Man-Thing (MCU movie)

Post-origin/origin exposition story movie, like The Incredible Hulk was.

Movie would open with nightmarish flashbacks scene of a monstrous shadowed figure in a lab attacking a military woman. Quick flashes show several other scientist and guard bodies strewn on the floor, and the woman being swallowed by flames as it is revealed it is Ellen Brandt. Her screams cut to silence as we change scenes to outside the bar in Iron Man 3, and we close up on her now scarred face walking down the street when she bumps into Tony Stark. After the two part ways, instead of following Tony, we follow Ellen. She goes to her car to gather some stuff, before we cut into the bar to see her confront Tony as she did in IM3. From here we reuse the the footage of the fight from Iron Man 3, but instead whenever the camera follows Tony, we follow Ellen. The fight moves into the diner, and Tony eventually blows her up into the powerlines. We see her eyes close and the screen fade to black. We comeback in after Tony has fought Slavin and left the scene, and it is revealed we are watching Ellen as a figure from the shadows, not just as the camera and audience. A monstrous shadowed figure steps out from hiding and gently retrieves Brandt's lifeless body off the powerlines.

Title card/intro.

Starting with just shots of his hand/partial body, etc., we eventually get a full reveal of Man-Thing as he bathes Brandt in the magical waters of his swamp, bringing her back to life.

Scared, confused Ellen listens as Man-Thing tries to explain. Man-Thing, Ted Sallis lost much of his intelligence, control, and even sentience after his transformation years ago. Memories come back fleetingly, and then some are lost again. Sometimes he is aware of who he is, sometimes he is not. Lately, unexplainable to him he's been more conscious and aware and recently he remembered his wife, Ellen. He remembered what happened to her, and their unborn child she was carrying.

Cue origin story recap. Ted, a scientist was working for a S.H.I.E.L.D research team, where he met Ellen, part of the project on the Army's side. Ted was attempting to make a Super Soldier Serum, and Ellen was there, unbeknownst to Ted, to gather data and research as part of the Armed Forces' Project Rebirth that was also secretly using Bruce Banner's research behind his back as well. After Banner's accident and the reveal of Project Rebirth's existence, Ted's research with S.H.I.E.L.D. is shut down due to concerns. Ellen and her team betray Ted and S.H.I.E.L.D. and attempt to steal his research before it can be taken away, telling him she will protect him and research before leading him into an ambush, claiming she "had no choice", claiming her cell's mission was to execute Ted as a witness if he was not willing to cooperate and give them the research. Ted barely escaped, fleeing in a car with the only existing sample of his serum. While fleeing, he injected the serum into himself in desperation of all of his work being for nothing, causing his car to crash into a swamp. He should have died, but the magical energies of the swamp combined with the serum cause him to transform him into the hideous creature. His intelligence and control rapidly fading, he returned to the lab only to face Ellen and her team ransacking it, leading him to attack them.

Ellen reveals when she woke up her face was scarred from fire and acid and she lost her lower left arm. Her career was done and her life as she knew it was over. That is until A.I.M. approached her to take part in the Extremis program. It healed her but made lose control and lust for blood and violence. The only thing she had heard about Ted was that he was alive and under S.H.I.E.L.D. protection, to stop another Hulk/Abomination catastrophe from happening. She reveals their child was lost in the lab.

[I chose to use this origin largely because of the opportunities to have cameos and make small connections to the universe as a whole - later we'll get back to the theme of Man-Thing connecting the universe. This origin specifically allows cameo of Tony Stark, mention of Captain America's super soldier serum, Ted working on the sister project to Bruce's gamma experiments, and cameos in flashbacks to Mockingbird (in the comics, Barbara Morse was a colleague of Ted's at S.H.I.E.L.D.) and Maria Hill (in Agents of SHIELD, Hill implies she knows well about Man-Thing and his story so far, maybe even personally).]

This is all too much for Ellen and deciding there is nothing she can do for Ted, and wanting nothing to do with him, she gets up to leave. As she opens the front door, a figure is there.

Doctor Strange.

Recent dimensional travel had shattered the Nexus of All Realities, a cross-dimensional gateway which provides a pathway to any and all possible realities that happens to be in Man-Thing's swamp [hence Man-Thing being so connected to everyone and everything, as mentioned earlier]. Dr. Strange has come to help Man-Thing restore it. [This is a direct storyline from the comics, and can be altered from here.] Man-Thing's transformation did not happen by chance. He was selected by the Nexus to be it's Guardian. It is his duty to protect the doorways between worlds from being opened, but as the Nexus has been shattered by measures he could not control, the fragments of the Nexus must now be gathered from across space and across realities.

In the process, in the comics, Man-Thing was possessed by K'ad-Mon, the history of the Men of Lineage was revealed, and Sallis learned that his relation with Ellen was predestined to restore his hereditary mission. Ellen, the Man-Thing, and K'ad-Mon [and Dr. Strange in our movie] recovered Nexus fragments from various places, ultimately including from a Nexus-created planet that Ellen had to destroy in order to save reality. The gang even recovered a fragment from our good ol' Guardians of the Galaxy star, Howard the Duck ["It's all connected"].

This may be a lot for one movie. I may suggest leaving the shattering of the Nexus and dimension hopping for movie 2, and have movie one focus on the Nexus being "disrupted" and Man-Thing having to save "just" Earth (instead of realities) by an invader.

The great thing about making a series of Man-Thing movies means even more connections. Man-Thing has worked alongside the Hulk and Thor in the comics, and has reason to team up with them later on. In fact, if we want, we could even bring in Erik Selvig, who stumbled upon the Nexus of Realities while studying the convergences of the Nine Realms.

Here is the best part about the Man-Thing and the Nexus of All Realities. After the Infinity Stones story is complete, we could easily twist the Nexus of All Realities to create an "Incursions" type story line. Cross-dimensional gateway open to all possible realities easily equals alternate reality heroes attacking our heroes, villains reimagined as heroes in their reality, etc. We got a whole half a phase at least there. Multiple realities would also create an internal consistency and precedent for a Spider-verse arc down the road, Sony...