What would happen if 8 actors who played multiple Marvel characters actually played the same character?

When actors appear in multiple Marvel comic book movies there is often uproar and outrage due to the much loved status of these characters:

That said, it's pretty lame to have the Human Torch play Captain America. It's a pretty iconic character. (Ponzer, Chris Evans imdb board, 14/05/10)

The uproar! The outrage! The misuse of it's!

There are multitude of actors that have appeared as different characters in two Marvel films, but what happens if they were actually playing the same character in both films? How did they get from one movie into the next? Will I hope to awkwardly answer these questions with ham-fisted descriptions and massive suspension of belief? Erm, yes...

Sam Elliot: General Thaddeus 'Thunderbolt' Ross, Hulk (2003) - Caretaker, Ghost Rider (2007)

Annoyed with his inability to capture Bruce Banner and the Hulk and mad about his daughter, Betty, still loving a rage embodiment monster (every dad's nightmare) he renounces technology and becomes the caretaker in a cemetery. Unable to clean and maintain the cemetery each day, he turns to the devil for help, becoming his Ghost Rider and a part-time caretaker with flexible hours. He receives double pay on Sundays.

Ray Stevenson: Frank Castle, Punisher: War Zone (2009) - Volstagg, Thor (2011)

After watching his wife and child being killed three times, Frank Castle finally goes mad and becomes convinced that he is a Norse warrior/alien called Volstagg and lives in a magic land called Asgard. The entire Thor movie occurs in his head and Marvel's cross-picture plan to combine all their heroes and films into one mega film, 'The Avengers' never occurs. Volstagg is actually a toilet cleaning product.

Ryan Reynolds: Hannibal King, Blade: Trinity (2004) - Wade Wilson, X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)

Hannibal King foolishly gets bitten and turns into a vampire once again, providing him with superhuman speed but with the thirst for blood. He uses an advanced serum, similar to Blade's dosage, inhibiting the vampire thirst but keeping his superhuman speed and developing superhuman wrists, changing his identity and joining William Stryker's 'Team X'. He then finds a mystical horse called Toby, with seven wings and flys to Saturn, where he befriends purple aliens that specialise in bread kneading. Hell the writers of Wolverine Origins can do what ever the fuck they want with Deadpool so so can I (zing!). 

Donal Logue: Quinn, Blade (1998) - Mack, Ghost Rider (2007)

Quinn reincarnates, curing himself of the vampire curse. Tired and unhappy of being henchman #1 to a vampire blood god and taking an another new, monosyllabic name, he starts a new career as comedy sidekick #1 for daredevil stunt riders. Is still unhappy. 

Chris Evans: Johnny Storm, Fantastic Four (2005), Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007) - Steve Rogers, Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)

In a fight with the time-traveller Kang the Conqueror, Johnny Storm is lost back in time and becomes time-displaced, losing his memory. He reappears in the early 1940s, in Brooklyn, New York and becomes an artist, drawing fantastic images from deep within his subconscious. The stress of time-travel and displacement takes a heavy toll upon his weight. Emboldened by his former life and duty as a superheroic member of the Fantastic Four, he attempts to sign up for WWII, wishing to protect the public once more from tyranny. This then leads to him volunteering for Operation: Rebirth and becoming Captain America. Last Reel Reveal was also arrested for bad fan-fiction.

Rebecca Romijn: Raven Darkholme, X2 (2003) - Joan, The Punisher (2004) - Raven Darkholme, X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) 

This lady doesn't know who she is. Raven tires of having little speaking parts and very bad hygiene and finally has a wash getting rid of all that blue paint. She also chooses a normal life, buying a crummy apartment and taking a slightly less evil name of Joan. Using the money given to her by Frank Castle, she decides that actually she really likes the colour blue and to not wear any clothes and uses the money to track and rejoin Magneto once again.

