Marvel is laying the groundwork for an Adam Warlock movie

Does anyone who still works at Marvel Studios have a personal passion for Adam Warlock, the great golden man played by Will Poulter in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3? There aren’t many signs of this being the case just yet – and it’s going to be an important question for the character’s future.

While Guardians 3 finally brings Adam Warlock – the Savior, the Avatar of Life, the head of the Universal Church of Truth – onto the screen after multiple plagues (in the First and second Guardians films), James Gunn is the only Marvel director to have shown any interest in the character to date. With Gunn moving on to helm DC’s superhero movie, leaving his Guardians series behind and wrapping up the story of the original team lineup, his entire roster of characters may now be up for grabs. That means someone else will have to decide who to highlight in a future Marvel Cinematic Universe story with the Guardians, and it might be up to them whether Adam Warlock makes it. That makes Full. 3‘s approach to the character seems like clever, carefully calculated play on Marvel’s part.

From comical to cosmic

The film introduces Adam Warlock as young and unhappy, mostly a comedic character. (Which doesn’t really make him stand out from the rest of the Guardians line-up.) He’s literally unfinished: We’re told that the movie’s villain, the High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji), kicked Adam out of his creation cocoon. ‘, making him malleable and a little childlike. Adam has almost Superman strength: he can fly, he doesn’t need any special equipment to comfortably survive in the vacuum of space, he’s incredibly strong and fast, and while he’s clearly not invulnerable, he apparently heals a lot. fast. But in this first appearance, he’s a bloated, naive, easily led dork.

The events of the film begin to steer Adam away from that direction, but with so many other better established, more central characters getting plotlines and payoffs for previous arcs, Full. 3 doesn’t have much time for him. He’s given the quick shorthand equivalent of a standard traumatic superhero origin story, and then he’s done. Which leaves him in a place where Marvel Studios could continue to develop him into the kind of leading hero he became in the comics – or we just might never see him again. Gunn and Marvel seem to be keeping those options wide open.

For fans of the golden cosmic wanderer, a Silver Age Marvel character created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in 1967, it was intriguing to see how the MCU has set up elements that could potentially lead to a story starring Adam Warlock. line, without actually committing to anything concrete. And that could be because there are a lot of complicated decisions involved in translating the character’s comic book adventures into a blockbuster movie, as Marvel Studios typically does with its long-running legacy characters.

Is Adam Warlock a villain?

Image: Jim Starlin, Ron Lim/Marvel Comics

Adam Warlock starts in the villain team in Guardians 3, but he has a long Marvel history as a hero. Sometimes he teams up with the Guardians of the Galaxy, sometimes with other characters. (He had a long arc with Hulk in the 1970s, when Hulk went to space.) More often, he works with his own team of traveling cosmic misfits. He has had many small adventures, such as fighting space pirates or the High Evolutionary’s genetically modified wolf creature Man-Beast. But many of his greatest arcs involved his nemesis Thanos, trying to keep the Infinity Stones away from him, or working with him to protect the Infinity Stones from other forces.

As the longtime frenemy and thematic opposite of Adam Warlock, Thanos was one of the villains who gave the hero the most purpose in the Marvel continuum. Comics legend Jim Starlin, who created Thanos, was also one of Adam Warlock’s biggest advocates and developers in his early years, along with Marvel writer and editor Roy Thomas. In their comics, Thanos was obsessed with (and romantically enmeshed with) death, while Adam Warlock represented life, and the two often clashed – except in stories where they had to team up to save the universe.

It’s hard to imagine the MCU bringing back Thanos or the Infinity Stones, even though in the franchise’s current time-hopping, multiverse-exploring environment, it would be easy enough to snatch another Thanos into the storyline, and the Infinity Stones are eternal by their nature. But both were such a central part of the MCU’s most beloved plot arc that returning to that source would risk undermining the MCU’s most famous and successful storyline – and look like Marvel was already out of ideas.

Adam Warlock’s other greatest adventures were dealing with the Universal Church of Truth, a galactic organization originally focused on worshiping its other defining arch-villain, the Magus – and wiping out planets that refused to follow suit. And tapping into those storylines would bring their own big problems with the story of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Should Marvel get religion?

