Disney/Fox Merger: 8 Disastrous Implications It Has For The MCU

5. The X-Men Are Better Off With Fox

x-men apocalypse
20th Century Fox

Although X-Men: Apocalypse didn't offer the greatest signifier of the X-Men's onscreen resurgence, it's plain for all to see that - in 2017 - Fox have done the mutants right.

X-Men: First Class, Days of Future Past, Wolverine, Logan and Deadpool have all intimated as much, marking the X-Men out as the innovators in the genre, dishing out R-ratings like nobody's business and deploying history to flesh out a universe audiences are still getting to grips with. Add to that a duo of fantastic X-Men TV shows in The Gifted and Legion, and you have a strong a case as any that the X-Men are actually better off with their current parent company, than the House of Mouse.

That might be a bitter pill for most Marvel fans to swallow, but it's true - right now, the X-Men are in the greatest state they've ever been, spurred on by an R-rated resurgence that's afforded them a boatload more creative freedom than any Marvel project could possibly hope to have, save for the Netflix series.

If the MCU were to impact negatively upon the X-Men, a cloud would hang over it for the rest of its existence. Granted, it's a storm Marvel could weather, but criticisms would almost certainly cross into the mainstream if it were the case.

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Content Producer/Presenter

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.