The Marvel Cinematic Universe is still the biggest singular entity in entertainment. Though it has suffered a slight decline over the past couple of years, the franchise carries on with several massive projects. The top is a precarious position, and it offers a ton of room to criticize. One of the most common complaints Marvel receives is its inability to introduce a variety of tones and genres. Especially in the post-Endgame era, things feel too monotonous. Agatha All Along could be the first MCU project to make horror stick.
Superhero movies are often at their best when they’re also steeped in another genre. Look at the first stable of Marvel movies that came before The Avengers. There’s a modern action movie, a World War II period piece, and a sci-fi fantasy epic in the first batch. New entries often feel harder to pin down as team-up vehicles blur the lines between each series. Remaining grounded, careful, and specific in tone and inspiration will only help flesh out future superhero movies.
Agatha All Along will be a horror comedy
|
Creator |
Jac Schaeffer |
|---|---|
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Stars |
Kathryn Hahn, Joe Locke, Sasheer Zamata, Aubrey Plaza |
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Number of Episodes |
9 |
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Release Date |
September 18th, 2024 |
The first full trailer for Agatha All Along dropped on July 8th, and it dramatically changed the conversation around the show. Up until then, most fans seemed disinterested in the concept. While the ad certainly didn’t win every dissenting voice over to the show’s side, it seemed to do a lot to make it seem worthwhile. Over three years have passed since WandaVision introduced Agatha to the world, and people have not kept the stunningly popular song alive during the downtime. The long wait and the consistently shifting titles implied some level of distrust in the material or creative clashes in production. No such rumors were ever substantiated, however. Agatha All Along looks a bit different from the average Marvel project, possibly opening up new avenues for the franchise as it continues to struggle with its potential overgrowth.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe has struggled with horror
The MCU plays primarily with action and comedy. It samples various subgenres within those overarching tonal palettes, but broad action-comedies are the usual default state for the franchise. Most Marvel films, and most films in general, have a romantic element, but it’s hard to call any of them romance films. Drama has the same position. Marvel does action-comedy in every imaginable setting. Horror can be a supplemental element, like romance, but it’s also one of the few consistently popular genres in modern cinema. It should come as no surprise that Marvel has tried out horror in a few projects. None of them have been overwhelmingly successful. The problem is multifaceted, and the audience is partially to blame.
The only horror-adjacent movie in the MCU is Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Sam Raimi, the perfect filmmaker to blend horror with superheroes, delivered some of the finest material the MCU has ever seen. It’s everything Marvel fans say they always want. It’s a bold, director-driven vision that uses the obscure elements of the comics to craft something beautiful. Unfortunately, anything slightly outside the usual visual storytelling can be a bit too much for some fans. Critics gave the film some pushback for its overloaded connections to previous works, but hardcore devotees were more inclined to complain about every distinctive camera move or campy visual effect. The few other existing Marvel horror projects can’t claim the same level of praise with faint damnation.
Werewolf by Night was a fun novelty in the vein of classic Universal monster movies, but its position in the franchise kept it from amounting to much. It’s a 52-minute special that can’t afford to develop any of its characters or plot elements. As a result, it’s just a light, breezy celebration of set design and practical effects. While it would be nice to have more stuff like Werewolf by Night, it’s hardly a proof of concept. Helstrom, on the other hand, is a grim example of disproving a concept. It turns out that Marvel can’t do Supernatural, especially if it’s doing so almost two decades late without any of the parts people like about Supernatural. Marvel has one excellent horror-adjacent project, one decent novelty, and one awful disaster. None of these projects feel perfectly at home in the franchise. Maybe the right solution was Agatha All Along.
Agatha could bring more horror to the MCU
If pressed to define the apparent inspiration for Agatha All Along, most seem to land somewhere between American Horror Story and Charmed. Witch-focused material like Hocus Pocus seems to be a perfect comparison point. People forget what family-friendly horror used to be like. Hocus Pocus is a comedy in which a child dies in the first five minutes and the villains suffer two brutal executions. Compare that to last year’s massive Disney flop, Haunted Mansion. Agatha All Along feels like it captures what worked about the classic kids’ horror films. It’s the exact kind of horror that could best fit the MCU franchise.
When Agatha Harkness debuted in WandaVision, a lot of people accurately compared her to a classic Disney villain. The surprise reveal, the campy violence, and the catchy song make her a perfect fit for the classic Disney model. Agatha All Along doesn’t have to disprove that; it just has to shift the target a bit. Maybe Agatha isn’t Cruella de Vil. Maybe she’s a bit closer to the Sanderson Sisters. That tone might be just what the MCU needs.
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