Death to the Multiverse

It’s impossible to escape the undulating universe sprawling tendrils of the Multiverse

The multiverse is a wondrous and imaginative concept in recent Film and TV, which, in the right hands, can elevate creativity to an unprecedented level. But, we must be careful.

The idea of the multiverse theory is a sprawling, seemingly never-ending oasis of philosophical and creative possibility. In Hollywood terms, it also entails a seemingly endless source of profit for years to come. We cannot allow corporate greed and Hollywood-manoeuvring to beat it into the ground via repetitiveness in the broader public media-landscape.

As with any trope in art, repetition is the death of broader creativity and imagination.

In recent years, the moviegoing public has found it nigh impossible to escape the multiverse’s undulating, alternate-universe-sprawling tendrils – from Marvel’s post-Endgame roster of films, such as Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness and television shows like Loki. Highly successful indie ventures, like Everything Everywhere All At Once,  have become some of the most successful indie productions at the Oscars and the box office alike. The multiverse, of course, is a highly engrossing concept for creative filmmakers and big studios with possibilities for characters and plotlines becoming seemingly endless upon its introduction. But what I hope to argue is that, with the multiverse coming to dominate both film and television, these two creative mediums become, conversely, stifled. 

Ironically, the superhero genre – possibly the biggest adopter of the multiverse theory in film and television alike – was born out of a similar rapid rate of interest in adapting comic book stories for the big screen. 

 Studios had largely failed in the years preceding the late 2000s, with Ang Lee’s Hulk and Pitof’s disastrously unsuccessful Catwoman, to launch any form of public interest in the superhero genre. This all changed, however, with the release of Iron Man in 2008, grossing an incredible five-hundred million dollars at the box office, and launching the incredibly profitable Marvel Cinematic Universe (or MCU).  

Other studios saw the jaw-dropping success of Marvel’s superhero film-making formula – the ability to churn out several billion-dollar audience pleasers every year which were guaranteed to be successful – and likewise tried to emulate it. These efforts were, by and large, unsuccessful. DC’s snide Avengers films Batman vs. Superman and Justice League essentially killed what little interest there was in their own ‘DCCU’ (DC Comics Cinematic Universe). The even more poorly received The Mummy (starring Tom Cruise, no less) likewise put a stop to Universal’s even more tenuously named ‘Dark Universe’. 

Multiverses attempt to emulate the success of the superhero genre.

In this genre, specifically, the concept of the multiverse has been used to elongate the already faltering interest in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) on-screen.  

Afterall, once Marvel released Avengers: Endgame – the single most profitable superhero film ever made, having grossed nearly three billion dollars worldwide – the whole overarching plotline of their aforementioned cinematic universe had, by and large, been wrapped up in a neat bow. Half their character roster had been killed off, or made unusable in future films.  

What the multiverse therefore allowed big studios to do was bring back all of those killed or unusable characters, and beat their metaphorical dead horse of plotlines for many more years to come.  

Critics and Audiences are becoming increasingly tired with commercially-motivated Multiverses

Critics and audiences alike have already begun to grow tired of the superhero genre, with a steady decrease in box office returns overtime; though some manage to break this formula, most notably Guardians of the Galaxy Part III, it is clear that a fatigue has developed within the broader cultural consciousness towards superheroes as a whole. 

Indeed, even in the otherwise markedly original productions we see exploring the multiverse, the constant exploitation of this initial premise again rears its ugly head.  

For example, the sequel to the critically acclaimed Into the Spiderverse, the recent Across the Spiderverse, found its ending and overarching plot stifled by corporate greed and the wish to create larger cinematic universes and sequels. Where the original film has a constant, rip-roaring energy of originality (and, crucially, an end-goal), its sequel drags itself out and ends on a crashing cliff-hanger that only serves to leave a bad taste in the audience’s mouth, and to ensure their ticket-purchasing eyes will be glued to the third Spiderverse film. 

Admittedly, I am certainly an outlier in this opinion concerning Across the Spiderverse. It, like its predecessor, has fast become one of the most critically lauded and commercially successful animated films of all time.  However, one can’t deny that the decision to stymy the otherwise wholly original, linear narrative inherent to the original Spiderverse film with two unnecessary multiverse sequels reeks of the same tried-and-tested business practice seen in the hundreds of superhero films that came before it.  

It is often said that, once you kill off a character and bring them back later on, your story loses all credibility; with the multiverse, this concept is essentially put on steroids, as entire worlds and universes are all brought kicking and screaming together in a final push to squeeze as much money out of the movie-going public as possible.