As Marvel celebrates its ‘greatest super villain’ in the brand-new trailer of the upcoming Hulu Original, MODOK, I just can’t help but wonder how the trailer reiterates everything that’s wrong with Marvel. The franchise may be on a roll with its Phase 4 ruling the small screen in 2021 with two original shows already making history on Disney+ and a dozen more lined up. But the blockbuster cinematic universe’s struggle with emotional and in-depth storytelling remains its Achilles’ Heel.
The trailer starts with MODOK declaring: “Time to change the world…by bringing it to its knees!” In the end, an AIM agent lets MODOK know that his criminal organization is bankrupt. He takes this terribly and vaporizes another agent’s right arm in anger.
It serves to highlight the one thing Marvel is infamous for—having superheroes (or in this case, supervillains) trying to fit into the human world and losing all depth of character in the process. Add to that the general lack of vision in cinematography and a popcorn flick background score—you have everything that’s wrong with the MCU right there in the trailer.
Marvel has definitely tried to make amends, or at least appear to do so, with its other Phase 4 stories. Known for its must-fight-the-big-bad plots and general aversion to the inner emotional struggles of its heroes, MCU delved into just the opposite with WandaVision and The Falcon and The Winter Soldier.
But then came Zack Snyder’s Justice League with one of the greatest meet-cutes ever between Barry Allen’s Flash and Iris West. The electricity of their chemistry blazed on my screen to the tunes of Rose Betts serenading us with “Song to the Siren”—some of DCEU’s best movie work. With one scene, I could not stop thinking about what went wrong with the romance between Wanda and Vision? I think I agree with Polygon’s Joshua Rivers when he said it was the MCU.
There was so much potential for a glorious romance between the human witch and the synthezoid who shared his core energy source with hers on WandaVision. But the entire MCU has always had a tell-don’t-show problem that gets in the way of its emotions and Phase 4 seems no different.
In The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, the greatest peg was a possible Black Captain America, but the writers ended up trying a bit too hard. In addition to its characters’ inner worlds, The Falcon and The Winter Soldier was also in dire need of a more nuanced exploration of racism. That’s just sad and typically Marvel. Critics have rightly called out the show for just paying lip service to a very surface-level understanding of racism.
In that light, MODOK’s light-hearted villainous goofiness also becomes a continued legacy of Marvel’s shallow supervillains (Ultron, Thanos, etc), one that does not take itself too seriously for its own good.
Patton Oswalt voices the titular Marvel villain in this Robot Chicken-style take on the franchise’s more serious superhero dramas. (A more serious version of the character was the primary antagonist for Square Enix’s 2020 Avengers video game.)
First created in 1967 as a foil for Captain America, MODOK was never a supervillain that struck terror into the hearts of heroes. This Dumpty-lookalike is far from being feared—he is loved.
The show was conceived under the four-time Eisner Award-winner and veteran producer Jeph Loeb back when he headed Marvel TV. MODOK is likely to be Loeb’s last Marvel project for which he stuck around even after stepping down in 2019, making way for Marvel’s movie mogul Kevin Feige.
Loeb had helped re-establish Marvel’s floundering animation presence in the 2000s with popular TV shows such as Daredevil, Agents of SHIELD, and Runaways. It seems the Hulu Original will come as a final glimpse at a different path that the company’s comics adaptations could have taken before the MCU took over.
Loeb was known for reviving lesser-known characters which worked superbly for Marvel. Even with MODOK, he brought back a popular comics character that was rarely seen in the Marvel universe otherwise. He also introduced other small-time characters like the evil Mr. Sinister.
Story-wise, MODOK’s plot seems promising with a bankrupt supervillain by day who returns to the suburbs by night to manage his crumbling family life. From the looks of the trailer, the show could do even better than Marvel’s recent Disney+ shows.
Releasing on Hulu, which is known for being home to some of the greatest adult-animation stories, I definitely have higher expectations from MODOK to give us a more in-depth Marvel story. But I am also not underestimating the power of 70 years’ worth of half-cooked character arcs weighing down this brand-new series—however promising it may seem.
MODOK also got a release date with its official trailer—May 21st.
About M.O.D.O.K
M.O.D.O.K. is an upcoming American stop-motion adult animated series created by Jordan Blum and Patton Oswalt for Hulu. It is based on Marvel Comics character of the same name.
The show also stars creator Patton Oswalkt as the titular character and is joined by cast members Aimee Garcia, Ben Schwartz, Melissa Fumero, and Beck Bennett. Guest stars include Jon Hamm, Nathan Fillion, Whoopi Goldberg, and Bill Hader.
M.O.D.O.K has long pursued his dreams of one day conquering the world. Although, after years of failures and defeats from Earth’s mightiest heroes, he loses control of his evil organization A.I.M. The story follows M.O.D.O.K trying to get his organization back while dealing with a personal crisis at home.
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