Marvel Cinematic Universe

Dazzler could be fun. Maybe I just have a soft spot for the character because I liked choosing her in the Konami beat em up though. Throwing big light balls and blowing up everything on screen.

I think a Dazzler show would be great fun if it focused more on showbiz than superheroics. You could bring in Nathan Fillion as Simon Williams, reprising his basically-unseen cameo from Guardians.

Who'd you cast though? I'd go for Ariana Grande but she's probably too famous/expensive.

I think you'd just go through the hordes of young female singer/actor/models out there until you found the right one - sufficiently un-famous to be cheap but also extremely talented. There's bound to be loads. I suspect we'll see Dazzler eventually, she's got a lot of potential.

I would definitely like to see Jubilee come back, she's one of those really fun X-Men, but y'know, she's an X-Man, and I think Marvel is really holding out on them for two reasons:

1) Obviously they couldn't use them for a long time (otherwise I'm sure they would have by now), so they built the MCU without them.

2) They're really the only major "set" of Marvel superheroes* who could definitely do another decade-long series of movies like the whole Avengers thing, so it makes sense to wait on using them, especially as people can then potentially forget the worse elements of the Sony X-Men and Marvel can selectively bring in what they want.

I don't think we'll see a Wolverine as good as Jackman eventually got though. The idea of any of the 20-45 actor crowd around today trying to play Wolverine kind of worries me lol. I'm sure there's someone, I just can't think of who they are.

* = I know there are Fantastic Four fans who think they could work, but they're not enough by themselves, especially as they're almost their own thing, and it's really hard to not make Reed Richards a massively unlikeable asshole because in the comics frankly that's what he is. They don't have the wild charm and lunacy of the Avengers, nor do they have something to say unlike the X-Men (who are still relevant, astonishingly).

I think is is achievable in much the same way the X-Men did it, because they also emerged into a Marvel universe full of Avengers and friendly local Spider-Men and so on, and real hated-and-feared stuff is mostly from the '80s and '90s so even later than their introduction.

People spontaneously finding they have often-significant superhuman powers is kind of a big deal. This isn't really a thing with most MCU heroes, who typically gained their powers from a clear, usually non-replicable source. It's a very different situation between a super-genius billionaire building a suit of power-armour, or a god flying down from the heavens and your neighbour's son suddenly having uncontrollable eye-beams that smash everything they're pointed at, for example, or the clerk at the local shop suddenly being able to read and control minds.

And given how fearful the US is of say, Black people, women's bodies/minds, or LGBT stuff (still!!!), it's very easy to see how that could extend rapidly to fearing mutants. I mean, the leading defence cops have for murdering some unarmed child or crazy guy or even person they've restrained is "I was afraid!" and the US really has a culture of fear about the slightest perceived "threat" from any group of people who aren't the establishment.

Even the Avengers had Civil War and stuff and people like Stark (somewhat implausibly but whatever) coming down on the side of forced registration. If a bunch of people suddenly start manifesting powers, that's certainly going inspire a lot of fear.

Introducing them is the tricky bit but the easiest way might be to have it be some sort of result of the blip, i.e. people who got blipped maybe sometimes start manifesting powers. Alternatively we have the "Ooops Wanda fucked up again!" angle, but that might be a little mean to Wanda - still they did show Wanda's shenanigans can cause mutations with Monica Rambeau. Maybe some sort of multiversal alternate Wanda will cause a larger problem. Or just some other multiverse shenanigans.

I mean, they can try, but that's the angle the X-Men has - they're unreasonably hated and feared for who they are.

It'd be kind of bizarre and backlash-encouraging to not use that angle, given how important it is.

I'm sure they'll go out of their way to avoid making the link to police violence and so on too obvious, but I don't think you can do the X-Men and not end up commenting on fear of the other. Even the '90s cartoon was about that in large part. They're doing a revival of that cartoon sometime this year I think, presumably to test some waters, X-Men-wise.

Make them all trans.

I mean, I just think it's inevitable that they'll do that angle. They're not really the X-Men unless you do.

I don't think any meaningful number of people will see it as "making light" of issues, because generally speaking people under 45 know who they X-Men are and what they represent so wouldn't see this as Marvel unreasonably extending their meaning. I mean, you don't have to be "into comics" to know X-Men represent fear of the other (where LGBT, Black, or whatever). My mum knows that and she's over 70.

I'm sure they'll get accused of being "woke", but that's like accusing Star Trek of being "woke", it's laughable. You'll also note that on Disney+ there is a much higher proportion of "woke" shows than on, say, Prime, possibly even Netflix. Their current Turning Red which is dull-but-harmless is getting accused for being "woke" and so on and Disney seems unperturbed.

Yeah, some people will quite reasonably criticise Disney for using them as a sort of proxy when Disney are still showing cowardice on LGBT+ issues, but that sort of criticism isn't the sort of criticism the media (mainstream or otherwise) enjoys so won't get any amplification.

Yeah, no way Disney sanctions a relevant political statement that isn't "be nice to each other."

Got that Chinese market, too. Not a fucking chance.

X-Men will be the result of some kind of multiverse stuff or just be given their own series and it'll be the same message.

I’m dreading Marvel resurrecting X-Men to only do the exact same storyline that happened already in fifteen fucking Fox movies.

Which is to say, I don’t think they will. Not soon, anyway. Doctor Strange 2 will introduce X-Men characters into the MCU, but I think Phase 4-6 is going to act as a kind of Crisis On Infinite Earths, in the sense that they will introduce this multiverse, pull from it the IP they want, then collapse it all back into one universe by the end of it and continue with the new mix of characters.

I agree with lexw in that taking the persecution angle out of the X-Men makes them not X-Men, so they definitely have to tackle that if they do decide to reboot it.
But it wasn't ahead of its time, just unfortunately always relevant. Remember that it came out during the Civil Rights era, a time where not only were people more openly racist, but you had blacks/whites only water fountains, restrooms, sections of public transit, lynchings, etc. Xavier and Magneto were modeled after MLK and Malcolm X, after all.
80s or 90s might seem like the classic era because we grew up on the cartoon with Wolverine, Jean Grey, Rogue, Gambit etc, but you can make or set an X-Men franchise in literally any era because there's always some group of people fighting for equality you can insert into the allegory. LGBT would be the obvious current allusion people would see, but there's always something.

The mutant question is why I’ve always felt like X-Men makes a lot more sense as a standalone world rather than as a part of the wider Marvel Universe. Even in the comic books.

Its also why X-titles are my favourite stable of superhero titles.

Didn’t they already do that with the people returned from the blip though? That was a big chunk of what Boat Loan was about.

That’s a fair observation. I made that Refugee X-Men proposal before Falcon and Winter Soldier and totally forgot about Falcon and Winter Soldier.

I think Marvel could count on everyone else forgetting about it too.