With fans feeling superhero movie and remake fatigue, Marvel should be careful with how they handle bringing back the X-Men and find a fresher angle.
The X-Men have been popular superheroes for decades, so when superhero movies were in fashion again, it was no surprise when the live-action movies were made. Marvel has now capitalized on the superhero film genre with their entire shared universe, but the X-Men had been noticeably left out because Fox still owned the rights after making the first trilogy. Marvel finally has the X-Men in their hands and plans to work them into the MCU now that the multiverse has been opened up, but instead of bringing back the same old team, perhaps trying a different angle will help the characters stick this time.
Studios keep trying to bring back the X-Men, but the results often fall flat. One fresh angle they haven’t done yet, is a prequel about Charles Xavier and Magneto’s relationship, even before they began forming a school. X-Men: First Class was close with its introduction to the creation of the X-Men and Brotherhood of Evil, but it still focused on the X-Men team, especially after X-Men: First Class. There is so much material in the comics and earlier cartoons to inspire a film focused on these two characters alone and even their experiences before meeting each other.
The Comics And Early Cartoons Have Material To Draw From
In Uncanny X-Men #161 and X-Men: The Animated Series Season 1, Episode 3 “Enter Magneto,” Professor Xavier and Magneto are shown first meeting in Israel at a hospital for Holocaust victims. Professor Xavier had been working there, using his mutant abilities to secretly help the patients heal. Eventually, Xavier and Magneto reveal to each other that they are both mutants and begin their friendship with deep philosophical discussions on their thoughts on about mutants’ place in the world. This difference in philosophies is the crux of their relationship and the battle between mutants as a whole when you strip it down to its core.
While only a scene in Bryan Singer’s X-Men, the opening scene showing Magneto as a child during the Holocaust was the most emotional scene of the entire movie. It’s important to remember that this ushered in the first of the X-Men films, so it was a unique choice to open the first film with such a serious and traumatic event of the character considered the main villain of the series. Movie audiences were introduced to the film series by Magneto as a young boy and his parents were led to the concentration camps by Nazis. The scene is dark, gray, and raining, young Magneto is scared and then, he is separated from his parents by the Nazis. His mother cries out and he cries back, trying to get to each, but both are stopped by the Nazis. It’s here that young Magneto reaches out his hand and the iron fence to the camp starts to bend. The scene is heartbreaking, powerful, and keeps going until Magneto is knocked out with the butt of a gun, revealing the mangled fence he contorted with his powers. The scene was also so effective, that it was recreated in a shorter, less detailed version for X-Men: First Class, but it was not quite as impactful.
An origin movie about Magneto could work again today if done in the right style. While the first Wolverine origin movie was a flop, the Logan film is considered the best X-Men film by some fans and critics. If an origin film about Magneto, or about Xavier and Magneto’s relationship from their first meeting up until X-Men: First Class, were made in a more philosophical, mature style like Logan, it would be a fresh story brought to screen that hasn’t been done multiple times over a short span already. Part of the appeal of X-Men: First Class was how it gave audiences a look at the earlier relationship between Xavier and Magneto when the X-Men were first formed. While it still involved younger versions of the X-Men team characters we had grown to know already, the focus was more on Xavier and Magneto. Even with the younger version of the X-Men continuing for movies after, the plots became less about Xavier and Magneto and more about the other mutants that formed the X-Men. This is where the ratings began to fall again.
Using the X-Men As A Team Is Getting Old And Not Performing Well
Even before X-Men Origins: Wolverine came out, the portrayal of the X-Men as a team started to fall apart. Bryan Singer directed the first two films, X-Men and X2, but left the third film to direct Superman Returns. The film was passed on to Brett Ratner, who was only known for directing music videos and the Rush Hour movies at the time. X-Men: The Last Stand went off the rails and failed to land the trilogy effectively. Dark Phoenix was finally brought to the big screen, only for the Phoenix character and story arc to be handled poorly. Not only that, but she kills the love of Jean Grey’s life, Scott Summers within the first 25 minutes of the movie. James Marsden was playing the role of Richard White in Superman Returns, so because the studio refused to wait, the X-Men films lost both for the third entry. Cyclops is an important character in the franchise, being the leader of the X-Men, and he is treated as if he means nothing. The death wasn’t even on-screen. Audiences were given Wolverine and Storm going to the lake and finding Cyclops’ glasses as the only thing that remained of him.
Bryan Singer did return to the director’s chair for more X-Men films, starting in 2014 with X-Men: Days of Future’s Past. While fans were pleased with the ways he tried to use the film’s narrative to correct several of the mistakes made in X-Men: The Last Stand, the next film, X-Men: Apocalypse, was not praised as highly. Part of the problem with X-Men: Apocalypse is that in the X-Men world, Apocalypse is equivalent to Thanos in size of influence on the story and amount of power. Trying to fit his storyline into one film could never have been pulled off correctly and deserved to be built up over time in the same way, as they did with Magneto. Being an ancient mutant, Apocalypse as a character was also criticized for not being as intimidating as he should have been, so the stakes of the plot did not feel exciting enough. It received a 47% on Rotten Tomatoes.
After the 2000s X-Men trilogy, Fox wanted to create origin story films for several characters, including Magneto and Wolverine. Since Wolverine was the breakout character of those films thanks to Hugh Jackman, the X-Men Origins: Wolverine movie was made first. Unfortunately, it was so terrible it killed any chance of the Magneto origin story coming out at the time.
Fans will never forget the disservice done to Deadpool and neither will Ryan Reynolds as can be seen in the between-credit scenes of Deadpool 2. Luckily, fans will get the redemption film they deserve this year as Wolverine will be alongside the “merc with the mouth” in Deadpool 3.
As for the X-Men, fans can hope Marvel can also give these superheroes the redemption they deserve on screen as well. That may mean holding back the whole team and going for a simpler approach with Professor Xavier and Magneto that will ultimately reward both fans and studios.
