Tuesday, July 05, 2016

In the best of all possible worlds, this would already be in production.

I could not find any images of Anna Kendrick wearing fake squirrel ears on the Internet, but here she is wearing fake cat ears, in a still from Mr. Right.
Hey, did you guys hear about this over the weekend?

If not, apparently Anna Kendrick was asked what superhero she could see herself playing, and the woman who previously played comic book character Stacey Pilgrim answered that she could see herself playing Squirrel Girl, based on the fact that her brother thinks she should play Squirrel Girl. Someone on Twitter even went and made some Anna Kendrick-as-Squirrel Girl art, which you can see at the link.

I found this news, if one can call it "news," tremendously exciting, because if there is one thing I love it is Ryan North and Erica Henderson's Unbeatable Squirrel Girl comic book, and if there are two things I love they are Ryan North and Erica Henderson's Unbeatable Squirrel Girl comic book and Anna Kendrick.

This marks the second time in my life that I have thought at all about a Squirrel Girl movie, the first being Elle Collins' November 2015 "Cast Party" column at Comics Alliance, in which she offered her fantasy cast for a Squirrel Girl movie.

Her choice for the star was actually pretty perfect, the rounder-faced, more Erica Henderson drawing-esque Mae Whitman. Kendrick, by contrast, looks more like creator Steve Ditko's version of the character, and the one that appeared in various Avengers comics up until the North/Henderson title launched, and were she to play the character, I'm afraid she would need a haircut, and I can't imagine what Anna Kendrick would look like with a pixie cut. Other than super-hot, that is.

Kendrick, unlike Whitman, is probably a big enough star now that she could actually get a Squirrel Girl movie made, although, like Guardians of The Galaxy, if Marvel did ever make a Squirrel Girl movie, it wouldn't be the character or the actress who would ultimately be the selling point–it would be the studio and "cinematic universe."
Similarly, I could not find any photos of Kendrick holding squirrels online, but here she is holding kittens in a magazine photo shoot. Kittens are kind of like squirrels, in that they are small and furry.
Now, I know that lots of people on the Internet have expressed varying degrees of anger and bewilderment as to why on Earth Marvel hasn't made any movies starring female superheroes before, and while I've discussed this a bit in on the past (and a lot with one of my friends and current writing partner on a particular project at Comics Alliance), it's been a while since I've talked to you guys about it.

The simple fact of the matter is that Marvel just doesn't have any great candidates to star in such a movie (Aside from the obvious one, Black Widow, although "a super-spy with no costume and no super-powers" doesn't really lend itself toward a superhero film; at this point, I think it wouldn't be hard to do a Black Widow film, but the thought of one sounded awfully boring to me a few years ago. I think if they gave her Taskmaster or M.O.D.O.K. or A.I.M. another Marvel villain or organization to fight, and used some Avengers as background characters or in cameos, it would work just fine, but I had a hard time imagining the point of a Black Widow movie on the heels of, say, Iron Man 2 or Thor).

The problem with Marvel's superheroines is that, when you eliminate all of the X-Men (and the fact that Marvel Studios can't use any of the mutant characters pretty much means you have to), what you end up with characters that fall into one of two camps. There are female versions of male heroes, like Spider-Woman, She-Hulk and Ms. Marvel/Captain America, or minor characters that it is (was) hard to imagine being the source of a film, as opposed to being a character in an Avengers or Defenders movie, like The Wasp, Scarlet Witch, Tigra, Valkyrie and Hellcat.

I should note that this line of thinking pre-dated the release of Guardians of the Galaxy, which demonstrated that Marvel didn't have to make movies featuring their B-list characters like Iron Man, The Hulk and Thor (The A-listers they already licensed to other studios). They could, conceivably, use any characters, like a team featuring Groot and Rocket Raccoon. Hell, they could make an Ant-Man movie. Not a Yellow Jacket or a Giant-Man movie, no; Ant-Man.

So hell, maybe they can and will make an Elsa Bloodstone or Satnanna movie some day; certainly a Ms. Marvel (Kamala Khan now, obviously) seems a fairly safe bet. Hell, Deadpool made so much money that a Gwenpool movie is within the realm of possibility now.

But Squirrel Girl, guys!

She is not a female version of a male character!

She is not primarily known as part of a team (at least, not anymore), nor as the partner to a male character!

And she's not one of the X-Men, so unlike Storm, Dazzler, Kitty Pryde or Psylocke, Marvel Studios can use her!

Squirrel Girl is perfect, and Guardians of The Galaxy and Ant-Man have proven that Marvel Studios can stray from the most obvious path into the quirkier corners of the Marvel Universe and still produce superhero films that are both pretty good and, more importantly for the studios, financially successful.

So yeah, I could actually see Marvel making a Squirrel Girl movie now. I wouldn't have imagined it prior to GotG and Ant-Man, of course, that was before Marvel was publishing North and Henderson's Unbeatable Squirrel Girl which is, no lie, maybe the publisher's best book at the moment...it's certainly my favorite.

I'd certainly prefer a Squirrel Girl movie following their basic vision of the character to a movie starring boring old Captain Marvel Carol Danvers, which I guess is the female character who is scheduled to be the star of Marvel Studios' first female-lead movie (which is too bad, because Carol Danvers is the worst). (Actually, I know I've already mentioned Black Widow; the other obvious female-lead superhero Marvel Studios really seems like it has to make at some point is one starring Hayley Atwell's Peggy Cater, focusing on the founding of SHIELD and maybe Peggy's first team of proto-Avengers).

One immediate problem with a Squirrel Girl movie? Her archenemy, Doctor Doom, is bundled with the other Fantastic Four characters, and thus would belong to Fox for the purposes of live-action movies...unless they cut some kind of deal with Marvel Studios, like Sony did with Spider-Man, or just relinquished the Fantastic Four characters, as they pretty obviously don't know what the fuck to do with them (For example see the last Fantastic Four film...actually, don't see it. It's not worth that. Nothing is worth that.)

In fact, looking at the first three volumes of The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, she seems to frequently deal with villains Marvel Studios can't use at the moment: Kraven The Hunter (Spider-Man villain; Sony), Galactus (Fantastic Four; Fox), Doctor Doom again, Kraven The Hunter again. Also, Deadpool's off-limits too, although he only appears in trading card form in Unbeatable Squirrel Girl.

Good news? Marvel Studios does have the rights to  frequent Squirrel Girl foil Iron Man  (who starred in the comic she first appeared in, and who S.G. is online friends with in her own comic) and Thor and Loki, who are featured prominently in Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Vol. 2: Squirrel You Know It's True.

So, in conclusion, Marvel should totally cast Anna Kendrick as the lead in a Squirrel Girl movie featuring cameos by Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark and Chris Hemsworth's Thor and Tom Hiddleston's Loki and they should start working on it right this second and forget making Captain Marvel, because Marvel's Captain Marvel sounds dumb and she's not even the real Captain Marvel anyway

Imagine this on a big-screen:
I could try and explain Cat Thor, but I really think you should read Unbeatable Squirrel Girl and enjoy that discovery for yourself. 
Tell me you wouldn't rather see that then Captain Marvel flying around space shooting energy beams or whatever her power currently is and talking about Kree bullshit.

1 comment:

SallyP said...

This would be the greatest movie...ever!