Stemming from some of the comments on Darth Cthulhu’s ‘controversial’ Star Trek post, I started thinking about the first X-Men movie and its relation to the rest of the franchise now that X-Men Origins: Wolverine is out. One commentor related the first X-Men movie, Ironman, and the first Spiderman to Star Trek as examples that the villain doesn’t need to be developed because the focus is on the origin story. I actually think those are bad examples because the only one that focuses on a team of characters like Star Trek is X-Men, which happens to have a very well developed and interesting villain. In fact, the opening scene of the whole movie is focused on that villain as it shows Magneto’s childhood motivation for being the kind of person that he is.
That’s when it hit me, the first X-Men movie is really only about two main characters – Magneto and Wolverine. That’s also when I realized the first two X-Men Origin movies that Marvel (Edit: actually Fox is more to blame, my bad) is working on for those exact same characters. I think this is where Marvel really took a turn towards running an excellent franchise into the ground, with considerations of how good or bad (mostly bad) X-Men 3 really was put aside. I believe we got enough of these two characters in the first and second movies, and that focusing on them for a set of origin based feature films is really overkill to the whole thing. The X-Men/Marvel universe is so expansive, and there is such an extreme gallery of characters to choose from, that it is detrimental to limit the focus of the franchise in this way. I think one of the biggest examples of this is the fact that we had X-Men 3 which attempted to focus on the Phoenix storyline but you couldn’t help but notice tons of tertiary characters that were thrown in (and unnecessarily changed from canon) for seemingly no reason at all. It appears that the same thing was done with the Wolverine movie, with the inclusion of characters like Gambit and Emma Frost for no reason other than to get people to come see the characters they like. The problem is, these aren’t anything like the characters we want to see, and they have nothing to add to the movie!
What Marvel really should have done after X-Men 3 is sit down and focus on what people haven’t been exposed to much yet in the franchise but really enjoyed from the early movies. What might that be? The plethora of different mutants, how the X-Men function as a team, and what Xavier’s school is really like because of these two elements. Of course in the aftermath of X-Men 3 several key characters had been killed, so why not take the Origin idea but apply it to the whole school? Well Marvel is working on this concept, a movie titled X-Men: First Class slated to be released in 2010, but with movies like Magneto and even Wolverine 2 also in the works I can’t help but feel like the franchise has already hit the coffin. First Class will supposedly focus on the young Cyclops, Beast, Jean, and Storm in training as the first students of Professor Xavier (P.Stew better be in it). Is it too little too late? Probably, as the movie will be surrounded by the origin movies featuring a slew of unnecessary mutant cameos that add nothing but confusion like a young Scott and Gambit showing up in Wolverine’s movie.
Perhaps the best time to do this movie would have been right after X-Men 2 was released, the only member of the original group in the comics who would need to be excluded is Iceman due to his age in the first two films. From there they could have expanded into movies that would give more time to excellent secondary characters like Nightcrawler and Emma Frost, instead of relegating them to the simple role of occasional plot device in some of the mainstream movies or worst of all a completely unimportant cameo. By the time X-Men 3 came out I think it was already too late. Hell, the third movie doesn’t even touch on the X-Men working as a team because Cyclops is barely present and too much time is eaten up by random other mutants. Sure this First Class movie could be great, and it could reinvigorate the franchise, but I think the excess of focus on Magneto and Wolverine are taking the spotlight away from what would really make excellent X-Men movies, and that’s the strength and size of the cast of characters available.
Not a bad bit of writing, but you might want to correct to whom you are attributing the blame for running the X-Men movie franchise, as you appear to be conflating the Marvel motion picture production company with the people responsible for X-Men – Fox. The Marvel brand shows up at the start of the film (as is the case with all films utilizing Marvel properties), but Marvel Studios had very little to do with these films.
In fact, my suspicion is that if they had it all to do over again (i.e. if they hadn’t been strapped for cash in the 90s to the point that they sold some of their more lucrative franchise film rights to outside studios), Marvel would keep the rights to the X-Men.
@Brian: You’re right! I completely forgot to attribute it to Fox more so than Marvel, thanks!
I agree with much of what you are saying, but I think the Donners are coming around to your way of thinking. The Magneto film has lost some momentum in the last few months while the Donners are talking about the possibility of a Deadpool as well as a Gambit film in the future. They went so far as to say that those possibilities were a large factor in the casting decisions on these two roles. Something I wish they had thought of in the original Sabertooth casting
Just for the record, Iron Man was the first true Marvel-made movie. Hulk reboot was the only other one so far… all others have been from studios that acquired rights to Marvel characters. Part of the reason you’re going to see Spiderman and X-Men movies from now until infinity is part of the contract has the rights revert back to Marvel if X years pass without a movie (I think five is the number I heard). Hence you have “X Men Origins: Wolverine”… as it is an X-Men movie the clock restarts again on Fox’s rights to the X-Men.