Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige offers an exciting update on the MCU’sX-Men, promising something so very different to Fox’s various versions. Fox’s X-Men franchise launched 25 years ago, at a time when few were confident superhero movies could be blockbusters.They openly mocked their comic book roots, with Cyclops and Wolverine bantering about blue spandex.
ScreenRant’s Ash Crossan attended theFantastic Fourroundtable, where Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige offered an exciting update that revealed how the MCU’s X-Men will differ to Fox’s.
“There’ve been more X-Men movies than there were Spidey movies or Fantastic four movies, so a lot has been done. But again, because it’s because it’s almost a comic legacy onto itself, there’s so much more to tap into it and there’s so many sagas within sagas for X-Men that that’s part of what we’re talking about now is which saga to grow and build to while doing the most important thing, which is introducing all of these characters and giving them their due in our first film.”
“I’m not going to speak to the makeup of the characters that will be in the first movie, but look at Galactus, […] look at Gambit in Deadpool & Wolverine, look at Wolverine in Deadpool & Wolverine. We want to embrace that which was not embraced 25 years ago when I was around on those early X-Men movies, which is those comic-accurate looks.”
There’s So Much More To The X-Men Than The Phoenix Saga
Fox Hasn’t Really Explored Much Of Their Comic Book History
It’s true that Fox tapped into some of the most iconic X-Men stories, ranging from the classic Chris Claremont 1982Wolverineminiseries to the epicDays of Future Past. Oddly,the franchise kept returning to one particular story- the Phoenix Saga. Fox may have made 13 movies (countingDark PhoenixandNew Mutants), but the surface has barely been scratched.
What is most exciting, though, is that Feige is promising a comic book accurate X-Men team like nothing we ever saw in the Fox era. We’ve already seen the MCU approach withFantastic Four: First Steps' Galactus, a delightfully comic book version who eschews the strange cosmic cloud incarnation made by Fox.
I guess we’re going to see that yellow spandex at last after all.
There’s A Massive Reason To Be Excited About The MCU’s Future
Mutants Are Coming At Last
Speaking as a lifelong follower of the X-Men franchise,I don’t think Kevin Feige could have possibly said anything that got me more excited for the MCU’s future. Fox did well with some characters - notably Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, and two fantastic versions of Professor X and Magneto - but I always found that franchise so disappointing. It had such untapped potential.
Let’s look beyond the Phoenix Saga, beyondDays of Future Past, and yes - beyond even Wolverine. It’s time for theX-Menfranchise to truly shine, for that potential to be realized, for even more iconic stories - the X-Tinction Agenda, the Muir Island Saga, the Phalanx Covenant, and so many other tales comic book readers love - to come to life.
