Category Archives: time travel

Where Are We Going In The Marvel Cinematic Universe (Multiverse) Phase (Fantastic) 4

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It would appear that Kang (or Kangs) is/are the new Big Bad for MCU Phase 4. So, where do we go from here? Let’s take a look at what has officially been announced and try to piece together how Phase 4 will play out the challenge of Kang The Conqueror.

Disney+ Shows:
Below is the list of Disney+ shows, as it was released by Marvel Studios –

What If…? (Summer 2021)

Ms. Marvel (Fall 2021)

Hawkeye (Winter 2021)

Moon Knight (2022)

She-Hulk (2022)

Secret Invasion (2022)

Loki Season 2 (Late 2022?)

Ironheart (TBA)

Armor Wars (TBA)

Out of that list, Tom Hiddleston has said that What If…? will deal with the multiverse. But, it’s an anthology show, and will likely not be essential viewing for the Kang arc. Should be fun, though.

We can also assume that Loki season 2 will pick up where season 1 left off, which was with Kang’s conquest begun in-earnest. But, it would also just be an assumption that the whole season would be spent on that threat.

I believe the other shows, mainly featuring street-level, Earthbound heroes, will be following a different track than the one laid out by WandaVision and Loki. I think, perhaps, The Falcon And The Winter Soldier has set that other track to a new Avengers team that will culminate with the recently-announced Captain America 4. It makes sense that the MCU, now filling hours in movie theater as well as television, would start building in multiple different directions at the same time.

They may even build in a third direction, if they want to work towards a Young Avengers team. We’ve already seen a new, younger Black Widow in the Black Widow movie, Wiccan and Speed on WandaVision, and Kid Loki on Loki (complete with Gator Loki). Ms. Marvel and the new Hawkeye will be debuting on Disney+ later this year, not to mention they have announced an Ironheart show.

Movies:
Unlike Disney+ shows, I think the threat of Kang will be dealt with primarily in the movies. But there will be some notable exceptions.

Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings (Fall 2021) – From what we’ve seen, this likely won’t deal too heavily with Kang. Considering the shuffling of schedules and production that occurred due to the pandemic, Shang-Chi was probably always intended as a standalone movie that now happens to be releasing after the Kang reveal.

Eternals (Fall 2021) – The only trailers we’ve gotten don’t tell us much about the actual plot. Though, it does seem to span hundreds – if not thousands – of years on its own, so I wouldn’t expect there to be too much room for Kang.

Spider-Man: No Way Homes (Winter 2021) – Everything we’ve heard about this one suggests that it deals with the multiverse, and multiple Spider-Men, so Kang will likely factor heavily into this. If not directly, then certainly as a catalyst.

Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness (Early 2022) – There is a very strong, direct link from WandaVision to Loki to this movie. I expect this will be a place where we see Kang himself raising hell, while poor Stephen Strange tries very hard to clean up everyone else’s metaphysical messes.

Thor: Love And Thunder (Spring 2022) – We don’t know much about this, other than that we’ll see the Guardians Of The Galaxy (Thor’s new running buddies) and Jane Foster will wield Mjolnir. But, since Mjolnir was destroyed by Hela in Thor: Ragnarok, it’s not outside the realm of possibility that we’ll be seeing a different universe’s Mjolnir. And possibly a different universe’s Jane Foster as well. I would say that means we get some of the Kang Thang here.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (Summer 2022) – Due to the tragic death of Chadwick Boseman last year, this script has been re-written numerous times according to some cast members. The first Black Panther was mostly standalone, but Wakanda (or Wakandans) did play a big part in Infinity War and Endgame. At the end of the day, I have no idea whether or how this will involve Kang.

The Marvels (Fall 2022) – This is another one we don’t know much about, other than that the title was changed to involve Captain Marvel, Photon (not Monica Rambeau’s official superhero name yet in the MCU) and Ms. Marvel. Considering that Captain Marvel is one of the heaviest hitters they have, a time travelling supervillain may be the most realistic threat to her. I expect we’ll see a good bit of Kang in this one.

Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania (Early 2023) – This is the movie that Jonathan Majors was first announced for as Kang and, considering how much the Quantum Zone factored into the time travel exploits of Avengers: Endgame, this may well be the culmination of Kang’s arc as the primary antagonist. One would assume that, if this ends up being the climax, it will be used as a sort of Trojan Horse Avengers movie, like Captain America: Civil War was. Which would mean we’d be seeing a lot more heroes than just the ones in the title.
However, it might be a stretch to assume that the threat of Kang will wrap up before Loki season 2, and there’s a very good chance that Loki season 2 is not ready to roll out before the release of this film. But they have stated that season 2 starts filming in January 2022, so they might make it under the wire here.

Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.3 (Spring 2023) – If Kang is finished as the Big Bad of Phase 4 in Quantumania, GOTG V.3 could well be its own thing, with the freedom to have some fun, and potentially send off one or more of the core characters. But, there is one big factor to consider when thinking about the end of Phase 4, and that’s…..

Fantastic 4 (Summer – or later – 2023) – This movie was announced, as was director Jon Watts, as part of Phase 4. But we’ve had no word yet on a script or a cast. Kang was originally introduced as an F4 villain, and Marvel Studios got the rights to him back when they re-acquired the rights to F4. In comics continuity, he is a descendent of Reed Richards and Sue Storm, so that all ties in nicely to whatever the end of Kang’s story arc might be. Also, if they don’t actually have a proper Avengers movie to cap off Phase 4, the next best thing would be to welcome the First Family of Marvel to the MCU, while actually making a good F4 movie for the first time. And, hey, Phase 4 capping with Fantastic 4 just seems poetic.

Blade and Captain America 4 – I believe these two movies will end up falling into the early stages of Phase 5.
I fully expect Kang to be the Big Bad of Phase 4 but, unlike Thanos, I don’t see Marvel Studios carrying over these supervillains for multiple Phases. Especially now that they have the rights back to more of their best bad guys (Mephisto, Dr. Doom, Magneto, Galactus, Annihilus).

I could be wrong about that, but I feel like – at this stage of the MCU’s evolution – they won’t expect their audience to have the same sort of patience. Also, Kang is a immediate and ongoing threat. While Thanos didn’t even really make his presence felt until six years into the MCU’s existence (2014’s Guardians Of The Galaxy). He also didn’t truly become a clear and present danger until 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War.

This is all, of course, 100% speculation on my part. But, I’ve got to say, speculation is way too fun to just be a spectator sport. I guess we’ll see how right, or wrong, I am by 2023. Until then, I’m just going to enjoy watching every single one of these movies and shows.

Avengers: Endgame – Closing The Circle

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Talk about a cliffhanger. I posted a spoilers and speculation blog about Avengers: Infinity War way back in 2018, shortly before I took an unplanned three year break from blogging, and never followed it up. That’s like a Star Wars Original & Prequel Trilogy style gap.

But I still didn’t want to leave anyone, including myself, hanging. So, I’m writing this piece to close my own circle with some general thoughts about Avengers: Endgame, and what’s come in the Marvel Cinematic Universe since then. I made some predictions in that blog, and I’m happy to say that I was more right than wrong in my predictions.

Loki and Heimdall definitely died “for real” even though Loki is getting his own time travel-ly series out of it. All victim of The Snap returned, though that wasn’t exactly a long shot. I was right to assume Hawkeye wasn’t snapped, and that the original Avengers squad all survived for a reason – I was also right about the reason being to give them a proper curtain call. Doctor Strange’s apology to Tony Stark did end up being because Tony had to sacrifice his life to save the universe.

Steve Rogers bowed out with a happier ending than I’d suspected. Bucky Barnes likely isn’t the one carrying the Captain America shield forward, so I was wrong about that part. But he, and Sam Wilson, are working together to fill the void, so I was right about the group effort part. Black Widow died, but still has a solo movie coming out (some day) so I was about 50/50 on that projection. Thor is getting a fourth movie, as expected, and they’re keeping Hulk in their back pocket, likely to drop by on the She Hulk series.

As for the movie itself: I loved Avengers: Endgame, and I think the last hour or so of it is the most rewatchable MCU movie out there. The time travel trip down memory lane worked way better than it had any right to. Just the fact that they introduced time travel out of nowhere, and made it work, is a small miracle. Though my faith never really waivered in Kevin Feige and the MCU brain trust.

The Star Wars crew couldn’t even properly wrap up a trilogy with the disastrous Rise Of Skywalker. Meanwhile, Marvel capped out a 20+ movie arc in the most entertaining and satisfying manner possible. Both of these are under Disney’s banner now, but you can see a stark difference in the way they’ve been handled.

