens and neighborhoods, it’s time to take him to a whole new playing field: the multiverse. You heard us right, Kevin. Pay attention now, because one of these might be the best Marvel casting decision you ever make.
Miracleman
Miracleman ⏤ occasionally known as Marvelman ⏤ is probably best known as one of Alan Moore’s long list of middle fingers to the industry that keeps his beard sparrows so well fed. Back in the ‘80s, Moore reinvented the Golden Age hero as a Nietzchian deconstruction of superhero culture, because that’s what Moore liked to do back then.
If the MCU ever decided to go dark, break bad, and admit that superheroes are mostly just fascists with killer smiles and a swell PR team, then Jeremy Allen White would have the chops to bring Miracleman to life the way the character deserves: darkly, dramatically, and with piles of loathing. Since Marvel probably won’t do that, we’ll instead get the on-screen interpretation of the character that Alan Moore would prefer: None at all.
Beak
Barnell Bohusk, AKA Beak, is the poster child for the X-Men’s remedial program, gifted with a series of mutant abilities that make his life demonstrably and objectively worse. He has feathers and hollow bones, but can’t fly. He has a beak, but that mostly just makes kissing awkward. He’s a man-sized pathos engine that smells like a parakeet enclosure.
Jeremy Allen White has the chops to bring the character to life, whether under heavy prosthetics or through the subtle art of flapping around a motion capture studio in a onesie covered in stickers. Better yet, if the MCU goes the “mutant cure” route, he even looks like the de-powered version of the character. That’s not shade, either ⏤ some of the best writers on the internet have giant noses and the tired eyes of a basset hound.
Molecule Man
Molecule Man is classic Marvel villain stuff. Coming out of the “we need a new villain every month” era of comics, he’s a schlubby nobody with low self-esteem until an accident with a particle generator whoopsies a bevy of unbeatable powers into him. He finds himself with the ability to control literally everything, which is a heck of a step up in life.
In more recent stories, Molecule Man has been sort of a wild card ⏤ an intermittently uncaring god figure with the power to make or destroy pretty much anything who’s generally too busy with his own stuff to do so. It’s a complicated role, if it’s written right, and Jeremy Allen White could undoubtedly do something interesting with it.
Frank Drake
What you’ve got right here is a part-vampire vampire killer like Blade, only Wesley Snipes never played him, so no one cares a whole lot. The premise is that Dracula was a worldly gentleman, had some kids, those kids had kids, and then those kids changed their last name from “Dracula” to “Drake,” presumably so they’d still sound interesting but not have a hard time meeting people on dating apps. Frank Drake was one of those kids.
He hates vampires so much that he builds a bunch of Men in Black-style weapons to mess ‘em up with. There’s plenty of room for goofiness and lots of potential for giant ‘90s over-the-top chrome sci-fi gun action, too. Add an actor who can really act to the mix and you’ve got a winner. Basically, if Marvel is looking for a buddy cop dynamic to flesh out that new Blade movie they keep not making, then Jeremy Allen White would be worth the money.
Ghost Rider
After two poorly received Nicolas Cage movies and an Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. story arc that got achingly close to being memorable, Marvel needs to step up and get one of its Ghost Riders right. Riders have always existed in a minefield of dumbness. They are, at their core, a bunch of guys with flaming skulls for heads driving things that go “vroom” and are also on fire. Johnny Blaze is an especially tough sell, but if anyone can take the pitch “it’s the first third of Place Beyond the Pines but instead of Ben Mendlesohn, the devil shows up” and make it into prestige drama, it’s a performer like Jeremy Allen White. The guy looks stressed enough that his head is about to spontaneously combust most of the time on The Bear anyway, so come on, Kevin. He’s ready. We’re ready. Let’s make it happen before DC snatches him up, shall we?
Published: Oct 12, 2023 05:42 pm