How Fox Completely F***ed X-Men - YouTube

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- Fox's X-Men series has come to an end.

The release of Dark Phoenix capped off

an epic franchise which spanned 20 years.

The first X-Men movie was a huge hit,

that launched the modern superhero movie genre

as we know it.

Over the years, the series has been maligned by fans,

but is by no means a total failure.

Great movies like Deadpool and Logan

definitely prove otherwise,

and the series introduced us all to beloved bad-ass

Hugh Jackman,

and fostered the world's best bromance between

Sirs Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart.

Solidifying Fox's X-Men tenure as an overall win.

That being said, between the 12 films

with eight different directors,

the series definitely has its flaws.

From big narrative problems,

to mishandling beloved characters,

to behind the scenes drama,

the franchise is far from perfect.

Now that Disney owns the future of our favorite

uncanny mutants, it's a good time to look back

and examine the ways Fox mistreated the franchise,

in hopes that Disney doesn't repeat the same mistakes.

Identity problems.

Ironically, the thing Fox seemed to struggle with the most

is the same issue the X-Men battle with every day

in a world that hates and fears them.

Identity.

Constant reboots with all new teams

and inconsistent casting,

made it feel like there was never a clear direction

for the series.

The biggest part of what makes epic, multi-film franchises

so successful, is familiarity with the characters!

Casting new actors as returning characters works,

when the story centers around throwback origin stories

like First Class,

but makes less and less sense as the following installments

jump decades into the future.

For example, The X-Men's field leader Cyclops

has been played by three different actors.

James Marsden, Tye Sheridan,

and some guy no one's ever heard of.

Seriously, who is this guy, who?

That's like having three different guys

play Captain America.

Yeah, doesn't quite work as well.

This, along with some wildly varying quality scripts,

kept the franchise under Fox's watch

feeling less than cohesive.

Even if you did get lucky enough to have your

favorite character played by the same actor consistently,

Fox's lack of follow through by constantly wreck hunting

and rebooting, by and large did a disservice

to the franchise.

The first X-Men and X2 did well at the box office,

but Fox's first stab at the Dark Phoenix saga Last Stand

didn't fare so well due to being, well,

objectively terrible.

They tried to soft reboot the series with First Class

because presumably Professor X wasn't hot enough,

which is absolute bull shit.

Then they seemingly bailed on that

and rebooted again with Days of Future Past.

Remember all the emotional investment you had

in moments like Wolverine confronting the Phoenix Force,

or Magneto's journey from holocaust survival

to homicidal maniac?

Or the emotional teenage love story

of Iceman and Rogue?

Well (bleep) you, because none of that actually happened.

In Days of Future Past, writer Simon Kinberg

and director Bryan Singer teamed up to totally

decimate everything we'd come to love about the series.

And also slapped on some unnecessary time traveling

side powers for Kitty Pride.

What, you don't have any other psychics in the franchise?

Like maybe a super-powerful psychic,

who's also notorious at coming back to life again and again?

Much like a, a Phoenix? No? Not gonna go with that one?

Gonna give it to the nice Jewish girl from Chicago

who can sink through the floor? Okay.

The rent-con storyline in Days of Future Past

totally undermine the other movies in the franchise,

ostensibly serving as another reset for the series,

even though we just had one in First Class.

And what they reset the series for was oooh boy,

X-Men Apocalypse.

Which in its own way served as a soft reboot,

by introducing traditionally heroic characters like Storm

as the bad guys.

I'd go through all the ways Fox wronged fans

with this movie, but honestly I don't have the energy.

Finally things came full circle,

when Fox decided to do the Dark Phoenix saga again.

We got to a place where nothing connects,

and therefore it's become harder for the audience to connect

with what is otherwise an awesome universe.

The one actor they did manage to keep

on board the whole time,

is the now iconic Hugh Jackman as Wolverine.

But Fox even managed to mess this up.

