What If? #6: 'Monger Issues? (and Other Marvelous Stuff)
Article by Sean Wilkinson,
a.k.a The Ticketmaster
a.k.a The Ticketmaster
I'll have to begin this post with something of a retraction. I should have double-sourced the What If...? Mid-Season Trailer that I covered at the end of my last post. It was composed by a fan-trailer YouTube channel called "Screen Culture." There was only one other instance of the trailer on YouTube, and that poster has since taken it down, leaving Screen Culture as the only source of their video. I have looked into Screen Culture's other content, and they include such speculation-fests as a re-edited version of the official No Way Home trailer with added credits for Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield, as well as legacy footage of Thomas Haden Church's Sandman, to name a few. Though I give props for their editing skills, I now urge you not to take anything Screen Culture puts forth at face value. Marvel's official Mid-Season Trailer, which I will address at the end of this post, has multiple shares and re-uploads (some with different thumbnails, but the content is identical), and contradicts some of the major reveals from Screen Culture's "trailer" (eg: no Galactus). So if it isn't straight from the mouse's mouth, ignore it. I will do the same.
As per usual, if you aren't caught up on What If...?, go watch the latest episode(s) on Disney+ so you don't feel spoiled. And catch up on my blog while you're at it. Here is my coverage of the first five episodes:
Episode 2: "What If T'Challa Became A Star Lord?"
Episode 5: "What If Zombies?"
The breakdown begins after the image....
The Premise: "What If Killmonger Saved Tony Stark?" The title pretty much covers it. As I mentioned last time, Uatu the Watcher is more visible here than he was in past episodes, his features as defined as any other character in the series, rather than just being a cosmic silhouette with glowing, yellow eyes. He still takes this appearance in a few establishing shots, and normal beings are still unable to see him, even in his well-defined form. The story begins with the opening sequence from Iron Man, where Tony is riding a military convoy through Afghanistan (a more recent source of bad news than America is comfortable with, especially in such close proximity to the twenty-year anniversary of the first time we learned what Afghanistan was capable of--never mind that we were so scared of Soviet Russia in the '80s that we gave Afghanistan that capability to begin with), and a faction of The Ten Rings (the real Ten Rings, not the Trevor Slattery/Aldrich Killian Wizard Of Oz production we got in Iron Man 3, though I'm not as big on hating this twist as most internet voices are) targets Tony with his own weaponry. But in the moment before the missile explodes, Erik Killmonger appears out of nowhere and yeets it into the distance, saving his life. That's as far as we go until the What Changed section. It's casting time!
The Cast: Mick Wingert is back to voice Tony after providing his services in the What If Hank Pym Was A Serial Killer? episode. I had to check the credits for Robert Downey, Jr. because Wingert captures his big-screen counterpart's voice and delivery perfectly here. The Wakanda cast from previous episodes are all back, as well. Michael B. Jordan voices Killmonger, Andy Serkis (no stranger to vocal and motion-capture performance, and even directed the Venom sequel) voices Ulysses Klaue, Don Cheadle has a few lines as James Rhodes, Jon Favreau is Happy Hogan, and Leslie Bibb reprises her role as reporter Christine Everhart from previous episodes, the WHIH Newsfront web series, and the first two Iron Man films.
The unknown Beth Hoyt is a commendable vocal replacement for Gwenyth Paltrow as Pepper Potts, and improv and voiceover specialist Kiff VandenHeuvel sounds nothing like Jeff Bridges as Obadiah Stane, but it's a bit part and he fills it well enough. Oh, and Kenny from The Office voices Thunderbolt Ross, as he did in previous episodes. I'd usually talk about the animation next, but there are some things that I need to explain in another section first.
