While it’s no secret that Marvel is going through a rough patch, most fans can agree that there was at least one good movie to come out of the MCU’s Phase Five. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 not only wrapped up the Guardians story in a satisfying, albeit sad way, but it marked James Gunn’s final contribution to the MCU. Now that Gunn has jumped ship, Marvel has an opening for a new team of rag-tag space cowboys, one they could easily fill with the Starjammers.

The Starjammers

If you’re an X-Men fan but you’ve only seen the Fox movies, you may be surprised to learn that the X-Men go on a lot of space adventures. Many of those adventures feature a gang of space pirates led by Cyclops’s dad, who call themselves the Starjammers. This team of cosmic ne’er-do-wells are like the Guardians of the Galaxy but turned up to 11.

Marvel’s Interstellar Rebels

Where Starlord and Co. are kind of like a heroic band of space bums, the Starjammers are more like a militant resistance group. Led by human captain Corsair, aliens Ch’od, Hepzibah, and Raza escaped from the Shi’ar Empire’s slave pits and vowed to wage war against the evil Shi’ar leader Emperor D’ken. As the Starjammers, the group of former captives, strike at D’Ken covertly, slowly chipping away at his tyrannical rule.

Fox Dropped The Ball

At any point in the last decade, 20th Century Fox could have thrown together a Starjammers movie to take advantage of the popularity of Guardians of the Galaxy. For whatever reason, the studio instead focused all of its efforts on the last two abysmal X-Men films, leaving it financially vulnerable enough for Disney to swoop in and acquire it. Fox’s loss is Disney’s gain if, that is, they actually take advantage of it.

Disney Could Succeed Where Fox Failed

The time has never been better for Marvel to make a Starjammers movie. Star Wars has been MIA at the cinema since 2019, and Marvel fans aren’t taking to the multiverse the way the studio hoped they would. The Starjammers could solve both those problems with one movie.

The story of a bunch of rebels banding together to take down an evil space empire is textbook Star Wars. A Starjammers movie would appeal to Star Wars fans hungry for cool space battles full of starfighters zipping around taking potshots at larger ships but without all the space religion of the Jedi.

Guardians Fans Would Be Sated

Meanwhile, Marvel fans who loved Guardians of the Galaxy for its self-contained story would jump at another adventure where they don’t have to watch 20 other movies and TV shows to know what’s going on. The Starjammers worked fine on their own and were, in fact, originally conceived to be a standalone book before the decision was made to tie them to the X-Men by way of the Cyclops.

The Starjammers are all of the swashbuckling fun of Flash Gordon with a team that includes a nine-foot, 430 lb reptilian hulk with a naughty name—don’t look up how to pronounce Ch’od, trust us—how could that lose?

If Marvel wants another Guardians of the Galaxy—and why wouldn’t they?—they need to put a Starjammers movie into production pronto before the comic book movie bubble pops completely, and it’s too late.