Foxs XMen Movies Never Worked Because it Focused On The Wrong Characters

Fox’s X-Men Movies Never Worked Because it Focused On The Wrong Characters

Fox’s X-Men series ultimately ended in disappointment because of an unwillingness to focus on individual characters beyond favorites like Wolverine.

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Foxs XMen Movies Never Worked Because it Focused On The Wrong Characters

Fox’s X-Men films were ultimately a disappointment because they focused on the wrong characters. The Fox-produced mutant movies may boast an extensive roster of mutant characters, but the characters chosen as the universe’s anchoring points contributed to the franchise’s poor finish. And that’s a lesson the MCU will have to heed as the X-Men embark on their journey back to the big screen under that banner.

Long before the MCU saw its first installment with the game-changing Iron Man, the X-Men franchise was already well-established. Beginning its historic twenty-year run, the franchise launched with the Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart-led X-Men in 2000, the original trilogy establishing Wolverine as the series’ leading man and point of view character. This proved to be a smart choice, keeping fans of the comics centered on one of Marvel’s most recognizable and compelling characters. And indeed, many of Logan’s most famous comic book storylines are earth-bound in nature, making the character well-suited for the filmmakers’ more grounded and gritty narrative. For the First Class prequel films, creators chose to follow the original trilogy’s other key figures, Professor Xavier and Magneto, whose strained friendship had served as a major through-line up to that point.

However, the decision to repeatedly double down on storylines disproportionately concentrating on Wolverine, Professor Xavier, and Magneto proved antithetical to the X-Men themselves, who are by definition a team – and a sprawling team at that. The franchise’s decision to closely follow so few of its mutants is all the more upsetting when considering the repetitive nature of a handful of story beats, for example, Wolverine struggling to unearth his identity and Xavier being duped into trusting a supposed ally in Magneto who inevitably betrays him once again. In essence, the preoccupation with these already well-established figures and plotlines ultimately robbed other characters of the potential to shine.

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Using the original source material as a model, the X-Men’s stories and teams often rotate around its familiar characters as the plot necessitates. But in this film series, Fox’s directors barely took the time to give their audiences access to any backstory or internal thoughts not belonging to Wolverine, Professor X, or Magneto, regardless of comic book precedence. Cyclops’ childhood as an orphan was never touched upon before he was killed off unceremoniously off-screen; nor is Storm’s Kenyan backstory. And though inspired by her most famous comic book arc, Jean Grey’s time as a god-like entity – as depicted in both X-Men: The Last Stand and Dark Phoenix – is ultimately undercut by giving a lion share of screen time to Wolverine and Professor Xavier.

Had the franchise opted for a more MCU-like approach by introducing major characters in their own solo films prior to a larger team-up, perhaps the series would have been a more successful one. And indeed, with the release of X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Deadpool – to say nothing of the ill-fated and unreleased Gambit – it is possible that the studio was headed in that direction. By taking time with a more diverse cast of characters reflective of the mutant metaphor and giving each room to breathe, Fox could have led up to a more impactful and far less homogenous coming together of Marvel’s most widely-read superhero team.

Dipping their toes in the genre years later, the MCU later exploded Fox’s template used for their once-experimental X-Men series, creating a universe willing to lean into not only the bombast and saturation of its source material but also its colorful cast of characters. With a larger canvas and a proven track record of superheroic storytelling, the Marvel Cinematic Universe will surely aim to bring its newly acquired team and characters back to big-screen prominence.

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Link Source : https://screenrant.com/x-men-movie-universe-focus-wrong-characters-wolverine/

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