MCU X-Men - Part 2

[Havok83]

"Bigotry isnt rational" is the excuse the comics have leaned on for a long time and it usually produces idiotic stories. I'd prefer to see an MCU where average Americans are sympathetic rather than moral monsters with an IQ of 70 who deserve to be ruled with an iron fist (no, not that Iron Fist).

Idiotic stories like what? Where is that used as an excuse in the comics?

 

[Kuwolski]

Idiotic stories like what? Where is that used as an excuse in the comics?

Yeah, I'm like what excuse? The fact that they are written as feared so the writers can deal with real world politics, however subtle or overt? This question has been going in circles for decades, but frankly nobody really cares if the stories are good. These characters are allegories in a fictional world, so the distinction between mutants and non mutants is often just another part of the suspension of disbelief which is required.

Yeah.

 

[Gamma Goliath]

Seriously a world where super heroes can be praised and criticized already exist, but we dont get much public perception of the avengers even though they've referenced the kind of star power they have (Ben and Jerry's flavors named after them). then you introduce the idea that regular every day people are out there with freakish super powers and are hiding in plain sight, or they're living in the sewers. then you introduce the right kind of bigot who can really tap into the public's paranoia and drive the distrust and fear of "mutants", Then you have something we haven't seen in the mcu.

 

[Havok83]

Seriously a world where super heroes can be praised and criticized already exist, but we dont get much public perception of the avengers even though they've referenced the kind of star power they have (Ben and Jerry's flavors named after them). then you introduce the idea that regular every day people are out there with freakish super powers and are hiding in plain sight, or they're living in the sewers. then you introduce the right kind of bigot who can really tap into the public's paranoia and drive the distrust and fear of "mutants", Then you have something we haven't seen in the mcu.

Exactly. Someone gets it

 

[AndrewGilkison]

Those are actually intelligent questions to ask! "Mutants are the only superhumans anyone hates because waves hands bigotry exists!" is an unintelligent answer.
I agree that the X-Men don't need a separate universe, but this is silly.

We live in a world where black people get the police called on them just for hanging out at Starbucks, two years removed from having a black President.

Why would mutants be loved just because the Avengers and the Fantastic Four are loved? Famous black people are revered but the black person on the street gets viewed with suspicion and has the cops called on them just for being in a public place.

 

[CaptainWagner]

"Bigotry isnt rational" is the excuse the comics have leaned on for a long time and it usually produces idiotic stories. I'd prefer to see an MCU where average Americans are sympathetic rather than moral monsters with an IQ of 70 who deserve to be ruled with an iron fist (no, not that Iron Fist).

Sure, who needs reality and relevant social commentary when you can live in a fantasy world because America loves nothing more than patting ourselves on the back and insisting everything is okay and, awe gee, aren't we the greatest.

I assume you mean such "idiotic stories" like "God Loves, Man Kills"? You know, the whole thesis of what the X-Men are and what they stand for

 

[MasterCat]

Sure, who needs reality and relevant social commentary when you can live in a fantasy world because America loves nothing more than patting ourselves on the back and insisting everything is okay and, awe gee, aren't we the greatest.

I assume you mean such "idiotic stories" like "God Loves, Man Kills"? You know, the whole thesis of what the X-Men are and what they stand for

OK, first, mutants aren't real (except the kind defined in Darwinian biology, which doesn't include a single "maybe you get eye beams, maybe you get Chaos magic" gene). Second, it's not relevant social commentary for every human to have an IQ of 70 and also a sixth sense that detects whether or not a superhuman has that magic X-gene. Like in the Marvels limited series, people on the street can detect that ugly Ben Grimm deserves sympathy because he doesn't have that horrible X-gene, so they don't demand his death after lynching a Mutant child the children of a morally pure photojournalist were hiding.
Being more like chimpanzees with an X-gene sense isn't even consistent with the characterization of human supporting characters in other Marvel comics, where they seem to have normal IQs and almost none of them join lynch mobs.

 

[Kuwolski]

We live in a world where black people get the police called on them just for hanging out at Starbucks, two years removed from having a black President.

Why would mutants be loved just because the Avengers and the Fantastic Four are loved? Famous black people are revered but the black person on the street gets viewed with suspicion and has the cops called on them just for being in a public place.

Exactly. And this is an obvious parallel, there are a myriad of other strands and subtleties that can be added to these themes in terms of the contemporary world, including moral outrage and hypocrisy, and the ramifications from that, etc.

