What if...?

Those two words are perhaps the most fundamental prompt for any novelist or screenplay writer. Unfortunately, they’ve turned into an excuse for writers who lack either the discipline or interest to honor what others — or they themselves — have created.

To be fair, the comic book moguls at Marvel and DC aren’t the only ones to blame here. They’re just two of the worst offenders in a growing club that includes people like Alex Kurtzman and a whole contingent of science fiction writers who’ve used the stroke of a red pen to wipe out everything that’s come before.

I speak of the alternate universe, which started out as a fantastic “what if?” concept but has turned into a crutch for writers who don’t give a damn about anything in the past. They’re only looking to crank out a new story without doing the research needed for it to make sense.

Mirror, mirror

My first contact (pun intended) with an alternate universe came when I saw the “Mirror, Mirror” episode of the original Star Trek. It was an extremely creative idea: Imagine if an alternate universe existed in which the goodies were really the baddies; the peacekeepers were bloodthirsty sadists?

Star Trek has revisited that universe several times in subsequent series, but it’s remained a consistent concept that’s part of the original story.

That’s not my issue.

The problem occurs when different universes exist alongside, and entirely — or almost entirely —independent of one another. That’s what the (in)famous Star Trek reboot film series did. It threw out the entire canon of the first series and reintroduced the same characters, played by different actors, in a different but eerily similar universe.

The problem went far beyond the idea that Chris Pine is not William Shatner in any universe. In fact, most of the cast did the best they could to fill impossibly big shoes: Zachary Quinto was the best non-Nimoy Spock to date, Karl Urban did an impressive job as McCoy, and Simon Pegg brought a nice touch of humor to Scotty.

The true problem lay in the concept: Let’s throw out everything that happened over the previous several decades as though it’s entirely meaningless and start over. But we’ll throw a bone to longtime fans by giving Leonard Nimoy a cameo. Shatner was right on the money when he said, “Leonard Nimoy was in some of those films, but it was totally gratuitous. They just wanted to put Spock in there and I didn’t admire that.”

Lowest common denominator

It was all about changing the rules in the middle of the game to make more money. The last Star Trek TV series, Enterprise, wasn’t as popular as its predecessors, so the creative folks behind that were simply jettisoned, along with everything they’d built.

Here’s the thing about world-building: The longer you’re at it and the more you build, the more there is to remember. That means there’s an increasing chance you’ll slipping up by not remembering something and breaking the rules you’ve created — or someone else has created if you’re just stepping into the project.

But research? Who has time for that? It’s a whole lot easier to just throw everything out except the few things even casual fans love, and start over from there. Go for the lowest common denominator.

Who cares if Khan Noonien Singh was supposed to be a genetic superman from northern India? We’ll turn him into a thin white dude instead. And we’ll have Spock hook up with Uhura, no pon farr required. Talk about a multiverse of madness. But casual fans won’t notice or won’t care, and there’s money to be made!

Legolas didn’t appear in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, but he somehow found his way into the movies. Could it be because Orlando Bloom’s take on the Elf was so popular in the Lord of the Rings movies that they thought he might help boost the box office?

Comical

But none of this even begins to approach what happens in comics (er, graphic novels), in which different characters are entirely different in different so-called universes. How many Supermen are there? Screen Rant posed that question and answered with the phrase “almost countless.”

It was bad enough when big-screen Batman morphed from Michael Keaton into Val Kilmer into George Clooney into Christian Bale into Ben Affleck. Or when Marvel dumped Tobey Maguire as Spider-Man in favor of Andrew Garfield. (Now the character is played by Tom Holland, who’s a whole lot better than Garfield but not quite up to Maguire.)

Old soap operas, aka daytime dramas, swapped out actors like this wall the time. It was and is both jarring and annoying, but what’s happening now is so much worse.

Here’s how bad it’s gotten: Affleck, Keaton, and Robert Pattison are all set to play Batman at the same time. But Pattinson’s Batman isn’t the same as either of the others, both of whom will somehow appear in the same movie. And Joaquin Phoenix’s brilliant Joker isn’t the same as Heath Ledger’s or Jack Nicholson’s or Jared Leto’s, either.

Follow the money

What’s the point of all this silliness?

First and foremost, to make money. The more ways you can exploit a beloved character, the more green goes in your pocket. Second, pure laziness. Who has time to worry about canon when there’s cash to be grabbed?

Yes, I said the quiet part out loud: The whole multiverse concept is a scam dreamed up by lazy writers and corporate executives whose interests just happen to converge.

Sometimes, the writers aren’t lazy. But they have to make thing so convoluted while juggling multiple versions of the same character and story, while somehow keeping them separate, that it all become mind-numbing. Is Superman alive or dead.

Yes.

And who even cares anymore, because the entire thing is meaningless?

When a writer goes to the time and trouble of creating an intricate universe with its own distinct rules through the painstaking process of world-building, the results are breathtaking. This is part of what makes high fantasy and good science fiction so enjoyable. You get to escape into a fully formed different world, not a half-ass alternate universe.

But that’s what’s being offered us these days. It’s an affront to the creative genius of people like Tolkien and Gene Roddenberry, and an insult to readers and viewers. But it’s fun, it’s exciting, and, most importantly, it sells.

Going to extremes

In watching Loki, Marvel’s recently released streaming series, I had to wonder if they understood how absurd this has all become. In its “multiverse” concept, Loki variants don’t always look like Tom Hiddleston, the actor who’s always played him. In fact, most of the time, they don’t. They appear as a bald guy, a woman, a kid, a politician (who actually is Hiddleston), and even an alligator.

Of course, if Marvel was ever going to call out its own absurdity, it would be in a series about the god of chaos and mischief. They probably knew they were having a little fun at their own expense.

But to reference the title of a forthcoming Marvel movie, the multiverse is madness.

There’s only one way Marvel would have even the slightest chance of getting me to wink and nod at all this chicanery.

Maybe you can guess what it is.

Find a way to bring Robert Downey Jr. back as Ironman.

Stephen H. Provost has created his own universes. Check a couple of them out in Memortality and the Academy of the Lost Labyrinth.