Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Otherwise, where are
we?
…Apparently, as we put ‘Spider-Man: Far From Home’ behind
us, and TLK-2019 is in front of us, now we are in the perfect time to proclaim:
the current incarnation of Spider-Man, the Tom Holland version, is TLK, just
with opposable thumbs and different hairdos. Let us begin!
Peter Parker is Simba, with Tony Stark being Mufasa;
previously, it was the late uncle Ben who’d been Peter’s father figure, but in
the MCU, it’s more of Tony’s job; so far, the closest we came to Ben Parker is
the BFP suitcase that Peter took upon his European vacation; we don’t even know
how he looks.
…This isn’t actually such a great deviation: we still know
next to nothing about Peter’s actual parents:
his uncle Ben and aunt May had been present with us, alongside Peter, in all
sorts of incarnations, but the actual Parker parents? Not so much. Adding Tony
into the mix did change the balance…but not as much as it appears at a first
glance. Tony is still Peter’s mentor and father figure, and he rescues Peter
from the Vulture, (at first), just as Mufasa rescues the young Simba from the
hyenas. Young Simba and Peter even have similarly optimistic and carefree
attitudes pre-Vulture and the elephant graveyard, respectively – Peter may not
have a musical number similar to ‘I just can’t wait to be king’ of Simba, but I
kind of got a feeling in ‘Homecoming’ that if he could he would.
Same for the women – Simba got Beyoncé… that is to say,
Nala, and Peter got Zendaya… uh, MJ. Yes, them. Do not know if that is woke or
just personal preferences, but there it is, and both Nala and MJ are presented
as having similarly spunky personalities, so to say. Yay?
Timon and Pumba in Africa and by Betty and Ned in NYC/Europe
round up the entourage of our titular heroes. Zazu (Oliver) is balanced by
Happy (Favreau), who, yes, got May to balance him out for further MCU romance,
but honestly? That romance was the weakest of the three in ‘Far From Home’ and
rather reminiscent of Ned & Betty back in Europe.
Both fathers die and are succeeded by villains, Scar and
Beck. Both of whom are hypocrites, liars, and are especially successful at
misguiding the titular heroes, in different manners but with similar results –
Scar becomes king on one hand, and Mysterio gets the unlimited access to
Stark’s technology on the other. Hyenas assist Scar, Mysterio got his own
minions; hyenas turn on Scar, Mysterio’s minions just outlive him as Spider-Man
defeats him for the final time…supposedly.
And then there are the sagely old advisors that take shit
from no man or lion, Nick and Rafiki. Rafiki is more polite and subtle than
Nick is, but conversely, he is more physical with Simba than Nick is with
Peter.
Pause. Yes, Nick is actually Talos, while Maria is Soren, or
is she?
Let us look away from Spider-Man to ‘Captain Marvel’ and one
person that you do not see there is Maria Hill. At all. Maybe she was just busy
elsewhere, or maybe she just had not been hired by S.H.I.E.L.D. in the 90s, or
something else, but maybe there is no Maria Hill, but only Soren, pretending to
be human. If so, then you have to admit that she is one kick-ass S.H.I.E.L.D.
agent, is all that I am saying.
It also alters the disposition of both the initial two
seasons of AoS and the very first Avengers movie, (aka the one where Loki
invades Earth with Thanos’ army). As humans, Fury and Hill may have had only
the slightest idea, as to what the GH formula will do to Coulson, (it was made
based on Kree blood, remember?). As Skrulls, Talos and Soren may have had a
much better idea, and then there is the issue of how does the rebooted post-Hydra and cap revelation S.H.I.E.L.D. fit
into the entire Kree vs. Skrull conflict. At the end of ‘Far From Home’ film,
there are mentions of Kree cells on Earth. Sigh. Looks as if Kree will be
replacing Hydra as the main secondary villain in MCU and possibly AoS.
…Here is the thing. From AoS S3 onwards, Hydra and the Kree
were increasingly mashed together, until the final quarter of AoS S5, where the
Hydra were revealed as being the minions of the Kree. Yes, it contradicts the
second half of AoS S3, where Hydra was supposedly founded by Alveus, who was an
InHuman or an alien space worm, rather than a Kree, and who really didn’t like
them, but that’s AoS for you: it had its’ back story broken and reset about as
many times as ‘Lost Girl’ had, only ‘Lost Girl’ was finished after five
seasons; AoS is currently in its’ sixth. Yay, really.
That aside, at that period MCU and AoS were in a bad place,
as their fan base were divided over whether Hydra was Nazi or only evil,
whether S.H.I.E.L.D.’s treatment of Grant and Kara was justified, who was in
the right – the Iron Stark or Cap’n Rogers… wait, sorry. The Iron Man and/or
Captain America – there, that is the correct versions, right? Anyhow, the Hydra
issue proved to be much more divisive than MCU imagined it to be, so around the
time of CA: CW movie they retired it from MCU as well as from AoS – we are
talking the S3 finale here. Only by the second third of AoS S4 Hydra came back
in a different incarnation… as opposed to the second half of S5, where it was
in its’ classical depiction instead: apparently, MCU cannot really function
well without Hydra, yet with it, the old controversies come
back. Whereas SW tried to just steamroll over them and it backfired, MCU is
trying to fix them – first it tried to get rid of Hydra, and now it is trying
to replace it with the Kree. Squee, and let us see as to how it will work out
for Marvel. Back to the main topic?
Both Peter and Simba struggle with their fathers’ death,
both Scar and Mysterio try to make them worse with verbal bullshit, and both
times it backfires – Simba learns that it was actually Scar who had murdered
Mufasa and is able to overpower him and throw him off the Rock where the hyenas
turn on him and tear him to pieces, while Peter gets his own shit together,
gets to Mysterio, and overpowers him, even as the latter’s handgun misfires and
he dies. What next?
Simba gets to be king. Peter gets to be a true hero slash
Avenger for real, finally. Of course, nothing good lasts forever and Peter know
gets to deal with the new incarnation of the Daily Bugle, as well as any other
shite that comes his way, (such as MCU’s version of the Scorpion), while Simba
will eventually have to deal with Scar’s widow and children in TLK2 movie,
(which hadn’t been re-worked with CGI yet). Go them, I say!
What next? Hard to say. No Marvel movies are coming in the
next 10 months or so, and AoS is being all over the place; plus real life
sucks, so it’s doubtful that we will be able to discuss AoS in the upcoming
weeks, especially the end of July and the beginning of August, but what can’t
be cured, must be endured, right?.. And Disney in general is in a similarly
confused place, seeing how it is has driven itself in a difficult situation
with those remakes of its old classics, rather than making genuinely new movies, as it has done in MCU and
SW. At least Spider-Man has returned to his roots, faced his fears, and became
a hero after trying to avoid it, just as Simba did in his movie. Hakuna matata!
…This is it for now, see you all soon.
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