These days, a key issue with developing a new X-Men movie has to be trying to figure out continuity. For example, X-Men: Apocalypse is set in 1983, ten years after X-Men: Days Of Future Past, which was set eleven years after X-Men: First Class. If the pattern holds, then we are (as X-Men producer/writer Simon Kinberg has hinted) working our way towards the present day. Logically then, well need a further X-Men past movie to bridge the gap between X-Men: Apocalypse and the events of the first X-Men movie but the more you create new prequel content in a franchise, the more you run the risk of breaking that franchises continuity: saying or doing something thats impossible or that renders something in the future impossible. Theyve already done this to a certain extent: X-Men has Xavier and Magneto meeting when Xavier is seventeen, and X-Men: First Class has this happen in Xaviers thirties. A way to completely prevent this from happening would be to set the next X-Men film in an entirely different dimension. The Mojoverse is a world conquered by television, ruled by a despotic nut who takes the role of producer of the shows that enslave the populace. Mojo will often kidnap and recruit people from other worlds to be cast in his broadcasting schedule: that gives him a plausible reason to be introduced, as he sneaks off with key X-characters, causing a rescue attempt to be necessary. The satirical tone of a film featuring the Mojoverse would be a welcome change of tack for the X-Men films, which have often been accused of taking themselves too seriously. In addition to that, the inclusion of Mojo allows for the inclusion of Longshot (a carefree, swashbuckling fighter with luck-related powers) and Spiral (an insane magician with six sword-wielding arms), and the Body Shoppe, the infernal workshop where people are transformed into highly advanced, terrifying cyborgs. If you wanted to change a characters continuity or casting, the Body Shoppe would be an ideal plot device to allow that to happen: older characters could be made young, and vice versa...
Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.
