On the other hand, keeping the X-Men to a big-budget TV series à la GoT would probably be the ideal medium to service such a broad swath of characters... (And I'm not even talking about my kooky X-Men-ish medical drama here!)
The X-Men Cinematic Universe (General Discussion)
- Thread starter DigificWriter
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I think the first thing to do is to find a human story to tell. Rogue was new to the X-Men, as was Wolverine. It let the audience be them. It travels from introduction to Wolverine mourning her corpse and sacrificing himself to bring her to life.
The story of Magneto is just as intimate. I still hear the screams of his mother as she is separated from her son, in the opening scenes. Screams that filled me, in the theater, when Magneto is telling Charles that we are the future.
First Class did this with some limited success around Charles and Mystique. But, Jennifer Lawrence screaming "Mutant and Proud?!" made me long for the kids at the refrigerator.
Days is dark. Let's spend some time in mourning (Rogue, Kitty, and Bobby didn't make the final cut) over who we lose in this war. How about some time in redemption for Mystique. Let's get her mind about what she is thinking instead of a sequence just showing the events?
X-Men lacks human stories.
The story of Magneto is just as intimate. I still hear the screams of his mother as she is separated from her son, in the opening scenes. Screams that filled me, in the theater, when Magneto is telling Charles that we are the future.
First Class did this with some limited success around Charles and Mystique. But, Jennifer Lawrence screaming "Mutant and Proud?!" made me long for the kids at the refrigerator.
Days is dark. Let's spend some time in mourning (Rogue, Kitty, and Bobby didn't make the final cut) over who we lose in this war. How about some time in redemption for Mystique. Let's get her mind about what she is thinking instead of a sequence just showing the events?
X-Men lacks human stories.
The powered up version is by far the most well known.
Yeah, as a Supergirl wannabe. The X-Men Evolution series shows how awesome Rogue can be with just her normal powers.
90s fans don't give two shits about Supergirl and 90s X-Men is still the standard most fans go by
90s X-Men sucked though, it was the start of their overall decline. That's a lame standard to have.
It's what the average X fan on the street is familiar with though. And the decline is vastly overrated. That's more of a 00s thing when they really went down the toilet. You might not like that era, but they have never been as popular as they were in the 90s. Sales, and the birth of the Fox movies, prove that. If Marvel wants to go with the most well known incarnation to appease the average fan, it will be 90s heavy.
This is the same backwards thinking that led Sony to think that only Spidey was worth their money when they had the chance to buy the other Marvel heroes. If folks aren't familiar with other eras then MAKE them become more familiar with them!
Yes but it started with the lame plotlines and other excesses of the 90s. Of course it wasn't just X-Men but comics as a whole.
They were better in the 80s.
Or they'll do what they've been doing for 10 years and do their own thing and just be good enough to still please people. There's decades worth of stuff to make MCU X-Men with.
The way I look at there are two factors that make this debate rather moot: 1) the MCU is probably still a number of years from even beginning to introduce the X-Men. 2) The MCU literally just introduced Carol.
Both of these things to means that in the long run, they can have their cake and eat it with regards to Rogue (IF they want to of course.) All they need to to is introduce Rogue with her basic powers a few years down the line, the have her stick around (maybe even as an antagonist) until Larson has decided she's done with the role, and *then* take an already established Rogue and to a version of the 'Ms Marvel' storyline for Rogue.
Both of these things to means that in the long run, they can have their cake and eat it with regards to Rogue (IF they want to of course.) All they need to to is introduce Rogue with her basic powers a few years down the line, the have her stick around (maybe even as an antagonist) until Larson has decided she's done with the role, and *then* take an already established Rogue and to a version of the 'Ms Marvel' storyline for Rogue.
I agree that the X-men movies worked better with a 'human' story at its centre. Rogue worked well in the first movie but they lost confidence in their ability to develop her and Wolverine as a double act. A better end would have been if she accidentally absorbed some Ms Marvel type powers at the end of X3 or inexplicably had super strength in DOFP.
I think starting with Sinister and a Mutant civil war could be cool, as could making the Marauders part of the villainous faction in Secret Wars.
Joker is it's own separate thing, and is not part of the DCEU.
No, they were just more exclusive in the 80s. X-Force, for instance, is a better book from start to finish than New Mutants ever was. As someone who's actually currently reading the 90s x-men pretty thoroughly, their bad reputation is massively overstated and it's really only a handful of storylines that come anywhere near being as bad or dumb as people say.
Though there is a marked absence of good villains for a few years - but that period actually included some of the best issues in the history of UXM, they just weren't villain centric issues.