I think Marvel has had a looser leash, which worked out for them Meanwhile, they course-corrected Star Wars on-the-fly, likely with a Bible full of studio notes, which ended up being a problem. But, if The Mandalorian is a sign of things to come, and it appears that it is, then Star Wars may soon be rising to Marvel’s standards. Imagine saying THAT twenty years ago.

Now, for how things are looking in a Post Infinity Saga universe.

Spider-Man: Far From Home was the only post-Endgame MCU release so far, even though Black Widow was scheduled to drop a year ago, before the pandemic effed up everyone’s lives for most of the past twelve months. Far From Home was a lot of fun, and a good demonstration of how well Marvel Studios can get themselves back into the flow of smaller, non-universe destroying crossover films. It was very encouraging.

No one has seen Black Widow yet, as I noted above. But I’ll definitely check it out when – and where – I can.

WandaVision is really interesting. I’ll probably post a review of it once the season concludes, since I don’t want to fully judge it without having seen the entire run. It’s pulled the rug out from under the viewers several times already, so I’ll gather up my thoughts about it when standing on more solid ground.

The Falcon & The Winter Solider is coming later this month, and I’m very much looking forward to more of the love-hate-buddy-cop action that those two characters have only been able to hint at up to this point. I’ll probably write that review up after the season (series?) concludes as well.

Loki is up after that in May. Lots of timey-wimey stuff going on there, starting with Loki being not-dead in the first place. But the character is always fun, and time travel worked out nicely in Endgame, so let it ride!

She-Hulk, Moon Knight, Ms. Marvel, Ironheart, and Secret Invasion have all been announced as Disney+ series, and some interesting casting news has come out already. But, it’s also far too early for me to have any real insights.

I’ll judge The Eternals when I know more about it, but I’m not familiar with the title at all, so I won’t make any assumptions yet. But I did watch Nomadland, which was also directed by recent Golden Globe Winner Chloe Zhao. I didn’t exactly know how to feel about the point-of-view in Nomadland, which I think was the point. It was a beautiful-looking film though, that’s for certain, so that’s hooked my interest in Eternals.

Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness is next up. It’s being directed by Sam Raimi, which sounds incredible. All we know so far is the title and director. But I’m loving the title and the director. It’s still in the early stages of shooting, but I’m fully on-board already. I can’t wait to further examine the mystical corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (Or, Marvel Cinematic Multiverse, I suppose). I really enjoyed the back-half of Doctor Strange’s solo movie, and loved his few scenes in Thor: Ragnarok. Picking up where those left off seems pretty awesome to me.

Spider-Man: No Way Home appears set to tackle the multiverse as well, which should be fun. Into The Spider-Verse may have already done this about as well as you possibly can. But the MCU has the bonus draw of bringing in actors and characters from the previous iterations of the Spider-Man film franchise. If nothing else, that should be good to pop the crowd a few times.

Thor: Love & Thunder is deep into shooting, with Taika Waititi again at the helm. Much like Doctor Strange’s new movie, the title and director are more-than-enough to get me into a theater. Plus, Thor: Ragnarok was probably the most fun MCU movie to date, so I’m all-in for more of that vibe.

Captain Marvel 2 and Black Panther 2 are also on-deck. But the former has just started casting, and the latter is trying to figure out how best to address the tragic loss of Chadwick Boseman. Either way, it’s far too early to make any assumptions about either.

I’m happy to finally put a bow on my Infinity War cliffhanger, and can’t wait to share my thoughts about all the interesting stuff that’s coming up in the future.

On Time Travel & Terminators

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Terminator Genisys opens on July 1st and, while I am cautiously optimistic that it will be good, I am certainly going to use the opportunity to discuss the use of time travel in entertainment.

I’m no quantum physicist – sorry to disappoint – so I’ll be giving a bit of a layman’s take on the three most frequently used types of time travel. Of course there have been many other types used here and there, but I’ll be focusing on the ones that seem to be the most recurrent. The Terminator film franchise had really made use of all three types, which is why I’ll be using that as a jumping off point.

I will be referring to the theories here as the the Infinite Loop, the Running River and the Parallel Timelines theory.  Not exactly scientific terminology but I find them to be fitting, so let’s just roll with it.

