I was a fan of the old Marvel Comics series What If…? back in my collecting days. It had a basic concept: the cosmic entity Uatu the Watcher would introduce a story where a well-known story from Marvel’s past had some change to it, resulting in a new story that could go as dark as the creators liked over 22 pages (give or take the occasional two parter) or any other wild direction. Announcing an animated version of that for Disney+, with Jeffrey Wright voicing the Watcher and many of the MCU’s live action cast members reprising their roles from the movies, sure did sound like something that could be a lot of fun. True, the animation style from the previews didn’t appeal to me, but maybe I’d get used to it when I saw it in action.
I’ve seen the first season now, so…
The basic premise is like the old comic book series: some incident in the past changed, leading to a new way to tell a story from one of the movies. Most of them were stand-alone stories, more or less, until the two part finale acted as something of a coda to all the previous episodes. Not every story was played straight, and some were more fun than others, and indeed, most of the MCU’s live action cast reprised their roles, even if that meant actors like Kurt Russell and Michael Douglas had maybe a dozen lines between them over the course of nine episodes. Other characters, including Iron Man, Captain America, and Black Widow were played by professional voice actors, and it somewhat showed as I will explain in a bit below.
But as for the series as a whole, it is somewhat hard to judge it in certain respects as each story did have a separate set of characters and often tone. Sure, the zombies episode was a fairly grim affair, and another where Killmonger rescued Tony Stark from the bomb blast that made him Iron Man seemed to suggest a dark time for the future of that Earth, but then were were more lighthearted episodes like a genuinely fun one where T’Challa (voiced well as always by the late Chadwick Boseman) was Star-Lord and led a group of benevolent Ravengers in Robin Hood-style heists and missions, or the intentionally humorous one that recast Chris Hemsworth’s Thor as an only child who behaved like an immortal frat bro always out to party. Truthfully, I liked Party-Thor even though no one else I knew seemed to because that one, at least, felt the most disposable, and perhaps What If…? should be at least a little disposable with various one-and-done stories.
However, I never quite warmed to this series. I think the problem for me was a simple one: there was what often felt like too much story for a 30 minute animated episode. Even the two-part finale somehow felt like there was too much going on to allow the viewer to really catch their breath and maybe enjoy the ride. It’s one thing to tell the story of Steve Rogers becoming Captain America and fighting Hydra in World War II for two hours. It is something else to have Hayley Atwell’s Peggy Carter get the supersoldier serum instead and cover more or less the same story in 30 minutes. Pacing always felt a little off in What If…? in ways the old comic series always managed to more or less avoid. True, there was always a feeling in the old comics that there was a lot more going on that the reader wasn’t seeing, but that could have been something filled in by the reader’s imagination. I think the only episode that really worked for me without question was the T’Challa Star-Lord story. It managed to tell enough of the story in a way that sure, could have left a lot out, but still felt like a complete tale. Maybe it was because the stakes were so low and the central cast so small that it did manage to tell a complete story (end-of-the-episode stinger notwithstanding) that hit all of my personal sweet spots. For the rest, it just seemed to be rushing through a story no matter what was happening.
Also, there was a small part of me that was thinking it might have been cool to draw Bruce Banner, even if he was being voiced by Mark Ruffalo, to look more like Edward Norton for the scenes taken from that movie. Sure, there’s probably a bunch of legal reasons why that can’t be done, but it might have been a little more fun all the same.
And while the animation was always a little too uncanny valley for my tastes, I found my biggest overall disappointment was the voice cast. Sure, getting the likes of Boseman, Hemsworth, and many others back to reprise their roles was a good idea, and some of them (Boseman, Hemsworth, Paul Rudd, Tom Hiddleston, and Josh Brolin come to mind) actually acquitted themselves well, but others sounded just flat–Jeremy Renner;’s Hawkeye never sounded very good. I suspect this may have something to do with the fact many of these actors are busy doing various projects, many of them for Marvel, so multiple takes may not have been much of an option. But then there were the characters recast with more experienced voice actors like Lake Bell as Black Widow and Mick Wingert as Tony Stark. There was a noticeable improvement in the performances for these characters–heck, Wingert has played Iron Man in other animated projects–but even though I would say they sounded better, I am still hesitant to call it good. work. Was it the pacing? Were the voiceovers sped through? I don’t know. All I know is a potentially fun series was decidedly less so with animation that didn’t much appeal to me, pacing that almost always felt rushed, and voice work that maybe didn’t go for a second take in many instances.
I think it says something that I honestly look more forward to new episodes of the Star Trek animated series Lower Decks, done without much in the way of famous actors with less impressive animation, but still just a fun romp with well-developed comedic characters.
Maybe What If…? will improve with the promised second season. All I know for certain is Wright’s Watcher will be back, and at least that character had some necessary gravitas even if, by the very nature of the character, he doesn’t do a whole heck of a lot.
Grade: C+
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