There may be good movies in the series, and sure the early movies were essential to getting superheroes mainstream, but now I'm starting to wonder if Fox having the rights for so long have overall done more harm than good.
I think there are several ways this shows:
- It's given people the impression that the X-Men are nothing more than a disposable offshoot of Marvel, rather than a true part of it. This despite the fact that the X-Men were far more popular than the Avengers (seen as a dumping ground for lesser heroes), with more crossovers, minis, acclaimed and bestselling stories, and spin-offs than the Avengers were getting at the same time. Because of how the Avengers are perceived now, many act like they've always been the core of Marvel, and that the X-Men exist outside of it, and that isn't true either. Before the MCU, I don't think anyone suggested the X-Men were somehow "less Marvel" than the other franchises.
- Many are only exposed to Wolverine, as everyone else got shafted. They may not know of the many, MANY awesome female characters that make up the series. I mean, Mystique was the only one who got promoted a bunch, and only Jennifer Lawrence (who was made a heroic paragon because it was her). Not just the female characters, either, but just a bunch of characters were reduced to little if not featured at all. I mean, take Cyclops for example.
- It's often thought that X-Men is about mutant racism and nothing else. While it's true that's a running theme, it's also true that the X-Men comics were just as fun as the rest of Marvel, featuring adventure, science fiction, fantasy, horror, drama, and general superheroics. I think Fox really only knew the racism aspect, and focused solely on that, and injecting the misery by focusing solely on mutant racism for twenty years kinda makes the brand go stale.
- Many aren't aware that the X-Men have a diverse and awesome rogues gallery that can rival Spider-Man. Many really only know Magneto, because that's who kept being used in the movies, and any time the main villain wasn't Magneto, they were either an anti-mutant racist (going with the point above), have a big relationship with Magneto, or are mostly forgettable. I mean, in the comics we have mutant supremacists, mutant criminal rings, elite societies, anti-mutant cells, aliens of multiple varieties, mad scientists, robots, magical beings, demonic creatures, interdimensional entities, and time-travelers, among miscellaneous rogues like the Juggernaut.
- Because of Marvel not having the X-Men movie rights for the first ten years, and when the MCU really made it big, Marvel (thanks to certain individuals like Ike Perlmutter) did everything they could to distance X-Men from the brand. This includes removing them from promotion, not allowing them in video games or animated series, keeping the X-Men on the outside in the comics, and making their roles in big crossover events minimal at best. All of this, combined with the X-Men not being in the MCU at the time when the franchise was really exploding to monumental heights, even led people to not know the X-Men actually share the same universe as the Avengers in the comics.
I think the reason we were all celebrating when Disney bought Fox, and when Feige teased X-Men for Phase 5 at SDCC, was not just the fact the we'll be seeing X-Men in the MCU. It's also that they'll be done better, they'll no longer be shafted in all media and stories, we'll get to see other parts of the mythos with a better continuity on the big screen, and they'll be able to interact with the others for a truly massive shared universe.
It's telling when disinterest completely overshadowed Dark Phoenix, as the general audience was substantially more interested in the MCU reboot that comes after the movie, rather than the movie itself. I think we all saw it as less of a "send-off", and more of something that stood in the way. It doesn't help the movie turned out terrible. However, even if it were good, it'd still be pointless to see a movie where all plot lines are going to be thrown out the window in a few years.
So is FoX-Men to blame for all of this? It sure feels like it.