R.I.P. The X-Men Movie Universe — 2000 - 2019

[mr.negativity]

Jean Grey: destined to keep dying.
This contains spoilers for X-Men: Apocalypse.

[mr.negativity]

A solo movie featuring the shape-changing anti-hero could happen "whether it’s Jennifer [Lawrence] or not," according to the 'X-Men: Apocalypse' director.



May 24, 2016 -

X-Men director Bryan Singer explains how Star Trek and T.H. White have helped guide the Marvel franchise


This week Singer announced his intention to step away from the X-Men movies for a while

[Gman2887]

[jellydonut25]

You made it further than I did then.
I can't stand her.

[DannyBeane]

I can't 99% of youtube bloggers. Their opinion means nothing and their personalities are obnoxious.

[Gargantuan Gargantua]

Seeing reaction videos gives me pain in my gut. I generally avoid youtuber commentary.

Also Rose McGowen sure showed X-Men a thing or too. Going after the hard targets Rose... female rights... in science fiction. God I'd love to see one of these spoiled hollywood brats get dropped off in the middle east and see how things go for them.

[Mysterio]

[jellydonut25]

So, at the behest of a friend, I actually gave it a shot. I quit when she started complaining about Wolverine "whining" all the time.
I've seen people complain about the characterization of Wolverine in these movies and wonder if they've read a Wolverine book since 1993, or are familiar with him outside the old cartoon at all. I'll grant that these movies have never given us that truly amoral Wolverine who is enthusiastic about killing and borders on bloodthirsty beast, but for me personally, that's not the most interesting characterization of Wolverine, nor is it the version I enjoy most. I like the guy who's at odds with his nature and his knowledge of what's right and what Xavier and the team expect from him. Wolverine works better when he's a bit more conflicted.
AND, Singer spent ONE movie focused on Wolverine trying to find his past (X2) and it's not been an issue since. In fact, he's been AWESOME since Origins made them re-evaluate the franchise.

She (and Faraci did this too) is retroactively bitching because... I don't really know why. Everyone's acting like ALL the X movies suck now just because they didn't like Apocalypse. It's confusing to me. People LOVED DOFP AND X2 and now these same people are claiming Singer can't possibly make a good X-Men movie. What the hell happened?

[Mysterio]

I personally didn't care for First Class or DOFP much either, but I fully acknowledge that I *haven't* read any of the comics since the mid-90s. But again, to each their own. I respect your right to your own opinions, I just personally wish things matched up better with the X-Men I grew up with, though an inevitable part of getting older is that anything made NOW is just gonna get further and further from the version of things I'd like to see. Ah, but that's life...

X-Men, honestly, was my primary comic. I *loved* it, and bought up older backissues from years before I started reading even though it was expensive for a kid. All those comics and many others are now missing, either tucked somewhere at my parents' house where we can't find them or even worse possibly left behind at my first house when I moved. It really pains me but I seem to have a dead spot in my brain (not literally) and I just can't freakin' remember where they are. 80s to early 90s X-Men was my main thing, so that's what I'm always hoping to see. Just personal preference.

[Gman2887]

The X-Men movies are awesome. Period. The first X-Men film was the first iteration of the franchise I actually liked... or loved. I never got in to or cared for the 1990s animated series and I've only read a few passing X-Men comics since I saw the first few movies. I watch/love these movies for Hugh Jackman's Wolverine, the characters I've come to love in them, a different flavor of superhero movie and, at this point, nostalgia that goes back 16 years. Sure, The Last Stand was one of the worst franchise "finales" of all time and X-Men Origins was eye rolling, but the good outweighs the bad by a long shot in my book. Quite frankly I'm both elated (mutant?) and proud to be the antithesis of the whine-ball's youtube video.

[Mysterio]

Huh. Well I think they mostly blow. I still can't get past the two radically different versions of Sabertooth so close together with no explanation, or how infusing Jackman's bones with liquid adamantium somehow turned his knobbly spiny bone claws into perfectly shaped and honed blades. Or why Juggernaut just kinda blew. But honestly, I'm glad you enjoyed them... there's no sarcasm at all in my voice there. I'm just perpetually disappointed in them. Plus Jennifer Lawrence has a face like a dropped pie and I have no idea why she's so popular now (and I'm from Louisville... I literally have to drive by a building with a giant multiple-stories-tall poster of her big round face on it every single day on my way home from work...)

[jellydonut25]

Bone claws were a thing in the comics LONG before Origins.

[The Shadow]

Wolverine's claws have had different explanations in the comics over the years, at different points the claws have been adamantium coated, just bone (if I recall correctly this was for a time after Magneto ripped the adamantium from Wolverine's skeleton), and originally implants that are not a part of his mutant abilities at all. Also, when Wolverine had bone claws the comics showed them still having the same claw shape as when Wolverine had an adamantium coated skeleton; whereas The Wolverine made the bone claws look like spikes which, honestly, is a head scratcher.

[Gman2887]

[jellydonut25]

[Mysterio]

[Mysterio]

[jellydonut25]

[Mysterio]

Well, I admit I'm older than f*** and am not the real target audience here. I was 23 in 1993... most of my reading was in the 80s, and I bought up back issues going back well before the time I started reading. I don't mind that he had bone claws, but if I'd seen them handled the same way in the comics I'd have been irked the same way. I'd have liked to see some sort of machining/tooling going on to turn them from bony spikes into perfect blades.