That's not really having your cake and eating it, too. To make that work, you either have to keep Rogue as a villain for years before finally letting her join the X-Men or regress her to a villain whenever Larson wants out or just make it some kind of accident or other bs 'she had to do it' excuse. None of that would be even remotely as compelling as the original story.
It really depends on the timetable. If for the sake or argument it takes them three to four years to introduce the X-Men, Rogue need not be part of that first wave. So say she crops up as a "villain" (perhaps in the same sense Wanda was a villain for all of 40 mins) in the second or third X movie. By that point Larson would have had the gig going on 7-8 years and about ready to move on, so it's not exactly stretching things out on the Rogue side of things.
Indeed, if they play is smart, they'll keep Rogue in the back pocket until they have an inkling Larson isn't likely to re-up her contract, that'll give them a few years notice to cast the role and slot Rogue in before the bow-out. Point being, however you juggle the pieces around this doesn't have to be an either/or proposition. And it's not as if the MCU has a history of adapting comic storylines verbatim. Indeed, mostly they just take the general concept, cherry-pick what works and do something mostly original with it in a context one might not expect. I see no reason why the same can't be done here.
For example, less than a year ago it wouldn't have even *occurred* to fans that the Skrulls could be presented as anything but antagonists, and yet here we are...
Well, making Rogue as powerful as Captain Marvel, as opposed to Ms Marvel, would not really work for the X-men. Her powers as Binary only really work on an intergalactic scale.
If they are going to do it, I would say the best way would be to introduce Rogue as a minor villain, a pawn in the employ of another villain, whose powers go wrong so that the after effects, multiple personality disorder, psychosis etc can be part of her story going forward in subsequent movies.
The mistake would be to gut the emotional heart of her story like they did with Archangel.
If they are going to do it, I would say the best way would be to introduce Rogue as a minor villain, a pawn in the employ of another villain, whose powers go wrong so that the after effects, multiple personality disorder, psychosis etc can be part of her story going forward in subsequent movies.
The mistake would be to gut the emotional heart of her story like they did with Archangel.
At the end of the day, I think the power swap is an important part of Rogue's character, but I don't think Carol Danvers specifically really is. Especially since the MCU Carol isn't the special forces military badass from the comics, anyway. One could circumvent all these problems by just having Rogue get her powers from a different character who approximates the power set and personality of the comics Carol. Not sure off the top of my head which character would be best, but push comes to shove they could always just invent a new one for that purpose.
I don't know, I think part of the impact is precisely that Carol (or whomever they might use) is a known character, not some random nobody that was shoved in front of the camera 5 mins before Rogue grabs them. I mean if you're going to go that route, why even bother? Just say that's just part of Rogue's abilities an be done with it.
As for the relative power levels: you can always fudge that. It is just fiction after all and one can always say that Rogue only got most of Carol's increased strength & flight ability and not the full on binary cosmic powers, which is why Carol is still alive after the fact.
I suppose if you really want to go dark and out there, one could create a new character in the form of a twin sibling for Rogue who's mutant powers were strength and flight and as a result of tragic circumstances, Rogue accidentally absorbed and killed her or him when her powers first manifested. That way the "Ms. Marvel" powers would be a constant reminder and source of guilt. That's straying quite a bit from the source material though.
I don't recall it ever being important that the audience knew who Carol was. What was important was that Rogue was a villain who went too far and regretted it and that she had someone else's mind trapped in her head which was why she needed Xavier's help (and why she was constantly forced to remember her villainous past). It also in a few stories mattered that Carol had awesome special forces moves from her days teaming up with Wolverine which could keep Rogue alive even when her powers were dampened by the bad guys, but like I said MCU Carol wouldn't provide that, anyway.
The powerset is iconic, too, but like you said that can be fudged (and apparently in the comics after she lost Carol's powers they at one point gave her Wonder Man's instead, which is a pretty similar set, so you could just skip straight to that). It's the mental stuff with regards to Rogue herself and her past that is the really important part.
Interesting, but accidental also loses an important part of things, as I mentioned above.
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Well if you wanted to go *really* dark you could have an Oliver Twist type setup with Mystique "raising" a bunch of mutant orphans including Rogue, and another one (either a literal sibling or surrogate) has said powers. Then for whatever story reason (insert nefarious/abusive parent plot here) Mystique pressures/persuades her into absorbing their powers. So it's not accidental, so there's a degree of self blame, but it's not like she's an irredeemable psychopath either.
That actually sounds pretty cool. I would watch that movie.
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