Kevin Smith Reviews Marvel's What If: "Everything That I Hoped That Series Would Be"

If a new Marvel Studios project comes out and Kevin Smith doesn't sound off about it, was it even released? Having spent the better part of the last few weeks editing his next movie, the highly-anticipated Clerks III, filmmaker and comic fan-extraordinaire Kevin Smith has finally given his reaction to watching Marvel's What If...?, the latest show from the House of Ideas on Disney+. Speaking on the latest FatMan Beyond LIVE podcast, Smith offered his thoughts on the animated series, dishing high praise for the show's storytelling, animation, and how they brought back the talent from the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies to reprise their roles.

"I did not watch 'What If...?' as they happened week by week because I was busy with my head up my own ass making a movie, so I got to watch them all in a row. F**king fantastic. Everything that I hoped that that series would be. Very movie centric which makes sense because those are the stories that the audience largely would know. It's not like you can do "What if Bullseye didn't kill Elektra?" a bunch of the audience would be like 'Wait, who are these people?' It makes sense that they're taking the 'What If...?' formula and applying it to the movie stories. I think that's the best chance they've got of capturing an audience. Helps that they're stunningly gorgeous pieces of animation on top of what I've felt are really strong stories."

He continued, "That Doctor Strange episode could have been Doctor Strange 2 in a less ambitious world where Kevin Feige wasn't like 'nah we got other plans.' If you were going to just do an Iron Man 2 version of Doctor Strange 2, that totally would have been a fucking absolute romp. I wouldn't have complained if that was the whole f**king feature, and the most recent episode, 'What if Killmonger saved Tony Stark?' Fantastic, a fantastic re-investigation of a character, and the fact that they're getting a lot of these cats to do their voices it just tickles me. It does scream though when people don't come back you're just like 'why?' I get Robert Downey Jr. cause if you're Robert Downey Jr.'s agent you're like 'If he's ever going to utter another word as Tony Stark, it's gonna be for f**king twenty, forty million dollars, not in a cartoon.' But it's crazy the people who did say yes."

New episodes of Marvel's What If...? premiere every Wednesday only on Disney+.