The future of the X-Men on the big screen

[Ferro]

Look, No More Mutants sucked, but I don't hold Wanda as a character responsible. That was Quesada shutting down Morrison's monster by any means necessary. She was just the tool he chose.

It will be interesting to see how they proceed with the introduction of mutants though; it very much is a big question without easy, elegant answers.

I most certaintly can and I will, my pettyness is more than enough for the characthers and quesada, and her uncanny avengers hot takes settled it, I will have beef with wunda mooxifphone.. forever.
And yeah its a tough answer, the red sore is not the answer.

[CRaymond]

House of M happened years after Morrison left. If anything, it destroyed Academy X, Whedon, Claremont’s “Reloaded” status quo, with an expanded school and global mutant police(plus dinosaur people).

[xhx23x]

Honestly, I don't think there's an elegant way to introduce the mutants here since the MCU has been running for so long, unless it's hinted to be something that happened in The Snap/Blip's five year gap, where since we didn't see it anything can be explain away pretty easily within.

If they go with Wanda, I'm of two minds on that. I like the idea of they pulling a reverse M-day and she adds mutants into existance, either on her show or on Dr. Strange 2, but I only want that to happen if the plan is to reintroduce the twins as Mags's kids. Otherwise, yeah keep her away from it.

The Eternal stuff always seem kinda dumb to me in the comics, but hey, it gives them a chance to be connected to a bigger franchise from the get go. My only gripe there is that I don't see the benifit to the X-Men there.

My point is, that they could just appear without any explanation and no one but a few hard core of us will really care all that much. The bigger thing will always be the Roster and then the casting.

[Jackraow21]

I think they are going to sow the seeds for mutants in Eternals. For sure, like 100%. You've got the Celestials, Deviants, and Eternals all in one place, talking about ancient history and the development of humanity. It's their actual comic book origins for mutants. If Feige doesn't slip it in there somehow(the Eternals even fought Apocalypse back in the day), I would be outraged(like I am about my boy Adam Warlock getting his best story stolen from him before he's even been actually introduced, or that Hela wasn't Lady Death somehow and also tied into the whole Thanos thing).

As for Wanda. I mean, look, I've never been that into her in the comics anyways, but all that HoM stuff isn't on her, it's on the writers, and MCU Wanda isn't about any of that. Let them tell their story. I honestly don't care all that much how they bring in the mutants, I just want them given their due onscreen after all this time. If Wanda pops open a multiverse on accident and that somehow results in me getting a new Storm onscreen kicking it with BP and Thor, I'm here for it!

I agree. Would love to see the Multiverse popped open and flashes of alt universe worlds with mutants (e.g., Deadpool’s universe, a glimpse of a world where the X-men are celebrities and heroes — perhaps showing James McAvoy, Sophie Turner, Tye Sheridan, Alexandra Shipp and Kodi Smit-McPhee at an event signing autographs as celebrated heroes — and and maybe even an Old Man Logan version of the MCU where the only hero left is Hugh Jackman’s Logan). Then in the Eternals we learn about the origin of not only the Eternals themselves, but the Deviants and the Celestials and, yes, the seeds of mutation being planted. Which leads to the question: Where are the mutants in our version of the MCU? The one we’ve been following since the first Iron Man (call it MCU 616).

And then we find that in MCU 616, mutants have always been here, just in hiding. I still say make it so the Illuminati have been helping Xavier to keep them secret, and they’ve been operating out of the school for many years. The best way to do this in my view would be a 12-episode Disney+ series, because there would be so much to unpack. Use that to show the X-men operating out of the school in secret, the many interactions they’ve had with other MCU characters which were either kept secret or the world was made to forget about for the safety of their species, and so on and so forth. Start with their first mission against Magneto and the Brotherhood in Episode 1, then jump to years later after a rescue mission prompted Xavier and Cyclops to recruit others to the team by Episode 2 (that mission being Krakoa but we don’t see it because we’re saving that for the movie), and now we’ve got the ANAD team. We bury Thunderbird, who died on this rescue mission, and we meet his younger brother James who blames the X-men for his older brother’s death and fights Wolverine. So we’re moving fast through established X-men history here. By Episode 3, we’re rolling with the famed Claremont/Byrne team (Cyclops, Storm, Jean, Nightcrawler, Wolverine, Colossus) and we meet Kitty Pryde; seeds for Dark Phoenix are planted on a rescue mission into space and the government announces Project Wideawake and the Sentinels. At some point we see the deal Xavier struck with the Illuminati (Stark, Strange, Richards, Fury and Namorita representing King Namor) to keep mutants’ existence secret, after the X-men infiltrate and destroy the Sentinel Master Mold facility owned by Trask Industries and people fear we are on the cusp of war between humans and mutants. The series would go on to detail other adventures of the X-men in the past, and would lead into whatever set up they want to use for the X-men movies. I would open the movie with a flashback to Krakoa, however, showing Cyclops and Xavier recruiting the ANAD team and rescuing the O5. Mainly because at some point we get back to Krakoa and the whole DoX set up in the films. If not right away, at some point. Maybe by the second or third film. Because it’s visually interesting and very much distinguishes the MCU X-men from the FOX-men with their more grounded school setting.

They could follow up the X-men Disney+ series with a Wolverine solo, and then start spinning other characters and teams (e.g., New Mutants, X-Factor) off into more content for their streaming service. They’d reserve some spinoffs like Deadpool and X-Force, however, for feature films. Especially these two as they’d be darker and more self contained movies probably with an R-rating. But basically everything else besides those two darker spinoff franchises and the main X-men tent pole films, would be reserved for Disney+ which gives them endless amounts of X-content there.

