Originally Posted by
Jackraow21
I think the X-men IP is incredibly powerful and it’s a broadly recognized brand, so it would be hard for Marvel to move away from it.
Having said that… if they were bound and determined to do so, they absolutely could. I mean, this is a group of folks who made Black Panther a household name and just produced a Shang Chi film in the middle of a pandemic that broke box office records. Shang-f@#$ing-Chi! So you better believe that if they launched an X-men film with the title of ‘The Mutants’ and never once used the X-men name in the film it would still be freakin’ huge. Honestly, I don’t get bent around the axle about stuff like this. If they want to ditch the X-men name in favor of The Mutants that’s fine. Just make it awesome and do my mutants justice!
I can actually see them leaning into the Krakoan status quo too as a way to further differentiate from FOX’s X-men franchise. So perhaps you’d have ‘The Mutants: House of X’ as the first film, then ‘The Mutants: Dawn of X’ as the sequel, with perhaps ‘The Mutants: Reign of X’ as the third one. And so on and so forth. While it would no doubt positively inflame the purists, it would still be huge with audiences. Furthermore, it’s not like they have to throw the baby out with the bath water. They could do an X-men: Hidden Years show on Disney+ which might go back and fill in the gaps of the pre-Krakoan era, back when they operated out of the school in secret and did call themselves the X-men. They could even have a tongue-in-cheek reference from Jean or somebody how the name feels a bit… patriarchal. Which explains why they ditched it later on when they became a nation-state. This would fit alongside the rumored Wolverine anthology series, filling in his MCU history throughout the decades, quite nicely. And then of course they could do an X-Force spinoff, either as Dis+ series or more likely films which follow the whole mutant CIA concept.
Could be a lot of fun actually, depending on how they end up folding mutants into the MCU (multiverse merger? House of M reveal that explains they were always there until Wanda wiped them out? Etc.). Whatever they do, I think they’re going to have to establish that mutants have been there for some time. I don’t think you can use The Snap as the catalyst for mutations popping up because then older characters like Magneto, Xavier, Wolverine, etc., have no MCU history whatsoever. They just essentially became mutants in the present day like all the rest. That’s too radical a departure IMO and erases all their history. I suppose they could do that, and take more an Ultimate Universe approach to things (e.g., Logan was just a normal human operative for Department H until he became a mutant after The Snap, and then Weapon X took him and bonded the adamantium to him sometime in the past five years). But like I said, that would be a radical departure. Then again, so is the whole Krakoa thing. So who knows?
Honestly, I can’t wait to find out how they’re going to introduce mutants to the MCU and am keeping an open mind because thus far Feige has delivered. At least IMO.