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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.

    Original post 
Since Thor and now Captain America came out this year, I wanted to get what Tropers thought of the concept and execution of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in general. Personally I love the idea and wonder why this idea hasn't been seriously tried before. It sorta seems to me like the DCAU in movie form (And well, ummm, with Marvel), and really 'gets' the comic book feel of a shared universe while not being completely alienating.

Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM

Mizerous Pet Owner from Hell Since: Oct, 2013 Relationship Status: Brewing the love potion
Pet Owner
#135126: Oct 6th 2021 at 6:21:17 PM

Or go edgy nihilism with them being made by the goveenmant. >.>

Just Makima.
MatthewWayne The Tapestry Weaver from Camp Echo One Since: Oct, 2014 Relationship Status: 700 wives and 300 concubines
The Tapestry Weaver
#135127: Oct 6th 2021 at 6:25:07 PM

Really, I'm more focused on how Charle Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters will play out. It always seemed like such a wonderful place in the Fox movies, and I kinda hope we'll get some fun "mutant kids going to school and hanging out" stories, maybe as a Disney+ series. I usually don't care for school set comedies, but I'd totally give that one a shot.

"I'm Mr. Blue, woah-woah-ooh..."
Khfan429 Since: Aug, 2009
#135128: Oct 6th 2021 at 6:39:52 PM

I don't think you even need to have the mutant population skyrocket due to recent events, just have awareness go up.

Like, realistically Marvel's had, what, thousands of named mutant characters across their publishing history, but that's nothing in statistical terms. The sixteen million mutants who died on Genosha? Not even half a percent of the global population, not to downplay the scale of the tragedy but to illustrate just how small mutants are purely in numbers terms because sixteen million is realistically more people than the MCU will ever need to kill off for drama again.

Personally I think trying to force any larger explanation for them is unnecessary bordering on the absurd.

Edited by Khfan429 on Oct 6th 2021 at 6:43:19 AM

PizzaDog11 Pizza is my business from closer than you think Since: Mar, 2018 Relationship Status: Holding out for a hero
Pizza is my business
#135129: Oct 6th 2021 at 7:13:42 PM

[up][up] I’d love to see that. There are so many different generations of X-students who barely get any focus in the comics, let alone the movies

M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#135130: Oct 6th 2021 at 7:32:56 PM

I kind of wonder if they'll attempt to jump straight to Mutants having their own nation on Krakoa.

Disgusted, but not surprised
GeneralGigan Godzilla from A New Empire Since: Sep, 2020 Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!
Godzilla
#135131: Oct 6th 2021 at 7:41:46 PM

[up] Nah, the MCU has so many Hidden Elf Village-types that it’d be best to set it earlier in the history of homosuperiority.

SKREEEEEEEONK!
Synchronicity (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#135132: Oct 6th 2021 at 7:42:05 PM

Or do a reverse Krakoa, as someone who's just not really a fan of that whole concept. Mutants have been chilling there for too long and must now rejoin the rest of the world?

Edited by Synchronicity on Oct 6th 2021 at 9:42:35 AM

Nouct over the front from an east coast Since: Sep, 2014 Relationship Status: Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies
over the front
#135133: Oct 6th 2021 at 7:47:30 PM

It'd be really funny if they implemented the Moira X concept by implying that all the Foxmen movies were actually previous Moira loops tongue.

Edited by Nouct on Oct 6th 2021 at 7:48:01 AM

Falrinn Since: Dec, 2014
#135134: Oct 6th 2021 at 7:54:43 PM

[up]x6 The Eternals are only a handful of individuals and Marvel felt the question of "why haven't we ever heard of them before?" was important enough to explicitly address it in the trailer.

And while mutants don't make up a large percentage of the human population, they make up an enormous percentage of the superhuman population. Which means just shrugging and saying they just haven't come up despite so many fate-of-the-world-and/or-universe situations where they were they should of either been called into action or intervened on their own accord is going to feel like conspicuously lazy writing.

Honestly though, these sorts of issues do tend to be a lot less complicated once they actually appear onscreen. Integrating mutants into the MCU in a way that makes sense to the average moviegoer may only take a few minutes of screentime when it's all said and done. It doesn't have to be a whole storyline unto itself if they don't want it to be.

Here's an example: End of the Eternals movie, maybe a post-credit scene.

"Well good thing we stopped the <EVIL PLAN>, I wonder though...with so much cosmic energy surging through the Earth, we might see the awakening of latent genetic anomalies within some humans."

"That's happened before"

"It's happened in a few, but if I'm right, in the next few years we could see millions of these...mutants."

