How would you approach an X-Men reboot in the MCU?

[SuperT]

I've been wondering

What do we think are the status of X-Characters created after the Fox deal????

I'm sure characters like Daken and X-23 might get automatically tied up to Wolverine's rights
But what about any of the younger students, New X-Men, Generation Hope, The Jean Grey School? Or other new-ish characters like Fantomex, Cecilia Reyes, Cassandra Nova, or even somewhere like the Breakworld...?

Obviously it might all get a little sticky
But it would be great if Marvel could throw Fantomex or X-23 into a movie just to screw with Fox

I'm pretty sure the contract includes any current and future X-characters created so Fox would own all of them. Wouldn't make any other sense contract wise.

 

[The Question]

1) The mutant population is not large enough that persecution of them would realistically be a social problem. The fact is that if Xavier can only find a few hundred students for his school from all around the globe, that means most people aren't going to come across mutants in their day-to-day lives. If they never see mutants, they simply will not care about them. People carrying billboards saying "God hates mutants!" would be viewed as fanatics and largely ignored.

A) Why does it matter wether or not most people will encounter mutants in their day-to-day lives? If anything, that increases the likelihood that people will hold prejudiced views about Mutants. Most homophobes don't regularly interact with gay people. A lot of white folks who hold racist views never regularly interact with non-whites. And lack of exposure makes it easier for them to see these out groups as something other or less than human. You don't need the dominant group in a society to regularly interact with a subordinate group for there to be a social problem.

B) Not caring about an entire group of people is a form of bigotry.

2) In certain times and universes where the mutant population IS large enough to cause a social problem, the idea of superpowers stops being interesting. To quote The Incredibles
Mrs. Incredible: "Everyone's special, Dash."
Dash: "Which is just another way of saying no one is."

What you're saying here is that the only thing that makes the idea of super powers interesting is that only a rare few people have super powers. I don't buy that.

3) Mutants have no obvious unifying traits, so it would be impossible to stereotype them. Nobody goes around making fun of people with Type-AB blood...all these mutants have in common is a gene. Some have extra arms, some don't. Some can make things explode, some can't. Some look totally normal. How do you even talk about them as a single group, much less oppress them?

Let's play the word replace game:

"Queer people have no obvious unifying traits, so it would be impossible to stereotype them. Nobody goes around making fun of people with Type-AB blood…all these queer people have in common is non-mainstream sexual preference/identity. Some are gay, some some are bi. Some are transgendered, some aren't. Some are butch, some are femme, and some fall in the middle. Some are able to pass as straight. How do you even talk about them as a single group, much less oppress them?"

Bigotry is and always has been completely arbitrary. It doesn't make logical sense. Race is a social construct. "Normal" gender identity and sexual orientation is a social construct. If you went to ancient Rome, our concepts of "gay" and "black" would be completely alien to them. The way we divide ourselves in society is largely arbitrary, and the ways we oppress and mistreat each other and the things we choose to deem as less are equally arbitrary.

4) Teenagers randomly and suddenly having superhuman powers is a legitimate safety concern, unlike homosexuality or differences in physical appearance due to ethnicity. When Scott Summers goes from A-student to blowing a hole in the wall just by looking at it, I get why the parents are frightened and try to find solutions.

Yes, there is no denying that. And it adds a level of complication and nuance that you very rarely see in mainstream oppression narratives but is very true to life. There are always going to be practical considerations and complications when dealing with the rights of individuals and oppressed groups that make the whole situation more involved than simply saying "hey everyone, let's be nice to each other!" The X-Men creates a scenario that asks us to address a very real practical concern while doing so in a way that is in the best interests of both society and the individual at the center of it and respects that individuals civil liberties and agency.

In this respect, Mutants are an especially applicable metaphor for neurodiverse individuals. People with mental illnesses can, if their illnesses are severe enough, pose a danger to themselves and, in some very rare instances, to others. Obviously, it is the responsibility of society to keep that individual and those around that individual safe and healthy. But the problem is doing so in a way that still acknowledges the individuals rights and worth and a human being. Very often in our society, the mentally ill are treated as freaks and potential violent criminals, and are often mistreated by the authorities who do not know or care about the subtleties of their condition of their basic rights as a human being. This attitude has its origins in a reasonable concern for safety, but has through callousness and carelessness morphed into a vicious form of oppression and margenalization, caution and fear devoid entirely of compassion or respect.

This, I think, makes Mutants a very versatile metaphor.

5) If the average human loves The Fantastic Four and The Avengers, why would they hate mutants? To the average human, these are all just people with superpowers…would they really care how they got those powers?

