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The X-Men Cinematic Universe (General Discussion)

I always find it amusing when people get bent out of shape on X-Men movie continuity when the movies have always only had a somewhat loose sense of continuity. Especially since it happens *every time* from X2 all the way to Deadpool. At this point people should already know what to expect and just go with it.

The first three mostly work together OK, but apart from that I'm inclined to treat each movie as it's own thing with only vague connections to the others. Honestly it's not worth sweating the details and I wouldn't be at all shocked if a different version of Laura shows up in the McAvoy movies down the line. If they even vaguely care they'll do a time travel thing or say she's "X-23 Mk1" or something.

I mean it's not like comic books aren't almost constantly retconning each other, right?
 
Especially since it happens *every time* from X2 all the way to Deadpool. At this point people should already know what to expect and just go with it.

The first three mostly work together OK

In other words, it doesn't actually happen every time starting with X2?
 
Well what was the first change poeple noticed (fans took to the chatty rooms to complain about)?

Beast/Hank McCoy in X3 vs his cameo in X2? Couldn't that just be retconned though now that he could take his meds to look human if he wanted, like in DOFP and especially in Apocalypse?



I watched X3 this morning actually, yeah there are a lot of things that are hard to conicide with later movies. It's a shame but yeah you just have to take each film for what it is and enjoy it with your horse blinkers on.
Or just accept that a lot of things happen in between each movie that are never mentioned or explained. That first scene with Xavier & Magneto visiting young Jean is a good example. After the end of First Class Charles can use his legs again somehow, like he did DOFP but yet can also use his powers at the same time. Magneto somehow escaped from the Pentagon prison and allied with Xavier again. Xavier's gone bald long before the Apocalypse incident (given Jean's age, and if you believe that happened in the original timeline or not)... etc etc

Also I forgot how frightning the CGI'd young face of Patrick Stewart looks! :lol:
 
I always find it amusing when people get bent out of shape on X-Men movie continuity when the movies have always only had a somewhat loose sense of continuity. Especially since it happens *every time* from X2 all the way to Deadpool. At this point people should already know what to expect and just go with it.

The first three mostly work together OK, but apart from that I'm inclined to treat each movie as it's own thing with only vague connections to the others. Honestly it's not worth sweating the details and I wouldn't be at all shocked if a different version of Laura shows up in the McAvoy movies down the line. If they even vaguely care they'll do a time travel thing or say she's "X-23 Mk1" or something.

I mean it's not like comic books aren't almost constantly retconning each other, right?
This has pretty much become my attitude as well. Continuity is nice, but it's way down on the list of things that impact whether I enjoy a movie or not.
 
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Still, it seems we have two extremes going on in the CBM genre these days. You have Disney-Marvel, where everything is in continuity and it's pretty airtight, and you have the X-Men franchise where it's utter chaos because they're not even trying.
 
Yeah, the MCU proved it can be done so well, that the only excuse for the X-Men franchise is extreme laziness. They've had some pretty big screw ups that were totally avoidable, and easily preventable with a tiny amount of effort. The fact that they not only put no effort, but actively break continuity for the stupidest things is what really pisses me off.
 
I can see where that's annoying for some fans, but I don't have a problem with it when it doesn't effect the specific stories being told.
 
I don't know, I think stuff like Angel being in two movies is definitely a detriment. I consider consistency to be an element that counts toward how much I enjoy a movie in a franchise. Its why stuff like Logan is just frustrating. Either state that a movie is in its own continuity, or have someone spend five minutes solving the easily fixable continuity errors in the scripts. The fact that so many X-Men continuity errors could have been so easily avoided with no effect on story quality is part of the reason its so frustrating, to me at least.
 
I don't think X-Men's loose continuity is "lazy", but rather a strength. Imagine for a second, we're denied Days of Future Past because of the other version of Trask in X3. Or First Class because X1 says Charles and Eric met as teenagers. Or no Logan because it undoes the happy ending of DoFP.

Every one of those retcons has made for a superior movie, IMHO. Just roll with it and enjoy!
 
I don't think X-Men's loose continuity is "lazy", but rather a strength. Imagine for a second, we're denied Days of Future Past because of the other version of Trask in X3. Or First Class because X1 says Charles and Eric met as teenagers. Or no Logan because it undoes the happy ending of DoFP.

Every one of those retcons has made for a superior movie, IMHO. Just roll with it and enjoy!

Like I said, Logan doesn't undo the happy ending, because its not in continuity. It can't be, or the X-Men franchise is literally dead and there is no reason to watch any more movies. FOX isn't going to say "Oh, yeah, in the end all the X-Men will die and mutants will magically stop being born for some reason, but in the mean time go watch New Mutants and X-Men: Supernova!". That's not a smart way to run a franchise. So, I seriously doubt any part of Logan will effect the future of the franchise in general.

As for the other stuff, its a mixed bag. If they could just stop using the same character in multiple time periods because they love to turn named X-Men into background characters and then regret it when they want to actually use them in a real role, I'd probably be less irritated.
 
I still applaud them for playing fast and loose with continuity and consistency.

Kor
 
It can't be, or the X-Men franchise is literally dead and there is no reason to watch any more movies.

For one thing, subsequent film projects coming out of the franchise appear to be set in a timeframe earlier than that of Logan. By the above logic there is no reason to watch a prequel.

For another, time travel is a thing in this franchise, so even if Logan were the dead end you're making it out to be, there would still be options to go forward.

