Movie/TV Universes:The Coolest Watching Trend?
By: Nhyira M
Tags: TV, Film

The Marvel Cinematic Universe. The DC Extended Universe. The Archieverse/Riverdale Universe. The Netflix Christmas Universe (which I only quite recently found about). There is one clearly evident aspect linking these together: the ‘universe’ part. The Wikipedia definition under ‘fictional shared universes in film and television’ is ‘that two or more previously unconnected characters come together in one film’. Maybe there are some of us who love good inter-connected movies and/or series, or others who prefer stand-a-lone content, at most a few sequels.

First, let’s begin with the big, action blockbuster ones: of course, the MCU and DCEU. The larger of the 2 — at time of writing — began as a mere sequence of comics, however the Universe element seemed to be there right from the beginning. And from the first Iron Man movie, now onto WandaVision, the small & big screen content have seen many improvements, as at first the content appeared not to follow chronological order (https://www.digitalspy.com/movies/a825774/marvel-cinematic-universe-in-chronological-order/), and now, it mostly conveniently does, especially for someone such as myself who’s decided to undergo the tremendous task of watching it all in chronological order.

Now, DC, who in fact had more success than Marvel on the comics side of things at first, didn’t lead so well when adapting their content for TV & Film. However, they are certainly catching up with Stan Lee’s Creation and may very well endure further than Marvel. But with Avengers: Endgame sitting at the top of the Box Office charts of all time, ahead of James Cameron’s masterpieces in Titanic & Avatar, that may be a while off. However, aside from their main universe, there’s the Arrowverse, which includes shows like Arrow, Black Lightning, Batwoman, etc…. If DC were to somehow link these parallels together… well let’s just say our eyes would love us that much more for it.

Next up, a more teen-focused universe, one also based on comics, and from it, a show know widely among Gen Z: Riverdale. The comics from which this CW show derived from is actually called the Archie Comics, and on its arrival to TV, a few relatively large changes were made, such as Josie, leader of the Pussycats’ significance. Along with Riverdale, spin-offs such as Katy Keene and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina were produced. Although, there are apparently limited appearances from the main show’s characters within these spinoffs. However much this particular universe may differ from the others with its target audience, and the content being mainly on TV, it certainly follows the universe trend.

And finally, maybe a lesser known, more novel attempt: the small but ambitious Netflix Christmas Universe. This particular one breaks out of the comic trend, but a few of the movies may be based on books. In case you’re not familiar with this, this Universe includes movies such as ‘A Christmas Prince’ and ‘The Princess Switch’. These in particular are linked by a cameo from the couple in ‘A Christmas Prince’, who appear to attend the main event in ‘The Princess Switch: Switched Again’. The movie ‘The Knight Before Christmas’ is also a part of this Universe, along with others.

So, as you may have been able to pick up, I personally think Shared Universes are pretty dope. But, before you bring up all those crazy Disney Conspiracy Theories and how they may prove that Frozen and The Little Mermaid are linked, and however much I may think they’re certainly intriguing, since they’ve not been officially confirmed or shown by Disney themselves (as far as I’m aware) they can’t yet be classified as part of a ‘Disney Universe’.

Of course, there are many more not mentioned here, including X-Men and Rocky.

Comment below with your fav or maybe comment on why you don’t like universes at all.

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