Blade

Short answer: Interface with Dr. Strange and Scarlet Witch, make way for Ghost Rider

There have been several Blade movies already, and the first is notable for being the first Marvel superhero movie of what's considered the current set of such movies (the first Marvel movie, superhero or otherwise, is largely considered to be Howard the Duck. And enough said about that.)

There have been three Blade movies so far and they... are done. Whatever loose threads were left hanging at the end are just going to be left untied. 

Because Marvel is now doing three things with the Blade character. One is adding him to the MCU. One is recasting him with Mehershala Ali. And one is rebooting him entirely, with no plot threads connecting the character back to the Wesley Snipes movies.

They have done this before. While Daredevil is now in the MCU, we see from the latest Spider-Man installment that it's Charlie Cox's version (from the Netflix series-- which means that his fellow Defenders [Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist] are also now in the MCU), not Ben Affleck's.

 Similarly, Ed Norton's Incredible Hulk movie is in the MCU, but not Eric Bana's just-plain-Hulk one (or the Hulk TV show). Or the 1990 Captain America movie, or any of the three Fantastic Four movies... (not sure about X-Men). Anyway, the point is, ya gotta draw the line somewhere.

So the question before us is how to integrate Blade into the MCU. And the answer is going to be, I think, through the "magic" end of things*, which is to say via Dr. Strange.

His new movie, Multiverse of Madness, had some straight-up, demonic, horror-movie imagery in it. And I think that's the first time we have seen that, to such a gory degree. 

So if we are putting a half-vampire vampire hunter-- which is what Blade is-- into the line-up, this is where he slots in. Wanda seems calmed down, but the Darkhold is likely eternal. Plus Agatha is still out there (and it was her, all along! Sorry, now the song is in your head.) 

Since Dr. Strange is having to plunge into this world now, he might need some help. He's a wizard, not a hand-to-hand kinda guy, so having muscle like Blade at his side makes sense-- some things that go bump in the night may be magicked away, but some may just need to be bumped back harder. 

This is good news for horror fans (if bad news for those who wanted to keep taking their kids to MCU movies). Because it opens up the potential for other characters from the creepier end of Marvel's work, like Ghost Rider. And Moon Knight (who has a show but is not in the movies yet).

In fact, Ghost Rider fans have smelled the brimstone in the air around Blade, anticipated that GR would follow, and have started asking that Nick Cage be allowed to continue playing him. 

So it looks like at least one branch of the MCU is about to get super-creepy. Yay?/!

*And, yeah, there is magic in the MCU, but it seems to only relate to some characters, like Strange and Wanda and Thor. Meanwhile Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, and SHIELD work more with science, so the vampire/demon aspect of things seems less likely to be integrated into the MCU through those characters. 

 

Hellboy

Short Answer: Hellboy's kids; revisit the comics

There are only 3 movies in this series, and the most recent, the reboot, was considered... a disappointment. 

The thing to do would be to pretend it didn't happen and, instead, make the movie as part 3 of the first two-- the second one ends with Hellboy about to become a father. Of twins.

There are only a few ways to go with twins: both are good, both are evil, or one is good and the other evil. Of these options, the third seems the most interesting (and grounded in Biblical precedent). Upon hearing their father's stories, one decides the humans are mostly trustworthy, while the other follows the logic (brought up earlier in the series, but not fully explored): "Why are we fighting with humans against demons.... if we are demons?"

Further, he learns that Hellboy was designed to bring about the apocalypse, end humanity, and usher in the age of demons... but has decided against fulfilling that destiny.

Then the Evil Twin finds out that Hellboy was the son of the demon Azzael... and a human woman, Sarah Hughes. This is confusing to him, so he studies up on them. He learns that his his grandmother was taken to Hell and that his grandfather is imprisoned there. So he goes to Hell to find them and meet them personally. Either his grandmother was an evil human to have married a demon, or she was a good human who felt that even a demon was good enough to marry. It seems to him that either way, demons are better "people" than humans.

The Good Twin learns the same information but has the opposite response-- it's all shades of gray. Some humans are worse than demons, while some demons are not that bad. But right now, each has a realm, and that seems fair. He joins his twin on this trip to Hell to visit their grandparents. On the one hand, he wants to have an open mind. On the other, if Evil Twin is radicalized and wants to do something really bad, Good Twin wants to be there to stop him. 

Only once they are gone does Hellboy realize the boys have gone to Hell, so of course he has to go there after them. Ultimately, there is a family reunion, with all three generations in one place.

There is a series in the comics called Hellboy Goes to Hell, and that would make a pretty good title. In those comics, though, he does bring about The End of the World as a result... so that part might have to be rewritten. 