 

[CaptainWagner]

OK, first, mutants aren't real (except the kind defined in Darwinian biology, which doesn't include a single "maybe you get eye beams, maybe you get Chaos magic" gene). Second, it's not relevant social commentary for every human to have an IQ of 70 and also a sixth sense that detects whether or not a superhuman has that magic X-gene. Like in the Marvels limited series, people on the street can detect that ugly Ben Grimm deserves sympathy because he doesn't have that horrible X-gene, so they don't demand his death after lynching a Mutant child the children of a morally pure photojournalist were hiding.
Being more like chimpanzees with an X-gene sense isn't even consistent with the characterization of human supporting characters in other Marvel comics, where they seem to have normal IQs and almost none of them join lynch mobs.

And yet as people have already pointed out, this sort of hypocrisy is still very prevalent in American society, whether you want to talk racism, homophobia, religious intolerance, any of the minority issues the X-Men serve to represent.

 

[Havok83]

OK, first, mutants aren't real (except the kind defined in Darwinian biology, which doesn't include a single "maybe you get eye beams, maybe you get Chaos magic" gene). Second, it's not relevant social commentary for every human to have an IQ of 70 and also a sixth sense that detects whether or not a superhuman has that magic X-gene. Like in the Marvels limited series, people on the street can detect that ugly Ben Grimm deserves sympathy because he doesn't have that horrible X-gene, so they don't demand his death after lynching a Mutant child the children of a morally pure photojournalist were hiding.
Being more like chimpanzees with an X-gene sense isn't even consistent with the characterization of human supporting characters in other Marvel comics, where they seem to have normal IQs and almost none of them join lynch mobs.

Why are you of the assumption that every human would have the IQ of 70?

 

[MasterCat]

And yet as people have already pointed out, this sort of hypocrisy is still very prevalent in American society, whether you want to talk racism, homophobia, religious intolerance, any of the minority issues the X-Men serve to represent.

If most Americans are racist, homophobic, religiously intolerant bigots, these beliefs must be compatible with normally distributed intelligence. Also, racism isn't the exact same thing as not liking someone's religion or sexual behavior, and neither is the same thing as fearing people with powers that force the laws of physics to go cry in a corner (being born a superhero/villain is much more like having a god for a parent in Greek mythology).
Because "bigots" have normally distributed human intelligence, you can ask them why they believe things. Humans, or at least Americans, in Marvel comics seem incapable of engaging in dialogue about why they hate superhuman but only if they have the X-gene. It's reduced to "Ook! Damn mutants! attempted murder"
And it's not clear how Marvel humans work in other countries. Do Africans want to kill all Mutants? If not, why did Xavier ever invite African Mutants to his school for protection?

@havok83: 70 is a vague shorthand for "scarcely more intelligent than a chimpanzee", which is how the humans come across when they make big9t noises and attack the Mutant heroes (but not other heroes).

 

[Fincher]

The X-Men don't just live in a world where there's discrimination. They live in a world where genocide is a looming threat. Also, in our world where the president was black but black people get shot by police, there are people who do have a problem with the president being black. They aren't the majority, but my point is that there isn't some gulf of human experience where Obama and Oprah and Denzel Washington never experience racism in their ivory towers.


When Fox's Fantastic Four were maybe going to be crossed with their X-Men franchise, I had the idea that they could have been celebrities before they gained powers and then were made the public face of mutants to try to sway public sentiment in their favor. What I was suggesting, though, was a nuanced take where not everyone considered them heroes and where there was backlash from the anti-mutant groups. What I specifically didn't want was to have X-Men do their thing, have the Fantastic Four do their thing, and then toss in some cameos and say they were connected, as if all it means to be the FF in an anti-mutant world is to simply happen to be in that world.


If mutants exist in the MCU, and people fear them, that fear should reach the Avengers and be felt in the MCU in general. Captain America should see the mutants as his people who are suffering and not see himself as something separate just because a super serum got him where he is. He should care in the same way that Obama or Oprah should care, and he should work to make the mutant situation better from the inside. In other words, there's no Captain America and X-Men co-existing like they're separate things. Either he becomes part of the overall X-Men property, albeit exploring it from a different angle, or he has no business being in the same world.

 

[MasterCat]

What Fincher said.
When X-Men is a work of speculative fiction that uses the assumptions "superhuman exist" and "the vast majority of humans fear and hate them", that should carry over to other stories set in the same universe. It shouldn't be "here's an Avengers film where superheroes are popular. Now here's an X-Men crossover where all the other superheroes are their friends and we never mention how the plebs act completely different in our respective movies."

