Why Marvel Need To Make An Avengers Vs X-Men Movie
How to justify the Fox billions...
It's only been a matter of weeks since Disney paid a pretty penny to acquire Fox's key cinematic and TV assets and there's already been ample talk about what that deal will mean for the MCU.
We've already been told - in no uncertain terms - that the Fantastic Four and the X-Men WILL arrive in the MCU before too long, and inevitably, fans and commentators have spoken up the possible movies we may see in Phase 4 and beyond.
Chief among them - and mentioned frequently already - is an X-Men versus Avengers event movie. And it needs to happen as the means to introduce mutantkind to the MCU. Why? Here's why...
Why It Needs To Happen
There are three reasons, beyond all else. The first...
Preserving The MCU Timeline
After a decade - and regardless of the pressing need to retire some of the founding characters (or at least the original actors playing them) - we've got to a stage where the foundations for the MCU have been deeply set. We have established characters, lore, continuous story arcs and dynamics and it would be a travesty to scrap all of that to start again.
To reboot is to inherently imply failure, and aside from a couple of missteps, the MCU has been a success. In other words, there is no need to start again, nor any excuse.
No Need For Origin Stories
As was made very clear when Spider-Man joined the MCU, Marvel have no plans to retread too much familiar ground (which is precisely why we didn't get a Spidey origin), and hopefully that mentality will transfer across to how they deal with the Fox properties.
Put plainly, we do not need any more origin stories for The Fantastic Four or the mainline X-Men (particularly Wolverine), and having the X-Men arrive as an already established team would be the best way to do that. It worked for Spider-Man in Civil War, after all, and there's no way doing origin stories for every X-Men character is necessary, given how familiar they now are.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't get solo stand-alones, of course, but doing it backwards here would be better.
It'll Make ALL The Money
Clearly this only really matters to the studio itself, but calling on the brand power of both the X-Men and the Avengers - not to mention setting up another Versus clash in the vein of Civil War - would be a licence to print money for Marvel.
They'd be looking at a multi-billion dollar movie, if Ciivl War and the Avengers movies were anything to go by, and that's exactly what they need to justify spending more than $50bn on Fox's assets.
And what about how to make it? Read on to find out...