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Big news, team. Huge. Chiwetl Ejiofor is part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Yep, you read that right. Deadline reports that Ejiofor is confirmed for a part in Venom 3 opposite Tom Hardy, although we don’t know yet who he’ll play. What a get!
Not only that, but Donald Glover’s in line to star in a Hypno-Hustler movie as the much maligned disco-based thief. And then when Kraven the Hunter rolls around this October, we’ll be treated to the sight of Aaron Taylor-Johnson and – get this – actual Russell Crowe. Really! Ridiculous.
Keeping that kind of ironic enthusiasm up is absolutely draining, so we’ll take a beat here. Yes, Ejiofor, Glover, Taylor-Johnson and Crowe are all ready to star in Marvel movies. But that’s something they’ve all done before: Glover was in Spider-Man: Homecoming; Taylor-Johnson did Age of Ultron; Crowe was literally just in Thor: Love and Thunder; Ejiofor has been in Dr Strange movies as Karl Mordo for the last seven years. Next time around they’ll all be playing different characters.
Which strikes me as being a bit weird. Glover, sure. He wasn’t in Homecoming loads, was he? And it was ages ago. But if Ejiofor isn’t playing Mordo – and he won’t be, what with the Sony-Marvel rights issues that keep Spider-Man out of Venom-ville – then is he playing Mordo’s long-lost twin? And Russell Crowe got cast because he’s Russell Crowe, and audiences will recognise Russell Crowe when they see him. That gets a bit muddied when they’re recognising him playing a completely different guy, who just happens to look exactly like Zeus from the film they watched about 12 months previously.
Why this space-based version of the Premier League managerial merry-go-round, where every vacancy seems to be contested by Big Sam, Mauricio Pochettino and Julian Nagelsmann? Can Frank Lampard: Quantumania stop the rot? Maybe Kevin Feige’s phone only has room for so many numbers. That’s why half the universe carked it at the end of Infinity War, so he could go on a deleting spree and squeeze a few more contacts in without upgrading his iCloud.
But the strangeness of signing up a whole quartet of actors who’ve already been in Marvel stuff before rather than blooding anyone new does point to the place which the MCU finds itself in. Old-school A-listers like Crowe, Christian Bale, Robert Redford, Angelina Jolie and the like might still come to Marvel, but the wave of critical appreciation and massive popular clout has broken. Marvel could still afford to get nearly anyone in the world, but some big swings with new talent – hello, Eternals – didn’t work out. Now, despite taking the kinds of box office cash that renders any fear about whether an actor is playing a slightly different magic wizard basically irrelevant, the vibe is very round-in-circles.
Look at Love and Thunder. Thor: Ragnarok had been such a laugh and such a hit that Taika Waititi returned – only this time, it wasn’t nearly as much of a laugh or a hit. Guardians of the Galaxy 3 is both good and a hit, but it’s very much the end of a cycle and working the nostalgia for a gang that has been together through six movies over nearly a decade. Ant-Man: Quantumania was a dud but, unaccountably, very profitable. It also brought back Ant-Man alumnus David Dastmalchian as a completely different, Quantum Realm-bound character.
Perhaps it’s a lack of adventurousness, or an unwillingness to paint with new colours given how underwhelming the response has been, or – even worse – the vague sense that hopefully nobody will really notice. But underneath it all is the sneaking suspicion that fans’ disquiet and even open mockery isn’t something the studio fears. And that’s a story that rarely ends well, no matter how many times you cast Russell Crowe in it.
