Welcome to our new (possibly short lived) series of proposals regarding how to move some of Marvel Comic’s less known properties to the MCU. Since Marvel/Disney doesn’t call me anymore, obviously the only way I can help them make this work is by sharing it here.
Since I support the WGA, let me start out by stressing this is not meant to be anything more than a silly thing for me to write about on my long dormant website. Once the WGA strike is settled (in the writer’s favor), I’ll unblock Kevin Fiege (who no doubt has me on speed dial by now) and we can discuss how to make millions of dollars together. My only term is that in every movie based on one of my ideas, there needs to be somebody who looks like Ron DeSantis throwing a big handful of manure that immediately gets blown back in his face. It’s a metaphor.
OK, for those of you not familiar with Alpha Flight, here’s what you need to know. They are a Canadian team of Superheroes who were created as part of Wolverine’s origin story in the comics. That’s the whole reason they exist. They’re kind of a bunch of Canadian archetypes/stereotypes with superpowers.
No, I’m serious. They have a first nation’s magic user named Shaman. They have a sasquatch named Sasquatch. And they have a short dude who dresses in black named Puck. Not as in Shakespeare, as in hockey. I’m sorry to report that there are not Alpha Flight members who were created to represent poutine or politeness.
Despite the fact that all of this is hilariously on-the-nose, the team is mopey AF. The original run was like a Canadian Telenovela. Sudden deaths and shocking returns, affairs, angst and the revelation that Puck is not actually a short guy, but a tall guy who was shrunk down when he offered up his body as a prison for a demon. I mean, brother Puck is always moping that nobody could ever love him because he’s short now and almost never moping about the fact that he’s basically a catch and release trap for a demon.
Basically, if Alpha Flight were a rock band, they’d be Fleetwood Mac. Don’t tell me John McVie doesn’t host a demon in his body.
Perhaps because they were so absurd, the writers didn’t seem to have any huge desire to keep the cast consistent. Old members were constantly dying or getting trapped in other dimensions. New members were constantly joining, either from their farm teams Beta Flight and Gamma Flight (not kidding) or from where the fuck ever. Then old members would come back to life or escape the other dimensions and join the team again. Then Alpha Flight would be cancelled and rebooted four years later with all new, all different versions of the same characters.
Here is probably a good time to mention that they had a character named Northstar who was the first openly gay superhero. They started a story in the late 80’s or early 90’s where he was starting to waste away from a serious disease. It looked like they were about to do something either really bold or really, really offensive and do a story arc where it was revealed he was dealing with AIDS. Instead, they chickened out and made it so he was actually an Asgardian elf who was wasting away because he’d been on Earth too long. He went to the Asgardian dimension for a few years, then came back, and may have died and come back once or twice in that time.
OK, so now you’re wondering how this team would fit into the MCU. You might also be wondering why anyone would want to add this team to the MCU. I can’t help with the why, but I know exactly how.
Backstory, back when Iron Man first came on the scene, other countries said “say, we should have some armored warriors too.” Multi-national (but Edmonton headquartered) company Jaxon Industries hires a big brained but arrogant scientist named James Hudson to build it. He does (though we’re not clear as to how he does at this stage) alongside his more-than-equally-brilliant-but-less-arrogant wife Heather Hudson.
James and Heather build a seriously powerful armored suit decorated by the Canadian flag. They’re going to use it to look for oil deposits or something. James learns that his boss is planning on selling the suit to the military. So, he steals the suit and, for a time, becomes known in Canada as the national superhero, Guardian.
Jaxon industries has proprietary rights to the suit and want it back, but they really don’t need the PR nightmare of suing a national hero. So while they support him publicly, behind the scenes they plan to get the suit back. They do this by staging an emergency of some sort. James/Guardian comes to deal with it and encounters a man in big clunky armor. They fight and, while Guardian wins, his suit sustains damage and, on live TV, he is apparently incinerated.
So maybe that last bit is the teaser scene to the movie. It starts with Heather, on the phone with somebody, half-watching the battle between Guardian and unnamed robot armor guy on TV. He wins and Heather glances at the TV just in time to see her husband incinerate. News report gives a little bit of an obit, mentioning the Iron Man connection and that the dude in the armor was somebody named Roger Bochs, who used to work with James. Bochs is now in custody.
