X-23: The Best At What SHE Does Appreciation 2022

[Gnostic]

That certainly could be the case, esp. considering that Patrick Stewart is playing Professor X again in some capacity and Keen was extremely well received as the character and seems to have been building a solid acting reputation since. However, I'm not exactly taking it as a given; so far, the MCU has recast before when bringing in new properties, they're not quite as prone to have legacy casting the way the DC Arrowverse has been, and it remains to be seen what they'd want to do with X-23 if they put her in a movie; given how slowly the wheels turn, it could be possible that Keen has aged out of the role by the time anything happens. There is also the advantage of casting a child actress again so they can grow up with the role, a bit like what we're getting with the Tom Holland Spider-Man.

As noted before, I hope I'm wrong; losing the X-23 solo movie was the deal breaker for me in being really happy over Disney buying Fox and the X-Men movies and I would like to see Keen come back again as the character (either adapt her adventures as a young adult or maybe do something where we see both her adult and childhood self somehow; maybe an origins movie cutting between her training and escape from the lab that cloned her and the "present" where she's on a mission to bring them to justice?). Still, I think it's a longer shot than other role reprisals we've gotten to date.

Well, Spider-Man: No Way Home and Hawkeye shows that Marvel Studios was willing to keeping the Defenders series canon despite not being involved in their production. They were made by Marvel TV and Netflix.

Marvel was even initially open to making the Amazing Spider-Man series canon to the MCU. Oscorp tower was going to appear in the first Avengers movie. They only changed gears after Sony ignored Kevin Feige's advice on The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and the film underperforming. There was also a leaked email where Feige suggested that he would not have rebooted the Sam Raimi series.

Marvel Studios is of course a business, so naturally they would want to keep around properties that are profitable regardless of who made them.

[Ambaryerno]

Sheesh, kids grow up; it's a part of life and they shouldn't be shamed for that, esp. in regards to a fictional character they played years ago.

Besides, in any event, it's not like there's a plan for X-23 to be in a movie anytime soon, much less that Dafne Keen would reprise the character if that was the case. And, if that does happen, Marvel Studios has proven to pretty good about translating their characters well. (Heck, I'd like to see her come back as X-23, either a new version a la J. K. Simmons playing MCU Jameson in the Spider-Man movies or her reprising the original X-23 is some kind of crossover, like the various supporting characters in the last Spider-Man movie.)

(On top of all that, X-23 has been depicted as growing up to be an attractive young woman from day one, so I don't see what the issue in the first place is.)

I was frankly just commenting on the fact that, "Holy crap, has it really been that long?"

[WebLurker]

Well, Spider-Man: No Way Home and Hawkeye shows that Marvel Studios was willing to keeping the Defenders series canon despite not being involved in their production. They were made by Marvel TV and Netflix.

No, it just shows that they're willing to port over well-liked actors, like they did with J. K. Simmons. If you look on YouTube, the only pre-Disney+ show put on the MCU playlists is Agent Carter; the Defenders shows, Agents of SHIELD, etc., are grouped with the other non-MCU "legacy" films. So, yeah, Defenders is not canon to the MCU, the fact that we saw Charlie Cox and Vincent D'Onofrio as Matt Murdock and Kingpin in Spider-Man: No Way Home and Hawkeye just provides that Murdock and Kingpin exist in the MCU.

Marvel was even initially open to making the Amazing Spider-Man series canon to the MCU. Oscorp tower was going to appear in the first Avengers movie. They only changed gears after Sony ignored Kevin Feige's advice on The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and the film underperforming. There was also a leaked email where Feige suggested that he would not have rebooted the Sam Raimi series.

That would've been interesting had it gone through, esp. in regards to how the two franchise's would've evolved after the fact.

Marvel Studios is of course a business, so naturally they would want to keep around properties that are profitable regardless of who made them.

Course, they can just keep it around while still doing their own thing.

I was frankly just commenting on the fact that, "Holy crap, has it really been that long?"

Okay.

[Gnostic]

No, it just shows that they're willing to port over well-liked actors, like they did with J. K. Simmons. If you look on YouTube, the only pre-Disney+ show put on the MCU playlists is Agent Carter; the Defenders shows, Agents of SHIELD, etc., are grouped with the other non-MCU "legacy" films. So, yeah, Defenders is not canon to the MCU, the fact that we saw Charlie Cox and Vincent D'Onofrio as Matt Murdock and Kingpin in Spider-Man: No Way Home and Hawkeye just provides that Murdock and Kingpin exist in the MCU.

Really? Because Kevin Feige said they were canon.



Vincent D'Onofrio said that Kingpin was the same one from the Netflix series.

