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Vincent D'Onofrio's portrayal of Kingpin
is one of the most fearsome, bleak,
and hard-nosed renditions of a villain
to ever appear in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
He's cold, calculating, and unlike many villains
in the MCU, decidedly well-defined.
It's funny, isn't it?
How even the best men can be deceived by their true nature.
However, it's highly unlikely that D'Onofrio's Fisk
will be featured anytime soon on the silver screen.
And the reason why?
Well, it has next to nothing to do with him.
Like so many things in life, it's politics.
But before we get into that, let's back up.
[VIDEOTAPE REWINDING]
Most people think of Wilson Fisk, a.k.a.
the Kingpin, as being a Daredevil villain.
He's one of the quintessential rogues for battling
Jack Murdock's little boy.
His iconic bald head and stout stature, his ascot and patented
white jacket--
He's appeared in animation, comics, and trading cards.
He's the Joker to Daredevil's Batman.
However, he's really a Spider-Man villain.
This complex and brooding antagonist
first appeared in Amazing Spider-Man, issue 50,
from July of 1967.
Drawn by John Romita Sr. and written by Stan Lee,
this incarnation of the rotund overlord
portrayed him as more of a standard criminal mastermind.
Ostensibly, he was a villain of the week.
However, when a young artist named
Frank Miller took the character to the pages of Daredevil,
he breathed a new morally gray, emotional backstory into Fisk
and permanently cemented him into the reader's minds
as the quintessential rival of the blind lawyer
of Hell's Kitchen.
Vincent D'Onofrio's portrayal of Fisk isn't only pitch-perfect,
but it builds on what was established in the comics.
His hulking physique, his emotional center,
and the raw power are all on display thanks to D'Onofrio.
His Fisk also has a tender side, adapted from Miller
and Sienkiewicz's Love and War graphic novel.
He has a rage and an intensity that is portrayed perfectly.
During the 1990s, the comic book industry changed forever.
And by proxy, the film industry did as well.
Basically, two ideas collided to permanently alter
the face of the comic book industry forever--
number one, speculators, and number two, distribution.
A rash of underinformed, overzealous speculator buyers
flooded the market, buying up sometimes hundreds
of copies of newly published comics
in the hopes of storing them away for a few years
and then selling them for thousands of dollars.
Spurred on by an erroneous local news broadcast that
touted the high-price sales of books like Amazing Fantasy 15,
Action Comics 1, and Detective 27,
people genuinely thought that they
were going to get rich buying hundreds of copies
of Turok, Dinosaur Hunter and The Death of Superman.
These books had print runs of millions,
and everyone was saving them.
The reason older comics were worth
so much money is because there's a high demand and a low supply,
because in the 1950s, there were mass comic book burnings
and censorship boards discouraging people
from keeping their, at the time, highly disposable media.
During the '90s, everyone was keeping their precious copies
of Youngblood Strikefile.
This was only half the problem, though.
Marvel was making so much money in the first half of the decade
that they decided to buy a distribution company,
pull all their books from stores,
and start a chain of Marvel stores,
something akin to the Disney Store at your local mall.
Needless to say, both of these business practices
didn't end up well.
Marvel virtually capsized the entire industry overnight.
The speculators jumped ship, and the major companies
were struggling to keep afloat.
Marvel was forced to declare bankruptcy.
In a last-ditch effort to remain solvent,
they auctioned off the film rights to their characters.
Hulk ended up at Universal, X-Men and Fantastic Four
at Fox, Spider-Man at Sony, Namor and Daredevil
at Columbia, and Iron Man at Paramount.
So here's where we get into the weeds.
During this time, only the characters
that appeared within the respective universe
of the individual characters were
allowed to appear in projects-- i.e.,
the lawyers were able to convince everyone
that Wilson Fisk was legally a Daredevil character
and wrapped the character up for a solid decade and a half.
However, as the MCU started to achieve more popularity,
Marvel's non-MCU characters slowly
began returning to the fold.
Daredevil, Ghost Rider, and Blade's film rights
slowly reverted back to Marvel.
And the House of Ideas, run by Hollywood maestro Kevin Feige,
began putting into place plans to bring new projects
to the forefront starring these characters, only
with one minor twist.
They were going to be TV projects.
And here's where things get even more dicey.
At this time, Marvel was run by Ike Perlmutter, Revco drugstore
magnate, Coleco owner, and the former owner of Marvel
prior to the sale of Disney.
Let's put it this way.
Ike is a specific type of person.
He likes things done his way, and he likes
people who are loyal to him.
He's purportedly something of a handful behind the scenes,
but that's besides the point.
Some people are better at dealing with him than others.
Ike was excited about the potential for Marvel
to push into the TV space.
However, he didn't like how much control Kevin
Feige had managed to wrangle.
He wanted the TV and film universe to talk to each other.
But he wanted to exert more control
over just how that happened.
So what did he do?
He brought a famed comic book scribe,
the Commando and Teen Wolf screenwriter Jeph
Loeb to produce everything.
The plan was this--
They'd basically repeat the playbook.
They'd launch a series of live-action TV projects,
building an interconnected web of characters,
all street-level vigilantes, in order to distinguish themselves
from the theatrical wing of the company,
and then build up a team adventure
in the same way the film's lead up to the Avengers.
Wilson Fisk is used in the Daredevil show as the big bad.
He's arguably one of like two or three MCU villains that
have actually been done well.
Usually, the heroes are well-defined and charismatic
and have depth.
The villains?
Not so much.
The dark elf from Thor 2?
What even was that dude's name?
Justin Hammer?
Red Skull, one of the best Marvel Universe villains,
isn't really even in the films.
What a major misstep.
Regardless, the Drew Goddard Netflix Daredevil series
created one of the best MCU villains.
However, don't expect to see him showing up again anytime soon.
The Netflix shows, Daredevil, Punisher, Luke Cage,
and Jessica Jones all did fairly well,
but weren't the cultural touchstones that Marvel wanted.
Kevin Feige didn't like being pushed out and disagreed
with what Jeph Loeb was doing with the characters
and specifically, how he handled The Defenders, the grand finale
of the Netflix experiment.
In October of 2019, the ship righted itself just slightly.
Kevin Feige was granted control of the TV division of Marvel.
Disney+ was getting a big push, and the corporate powers that
be didn't want to take any chances.
They wanted Disney+ to be a success.
And with a contingent of Marvel shows
acting as their anchor for subscriber generation,
they needed them to be good.
However, this small screen era of the MCU
and the previous attempts like Peggy Carter, Agents
of S.H.I.E.L.D., and The Defenders
aren't on the same level.
Feige doesn't seem interested in litigating the past.
He wants to move on.
He doesn't seem interested in utilizing the greatest
villain of MCU history on the big screen, which is evidenced
even more so by Wilson Fisk's appearance in Into
the Spider-Verse.
Marvel has been very specific about attempting
to strong-arm their characters as being
the only version of the characters
the public is aware of, so much so that they forced
Fox to reshoot the entire back half of Dark Phoenix
because they didn't want the Skrulls in the film.
And then there's that whole Quicksilver thing.
You didn't see that coming.
Some fans remain convinced that Charlie Cox's Daredevil is
going to show up in Sony's Spider-Man--
No Way Home.
However, we'll see.
And while the film does exist in the MCU,
it's not a fully Marvel Studios film.
It's a co-produced project with Sony, so who knows?
Let's just leave it at this.
If you're a huge Kingpin fan, don't hold your breath
to see him going toe-to-toe with the Avengers anytime soon.
You'll be holding your breath for a while.
And that's it for today's episode.
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