The X-Men movies continued to run through storylines for over a decade, but eventually 20th Century Fox was forced to innovate in order to compete with the rest of the superhero franchises out there. After a few critical flops, the X-Men made a quiet comeback by experimenting with the superhero genre. In 2016, the hyper-self-aware Deadpool not only broke the third wall but proved that R-rated superhero movies could smash records. Logan, which premiered the following year, stripped X-Men’s most popular character, Wolverine, of all his heroism in a small, gritty, emotional film.
But the punch-quip formula is Marvel Studios’ bread and butter. Sure, Marvel’s begun to test the bounds of the genre a bit with a talking raccoon and shocking cliffhangers. Yet those movies never stray too far from the magic formula that has led to Marvel’s overwhelming success. And it’s unclear whether Marvel Studios would even want to take a risk by making another movie like Logan.