The X-Men Cinematic Universe (General Discussion)

[Marsden]

As someone who puts 100% faith in the official timeline

I think I understand now. Sorry about my Bill Duke/Peter Drinklage post. I don't want to upset you. I was just making a joke.

I really like the X films, although some more than others. And overall, the many little mistakes really don't seem so glaringly obvious if you just watch them rather than read an article about all of the changes, like why Hank McCoy was not a blue furry in X-2. Maybe he'd just recently had a shot of that mutant suppression stuff they created for the next movie but had back in the 70s too. It's ok. They work pretty well as a whole and one of the good things I can say is they seem to be improving as a series.

I think X-3 was easily the worst of the series, Origins was ok, not as bad as it's clamored by so many but I'm not a big Deadpool fan so I think that's why it doesn't bother me. I also don't believe that was supposed to be "the" Deadpool but another character that Stryker happened to choose that name for, but that's a bit silly on my part, too.

I'm sorry I forgot who posted, but they were right on when they said that most of their problems are using character names for bit parts and then having to deal with it later when they actually want to use the character, like Dr. McCoy. Maybe that Dr. McCoy was just another Hank McCoy, they are somewhat common names, like the two Mr. Trasks.

And on that theme of just using names, I think it was a real waste to have Peter Henry Gyrich be dead before the start of the first movie! That guy has been around for a long time and caused a lot of trouble for everyone from the X-men to the Avengers, and he's dead and gone off screen before anything even starts. Oh, well.

 

[DigificWriter]

X-Men, for some inexplicable reason, is the only franchise I have ever seen where people seem to refuse to just "accept some things on principle" and instead nitpick everything to death, even going so far as to intentionally make "mountains out of molehills".

Stuff like Hank McCoy being seen as a human on TV in X2 doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, especially not when there now exists a Canonical in-universe explanation for it, and yet it and a great many other things seem to be continually dredged up and paraded about as if they're legitimately something to complain about.

Star Trek fans don't even pull this kind of crap (by and large, anyway), and yet there are far more reasons for doing it with that franchise than there are with X-Men.

 

[Thestral]

Have you seen the reactions to Abrams' Trek movies?

 

[Tosk]

X-Men, for some inexplicable reason, is the only franchise I have ever seen where people seem to refuse to just "accept some things on principle" and instead nitpick everything to death, even going so far as to intentionally make "mountains out of molehills".

Most of the nitpicking seems pretty mild to me. Point out stuff that doesn't work, make fun of it, move on. No one seems to be getting particularly worked up about it. On either side.

 

[DigificWriter]

^ You and I clearly hang around different places, then, because the whining and complaining is louder and more persistent than you think it is.

There are even people out there who whine that the rights should go back to Marvel because "they'll do X-Men right" even though the franchise is actually in excellent shape both financially and creatively.

 

[Starbreaker]

New Mutants looks to be some kind of soft reboot for the franchise. All brand new characters could do some good.

 

[Kor]

In order to steer the conversation back in a more positive direction instead of arguing about its overall success and/or how flawed its continuity actually is versus how flawed it's (wrongly) perceived to be, I wanted to ask people who their favorite character(s) are or have been from the franchise overall thus far.

For me, I've always been partial to Rogue, Logan, Charles, Erik, Jean, Hank, and Raven, and happen to love the way that their stories have ended up being interwoven over the course of the franchise thus far. I'm especially fond of the foster sibling relationship that's been established between Charles and Raven (even though it ended really badly in the original timeline), and am really interested in seeing what ends up leading them to reconcile post-DoFP.

Logan, especially in X2, The Wolverine, and DOFP.

Magneto...both versions, but especially Fassbender. I was always on the fence on whether Professor X or Magneto was correct in their views of things. Fassbender's Erik Lehnsherr put me on Magneto's side all the way.

I like Raven's character development in FC and DOFP, but I'm not a big fan of Jennifer Lawrence's acting.

Kor

 

[seigezunt]

I've only very recently started catching up with comic book movies --the bulk came out when I was busy being a stay at home dad and freelancer-- and while I'm getting into the MCU all gangbusters, the X-Men movies left me cold. I stopped after the first two.

 

[DigificWriter]

New Mutants looks to be some kind of soft reboot for the franchise. All brand new characters could do some good.

There is no such thing as a "soft reboot", and I wish people would stop using the term.

With the news that the next X-film will be set in the 90s (as per Simon Kinberg), I happen to think it's only a matter of time before we end up seeing another film with at least SOME of the older cast in order to sort of "bring things full circle", which would be nice.

 

[Dick Whitman]

I am very happy to see them continuing forward in time. Though not surprised. These films have been very successful. Particularly Days of Future Past.

The idea that a hard or soft reboot is coming is based on fan conjecture. Mostly that the First Class cast would be bored and move on. But recent comments suggest otherwise. Even if that was true they would not be introducing young versions of classic characters in this film without plans to show more of them. We already got our reboot in the last film! This film would have to be a HUGE flop for them to reboot again so soon.

While I love seeing the passage of time but I wish they were not so rigid with each film being mostly a decade later. I think they are missing much character development. Also none of the character's really visibly age. In the early 90s Xavier will be 30 years older than we first saw him. Plus less than 10 years younger than when Patrick Stewart first played him. Unless that is much further in the future than when those films were shot. Even with a reset timeline they should look the same from what we saw of Logan's new future. The closer they move to that time period the harder it I'll be to suspend disbelief that these are younger versions of the same people.

