I have no idea why Fox Studios can’t tell a decent X-Men story but it’s no wonder Marvel doesn’t support the movie franchise. It’s like someone telling your life story and screwing up everything, from miscasting your family members to having your children introduced as your parents or even worse. By now we all know the story. Marvel was in financial distress several years ago, so they sold the rights to their two biggest comic book franchises to Fox Studios; The Fantastic Four and the X-Men. I grew up reading comics so to see what has done to both superhero teams on the big screen is down-right sickening to say the least. Where did they go wrong? Let’s take a look.
The first X-Men movie actually wasn’t bad. As a matter of fact, we have that movie to thank for the other superhero movies that followed whether they were better or not as good as the X-Men franchise of movies. Spider-Man, Iron Man, Hulk (the second incarnation), Captain America, Thor and The Avengers. You can honestly tell that someone over at Marvel cared about the source material while writing their movie scripts. As of X-Men Age of Apocalypse, it is apparent that Fox Studios is more concerned about making money than about making a good movie. I mean seriously, how do you get Angel wrong in two movies?
Never the less as good as the first movie was, it was the success of Hugh Jackman as Logan/Wolverine that doomed the franchise. When fans first saw Wolverine and his claws on screen we immediately became enamored with Hugh. That was the beginning of the end in my opinion. I’ve said it many times. Wolverine may be the most popular X-Man but Cyclops is the unquestioned leader of the X-Men and always has been. Fox Studios chose to make his character lame beyond belief. If you didn’t read the comics, you don’t understand the significance of Cyclops to the X-Men universe. Obviously no one at Fox Studios understands, much less cares.
Cyclops was the first X-Man. His leadership skills are on par with Captain America. He’s also a capable hand to hand combatant having held his own against the aforementioned Captain. As for his powers? Let’s just say even the super durable Wolverine has a healthy amount of respect for Cyclops’ optic blast. How so? Cyclops optic blast is pure force and can easily punch a hole through a mountain. In the first film he was outflanked by Toad in a subway station. Cyke (as he is affectionately known) is not the type of person to be easily caught off guard. He’s a master strategist. In the second film he is done in by Lady Death Stryke. Okay, that one is believable but then in the third X-Men film, he’s so distraught over Jean Grey’s death (from the second film), he’s reduced to a wimp and killed off screen even.
What Marvel Studios has done with their Avengers movies is make sure that every character plays a significant role. Even Hawkeye whom Josh Whedon had walk around as Loki’s hypnotized lackey for most of the first The Avengers movie corrected that mistake by having him play more of a pivotal role in the second one (I’m still upset about that whole meaningless death of Quick Silver but I digress). Why couldn’t Fox Studios reverse course with the portrayal of Cyclops? Speaking of the third X-Men movie, what happened to Angel?
I mean damn, Angel/Warren Worthington was cast in two X-Men movies, The Last Stand and Age of Apocalypse. All we get from him in X-Men Last Stand is a few minutes of him as a kid trying to cut off his wings. Then he’s a young adult about to use the mutant cure to get rid of his wings but then changes his mind. During the closing minutes of the movie, he flies in and saves his father who was just thrown off a roof. At the end of the movie, he becomes the newest student at Charles Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters yet we don’t see him in X-Men Days of Future Past. His inclusion in the movie begs the question, “Why even have him in the movie at all?” He was totally wasted.
In Age of Apocalypse, he’s a mutant cage fighter. He’s pretty bad-ass considering (if I’m not mistaken, that’s the Blob that being carried out on a stretcher). He then gets turned into the Horseman of Death for Apocalypse complete with metal wings that he can hurl towards his enemies. Did I mention that Angel can fly? No? Apparently he can’t because inexplicably as the plane the X-Men were using hurtles towards the ground, he can’t fly out. As souped up as Apocalypse made him, he couldn’t escape although miles in the air, a non-flying Psylocke made it back to the ground just fine by using her Psi-Blade to catch hold of a building on her way down. Huh? Seriously. This wasn’t the first time that Fox Studios killed off a mutant for no reason but more on that later.
Remember what I said earlier about Hugh Jackman’s success as Wolverine and how it negatively impacted the X-Men franchise of movies. Here’s a complete synopsis of each movie. X-Men was nothing more than Wolverine finding more about himself by finding other mutants who were outcasts just like him. Based on her relationship with Logan, Rogue was actually X-23 before we saw X-23 in Logan. X-Men United was about Wolverine leading the X-Men against his arch nemesis William Stryker. X-Men The Last Stand was Wolverine finally accepting his role as leader of the X-Men after Cyclops (killed off screen in the first few minutes of the film) and Professor Xavier were killed by Jean Grey. Now that I think about it, even though the X-Men were clearly already established as a team prior to finding Logan, they needed him to save them in each of the first three installments.
