Stephen King Should Stick To Writing And Leave Marvel Alone

On Monday, Stephen King rightly called out fans online for taking joy in the financial failure of the first chapter of Kevin Costner’s passion project Horizon. He also took the opportunity to take a swipe at Marvel.

Now, I support the first part. Horizon doesn’t look like something I’m going to rush to the theater to see, but there’s no reason for me to feel good about it doing poorly. I won’t be at the party, but I still hope it goes well.

But then he had to throw in that, “Why in God’s name would anyone luxuriate in the failure of a film that isn’t a sequel or part of the, God save us, “Marvel universe?””

Of course, let’s be honest.

Wouldn’t be the first time you wrote too much, huh, Steve?

Now for the moment let’s set aside the question of whether or not Marvel’s many vocal celebrity critics have valid issues with the film studio and its creations. For now, let’s talk about how today–July 2024–for someone like Stephen King to imply that Marvel is the big bad monster that’s crowding everyone else out of the film industry, that’s making it impossible for other movies to get their fair shot, is akin to going back in time to, say, 1995, and complaining about the kids and their “crazy disco music.”

It’s like accusing Blockbuster Video of causing the Covid-19 pandemic.

It’s like blaming dinosaurs for Abe Lincoln’s assassination.

Dear Stephen “Most Of My Novels Can Eat Phone Books” King, we are over halfway through 2024, and not a single Marvel Studios film has released yet. Not one.

Deadpool & Wolverine hits theaters at the end of the month, and then that’s it. No Marvel Studios films for the rest of the year.

Is one movie just too much Marvel? I mean, I’m sorry, Steverino, but us Marvel nerds have had a rough few years–I think one promising movie isn’t too much to ask.

At least you’re not a hypocrite though, Steve. At least, for example, it isn’t like you’ve got your own personal MCU that different studios have been building for years. It isn’t like there’s enough Stephen King media on the way to make people wonder just how much King media the market will bear.

Right, Steve?

Well, actually, Stephen “Yes My Next Protagonist Is A Writer From Maine Why Do You Ask” King, the Salem’s Lot remake is scheduled to stream on Max by the end of 2024.

The Life of Chuck–based on your novella from 2020’s If It Bleeds–is scheduled to premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September.

Production on The Long Walk is scheduled to start this month, The Institute was just picked up as a series by MGM+, and Longlegs director Osgood Perkins is helming The Monkey based on your short story.

Is it okay to have some Marvel in the middle of all that, Steve? I mean, that’s five projects–two releasing this year–that I found just browsing entertainment news from the past few months. I’m sure there are more in development I’ve forgotten.

There are more movies based on your work releasing this year than there are Marvel movies releasing this year.

Can you just let the rest of us nerds have our fun, Steve?

I have a theory I call the Sally Jesse Raphael Marvel Theory.

Sally Jesse Raphael was a daytime talk show host around the same time people like Phil Donahue and Oprah Winfrey were doing the same thing.

I was home sick from school one day and I watched this episode of Sally Jesse Raphael that was about men who liked larger women.

The men on stage were being screamed at by some of the women in the audience, and there was one in particular who was shrieking at the men through sobs. All these women who were upset? They weren’t larger women.

At first, I didn’t get it. What do they care who these guys like?

But even at a young age, it occurred to me what was going on. These women had been told their whole lives that if they didn’t do everything they could to get thin and stay thin, no man would want them.

Simply by virtue of existing, the men on stage who preferred heavier women took a fundamental part of the audience’s world view and ground it into dust. The audience, in turn, had an extreme reaction.

What does this have to do with celebrities hating on Marvel?

It may be tough to remember that there was a time before 2008 when it would be career suicide to say, “So yeah there’s going to be a god of thunder, a dude in a robotic suit, a green monster, an assassin, a World War II super soldier, and an archer fighting giant space whales in Manhattan but don’t worry!!!! It will only cost $225 million.”

Stephen King, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Jodie Foster, and all of the other celebrity creatives who throw shade at Marvel every chance they get would never have gone anywhere near a Marvel superhero movie or TV show.

They weren’t cool. In the high school of Hollywood, even to sci-fi directors, superhero projects were the nerds who got shoved in the lockers and given wedgies.

It’s still like that even to people who make superhero movies. Under Zack Snyder’s slow-motion-overdosed care, every director coming out with a DC movie would say… what?

They would say their movie wasn’t really a comic book/superhero movie.

Snyder said it. Andrew Muschietti said. Todd Phillips said it.

Hell, judging by his interviews, Todd Phillips is terrified of anyone every learning that he ever read a comic book. Every time Todd Phillips makes a new Joker movie at least 300,000 comic books erase themselves from his memory. By the time Joker 5 comes along, he’ll just go back in time and stop DC Comics from ever existing.

In other words, if it isn’t clear yet, in my Sally Jesse Raphael Marvel Theory, the larger women are Marvel, and the upset women in the audience are the Stephen Kings and the Martin Scorseses of the world.

Marvel wasn’t supposed to work. It wasn’t supposed to be a success. No one was supposed to like it, but they do.

Lets us love our Marvel nerd stuff. Stop crying. Sally’s getting tired of holding the mic, and we stopped listening a while ago.