Marvel Films MCU X-Men - Part 4

[BobJM]

I think Karl Lykos as the primary villain on Krakoa (an amalgamation of comics Krakoa and the Savage Land) would be an awesome MCU X-Men start.

Lykos could be an amalgam too—I think making him the MCU’s John Sublime would be interesting. He’s gene-engineering to harvest mutant powers to create the Third Species on Krakoa (far from the curious eyes of world governments & gene-splicing sanctions) and eventually transforms into Sauron in Act III. U-Men goons/Marauder mutates could serve as the cannon fodder for the X-Men to punch until the ‘big boss’ battle against Lykos.

 

[metaphysician]

It occurs to me that with Sinister, they have A LOT of flexibility with his origin. IIRC, Claremont had his own plans for the character that were never realized, and the comics didn't even reveal to his backstory until after he'd appeared on the cartoon.

So it's an interesting case where the elements that made the character worth keeping around aren't necessarily tied in with the origin like they are with Magneto or Juggernaut. Even so, they'll have to commit to those details eventually, whether it's his comics origin, something more in keeping with Claremont's pitch, or something entirely new. As long as he's not revealed to be Scott's real bio-Dad, I'm open to some liberties.

I more or less agree. IMO, Sinister works best as something of a trickster, where everything about him is lies and deception. This makes his exact backstory unimportant, because even if he tells you, its either a lie or an omission. Its his praxis, his modus operandi, which is much more defined. . . and that MO is "plays behind the scenes, lies and deceives, lots of mad science".

Honestly, I'd disconnect him from Apocalypse. He doesn't need an immortal god-mutant to give him powers, he can just be a probably-Victorian mad scientist. Either he was an early mutant who studied his own powers and enhanced them, or he was a mad scientist who studied early mutants and gave himself powers. Either way he's spent the past century learning more about mutation than anyone else, and juicing up his own powers slowly on the way.

( Which actually gives an idea for how to make Sinister's power set a little more cohesive and elegant: he's basically Mad Scientist Sylar. His powers are a grab bag because they are a *literal* grab bag. He pretty much studied, experimented on, dissected, analyzed, and ultimately bottled up every interesting power he came across, and then shot it up like cocaine. Upside, he's more versatile than anyone else, downside, his powers aren't as deep as most natural users. He might not do that as much in the present, because he's already incorporated as many individual mutant x-genes as he can without the danger being worse than the benefit. )

 

[BobJM]

I always likened what I thought the MCU’s approach to Sinister should be as a “Victorian-era scientist with STAS-Brainic ambitions to ‘collect’ mutant evolutionary DNA.” The Sylar comparison isn’t too far off—I’ve even suggested Quinto for Sinister a number of times

 

[CaptainWagner]

I think Karl Lykos as the primary villain on Krakoa (an amalgamation of comics Krakoa and the Savage Land) would be an awesome MCU X-Men start.

Lykos could be an amalgam too—I think making him the MCU’s John Sublime would be interesting. He’s gene-engineering to harvest mutant powers to create the Third Species on Krakoa (far from the curious eyes of world governments & gene-splicing sanctions) and eventually transforms into Sauron in Act III. U-Men goons/Marauder mutates could serve as the cannon fodder for the X-Men to punch until the ‘big boss’ battle against Lykos.

This is my current pitch for the debut MCU X-Men movie (I posted it here a while back, I think). Sauron is IMO the biggest unused villain who is accessible for a first movie threat. It would also be very easy to tie Lykos' work into an over-arching Hellfire Club/Mr. Sinister arc.

Tom Wlaschiha as Dr. Karl Lykos/Sauron

 

[BobJM]

This is my current pitch for the debut MCU X-Men movie (I posted it here a while back, I think). Sauron is IMO the biggest unused villain who is accessible for a first movie threat. It would also be very easy to tie Lykos' work into an over-arching Hellfire Club/Mr. Sinister arc.

Tom Wlaschiha as Dr. Karl Lykos/Sauron

I don’t know the actor you’ve suggested, but for Lykos my mind went immediately to Pedro Pascal. Or Antonio Banderas. A bigger name actor, especially if he’s the main antagonist.

Really like the idea of Sauron as the jumping off point though. He seems like a character that the MCU could really make their own. And there’s just something about the juxtaposed imagery of dinosaurs / Savage Land and the “children of the atom” that’s really intriguing. And fresh for the X-Men on screen.

