I have the perfect solution. They should've just gotten Matt Smith; he doesn't have eyebrows anyway (and he's got experience playing time travellers)!
He’s more Doom than Kang lol
Still haven't seen Wakanda Forever, doubt I'll go see this either. The MCU has become something that I just watch if I have nothing better to do, even though only a couple years ago I'd be at IMAX for midnight screenings.
Wtf man, aren't you excited for the D-List Avengers vs the Saturday Morning Cartoon Villain?! And then the sequel where geriatrics and middle aged wrecks come back to face off against the same guy with a power up?!
I don't understand why they're doing this. 3 Phases, devoted to this one guy. Even disregarding how miscast the role is. Even ignoring how ridiculous it is to cast a single person to play literally every different variant. How the Hell did they decide to give a one-note card carrying villain this much attention? I like Kang in the comics, I've made that known. He's an enjoyable fine fellow with a nice gimmick that allows him to come back and pester the Avengers. But he's a moronic and swallow character. He's a thrill-seeking fine fellow. That's it. That's his story. There's nothing more to say. He's got no grand plan or desire. He's not a human supremacist fighting against aliens. He's not avenging something. He's not fighting for an ideal. He's just an fine fellow thinking he's fighting for glory. That's good enough for a bookend in a single Phase against the Avengers, but as some multiversal threat that borders on godhood? Please. The guy's too dumb to create his own time machine. He's restrained by tech. He has never reached the levels of cosmic forces where magic becomes meaningless. He's a top tier Avengers threat, but he's never been in the league of Eternity, the Living Tribunal and so on.
He was a regular joe living in techno-utopia who got bored, randomly discovered he was related to both Reed and Doom, then was the first person ever to think to search Doom's castle for a time machine, and upon getting that time machine he proceeded to travel across the timestream and conquer stuff. He's a simple and enjoyable villain, but he's swallow. He's a single Phase endboss at best. He's one-note. He's a cliche. We admire real life conquerors because they're restrained by physical limitations making their exploits notable. Kang is a guy with all the hacks bullying cavemen. You mean to tell me he lived in techno-utopia and there weren't any super-men to test himself against? He's off-panel taken out alien empires that are thousands of years more advanced than the ones that can casually obliterate "current" Earth, but Captain America and Thor are his biggest challenge? Am I supposed to believe a random schmuck decided to become a conqueror and he just became one? Not just on Earth, but across time and space? Screw it, I guess he played sandbox for a while, raised XP, became the embodiment of git gud, then used future tech to make himself smarter and whatever else. That is all weightless. Like a guy using passwords and acing a stage. There's no gravity to it. Remember, he still needed the time machine built ~2K years ago to literally be what he is. Doom's time travel in the comics is special because due to his use of magic he's the only one who can rework this one particular timestream without creating branches. Kang can't even create his own means of time travel, let alone pull off such a feat.
I could go on, but you get the gist. Kang is cool, in theory and sporadically on panel, but he's swallow. He's a guy operating on the logic of all hacks activated, he's got no grand plan, he's got a design which makes no sense and a name that's never been explained. Kang? What is "Kang"? For me they could've made it so Khan got mistranslated throughout the centuries and he took on the title. Maybe you could rework the Egypt and such takes into Asian empires and eras if you wanted to make him work a bit better. Cast an Asian actor too and make it work around a specific look. But a green tunic with purple thigh boots, a blue mask and a name that makes no sense, all atop a smug fine fellow who exists to be a smug fine fellow, most certainly do not make a multiversal threat.
He's literally discount Doom. Doom created his time machine and he uses it sporadically to go bang Morgan Le Fay. Kang stole that and made it his whole identity. He's a cheater with no beliefs. He's entertaining, but he's not that interesting. But here we are and they're giving literally everything that is Doom's to him. How the Hell do you do Secret Wars without Reed and Doom? What is the point of this guy we'll see in 50 different roles get another power up? The whole thing is like a fighting game's plot. Doom wanting to become God makes sense because it's rooted in his supernatural side. Kang's a literal thief stuck in the sci-fi orbit. But they're going ahead, stripping Doom of everything just to prop up this second stringer.
I seriously cannot understand what they're doing. MCU timetravel is already the worst kind as it has introduced no stakes, due to the branching timelines. Kang should've been appearing in multiple movies throughout Phase 4 under multiple aliases, and then been the villain of the bookend Avengers 5 film, The Kang Dynasty. That was all that was needed. They should've made Phase 4 larger or made 4 & 5 smaller, but there was never any need to involve Kang in anything else. He's a gloryhound with stolen tech who wants to fight ancient heroes. That's not some Phases long journey, that could've been done in a single movie. But no, let's waste the next 4 or so years shoving this guy down our throats.
The question then becomes what happens next? What is the point of the MCU after you've wasted the Beyonder and the Incursions just to give Kang another variant? Who the Hell will care about Magneto's rants, Apocalypse wanting to take over the world in the name of Ugly John and Three-Anus-Amy? What is the point of Doom and the FF? Oh no, Annihilus will unleash the Annihilation Wave and destroy the entire univ- Wait, we already saved the entire multiverse, who gives a crap? Doom will stand around like a schmuck picking fights with Reed. Wow, I've not seen that 4 times before already!
Now, the only way I can see this working is like this: Remove Kang entirely after TKD. That's his ultimate gamble and he fails. Problem is, he's caused a multiversal collapse and the universes are all colliding together. Cue Battleworld. The Beyonder is just the Beyonder and he's the one who keeps Battleworld stable. Have him played by someone with genuine presence and history. You can't have God be a Z-Lister. You need someone like Hopkins or Bale. A star and a thespian both. Anyway, the characters from each universe make a run for it, yadda, yadda, yadda, they team up, they reach the Beyonder and convince him to put reality back together again. Everything's fine and dandy. Then it's revealed the Beyonder was just one of many of THE Godlike race, and the whole debacle was a minor inconvenience in a single multiverse resting on one plane of existence. The problem is, there's a decay and all of reality is crumbling, returning to the void.
That's your hook for the next stage. It's not just universes colliding, but reality itself is crumbling and even THE God Race can't figure it out. Flesh out the Phoenix, tackle things such as the Life Force and White Phoenix Of The Crown. Do Annihilus and the Negative Zone as a place outside the Multiverse. Use the FF and the Strange movies to properly introduce the Abstracts. And set up Doom as the guy who's going to kill everything and restart it with himself as God. He doesn't want to conquer worlds, or universes, he wants to be the literal God. Rabum-Alal being hyped in the shadows is needed. Doom's not a creature of science only, he's a myth of his own making, and so he needs his own religion. They could even merge it with the Universal Church of Truth. There's ways to go around the nonsense they're doing with Clown Kang, but they need to stick the landing with Secret Wars and not go with what's rumoured.
This is the only way it could work. It's still kinda similar to what they're doing now, but there's nowhere higher to go. The MCU is already on a downwards slope. D-List actors playing Z-List characters without a plan or an engaging villain can't be sustainable for much longer. If they do multiversal collapse now, they need even bigger stakes for later if they want people to stick around. If they reboot, then that's the end, period.