Marvel credits roll and we drop forward to whatever time period we’re in in the MCU currently in. So the basic arc of the movie is Heather Hudson moving from the depression stage of grief to the acceptance stage. We establish that she made a half hearted effort at following in James’ footsteps as Guardian in a slightly updated version of his suit, but she gave that up years ago because it reminded her too much of James’ death. She barely even notices the news report that Roger Bochs has escaped from prison.
And basically, at this point, we meet Alpha Flight, who were established by the Canadian Government to be Canada’s Avengers (and a sort of marketing project for Canada). They are a group of superhumans who were asked to adopt Canadian themed identities to be part of the team. They include:
- Elizabeth Twoyoungman – a woman from Calgary of First Nations descent who goes by the name “Talisman.” We’d want to involve a consultant or writer of First Nations descent to develop her. She was kind of walking away from her heritage when her powers kicked in and said “no, you’re coming back.” We’re choosing her rather than her father, Michael Twoyoungman aka Shaman, because her power set is slightly less racist and less Felix the Cat (“Here’s Shaman with his magical medicine bag.”). Basically, she uses magic.
- Eugene Judd – He looks about 30 but he’s a 100+ year old short dude from Saskatachwan. He hates the nickname “Puck,” but we use it for good comic effect because it sounds like fuck ha ha ha. He’s the team leader because he has been working as a government spy for years. He’s a poly-math with some pretty amazing acrobatic powers. We don’t learn his origin or age in this movie, but we do see a picture of him hanging out with Tony Stark’s dad back in the day. He and Heather know each other, but its tense.
- Jean-Paul Beaubier – a dazzling handsome, sculpted and belligerent openly gay young man from Quebec but of Asgardian descent (and he knows this). His code name is Northstar, but he resents it (thinks it should be something in French) because his powers are light based (both speed and blinding blasts or something). He’s joined the team primarily to keep an eye on…
- Jeanne-Marie Beaubier – Jean-Paul’s twin, with the exact same power set. She barely speaks any English and comes across as a totally confident free spirit think Leeloo from The Fifth Element. She acts on impulse and that can get her (and the group) in a lot of trouble. She is called Aurora, but doesn’t seem to know that. When she does speak in English, she speaks perfect English and is a TOTAL entitled and demanding person and treats everyone (especially Jean-Paul) appallingly. Heather is told she has dissociative identity disorder.
- Sasquatch – he is a Sasquatch. He’s generally a big and friendly animal (like Koko the Gorilla) and treats the rest of the team – especially Puck and Northstar – like they’re his caretakers. He’s a formidable Hulk-like fighter when worked up. We learn his secret later in the film – that he’s actually a man named Walter Langowski who only turns human again when he completely wears himself out. He hates that he’s trapped in his Sasquatch form.
Anyhow, Puck and Talisman are assigned to investigate the disappearance of Bochs and come to Heather because they think she may be in danger. Over the rest of the movie, she’s slowly drawn in to tracking down Bochs and working with the team in her occasionally malfunctioning Guardian suit. It turns out the Bochs can create and destroy machines just from touching them.
Furthermore, it turns out that he wasn’t the one responsible for the attack on James Hudson – that was Jerry Jaxon. Jaxon industries collapsed once the super suit proved to be deadly. Jaxon broke Bochs out of jail to force him to build new robots and stuff for him.
The climactic battle is between Alpha Flight, including Heather, vs Jaxon’s unnamed team of mercenaries (Wildchild, Diamond Lil, Flashback, and a robot named Delphine Courtney – basically Omega Flight, but let’s not use that name). At the end, the villains are defeated (only robot Delphine is destroyed, by Bochs), Heather keeps Jaxon from frying in his own malfunctioning robot suit. Sasquatch is left in his human form, but in a coma.
As the film ends, Heather is in a new green and white suit calling herself Vindicator and has joined the team, as as Roger Bochs and his transformer style robot.
Mid-credit scene introduces Bochs’ brother, who can do what Bochs does, but to human flesh. David Cronenberg’s Alpha Flight 2 is on its way.
Post credits scene features Mantis of the Guardians on her journey of self discovery. She finds a weird alien pod. Opening it and wiping away some slime, she sees the face of James Hudson in his Guardian costume.