How Did the X-Men Film Franchise Fall from Grace so Severely?
The Blind Eternities forum
Posted on Oct. 20, 2024, 5:25 p.m. by DemonDragonJ
The first X-Men film was amazing, as it completely redefined superhero films, showing that they could be serious and dramatic, and not merely colorful camp fests, as were Batman Forever and Batman and Robin, and, in doing that, it helped to bring superhero media to mainstream audiences, when, before, such projects would have been viewed only by dedicated audiences. Its sequel, X-Men 2, was equally as good, and, in many ways, improved upon the best parts of the first film, so audiences were certain that a new cinematic franchise had been born, and expectations were understandably high for the third film, but X-Men 3 was a severe disappointment compared to the first two films, in that it had simply too many plots running simultaneously and felt too over-the-top, compared to its predecessors, a trend that also was seen in Spiderman 3, Shrek the Third, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, Robocop 3, Terminator 3, and The Dark Knight Rises, all of which were unquestionably the worst installments of their respective trilogies; in fact, the only trilogy whose third installment I believe to be the best was the Star Wars prequel trilogy, in which I feel that Revenge of the Sith was far superior to The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones (not that that was a high bar to clear, of course).
After the poor reception of X-Men 3, the franchise became a roller coaster of highs and lows, with some films being nearly as good as the first two, but others being abysmally poor; X-Men Origins: Wolverine, a prequel to the original trilogy, was supposed to be the first of several origin stories, with the second one focusing on Magneto's journey from World War II to the present day, but Wolverine performed very badly, so Fox abandoned any further prequels and instead decided to entirely reboot the series with X-Men: First Class, which I personally believe was the best film of the franchise, other than the first two, and that film could have saved the series, if not for the studio's inexplicable decision to retcon the film as a prequel, rather than a clean reboot (despite there being clear contradictions between the original trilogy and First Class), which then led to the continuity of the film series being remarkably convoluted and difficult to understand. Despite the poor reception of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Fox made a second film starring Logan, The Wolverine, which I shall confess I do not recall, at all, and, them, X-Men: Days of Future Past was when the timeline became truly a clustered mess of disparate ideas, since it was a direct sequel to First Class, yet also incorporated actors, characters, and plot elements from the original trilogy, although the ending of that movie was supposed to clear up the timeline, as the next film, Age of Apocalypse, directly followed Days of Future Past, but, around the same time, Logan was released, directly following The Wolverine, albeit with a radically different tone from any of the previous films, and most people regarded Logan as an amazing film, giving a perfect conclusion to Hugh Jackman's portrayal of the character (until Deadpool and Wolverine ruined that), but the next film, Dark Phoenix, is the film that most people agree finally killed the franchise, which is unfortunate, since the phoenix storyline is one of the best-known storylines in the original X-Men comics. However, the actual final film of the franchise, New Mutants, was an entirely standalone film with no connections to any previous film in the franchise, apart from the fact that the characters were mutants, and I believe that it could have revived the franchise, but the Covid-19 pandemic, combined with Disney's acquisition of Fox, ruined those plans, so I shall forever wonder how differently everything would have been, otherwise.
I do think that it is truly a tragedy that the franchise that revived superhero films ended in such a manner, going out with a whimper, rather than with a bang, and I am certain that the franchise could have been an amazing one, if only the writers had been able to maintain the same quality from the first two films, but that sadly did not happen, so I shall forever wonder how it may have ended differently.
What does everyone else say, about this subject? How did the X-Men film series fall from grace so severely?
The franchise (such as it is) always had issues, one of them being the tendency to make them headlong action movies. X-men isn't really the most action-y comic in my experience, it dealt with way more serious issues, and was meant to be read by relatively mature audiences (for comics). IIRC it was assumed that younger readers would start out with Fantastic Four or Spider Man, followed by The Avengers, and finally X-Men when you were actually old enough to have experienced systemic societal abuse (or witnessed it happen to people you care deeply about), X-Men is about man's inhumanity to those it others, a very rich trope in a US steeped in racism and misogyny.
