A Plea for the Kidman-Verse

“Part of the journey is the end.” – Tony Stark, Avengers: Endgame (2019)

“As if!” – Cher Horowitz, Clueless (1995)

Last week the first trailer for the [editor: plz confirm # of spider-man movies i don’t have the energy to look it up] “Spider-Man” movie, “Spider-Man: Far From Home” was released. Jon Watts’s movie is apparently set in a post-“Avengers: Endgame” universe which simply amazes me because it means, apparently, that the Endgame really wasn’t the Endgame which was the only “Endgame” theory I had all along. And if you thought “Spider-Man: Far From Home” was going to be the Endgame that “Endgame” wasn’t then you were probably surprised when Budweiser doubled down with Bud Light. Indeed, the trailer features a scene in which Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury, sort of “Mighty Aphrodite’s” Greek Chorus for the MCU (Marvel Comic Universe), explains that Jake Gyllenhaal’s Mysterio is from an alternate dimension to which Spider-Man née Peter Parker replies: “Are you saying there’s a multiverse?” Gawd. Whatta move. It made me think of the moment in “Risen” when Joseph Fienne’s Roman military tribune hears of this Jesus guy’s promise of eternal life and mutters “What a marvelous recruiting tool.” The MCU is eternal movie life! It never ever dies! I mean, they really are gonna milk this thing into the year 9595. Movies are dead; the MCU has risen.

I don’t mean to begrudge Marvel fans their “Avengers” love. Truly, I don’t, despite all the pseudo-pithy comments made here and in the past. I saw an old friend from high school post a lovely tribute on Facebook to “Avengers: Endgame” and the twenty-one movies preceding it and how they brought his family together throughout, echoing Maya Phillips's reckoning with the Marvel movie universe at The New Yorker when she wrote how “(t)he narrative worth caring about becomes the story of one’s own interaction with the M.C.U.” Just as I argue for and defend a critic’s inalienable right to an aesthetic appraisal of any film, large or small, and strenuously object to any Rotten Tomatoes-addled eggheads who erroneously contend such appraisals somehow constitute a refusal to “let people enjoy things”, I hold holy a fan’s right to form totally partial, overly emotional attachments with works of art they truly love. I am sometimes a critic, sometimes a fan, just a fan with a little more arthouse DNA, which is why I blog before you today not to say stop this cinematic cross promotion, since you can’t stop what’s already here, but simply ask that if this is to be our present and future then it’s only right to afford fair and equal multiverses.

And that is why, loyal frustrated followers, random, confused readers, and Hollywood, to ask, on behalf of my artsy fartsy acolytes, many of whom are fanboys and fangirls of a different sort, worshiping at the chic altar of another superhero, for a Nicole Kidman multiverse.

Kidman has superhero movie experience, of course, appearing in “Batman Forever” and so why can’t Millicent Clyde take a portal from “Paddington” to there? Millicent Clyde, evil taxidermist extraordinaire, would stuff and mount the Batman and his bird-brained bro and then admire them in her tony London flat while sipping Pimms and lemonade (and telling The Riddler, in that peerless way Kidman can imperiously reproach, that riddles are for children, leaving him to toddle off with his cane between his legs, never to be heard from again). That’s the superhero movie the Kidman Krew wants to see!

Why can’t the darkly transcendental ending of “Destroyer” not really have been the ending but Erin Bell gaining access to the Dogville, Colorado dimension where she proceeds to put us out of our misery by putting Lars von Trier out of his thereby blowing up the von Trier-verse and retroactively wiping our minds of any von Trier movies we might have seen?

Why can’t Suzanne Stone get alternate dimensionally air-dropped into that yacht in the middle of Pacific in “Dead Calm”? Can you imagine Suzanne Stone going toe-to-toe with Psycho Billy Zane?

Charlotte Bless should be in every movie, if only just in the background somewhere.

Why can’t Charlotte Bless move into Stepford? Charlotte Bless v Glenn Close? Yes, please!!!

Why can’t there be a parallel universe where Virginia Woolf is married to Kyle Miller in “Trespass” not simply so we could see Virginia Woolf sagely observing her way through a home invasion but so we could see Virginia Woolf married to Nicolas Cage? WHAT SORT OF BLOCKHEAD WOULDN’T WANT TO SEE THIS?

And what if – go with me here – Dr. Claire Lewicki was, via the Nicole Kidman Multiverse, able to rip a hole in the “Days of Thunder” universe to follow Cole Trickle through to the “M:I” universe to finally, once and for all, settle the score with you-know-who. It’d be like Kerrigan v Harding but for the big screen which sounds to me like a pitch that would make the marketing suits who think creativity is just a synonym for synergy salivate.