‘Black Widow’ Reveals That the MCU’s Cold War Was A Superhero Arms Race
By George Robbins
Marvel has, by far, been catapulted to the front of pop culture and has become the most recognized franchise we have seen outside of Star Wars. This has easily made it a franchise the likes of which very few other franchises can make it to. Therefore it is not that big of a surprise that they can take a number of liberties with how they choose to adapt the source content. Marvel Studios is responsible for these adaptations and they do all that they can to make sure some of it can stay true to source material. What ends up being the most important thing for them though is the fact that what they make has to be interesting.
Making their movies interesting has never really been much of an issue, but they still do what they can to give older fans something new. It is cool to take something that people like and turn it into another enjoyable form of media, but it is another thing to make it new. What I mean is that they took characters that people loved from the comics and gave them new and interesting stories to follow in the movies. This has given fans new and old something to enjoy whenever they go see a Marvel film. This trend will also not end any time in the near future and the ability to do things as they please gives them plenty of ways to proceed.
One of the more interesting ways we are seeing these creative actions take form is with the villains we see in each of the films. Also, the adaptation of each hero we see in the films changes what we would expect from any of the films as well. This is because not every character is the iteration of that character that we expected to see, which is the case in the Ant-Man movies. So far, every Marvel film has had the hero portrayed by their comic counterpart, and Ant-Man is no exception. The difference this time is that he is played by the second iteration of the character, Scott Lang, instead of the first iteration, Hank Pym. The villains for those films seem to make sense, but it still doesn’t change the fact that the upcoming film has a villain many perhaps weren’t expecting.
In the upcoming ‘Ant-Man 3,’ we have found out that the main villain we are supposed to be seeing in the film is the villain, Kang the Conqueror. He is a being that is more in-line for being an Avengers-class villain and we are supposed to be seeing him in a standalone film. This has many fans wondering what exactly will be happening in the future of the MCU and what plans are in place for the next over-arching storyline. We have no idea what we are even supposed to be looking forward to in the future of the MCU. This still hasn’t changed the fact that we already know what movies we will be seeing next though.
Even though details for ‘Ant-Man 3’ have been revealed already, the movie is not set to start production until June of 2021. This is still a little ways off and we don’t have anything close to a release date, so all we can go off of are upcoming movies. This is something that is much easier to keep track of as they are movies that we should be seeing in the near future. Unfortunately, this pandemic has made those plans sort of difficult for Marvel Studios and Disney as a whole because release dates keep having to be pushed back more and more. Soon enough, we were supposed to see the movie ‘The Eternals’ which was the first new character movie to premiere in Phase 4 of the MCU. This seems like it was not meant to be though and the new release date for the film is unknown.
The release date for ‘The Eternals’ was given to ‘Black Widow‘ when the movie’s release was postponed after the pandemic began. Given how poorly theaters are now performing despite being reopened to the public, Disney has decided to once again push back the release dates for many of their films including ‘Black Widow. There is no true release date as of yet because we don’t know how the following months will turn out. Therefore, the entire line-up they had planned for Phase 4 is now borked and we have nothing to go off. Luckily, the studio knows that we are getting bored waiting for the film to release and, in turn, they have released some details for the film to get us excited for it again.
Going back to the whole creative liberties thing, they are choosing how they want to play out the Cold War, and its aftereffects, in the MCU. In the comics, things turn out similarly, but those comics were made during the Cold War, so the new movie is showing us their adaptation and it definitely sounds interesting. According to details given from the movie, the Cold War in the MCU was actually an Arms Race to create better super-soldiers in the form of superheroes. These details have been given to us over a few different films at this point, but ‘Black Widow’ seems like it will expand upon this and show us a more in-depth look at the era. More specifically it will give us a look at the post-Cold War aftereffects, which makes us all the more excited for the film.