As an example, who is the single most popular X-Men character of all time, hands down? Obviously the answer is Wolverine, who was a household name on par with Spiderman for 90s kids. Wolverine dodges a lot of the problems you run into with superhero movies in the same way Captain America does, he's just not powerful enough to ruin the plot (see every Superman movie ever), and so it's relatively easy to write a decent Wolverine character/story arc. The problem stems from it being specifically the young people liking Wolverine, and these young people aren't jaded enough to understand the character. As a result of the movies leaning into him really hard AND having a puerile audience we get a Wolverine who's very 'cool', and does cool stuff... but the reason Wolverine is a compelling character is not because he's 'cool', it's because he's endured and struggled so much over his centuries of life! Unless you're willing to treat him like the brutally traumatized psycho he is you can't do him justice. The first 3 X-Men movies (and the first 2 Wolverine movies) all wanted a cool, competent, and effective Wolverine that is merely hassled by inner demons, this sucked out all of the potential depth and intensity that should be inherent to the character, and so most of those movies weren't great (though the first two X-Men movies were good I agree they didn't age especially well). I think you could argue that finally leaning hard into this tortured past for Logan resulted in a better movie compared to the other two stand alone Wolverine movies, they made the character feel human and humane, instead of just a symbolically horny killing machine (he's a macho fantasy fyi, without the necessary depth he's just weirder shorter He-Man).
Regarding the attempt at a reboot of the 'Original' X-Men, they missed the mark IMHO. Everyone loved the expanded X-Men, the original team felt boring and lame (they used a bunch of seemingly privileged white kids that had 'become' others to make them relatable to a white audience, the expanded X-Men were more diverse and thus less patronizing) so the movies weren't as exciting, and again, if you don't lean into the whole 'mutants are an allegory for the horrors we do to society's "others"' thing X-Men isn't very special, and having access to multiple POWERFUL telepaths almost completely invalidates every plot you can think of (throwing in Cerebro feels like trolling), to the point where any important recurring X-Man villain had to be immune or gain immunity, like Juggernaut or Magneto. Professor X (and definitely Phoenix) are too OP to write around.
So yeah, I think the bulk of the X-Men movies assiduously avoided the actual themes of the comics and just made dumb action movies that either flopped or aged like the finest of bananas: the unwillingness of the suits to make movies that challenged the audience keeps killing the X-Men franchises. People loved Logan, but will studios figure out WHY people loved it?
October 23, 2024 6:36 a.m.
FormOverFunction says... #4
I thought Legion was a pretty great X-Men universe show. The first season, at least. I sort of fell off during the second season. Comics are difficult to translate into film, I think, because (generally) they weren’t meant to be something you consumed repeatedly and to great lengths. X-men was cool because you had a bunch of weird characters that you could dip into, check out, and dip out of. Even if you put a TON of work into it, Cyclops can only be so great. Maybe for one additional outside-of-the-main movie. The biggest challenge is, like all movies, we’re never satisfied by a good movie. We want another one. Immediately. Severance is a great show, but I’m very nervous about season two. The first Batman of a series of Batman movies is great because you go through the “here is who he is” piece… but the second one has to rely entirely on the new stuff; because we already did the fun intro part. Often, for Batman, it’s easy because you get to do the intro piece for a new weird villain.
October 23, 2024 11:30 a.m.
sergiodelrio says... #5
DreadKhan excellent comment.
FormOverFunction while I generally agree with you, personally I've grown sick and tired of intro movies. I just wish they risked more. Give me Kingdom Come Superman. Give me a good Silver Surfer movie, not a F4 sequel doof. As soon as they find the balls to deviate from what they think is a safe cash cow, we can have good movies again. The world does not need the twentieth introduction to Batman or Superman, literally everyone knows who they are.
October 23, 2024 4:25 p.m.
FormOverFunction says... #6
sergiodelrio I couldn’t agree with you more! I only meant to point out why the first Rambo / Nightmare On Elm Street / Die Hard / Predator / etc movies were dramatically different from their sequels. It’s like meeting me for the first time vs working with me for fourteen years. Eventually you learn all my jokes and stories and want to quit and find a new job LOL
October 24, 2024 7:20 p.m.
I will say, I always thought that Xmen 2 was a masterclass in acting. With Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, and Brian Cox, every character that was meant to be larger than life was played by a Shakespearean actor, while the characters that were meant to be more relatable were hollywood actors, and it really made it feel like there were two very well defined levels to the story. And I really feel like Alan Cumming just is nightcrawler, he nailed it, and even brought some levity to the character.
This kind of reminds me, because Hugh Jackman, but if you ever get the chance to watch the DvD commentary for Van Helsing, it's so entertaining.
shadow63 says... #2
The movies at least the original trilogy very much felt like a product of their time. And haven't aged well then the MCU came along and showed what super hero movies could be. Logan and days of future past get lots of praise and rightfully so. But I think that the new trilogy had to be tied to the d trilogy really hurt things
October 21, 2024 10:07 a.m.