The question of how to save the MCU has been on everyone’s mind for a while.
And it’s never been a more pertinent question than now. With The Marvels stumbling out of the gate and Jonathan Majors’ star experiencing whatever the opposite of a meteoric rise is, things are starting to look rough. Meanwhile, Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, theoretically the next big thing that the MCU has been building toward, is starting to look like a dud. Destin Daniel Cretton, the director behind Shang-Chi and the Legend of the 10 Rings, has been removed from the project. Heck, the title may have been removed from the project. Things aren’t looking good.
The good news is, Marvel is hiring. With Cretton out, it’s time for the higher-ups to consider who could take his place as the hand at the wheel of the biggest film franchise in the world.
5: Wes Anderson
Let’s break down what an Avengers movie is for a minute. It’s a superhero story, sure, but traditionally, it’s so much more than that. It’s an ensemble piece, featuring some of the biggest, most talented actors on the planet, telling a story that usually leans hard on the failings of a flawed father figure. Back in the 2000s, we didn’t call that the MCU, we called it The Royal Tenenbaums.
We know that Wes Anderson will take a paycheck if he thinks that it’ll clear – he did that H&M commercial a few years back, and what’s working for Disney if not making a bigger, more expensive H&M commercial? He’s already got a relationship with Owen Wilson, Benedict Cumberbatch, Tilda Swinton, and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’s own Bill Murray. He might even be the key to bringing Edward Norton back – if not for good, then at least for a cameo hanging out with She-Hulk.
4: Martin Scorsese
Hey man. Nobody’s saying it’s a good idea to hire Marvel’s most vocal showbusiness detractor, or that it would ever happen. But you have to admit, if Martin Scorsese announced that his last movie was going to be Avengers 5, you’d be curious to see what he did with Disney’s money. A digital de-aging experiment featuring the surviving cast of Casino as Alpha Flight? A rerelease of Gangs of New York with children’s drawings of superhero masks superimposed on the main characters and Loki’s army of Chitauri keyed in, attacking the city in the background? A 20-minute short film made up of a single shot of Scorsese eating a chicken parm and flipping off the camera while a midi of the Avengers theme plays on a loop? It doesn’t matter. You’ll be curious, and your friends will be curious, and you’ll all go to see it – or at least begrudgingly watch it in three sittings the next time there’s a pandemic, the way everyone did with The Irishman.
3: Zack Snyder
Things aren’t like they were in the old days. Entries in the first three phases of the MCU managed to go two for two on desirable movie qualities: They were good, and they were talked about. Today, Marvel films are mostly just talked about.
And the same thing could be said about Zack Snyder’s movies, so why not bring him into the fold? As Marvel continues to hemorrhage audience enthusiasm, it’s time to hire the one guy working in Hollywood with a fan base loyal enough that they could explain, dead-eyed and unsmiling, why a four-hour black and white story about Batman saying no-thank-you words and Aquaman throwing broken glass into the ocean was a really, really, unironically good idea. Snyder fans watched a scene where Wonder Woman vaporized a terrorist in front of a group of children, then turned around and told the kids that they could be whatever they wanted when they grew up, and they thought, “Yeah man. That was worth the wait. That’s good storytelling.” Imagine what Marvel could do with that kind of audience backing. They could make an ultra-violent adaptation of those Marvel Comics Hostess Fruit Pie commercials from the ‘80s and still make a billion dollars.
2 & 1: The Russo Brothers
Joking aside? Honest to God, Feige. The Russo brothers took Bucky’s full-body allegory for PTSD and made it fit in the same movie as a Scandinavian space god and a cranky teenage tree who won’t stop playing Gameboy. Just pay them whatever they want so we can have a good Marvel team-up again.