Bigotry is not rational. If it were, it wouldn't be bigotry, it would be a reasonable distinction.

A while back, when there were laws on the books that limited certain property rights of African Americans and other non-whites, it became "necessary" to determine how "black" you needed to be in order to qualify. There was, however, no national standard. These laws were on a state-by-state basis. In some states, if at least one of your grandparents was black, you were legally considered to be black. However, in other states, it was if at least one of your great-grandparents was black. So what happened was that you had people who, in their home states, looked white, socialized as white, and were legally considered to be white, moving to another state and suddenly "becoming" black.

Way back when, there was a court case which made it all the way to the Supreme Court. A Chinese man wanted to be legally recognized as white, in order to take advantage of the aforementioned property laws. He argued that his natural skin tone was exactly the same as most white folks, and thus should be considered to be white. The court ruled against him, citing (now largely discredited) scientific definitions of "whiteness" which stated that the "white race" were descendants of the Aryan people, which the Chinese are not. A few years later, an Arab man also filed suit in order to be legally recognized as white for the same reasons. Now, this man was as brown-skinned as it gets, but the Arab people are in fact descendants of the Aryan people, and therefor conform entirely to the "scientific" definition of whiteness cited in the previous case. The court, the exact same court of justices, ruled against him as well. Afterwards, when asked how one determines whiteness in light of this discrepancy in ruling, the Chief Justice said "I know it when I see it."

All of this **** is arbitrary. It's crap that people made up so they'd have someone to bully and so their own choices and culture would be somehow validated as better, with new crap added on to justify it. Nothing about prejudice makes any logical sense when you apply any kind of rigorous thought to it. Prejudiced thinking doesn't appeal to logic, it appeals to emotion.

The emotional reasoning behind this discrepancy is simple: They used to be one of us, so it's okay. They got their powers through science, through a process that comes as a result of our scientific accomplishments and that we can control, so it's okay. They are an extension of us, they're not here to replace us, so it's okay.

Add to that the fact that the populace of the MU generally assumes that any superhero who's origin is not public knowledge is a Mutant, and it makes exactly as much sense as real world prejudice.

Captain America is, in essence, the superhero equivalent of Macklemore.

6) Exceptional gifts are usually celebrated in society, not shamed and persecuted. There were no mobs out to kill great minds like Einstein or Beethoven. None of the parents wanted to kill the dunker on your high school basketball team because he was "too tall." What's wrong with the people in Marvel that they hate mutants so much?

There's a clear difference between "talented" and "super powered." There's a very clear difference between "I'm really good at math" and "I am a 15 foot tall six armed guy with purple skin who can transmute matter with my mind."

There's a difference between "talented" and "freak." Not a logical difference, because as I said there's nothing about this that is logical, but an emotional one. An "I know it when I see it" one.

The people you mentioned had human talents that fall in line with what we expect from people. There was nothing about them that seemed other or alien in our cultural landscape. And they were things that we, as the insecure egotists that many of us are, could convince ourselves was do to hard work and human ingenuity.

If mutants actually existed as they do in Marvel, there is no doubt that they would face prejudice and persecution.

That's just a few reasons off the top of my head, and I could probably come up with many more with more time. In my opinion, the X-Men have always failed to be a metaphor for oppressed groups, so I don't believe that metaphor is worth trying to preserve in the MCU.

If the metaphor isn't worth preserving, then the X-Men aren't worth preserving, because that is everything they are about.

Mutants are also not necessary to the X-Men from a narrative angle. Xavier could run a fake boarding school for teenagers who get superpowers for whatever reason...it doesn't have to be that they are mutants and therefore inexplicably hated by everyone (including their family.) Magneto could be someone who believes superhumans should stay away from normal people for their own safety, but then seek to rule over them, while Xavier could help people with superpowers finds ways to use their gifts to work WITH normal people. They don't have to be mutants to have these conflicts.

Magneto becomes a pointless character without the metaphor. Malcolm X without a civil rights movement to fight in is just a guy yelling about nothing.

7) Stan Lee literally only came up with the idea of mutants because he was too lazy to keep writing origin stories. "I couldn't have everybody bitten by a radioactive spider or exposed to a gamma ray explosion. And I took the cowardly way out. I said to myself, 'Why don't I just say they're mutants. They were born that way'."

It wasn't to make some statement about society, and it has never worked when later authors have tried to use them that way, partly for the other six reasons I have already listed. You don't need mutants to have the X-Men.