But most importantly Logan is not the dead end you're making it out to be. You haven't even seen it.
 
Yeah it's not laziness to much as a lack for foresight, or rather a lack of interest in the organisation necessary to make it all line up, which is to be expected since nobody is really overseeing things at Fox with an eye towards this sort of thing, mostly because they don't care.

Marvel is better as this precisely because they do care and plan ahead accordingly. They don't waste a character on a cameo if they're planning on using them in something else down the road and they're more careful about making easter egg references so as to make it less likely to be contradicted later on if it's something they end up using.

Honestly both approaches have their strengths and weaknesses. Playing it fast and loose mean you can be lighter on your feet and more adaptable to change, but it also leads to wildly inconsistent standards of quality.
Keeping a tighter continuity is great for making an audience feel more invested in the franchise as a whole and can help prop up individual projects that might not have fared as well on their own. On the other hand it brings with it the danger of being hamstrung by what other projects are doing, putting an onerous burden on certain projects to act as a setup for later ones at the expense of it's own story telling needs (see: IM2 & AoU) and possibly worst of all is the danger of a bland sameness overriding of at least dulling a particular project's sense of individuality.
 
I don't know, I think stuff like Angel being in two movies is definitely a detriment. I consider consistency to be an element that counts toward how much I enjoy a movie in a franchise. Its why stuff like Logan is just frustrating. Either state that a movie is in its own continuity, or have someone spend five minutes solving the easily fixable continuity errors in the scripts. The fact that so many X-Men continuity errors could have been so easily avoided with no effect on story quality is part of the reason its so frustrating, to me at least.
Well, the Angels are seperated by an in universe time alteration, so that is easy to deal with. As for Logan there is a possible way to work around the issue, along with an easy set up for more movies at the end.
Like I said, Logan doesn't undo the happy ending, because its not in continuity. It can't be, or the X-Men franchise is literally dead and there is no reason to watch any more movies. FOX isn't going to say "Oh, yeah, in the end all the X-Men will die and mutants will magically stop being born for some reason, but in the mean time go watch New Mutants and X-Men: Supernova!". That's not a smart way to run a franchise. So, I seriously doubt any part of Logan will effect the future of the franchise in general.

As for the other stuff, its a mixed bag. If they could just stop using the same character in multiple time periods because they love to turn named X-Men into background characters and then regret it when they want to actually use them in a real role, I'd probably be less irritated.
Logan takes place decades after pretty much all of the other movies that have come out, and depending on when they're set, between 8 and 30 years after all of the future movies we know about so there really is no conflict with any of the upcoming movies.
As for whether or not it will effect the franchise, we already know of at least four ways it will, this is the last movie with the Hugh Jackman Wolverine, probably the last movie in this continuity with Patrick Stewart's Xavier, and it introduces X-23 and Rictor.
 
Logan takes place decades after pretty much all of the other movies that have come out, and depending on when they're set, between 8 and 30 years after all of the future movies we know about so there really is no conflict with any of the upcoming movies.
As for whether or not it will effect the franchise, we already know of at least four ways it will, this is the last movie with the Hugh Jackman Wolverine, probably the last movie in this continuity with Patrick Stewart's Xavier, and it introduces X-23 and Rictor.

The X-Men will not be killed en masse. mutants will not stop being born. Period. End of story. Unless FOX is somehow magically losing the rights to X-Men and decides to go out in a blaze of "glory", or is closng the franchise down with a reboot, the future shown in Logan is not the future of the franchise, it doesn't matter how far along in the future we're talking about.

Also, those aren't effects. Logan didn't make Stewart or Jackman quit, they were already going to do that and chose Logan to be their last movie (and it might not even be Stewart's last X-Men movie). Also, X-23 and Rictor (both pretty much in name only from what I understand, well at least X-23 because I had no idea they had dragged Rictor into Logan) will never show up in the actual franchise (unless they reuse Rictor like they did Psylocke, caliban, etc), so they're just characters in the Logan timeline.
 
Still, it seems we have two extremes going on in the CBM genre these days. You have Disney-Marvel, where everything is in continuity and it's pretty airtight, and you have the X-Men franchise where it's utter chaos because they're not even trying.
Yeah, but why should they bother ?

They're only silly kiddies movies aren't they ? No-one pays any attention to them...
 
Well, the Angels are seperated by an in universe time alteration, so that is easy to deal with.

The Angel in Apocalypse is clearly someone who was born earlier than 1973, so the time alteration in DOFP wouldn't be sufficient to explain him on its own if we were to assume the alteration could only go in one direction and affect things after 1973. However, if we assume for whatever reason ( see Pegg's Trek-related comments ) that the changes may propagate both forward and backward in the timeline, then pre-1973 stuff can be explained away as well. Still, this is a much bigger discrepancy in birth year than we saw with, say, the two Chekovs. Another option, though perhaps unsatisfying, is just to assume they were two different guys with the same mutation, since the Apocalypse guy isn't named Warren Worthington in the film.

Logan takes place decades after pretty much all of the other movies that have come out

It's only 6 years after DOFP.
 
Like I said, Logan doesn't undo the happy ending, because its not in continuity.

Except it does and it is, as stated by James Mangold (even as he designed it to be standalone).

It can't be, or the X-Men franchise is literally dead and there is no reason to watch any more movies.

This is nonsense. Logan marking an "end point" - even a disastrous one - for the franchise has no bearing on FOX's ability to continue telling stories in its universe either before or after its events and continue getting people to care about said stories.
 
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