 

[MilkmanDan]

This is my current pitch for the debut MCU X-Men movie (I posted it here a while back, I think). Sauron is IMO the biggest unused villain who is accessible for a first movie threat. It would also be very easy to tie Lykos' work into an over-arching Hellfire Club/Mr. Sinister arc.

Tom Wlaschiha as Dr. Karl Lykos/Sauron

A man approves this choice.

 

[SumT]

I like the idea of Savage Land and Sauron and all.......... but definetly not for the first movie. neither the second. It just doesnt feel right.

First movie should be Friends of humanity and Early version of the sentinels imo. If Marvel presents the mutant concept some years before their movie, and some key x-men debuting here and there, it will be enough to justify some sentinels on the first movie. Its all about storytelling after all, and Feige nails that.

 

[BobJM]

I don’t think Lykos & Savage Land/Krakoa necessarily needs to be exclusive from a human threat like Friends of Humanity or MRD—they can compliment each other. Lykos, seeking mutant power to increase his own strength, partners with FOH or MRD behind-the-scenes to obtain mutant test subjects.

And, regardless of the main antagonist, I think there’s always room for a Revered Hodge (instead of reusing Stryker again and again) or Senator Kelly to be herding a grassroots movement in the media across the nation against mutants in the background. That should be present throughout, and propel some of the character motivations (i.e. like Jubilee initially running from home).

 

[DawnWarrior]

Here's what I was thinking about that:

The A-Plot revolves around Krakoa. The O5 went there years ago, only Scott got away, the rest are presumed dead. Xavier and Scott parted ways, deciding their little X-Men project was finished.
Now in the present day, there's some kind of human-v-mutant trouble brewing, i.e. riots on college campuses, escalating violence from groups like the Purifiers, etc. It's the kind of thing that Xavier and Scott see on the news and think, "sure would be nice if the X-Men were around. But they're not, so that sucks." And they just feel powerless. So that's going on in the background.

Then Xavier learns that the team on Krakoa may still be alive, and convinces Scott to help assemble, train, and lead the 2nd team to rescue them.
So Krakoa is the A-plot with all the super-hero action. Maybe they fight Sauron and the Mutates there, or maybe they just battle the island and banish it into space like the comics.
Once the whole team defeats Krakoa in the big slam-bang action fight, they head home in the Blackbird, and Professor X is like, "Hey guys, if anyone wants to stay on and help with this Purifier situation, that'd be awesome." So the X-Men head over there and take care of business, giving them a big public victory for the news media to go with their win against Krakoa.

Admittedly this might make the grounded human conflict TOO incidental and tacked-on. But if we want a big event film that has to introduce two whole teams of X-Men, maybe that's okay.

 

[CaptainWagner]

I like the idea of Savage Land and Sauron and all.......... but definetly not for the first movie. neither the second. It just doesnt feel right.

First movie should be Friends of humanity and Early version of the sentinels imo. If Marvel presents the mutant concept some years before their movie, and some key x-men debuting here and there, it will be enough to justify some sentinels on the first movie. Its all about storytelling after all, and Feige nails that.

Personally, I don't see FOH/Sentinels being a feasible or desirable focus for a first movie. I too assume that the mutants will be retconned in as having been a part of the MCU all along, but there's no way that Fiege has them become widely known to the public enough to inspire large hate groups outside of their own movie. I will bet dollars to donuts that whatever the villain turns out to be, the central premise of the first movie will be on mutants "coming out" to the world.

A first movie villain needs to be someone who is memorable but simple enough to be fully realized without taking too much time away from the introduction of the protagonists and their corner of the world. That's why someone like Sauron works so well while opening a franchise with a complicated nemesis (see: Dafoe's Green Goblin or Weaving's Red Skull) tends to leave fans disappointed.

Lykos/Sauron also works great here because his attachment to genetics and mutant research allows a lot of exposition to be dumped in a way that feels natural to the story.

 

[Silvermoth]

I don’t know the actor you’ve suggested, but for Lykos my mind went immediately to Pedro Pascal. Or Antonio Banderas. A bigger name actor, especially if he’s the main antagonist.