It's just one of the ironies of life... when I was younger special effect technology couldn't pull these kinds of movies off worth a darn. Now they can do whatever they want and make it look perfect, but the stories have moved WAY past what was the sweet spot for me. Eh, and so it goes.

[mr.negativity]

[Benjamin Haines]

I think I was lucky to have only been 11 years old when X-Men came out in 2000. As far as I knew at that point in time, the only comic-based superhero films were the four Superman movies and the four Batman flicks. I didn't have much exposure to comics as a kid so I knew the X-Men from the 1990s animated series and their memorable guest appearances in the Spider-Man series. I was blown away when I saw that first movie on glorious VHS. It and Sam Raimi's Spider-Man two years later really got me jazzed for the budding genre of superhero cinema, and then X2: X-Men United came along in 2003 and managed to outdo the first movie. At that point X-Men became one of my favorite film series along with Godzilla and I couldn't wait to see where they took it next…

And god DAMN did they mess it up after that. I hate X-Men: The Last Stand. It took a few disparate elements that worked fine unto themselves and mashed them with a plethora of terrible creative decisions into a whirlwind of stupidity. Then X-Men Origins: Wolverine botched both Wolverine's origin story and the character of Deadpool in the most mind-boggling ways, with a horrendous script and every generic action movie cliche imaginable. After that I just stopped caring about what they did with the franchise. I genuinely believed that the days of good X-Men movies coming from Fox were behind us.

Now I regret skipping X-Men: First Class in the theater and not catching up with it on DVD until over a year later. It's fantastic! I was shocked by its slick editing, talented cast, and thematically rich script with sharp dialogue and tight pacing. I thought it was a complete 180 from the prior two X-flicks and I suddenly found myself excited again about what would come next.

The Wolverine was a delightfully smaller-scale kind of movie that hit all the right notes. It was good in the theater and the extended version is even better. Deadpool was hilariously well done, carving out its own niche and expanding Fox's cinematic X-universe. Both movies together are a welcome course-correction from the Origins disaster. I also appreciated how, even while Days of Future Past made it a point to acknowledge The Last Stand as canon so as to highlight the significance of how the future is altered in the end, both DoFP and First Class before it also made a point to explicitly ignore Origins altogether. I'm glad that the movies we've gotten since that fiasco haven't been bound to it.

I think X-Men: Days of Future Past is one of the best examples of the genre to date. I love the way it adapts that storyline from the comics (and the '90s cartoon) while flipping the premise on itself. In both the comic and the cartoon, we the reader/viewer have known that particular iteration of the X-Men for several stories when they receive a visitor from their dystopian future. Fox's series of X-Men films does just the opposite. We followed the original ensemble cast of Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellan, Halle Berry, etc. from X-Men to X2 to The Last Stand and then The Wolverine, and it is that particular iteration of the X-Men whose timeline becomes bleak and who end up sending someone back in time to change the past. I love the fact that the X-Men film series I've been following since I was 11, the one that fudged the whole Dark Phoenix story so badly, was in retrospect a cinematic representation of the X-Men's dystopian future timeline.

Having that as the backbone of a Days of Future Past movie gives those prior four films a special place in the cinematic canon going forward. With X-Men: Apocalypse and whatever comes next, we're now watching a new X-Men timeline unfold on the screen, one which only includes First Class and Days of Future Past as part of its cinematic past. But the very fact that DoFP is a part of this new canon means that X1-X3 and The Wolverine are still just as much a part of the complete cinematic narrative. Bryan Singer and the folks at Fox managed to successfully reboot their X-Men film series with a new cast, but unlike the dead-end route Sony went down with The Amazing Spider-Man, Fox managed to pull it off without actually disregarding the movies that came before (except X-Men Origins: Wolverine, blessedly).

Aside from those two major duds in 2006 and 2009, I really dig the X-Men film series. Between these movies, Del Toro's Hellboy duology, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and Nolan's Batman trilogy, Hollywood's long dive into the comic-based superhero genre in this century has been a real treat to experience as it's happening. Our cup runneth over with quality examples of the genre and I think the X-Men films have been among the best of them, particularly X2, First Class, and Days of Future Past.

[mr.negativity]

[mr.negativity]

[jellydonut25]

It's somewhat unfortunate that Singer may never get to do the Dark Phoenix adaptation that he has always wanted to do, but if they are moving on from him, just hit the reset button. Best way to do that would be to eliminate Lawrence and reconfigure the team. Keep McAvoy but bring in some new (at least, new to the movie universe) characters and just set off down a different path without all the continuity headaches

[daikaijusaurus]

I like the idea of an X-Force movie. I think what they should do is not hit the reset button, but just move forward with an X-Force movie set in the same universe and timeline as XMen Apocalypse. This way, we have cool new mutants, new storylines, and any characters from the X-Men films ( Xavior, Magneto, Mystique, etc.) can make appearances.

Just move forward, the X Universe is so vast and so much to explore. Either do that or just give the rights back to Marvel.