[Jackraow21]

That certainly could be the case, esp. considering that Patrick Stewart is playing Professor X again in some capacity and Keen was extremely well received as the character and seems to have been building a solid acting reputation since. However, I'm not exactly taking it as a given; so far, the MCU has recast before when bringing in new properties, they're not quite as prone to have legacy casting the way the DC Arrowverse has been, and it remains to be seen what they'd want to do with X-23 if they put her in a movie; given how slowly the wheels turn, it could be possible that Keen has aged out of the role by the time anything happens.

See, I’m really hoping Kevin Feige goes the Spider-man: Homecoming route with the X-men, in that he doesn’t rehash the origin story rather he picks up in the here and now somehow. To me it would be amazing if somehow it was revealed that mutants did exist in the MCU all along, but Wanda made everyone forget them and de-powered them… but somehow Doctor Strange and this multiversal Illuminati from Doctor Strange 2 fixes that by the end of the film.

This would allow them to do an X-men: The Forgotten Years series on Disney+, detailing their MCU history and filling in the gaps plus they could just hit the ground running in the here and now for the first movie… with a modern X-men team that has some serious mysteries that need answering…

- First, I like the idea of a core X-men team made up of Scott, Jean, Storm, Sunfire, Rogue, Wolverine (Laura) and Thunderbird.
- Right out of the gate you have a mystery surrounding John Proudstar, as everyone remembers him dying years ago but somehow he’s back, plus the biggest mystery of all — where is Logan?
- The X-men now operate out of Krakoa and the beginning of the Uncanny X-men film shows them leaving the school and starting their new nation-state, very similar to House of X.
- This is because in the wake of Wanda’s actions being discovered and the fact that she is indeed a mutant, the world is incredibly fearful of mutants and a huge anti-mutant backlash is brewing across the globe (with ORCHIS being formed behind the scenes).
- There are lots of supporting characters around Krakoa, including Beast (who is also a diplomat) and Forge and Dr. Cecelia Reyes, along with others like Gambit, Colossus, Jubilee, etc., living on the island.
- In the first film we uncover The Resurrection Protocols, hence solving the mystery of how Thunderbird is back, and it ends with a post-credits stinger that sees Beast conferring with Sage in a Krakoan no-place (which cannot be detected by the island or its many telepaths) about the many threats that are out there… “ORCHIS, the Russians, even rumors of a re-emergence of Weapon Plus”… and suddenly you hear a gravely voice off camera, which belongs to someone in the shadows smoking a cigar… he says “that’s why we have X-Force” and you see on the computer screen a list of potential recruits including Archangel, Domino, Fantomex and Deadpool… at which point Logan walks up to the screen and says, “No. Not him.” Teeing up an X-Force spinoff as well as that rumored Wolverine anthology series on Disney+ which would detail the sordid history of Weapon Plus and how this conspiracy literally connects almost the entire MCU from the Super Soldier Program to Weapon X to modern day Weapon Plus cranking out super Sentinels.

At any rate, I’d love to see something like that which has Laura as the X-men’s Wolverine from the jump, and Logan operating from the shadows leading X-Force in the MCU.

[Ambaryerno]

Ugh. They need to keep this entire Krakoa mess the hell OUT of the films.

The one thing I agree with is using Laura from the start to give Logan a break while they figure out how to handle that casting in the wake of Jackman.

[Jackraow21]

I think they need to go ahead and cast their Logan and have him operating from the shadows, or somewhere outside the X-men, otherwise they’ll create an even bigger mess in terms of backlash towards Laura. The best way to have her be well received in the role is to have Logan otherwise occupied somewhere else in the MCU.

[Malachi]

It's a good story. Laura is more of a supporting character, but it does really help flesh out her situation between Innocence Lost and NXM. And while Marvel downplays it these days, the events do get the occasional reference.

It wasn’t for me. In a way it encapsulates Joe Q. Tradegy over substance.

I can see why it is part of Laura’s history but I prefer it to stay that way. Something that is sometimes brought up but never visited again. It didn’t really add something for me since Laura is more of a prototype for the character she becomes.

[Ambaryerno]

It wasn’t for me. In a way it encapsulates Joe Q. Tradegy over substance.

I can see why it is part of Laura’s history but I prefer it to stay that way. Something that is sometimes brought up but never visited again. It didn’t really add something for me since Laura is more of a prototype for the character she becomes.

I honestly think it's something that MORE should be done with. IE have Laura address a support group for trafficking victims and share her story. And use it to address the meta issue of trafficking and how it connects to #MeToo. There's an important message there to be explored.

[Malachi]

I honestly think it's something that MORE should be done with. IE have Laura address a support group for trafficking victims and share her story. And use it to address the meta issue of trafficking and how it connects to #MeToo. There's an important message there to be explored.

Yes definitely in that regard. If something important and powerful could come out of it we are all richer for it. I saw that Liu wrote the sequel. For me it would need to be someone like her, who is sensitive enough to capture it all.