That’s how I’d do it anyway.

[yogaflame]

I think the Disney+ potential really is a game-changer for the X-Men. Their biggest problem onscreen stems from the fact that there are soo many characters and the typical movie format just wasn't used well enough to service them all(obviously the Russos have shown that you can actually develop lots of characters in movies, but I digress...). If they can get a series(with multiple seasons even) that link up with the big movies, we could be in for a treat!

I wouldn't spend much time with the Fox-Men though. A quick cameo of Steward and Jackman would be more than enough to acknowledge them as part of the multiverse, but I wouldn't even waste time or energy getting the rest of them onscreen again. Bring in the new MCU 616 mutants!!

Also, I wouldn't try to pack that much content into singular episodes. Take your time! Spread it out. There is so much great content to unpack. That's why I would almost prefer that there weren't many mutants yet before Thanos's snap(maybe just handful of the older characters, like Destiny, Mystique, Sabretooth, Wolverine, Gateway, Xavier and Magneto, for example). Keep the content in the present, not always referenced in flashbacks or montages. So let's say Scott/Jean/Ororo were all just children when the snap happened, and didn't get dusted, so they had 5 years to grow up and are now just manifesting their powers and are still young teenagers/college aged at most when we actually start focusing on them. So they can develop in realtime, over the course of many films and series(which is the greatest strength of the MCU in my opinion).

[Hybrid]

Marvel Studios to Bring an Obscure New Mutants Hero the MCU.

According to MCU Cosmic, Thor: Love and Thunder will introduce Mist. She's very obscure with only a handful of appearances, but was introduced in the New Mutants and introduced Moonstar to the Valkyries. That they would choose this obscure character to introduce is curious. Could they be planning to introduce a rebooted New Mutants team in the MCU? Wouldn't surprise me if Phase 5 has that as a Disney+ series.

What do you think?

[phoenixzero23]

If Disney decided to not used the usual characters like Jean, Cyclops, Storm, Nightcrawler or Wolverine (he will be there I know), if those characters were absolutely forbidden.
What line up do you think could work for the MCU?
On what characters would fall the spotlight?

[Hybrid]

If Disney decided to not used the usual characters like Jean, Cyclops, Storm, Nightcrawler or Wolverine (he will be there I know), if those characters were absolutely forbidden.
What line up do you think could work for the MCU?
On what characters would fall the spotlight?

I really don't think anyone is "forbidden". Feige has been very excited about the sandbox they have on their hands, given how much larger the MCU is now. Besides, many FoX-Men characters just weren't done well and need to do better. Not sure what you're getting at there.

[phoenixzero23]

I really don't think anyone is "forbidden". Feige has been very excited about the sandbox they have on their hands, given how much larger the MCU is now. Besides, many FoX-Men characters just weren't done well and need to do better. Not sure what you're getting at there.

It is just a little exercise, these characters aren't forbidden I was asking, what if Disney wanted to do something extremely different and decided to not use them. Who would you want them to use?

[Hybrid]

Kitty Pryde is a good start.

[Maestro 216]

Jubilee for China support?

[Sutekh]

If Disney decided to not used the usual characters like Jean, Cyclops, Storm, Nightcrawler or Wolverine (he will be there I know), if those characters were absolutely forbidden.
What line up do you think could work for the MCU?
On what characters would fall the spotlight?

They've managed to get some good mileage out of Polaris and Thunderbird, on The Gifted, and Legion, on his own show, so I kinda think almost anyone *could* work.

Of the older crew, Iceman and the Beast and Angel are still available (although Angel seems the least likely to appear of those three), and from the All-New batch, Colossus and Banshee are options (more Colossus than Banshee, I'd think). Newer popular characters like Gambit and Rogue seem like must-haves, in a team without Scott and Jean (or Logan), and maybe Kitty, Emma, Dazzler, Polaris, Bishop, Jubilee, etc.

Just to pick from those options; Beast, Iceman, Gambit, Rogue, Polaris, Bishop, Jubilee.

Or they could get totally radical, and pick from X-Men who've never appeared in a Fox production, like Sunfire, Frenzy, Lifeguard, Trinary, etc.

[Salvatore Frost]

I think make the mutant gene dormant in human DNA for centurys but having a boom after the snap could make sense I guess.

Anyway, It seems really safe to go with the ANAD Team but maybe with more female characters.

[Sutekh]

I think make the mutant gene dormant in human DNA for centurys but having a boom after the snap could make sense I guess.

It would be interesting to position the sudden emergence in numbers of the X-gene as being some sort of evolutionary stress reaction to the snap, as if humanity, as a species, was desperately kickstarting it's own evolution to try and avoid possible extinction... The stress and uncertainty of the snap (What caused it? Could it happen again? Was 'half the people in the world' just a test run? Will I be next?) could certainly be seen as a strong motivator for the human race to try anything to avoid dust-to-dust-ing.

It's obvious techno-babble 'bad science' but it's the sort of bad science (bitten by a transgenic spider! Hit by gamma rays!) of which comic book superhero origins are made.

[Captain Buttocks]

I think make the mutant gene dormant in human DNA for centurys but having a boom after the snap could make sense I guess.

Anyway, It seems really safe to go with the ANAD Team but maybe with more female characters.

I like this idea, but it could be tricky to put Apocalypse, Sinister, Wolverine, Namor and older mutants in.

Maybe WandaVision and the snap could work in some way?