Eh, the real mechanism to screw with Wolverine is to do one of the following:
- Screw with him on a psychic level.
- Be Magneto, at which point you basically have total control over him since you can just manipulate his skeleton.
Attack his will save, the classic anti-melee strategy.
Other than X3, I think all the films are at least watchable, for me anyway. I think part of that is my love for the X-Men though. It became my favorite book when I started reading comics.
It’s amazing that the Avengers is what became the biggest of them all because I think the X-Men are a lot easier to relate to for every man. Misfits, cast offs, people who are different… we all end up in that position. Or maybe that’s not easier to relate to for most people because it really only resonates with the nerds like us? I dunno… maybe it’s just easier to accept a guy wearing stars and stripes or a guy in a metal suit? Having super powers you are born with might be a bridge too far?
*sigh* I do hope this is good. Dark Phoenix happened before I was collecting but I own X-Factor #1 and collected for a long period of that run. I really enjoyed it. Seeing the costumes they’re using in this film is very cool.
I think it’s pretty interesting to compare the trajectories of the two franchises. If you introduced the Shi’ar in Dark Phoenix, it would be nuts because the X-Men movies have never been part of a larger universe. Suddenly, aliens! Starships! Battling on the Moon! It would be too much.
The same stuff in the MCU movies? No big deal.
Well, they made a movie about big damn space heroes, so it’s easy now to have more movies with space heroes and villains.
The trick for Marvel now is to have a character like Spider-Man stay grounded. One of the reasons I love the Marvel Universe is that it’s not always Earth threatening. The stories need to be smaller sometimes too. Whether that leads to a new TV approach or something else, I dunno, but that’s a key for the future of the MCU.
I’m so ready for Agents of SHIELD to come back. Soooo ready… I need Director Mack!
X-Men got off to a strong start by giving us characters and relationships that were worth caring about, but it downplayed a lot of the more comic-y stuff, to the extent possible. I don’t know if that was right, but it was the expectation at the time that it’s what you needed to do to get these properties to be successful on screen. Maybe the MCU would’ve been more conservative if X-Men hadn’t taken those first baby steps into a world of silly powers and implausible sci-fi, or maybe it was never a necessary step for audiences, just nervous studios and executives. Hard to say at this point, but it largely locked the tone of the X-Men franchise in a very different cinematic era.
The ultimate X Men character:
I think given the success of many comic, toy and old sci-fi properties that have been re-created to be more faithful to their original designs, it was always a problem with studios and the people that run them.
That Office Space article last week showed very clearly how there are so many people that just can’t accept that the original creators might actually have known what they’re doing and won’t get behind them.
The good thing is the X-Men can always be rebooted again and get it right. They need to lean into the comics for better inspiration. You could even sort of reboot with these actors if Dark Phoenix is only a marginal success, plus there are all the rumors about an X-Man maybe appearing in Endgame.
If Endgame winds up re-writing history there’s no reason they can’t start bringing in X-Men. Maybe the Wolverine rumors are true…
I would love to see McAvoy’s Professor X and Jackman’s Wolverine on screen with the likes of Downey’s Iron Man and Evans’ Cap.
Did the licensing deal stuff get worked out?
That was the whole reason there was no cross over between the XMen and the rest of the marvel characters, wasn’t it?
If by “licensing deal stuff” you mean “Does Disney now own the entire freaking planet?” then I think the answer is yes.
Pretty sure Jackman said he’s done being Wolverine.
As inconsistent as it was that was why I liked Ant-Man and the Wasp. The whole story is really just “let’s save this one person” - nobody trying to end the city/world/universe/whatever.
Rumors are out there. Have a look.
Just like Daniel Craig said he was done being Bond, and Johnny Depp said he was done being Jack Sparrow. Both Chris Evans and RDJ both said they were done being their Marvel characters years ago as well.
This is a standard negotiation tactic. If Disney really, really wants Jackman as Wolverine, they will pay him enough to change his mind.
I played Jubilee in a one-shot RPG run using the old 80s Marvel Super Heroes system by a friend of mine. I rolled some sort of double-critical on the enormous color-coded powers chart on the back of the book at insane odds and one-shot Mister Sinister with my fucking finger-fireworks right as the big climactic fight was getting started.
I love tabletop RPGs*.
On topic, like @DaveLong above, I love X1, X2, First Class, and Days of Future Past. I even liked Apocalypse just fine! I didn’t like Logan at all, because it basically says, “All the good things everyone in the previous movies worked for were for nothing. Also lol everyone dies” which felt like a shitty ending to the timeline. I have hopes that Dark Phoenix might manage to give it a better one, but yeah, X3 has me hyper worried :-/
* Okay but more seriously most crit mechanics are dumb as fuck. It was a one-shot, though, so I didn’t mind the kind of stupid ending the dice gave.
I will be so pissed off if Endgame puts in some kind of multiverse FOX X-Men/FF cameo of any kind, but doesn’t also include at least a throwaway cameo from Daredevil or someone else from the TV side of things.
I thought the deal wasn’t finalized enough to get them into Endgame, and that any potential X-Men or Fantastic Four integration would be for the next big MCU moment (potentially Secret Wars).
Secret Wars would be great. Let Pete get the REAL Symbiote! Maybe they’ll hint at Secret Wars with the end of Endgame? Stranger things could happen…