Gratuitously shoving Wolverine in places

he doesn't belong.

Yeah sure, it's fun to give him a single F-bomb cameo

in First Class,

but making him the main protagonist

of Days of Future Past makes absolutely no sense.

He floats through the whole movie

without any emotional stakes,

he's simply there to be the recognizable main character.

Clearly, Fox just wanted to capitalize on the Canadian

with claws as much as possible,

but relying on Wolverine as the only through line

for the movies, was a disservice to Marvel Comic

and movie lovers alike.

And there are some other glaring examples

of X-Men characters who didn't get the treatment

they deserved at the hands of Fox.

Mishandling of characters!

New twists on classic characters could often

have a big, fun payoff.

But Fox just missed the main points

of some of Marvel's most beloved X-Men.

The much anticipated first appearance of Deadpool

in Wolverine Origins, was met with a lot of blowback

after the merc with the mouth appeared without one.

This more serious take on Marvel's funniest hero

did not sit well,

and the negative reactions from the media and fans alike

helped persuade Fox that the Deadpool we eventually got,

was the one that fans really wanted.

Too bad they didn't hear from fans sooner.

Maybe some more constructive criticism

could've saved X-Men Origins' Wolverine.

But it didn't.

Anyways, besides my personal gripe with Wolverine

crying in The Last Stand, there's another glaring

hole and huge misstep that can be pinpointed

to the maltreatment of one character specifically.

Darwin.

Darwin was introduced as one of the new mutants

in First Class,

and he gets his codename from his super cool power,

reactive evolution.

Darwin's power means that his body adapts

to survive any scenario.

But inexplicably, Fox killed him off first.

Why spend all this time specifically pointing out

that a character can survive anything,

if you're gonna off him before the movie even gets going?

Not to mention that killing off one of the only

people of color in the franchise

is a fucking stupid, old, cliche.

I wish Darwin had stuck around, and got his own movie.

Other characters who were introduced in First Class

were simply just never seen again,

like Riptide and Angel.

Why name a movie after this first class of characters,

only to barely use them and immediately dispose of them?

I don't know.

Well some characters they nailed,

even if they broke the entire universe.

Looking at you, Quicksilver,

and others they introduced briefly,

then never wrote any other storylines for them.

One character's journey in the series

became intertwined with the actor that played her.

And not in a good way.

Mystique.

In the comics, she's usually portrayed as a villain.

And an interesting one, with strong personal views

and motivations.

Rebecca Romijn did a great job bringing her to life

in the original X-Men movies.

And the reboot of the cast in X-Men First Class

saw her replaced by Jennifer Lawrence.

It was an interesting take on the character,

rooting her in the reality of having to hide

her true nature from a world which rejected and feared her.

She was well on her way to becoming the super villain

we all know and love.

But Jennifer Lawrence came into this series

at an awkward time.

Because of The Hunger Games,

she was suddenly one of the most famous people

in the country, and Fox had a huge star on their hands.

Understandably, Jennifer Lawrence wanted to

pull away from the films,

and specifically the grueling seven-hour prosthetics

and makeup application process required to

transform her into Mystique.

But the studio wanted to jam as much Mystique

into their next movie, X-Men Days of Future Past,

as mutantly possible.

Perhaps that's why they made Mystique

the crux of the entire film,

and awkwardly crammed in stakes for both Magneto

and Professor Xavier surrounding the blue shape shifter.

The studio worked to accommodate the actor

and make the costume application easier,

but ever-changing prosthetics, hair,

and costuming choices make the character feel

almost unfamiliar with each new movie.

You'd think that wouldn't be a problem

for a shape shifter,

but with a character whose demons come from

being self-conscious about her natural appearance,

the changes were pretty jarring.

And Mystique's inconsistent character was far from

the only effect on the franchise

caused by offscreen issues.

Behind the scenes problems.

The perfect example of this is The New Mutants.

