The Marvel Cinematic Universe is one of the most successful franchises in the world, earning billions but what about other more unknown cinematic universes. I am not talking about well known cinematic universes like the DC cinematic universe nor the Star Wars cinematic universe but rather a several clusters of films and television shows that are all unique with different actors and directors that become interconnected narratively through the roles and stories in these mediums. These cinematic universes can be viewed as a graph where each movie/show is a node on the graph whereas the edges would be the narrative threads or characters that connect the films together.
An example of this is would be the United States Space Program cinematic universe (USSPCU) which contains the films The Right Stuff, First Man, Hidden Figures, and Apollo 13. The Right Stuff is a film made in 1983 about the first 15 years of the NASA space program and has an actor who portrays Gus Grisson who we see him become Mercury Astronaut his character connects to both First Man and Apollo 13. In the 2018 film the First Man which follows Neil Armstrong and the Apollo 11 mission, we are reintroduced to Gus Grisson who becomes an Apollo 1 pilot who died during one of its launch tests. Both of these films are connected to the 1995 Apollo 13 film through a brief scene where the Apollo 13 astronauts meet Neil Armstrong and a key conversation between Jim Lovell (portrayed by Tom Hanks) and his son about the dangers of their mission which mentions the death of Gus Grisson. Another connection is the character Deke Slayton who is an astronaut recruit in The Right Stuff who becomes an executive who oversees the NASA space program in The First Man and Apollo. Hidden Figures, a 2016 film can be seen as a side story connected The Right Stuff overseeing the Mercury 7 launch which also shares 4 characters with each other. These links show how films can unintentionally become interconnected by the story or narrative threads and can tell a multi-movie story that we might not otherwise see to create a cinematic universe. Films based on historical events such as the USSPCU is an easier example to find as many of these historical pieces can be linked through real people that the actors’ portray. However, there are two other theories that feature only fictional entertainment to create new universes.
There is a theory that is based on television shows, it is called the “The Tommy Westphall Universe” (refer to the image below), which states that there are more than 400 interconnected TV shows and that they are all part of a dream from the character named Tommy Westphall, who is from a TV show called St. Elsewhere. This universe was constructed through the various crossovers and spin-offs with St. Elsewhere and other shows thus creating an ever-growing universe where any show that collaborates with anyone shows from the existing universe would then be added to the overall universe.
The other theory is the Pixar Animated Cinematic Universe which states that each Pixar Movie is related through several easter eggs that include cameos from other franchise characters such that they can create an overarching narrative.
References
Gott, Davey. “The Pixar Cinematic Universe!” NCI FM, Native Communications Inc, 2 Apr. 2019, www.ncifm.com/the-pixar-cinematic-universe/.
Hughes, William. “Do Historical Movies about the Same Event Count as the ‘Original Cinematic Universes’?” AV Club, AV Club, 23 Nov. 2018, news.avclub.com/do-historical-movies-about-the-same-event-count-as-the-1830625342.
Luling, Todd Van. “Fan Theory Proves Almost All TV Shows Exist Within Same Universe.” HuffPost Canada, HuffPost Canada, 16 Sept. 2015, www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/tv-show-fake-tommy-westphall-universe_n_55f84ba1e4b00e2cd5e8118a?ri18n=true.
“The Pixar Theory an Interactive Story.” The Pixar Theory, 97th Floor, www.pixartheory.com/.
I enjoyed this post a lot! This reminds me of the concept of six degrees of separation. Perhaps a similar analysis can be done on movies to see whether we can find a reference from one movie to any other movie in a small finite path in such a network like the ones shown in this post.