Yes, the original idea was born out of laziness. And then it grew into something more than that, because other writers came along and turned a failing series into the single biggest Marvel franchise.

Problem isn't with the X-Men itself, their universe and stories are fine, it's just that they haven't and still don't really fit amongst the entire Marvel comic universe. It's never made any sense why humanity would like The Avengers, Hulk, Fantastic Four etc. yet hate mutants. I'd be more than fine if some reboot happened and the X-Men simply weren't apart of the Marvel comic universe anymore. In fact, I think that would do both wonders.

I disagree completely, for the reasons mentioned above, but I just wanted to point out: Since when does humanity love The Hulk?

 

[The Question]

I honestly don't know how Feige could introduce the X-Men without a continuity retcon or dropping the Bond idea and letting the MCU age in real time.

Conceptually, the X-Men have always been the hardest property to integrate in the Marvel U in the first place. The idea that mutants would be persecuted while other superpowered beings are A-okay never really sat with me. Then there's the fact that the X-Verse feels in an entire league of its own with its vast amount of characters and tone.

The thing is that the X-verse makes claims about the Marvel-verse that we just don't see anywhere else. If there was a new species on the rise and humanity's life was in danger to the point where they sanction government drones to hunt them down, we'd hear about it a lot more often. Everything else would be secondary to the mutant issue.

But to complicate this even further, at least in the comics the X-Men were there from the very beginning. The mutant reveal debuted around the same time as Spider-Man, FF and the Avengers. Whereas the MCU already faces several more obstacles.

If there was a new sub-species on the rise by now, SHIELD would have known about it. They would have had meetings about it. Fury or Hill would have at the very least implied it whenever they were schooling someone on how the world is changing. We already know from Agents of SHIELD that [BLACKOUT]there's already some active inhumans in hiding that no one in SHIELD knew about[/BLACKOUT], so why would they know about mutants? They're either extremely small in numbers or there is something suppressing their X-gene.

Let's assume it's the latter (something is suppressing their X-gene). In that case, it's redundant of the whole Inhumans story they're planning since that's exactly what the Inhumans are all about. It'll be even more redundant if they give the persecution angle to the Inhumans. The X-Men definitely won't revert back to Marvel by 2019, so there's that to take in account.

Furthermore, wouldn't everything that's happened in the MCU go against Magneto's reasoning? At least in the comics, Magneto started his reign when there were still very few superhumans running around. But how many of them will be active post-Infinity War? At least 10 Avengers, the Guardians, Daredevil, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, Iron Fist, Strange, Panther, a few Inhumans at the very least...gods, mutates, aliens, AI's...so what would make Magneto think "it's human extinction or our extinction" when practically every other superhero under the sun has been accepted?

Only way I can see it work without a retcon is by letting the universe grow via real time, including letting the characters age. The explanation being that the current events of today led to nature creating more mutants for the future, or something. I'm not even sure if I would advocate going that direction, just that that's how I see it making the most sense.

I think it's a pretty simple fix. Mutants make their big debut after all of this other superhero stuff. Say that the presence of the X-Gene is growing at an exponential rate, and that because of that they're going from a small handful to thousands in just a few generations. Society reacts negatively to them, because they're random freaks popping up unpredictably in huge numbers instead of isolated and mostly controlled instances of beloved public figures obtaining their abilities from human science. Then Magneto starts his thing.

Plus, I think accepted is a strong word. We already know that public reaction to Iron Man was pretty mixed.

 

[The Question]

Also, it depends on how the Inhumans play out, but I don't think they'll end up stepping on any potential X-Men toes. The Inhumans aren't very much like Mutants. They're an organized, isolated society that is "invading" human society. They're more like aliens or Atlanteans than they are like Mutants.

 

[MbJ]

I'm pretty sure the contract includes any current and future X-characters created so Fox would own all of them. Wouldn't make any other sense contract wise.

This has been all but confirmed. Ink, a VERY recent character, appeared in Days of Future Past.

 

[NealKenneth]

First of all, I just want to say thank you for thinking this through and taking it seriously because I believe it is a debate worth having. You made a lot of good points.

A) Why does it matter wether or not most people will encounter mutants in their day-to-day lives? If anything, that increases the likelihood that people will hold prejudiced views about Mutants.

You're right, I had it backwards. People are more likely to view groups stereotypically if they don't actually encounter members of that group. However, the persecuted population would still need to be a certain size in order for this to cause social problems. Fact is, people wouldn't bother passing anti-mutant laws or even talking about mutants if there were barely any mutants in the town.

