50 years before the MCU taught audiences what a variant was , and decades before DC balanced multiple Batmen , The Who’s Tommy was already operating like a multiverse. What began as a 1969 rock opera jumped formats, rebuilt itself, shifted tone, and reinterpreted its own mythology long before franchise storytelling became Hollywood’s default.

Now that the 1975 film adaptation hits its fiftieth anniversary, Tommy looks less like a cult relic and more like a prototype for the way modern IP evolves .

Tommy’s First Leap Was The Kind Of Reinvention Superheroes Depend On

Tommy The movie The Who, Ann Margaret

When The Who released Tommy in 1969, it was a complete narrative myth—one built around trauma, transformation, and symbolic rebirth. But the mythology expanded dramatica

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