X-Men films: where do we go from here?

[Gaith]

I don't feel like these are really that big a deal. For one thing, he can always get another home or live in Stark Tower....

Yeah, and that whole dismantled-SHIELD thing? By the end of AoS S1, SHIELD had a new Director, and a new mission - to rebuild. Meanwhile, Loki capturing the Asgardian throne is a real development, I'll give you that one.



As for the X-Men movies...

Especially considering the only X-men movie that tried to change the status Quo (X3) was disliked.

Tried to change the status quo?! It killed off Xavier, but backtracked. It depowered Mags, but backtracked. It killed Cyke, but then made Wolvie as tame as he'd ever been. It paid off the mutant-human war threatened at the end of X2 on a tiny scale (one battle on one mostly uninhabited small island, big whoop), and utterly ignored the global trauma of Mags' almost-successful attempt to kill all of humanity. Whereas FC showed the X-Men's origins, which changed its initial status quo from nothing, and I certainly hope that DOFP will prove to be a game-changer in that the repercussions of time alteration will result in more out-there stories.

Meanwhile, for all its strengths, TWS boiled down to "hidden Nazis want to use magic guns on the magic aircraft carriers to murder huge numbers of people, something the heroes can prevent through lots of punching and blowing sh*t up."

 

[Anwar]

Singer's original take on X3 wasn't going to follow up with a Human-Mutant War either, or the near genocide of humanity. It was just going to be about Sigourney Weaver messing with Jean's mind and Jean becoming a knock-off of Dave from 2001 (a starchild).

And DOFP's time travel will not affect anything. It's just Singer's excuse to reset everything back to the way it was at the start of X2. He's all about the Status Quo with no real changes. If Singer had any intention of following up on X2 with consequences then DOFP wouldn't have ended the way it did.

In the face of all that, yeah X3 did attempt to shake up the status quo.

Tony's actions in Iron Man 3 are part of what sets up Age of Ultron (which will change things itself), and the beginning of a new SHIELD in AoS doesn't change that it's nowhere near as powerful as SHIELD used to be, HYDRA is out there more powerful than it was in WWII, and all of SHIELD's dirty secrets are all out for the whole world to see (including the secret superweapons they were building). It just means the heroes aren't willing to throw in the towel despite everything.

And how was Winter Soldier's solution any different from the X-Men just trashing Stryker's base or trashing Magneto's machine in X1 and X2? I don't see anyone here complaining about those endings.

If the MCU guys were in charge of the X-Men movies we'd see Xavier getting outed as a mutant and the school losing it's secrecy. Some real changes.

 

[Lexx Shrapnel]

X men feel more serious as a franchise. I hope they will have more mature story choices in the new timeline.

 

[M.A.C.O.]

XMO was rushed into production with an incomplete script and a unfinished effects.

I'm not sure what this is trying to say. It was rushed into production with unfinished effects? When a film is in production the effects would be unfinished by definition. Are you perhaps thinking of the infamous workprint? I assure you that those of us who watched the released film rather than the workprint saw a film with finished effects.

Maybe he meant "unfinished script"? I remember reading an interview with the director where he complained that he was getting script pages faxed to him the day before shooting scenes.

What Turtletrekker said. Gavin Hood said that he was being sent new pages the day before shooting XMO and would sometimes have to rewrite what they sent him the night before shooting.

XMO was a mess. I believe Fox only made it to keep the rights to X-Men. Since nobody wanted to touch or had an idea for X4.

 

[CaptainCanada]

If the MCU guys were in charge of the X-Men movies we'd see Xavier getting outed as a mutant and the school losing it's secrecy. Some real changes.

The school and Xavier's secrecy have never been a significant part of the film series to begin with.

I'm not even sure why the X-Men series doesn't qualify for having "real changes". The first film was about bringing the major characters together. The second ended with Jean's sacrifice, meant to set up the next movie. The third movie made a bunch of seeming shakeups, though it also built in a bunch of cheats for bringing characters back. If you want to bring in the Wolverine solo movies, each of those has wildly different settings from everything else in the series. FC was about the team's origins. DOFP jumped forward a decade, with a secondary plot set in the distant future.

 

[Lexx Shrapnel]

The soft reboot changed things a lot with half of the team becoming mutant supremacist.

