The Marvel Cinematic Universe is going through what you might call a rebuilding decade. With a few exceptions, a bloody trail of disappointments has followed Avengers Endgame, boldly reminding fans, time and time again, that they’re running out of characters to care about. As Marvel Studios continues to lean harder and harder on fresh talent to pick up the slack left over when audiences failed to catch Nick-Fury-solo-adventure fever during Secret Invasion’s run, it’s becoming clear that they’ll need weaponizably watchable new blood if they want to get back to draining the public of their popcorn money.
And that’s where Zac Efron and Jeremy Allen White come in. The duo is currently tearing it up critically with their respective performances in The Iron Claw, and their fan bases come baked in thanks to White’s The Bear and Efron’s decades of bangsy adorability. Here’s a quick look at some of the ways that their on-screen chemistry could be mobilized for the benefit of the MCU.
Zac Efron as Cyclops and Jeremy Allen White as Wolverine
As we’ve already pointed out once before, Zac Efron has the almost supernaturally sculpted jaw necessary to succeed in the role of Scott “Cyclops” Summers. As everyone else has pointed out, The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White has the perpetual look of a man whose veins are about to burst out of his temples in a fit of sandwich-driven fury, making him a natural fit for the role of “X-Man with the most knives in his hands.”
With the two actors already having done all the hard work, all that Disney would have to do is glue mutton chops to one of them and a Geordi La Forge cosplay kit to the other and watch the money print itself. Bonus points if their The Iron Claw co-star Lily James gets to play Jean Grey.
Jeremy Allen White as Ben Grimm and Zac Efron as Johnny Storm
The Thing and the Human Torch have always butted heads in the comics. They’re like oil and water, or more accurately, like orange masonry and flaming skin — two widely-recognized unmixable elements.
If you’re as old as the cold mountain’s whispers like I am, you’ll already know that the smart money was on Efron taking over the role of Johnny Storm years ago. Paired with White doing either a day and a half of mocap work or six months on set in a four-inch-thick Michael Chiklis-style polyurethane body sock, and you’ve got all the high-tension brotherly rivalry you could ask for from a guy who’s on fire and a guy who’s a rock.
Jeremy Allen White as Ghost Rider and Zac Efron as Mephisto
It’s a rivalry that would be a little less hands-on than the one Efron and White brought to the screen in The Iron Claw, but it’s one for the books: Mephisto and Ghost Rider. White brings the tortured, greasy pain of Johnny Blaze to a new generation of viewers. Efron plays the too-handsome, grinning, upsettingly compelling manifestation of evil. It’s a stretch — currently, the scuttlebutt is that Sacha Baron Cohen is teed up to play Mephisto in Iron Heart, and fans seem set on Keanu Reeves as the MCU’s Ghost Rider — but if all of that falls apart, or Cohen turns out to just be playing another iteration of Ralph Bohner, this would be a heck of a backup plan.
Either/or as Professor Xavier and Magneto
This is about so much more than the fact that Efron and White have the acting chops to pull off maybe the most iconic rivalry in the history of Marvel Comics.
It’s not simply a matter of bringing the gravitas, pathos, and arguably romantic tragedy of two old friends locked in an ideological stalemate, decade after decade, to the big screen for a new generation. What’s really, truly important about this fan casting is that it would give viewers the chance to see one of two award-winning actors with their hair shaved off, allowing us the opportunity to judge for ourselves whether or not said actor has a weird head shape. Some things are more important than 60 years of storytelling. Finding out that the star of High School Musical has the same profile as Sloth from The Goonies when you shear him is one of them.
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