Reimagining the Marvel Universe
Zoë Kravitz as Spiderwoman
AI makes it simple to recast your favorite MCU movie, or any movie or TV show, for that matter. Reimagining the characters, or putting them in different scenarios, is one of the more popular activities you’ll see on AI platforms.
And let’s face it, the MCU on its own, is already giving us different racial and gender takes on its superheroes. They’ve used the “multiverse” concept to bring different Spiderman characters to the screen, including, my favorite Miles Morales, the biracial teenage son of an African-American father and a Puerto Rican mother.
On the Disney+ streaming service, Marvel has brought us Ms. Marvel, which features a Muslim-American teenage superhero, and they’ve introduced Moon Knight, which not only has a Jewish-American mercenary of Latino heritage as the eponymous hero, but also introduces an Egyptian superhero sidekick played by Egyptian-Palestinian actress May El Calamawy.
Whether they’re doing it because it’s the right thing to do, or they know that it makes good business sense to attract diverse audiences with diverse characters (irregardless what right-wing commentators might argue), Marvel deserves kudos.
So, while diversity and gender equity are always top-of-mind issues for me, realizing that this has been done many times over, I tried to focus more on specific actors who might bring a new take to the characters.
I tried to imagine the kind of gravity that William H. Macy would bring to the Iron Man role or the quirky, odd mannerisms of Rami Malek as Dr. Strange.
It was also a chance to continue experimenting and learning how to use the Midjourney platform. For each of these images, I used a prompt image of the actor to help guide the AI. For those not familiar with the Midjourney process, I added a link to a photo of the actor to the descriptive text to help lead the AI in the direction I wanted to go.
Also for those who haven’t tried their hand at generative art or who are new to it, I want to stress that there is a misconception that you enter a string of text and the AI spits out a perfect image. That’s really far from the reality. It can take an hour or longer of tweaking the descriptions and asking the AI to “redo” an image before you get a result that you’re happy with.
All images were generated by Joe Newman using the Midjourney platform. You can also follow along on Instagram at @most_sublime_media. Get fresh content delivered to your inbox by subscribing to my Substack newsletter.
