Even before the movie's opening weekend crushed domestic box offices to the tune of $100 million, Guardians of the Galaxy was already green-lit for a sequel.
Guardians has been another accomplishment in establishing a new tent-pole franchise for Marvel's Phase 2 film line-up. And while that's all well and good for what is obviously shaping up to be an Infinity Gauntlet-dominated Phase 3 of the Marvel movie universe, I only have one question: Can we get a goddamn Inhumans movie now?
The biggest achievement Guardians has made, aside from forcing audiences to accept a talking raccoon and a sentient tree as heroes, has been the cracking open of the Marvel Universe beyond the confines of Earth (and Asgard). Familiarizing audiences with the vast cosmic cast of Marvel was always a priority, but a conditional one. We've gotten to see not one, but two massively disappointing forays into the cosmic corners of Marvel thanks to 20th Century Fox's abysmal pair of Fantastic Four films, but Marvel Studios doesn't own the rights to the Fantastic Four (or the X-men). Marvel Studios has built its cinematic realm around their owned properties of Iron-Man, Thor, The Avengers, Captain America, and now Guardians of the Galaxy. This presents them with the perfect opportunity to introduce another tier of cosmic players while circumventing the sticky ownership policies that prevent Marvel Studios from introducing any Fantastic Four related properties like Galactus and the Silver Surfer.
So who exactly are the Inhumans and why should you care about whether or not they make it onto the roster of Marvel properties deserving of a film adaptation? Aside from being massively powerful and utterly badass in every way, the Inhumans are a race of beings that are essentially a failed cosmic science experiment. Without penetrating the nearly 50 years worth of Inhuman mythology, I'm going to attempt to give a very cursory explanation of who the Inhumans are and how the world would be a better place with the inclusion of an Inhumans film.
Thanks to the introduction of Ronan the Accuser in Guardians of the Galaxy, audiences are now aware of who the Kree are. The Kree are a hugely important alien species in the Marvel Universe, the most important thing to know about them being that they performed genetic experiments on homosapiens during mankind's evolutionary development and the Inhumans were the result. The experiment was abandoned and the Kree left behind a race of what were essentially lab rats spliced with the genetic coding of space gods. The resulting Inhumans developed completely separate from both humans and mutants here on Earth.
Again, this is very, very surface level and the driving reason the Inhumans would be beyond ideal for a film adaptation is that they're a race of genetic immigrants that have developed into an entire society structured the same way as feudal Europe. Political intrigue, high drama, and cosmic implications are all ready to go straight out of the box. Take Game of Thrones, grant House Stark with super powers, a hidden Moon kingdom to rule over, and you've got the elevator pitch for an Inhumans film.
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Marvel has shown that it's willing to take risks on little known characters in a much larger interconnected context with Guardians, it's not much more of a push to get one of the oldest and satisfyingly weird factions of the Marvel U on the big screen. The Inhumans are a creation of the legendary Jack Kirby and Stan Lee who first appeared in a 1965 issue of Fantastic Four and, as a result, the Inhumans are brimming with all of Kirby's high surrealist, space philosophy that would later be unchained in competitors DC Comic's New Gods
One of the central ingredients for Marvel's cinematic success is the existence of a shared universe. The Avengers, Iron-Man, Captain America, Thor, and now, Guardians of the Galaxy are all happening in the same place. This blended reality allows Captain America's shield to appear in Iron-Man and for The Collector to appear at the end of Thor: The Dark World. This functions as a cue to audiences that events from one film will cause ripples in the next. The interwoven Easter Eggs are littered throughout all of the Marvel films serves as a direct declarative that: we're all in this together.
The success of Guardians has also perfectly laid the framework for an inevitable Inhumans film by introducing the Kree, the Nova Corps, Thanos (more central a figure after his end credits cameo in The Avengers), and one more of the Infinity gems. Those gems have already made their presence known in several of the Marvel films in the form of the Tesseract and Loki's staff in The Avengers. Hell, the Infinity Gauntlet is even visible in the armory of Asgard in the first Thor movie. All of this means that Marvel's long play for the third phase of films will be one with cosmic implications. And if Marvel is going to go cosmic, the Inhumans have to be present.
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While the Inhumans may not share the high-profile visibility of Iron-Man or the instant recognition of Captain America, the characters that make up the first family of Atillan are second-to-none in terms of sheer power. Black Bolt, the mute king of the Inhumans, is cursed with a weaponized voice that can level planets with the merest whisper; his queen, Medusa, serves as the voice of her king and is gifted with a massive mane of sentient, indestructible red hair; Gorgon, Black Bolt's cousin and personal body guard, looks like a Satyr with a pair of hooves capable of causing seismic, localized earthquakes; Lockjaw is a giant alien bulldog with the power to teleport anyone across vast stretches of space and time. These are just a mere selection of a cast that could be used to round out an Inhumans movie that would perfectly integrate into the larger Marvel cinematic panorama.
Other than my very clear and obvious bias towards seeing the Inhumans get their due respect, a film adaptation would also solve the soon-to-be very obvious problem with the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver in The Avengers 2: Age of Ultron. Both Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch are mutants, the son and daughter of Magneto to be exact, and since Fox owns the film rights to the X-men and by extension the concept of mutants, they need an alternate back story. If they can't be super soldiers or mutants, why not re-brand the pair's existence and powers as Inhuman in nature. It would be a logical conclusion on the part of Marvel Studios to introduce a pair of Inhumans that wind up fighting alongside The Avengers as a means to further intertwine the Earth-based heroes with the larger cosmic set-pieces in play.
The Inhumans are some of the most established characters in the Marvel U with a history that predates some lesser characters who've have already been given execrable film treatments *cough* two Ghost Rider, two Punisher movies *cough* With the success of Guardians of the Galaxy still printing money for Marvel and the acceptance of a talking raccoon as a viable supporting cast member, an Inhumans film isn't that far of a leap to make for Marvel.
Hanuman Welch is an associate editor at Complex. He tweets here.