What Changed: No shrapnel in Tony's heart means no formative period in the cave, no Mark One, and no erratic attempts to restructure Stark Industries out of the weapons business. Instead, Tony latches onto his savior (clearly unaware that people with ten-letter nicknames that end in "-monger" are not to be trusted), who publicly outs Obadiah Stane as the man behind the attempt on Tony's life, and just like that, the entire first entry of the MCU doesn't happen. As Tony bonds with Killmonger over a shared loss and gives him more and more influence at Stark Industries, things do dip a little into Iron Man 2 territory, with hints of Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Avengers: Age Of Ultron thrown in for good measure. Killmonger's "Project Liberator" puts him in the Ivan Vanko role as a mastermind exploiting a tech billionaire's resources to build his own robotic military force, and the AI-driven aspect rings of Ultron's Iron Legion from the Avengers sequel and HYDRA's Project Insight from Winter Soldier. Of course, this is all according to Killmonger's master plan to use Stark Industries, the US military, and Ulysses Klaue as a means to assassinate T'Challa and stage an invasion of Wakanda so he can become the new Black Panther and rule his true homeland. He succeeds, but Shuri and Pepper know something isn't right and they make plans to expose Killmonger as the episode ends.
The Animation: Points for consistency, with regards to quality and quirks alike. The exaggerated facial animations give the audience plenty of enjoyably cheesy "I'm dead and I know it" expressions from Killmonger's victims, the recreated sequences are as iconic and nostalgic as ever, Uatu's looming visible form gives the impression of a 3D effect, and the establishing shots are beautiful. The big draw for this episode, though (aside from the well-written story) is the action. "What If Killmonger Saved Tony Stark?" does with action sequences what the Baron Strange episode did with abstract visuals, pushing the fight choreography and spectacle of each encounter to eleven. The one-on-one fights are personal, flashy, and creative (as if someone decided to freestyle---so I am inserting my obligatory Simpsons meme here),
 |
| "Say Tony Stark found out you were using him to get get revenge on society for your father's murder and he comes at you with a giant robot that fights like you." "Just give him one of these!" |
and the group battle between Wakanda and the Liberator army is just epic.
The Implications: There is no Iron Man. Tony Stark is dead. Klaue is dead. T'Challa is dead. Rhodey is dead. Killmonger installed himself as the hero-king of Wakanda, and became the new Black Panther (sporting the gold-accented armor he wore in his fight with T'Challa in Black Panther). Thanks to the hyper-militaristic view that Killmonger instilled in Tony (in essence, peace means having a bigger stick than the other guy, but war means bludgeoning them into red vapor with a nuclear sequoia tree), America stands on the brink of a vengeance war with Wakanda. And only Pepper and Shuri know what's really going on. With the key men in their lives (Tony and T'Challa, respectively) dead, there is a subtle implication as to the cyclical nature of revenge, and that if our surviving heroines are forced to go to extreme lengths to bring Killmonger down, they will become just like him, for nearly identical reasons.
The Verdict: Hot take, but I didn't like Killmonger in Black Panther. He was just some generic gangsta character who turned out to be Wakandan royalty to make him fit into the movie (but also a literal social justice warrior to give him a pandering level of "depth"), and at the end he was just another dark mirror villain to add to the MCU roster of dark mirror villains, right alongside his fellow 'Monger, YellowJacket, Abomination, Whiplash, Ultron,.... But in this episode of What If...?, we come in with advance knowledge that he is Wakandan royalty, that he is the villain, and we get to watch the wheels turn as he bonds with and manipulates Tony (albeit with some pedestrian confidence tactics that anyone who's seen a heist movie before can dial the bullshit hotline on from the words, "What if we...? Nah, forget it.") and turns two nations against one another so deftly that only two people (the women behind their respective men) are left alive to oppose him. The MCU needs more villains like Thanos, Kang (what we know of him so far, anyway), and this version of Killmonger. Animation-wise, this is in my top two episodes. The final battle, especially, is a must-see, but the episode is chock full of creative fights, dramatic, campy kills, and stunning scenery. While not as dark of an ending as Baron Strange, Marvel Zombies, or Serial Killer Hank Pym (the latter two of which had a lingering measure of hope, just like this episode), or possessed of such bleak implications as the Star Panther episode, the trail of dead bodies here is pretty significant, and a world on the brink of war (especially of a war waged in the perpetuity of revenge) is a terrifying prospect. Strange is still my favorite episode, but this is a hair-splitting second.