 

[Creo]

No its not. The point he is trying to make is bigotry isnt rational and it exists in the world all the time. The Avengers and they were trained, authorized heroes sanctioned by the government. People are confitioned to trust cops and they were that on a grander scale. Even so, as we saw in Civil War, not everyone loves them. I can easily see how there would be fear in that universe if a bunch of random people started getting powers with many high profile ones using those powers for terrorism. All it takes is the media to grab onto that and spread the fear by making it a story and politicians using that for their own advancement. It happens in real life and not that hard to grasp



Thats not necesarily a bad thing. Id have much preferred an MCU film over Eternals

I'd have said the same thing about half of the Marvel movies a decade ago. Now I'd rather have every mcu movie instead. I'm glad they use lesser characters, and I hope they continue to use the un the future.

 

[CaptainWagner]

1) Intelligence and bigotry are not linked. Some of history's most notorious bigots were also highly intellectual.

2) You're missing the entire point that superheroes and mutants are viewed DIFFERENTLY! And as we've repeatedly stated, there are plenty of real world parallels. People will line up to cheer a distant celebrity metahuman, but start to think a little differently when they could be living right next door. Not to mention none of the Avengers really have "scary" powersets.

 

[Captain Marvel]

Many of the Avengers don't even have powers. Falcon, Iron Man, War Machine, Black Widow, Hawkeye, and Ant-Man just use gadgets or training.

Here's a difference, though. The run-of-the-mill superhero represents a one-off occurrence or isn't even human. Captain America was created from a unique experiment that can't be replicated. The same is true of Scarlet Witch in the MCU. Thor and the Vision aren't human.

Mutants, on the other hand, are born at random. And while most superheroes get their powers in adulthood, mutants gain theirs during puberty, so you have people gaining superhuman powers when they're at their most volatile and don't have the maturity level to handle that. Having seen Deadpool 2, would you want Rusty Collins in a school with your kids? Many parents would not feel safe if that were the case. They'd be screaming bloody murder that someone capable of burning down the entire school on a whim was hanging out in a school with other kids.

There's also the issue that mutants represent the next evolutionary step. Again, run-of-the-mill superheroes are accidents for the most part. Mutants, though, represent a change to human history. They represent normal humans being supplanted and replaced. They represent a possible era where the normal human becomes the minority, and are potentially lorded over by the mutant majority. They're not individual lab accidents, but a whole new race being born, one whose identity is shaped by their nature as a mutant. The irony here is that by hating and fearing mutants, humans are making mutants more likely to place more importance on their identity as mutants. It's tribalism in its purest form, where people on both sides have the deeply held belief not only that there's an "Us" and a "Them", but given enough time, it'll turn into "Us Vs. Them."

 

[Bayne]

1) Intelligence and bigotry are not linked. Some of history's most notorious bigots were also highly intellectual.

2) You're missing the entire point that superheroes and mutants are viewed DIFFERENTLY! And as we've repeatedly stated, there are plenty of real world parallels. People will line up to cheer a distant celebrity metahuman, but start to think a little differently when they could be living right next door. Not to mention none of the Avengers really have "scary" powersets.

What? Hulk, Thor, Vision, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, Dr. Strange and Wong, Ant-man and the Wasp, and arguably Iron Man and War Machine would literally terrify the crap out of any random person who suddenly found themselves face to face without already knowing who they are. Probably many people would still be equally terrified even if they did know who they are.

 

[MasterCat]

What? Hulk, Thor, Vision, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, Dr. Strange and Wong, Ant-man and the Wasp, and arguably Iron Man and War Machine would literally terrify the crap out of any random person who suddenly found themselves face to face without already knowing who they are. Probably many people would still be equally terrified even if they did know who they are.

Yeah, really. The Hulk is viscerally terrifying. Thor is a Norse god, making people question their own religions (unless he says "we're not really gods" and endorses a mainstream religion, as 616 Thor once did with the Catholic Church). The Scarlet Witch is canonically so scary that 117 governments signed the Sokovia Accords. Ant-Man and the Wasp could walk into anyone's home at ant size and kill them.
People might not be terrified of Drm Strange or the Vision, but only because they haven't seen what a sorcerer's powers are and Vision' s are really weird.