The Terminator goes with the Infinite Loop theory, which essentially states that time is a circle. Everything that will ever happen has already happened and will happen again and again and again. Specifically in this case, John Connor sends Kyle Reese back in time to protect his mother Sarah Connor from a Terminator sent back to kill her by Skynet, and then Reese ends up becoming John’s father.

The suggestion here is that Reese was always John’s father, and so the future and the past have always been set in stone. By the end of the movie, Judgment Day – the nominal nuclear destruction of the human race – has not been averted. So, humanity is blasted, John Connor leads the rebellion against the machines, Skynet sends a Terminator back in time, John sends Reese back in time to protect his mother, and the events of the film continue on an infinite cycle.

The Infinite Loop is typically used in tragic stories, as it plays with the notion of unavoidable fate always trumping free will. This is why it’s the theory favored by the fairly nihilistic Rust “time is a flat circle” Cohle in True Detective, and Battlestar “all of this has happened before and all of this will happen again” Galactica.

T2 switches gears and uses “no fate but what we make” as it driving mantra. I’m going to skip the details of the film since, if you haven’t seen it, then I’m sure you’ve already stopped ready this blog post. The bottom line is that Sarah Connor, the super annoying preteen version of her son John, and a Terminator fresh off a babyface turn (wrasslin’ reference alert) decide to go ahead and stop Judgment Day from ever happening.

It’s not made clear whether they succeeded in the theatrical release, but several of the home video versions have a deleted epilogue where an elderly Sarah Connor is playing with her grandkids in a park. All of which suggests that Judgment Day was, in fact, averted.

This is the Running River theory, called such since a good analogy for it is that, if a river’s course is diverted at any point, then every point that flows after that affected point is changed as well. However, it is still the same river. This theory is used in stories with happier endings, as it illustrates that we can change our future for the better. The best example of this is perhaps Back To The Future, wherein Marty McFly changes his family’s life for the better after a brief, reverse-Oedipal wracked, visit to his parents’ past.

Terminator 3 flipped back to the Infinite Loop theory and, while I wouldn’t mind blogging about how that movie get a bad rap and is actually pretty good, it would be superfluous to go further into it.

Terminator Salvation, also better than its reputation though still not especially good, doesn’t really have much to do with time travel. As such, I’m going to twist the facts here to get to my last point. It could be interpreted as saying that the future (or the present, I suppose) may not be the same as it once was. In fact, it may be an entirely different timeline.

Parallel Timelines have long been the theory of choice for ongoing stories. DC  and Marvel Comics have had several “Event Series” and one or two movies that stemmed from this version of time travel. Buffy The Vampire Slayer had a great episode titled Dopplegangland, where a vampire version of Willow crosses over the the “Prime” timeline.  That’s a good specific example of why comic books favor his method – because it allows for different versions of characters to interact with one another. It also enables them with to do things with – and to – famous characters that they otherwise couldn’t (for primarily economic reasons).

The broader explanation for Parallel Timelines is that anytime someone goes back in time and changes something, a whole new future is created from that point forward. The original timeline still exists, adhering to the Infinite Loop rules, but the new timeline essentially falls under Running River rules. But, again, that timeline has not been changed. A new one has simply been created.

Looper, an awesome time travel movie that you should see if you haven’t yet, sits on the fence between Parallel Timelines and Running River, but I always interpreted it more as the former than the latter. The underseen Source Code is a better pure example of Parallel Timelines, where soldier/lab rat Colter Stevens is continually sent back in time to try and stop a terrorist attack on a  train. This theory can be bittersweet, as it allows for a happy ending in one timeline, but you know that things still turn out crappy in the others.

The Parallel Timelines theory of time travel actually plays off of a similar philosophical theory. The philosophy states that, to keep it as brief as possible, every decision that every living being makes creates its own distinct timeline. I’m rather fond of this theory, but it would take another couple thousand words to get into.

To bring things full circle, or back to the start of this particular Infinite Loop, Terminator Genisys opens on July 1st and I’m going to check it out. Looks like they’re throwing together a grab bag of every time travel theory mentioned above, and so it may be an unholy mess. But I’m never one to pass on a time travel movie, so I’ll be there.

Thanks for indulging my crackpot take, I’ll be back soon with some news about my own works, so keep readin’!