The places where racism is a problem are where there are a lot of different ethnicities, and the biggest problems are between the largest groups. For example, check out the demographics of Milwaukee, which is frequently listed as one of the most segregated cities in the nation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milwaukee#Demographics If mutants were as high as even 1% of the population, the persecution still wouldn't be analogous to the reality of racial conflicts.

B) Not caring about an entire group of people is a form of bigotry.

It may simply be sensible. Most people I meet who claim to care about far-away groups like "starving Africans" or "children working in Chinese sweatshops" don't actually care about them. They publicly support those groups as a way to get attention for themselves or privately support them as a way to feel self-righteous. Those that actually do care have usually met one or more of those people. It's impossible to truly empathize with every person on the planet, so most people stick to caring about people they actually know. That makes sense and is not hateful.

Others assume that they don't know enough about a particular group or situation to make a judgement, and that is wise, not bigoted. Ferguson was trending recently, but a lot of people who tweeted about it had no idea what was going on over there. Was it really helpful for those people to share their uninformed opinion?

What you're saying here is that the only thing that makes the idea of super powers interesting is that only a rare few people have super powers. I don't buy that.

I agree, it's not the only factor. Even if everyone had superpowers, it would still be interesting to see how their specific powers interact with each other. However, one basic appeal of superhumans is seeing how the existence of exceptional people would impact our society. When a significant portion of our society has superpowers, superpowers stop being exceptional by definition, and it stops being our society too.

Let's play the word replace game:

"Queer people have no obvious unifying traits, so it would be impossible to stereotype them. Nobody goes around making fun of people with Type-AB blood…all these queer people have in common is non-mainstream sexual preference/identity. Some are gay, some some are bi. Some are transgendered, some aren't. Some are butch, some are femme, and some fall in the middle. Some are able to pass as straight. How do you even talk about them as a single group, much less oppress them?"

This word-replace doesn't make sense as a criticism of my point because queer people DO have an obvious unifying trait...atypical sexuality. Even so, specific prejudices about queer people usually sub-divide into specific stereotypes. For example, it is not unusual for straight males to avoid gay men but be excited by the idea of meeting a lesbian couple. If we were using the idea of mutants as a metaphor for queer people, we would expect mutant stereotyping to be more specific. For example, we would expect normal humans to maybe fear mind-readers in particular but have no opinion of teleporters, and for some mutations to be favored (you can bet a lot of men would want to date shapeshifters).

But nope, it's always "We alllll hate alllll mutants!" for some reason...that is what I mean when I say that the X-Men are a poor metaphor for racism or homophobia. The complexities of those issues are almost totally unexplorable because that nature of gene mutation as a unifying trait is totally different from sexual preference or ethnic appearance. It's nature as a unifying trait is most comparable to blood type.

Bigotry is and always has been completely arbitrary. It doesn't make logical sense. Race is a social construct. "Normal" gender identity and sexual orientation is a social construct. If you went to ancient Rome, our concepts of "gay" and "black" would be completely alien to them. The way we divide ourselves in society is largely arbitrary, and the ways we oppress and mistreat each other and the things we choose to deem as less are equally arbitrary.

Incorrect. If a black slave escaped a plantation in the 1850s, was his lifelong hatred of white people arbitrary? There is history and logic behind every division we have in society. I'm not saying any of these divisions are just, I'm saying they have all happened for a reason, not arbitrarily.

Marvel has never given us the reason humanity hates mutants. Knowing the reason why mutants are viewed in a different light from other superhumans is important information we are never given, leading to mutants feeling out-of-place in the universe. My theory is that we aren't shown the reason because no one has been able to think of one that makes sense.

Yes, there is no denying that. And it adds a level of complication and nuance that you very rarely see in mainstream oppression narratives but is very true to life. There are always going to be practical considerations and complications when dealing with the rights of individuals and oppressed groups that make the whole situation more involved than simply saying "hey everyone, let's be nice to each other!" The X-Men creates a scenario that asks us to address a very real practical concern while doing so in a way that is in the best interests of both society and the individual at the center of it and respects that individuals civil liberties and agency.

In fifty years of X-Men stories, the authors have never explored this idea as well as it was in The Incredibles. The Civil War event also explored this theme (but poorly). Neither needed mutants to explore it, just superhumans.

Mutants are an especially applicable metaphor for neurodiverse individuals. People with mental illnesses can, if their illnesses are severe enough, pose a danger to themselves and, in some very rare instances, to others. Obviously, it is the responsibility of society to keep that individual and those around that individual safe and healthy. But the problem is doing so in a way that still acknowledges the individuals rights and worth and a human being. Very often in our society, the mentally ill are treated as freaks and potential violent criminals, and are often mistreated by the authorities who do not know or care about the subtleties of their condition of their basic rights as a human being. This attitude has its origins in a reasonable concern for safety, but has through callousness and carelessness morphed into a vicious form of oppression and margenalization, caution and fear devoid entirely of compassion or respect.

