12 Easy Solutions To Save The X-Men Franchise
9. Infamy, Infamy, They’ve All Got It In For Me
783684Now, I’m not sure if I’ve correctly parsed the clever cultural subtext in the X-Men films, so apologies if I’ve misinterpreted something… but my understanding is that, in these radical political texts masquerading as summer superhero fluff, the X-Men fight to protect a world that hates and fears them for no other reason than that they are mutants, in a thinly veiled allegory of every real life civil rights issue that’s ever plagued mankind.
You know how I know this? Because the default plot of every freaking X-Men movie ever made is twofold. Either Magneto is going off on one because humans hate and fear mutants, or humanity’s hatred and fear of mutants has caused them to experiment on them/enact legislation to control them/invent giant robots to kill them.
Or, in a dramatic and unforeseen turn of events, Magneto has gone off on one again. Because humans, you see, hate and fear mutants. We’ve seen so many different versions of these two incredibly depressing plotlines that I’m starting to hate and fear mutants.
Even X-Men: Apocalypse had to give us yet another appearance from mutant-hating military man William Stryker, the villain from X2 and X-Men Origins: Wolverine and X-Men: Days Of Future Past, and yet another visit to the mutant experimentation facility at Alkali Lake that birthed the Weapon X project.
The X-Men movies need new antagonists to antagonise them. Apocalypse would have been an excellent start, had Simon Kinberg and Bryan Singer not completely failed to bring the character’s awesome power and repellent magnificence to the screen.
The last film’s post-credits sequence teasing the arrival of Mister Sinister is very welcome… but how about a villain who’s not obsessed with genetics, mutation, stealing mutant powers or orchestrating some form of Nietzschean bloodbath?
Arcade, Mojo, the Shi’ar, the Brood, the Technarchy/Phalanx… even the modern day return of the Hellfire Club. Not every X-Men villain is a mutant supremacist/terrorist, and some of them are even...