Emma Frost is one of the most complex and pivotal X-Men characters in the comics, having evolved from a supervillain into one of the team's leaders in recent times, which makes her poor treatment in the films only more frustrating.
Portrayed by January Jones in X-Men: First Class, the character wasn't really given much to do and, while Jones herself has proven to be a fantastic actor over the years, she wasn't really given the freedom to make the character her own. Instead, she serves as the henchwoman to Kevin Bacon's Sebastian Shaw, lacking the agency of her comics counterpart before being killed off in between the film's climax and the arrival of First Class, where it was revealed she was lost to Trask Industries.
Emma hasn't been heard from since, and though Dark Phoenix would seemingly present the best opportunity to reintroduce the character as a formidable villain-turned-hero, it doesn't look as though she'll be making an appearance there either.
If ever there was a reason to reboot the franchise, Emma Frost's mistreatment would be chief among them.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
