Something occurred to me after a viewing of X-Men First
Class. No, its not that the movie is a
continuity nightmare that not only clashes heavily with the comics but makes
its status as a prequel to the four other X-men films impossible. What occurred
to me concerns the situation that Marvel Studios has with other studios that
own the film rights to various characters. You see, Sony having the rights to
Spider-man is a huge blow to Marvel Studios as the Avengers can’t connect to
one of their company’s franchise characters. To a lesser extent 20th
Century Fox having the Fantastic Four sucks too when you consider that Reed
Richards and company connect to Marvel’s space universe and bring with them
Silver Surfer and Galactus. But 20th Century Fox owning film rights
to all the X-men characters? Not such a big deal. Allow me to explain.
As the popularity of the X-men rose in the 80’s and 90’s,
Marvel found itself with an identity crisis (no, not the kind where Batman gets
pissed about having been mind wiped). You see, it became apparent that Marvel
had two subsets to their universe… the superheroes such as Spider-man and the
Avengers and the mutants consisting of the X-men and all those other X-teams.
This brought up the question ‘why does the public love and embrace the Avengers
and the Fantastic Four but hate and fear the X-men?’ In the end, whether you
got your powers from radiation or a serum or a robot suit or simple evolution,
you were still dealing with people having superpowers. On one side of the coin
everyone hates mutants and on the other they cheer for Thor and Spider-man.
What gives?
Well, the current studio ownership debacle sort of
alleviates that problem in a way. You can make a movie universe where only
mutants exist. There are no superheroes, only Homo Superior who the public hates and fears. This creates a
perfect need for a peacekeeping force like the X-men. On the flip side Marvel
Studios, assuming they eventually get back Spidey and the Fantastic Four, can just
focus on the idea of superheroes and supervillains.
It’s really as simple as that. I see no need for Marvel to
have to get the X-men licensing back to make awesome movies and franchises. The
X-men can exist in their own world and the Avengers-verse (I think I’m going to
start calling it that) can do its thing. After all, the only character that
really overlaps is Wolverine and really it wasn’t until the last decade that he
became a regular Avenger anyway.
If only the Amazing Spider-man hadn’t been so good… it looks
like Marvel Studios won’t be getting back their Webslinger for another decade
at least.
No comments:
Post a Comment