This is a great point. You've really nailed on the head that the best possible (and possibly only) way to use the persecution of the X-Men metaphorically is a representation of people with mental illnesses. However, as with your last point, the metaphor is equally fulfilled by superhumans in general. For example, The Hulk could be used as a superb metaphor for someone with split personality disorder or anger management issues, and he is not a mutant.

Bigotry is not rational. If it were, it wouldn't be bigotry, it would be a reasonable distinction.

The issue with using a gene mutation as a catalyst for bigotry isn't that it's irrational, the issue is that it's impractical. Without testing their blood, how could the average person know whether someone was a mutant rather than a different type of superhuman? If someone hated mutants, you would expect them to hate all superhumans, because it would be impossible for most people to tell the difference. However, we are repeatedly shown that the general population loves The Avengers and The Fantastic Four, yet hates the X-Men. That makes no sense.

The emotional reasoning behind this discrepancy is simple: They used to be one of us, so it's okay. They got their powers through science, through a process that comes as a result of our scientific accomplishments and that we can control, so it's okay. They are an extension of us, they're not here to replace us, so it's okay.

Add to that the fact that the populace of the MU generally assumes that any superhero who's origin is not public knowledge is a Mutant, and it makes exactly as much sense as real world prejudice.

Captain America is, in essence, the superhero equivalent of Macklemore.

This is a great point in theory and the Macklemore comment was a funny way to summarize it.

However, this does not reflect how humans actually react to natural changes. We know from real-world issues like GMOs, embryonic stem cell research, sex change operations and "designer babies" that it's actually human attempts at changing things that get social backlash and protest. It's also clear that whenever a change is considered undesirable, there is always an attempt to blame it on humans (like global warming or the extinction of honey bees.) For these reasons, I believe the average person would be more likely to persecute human-made superhumans than mutants, if they were somehow able to tell the difference between the two.

Basically, it's hard for me to imagine a significant portion of the population hating what appears to be a natural change in our species, especially if they are aware aliens exist and mutations therefore mean humanity will have a better chance at surviving on a galactic scale. It would be much more realistic if fringe groups were shown trying to prove super-mutations were actually caused by humans if they wanted society to hate them.

There's a clear difference between "talented" and "super powered." There's a very clear difference between "I'm really good at math" and "I am a 15 foot tall six armed guy with purple skin who can transmute matter with my mind."

There's a difference between "talented" and "freak." Not a logical difference, because as I said there's nothing about this that is logical, but an emotional one. An "I know it when I see it" one.

The people you mentioned had human talents that fall in line with what we expect from people. There was nothing about them that seemed other or alien in our cultural landscape. And they were things that we, as the insecure egotists that many of us are, could convince ourselves was do to hard work and human ingenuity.

If mutants actually existed as they do in Marvel, there is no doubt that they would face prejudice and persecution.

You're right that talent and superpowers aren't exactly the same, but why would someone with superpower be hated? If we defined a superpower as an extremely exceptional talent, why wouldn't that be extremely-exceptionally-embraced by society? You haven't explained why increasing the level of advantage would lead to an individual suddenly being rejected rather than embraced.

If you have an answer to that, then the follow-up question would be: why would the origin of the superpowers being a natural mutation make any difference in whether or not that individual was rejected by society?

If the metaphor isn't worth preserving, then the X-Men aren't worth preserving, because that is everything they are about.

I disagree. The characters are still awesome without the mutant persecution angle, and the relationships between them are largely unaffected by whether or not they are persecuted. There is also the option to have them persecuted for a reason other than their DNA.

Magneto becomes a pointless character without the metaphor. Malcolm X without a civil rights movement to fight in is just a guy yelling about nothing.

Magneto can still fight for superhumans and view them as the rightful masters of regular humans without the idea of some are persecuted because their powers were natural. The origin of the powers does not effect Magneto's cause.

Yes, the original idea was born out of laziness. And then it grew into something more than that, because other writers came along and turned a failing series into the single biggest Marvel franchise.

You're treating the mutant persecution angle as though it is the source of life for the series. This angle was already used before the first run was cancelled. The later success is due to better characterization and stories. After all, the coolness of Wolverine has nothing to do with his resistance to prejudice and the Dark Pheonix saga stayed away from the theme entirely.