[Gnostic]

Ugh. They need to keep this entire Krakoa mess the hell OUT of the films.

I think it would be cool to adapt the resurrection protocols in some form. Have Hope Summers (who was introduced in Deadpool 2) be the new Phoenix and one of her abilities is creating cosmic eggs that perfectly clones dead mutants whose memories she implants via cosmic-scale telepathy.

[Ambaryerno]

I think it would be cool to adapt the resurrection protocols in some form. Have Hope Summers (who was introduced in Deadpool 2) be the new Phoenix and one of her abilities is creating cosmic eggs that perfectly clones dead mutants whose memories she implants via cosmic-scale telepathy.

One of the best things about the MCU vs. the comics is that death ACTUALLY HAS MEANING. Comic book death was already a colossal joke even BEFORE the Resurrection Protocols. I'd compare it to beating a dead horse, but the damn thing won't STAY dead as it is.

[Jackraow21]

This edit to the fight scene in Logan is genius…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=de...ture=emb_title

[Gnostic]

One of the best things about the MCU vs. the comics is that death ACTUALLY HAS MEANING. Comic book death was already a colossal joke even BEFORE the Resurrection Protocols. I'd compare it to beating a dead horse, but the damn thing won't STAY dead as it is.

They don't have to use it the exactly same it is done in the comics though. Hope/Phoenix would just be a superior version of The Scarlet Witch, who already was capable of spontaneous creation and making duplicates of the dead.

[Ambaryerno]

They don't have to use it the exactly same it is done in the comics though. Hope/Phoenix would just be a superior version of The Scarlet Witch, who already was capable of spontaneous creation and making duplicates of the dead.

Duplicates, not actual resurrections, and only short-term. As soon as her spell collapsed/ended "Resurrected" Vision ceased to be. While he may have been resurrected in the White Vision body, that's only because fragments of his original personality and memories were retained when SWORD reconstructed and activated him, and "good" Vision merely succeeded in unlocking them.

Anyway, what would everyone think of this:

Use Target X as the basis of the X-23 solo movie, skipping over a direct retelling of her origins, and instead use the framework of Sam, Bucky, and Murdoch interrogating her. Her new origin would be loosely glossed over, since Logan already did a good job of adapting it, only to reestablish she was the ONLY experiment, not one of several children, (thus reestablishing the significance of the X-23 name as the 23rd attempt at a female clone) created primarily through the work of Dr. Sarah Kinney. It's hinted she was a clone, but the identity of her genetic donor is so secret that even Sarah doesn't know the full truth. Tease out that in this universe, Laura DID succeed as an assassin, primarily for Street Level villains like Kingpin, but also possibly for HYDRA, AIM, and other organizations, during the aftermath of Thanos's defeat, before Sarah grew disillusioned and broke her out, at which point she was killed helping her escape. Laura goes to ground with Sarah's family until she's forced to leave them to protect them from Kimura.

In this universe, it was Sam who let Laura duped to escape after her first kills. Rather than simply being a conflict between Steve and Matt as in the book, You'd have a more balanced trio: Sam wants her to face justice, Murdock defends her, as he did with Castle once he learns the full story, with Bucky being caught in the middle; sympathetic because he sees his own experiences in her but also pragmatic about how dangerous she could be uncontrolled. Bucky can also cryptically drop references to Logan, with her reminding him of a Canadian soldier during the War it was said was more animal than man and couldn't die.

Maybe have more of an action climax at the end than in Target X, perhaps with Kimura attacking the compound. During the fighting, Bucky takes it on himself to let Laura escape during the chaos, dropping hints about who she came from and telling her to find the man called Howlett, perhaps ending on a final confrontation between Laura and Kimura where Laura uses her smarts to get the upper hand, leaving Kimura for dead (but obviously not) before fleeing. Cue Sam and Bucky banter, with Sam knowing Bucky let her go, but Bucky plays coy.

Starring:

Obviously, Dafne Keen as Laura Kinney.



Jennifer Connelly as Sarah Kinney. Sure, she's already appeared in the MCU after a fashion (as Karen, the voice of Peter's suit). Because all things MCU ultimately connect back to Stark, reveal that Sarah was formerly a colleague of Stark before the events of the Snap, and Karen's voice and personality was based on her.



Millie Bobby Brown as Megan Kinney. I just REALLY want to see Brown and Keen do a movie together. Plus it's a fun Easter Egg since Daf beat her out for the role in Logan, freeing up Brown to appear in Stranger Things (which, aside from her powers, Eleven isn't too different from Laura).



Kelly Hu as Kimura. Another Easter Egg. Maybe make some references to her turn as Deathstrike in X2, though this time making her more accurate to the comics. In Luke Cage Season 1 we learned the scientist experimenting on Cage resumed his work with Diamondback, maybe the Facility got their hooks into him, and had them enhance Kimura as well.