 

[Silvermoth]

Sometimes bigotry is irrational. I mean, why do so many straight guys fear gay guys but love gay women so much? It’s just fear.

It’s like, when we had a vote on marriage equality last year so many straight people voted no because they thought if the opportunity existed we would do to them what they did to us and make their marriages illegal. Irrational.

 

[CaptainWagner]

What? Hulk, Thor, Vision, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, Dr. Strange and Wong, Ant-man and the Wasp, and arguably Iron Man and War Machine would literally terrify the crap out of any random person who suddenly found themselves face to face without already knowing who they are. Probably many people would still be equally terrified even if they did know who they are.

That's the point. The public KNOWS the Avengers. They're iconic, hyped-up celebrities with PR teams who stay far away from average Joe and Jane American on the street. Mutants are everywhere, and a lot of them are a lot more scary than an attractive lady who shoots red power blasts.

 

[Rorschach2012]

If they’re going with a bigger name for Wolverine, I really think Hunnam is the guy. Give him some hair dye and gel and he’s good to go. I wouldn’t mind seeing camera tricks or CGI to make him a little shorter as well.

 

[Herofan]

"The MCU doesn't need the X-Men or the FF." What the **** does need have to do with it?! These are movies based on comic books. They are there to entertain. None of this is "needed".

Well at the risk of being too pretentious (but I don't think so), the valid reason to do a new version of something, aside from making money, is if it will be better than the previous version(s). I think the first three X-Men films were pretty close to the comics of the '70s and '80s, the Claremont years (best years) and then First Class tried to go retro, literally and stylistically to the '60s (which I didn't like but was fairly successful). A notable area where they were lacking was Cyclops and it's doubtful that with Marvel producing he would get more attention, instead likely just more of Wolverine as star.

I've already seen X-Men movies where the X-Men where the only superheroes in their universe.

And featured the most popular characters as the team so new films casts would probably be repetitive or less interesting/popular.

I've already seen Fantastic Four movies where they were the only superheroes in their universe.

With that there isn't much consensus of why they didn't succeed and so why or how Marvel would do better seems unclear. If anything, there's some consensus that two of the main five characters were well-cast (Evans as Johnny and Chiklis as Ben) yet the films still overall failed.

I've already seen Spider-Man movies where he was the only superhero in his universe. Why do we need to be limited by this anymore when having everyone in the same universe opens up more stories that can be told? The possibilities are now endless. Whereas having everyone split up in their own universes limits things. Limits what you can do. Why do we need these limitations anymore?

I don't think crossovers are a huge part of the comics, especially the better and best comics. I'd rather see Peter interacting with J. Jonah Jameson than Iron Man or Wolverine, Tony interacting with Rhodes than Banner or Richards. Too much interaction among heroes can easily take away too much focus away from the characters' personal/civilian lives.

 

[Kuwolski]

I don't think the X-Men films felt anything too close to Claremont for me. They certainly borrowed elements from his run, but I never felt like I was truly ever watching the X-Men come to life.

I do love X2 very much, still a top 5 favorite of mine, but it's certainly a product of the times in the genre. It needed to be like that as much as Singer wanted it like that.

As for Marvel not improving on a terribly mistreated Cyclops, thanks for the laugh. They re all about the characters, first and formost.

Cheers.

 

[MasterCat]

Is there anyone who could replace Ian McKellen as Magneto without de-aging the character?
Christopher Plummer, born December 1929, is still acting and has experience playing morally ambiguous "great men" like Caesar.
Michael Caine (March 1933) is still active and frequently plays surrogate fathers, but he seems too gentle to play a father figure who's a villain.

Ultimately there aren't more than a small handful of white actors that age who are in Sir Ian's league. Michael Douglas oozes morally ambiguous charisma, but he's already playing Henry Pym. And if they could get Sir Ian to return, I imagine it would generate more excitement than any alternative.

 

[Havok83]

I don't think the X-Men films felt anything too close to Claremont for me. They certainly borrowed elements from his run, but I never felt like I was truly ever watching the X-Men come to life.

I do love X2 very much, still a top 5 favorite of mine, but it's certainly a product of the times in the genre. It needed to be like that as much as Singer wanted it like that.

As for Marvel not improving on a terribly mistreated Cyclops, thanks for the laugh. They re all about the characters, first and formost.

Cheers.

yeah that staetment is a big WTF to me. The first films were about modernizing the X-men and took the franchise in a new direction that the books then adopted. The concept of the school for one was radically different than the small close knit family CC wrote.