Our movie ends with Hellboy renouncing his destiny, and saying: there is no destiny-- only choice. But the Evil Twin remains unconvinced, and so we set up Part 4 with Evil Twin releasing Azzael from his prison in Hell.

But we have to move beyond Rasputin and the Nazis. Those plotlines are pretty much played out. Also, integrating the Hellboy story with Arthurian legend also seems... much. The urge to tie such characters into other mythologies is strong-- we have seen it play out in the Hercules and Xena shows, for instance. But Hellboy is part of Catholic demonology, and its own-- so let's focus on those for once. 

There are ways to integrate the plotlines of the graphic novels with those set up by the first two (acclaimed) movies, is the point.

It would also be cool to spin off Abe Sapien and connect him with the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and with the Amphibian Man from The Shape of Water, also. There could be a whole water-based series that is counterpoint to Hellboy's fire-based one...

Jack Ryan

Short Answer: Adapt the rest of the books

There is no reason that Jack Ryan should not be as big a name as Jason Bourne, John Wick, Jack Reacher, or Ethan Hunt.

And, in a way, he's not really their competitor. Bourne, an agent, is all about hand-to-hand. Wick, a hitman, is all about gunplay. Ethan Hunt is all about stunts. Reacher was former Army, and is not really as famous as these others; he only has two movies.

Ryan, meanwhile, is not as much about fighting and fight senes. He's more about intrigue, unraveling plots and schemes, and tension/suspense. All these things are in all these movies, sure-- but it's about proportion. In those other series, action is more like 70% of why people go to see them. For Ryan, it's maybe 50% or less of what's going on; his movies are more like police procedurals or mysteries, with an action element. (For even more mystery and less action, you want Alex Cross. For closer to 80% action, you want John McClane.)

Also, Jack Ryan is a legacy brand. The Hunt for Red October, the first movie to come out, dropped in 1990. The character has been played by many more people over the years-- A-listers like Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, Ben Affleck, and Chris Pine-- than those other roles. It's really in this way that the character is most like Bond. Aside from working for their governments, they don't have anything else in common; Ryan doesn't use sci-fi gadgets, or fall into bed with every female agent he runs across, or drink all day, or gamble all night... 

M:I's TV show, Treadstone, lasted 10 episodes; its original show, upon which the movies are based, ran from 1966-73. But the Cruise-as-Hunt movies started in 2000, 10 years after Ryan's, so for many viewers, he's a newer character. Also Ryan's 2018 show is at 2 seasons and counting, and the character is not a Boomer like Hunt but a "90's kid." 

The others? From a feature-film standpoint, they are also 21st Century babies. Bourne's novels started in the 1980s, but the first movie didn't drop until 2002 (it had one TV movie, in 1988). Jack Reacher's first novel was released in 1997, but the first movie didn't come out until 2012. John Wick is even newer; his character was not novel-based and so he first appeared in his 2014 movie. Eggsy Unwin also debuted that year, in the Kingsman series. 

Which, again, makes Jack Ryan the cinematic daddy of all of them (if not granddaddy-- that'd be Bond. While Martin Riggs and John McClane are... maybe their older uncles?). 

In any case, there is plenty of life left in the Jack Ryan character. And plenty of material to work with. As with several of these others, Ryan was "born" in a series of books. And, as with others, not all the books have been movie-fied yet. 

In Ryan's case, there are Without Remorse (technically a Ryan prequel; he's not even in it), Red Rabbit, The Cardinal of the Kremlin, Debt of Honor, Executive Orders, Rainbow Six, The Bear and the Dragon and other that have not yet been adapted for movies.

I mean...there are 34 books in the series! Even if you only count the ones credited to Tom Clancy alone, that's 14 books-- only 4 of which have been adapted, plus 4 with a co-author. So that's 10-14 more plotlines already gamed out. My pick would be Cardinal, the only one of the first 5 books not yet turned into a movie. Red Rabbitt, in which Ryan joins the CIA to begin with, is another solid choice.

And that's without getting into the Jack Ryan, Jr. books, which would give both older and younger viewers someone on screen to identify with. 

Since the character has already been played by many others, it's totally acceptable-- even expected-- to recast the role yet again. Chris Evans-- maybe with his hair darkened-- could work. He's done with the MCU (unless there is more time-travel afoot), but he also might not want to be locked into another series. 

Ryan Gosling would also work. Bradley Cooper, Christian Bale, Channing Tatum, Oscar Isaac... there are enough granite-jawed actors who can still convincingly do action scenes in their 40s. As some of the yet-unadapted books take place earlier in the Ryan timeline, or involve Jr.,  we can get some 20- and 30-something actors some time in this series, also.

Let the future Patriot Games begin! 