There. Three lines of dialogue and the framework for mutants is established. Mutant characters can then be casually added within that framework going forward, either being people who have just manifested abilities or are one of the very few that existed previously.

Edited by Falrinn on Oct 6th 2021 at 7:54:57 AM

M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#135135: Oct 6th 2021 at 7:59:40 PM

Mutant birth rates skyrocketing after a major event even has some basis in the original comics. It's been implied that Mutant birthrates drastically increased after Fat Man and Little Boy were dropped.

Disgusted, but not surprised
Falrinn Since: Dec, 2014
#135136: Oct 6th 2021 at 8:14:06 PM

[up] That is true. Obviously the timeline doesn't work for it to be the atom bomb in the MCU, but there's a few candidate events that have either already happened or are slated to occur.

While my script was semi-facetious, I have seen some genuine speculation that the Eternals movie will introduce the idea of mutants into the MCU (even if not actual mutants show up).

It at least established that the second snap has had unintended side effects.

Of course this could be a case of "every MCU release that deals with anything vaguely cosmic or genetic is going to be speculated as the introduction of mutants until mutants are introduced", but I suppose eventually it's going to be right.

Khfan429 Since: Aug, 2009
#135137: Oct 6th 2021 at 8:19:13 PM

[up][up][up]Or Marvel felt the need to explain the Eternals' absence because (based on their names) not only are they the inspiration for figures of myth but they're directly created by giant space god robots for the purpose of protecting humanity, so you have to add the qualifier "from the Deviants" because otherwise it doesn't make sense why they didn't protect humanity all those other times.

Mutants being absent so far in the MCU works perfectly fine because there hasn't been any reason to get involved in the ongoing scuffles so far. Even for the bigger stuff like Avengers' level events, a lot of those crises happened very quick and it's not like you're going to know if you aren't on the Avengers' mailing list.

The only real argument against mutants having already existed in sizeable but still small numbers I can see is "why didn't SHIELD know about them?". And you can easily explain that as the X-gene itself being a relatively recent discovery. SHIELD hasn't had a lot in the way of manpower or infrastructure since 2014.

Edited by Khfan429 on Oct 6th 2021 at 8:19:48 AM

PizzaDog11 Pizza is my business from closer than you think Since: Mar, 2018 Relationship Status: Holding out for a hero
Pizza is my business
#135138: Oct 6th 2021 at 8:43:07 PM

There’s plenty of scope, especially in the five years post-snap, to even say the x-men have been formed and operating, they just haven’t had any huge and noticeable battles. It’s not like a fight with the Blob or Vanisher for instance necessarily has to come with heaps of collateral damage

M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#135139: Oct 6th 2021 at 8:49:33 PM

Or they could have just been deliberately keeping as low a profile as possible. For good reason considering how the world reacts in other continuities to the existence of Mutants with giant genocide robots.

Disgusted, but not surprised
Falrinn Since: Dec, 2014
#135140: Oct 6th 2021 at 8:59:36 PM

[up][up][up] I really don't think you can just say that a group that likely makes up a staggeringly high percentage of all superpowered individuals (likely an outright majority and certainly a strong plurality) was just...missed.

If anything, I think it would be a lot harder to dance around the question of where mutants have been all this time and play it off like they were always around then to just tackle the issue directly and then move on.

Gaon Smoking Snake from Grim Up North Since: Jun, 2012 Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
#135141: Oct 6th 2021 at 9:15:38 PM

I've always thought that in the MCU, the event that would skyrocket Mutant births would be the usage of the Infinity Stones. This kind of tracks with the fact WWII saw a rapid upswing in the almost mass-usage of one infinity stone (the Cosmic Cube) in the MCU, leading to a post WWII boom of mutants. And then in the last 10-15 years of MCU chronology there has been a whole fuckton of Infinity Stone usage in earthly grounds, leading to a much greater boom. So in a way they're still borne of atomic energy, but in a more cosmic way. You can eeven use Captain Marvel (who was powered by the cosmic cube in the MCU) as a sort of baseline for the sort of thing prolonged exposure to a Infinity Stone can cause in the human populace.

You could do a reverse Wakanda of sorts with Genosha, also. As in, rather than a utopia Hidden Elf Village, the proverbial elves are kept in shackles in Genosha toiling under opppression, with a government who hunts them down and keeps hold over them.

