Jennifer Lawrence’s Fame Totally Ruined the ‘X-Men’ Franchise

Jennifer Lawrence’s success has led to plenty of good things. The Hunger Games fans love those movies, and the internet at large went through a phase where we all loved her “holy crap WTF” responses to fame. Lawrence’s success is undeniable; ten of her films have grossed over $100 million at the box office. The success is also deserved, because she’s super talented (one Oscar and three Golden Globes). Lawrence is currently sitting, probably slouched over all casual, at the top of the A-list. She’s a winner, but I want to talk about the loser, the price paid for her success. That loser?

The X-Men film franchise.

Apologies to Ms. Lawrence, who I know is definitely reading this on her phone while she, I dunno, waits in line at Starbucks or Target or somewhere we all go, because she’s just like us. I do feel bad for dragging her just a teeny bit on her birthday (happy birthday, J. Law!), which is why I want to clarify that I’m not dragging her… entirely. I’m actually just dragging how her fame–her totally warranted and deserved fame!–derailed a franchise that I hold near and dear to my heart.

When Lawrence was cast as a young Mystique in the ’60s-set X-Men reboot-turned-prequel X-Men: First Class, she was just the Oscar-nominated young’un from Winter’s Bone. First Class, the first X-Men movie with decent reviews in 8 years, kinda made Lawrence a star. The film grossed $146 million domestically, 22 times what Winter’s Bone pulled in (!). And nine months after First Class, Lawrence made her debut as Katniss Everdeen in 2012’s blockbuster hit The Hunger Games. Then in 2013, Lawrence won the Best Actress Oscar for Silver Linings Playbook and the Hunger Games sequel Catching Fire outgrossed the first film.

The X-Men franchise, which had modest success with First Class, was all of a sudden grandfathered into the Jennifer Lawrence phenomenon, all because she signed a three-picture deal back when she was just a 20-year-old up-and-comer. Even though Lawrence had her own mega franchise and a career as a serious award-magnet actress, she still had to do 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past and 2016’s X-Men: Apocalypse. And when you have a star suddenly as hot as Lawrence in your cast, well, things have to change.

This is where I point out two things: Mystique was nowhere near as big of a deal in the comics as she was in the movies, and it’s not Lawrence’s fault that the X-Men movies suddenly became all about Mystique, to the detriment of every other character. In the comics, Mystique isn’t a bit player but she’s not a major player either. For one thing, she’s very rarely been an actual member of the X-Men or any hero team; she’s much more the X-Men’s cunning and conniving adversary, the kind of by-any-means-necessary villain that you’d love to see Lawrence sink her teeth into.

Lawrence does not play that character. She didn’t even play that character in First Class, which introduced the retcon of Mystique growing up with Professor X as his quasi adoptive sister. But that film ends with Mystique given reason to hate humanity, and reason to become the scheming strategist of the comics. Instead of letting Lawrence, the hero of The Hunger Games, play an outright villain, the X-Men trilogy treats Mystique as a morally gray character who always does the right thing in the end. She exists between Professor X and Magneto on the alignment spectrum, and she becomes way more of a symbol than an actual character. Whoever sways Mystique is the man that’s winning! As if that’s not enough, she gets a romance with the similarly blue Beast, meaning Mystique spends most of her time in three movies acting as the object of affection, pulled between three different men.

If Lawrence hadn’t gotten super famous between First Class and Days of Future Past, the screenwriters might have actually let Mystique be a lot more unapologetically vicious like her comic counterpart. Maybe she could have gotten a compressed Anakin/Vader fall and redemption arc. But the film’s hesitancy to let Mystique be as bad as comic fans wanted her to be resulted in a boring take on the character.

Lawrence looked bored playing the character too. J. Law’s energetic personality is what made her into memes, and her charismatic and commanding turns won her those awards. Lawrence was an actor with–and again, biggest X-Men fan ever–better things to do than star in those X-Men movies and it showed. One major example: Mystique goes from being “mutant and proud” in First Class, unashamed of her natural blue form, to spending 90% of the sequels in her normal-passing blonde form. Lawrence understandably didn’t like all that makeup. And when a movie has a star as big as Lawrence, you don’t want to obscure their face even if it contradicts the core of the character.

But none of that stopped the filmmakers from continuing to put Lawrence, along with James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender, front and center. Suddenly Mystique was the wayward moral center of the X-Men (say what?), and suddenly Mystique was a major protagonist, even when a whole new crop of kids showed up in X-Men: Apocalypse. Even as the movies became more crowded, the braintrust of director Bryan Singer and writer/producer Simon Kinberg only cared about Xavier and Magneto’s ex-bromance and the increasingly tired Mystique. No one upstages Mystique in these movies, except for the men that love her!

The thing is, I don’t think Days of Future Past or even Apocalypse are bad (fight me!). I enjoy the hell out of them! It’s just that when I watch them, I see two movies with a bland Mystique in the lead as opposed to true ensemble films. I do have reason to hope for more with next year’s X-Men: Dark Phoenix. For one thing, Lawrence’s contract was up and she chose to come back. This is a film, hopefully a role, she wants to do again! And hopefully putting Jean Grey (Sophie Turner) in the lead will allow Mystique to go to places she couldn’t when she was in the spotlight. All I want is for Lawrence to be as dynamic as Mystique as she is in her Oscar bait.

Where to watch X-Men: First Class