Entertainment

Marvel's Gonna Run Out of Superheroes at This Rate

by Anneliese Cooper

If you're following the saga of Marvel's Ant-Man, you've likely experienced a veritable roller coaster of emotions these past months, from the eyebrow raise of "Really? Ant-Man?" to the shrug of, "Huh, okay, guess it's cool," to the passing "Oh" at hearing its director, Edgar Wright, officially dropped the project, to the same "Oh" at learning Marvel turned to comedy guru Adam McKay in an attempt to perhaps resurrect the limping project into some sort of latter-day Batman and Robin. Maybe you even paused to think "Wow, they're really scraping the bottom of the barrel over there," or "Still not Black Widow?" or even "How many more of these until we hit Aquaman?" (Who, yes, is DC, but go with me on this one.) And yet, rather than sulk in the defeat of their deflating film, Marvel has chosen to kickstart a new franchise, appointing Sinister director Scott Derrickson to helm Doctor Strange , the story of the mystical sorcerer-cum-physician with just the craziest cape.

Of course, diehard fans probably saw this coming from the moment Nick Fury name-dropped Strange in Winter Soldier — but it does beg the question: Just how far down into the B-level characters will these comic book studios go?

For whatever (deep-rooted psychosocial) reason, superhero movies are wildly popular nowadays — a.k.a., essentially guaranteed cash cows — and since Hollywood is primarily a business, it makes sense that they would continue churning them out until there's quite literally nothing left to churn. That said, we'd better buckle up for some pretty ridiculous fare yet to come; Frog-Man isn't even the worst of it.

So, in order to prepare for this regretful inevitability, here are six unlikely heroes for whose blockbuster weekends we may have to brace ourselves:

1. The Geico Gecko

Geico

Look, if they can make a TV show about the Geico Cavemen, there's nothing to stop them from turning the company's most popular character into a movie — like Rango, but with a lot more mention of the number "15." Remember Ernest, of Ernest Goes to Camp? He started out as a character from a commercial, too, and there were 12 of those movies — twelve! That's more than Spiderman's gotten in two separate franchises. I will honestly be shocked if The Gecko: 15 Percent Saved, 100 Percent Badass isn't in theaters by 2016.

2. Mark Zuckerberg

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In the tradition of the billionaire-as-superhero, à la Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark — and especially considering his prior fictionalized success on screen in The Social Network — Mark Zuckerberg seems primed for a supernatural adaptation. Think about it: What if Facebook weren't gathering all of our personal information to sell to advertisers, but rather for some altruistic cause like Batman's creepy wire-tapping in The Dark Knight? Right? Please?

3. The Key Finder

Because if we're going off sheer modern day super-helpfulness, nothing beats the Key Finder. I can just see it now: "He was but an ordinary piece of plastic, lurking an Amazon storage facility basement — until one day, some mad scientist infused him with the power of basic GPS / blinky-lights, and he became... The Key Finder!" Or maybe it'll be a "she." Lord knows we need more heroines on screen.

4. Carrot Top

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I don't know, you guys — I just feel it. Those eyebrows alone... Maybe his calling is for super-villainy, then? I can so see him and the Gecko squaring off in some pretty epic heats — Geico Boy encouraging customers to just take the 15 minutes to call and save, Carrot Top deferring them by replacing the on-hold music with his own stand-up. A true clash of the titans.

5. Your Mom

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images News/Getty Images

Because every mom's a superhero, right? And not, like, Elastigirl from The Incredibles. I'm talking about your mom. Anyone's mom. Doing all that amazing everyday mom stuff — handcrafting Halloween costumes, kissing boo-boos, making that one food thing only she makes just right. Yes, this is my prediction: that Marvel will eventually go the route of Lifetime and spend 90 minutes on multitasking between work hours and bake sales, S.H.I.E.L.D. replaced with the PTA.

In short, Frog-Man is starting to look pretty good right about now.

Marvel