I disagree completely, for the reasons mentioned above, but I just wanted to point out: Since when does humanity love The Hulk?

This is actually evidence that society would be more likely to judge each superhuman on their individual actions rather than the origin of their superpower. It would just be too difficult to stereotype when each one is so unique.

I think it's a pretty simple fix. Mutants make their big debut after all of this other superhero stuff. Say that the presence of the X-Gene is growing at an exponential rate, and that because of that they're going from a small handful to thousands in just a few generations. Society reacts negatively to them, because they're random freaks popping up unpredictably in huge numbers instead of isolated and mostly controlled instances of beloved public figures obtaining their abilities from human science.

I agree that the best way to approach the idea of mutant persecution would be to place it's introduction later in the history of the MCU than the Avengers/Spider-Man/Inhumans etc. It simply does not fit into the universe otherwise.

Also, it depends on how the Inhumans play out, but I don't think they'll end up stepping on any potential X-Men toes. The Inhumans aren't very much like Mutants. They're an organized, isolated society that is "invading" human society. They're more like aliens or Atlanteans than they are like Mutants.

Persecution of the people of an organized, isolated society like Atlanteans or Inhumans would be a better metaphor for racism than the X-Men are capable of. I would rather see that theme explored with either of those than another attempt with the X-Men.

 

[pr0xyt0xin]

I would approach it as it already is being approached: X-Men separate from the rest of the Marvel Universe and Marvel/Disney just has two separate universes to play in.

Other than that, better costumes, more team battles, better young actors.

 

[Steyin]

It seems to be agreed upon here that you need the idea of mutants in Marvel because they are crucial to the identity of the X-Men. I disagree because mutants have always been a poor metaphor for minorities/homosexuals/oppressedflavoroftheweek.

Whenever this theme has showed up in the films or comics, it has always felt forced and out-of-place. Here are a few reasons why:

1) The mutant population is not large enough that persecution of them would realistically be a social problem. The fact is that if Xavier can only find a few hundred students for his school from all around the globe, that means most people aren't going to come across mutants in their day-to-day lives. If they never see mutants, they simply will not care about them. People carrying billboards saying "God hates mutants!" would be viewed as fanatics and largely ignored.

2) In certain times and universes where the mutant population IS large enough to cause a social problem, the idea of superpowers stops being interesting. To quote The Incredibles
Mrs. Incredible: "Everyone's special, Dash."
Dash: "Which is just another way of saying no one is."

3) Mutants have no obvious unifying traits, so it would be impossible to stereotype them. Nobody goes around making fun of people with Type-AB blood...all these mutants have in common is a gene. Some have extra arms, some don't. Some can make things explode, some can't. Some look totally normal. How do you even talk about them as a single group, much less oppress them?

4) Teenagers randomly and suddenly having superhuman powers is a legitimate safety concern, unlike homosexuality or differences in physical appearance due to ethnicity. When Scott Summers goes from A-student to blowing a hole in the wall just by looking at it, I get why the parents are frightened and try to find solutions.

5) If the average human loves The Fantastic Four and The Avengers, why would they hate mutants? To the average human, these are all just people with superpowers...would they really care how they got those powers?

6) Exceptional gifts are usually celebrated in society, not shamed and persecuted. There were no mobs out to kill great minds like Einstein or Beethoven. None of the parents wanted to kill the dunker on your high school basketball team because he was "too tall." What's wrong with the people in Marvel that they hate mutants so much?

That's just a few reasons off the top of my head, and I could probably come up with many more with more time. In my opinion, the X-Men have always failed to be a metaphor for oppressed groups, so I don't believe that metaphor is worth trying to preserve in the MCU.

Mutants are also not necessary to the X-Men from a narrative angle. Xavier could run a fake boarding school for teenagers who get superpowers for whatever reason...it doesn't have to be that they are mutants and therefore inexplicably hated by everyone (including their family.) Magneto could be someone who believes superhumans should stay away from normal people for their own safety, but then seek to rule over them, while Xavier could help people with superpowers finds ways to use their gifts to work WITH normal people. They don't have to be mutants to have these conflicts.

7) Stan Lee literally only came up with the idea of mutants because he was too lazy to keep writing origin stories. "I couldn't have everybody bitten by a radioactive spider or exposed to a gamma ray explosion. And I took the cowardly way out. I said to myself, 'Why don't I just say they're mutants. They were born that way'."

It wasn't to make some statement about society, and it has never worked when later authors have tried to use them that way, partly for the other six reasons I have already listed. You don't need mutants to have the X-Men.