Ben Foster: Spacker Dave, The Punisher (2004) - Warren Worthington III, X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)

Dave uses the money given to him by Frank Castle to pay for plastic surgery to repair his battered, tortured face. The plastic surgeon accidentally attaches massive, angelic wings to his back. Hey, it happens. The completed plastic surgery makes Dave look like the splitting image of millionaire Warren Worthington II's long lost son, Warren Worthington III. Dave is then adopted by Warren Snr. and comes into a massive inheritance. Dave's wings are then attempted to be surgically removed, on behest of his Warren Snr., by a surgeon that doesn't randomly attach massive wings to patients. 

Jon Favreau: Franklin 'Foggy' Nelson, Daredevil (2003) - Happy Hogan, Iron Man (2008), Iron Man (2010)

Depressed and almost penniless through Matt Murdock's insistence of running a philanthropist lawyer agency, Franklin parts ways with Matt and becomes a drug addict, keeping him 'Happy' all day long. He moves away and takes his mother's maiden name, Hogan, continuing his party-loving style. He meets Tony Stark and become firm friends through their mutual smugness. Stark then employs him as his personal assistant.

Have I missed any actors that play multiple Marvel characters? Feel like you can create or haphazardly fit a better story? Then have leave a comment down below and lets have a chinwag.

Red Planet Mars and 1950s Hollywood propaganda

In what film do you find a former Nazi scientist serving the devil, funded by Soviet Union money, a highly-advanced Mars nuclear culture, ruled by a Christ-like figure and a religious revolution in Communist Russia, inspired by American radio broadcasts? Only in wonderful 1950s, B movie, propagandist Hollywood can you find such a film, called Red Planet Mars, made in 1952.

This film is presented in its entity on YouTube, making a change from piecing together 13 parts of a film in a different language, until you find out that the end has been removed due to copyrighting. Through the technique of reading further down the page, you will find that I placed this unique film just below. Isn't that nice.

 

The 1950s were the peak of Hollywood's propagandist output  in the cultural Cold War between the capitalist United States and the communist Soviet Union and the fight for people's hearts and minds. Particularly, religion became one of the most emotive themes used in Hollywood and the United States, due to the Soviet Unions persecution of religion throughout its combined states. It was Lenin's original belief that religion was a product of social, economic oppression and exploitation.  

Red Planet Mars perfectly and insanely encompasses pretty much all the 1950s Cold War themes in one film. Obvious anti-communism, the power of religion and alienation at home and even at other planets. The film even manages to fit in a distrust of science, with the antagonist and protagonist scientists both dying in a fiery laboratory explosion. Lots of rather large cultural eggs were put in a very preposterous, cold basket.

An American astronomer, Chris Cronyn, played by Peter Graves, starts to receive mysterious messages from Mars using a new invention named the 'hydrogen valve' to contact it. Through questioning and exchange of information, Cronyn realises that Mars is ruled by advanced intelligent beings. They live a longer that human life-span and have developed new, more efficient energy sources. The discovery causes chaos on Earth, with a threatened collapse of Western society, through stock markets falling and wide-spread depression. The original, ex-Nazi inventor of the 'hydrogen valve', Frank Calder, played by Herbet Berghof, along with Russian agent cohorts, looks upon gloatingly at the approaching western collapse.

This is until the discovery that Mars follows Christian values, through the message of, 'Seven lifetimes ago, you were told to love goodness and hate evil.' The news sends the Soviet Union into panic and chaos instead, where their people openly start to worship and embrace God once again, sending peace and revolution throughout the world. But then Calder reveals himself to be the true sender of the messages, in an attempt to dupe and bring down both sides using a radio-transmitter, high in the Andes mountains. Realising he has failed, he attempts to blow up the hydrogen valve, taking his life and Cronyn and his wife in an explosion. Just before the hydrogen valve is destroyed, one final, disrupted message comes through from Mars: 'Ye have done well, my good...' possibly proving that God was indeed on Mars. 

There is a clear attempt here to attach religion with freedom, liberty and democracy, a theme that is constantly used in America and Hollywood in the 1950s. They attempt to create the idea that capitalism, anti- communism and Christianity was one whole synonymous idea. The danger of science and dabbling in things we do not fully understand was also investigated, a theme common in Hollywood movies until the later wave of disaster movies in the 1990s and 2000s.