 

[Anwar]

If the MCU guys were in charge of the X-Men movies we'd see Xavier getting outed as a mutant and the school losing it's secrecy. Some real changes.

The school and Xavier's secrecy have never been a significant part of the film series to begin with.

Actually, it was. Xavier said that anonymity was a mutant's best weapon in the first film (of course, this ignores the poor mutants who can't hide themselves). And part of what set off the plot of X2 was the Government learning about his school and their illegal activities.

I'm not even sure why the X-Men series doesn't qualify for having "real changes".

Because in the end, Singer just reset everything back to how they were at the start of X2.

 

[suarezguy]

I like the X-Men characters overall a lot more than the Avenger characters (haven't read as much of the latter's comics) but the recent films have all been about average or (more the MCU) a little below average.

I agree that the X-Men films have become a bit too much about Magneto all the time; I wish that they had just gone on with remaining and new characters after TLS rather than prequels. It now makes sense storywise to continue with period pieces as they can have the most popular characters.

 

[CaptainCanada]

Because in the end, Singer just reset everything back to how they were at the start of X2.

That affected one movie, a movie that almost nobody liked (reputationally).

 

[Set Harth]

It affected more than one movie, including X2. Jean Grey is back.

Maybe he meant "unfinished script"?

Doesn't the phrase "incomplete script" mean the same thing? So that point was pretty much covered. But then it was followed by "and unfinished effects". Why would someone type out the word "effects" if they didn't really mean the effects?

 

[Masiral]

It affected more than one movie, including X2. Jean Grey is back.

Jean Grey didn't die until the end of X3.

 

[Anwar]

It affected more than one movie, including X2. Jean Grey is back.

Jean Grey didn't die until the end of X3.

Presumed dead at the end of X2.

Of course, the whole "love story" between Logan and Jean was always a mess. He barely knew her for 2 days (the length of the first X-Men movie), then had 2 small brief scenes with her in X2. Then for whatever reason all the other movies treat it like it's some love of the ages story.

 

[CaptainCanada]

Presumed dead at the end of X2.

The final scene makes it clear that she isn't.

 

[Zombie Cheerleader]

Presumed dead at the end of X2.

The final scene makes it clear that she isn't.

Yeah she could be reborn, like a phoenix...or something.

 

[Anwar]

Presumed dead at the end of X2.

The final scene makes it clear that she isn't.

She didn't come back til X3 though. Which means the retconned timeline got rid of the ending of X2 as well.

 

[RoJoHen]

Presumed dead at the end of X2.

The final scene makes it clear that she isn't.

She didn't come back til X3 though. Which means the retconned timeline got rid of the ending of X2 as well.

Unless it didn't. Maybe the Phoenix storyline still happened but, instead of going on a murderous rampage, Jean, ya know, didn't go on a murderous rampage.

 

[Gaith]

^

"Hard to see, the retconned timeline is."






​

 

[M.A.C.O.]

DOFP retconned everything that happended after 1973.

XMO - Happens in 1979
X-Men - Happens in 2005 (according to Singer)
X2 and X3 - Happen in 2006
The Wolverine - Happens in 2013
The Apocalyptic Future of DOFP - Happens in 2023.

All of the above have been retconned from existence. The only X-Men movie that could possibly still have happened is X1 since Rogue has her white streak of hair in the brief scene we see her in the Happy Future of 2023.

So the new timeline is thus:

X-Men First Class 1962
The 1973 timeline w/ the Mystique not killing Trask version of DOFP
Apocalypse which will be set in the 80's
Some version of X1 different or the same as the one from the original timeline
Happy Future of 2023 DOFP.

 

[RoJoHen]

We have no way of knowing what happens in the new timeline. All we know is that Scott and Jean aren't dead when Wolverine wakes up from his nap, and in the X-Men world, that doesn't necessarily mean anything. Characters die and come back all the time!

So for all we know, Jean still died, turned into the Phoenix, killed Cyclops and the Professor...and then somebody brought them back. I mean, Professor X obviously survived Phoenix's de-molecularizing attack from X3. Maybe Cyclops found a way back, too! Who knows? Maybe they're all clones!

 

[Anwar]

Xavier's survival was explained in the post-credits scene in X3: He transferred his mind into the comatose patient he was talking about earlier (who turned out to be his twin brother he accidentally wiped the mind of when they were in the womb together).