Fantastic Four

Short Answer: Ditch the origin; connect to MCU through the Skrulls

There have been four Fantastic Four movies. People are familiar with the one (2005) that got a sequel (2007), and then the reboot (2015). And then there was one from 1994 that was only made so that the studio could hang onto the rights to the characters.

All did poorly.

But now, the characters are owned by Disney, and so they are going to get yet another chance (which is several more chances than DC has given poor old Green Lantern).

How are they going to do this right?

First, ditch the origin story. It's simple enough-- scientists go to a space station, get douses in cosmic rays, receive superpowers. We have told it twice in movie before. This time, tell it wordlessly during the opening credits as a montage and get to the story already.

(Cracked.com has a great article on origin stories so baked into the culture they need not be told again on film but can be assumed known by the audience. The F4 origin was not on their list. So I say, OK-- tell it again, but in five minutes. Don't make it the plot of the movie.)

Also, in these other cases, the F4 have fought Dr. Doom. He's a good baddie, since he uses both super-science and magic, and runs a small European country called Latveria (somewhere in the neighborhood of Latvia, we assume?). But, we have seen him already.

Instead, we should use another foe, the Skrulls. These shape-shifting aliens were introduced in the Captain Marvel movie and Spider-Man: Far from Home, but referred to in Guardians of the Galaxy,  and were also seen in the WandaVision show. So, we MCUers know who they are.

But... in Captain Marvel's origin movie [spoiler!] they get retconned into being the victims of the Kree, and are now sympathetic. Then again, they are seen as a threat still because they are shape-shifters and can become anyone.

So, now we have our in for the F4. They get their powers and master them. Now, they are chilling in The Baxter Building-- their high-tech HQ-- when the get a visit from Nick Fury. He knows Reed "Mr. Fantastic" Richards is a science brain on par with Tony "Iron Man" Stark, Bruce "Hulk" Banner, and Hank "Ant-Man" Pym. 

But those brains are busy. So he asks Richards to develop a way to scan for Skrull DNA-- from a distance-- to make sure they are humans and not aliens in disguise-- "Just to keep tabs on them." Naturally, Richards is appalled at the idea of spying on people. A debate takes place among the F4 as to whether to comply.

Meanwhile, a Skrull learns of their powers, traces its source, and exposes himself to the cosmic rays (not that hard, since as an alien, he has a spaceship). He becomes Super-Skrull-- I promise I did not invent this character! Look him up-- who can use all of the F4 powers at once.

So... yeah, he becomes the bad guy the F4 have to defeat. He does a bad thing in a way that frames the F4, ("Who else could have done all this particular damage?"). Being a genius, Richards figures out that it was a rogue Skrull. 

Of course, to find him-- since, in addition to their powers, he has retained the basic Skrull power of shape-shifting-- they kinda have to invent the Skrull Detector that Fury wanted to begin with.

At first, they fight Super-Skrull (again, not making him up) with their own matching powers. But then they figure out that they have to counter with different powers. Does he shoot a Human Torch flame? Invisible Girl wraps it in a force-bubble and snuffs it. Does he throw a Thing-style clobberin' punch? Mr. Fantastic bounces it right back at himself.

Teamwork also figures in. His Mr. Fantastic stretchiness is undone by The Human Torch's flame, which makes him brittle enough for The Thing to Punch. And his invisibility? Again, the flame makes him glow hot enough to be seen, and if The Thing can see it, he can hit it. It's important to have these to learn to work together, as they are famously always on each other's nerves.

So, yes-- they subdue the Super Skrull and also make it known that they are innocent but that of course not all Skrulls are bad and to be feared. To drive the point home, Richards publicly demolishes the Skrull Detector and deletes the blueprints for it.

I kinda hate to bring in The Four Elements, since that trope has been done in every movie from the Frozen sequel to, well, The Fifth Element and of course the Avatar: The Last Airbender show. But it has never been really acknowledged that the F4 are what D&D players would call Elementals. The Thing is Earth and Human Torch is Fire-- those two are easy. Invisible Girl represents Air-- and so that leaves Water for Mr. Fantastic, who while not wet is basically a liquid. 

Richards is a man of science, and the Four Elements are, at best, pre-science thinking. But even Richards can see that these were early attempts to codify what we would today call The Four States of Matter: Solid (Earth), Liquid (Water), Gas (Air), and either Energy or Plasma (Fire). So he would say that the alchemists were trying to have these things balance-- so while it's wrong from scientific standpoint, it's still a useful metaphor from a literary point of view.

In the post-credits scenes, we learn that Fury has already copied the blueprints of the Skrull Detector machine, but of course does not tell Richards he has done so. 

Or, maybe, that Dr. Doom has? Also? I mean, once the F4 are in play, we have to have Doom show up at some point.