Fun
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Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
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Curious
Romantic
Weird
When news of Disney potentially acquiring 21st Century Fox’s assets first rang out, I had two thoughts: massive monopolies are how apocalyptic nightmare futures begin, and the X-Men might get to meet the Avengers.
None of the fears I had about the former were assuaged by the latter, to be sure, but that didn’t stop my comic-fan mind from running through all the comic stories that could finally come to life, especially if the X-franchise was given a hard reboot! Beast could join the Avengers, Magneto could be Scarlet Witch’s dad, Storm could marry Black Panther, Wolverine could be World War II buds with Captain America, Rogue could copy and keep Captain Marvel’s super strength and flight powers, the Starjammers could cross paths with the Guardians of the Galaxy, and–most importantly–the X-Men could totally versus the Avengers. The mind reels at the action-packed possibilities! Just look at what we could have!
This could be Disney and Fox, but they playing!
I love the X-Men and I have for 25 years. I carry an X-Men wallet and have X-Men shoes. There are, as I type this, 14 X-Men action figures staring at me on my work desk. After getting into comics in the early ’90s when the X-Men were king, it has been disheartening to watch my beloved mutants’ profile shrink as Marvel (really Disney) prioritized comic characters they owned the film rights to, resulting in Storm and friends disappearing from Marvel video games, encyclopedias, and apparel. However good Marvel Studios’ take on the X-Men would be (and I believe it would be the kind of Claremont/Byrne team dynamic realness X-Fans have been clamoring to see on screen for almost 20 years), I was even more excited at the thought of the X-Men and FF being welcomed back onto t-shirts, posters, backpacks, and the like. So… why was I, Mr. The-Phalanx-Covenant-Was-Referenced-During-My-Wedding-Vows, actually happy when the deal was pronounced dead?
Okay, the major reason is that monopolies are bad. I mean, they’re illegal, but I can’t get into all that as my head is filled with facts about Cable and Psylocke’s origins and not United States law. Disney already owns Marvel and Star Wars in addition to being Disney, they don’t need more toys. And the more Disney acquires, the less other studios are able to compete, and that lack of competition drives down the incentive for inventiveness (as I’ll get to in a second). One company just shouldn’t have all that power. But the other reason, the X-Men-related reason, is that Fox is actually killing it with the X-Men franchise right now, and I don’t want to see this streak cut short.
I’ve had a complicated relationship with Fox’s X-Men franchise since it launched in 2000. I sincerely love almost all of the movies, but–and this became numbingly apparent by the time X-Men: Days of Future Past hit in 2014–the film franchise has never, ever captured what makes the comics special.
As great as the films are, and I would say that 2003’s X2 is legit great, they’ve consistently been Wolverine movies with some X-Men on the side. I cannot call the film franchise totally successful when so many characters (Rogue, Cyclops, Colossus, Storm, Banshee, Emma Frost, Iceman, Juggernaut, Multiple Man, Callisto, Angel, Psylocke, etc.) have been adapted as shells of their comic selves. Like, X-Men: First Class is a blast, but would it have killed them to keep the unkillable mutant alive?
Over the last 9 years, it’s been hard to not look at Marvel Studios’ growing universe with jealousy. Those first movies, from Iron Man to Captain America: The First Avenger, distilled decades of continuity into tonally perfect films. And at that time, Fox released… X-Men Origins: Wolverine, a campy movie with a mouthless Deadpool!
But something changed as the years went on. Just as the 2000 X-Men made superheroes palatable to mainstream audiences burned by Batman & Robin, Marvel’s 2008 to 2014 run made them love the colorful bombast of comics that the X-Movies shied away from. In the wake of Guardians of the Galaxy’s runaway success, the X-Men movies could finally cut loose. And they had incentive to, because of competition! See? Down with monopolies!
Fox actually started to take risks with the X-Men, risks that (mostly) paid off. Deadpool hit in early 2016, a totally filthy and bonkers R-rated romp that catapulted a cult favorite character into the mainstream. X-Men: Apocalypse followed a few months later and, I gotta say, it really captured the feel of the sprawling, over-the-top, and nonsensical crossovers that dominated the books in the ’90s (either a good or bad thing). This year, the film Logan and the TV drama Legion have taken the franchise in wildly different directions. Logan took Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine to his gritty, heart-wrenching end, and Legion pushed small-screen boundaries with its twisting, nonlinear approach to a character study. Now we have the primetime network drama The Gifted, which feels so much like the ’90s X-Men cartoon. Next year we have the horror-tinged films New Mutants (which packed so many comic book Easter eggs into its one teaser) and X-Men: Dark Phoenix (which seeks to fix the mess that 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand made of the most iconic X-Men story ever).
Fox is finally taking risks with these characters. The franchise isn’t boring anymore, and it’s not as samey as it used to be. You’re not going to get further apart than Logan and Deadpool, or Legion and The Gifted–and all four of those takes are exciting for different reasons. There’s a wild variety with Fox’s X-Men right now, which sets it apart from how Marvel and DC are constructing their shared universes.
I know what we’d get from the X-Men in the MCU. We’d get a killer ensemble, we’d get Wolverine in a mask, we’d get crackling chemistry and dynamite performances–but it would look like a Marvel movie. With the X-Men at Fox, the future is a big question mark. How scary will New Mutants be? How faithful will Dark Phoenix be? Where does Legion go in Season 2, and how deep into the canon will The Gifted dive? And what the hell does a Channing Tatum Gambit movie even look like?! It’s totally uncertain, but Fox has finally hit their stride after plenty of stumbles. I want to watch Fox run with it.