Originally slated for release in 2018,

Director Josh Boone had a richly imagined horror film

in his head.

A genre-bending breath of fresh air for comic book movies.

But Fox was afraid of an R rating,

which would drive away younger viewers,

and made Boone tone down his original ideas.

Boone and Fox finally agreed on a cut that felt

more like a typical young adult movie,

but in 2017 the studio released a trailer

focusing on the horror aspects of the film

and people loved it!

The audience reaction to a pure horror film

involving mutants was electric,

and once again the studio changed their minds.

The original 2018 release date was pushed back

so as not to overlap with the release of Deadpool 2,

and reshoots were announced in order to

get closer to Boone's original vision.

Then the release was pushed back again to February 2019.

As of Spring 2019 those reshoots hadn't happened,

and the release date was pushed to August.

In the meantime a lot had changed, including New Mutants

and Game of Thrones star Maisie Williams

having grown all the way up.

And the superhero genre had grown up as well.

Beyond narrative problems,

beyond the mishandling of fan-favorite characters,

beyond every other petty complaint you could have,

there's one major screw-up that absolutely

cannot be denied.

Fox hiring toxic personalities and alleged sex offenders

to direct.

In such massive, multi-million dollar productions

with big casts and crews all trying to tell the story

of a beloved but complex band of outcasts,

the leader at the helm holds a position

of huge responsibility.

So it's hard to fathom why Fox chose some of

the directors it did for the X-Men movies.

Let's start with the most prolific,

and most problematic director in the franchise,

Bryan Singer.

He directed X-Men one and two,

Days of Future Past, and Apocalypse.

And is an alleged,

and I use that word only because I legally have to,

pedophile and molester.

Yikes!

It's also well known that besides his despicable behavior

preying on young people,

he's terrible to work with.

In fact original Nightcrawler actor Alan Cumming

clashed with Singer so much,

that he told reporters he was happy not to have

to work with him again.

Singer's been described as showing up late to set,

and making excuses to dip out of shooting days early,

leaving his cinematographer Tom Sigel to finish up.

Not only did his ability to put together

a coherent movie get worse from X-Men one to Apocalypse,

but apparently, so did his on-set behavior.

Making actors feel safe is an important job of a director.

And no X-Men director is worse at it

than Brett Ratner.

Apart from tanking the studio's first attempt

at the Dark Phoenix saga,

he also has a long and well-known history

of creating an unsafe environment for women,

stretching back to when X-Men was only a twinkle

in Fox's eye.

Though they never worked together on an X-Men movie,

Psylocke portrayor Olivia Munn was sexually harassed

by Ratner in 2004.

And he continued to verbally harass her for years after.

On the set of The Last Stand he outed Ellen Page,

who was only 18 at the time, and had not come out as gay.

In a Facebook post, she described an incident on set

where Ratner pointed to a woman standing next to Page,

and said "You should (bleep) her to make her

"realize she's gay."

What a cool thing for your boss to say to you at work!

Abuse and drama like this does not make

for a tight ensemble work environment.

Shitty leadership paired with progressively

bigger explosions,

more CGI and increasingly convoluted plot lines,

steered us farther and farther away

from the heart of the series.

A band of outcasts who find that the only place they belong

is with each other.

While the franchise is far from perfect,

it still has some of my favorite movie moments,

and the greatest characters of all time.

When the series shines, it's through

character-driven stories, where the plot revolves

around real human choices.

Movies like Logan and the first X-Men

are examples of fun and worthwhile films,

able to stand alone as great movies out of context

of the larger series.

But pitfalls like Apocalypse and Wolverine Origins

make me, and a lot of people who know

the potential of the franchise, glad that Fox

has handed over the keys to the Kingdom.

And while I'd rather have a bad X-Men movie

than no X-Men at all,

I have high hopes for Disney's take on the series.

Who knows? They may even make the best X-Men movie yet.

Thanks for watching.