Image: Gerry Conway, Herb Trimpe/Marvel Comics

With the MCU heading in a bigger, sloppier, more cosmic direction with Phases Five and Six, it’s an open question whether Marvel Studios wants to deviate from the kind of at least somewhat socially relevant storylines that emerged in the Captain America movies. . , around current political debates about drone warfare, government surveillance of civilians and overseas adventure. Given America’s current political divisions over faith-based politics, there’s certainly a lot of potential for relevance in Adam Warlock’s storylines, which often revolved around faith and religion, both overtly and metaphorically. (In one of its first major arcs, the High Evolutionary sent Adam to Counter-Earth to try to return the populace to a moral and ethical life – and he was crucified and then resurrected.) But Marvel also has every reason to be religious as much as possible commentary or themes, and to distract Adam Warlock from battling oppressive churches and fanatical believers.

That is not necessarily a problem. Like any MCU version of a Marvel character, Adam Warlock has already been significantly updated and changed for the screen-in Guardians 3his parentage and creator changed as much as his personality.

Also, that stone on his forehead appears to be purely decorative in the MCU. In the comics, it is one of the Infinity Stones – the Soul Gem, which gives him the power to suck the souls out of opponents, making them a permanent part of him. It’s possible the whole idea was scrapped in a post-Infinity Saga MCU – if nothing else, he might feel too much like the Vision, who also had an Infinity Stone stuck in his forehead.

And while a future for Adam Warlock in the MCU seems unlikely, the way Marvel has freed up or introduced some of his old teammates suggests that someone at the company would want him to have a future in the MCU. The end of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 notably frees some of the character’s traditional partners, as he gets his first connections with them – but again, without the usual Marvel tease that anything is actually planned or planned.

[Ed. note: Some very broad end spoilers for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 ahead.]

How the MCU is setting up an Adam Warlock movie

Image: Jim Starlin, Joe Rubinstein/Marvel Comics

Like many long-running Marvel heroes, the comic book version of Adam Warlock has had several teammates over the years, but his core circle includes a pair of MCU Original flavor Guardians: Drax the Destroyer and Gamora. Both end up with loose ends in the final of Full. 3, with Drax looking like he needs some direction and a new set of buttons, and Gamora at peace with her Ravager friends, but clearly free to roam the galaxy and pull whatever nonsense she wants. Another old Adam Warlock companion, Pip the Troll, was recently introduced to the MCU in an Eternals post-credits scene. Even ending Gamora’s relationship with Peter Quill could be part of that setup, as she ended up becoming Adam Warlock’s love interest.

Another of the character’s old ally, Moondragon, has never appeared in the MCU – but canonically, she has romantic ties to Mantis, who ends up Guards Vol. 3 by going into space to find herself and decide what she wants as a person. (Which would sound like an open invitation to a romantic arc if Disney weren’t so sick of queer relationships of any kind.) Moondragon is also Drax’s daughter in comics chronology, though that’s because of a lot of plot twists that “It isn’t part of the MCU – at least not yet.

We can assume that any return to the screen for Adam Warlock would change him quite radically from the Christ figure who died repeatedly to save entire planets in Marvel Comics continuity, then resurrected repeatedly. Whatever his MCU future, he needs a creator like Gunn, someone willing to advocate for more Adam Warlock out of an interest in the character’s Marvel history, and who has a meaningful vision for his place in the MCU. Or it requires a remarkable sense of fan enthusiasm for Adam, which seems unlikely given how minimalistic his character and subplot are in this first outing. In a series as colorful and complicated as the Guardians films, one more terrifying super dude trying to figure out who he wants to be and who he wants to be with isn’t exactly a big deal.

At this point, it seems Marvel is being cautious about Adam Warlock – smart not to invest significant resources in a character tied to the kind of outer space adventures that was usually a sidebar in the MCU’s Earth-focused adventures, but him didn’t write off at all. Are Full. 3 arc, going from a childish, easily guided, approval-seeking servant of the High Evolutionary to a Guardian of the Galaxy, echoes the story of Rocket Raccoon, without the same level of detail or emotional commitment. But it’s a full arc that leaves him with a completed story – or sets him up to take center stage in a future Marvel phase. Almost all the pieces for an Adam Warlock story are on the board. It remains to be seen if anyone has invested enough to pick them up.