How To Integrate the X-Men into the Marvel Cinematic Universe
Every X-Men fan has been wondering, when will Marvel’s merry mutants make their way from their own cinematic universe over at Fox Studios on over to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU)?
There are numerous factors that are going into the decision, not the least of which have to do with big business moves and decisions like, when was the sale of Fox Studios finalized at Disney? What approach does Marvel want to take with the mutants? Cast them young? Which ones to start with, the original five–Cyclops, Jean Grey, The Beast, Angel, and Iceman, or start with the later editions who are largely more popular than the originals? And of course, there’s the logistics of casting, once those larger decisions are made.
But for the sake of this post, let’s look at some interesting times Marvel could have made the move in a big way to “import” the X-Men on over to the MCU.
The most obvious place to have done it was during AVENGERS: ENDGAME. Here, we’ve got a magical glove that can literally make anything happen. And the bearer could manifest or change reality consciously, as Thanos did with “the snap” or perhaps unconsciously. And as Marvel events typically want to do, they like to have something “come out of” an event, and no bigger event has ever existed in super hero universes than ENDGAME. So, as the film winds down, that seems like a great place, perhaps in a post-credit scene to drop a hint that a mutant is out there and on the run, just cracking the door open. Was it something that Tony Stark unconsciously invented for a world he knew would need more heroes once he was gone? Maybe so…. Maybe not…. But cracking the door open there because something changed the universe, seems like a good fit.
Or launching on Disney+ shortly after ENDGAME was WANDAVISION. A show that demonstrated the Scarlet Witch’s immense power. And boy did it seem like the integration was going to start in that show–a great tease, but unfortunately, it was played off as coincidence. What looked like a bold step forward for the MCU died on the vine. Even so, the opportunity there, was for Wanda’s powers and passion for her lost children to have invented the mutant population, or more to the point, created mutants amongst the current population…
A similar opportunity arose in DOCTOR STRANGE: INTO THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS also using the Scarlet Witch. In fact, we got yet another tease when the X-Men’s leader shows up in one of the many realities that Stephen Strange visits, but again, gone just as quickly as it arrived.
More recently, the post-credits seen in THE MARVELS, once again has one of the MCU’s character’s dimension hop on over to another reality. This time we get a glimpse of the Beast. But again, not the MCU reality.
And then here comes DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE–the colossal hit putting Marvel back on top of the box-office and possibly the #1 grossing movie the year (yet to be determined). And here we have a Wolverine played by Hugh Jackman, who is not an MCU Wolverine nor is he the Wolverine from the X-Men’s previous universe, but again, dimension hopping ensues, and opportunities present themselves to lay the ground work for the X-Men and maybe even Deadpool to come on over to the warm waters of the MCU.
But as those opportunities have either come and gone or have yet to play out further, what’s interesting to me is that a real strategy to integrate that hasn’t really materialized. Those previous teases, we’ll call them, seemed a lot like “testing the waters” to get a feel for how audiences might react IF they brought the X-Men in this way or that way. It’s a big question and literally billions of dollars are at stake if they get it wrong. So, man, I get why they wouldn’t want to rush it and want to be careful. Better to wait and hit a homerun than risk rushing and only making it to first base.
Here are some bigger questions they are likely considering:
The SLOW BURN APPROACH in which they don’t need any magical gloves or spells or even dimension hopping. In this approach, they’d likely start small, revealing one mutant in a non-mutant film, and making that character something surprising to our heroes. Imagine Captain America asking Rogue how she got her powers, and she doesn’t understand the question–she thinks all super powers come at puberty–not knowing he got his from a super serum or that Tony Stark didn’t build that armor from a super power, that Thor really is a god, and so on. But this girl, she just HAS them. That’s potentially a game changer. The question would have to be asked, are there more like her? How many? What else can they do? And so on? So a small introduction of a single character, starts to crack open a world beneath the one audiences have grown to love and they were there…. All along, just in hiding and in secret, but that secret is about to get blown wide open.
SPONTANEOUS EVENT – Or they could create an event–they’ve had some chances already–that manifest mutants here and now. Either as if they’d always been here, almost rewriting history, or they could do it where the very first mutant is created in the present. That would likely limit the number of mutants, which could grow over the years, but would also create some issues if we want mutants to have a long history–like say, Apocalypse coming from ancient Egypt or Magneto having his powers during World War II. A lot would have to change with that approach, but that’s not always a bad thing. The characters are pretty malleable and sometimes forcing creators to be creative produces some incredible results.
TRANSPLANTS – The last big option would be to bring them over from another universe or dimension or, potentially merging the MCU Earth with another Earth from another dimension that has mutants. This also creates certain questions and story problems that need solving. Again, it’s possible that these challenges bring out the best in writers and we get some incredible X-Men stories out of this. But you’d have to wonder, wouldn’t some of them just want to go back home? Do we wind up with stories about two Earths, or do we wind up stomping on existing continuity because we’ve not retro-actively changed history? Those things make my head hurt.
For me, I’m a fan of Occam’s razor. In this case, the way to apply it is that the simplest solution is likely the best one.
And this might also help the MCU with some of its current flagging enthusiasm. It’s just a guess, but it seems like too many of the recent MCU films deal with two things–plotting out universal events or other dimensions or both. And this takes focus off of what the first ten years stayed absolutely laser focused on–the characters. The characters are getting lost in all of this world-hopping going on.
If they were to go with the Slow Burn Approach, no big explanations are needed, they don’t need to rewrite history, and they don’t have to do a story that explains why mutants are here. There’s no need for a story that explains how or why they exist. There is a need for a story about who they are. Introduce audiences to one fascinating mutant character, and through that characters, audiences will naturally want to know more and care about the rest.
That’s my two staples worth…
Andy
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