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Last April, my colleague Melanie McFarland wrote a remarkable article on how 2019 marked the end of three historic franchises of American pop culture: the TV series "Game of Thrones", the narrative arcs of the movie Avengers in the film world. Marvel. the Skywalker saga in nine parts in the "Star Wars" movies.
However, there is a fourth franchise that is also part of this list, one that will also end in 2019 – in fact, before the end of this week: the movie series "X-Men".
It's not a euphemism to say that "X-Men" movies are historical. The original movie "X-Men", released in 2000, revitalized the genre of superheroes after a series of terrible films of the late 90s. ("Batman & Robin," do you like?) In the 18 following years – Christopher Nolan released his classic trilogy "Dark Knight" and the Marvel Cinematic Universe went from a glow in the eyes of Kevin Feige to the world behemoth – the "The X-Men Series" has produced 10 additional films of varying quality, in which he established that a larger cinematic universe was possible for superhero films, even if he did not formally claim to be such, and demonstrated that intelligent and complex stories could be told through this genre: "X-Men" a parable about racism and genocide, "X2" about gay rights, "Logan" about death and existential despair, etc.
After Disney took over the "X-Men" series following the 20th Century Fox acquisition, the fate of the movies was not clear … until April. It was then that Emma Watts, a member of Fox's executive, told the crowd at the annual ComicCon event in Las Vegas that "X-Men: Dark Phoenix", which will be released this week will be the "perfect start for our X-Men team".
Some points are worth mentioning here. The first is that technically "X-Men: Dark Phoneix" is not the latest film made in the universe of the series "X-Men" which began in 2000; this distinction belongs to "The New Mutants", a horror film whose release has been delayed so many times (from 2018 to 2019 and in the 2020 horizon) that one has to wonder if it will never see the light of day – or, for that matter, what's going on behind the scenes with the business people behind doing it. Yet, even if "The New Mutants" is published, it does not contain any of the main characters or narrative arcs of the first 12 films. So you can say that it will be a more independent singularity than a direct sequel. of the series in its own right.
More importantly, though, it makes sense that "X-Men" movies are restarted in the Marvel cinematic universe rather than being transferred from the existing series to the new one. While Marvel's gurus might find an imposed way to insert the old characters into their series, he would feel discordantly moved simply because the two have already completely fleshed out completely different stories and narrative tones. While it's fun in theory to see Hugh Jackman's Wolverine / Logan or Sophie Turner's Phoenix / Jean Gray interacting with the new generation of Marvel Cinematic Universe superheroes, the logistics of their assembly would certainly be more bothersome than valuable. Hence the reason why "X-Men: Dark Phoenix" will be the swan song of the series – and rightly so.
That said, there remains one question: what is the legacy of the "X-Men" movie series?
To answer this question, it is first important to distinguish the four sub-series from the larger universe of the movie "X-Men". There is the original trilogy (2000-2006), composed of "X-Men" by Bryan Singer (2000) and "X2" (2003), as well as "X-Men: the last fight" by Brett Ratner (2006) ); previous films that simultaneously reinvented existing characters while remaining in the same larger universe, including Matthew Vaughn's "X-Men: First Class" (2011), "Singer" (X-Men: Days of Future Past) (2014) and "X-Men: Apocalypse" (2016) and the upcoming "Dark Phoenix" by Simon Kinberg; Wolverine's derivative films, including "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" by Gavin Hood (2009) and "The Wolverine" by James Mangold (2013) and "Logan" (2017); and the Deadpool movies, Deadpool by Tim Miller (2016) and Deadpool 2 by David Leitch (2018).
Although these are the four categories of "X-Men" movies, the films in these groups range from landmarks in the film's history to outrageous embarrassments. "Logan", for example, is arguably one of the greatest superhero movies of all time, considering a dark conclusion for the Wolverine character (and, since it's all about the last film chronologically in the continuity of the series, by extension all other -Men) which becomes a poignant character study for the titular hero himself. If a movie captures what's best in the "X-Men" series – deep characters, well-choreographed fights, compelling special effects, a burning social comment – that's "Logan" . Yet, "X-Men Origins: Wolverine", although it's also a Wolverine-centric film, is arguably one of the worst films in the franchise, straddling the border between camp and melodrama without ever engaging in quality. entertaining also has the despicable peculiarity of totally preventing the introduction of the character of Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds).
The weak point of the series, however, is "X-Men: the last fight", a film so bad that no fan of "X-Men" was displeased when Singer erased his story from the most great continuity at the end of "X-Men: Days of the Future Past." This film took up all the secondary intrigues in which the fans had invested the two previous films "X-Men" and brought them to hasty conclusions artificial and sometimes intellectually insulting. Fortunately, no other movie "X-Men" has hit this nadir: the first two films "X-Men" are real classics, laying the foundation for what a movie "X-Men" is supposed to feel while telling fascinating stories with iconic characters, especially Patrick Stewart as teacher X; "X-Men: Days of Future Past" is also a modern-day classic, adding new layers to the character of Mystic through the performance of Jennifer Lawrence and allowing the two chronologies of "X-Men" to combine intelligently . and "X-Men: First Class", "The Wolverine" and "X-Men: Apocalypse" are all good solid superhero movies, even if they do not reach transcendent levels.
The films of "Deadpool" fall into their category, both because they seem alone to be followed by Marvel (although rumor circulates that it will not be directly brought into the Marvel scenario) and because they never really fit squarely into the other "X-Men" movies. The films of "Deadpool" were always more and more unusual, Reynolds scorching the movies of "X-Men" while telling his own stories. These two movies are excellent if you are a fan of Reynolds' sense of humor (which I am), unless you are not.
For those of you who keep points, this represents up to six excellent movies ("X-Men", "X2", "X-Men: Days of the Future Past", "Deadpool", " Logan "and" Deadpool 2 "), three good (" X-Men: First Class "," The Wolverine "and" X-Men: Apocalypse ") and two bugs (" X-Men: The Last Fight "and" X -Men Origins: Wolverine "). Considering that the most important legacy of any film series is to produce films that can be viewed, the fact that only two of the 11 "X-Men" films released are downright bad is a huge credit for the franchise. The film universe of Marvel will have a high bar to reach if he wants to prove that he is worthy of the series that is about to close, no matter if "X-Men: Dark Phoenix" glue or not the landing as the final of the series.
Yet even though Marvel Cinematic Universe manages to do justice to the characters of X-Men, it will never be able to repeat what this series meant for the story of the genre of the superhero movie. The first "X-Men" showed that superhero movies could be profitable again, before Sam Raimi's "Spider-Man" sent the same message in 2002; "X-Men" and its worthy successors in the series have shown that super-hero movies can intelligently address complex social and political issues long before the "Dark Knight" or "Black Panther" trilogy even. and, before "The Avengers" proves that you can turn autonomous superhero movies into a cinematic universe, the "X-Men" series has created a whole universe of superheroes right from the start and does not have to never hesitated to integrate them. the same story and compete for time on screen.
The "X-Men" series was not perfect, but in almost two decades of existence, it has forever changed the film industry by producing a number of entertaining, stimulating films and uncontrollable. When "X-Men: Dark Phoenix" will close its story this week, it will actually be at the end of one era – yet another to retire in 2019.
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