After those first three films, we then had the “what the hell were they thinking,” X-Men Legends: Wolverine. The opening sequences of the movie with Liev Schreiber as Sabertooth were compelling but right after that, the movie goes off track. I mean that movie went way off track. James Hudson and his wife Heather are portrayed as an elderly couple and immediately killed off for no reason. I guess we can scratch off the possibility of making of Fox Studios making an Alpha Flight spin-off movie anytime soon. Remy Lebeau, a.k.a. Gambit plays a pivotal role in the movie but his character shouldn’t have met Logan that early in the X-Men timeline. Not to mention, we haven’t heard from Gambit since this movie. The Blob is also unceremoniously killed off and the portrayal of Dead Pool? I wanna know who read this script and said, “Oh yeah! This is gonna be a hit!” Whoever the person is/was, they should never be allowed to overlook the creative process of a comic book movie again.
The Wolverine, however wasn’t a bad movie only in that it didn’t involve any of the other X-Men. By now we know that the X-Men franchises are trying to reset themselves with X-Men First Class. With a title like First Class, how can we go wrong? Easy, I guess. Here Fox Studios has a prime opportunity to correct all of the flawed character portrayals of the past movies and still could not get it right. When you say “First Class,” most comic book aficionados would think Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Angel (nope, you’ve already used him) Beast (okay he’s in and since Kelsey Grammer portrays an older Beast in the other movies, that makes sense) and Ice Man (nope, you’ve already used him as well).
The problem with First Class is the time period it was initially set in. Fox placed the movie in the 60’s which basically made it impossible to include the three main characters established from the previous three movies such as Storm, Cyclops and Jean Grey in that they would’ve been too young to be Xavier’s initial students. So who do we get instead? Well they do use an Angel…sort of. This Angel is actually a young woman by the name of Angel Salvadore. She doesn’t have feathered wings. She has dragonfly insect wings. Huh? Then we have Banshee. That could actually work because aside from Wolverine, Banshee was quite a few years older than his initial X-Men teammates in the comics.
What about everyone else though? We get Darwin who is killed when Sebastian Shaw places an energy bomb down his throat. In the comics, Darwin’s ability of instant reactive evolution has allowed him to go toe to toe with the Hulk as well as Hela (the Goddess of Death – please see Thor). Long story short. He should still be alive. Fox Studios could’ve even brought him back at the end of the First Class movie by having his body re-assimilate itself. Fans don’t mind characters dying in movies but inexplicable deaths. Regular movie fans may not care but you risk alienating true comic book fans by portraying such nonsense which is exactly what they did in Last Stand.
Then we have Alex Summers, a.k.a. Havok. For those who don’t know, Havok is Cyclops younger brother. So how exactly is he a part of Xavier’s first class? See at this point it becomes obvious that Fox Studios doesn’t care about the source material. They know fans love the X-Men so let’s just throw an X-Men movie out there with a well-known mutant and the fans will come; source material be damned. Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique is next up as a member of the First Class. Here’s where history starts repeating itself though. Just as the first three X-Men movies were about Hugh Jackman as Logan. First Class, Days of Future Past and Age of Apocalypse are all about Jennifer and Michael Fastbender as Magneto. Even Hugh manages to show up and steal a few scenes in his reprise of Logan in two out of three of the newer X-Men films.
So after Days of Future Past, Fox Studios has the perfect opportunity to reintroduce X-Men characters that everyone knows and loves. They have a prime opportunity to get it right. Do they? Nope. Remember when I mentioned how Warren Worthington was cast as a cage fighter? Well at least he’s in the movie. So are Cyclops, Beast and Jean Grey. All we need do now is cast Ice Man to have the original five? Inexplicably, Ice Man is left out. Common fans may not know but Ice Man is one of the most powerful mutants in the X-Men universe. As an African-American, I’m proud to be represented by Storm but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t cast Bobby Drake a.k.a. Ice Man. They gave us Night Crawler whose inclusion may have just been a matter of the plot running smoothly but Bobby should’ve been in this movie.
Not only should Bobby have been in the movie but why did they kill off Havok? He was killed off in much the same fashion as Darwin and Angel. Okay; real quick. Cyclops and Havok’s body’s act as energy conductors. Their cells normally process solar energy which neither one has legitimate control over hence the “Energy Cell” on Havok’s uniform and Cyclop’s optic visors. In essence, that blast from the X-Man mansion should not have vaporized Havok. He should still be standing, albeit super charged with the ability to disperse the excess energies. So where does that leave us now? Fox Studios needs to hire someone who actually reads comics go over their plot summaries going forward.
HARD IN THE PAINT 