Welcome to the main discussion thread for the Marvel Cinematic Universe! This pinned post is here to establish some basic guidelines. All of the Media Forum rules
still apply.
- This thread is for talking about the live-action films, TV shows, animated works, and related content that use the Marvel brand, currently owned by Disney.
- While mild digressions are okay, discussion of the comic books should go in this thread
. Extended digressions may be thumped as off-topic.
- Spoilers for new releases should not be discussed without spoiler tagging for at least two weeks. Rather, each title should have a dedicated thread where that sort of conversation is held. We can mention new releases in a general sense, but please be courteous to people who don't want to be spoiled.
If you're posting tagged spoilers, make sure that the film or series is clearly identified outside the spoiler tagging. People need to know what will be spoiled before they choose to read the post.
Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
The problem isn't teaching audiences why mutants exist; the hard part is fitting all the worldbuilding elements that surround mutants (public fear of mutants, anti-mutant legislation, historical events that involve mutants) into a movie series that has gone on for twelve years without any hints of that stuff.
Civil War does lay groundwork for that sort of thing, what with revealing that the public is rather afraid of enhanced individuals in addition to being upset about the Avengers' freedom. Stuff like Ross referring to Banner and Thor as warheads to be monitored at all times, and literally everything that happens to Wanda, are fairly suspect.
He'll reveal that his full name is Thaddeus Henry Peter Gyrich Ross
Forever liveblogging the AvengersMaybe they'll combine him with Stryker ?
Though would prefer honestly if Stryker actually was a Holier Then Thou Sinister Minister like in the comics. If it's too controversial for the films. A show would be able to handle it better.
"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."Personally, I think that the TV series take place in their own seperate continuity that was created at a divergence point starting in The Avengers.
Phil Coulson dies but is later revived: Agents of Shield, The Runaways, Cloak and Dagger, all the Netflix series
Phil Coulson remains permanently dead: The MCU and Disney+ series
This explaination would explain the discontinunity between the former series and the films and Disney+ series and why none of the characters from the former series show up at the big Battle in Endgame
What you do is, you have mutant characters pop up in a few different films. You don't even need to call them mutants at first. They're just people who have superpowers with no apparent origin. Seed in the idea that this sort of thing is becoming more and more common, and folks are starting to freak out about how far this can go.
Then, when you do a full-fledged X-Men movie, you pull some of those established mutants together into a team, and confront them with how, for mutants who aren't as powerful/well-connected/photogenic as they are, a lot of bad stuff is going down, and something needs to be done about it.
I'd say make their first opponent the Hellfire Club, who's running a mutant trafficking ring. No need to go full-on with anti-mutant lynch mobs or Sentinels rounding up people into camps. Just an organization that's exploiting mutants for their own benefit, with hints that the authorities who should be protecting the kidnapped mutants aren't looking into it too closely, partly 'cause the Hellfire Club lines their pockets, partly 'cause, "Hey, someone has gotta keep these mutants under control, make sure they use their powers to benefit humanity."
As for having mutants in a setting with other superpowered folk, I really think the simplest approach is to adjust how you define "mutant". Instead of having it refer to a specific kind of superpowered person, make it a catch-all term for "human being with superpowers". Under this definition, heroes like Spider-Man and Captain America would be mutants, too. Their bodies have been mutated, after all.
Edited by RavenWilder on Sep 22nd 2020 at 5:36:01 AM
Ross' main issue with The Hulk isn't that he's a giant super strong rage monster. It's that he's a giant super strong rage monster who isn't under his command.
This went further in the comics when it was revealed that Ross' real issue with The Hulk was that he coveted that power for himself. He wanted to be The Hulk. It's not a coincidence that his Red Hulk form originally looked like a palette-swapped version of Savage Hulk.
That's not even getting into the whole Obnoxious In-Laws thing.
Edited by M84 on Sep 23rd 2020 at 12:41:59 AM
Disgusted, but not surprisedIt's always been an interesting conundrum in that the X-Men related material of Marvel makes up about 1/3 of the Marvel Universe, and in turn their classic stories stand largely apart from the rest of the Marvel Universe. This made the separation between the Fox Marvel and Disney Marvel movies almost natural, Wolverine may appear in just about anything but Cyclops rarely does. So even with the rights back at home base you're left with both "How do we restart a franchise with some beloved characters? and "How do we integrate a large cast of characters that are normally doing their own thing anyway?"
![]()
Yeah, that's another issue that the purchase has fixed. The X-Men property is really widespread and versatile, despite Fox literally only focusing on one thing and making like the same three or four stories out of it over and over again, and accounts for a lot of incidental characters, worldbuilding and parts of the Marvel setting that the MCU was just straight-up cut off from.
I remember it used to come up routinely back around Phase 2 that a lot of Marvel's minority heroes and villains - for example - were wrapped up in the X-Men license, for instance, even though most of them weren't even X-Men or largely connected to the X mythos at all, just by way of being mutants, or related to important mutants, or being on teams with mutant connections (a la Alpha Flight), etc.
It's basically the same thing they lost out on by not having the Fantastic Four. I could imagine that even without the X-Men, the Guardians property could have seen some use of the Shi'ar. Or if we had gotten stuff like (cough) Alpha Flight, and so on.
Edited by KnownUnknown on Sep 22nd 2020 at 11:26:46 AM
I will always remain fascinated and frustrated by the fact that the X-Men franchise saw the comic book genre evolve around it while it was still playing with the same sort of Real Is Brown necessary adjustments for realism and almost pathological hatred of anything outside the tiny bubble of Magneto plots. It’s what made the Wolverine films (namely, The Wolverine and Logan) and Deadpool films stick out even more.
I’m pretty sure if a writer over there ever pitched the Shi’ar or Inferno they were probably laughed out of the building. Dark Phoenix and its limp-wristed, almost embarrassed way to insert aliens into the same old “Magneto vs human prejudice” narrative is proof of that.
It most likely would have been 'spandex' the way the Cap Stealth Suit is *ACTUALLY* spandex in parts but made in a way that it doesn't look like the classic shiny neon bright spandex.
Superhero Costuming has come a LONG way since the first X-film. I have no doubt that the MCU design team can create a Wolverine Costume that is a respectful homage to the classic costume but still looks practical.
IIRC the problem with the X-Costumes was Wolverine's cowl, they couldn't figure out how to make it work in live action since in some angles it looks great in others...not so much so shooting around it would have been way too much trouble. And this was...of course...way before CGI could have helped.
So Wolvie got the black leather number...then the other X-Men looked out of place next to him....so BLACK LEATHER FOR EVERYBODY!
To quote Strong Bad:
Black Widow, which was meant to come out November 6, 2020, now comes out May 7, 2021.
Not exactly, General Ryker was the one that wanted more Gamma soldiers and General Fortean was the one that obsessed over control.
Comics Ross always did what he did because he thought Hulk and the other Gamma Mutates were a danger to civilians, this was even used to show the difference between Ross and Fortean(who has no problem killing civilians, which Ross wouldn't do.)

It's literally as simple as "more and more people are just popping up with superpowers, think it might be genetic". An Agents of SHIELD episode literally got away with "this guy shoots fire from his hands, not sure why, might be because he lived near this energy plant". That's all you need for a movie that isn't mutant-focused. Then when you get to an actual X-Men movie you go into the specifics of the X-gene. I'm genuinely baffled by the notion that mutants need any kind of big introductory build-up, the whole point behind the X-Men's initial creation was to avoid having to create convoluted explanations for why people have superpowers.