Marvel Studios risks making a big mistake with the MCU's version of Ms. Marvel - and a rare misstep. When Kamala Khan made her comic book debut in 2013, nobody really knew what to expect. Precious few new characters firmly establish themselves in popular culture, and so when writer G. Willow Wilson launched the first Ms. Marvel series in February 2014, she had a three-issue exit strategy for if pre-orders were low. Instead, the Muslim-American superhero became a cultural phenomenon, and now she's set to make her MCU debut, played by Iman Vellani.
Over the last few months, there have been consistent reports Marvel has reworked Ms. Marvel's traditional powerset - shapeshifting, size manipulation, and stretching - with strange energy constructs. The change is dramatic, and - although fans speculate it's to differentiate Kamala from Mr. Fantastic of the Fantastic Four, who they view as having a similar powerset - in reality, it's probably because Ms. Marvel's powers can appear problematic in live-action, looking like body horror. The latest images show Kamala demonstrating a shimmering purple energy effect around her, an "embiggened" version of her hand that appears to be some sort of force-field construct. As her co-creator, G. Willow Wilson observed, "She’s got very comic booky powers. God bless them trying to bring that to live-action, I don’t know how that’s going to work out, in a way that doesn’t look really creepy.”
The redesign is, however, a big mistake. It assumes that a superhero's powers can be switched without radically affecting their identity. But, while Ms. Marvel's powers may not lend themselves naturally to a cinematic experience, they were deliberately chosen. Khan is best viewed as an "Everyman Hero", and Ms. Marvel's powers are an extension of that. Another of Khan's co-creators, Sana Amanat, explored this in an interview with Nylon in which she specifically explained why Ms. Marvel's powers shouldn't look "pretty" or "sparkly."
"Her being a polymorph seemed to make sense. There’s a really great message there when you think about a young girl, who doesn’t like the way she looks and doesn’t think she fits in, who can change to look like anything. And her not being herself was a big part of her own self-exploration. You know, in the first issue, she morphs into her idol [Carol Danvers], and that was a very specific choice we made because of her thinking that the ideal and the concept of strength and beauty and perfection is someone who is literally her opposite in terms of looks. So, that power set really was organic to her story. And, I wanted to make sure she didn’t have typical pretty powers with sparkly explosions and her hair blowing in the wind. Or even powers of flight. We wanted to make sure it was a little quirky; she’s a teenager. Her powers are a little awkward, and I think that’s kind of fun to play with."
Marvel Studios don't make many mistakes, but in the case of Kamala Khan's Ms. Marvel, they appear to have failed to realize how iconic the character really is. It's true she is less well-established than most MCU characters to date, many of whom have appeared in decades' worth of comic book adventures before they were adapted for the big screen. But as Marvel's first Muslim-American superhero, Ms. Marvel had a cultural impact beyond that of normal comic book heroes. By 2015, street artists in San Francisco were using images of Kamala Khan to oppose the anti-Islamic American Freedom Defense Initiative; by 2016 her co-creator Sana Amanat was meeting with then-President Barack Obama, who name-dropped Ms. Marvel. Like the best superheroes, Ms. Marvel has come to represent something far bigger than herself, meaning she really needs to be adapted with care and reverence.
Even more concerningly, Ms. Marvel is getting a reboot in the comics ahead of her MCU debut. In December, Young Adult writer Samira Ahmed and artist Andrés Genolet will launch Ms. Marvel: Beyond the Limits, and solicitations have hinted her powers will be changing. It's possible Marvel's desire to synergize the comics and the MCU will result in a dramatic change in Kamala Khan's status quo - and that means Marvel Studios' Ms. Marvel mistakes would ripple on into other mediums as well.
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