On to some trailer news that isn't news anymore because internet!
The real What If...? Mid-Season Trailer (shown here)
is mostly clips from the existing episodes, but also serves as a hero roll call for future episodes, especially the finale. Known quantities include T'Challa Star Lord, Economics 101 Thanos, Hawkeye (from multiple episodes), Zombie-survivor Spider-Man, Zombie Iron Man (?), Nick Fury from either the Captain Carter or Killer Pym episode (or both because multiverse?), Headpool Supreme Ant-Man, Captain Carter, HYDRA-Stomper Steve Rogers, Loki (?), the Hulk (maybe he survived the zombies at Zola's compound?), Captain Marvel (SKP episode?), King Killmonger, Zombie-verse Vision, and both Doctor Stranges. Red Guardian Widow, the Winter Soldier, and Titan Gamora are confirmed for future episodes, as well. And we get a brief flash of an animated Grandmaster. There's a shot of Korg doing the robot with a pacifier in his mouth while partying with Asgardians, Skrulls, and what looks like Mantis leaving the frame. Pepper is leading a party of Dora Milaje, weilding a BFG that I can only think of as Potts' Revenge (after Coulson's gun from the first Avengers). There's a shot of Thor cracking an Ultron in the face, Ego Celestializing Peter Quill, a bunch of Ultrons flying toward the camera with Vision-like markings on their faces, and what could be a female Hawkeye (or just Red Guardian Widow using Clint's bow--or maybe Natasha is a Taskmaster?!). Hype!
Disney and Marvel also dropped a trailer for the Hawkeye series this week:
While nothing really caught my eye that screamed of MCU Easter eggs (except for the "Rogers" Broadway musical, which quickly blew up the meme community), the trailer is a clear homage to the Die Hard franchise. The story aside (which kicks off with Kate Bishop impersonating Clint's Ronin alias), the Christmas setting of the show, the heroes coming to blows with a group of organized criminals, Clint swinging through a window, and the trailer's final shot are immediate clues to the series' likely inspirations. I half expect Samuel L. Jackson to show up as Nick Fury driving a cab, but there's nothing in existing casting info, or the trailer itself, to suggest this will happen. We can expect Florence Pugh's Yelena Belova to show up in an antagonistic role after Black Widow's post-credits scene, though.
Speaking of casting information, here's another theory for you. I've been checking No Way Home's Wikipedia page to see if Maguire or Garfield have been confirmed (they haven't), but I ran across an interesting information conflict. NWH's wiki lists Paula Newsome in an "undisclosed role." The film's IMDB cast list shows her character name blank, but upon clicking Newsome's name on the wiki, it shows, among her film credits, Rio Morales in No Way Home! We've already been teased that Donald Glover might have been playing the unseen Miles Morales' uncle (a.k.a. The Prowler from the comics) in Homecoming. And now we have a potential leak of Miles' mother appearing in the MCU. A fourth Spider-Man film is in development, but with Tom Holland's contract set to expire following the imminent threequel, I think that Peter might be set to die (or get the Superior treatment) in No Way Home, opening the way for Marvel to do the fourth entry with a Spider-Man that they fully own the rights to, and if they intend to continue the Home branding, may I suggest calling it Miles From Home?
October is going to be a packed month! I start a new term at WGU, Black Widow and Shang-Chi are scheduled for streaming release, What If...? has more episodes coming out, and the Chucky miniseries is hitting the airwaves. Wish me luck and stay tuned!
Ticketmaster the Watcher,
Cannot interfere,
Must not interfere,
(But I probably definitely will interfere...)
So come with me and ponder the question:
Out If?
Goodnight.
Comments
Post a Comment