 

[Tosk]

You and I clearly hang around different places, then, because the whining and complaining is louder and more persistent than you think it is.

I figured we were talking about the reactions here on TrekBBS. Unless you link or copy/paste something, why would I know or care about them "out there on the internet"? But I won't argue further. You and I aren't so far away from each other on our X-Films opinions. Not really.

 

[Grendelsbayne]

The fact that the X-franchise hasn't been rebooted, even with the alteration of the timeline, says (to me) that both it and Mortal Kombat do in fact play by the same rules, at least in terms of the basic conceits of the "ripple effect principle" upon which the way the two franchises have altered their respective timelines is based (which is that one change creates many other changes as a 'ripple effect').

So basically your entire train of logic is based on the assumption that they must be have a consistent logic behind their choices because, just, because.

If this were actually a time travel franchise which went out of its way to play with all the weird and wild ideas that can come out of time travel, then this reverse ripple effect of your might be viable. But the time travel is a tiny part of this universe used for a very specific purpose in a single story. Therefore, the only reasonable way to approach it is to apply basic common sense to what is actually presented in the movie. And based on what we saw in the movie, there is no logical reason to believe that changing the past in 1973 can alter the 1960s. At least, not without positing the theoretical existence of future time travelers going back to change the 1960s without ever being mentioned on screen, which is a massive cop-out.

I find it hard to believe, based on what's presented in both X2 and TLS, that there's enough time for an election to have taken place, especially when you have both Hank and the President speaking and behaving as if Hank's been in his position as Secretary of Mutant Affairs for a while.

There is literally no reason whatsoever the X2 couldn't have happened less than a year away from an election.

More importantly - you *don't* need an election to get a new president. The first one had a heart attack. Or he resigned over a major scandal. Or he just resigned period (must be stressful all these mutants just walking into the oval office so easily). The end of a presidency can easily occur in a matter of weeks, days or even a few hours.

 

[DigificWriter]

@grendelsbayne My application of logic regarding a "reverse ripple effect" as a result of what Logan does to change the timeline in 1973 IS based on the information presented in the film itself, and is also extrapolated from the similarities that exist between the nature of the time travel as presented in the movie and Bryan Singer's rationalization for approaching it the way that he did and statements that he and Simon Kinberg have subsequently made regarding the connectivity of future installments in the franchise post-DoFP to those franchise installments that were released pre-DoFP.

 

[Tosk]

If there is a reverse ripple effect, why doesn't it go all the way back? What is it about it that makes Jubilee be born two decades early but doesn't make dinosaurs evolve to rule the Earth?

 

[Marsden]

X-Men, for some inexplicable reason, is the only franchise I have ever seen where people seem to refuse to just "accept some things on principle" and instead nitpick everything to death, even going so far as to intentionally make "mountains out of molehills".

Then you haven't seen too many franchises.

And why when it doesn't agree with you it's a nitpick?

I like the movies, but I'm possibly not a "true X-Men fan" so my comments are to be disregarded with two word proclamations.

I wish you well and enjoy the movies.

 

[DigificWriter]

If there is a reverse ripple effect, why doesn't it go all the way back? What is it about it that makes Jubilee be born two decades early but doesn't make dinosaurs evolve to rule the Earth?

You've got me there, but all I can go by is what is presented onscreen and what the filmmakers themselves have said regarding their approach to the franchise, which is that everything does remain connected even across disparate timelines... thereby putting a "reverse ripple effect" concept in place since we see characters having been born earlier than they would have been in the original timeline.

I would point out, though, that in the case of both Jubilee and Psylocke, the "Original Timeline" versions were never actually identified, at least so far as I can recall, by those names onscreen, which could provide justification, if one were so inclined, to overlook the fact that they both appear in the new timeline at a much earlier period in the form of the idea that the individuals who appeared in X2 and TLS were not actually those characters even though they were identified as such in the credits.

Then you haven't seen too many franchises.

And why when it doesn't agree with you it's a nitpick?

I like the movies, but I'm possibly not a "true X-Men fan" so my comments are to be disregarded with two word proclamations.

I wish you well and enjoy the movies.

I wasn't trying to refer to anyone who posts HERE specifically, but making a general complaint about the behavior of what seems like a majority of the X-fandom that is active on one of the other boards I frequent quite regularly, and I apologize if you felt like I was singling you out with what I was saying, as that was not my intent.

 

[Grendelsbayne]

^There's no point arguing about the ripple effect endlessly, but just FYI: Jubilee was identified by name in one of the OT movies. Psylocke wasn't, and I don't personally count her as a problem at all. Like I mentioned before, I didn't even know she was supposed to have been in X3 until this thread, which tells you how noticeable she was.

 

[DigificWriter]

^There's no point arguing about the ripple effect endlessly, but just FYI: Jubilee was identified by name in one of the OT movies. Psylocke wasn't, and I don't personally count her as a problem at all. Like I mentioned before, I didn't even know she was supposed to have been in X3 until this thread, which tells you how noticeable she was.

Deleted scenes don't count, at least as far as I'm aware, and the only time we see her that ISN'T in a deleted scene is in X2, where she's never identified by name.

 

[Thestral]

Deleted scenes don't count... but Empire magazine articles do?

 

[DigificWriter]

There's never been any official statement from the filmmakers as to whether or not the Empire Magazine timeline is Canon or non-Canon, but, as far as I know, they HAVE said that deleted scenes don't count (unless I'm just making stuff up, which is entirely a possibility).