I don't think I could honestly ever buy into the X-Men in the current MCU. Hell, I have a hard enough time buying into them in the comics and how the world views/treats them with all the other superheroes and aliens running around. Doesn't make much sense in my eyes.

 

[Chris B]

This may sound contrived, but I've always figured that it wouldn't be a huge stretch to say that mutants, on average, have a longer lifespan than humans. This being a way to keep Magneto a Holocaust survivor for still awhile longer.

But that would probably be plausible for only so long. So I recognize the possibility of retconning his backstory to a later genocide.

 

[Tg11]

But if X-Men are introduced in the MCU then that means X-Men has the potential to cross over into the world of The Avengers but also I would love to see Nick Fury cross paths with The X-Men but also I wonder if SHIELD or what is now Hydra if they would see the X-Men as a threat? Because of the fact that they are mutants but also because of the fact that the X-Men are unpredictable and then add to the fact that The Brotherhood of Mutants they would probably work with SHIELD/Hydra

 

[GREEN =w= DAY]

i honestly can not see the X-Men fitting into the Marvel Universe

it seems that Fox has finally been trying to steer the ship right with the X-Men films so i actually do hope they stay separate from Marvel

 

[pr0xyt0xin]

This may sound contrived, but I've always figured that it wouldn't be a huge stretch to say that mutants, on average, have a longer lifespan than humans. This being a way to keep Magneto a Holocaust survivor for still awhile longer.

But that would probably be plausible for only so long. So I recognize the possibility of retconning his backstory to a later genocide.

This is lame.

X-Men is the perfect example of why the un-aging nature of comic book characters is bad for creativity and just poor writing.

X-Men should for all intents and purposes be a period piece. It should follow Mags and Xavier through the mid 1900s, the core teams through the late 1900s, new teams throughout the 2000s, and touch on ancient mutants and far future mutants throughout time.

Stop trying to de-age Magneto and Charles and don't even consider making him something other than a holocaust survivor. Instead show how his PERMANENT death affects the characters as we know them. Show us how his ABSENCE is felt rather than just his presence.

I know it's a difficult concept to comprehend, X-Men stories without Magneto... but thats the point. We would all miss him. Just like death in real life.

 

[Mjölnir]

I'm pretty happy that X-Men aren't part of the MCU since I actually think they work better on their own. The whole mutants vs humans theme gets stronger when there's not a crap ton of other superheroes around that don't get blamed for being dangerous to the same extent that the mutants do.

So I'd either create a separate universe for them, or make a tv show out of them. Probably the latter, but right now I'm happy enough with Fox doing those movies.

 

[Shikamaru]

I personally wouldn't want Magneto's backstory to be discarded. While there's definitely been other horrible atrocities and dehumanizations of human beings since WWII, I don't think any of them would have the same impact as the Holocaust.

I wouldn't mind if they came up with a way to keep him long lasting from the get-go, similar to Demona in Gargoyles. You could even tie it in to other parts of the mutant canon like how Sinister is with Apocalypse.

 

[Visualiza]

This is lame.

X-Men is the perfect example of why the un-aging nature of comic book characters is bad for creativity and just poor writing.

X-Men should for all intents and purposes be a period piece. It should follow Mags and Xavier through the mid 1900s, the core teams through the late 1900s, new teams throughout the 2000s, and touch on ancient mutants and far future mutants throughout time.

Stop trying to de-age Magneto and Charles and don't even consider making him something other than a holocaust survivor. Instead show how his PERMANENT death affects the characters as we know them. Show us how his ABSENCE is felt rather than just his presence.

I know it's a difficult concept to comprehend, X-Men stories without Magneto... but thats the point. We would all miss him. Just like death in real life.

The Ultimate universe had an opportunity to explore this, but never really did so in any meaningful way.

 

[pr0xyt0xin]

The Ultimate universe had an opportunity to explore this, but never really did so in any meaningful way.

The Ultimate universe had a lot of opportunities they didnt explore in meaningful ways.

Sue me but I'd love to see another reboot of the X-Men comic series from the beginning, as a period piece, separate from the MU, without the trite comic cliches. With a clear cut end. The nature of the X-Men mythos would imply an actual end (i.e. the last non-mutant human) just as it had an actual beginning (the first mutant).

 

[Flint Marko]

This is lame.

X-Men is the perfect example of why the un-aging nature of comic book characters is bad for creativity and just poor writing.

X-Men should for all intents and purposes be a period piece. It should follow Mags and Xavier through the mid 1900s, the core teams through the late 1900s, new teams throughout the 2000s, and touch on ancient mutants and far future mutants throughout time.