Edited by Gaon on Oct 6th 2021 at 9:17:20 AM

"All you Fascists bound to lose."
HandsomeRob Leader of the Holey Brotherhood from The land of broken records Since: Jan, 2015
Leader of the Holey Brotherhood
#135142: Oct 6th 2021 at 9:19:24 PM

[up]Hmm. There was an old X-men comic from the time where Carol was practically a member herself where Collossus called her a mutant after she became Binary.

I don't many people remember that, and we wouldn't see it now, since there's a much bigger divide between Mutants and non-mutants, and it definitely feels that the X-Men don't trust the Avengers all that much at all, but still....maybe you're on to something.

Edited by HandsomeRob on Oct 6th 2021 at 9:19:39 AM

One Strip! One Strip!
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#135143: Oct 6th 2021 at 9:23:01 PM

It could be tied in with the Eternals as well since in the comics Mutants are also a result of the Celestials' experiments. Specifically, the experiments Celestials performed on early humans to create Eternals and Deviants also gave the rest of humanity the potential to develop superpowers (with the X-factor of Mutants being one of those).

So in the MCU it'd be a case of the Celestials granting all humanity latent superpower potential, and the Infinity Stone usage activating that potential in a lot of newborns.

Edited by M84 on Oct 7th 2021 at 12:24:11 AM

Disgusted, but not surprised
Chrononaut70 Since: Dec, 2020
#135144: Oct 6th 2021 at 9:25:12 PM

I think the most likely path for the MCU X-Men is that Hulk's reverse Snap in Endgame unintentionally causes a massive spike for the otherwise low (3-5 million) mutant population around the world and soon mutants are put into the spotlight. And certainly not in a good way in true X-Men fashion. This would give us a convenient explanation for why we've never seen mutantkind in the MCU and keep most of the X-Men pretty youthful.

M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#135145: Oct 6th 2021 at 9:30:44 PM

Heck, maybe in the MCU the experiments the Celestials performed on early humanity to create superpowered humans were done using the Infinity Stones in the first place. Remember that the Celestials used to have the damn things.

My bet would be that the Reality Stone was the one used the most. This ties in with another idea from the comics. It's not exactly canon, but it's my personal favorite explanation for how the X-gene actually works. According to the Galacta: Daughter of Galactus miniseries, the X-gene doesn't actually grant different powers. Instead, it weakens the fabric of reality, and this distortion manifests in different ways.

In other words, every Mutant is a Reality Warper. In the MCU, maybe this is because all Mutants have inherited a trace of the Reality Stone's power.

Edited by M84 on Oct 7th 2021 at 12:34:57 AM

Disgusted, but not surprised
slimcoder The Head of the Hydra Since: May, 2013
The Head of the Hydra
#135146: Oct 6th 2021 at 9:39:22 PM

Huh wonder how Deadpool and his cast are gonna tie into this

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#135147: Oct 6th 2021 at 9:41:30 PM

The X-Men will probably try to reach out to him for a while before getting exasperated with him and deciding he's not worth the trouble.

Disgusted, but not surprised
windleopard from Nigeria Since: Nov, 2014 Relationship Status: Non-Canon
#135148: Oct 6th 2021 at 10:14:03 PM

It's kinda impressive that they tried to avoid the Yellow Peril and/or Dragon Lady aspects of the character and choose "hey, let's dive head first into Mighty Whitey and Mellow Yellow territory instead."

I don't think they were explicitly trying to avoid Deathstrike's Yellow Peril influences. It seems they just took a character fans would be familiar with and slotted her into a role that made her submissive to the white male villain. Kind of like how Mystique was depicted in the first three movies.

Blink's been noted to have a particularly striking powerset and design and yet literally zero characterization.

Also, isn't Blink from the Bahamas in the comics?

Psylocke has been The Dragon to three separate mutant groups and yet her personality is "sometimes has a sword."

I remember how Olivia Munn got so much praise from fans for "saving" the character with her knowledge when all her input amounted to was Psylocke getting to wear her ninja leotard.

Edited by windleopard on Oct 6th 2021 at 10:14:19 AM

PizzaDog11 Pizza is my business from closer than you think Since: Mar, 2018 Relationship Status: Holding out for a hero
Pizza is my business
#135149: Oct 6th 2021 at 11:28:24 PM

I’ve just realised that the Starjammers are now fair game for future Guardians or Captain Marvel movies. I’d love to see them pop up, though they’re probably kind of redundant with the direction the MCU Guardians have gone

slimcoder The Head of the Hydra Since: May, 2013
The Head of the Hydra
#135150: Oct 6th 2021 at 11:32:34 PM

You could play them as more visibly pirates, I think they raid ships.

Though it does depend on what direction the Guardians will take after 3.

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."

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