Netflix’s Project Power is the newest take on the superhero genre that is taking the movie making industry by storm. The movie has the right amount of action, drama, mystery, and a powerful ensemble cast. While it works on an original story line and idea, there is a strong connection it shares with an already established comic book universe – Marvel Comics. To be precise, the Netflix Original takes a classic tale from the pages of Marvel Comics’ Captain America and turns it on its head to give us the movie. You might be surprised at how shamelessly it borrows from Marvel Comics. We are almost left to wonder if Marvel should sue Netflix for its name to be showed when the credits roll.
The key detail that Project Power borrows or rather steals from the Marvel Comic Book Universe is the addition of power granting super drugs that could give you inhuman abilities for 5 minutes. Netflix created an alternate superhero action movie that quickly grabbed a lot of eyes. Jamie Foxx and Joseph Gordon-Levitt have great performances as leads. The movie soon occupied the number one spot in the Top Ten slate of the streaming platform. There are even talks for a Project Power sequel and a new spin-off series based on Levitt’s character.
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The movie’s director had openly confirmed that the story would borrow from other comic books and even though the plot will be original, the ingredients will be not. Project Power owes a lot to the comic books for its recent success. In the movie, we see super humans that have powers similar to the Abomination, Wolverine, the Human Torch, and a lot of other Marvel characters.
The superhero who had a very huge but indirect hand in the making of Project Power is also one of Marvel’s greatest flagship heroes. Captain America is the one we are talking about. The way Project Power introduced its super humans is a leaf taken directly from the earliest tales of Captain America in Marvel Comics. Jamie Foxx’s character is known as Art. Art has a history with being experimented by shady agencies because of his unique trait to activate the latent superhuman powers found in all human beings in the Project Power universe.
In Captain America’s past story lines, we have come to know of a character called Isaiah Bradley. Isaiah Bradley was an African-American veteran who was captured by the US army and then used for inhuman experimentation. In Marvel’s Truth: Red, White & Black, Marvel explores this chapter of Captain America’s past. In Project Power, the story digresses a little bit than what happened in Marvel comics but the result is still the same.
Art and Isaiah Bradley are made out of the same mold. Like Isaiah Bradley, Art never got any acknowledgment or as much as an apology for the scientific trials conducted on him. Moreover, the story of Art’s daughter being gifted with natural super powers while Art is not pans out very similarly.
Let us take a step back and see what we mean here. In Truth: Red, White & Black, we discover just how sinister of an entity the Post World War Two US Government was. In order to create more super soldiers like Captain America, the US Government initiated Project Rebirth – the program to recreate the Super Soldier Program. To do so, the US Government nabbed African-American men and injected them with experimental drugs and ultra-steroids. The experiment is basically a jab at the real life Tuskegee Syphilis Study.
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The Tuskegee Syphilis Study entailed targeting a Black neighborhood and deceiving hundreds of Africa-American men into taking active syphilis shots. The government was trying to see the effects of syphilis on grown adults. The test subjects were told that the Government is conducting free medical care. They were instead infected with Syphilis. This was done during a time when there was no cure for the disease. So the STD could be deadly if not treated soon. The government then watched as the test subjects suffered, with more than 120 confirmed deaths. There were a lot of spouses who were also affected with Syphilis. 40 women died as an outcome. 19 children were born infected with Syphilis due to the study. These are the official figures. The actual number is probably way higher.
In the comic books, Isaiah Bradley was selected for a secret night time mission. The covert operation would recruit 300 African-American soldiers for a raid that never happened. They were then imprisoned and then used for experimentation purposes. Out of the 300 men that were used as guinea pigs in Project Rebirth, only 5 of them survived. The US Government then termed the project a failure and in order to erase all evidences of its existence, they killed every one associated with the project. Isaiah Bradley ended up being the sole survivor of Project Rebirth. He then worked from the shadows. One of his greatest feats was going behind enemy lines and destroying a laboratory conducting a similar project. Bradley is a legend among the Avengers and Marvel’s Black Superheroes.
In Project Power, Art was a military veteran who chose to be part of an experiment by a private military contractor named Teleios. Teleios was injecting people with radioactive isotope serums in the hopes of making superheroes. Art survived the project but he did develop the ability to activate other people’s super human gene, turning them into Powers. There might be some differences in the consent aspect but there still exists a basic common source.
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Now the question for the future is – Will Project Power’s Sequel also play coy and copy-cat? This time the fans failed to notice but maybe next time their subtlety will give in and the fans would start asking questions. It may be time for Netflix to look for original sources. Or there might be another way. If they are so into exploring the backstory of Isaiah Bradley through Art, then dig and dive deeper into that trench. Maybe they will find something even more interesting. Isaiah Bradley has a descendant who is also an Avenger. He is called Patriot. Maybe give Art a son he had before he was experimented upon by Teleios.
In the comics, Patriot became a super soldier after getting a blood transfusion from Bradley. Maybe Art’s son could also become a Power if he is treated similarly in the sequel. We are giving ideas here people. Hope Netflix is reading this.