Stop trying to de-age Magneto and Charles and don't even consider making him something other than a holocaust survivor. Instead show how his PERMANENT death affects the characters as we know them. Show us how his ABSENCE is felt rather than just his presence.

I know it's a difficult concept to comprehend, X-Men stories without Magneto... but thats the point. We would all miss him. Just like death in real life.

Great point, if they ever do integrate the X-universe into the MCU I'd like for them to make them "period pieces" like you said. It's too bad Fox got to that first because now it might look like a rip-off if Marvel ever did it.

 

[XtremelyBaneful]

it'd be hard to introduce the all-the-while coexistence of mutants with the continuing deepning of narrative in the mcu.

 

[Shikamaru]

In response to the earlier explanations regarding mutants...

"I know it when I see it" is precisely why I'm on the fence with mutants in the MCU. While that may be applied to characters like Beast and Angel, it still doesn't account for all the millions (and often portrayed as majority) of "normal" looking mutants. Bigotry may not be reasonable, but it IS shallow, and I think the average bigot has too shallow of a mindset to differentiate between a normal-looking mutate and a normal-looking mutant. The Neanderthals all had similar physical traits in common that differentiated them from the Homo Sapiens. Two mutants are as different from one another as they are from humans.

 

[ralphuniverse]

G'day,

You know, I think we are asking the wrong question here. The question is not "how Marvel can introduce the X-Men into the MCU" but the reverse,m "how Marvel can sell the X-Men comic books (not just the movie rights) to Fox?". Just why does Marvel need the X-Men? They have come up with alternatives for the MCU (the inhumans) so don't need them. Yes, the X-Men are still important for the comics but they are slowly but surely replacing them there too. We now find the Magneto is *not* Wanda & Pietro daddy. They might be, dare I say it , Inhuman? Expect more Inhuman promotion when the movie come out. In effect the X-Men comics are promoting Fox not Disney. So don't be surprised if in a few years time the X-Men leave the Marvel Universe and completely become Fox properties. Fox could probably set up a profitable little (mostly web based) comic book subsidiary which would include the X-Men and their other popular franchise like Star wars, Alien, Predator etc.

Ralph

 

[Brawl]

I would make it a TV or Netflix series. It would initially star the original 5. Wolverine would debut in season 2. I would cast Daniel Dae Kim as Magneto.

So would you abandon the whole "concentration camp" and "Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver" story lines?

 

[Brawl]

In both those cases, we'd have a Muslim Magneto, and having a terrorist who is also a Muslim is kind of a mine field to navigate in terms of PR.



1: Actors generally aren't much like the characters they play, because they're acting.

2: Shut your mouth Kim is great!



…

Kim is not a "great" actor, he has no presence, he's good for playing the the character that intently follows the charismatic leader or something but him being a raging symbol of hatred or vengeance I'll never see it, he just doesn't have that range.

 

[Brawl]

I would make mutants a big cover up by Shield or SWORD. Introduce the Celestials as a backdrop for Inhumans and Mutants. Each a different experiment on mankind. Have a genetic bomb that explodes in AGENT CARTER series that triggers the latent mutant genes in humans. Flash forward to today we have mutants getting found by Prof X and start with half of the most popular mutants like Angel, Cyclops, Storm, Rogue, Nightcrawler, and Colossus.

I would make their arch enemy different each season. One season its the Goverment, next it would be anti mutant party, next a alien invasion. spice it up.

 

[Tg11]

And you could also involve Hydra as a whole

 

[TMC1982]

- After the events of Avengers: Age of Ultron, the government uses the remains of the Ultron army to build Sentinels.

- The Mutants are believed to be an urban myth but the UN knows they exist and have for a few decades or so.

Since mutants in the Marvel Universe are entirely the product of Celestial tampering with humanity, and the MCU has already established (in Guardians of the Galaxy) that the Celestials used Infinity Stones in the past to blow up planets, and also established (just now, in Age of Ultron) that an Infinity Stone can be used to 'enhance' humans into superhumans like Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch, it would be "easy as pie" for some Infinity Stone / Infinity Gauntlet shenanigans to kick-start the appearance of 'enhanced people' (aka *mutants*) all over the Earth.

- Kitty Pryde would be the audience surrogate, much like how Rogue was in the original movies

- The lineup would consist of Beast, Cyclops, Jean Gray, Psylocke, and Colossus

- Wolverine will not be a main character, he will only make a blink-and-you-miss cameo via Cerebro