Storytime with Rachel F Hundred

With the confirmation that Marvel and Disney have parted ways with Jonathan Majors, it is time for the Marvel Cinematic Universe to also part ways with Kang the Conqueror.

Majors was announced with much fanfare as the comic book villain back in September 2020 and I was one of the fans excited at the possibility of a big screen blue rendition following in the large purple footsteps of Thanos. 

Kang is a great villain and it made sense in the wider arc of the movies which were all leading towards the reintroduction of the Fantastic Four. Doom has already been done a LOT in the film outings for the Marvel family superheroes and is in many ways too much of an Earth bound comparative nemesis (think Justin Hammer vs Tony Stark, or a Winter Soldier vs Captain America) to become THE Big Bad for the Avengers. Yet the Four’s other main villain, Galactus, feels almost too cosmic, too alien and huge with no grounding in reality to ensure a victory could be possible for a new Avengers team. Kang is on paper then a good choice – super-intelligent and with the tech to be a realistic threat for a team of superheroes, but a villain with motivations and purpose that the audience can understand. Unfortunately, regardless of Majors’ own personal situation, Kang’s introduction in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania failed to hit that mark and the Conqueror is already struggling to fill the rather gigantic villainous boots Thanos left behind.

Arguably, Kang has succeeded best in Loki, the Disney Plus show featuring everyone’s favourite anti-hero, and the MCU’s first successful villain in Thor’s younger adopted brother.  At the end of the first season, a Kang variant, He Who Remains, was revealed as the power behind the Time Variance Authority.  A crazy genius madman who kept ‘pruning’ other timelines in order to ensure that he was the only Kang variant in power, ostensibly to stop himself from creating a multiversal war, but in essence simply ensuring he was the one controlling everything and everyone. For me, that Loki outing was a great performance by Majors, a real and delightful surprise given the expectation that Kang’s first outing would be in the Ant-Man and the Wasp’s 2023 movie.

Kang was suitably villainous – a hero of his own story in his own mind and yet responsible for the deaths of millions of variants across multiple timelines.  His showdown with Loki and Loki-variant Sylvie at the end of time did a good job of establishing Kang as a threat – if you watched the show.

And that has been the root of the problem for me.

Kang was successfully introduced in a mini-TV series on a streaming service.

It was once promised to audiences that fans would not need to watch the Disney shows to know what was going on; that they could still just turn up to the movies and be fully informed; that the shows would provide bonus material that would only add value not subtract or confuse if you did watch. To a large extent, ignoring the recent The Marvels film, that has been true. But what is also true is that in trying to keep that promise there is a disconnect in the character and storyline continuity between the shows and their movie cousins (Wanda could be considered another example). A problem compounded by the focus on quantity over quality during Bob Chapek’s reign at Disney which treated Marvel as nothing more than a cash content factory. Kang’s storyline in particular seems to fallen victim to that quality drop.

Kang’s introduction in Loki was clearly meant to fulfil the promise of bonus material but not an issue if you did not see the show. He Who Remains is a variant. He is one rendition of Kang and the movie would give us another. But that ultimately became the nub of the problem for me. Having seen a great Kang variant, I was expecting a lot of the movie version – and my expectations were not met at all. The difference was jarring and it was like watching, not just a variant of Kang, but a completely different character.

Ultimately the threat of Kang in the Quantum realm is well set-up in the first part of the movie; there is a sense from Janet’s behaviour, from the actions of the aliens they encounter that there is a threat which means them harm. And then Kang himself appears and…he is just not well-executed once he’s part of the action.  It all plays out too ludicrously – something not helped by the comical MODOK and the weird cartoonish mostly CGI alien rebels.  Even Majors’ performance seems that it leans more into the trope of a moustache-twirling evil villain from a silent movie than a nuanced intelligent Realm Emperor intent on power.  Yes, there is a struggle for the Ant-man/Wasp team to defeat him but the fight never seems truly unwinnable given the movie’s odd imbalance between the usual light-hearted tone of the Ant-man movies and the Marvel franchise need to introduce a serious Big Bad. 

That’s not to say the movie doesn’t try. It tries to set up that moment of uncertainty from Scott about his victory, but it doesn’t play as well as it should because there is a lack of foreshadowing or even an explicit scene showing the audience that Kang is several steps ahead of Scott and his family and so has set up only the illusion of victory.  It tries with the end credit scene showing a multitude of Kangs to horrify and terrify the audience with the idea of what is coming, but this only comes across as a CGI mess in my view.

Ultimately, for me, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania failed on every level to introduce Kang as THE BIG BAD on a level with Thanos.  And I feel that was a sentiment that resonated across the majority of the MCU fandom.  Not a great result for a character who had been heralded as the key throughline villain for the next Avengers film when it finally arrived – and a mess Marvel needed to fix.

Given the decision to part with Majors, recasting is an option if they really want to stick with Kang – or need to given the work to already incorporate the character through the rest of the Phase 5 movies and shows. Recasting happens, for example, Mads Mikkelson stepped into the role of Grindelwald, or within the MCU itself, Mark Ruffalo stepped into the role of Bruce Banner, Don Cheadle into the role of Rhodey.  Within the MCU, the notion that variants can exist in all different shapes and sizes also helps to ease that transition: the real Big Bad Kang could simply be played by someone other than Majors.  Within the MCU itself, Spiderman has been played by three different actors and Loki by several different actors.  I think if Majors’ personal issues were the only problem with Kang, this would likely have been the solution. 

But my argument is that the problem with Kang is not rooted in Majors’ performance, but in the Quantumania story construction and the movie execution.  Recasting does not solve that problem. Yes, recasting could allow for a reintroduction and a reset, but I personally don’t think this is a viable option.  There are a limited number of Marvel properties coming out in 2024 and in addition, with Bob Iger back at the Disney helm, quality not quantity seems to be back as the mantra for Marvel as it relooks at its slate of projects and the overall plan.  It feels like Marvel has decided to mop up outstanding projects and go back to the drawing board, ultimately replanning – and part of that replan doesn’t feel like it has room for Kang when the ending of Loki’s second season is thrown into the mix.

Indeed, if I look at Loki, the decision on what to do with Kang feels like it has already been made. The final episode turned the tables on He Who Remains with his variants now hunted by the TVA he once founded and Loki holding all the threads of all the timelines across a vast multitude encompassing Yggdrasil, the Norse Tree of Life. It does leave the door open to using Kang in the future, but it is also a good ending for Kang right now – defeated by a God with glorious purpose and a creation of his own making.

If I was Marvel would my decision be to find a different Big Bad?

Quite frankly, yes.

For me, Kang has not worked out.  Let’s move on.