Will the MCU's X-Men reboot stick to the source material, unlike the previous franchise? Speculations explored

One of Marvel's most exciting projects in the future is the X-Men reboot, which is set to be rebooted by Thunderbolts*/The New Avengers' Jake Schreier. While this is not the first time we will be seeing the X-Men movies on the big screen, fans are hoping that this time they will get an adaptation that honors the source material, which at this point is at least 62 years old.

Fourteen movies featuring the mutants were released under the X-Men franchise, released by the now-defunct 20th Century Fox. The franchise, which ran for 20 years between 2000 and 2020, is respected, but it also has its fair share of problems.

Firstly, the franchise got every mutant not named Wolverine, Professor X, Magneto, Nightcrawler (Alan Cumming), and Quicksilver wrong.

Cyclops, Jean Grey, Storm, and every other mutant were nothing like their comic counterpart.

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The X-Men franchise got the characters wrong:

As mentioned earlier, the iconic film franchise, which the wider public saw for 20 years, got most of the characters wrong. The franchise ran on one name, and that's Hugh Jackman's Wolverine. It wasn't until 2024's X-Men '97 that the wider public learned why Scott Summers is as popular as he is amongst fans who have read the comics.

While Marsden is well cast, he was not given any chance to bring Cyclops' leadership skills to the big screen. The same can be said for Famke Janssen's Jean Grey, who is reduced to being the object of Scott Summers' and Logan's affections. While Halle Berry is well cast as Storm, she is hardly given anything in those movies.

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Those movies also got the continuity wrong:

Apart from the wrong characterization, a point of contention among fans for over a decade and a half is the franchise's messy continuity. While the first three movies had an air-tight continuity, it began to unravel as soon as the first prequel in the franchise, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, was released in 2009.

While 2003's X2 revealed that Logan was experimented on at Alkali Lake, Origins revealed that Professor X and Scott were also present there. Furthermore, Logan even saves a teenage Scott Summers from captivity in the final act of the 2009 movie, and yet Cyclops does not acknowledge Logan's help in the 2000 movie, which is set after the events of Origins.

The 2009 movie only made continuity worse, as Emma Frost is one of the antagonists in 2011's prequel/reboot X-Men: First Class, but she is one of William Stryker II's captives in Origins. 2014's Days of Future Past further added confusion by casting Peter Dinklage as Bolivar Trask, while the character was introduced in 2006's The Last Stand, where he was played by African-American actor Bill Duke.

The continuity issue was not solved after Days of Future Past rewrote the franchise's timeline.

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The filmmakers frequently used major events:

Despite all the issues, one of the worst aspects of the film franchise featuring Marvel's mutants is that it always seemed to go for major events from the comics back-to-back. While MCU is known for offering palette cleaners like 2015's Ant-Man or its 2018 sequel, Ant-Man and the Wasp, the mutant film franchise never offered fans a lighter affair between major events.

After Magneto tried to turn everyone into a mutant in the 2000 movie, the sequel, X2, adapted the acclaimed 1982 graphic novel, X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills, which is a defining event in the mutant history of the Marvel Universe. Then, the third movie, dubbed the final one in the trilogy in 2006, X3: The Last Stand, adapted not one but two events: Dark Phoenix and Gifted.

Even Logan, the best movie in the film franchise, repeated the mistake by adapting the Old Man Logan storyline without any buildup. Over its 20-year history, the film franchise has adapted only the major events repeatedly. Thus, it makes sense that it fizzled out as badly as it did during its conclusion.

To sustain the mutants for the long term, it is important that Marvel Studios slowly builds the major events, but also simultaneously offers projects that are lighter and just fun to watch. The films just showed the misery of the mutants, but not the joy. Maybe the upcoming adaptations highlight the joy.

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Read More: Thunderbolts* director Jake Schreier to officially direct the X-Men reboot, Kevin Feige confirms