This month sees Marvel‘s big reboot of “The Fantastic Four,” but there is another big remake on the horizon with their “X-Men” movie, which reportedly has Jake Schreier (“Thunderbolts”) reportedly to be in the mix to direct.
Over the weekend, Kevin Feige was speaking with press to promote “Fantastic Four” and revealed to ScreenRant that they’re aiming to make up for the previous mistakes and misfires of the Fox-era, which led to the Marvel Studios’ head to promise they’ll be pursuing “comic-accurate looks” after citing Wolverine and Gambit from “Deadpool & Wolverine” alongside Galactus in “Fantastic Four” (was previously a cosmic cloud in big-screen debut).
“There’ve been more X-Men movies than there were Spidey movies or ‘Fantastic Four’ movies, so a lot has been done. But again, because it’s because it’s almost a comic legacy onto itself, there’s so much more to tap into it and there’s so many sagas within sagas for X-Men that that’s part of what we’re talking about now is which saga to grow and build to while doing the most important thing, which is introducing all of these characters and giving them their due in our first film…I’m not going to speak to the makeup of the characters that will be in the first movie, but look at Galactus, […] look at Gambit in Deadpool & Wolverine, look at Wolverine in ‘Deadpool & Wolverine.’ We want to embrace that which was not embraced 25 years ago when I was around on those early ‘X-Men’ movies, which is those comic-accurate looks,” Feige said of their thinking when it comes to the “X-Men” reboot. Stopping short of running down the lineup of the team will be.
When Feige comments on the legacy of the mutants and their place in the zeigest it comes from a place of authority when it comes to the “X-Men” franchise as he was a producer and cohort of The Donner Company (Richard Donner and longtime franchise producer Lauren Shuler Donner) before he was scooped up by Marvel to oversee their various films and was set to launch a wave of in-house projects that launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2008 with “The Incredible Hulk” and “Iron Man.”
There is certainly a large fan-base behind those Fox-era films, but they’re hardly comic-accurate to the point that for the longest time it felt like Fox was going out of their way to avoid the established character costumes and mangled all sorts of the key stories, allowing plenty of room to attempt much better versions of The Sentinel Program, Genosha, The Hellfire Club, Apocalypse, The Shi’ar Empire (a huge group of aliens that could be explored in cosmic adventures alongside The Starjammers, space pirates led by Cyclops’ estranged father), Days of Future Past, and The Phoenix Saga (we hope ages from now).
It didn’t stop at costumes and storylines, as characters like Cyclops, Storm, Rogue (her origin and power-set are linked to Carol Danvers), time-traveler Bishop (John Boyega voiced his desire for the role), Psylocke, Kitty, Jubilee, Iceman, and others never really got their proper due, which could be fixed in this new wave of films, as their animated revival series “X-Men ’97” clearly indicated that Marvel is willing to put in the effort to make things right with die-hard fans.
Some have assumed that “Avengers: Doomsday” and “Deadpool & Wolverine” give a lifeline to those original actors that they’ll continue on beyond those Multiverse events, but Feige keeps indicating we’re looking at a hard reboot (although Channing Tatum’s Gambit feels like he could carry over, given how new that casting is and it was done under Marvel Studios) or reset/mergering of various universes.
We’re sure Marvel will make things much clearer on the direction and who is staying or being replaced once casting is fully underway.
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