MCU's X-Men Sounds A LOT Like This (& That's A Good Thing)

What Comics Will Inspire The New MCU X-Men Movie? (Starting With Mister Sinister)

If X-Men: Evolution provides a potential approximation of tone, vibe, or even conceit for Schreier's X-Men reboot, that still leaves the question of which comics will form the spine of the movie's story and what may inform its broader thematic elements. As mentioned previously, both Schreier and Kevin Feige have spoken about the influence of Chris Claremont's X-Men, which basically goes without saying. Claremont and artist John Byrne wrote what is essentially the definitive Mutant bible across their time on the X-family of books, picking up the gauntlet left by Len Wein and Dave Cockrum and transforming the team into the stars of Marvel's most popular and acclaimed comics.

Uncanny X-Men, Excalibur, Wolverine, The New Mutants - Claremont had a pivotal hand in all and imbued the X-Men with their core narrative pillars: the development of the "mutant metaphor", a cosmic scope, and some seriously messy soap-opera shenanigans. In fact, it's kind of impossible to make an X-Men "thing" without taking from his work in some way or another, and the bulk of live-action X-Men material we've received so far reflects that. X2: X-Men United was heavily inspired by God Loves, Man Kills, while the likes of Days of Future Past, The Dark Phoenix Saga, and Claremont and Frank Miller's Wolverine miniseries have also done a lot of heavy lifting in the live-action realm.

Basically, when Schreier and Feige say that Claremont is a big touchstone for the reboot, that doesn't exactly narrow things down.

What does help narrow the focus a little is the knowledge that Adam Driver will be playing Mister Sinister. Born Nathaniel Essex, Sinister is a character whose history is inextricably linked with that of Apocalypse - an ancient mutant whose Celestial attributes have made him the X-Men's most formidable adversary.

Sinister, like Apocalypse, is heavily preoccupied with evolution, but specifically genetic experimentation. He's the X-Men's quintessential mad scientist villain - a theatrical, long-lived figure who's a big fan of cloning and who loves to mess with the genealogy of the Summers line especially. That's bad news for Kit Connor's Cyclops, who together with Jean, is likely to bear the brunt of Sinister's attention in the upcoming film.

To make a long, convoluted, messy story short, Sinister is probably most famous in the comics for his involvement with the character of Madelyne Pryor, which the 1988 Inferno arc retconned to reveal she was a clone of Jean Grey manufactured by Sinister. The rest of the story involves demonic forces and Pryor transforming into the villain known as Goblin Queen, but that's sort of by the by. I wouldn't expect this X-Men reboot to go head-first into demonic cloning territory with its first film, but in terms of gauging Sinister's character and his evolution into a significant Marvel villain, Inferno is fairly foundational.

Plus, if one of the main priorities of the reboot is to address how badly the Fox movies treated Scott Summers (and to reiterate how cool Cyclops actually is), then Sinister is a great way to go.

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