Really like the idea of Sauron as the jumping off point though. He seems like a character that the MCU could really make their own. And there’s just something about the juxtaposed imagery of dinosaurs / Savage Land and the “children of the atom” that’s really intriguing. And fresh for the X-Men on screen.

oh Antonio is a fun idea. He doesn’t really get enough cred for being in Philadelphia. I could see him being a Jake Gyllenhaal level “good get”

 

[Marvel united]

Here's what I was thinking about that:

The A-Plot revolves around Krakoa. The O5 went there years ago, only Scott got away, the rest are presumed dead. Xavier and Scott parted ways, deciding their little X-Men project was finished.
Now in the present day, there's some kind of human-v-mutant trouble brewing, i.e. riots on college campuses, escalating violence from groups like the Purifiers, etc. It's the kind of thing that Xavier and Scott see on the news and think, "sure would be nice if the X-Men were around. But they're not, so that sucks." And they just feel powerless. So that's going on in the background.

Then Xavier learns that the team on Krakoa may still be alive, and convinces Scott to help assemble, train, and lead the 2nd team to rescue them.
So Krakoa is the A-plot with all the super-hero action. Maybe they fight Sauron and the Mutates there, or maybe they just battle the island and banish it into space like the comics.
Once the whole team defeats Krakoa in the big slam-bang action fight, they head home in the Blackbird, and Professor X is like, "Hey guys, if anyone wants to stay on and help with this Purifier situation, that'd be awesome." So the X-Men head over there and take care of business, giving them a big public victory for the news media to go with their win against Krakoa.

Admittedly this might make the grounded human conflict TOO incidental and tacked-on. But if we want a big event film that has to introduce two whole teams of X-Men, maybe that's okay.

This is great stuff.

I like the idea of Savage Land and Sauron and all.......... but definetly not for the first movie. neither the second. It just doesnt feel right.

First movie should be Friends of humanity and Early version of the sentinels imo. If Marvel presents the mutant concept some years before their movie, and some key x-men debuting here and there, it will be enough to justify some sentinels on the first movie. Its all about storytelling after all, and Feige nails that.

Personally, I don't see FOH/Sentinels being a feasible or desirable focus for a first movie. I too assume that the mutants will be retconned in as having been a part of the MCU all along, but there's no way that Fiege has them become widely known to the public enough to inspire large hate groups outside of their own movie. I will bet dollars to donuts that whatever the villain turns out to be, the central premise of the first movie will be on mutants "coming out" to the world.

A first movie villain needs to be someone who is memorable but simple enough to be fully realized without taking too much time away from the introduction of the protagonists and their corner of the world. That's why someone like Sauron works so well while opening a franchise with a complicated nemesis (see: Dafoe's Green Goblin or Weaving's Red Skull) tends to leave fans disappointed.

Lykos/Sauron also works great here because his attachment to genetics and mutant research allows a lot of exposition to be dumped in a way that feels natural to the story.

I fall somewhere in between this argument. I do agree that it would be too early for the Sentinels.

But I'm also of the opinion that X1 needs to be their set-up. Prior to the events of this movie, mutants could just be seen as people with strange powers. Some dangerous, some aren't. Nothing unusual in the MCU.

Until someone show up, groups them altogether, and creates this "Homo Superior" narrative... That mutants are the next step. That would scare people.

Everything that happens in the future is a reaction to the events of the movie. IMO X1 should chronicle the beginnings of anti-mutant hysteria. It has to start somewhere.

 

[KRYPTON INC.]

I think that those five years of the skip will be important to establishing the Mutants. It's like A LOT of time despite what some who are young might think.

Plus, any events, whether in the "past" of the MCU X-films or those films taking place during the skip, by the nature of that moment in time (Heroes in disarray, half the world gone etc.) you can justify a more "mature" take with a less frivolous tone if you wanted to.

 

[universeman]

Did anyone else see this because what Feige said here about WandaVision is interesting.

Spoiler

“If you look at the Infinity Saga, I don’t think any single person has gone through more pain and trauma than Wanda Maximoff. And no character seems to be as powerful as Wanda Maximoff. And no character has a power-set that is as ill-defined and unexplored as Wanda Maximoff,” MCU boss Kevin Feige tells Empire. “So it seemed exploring that would be worthwhile post-Endgame. Who else is aware of that power? Where did it come from? Did the Mind Stone unlock it?”

WandaVision Explores Scarlet Witch’s ‘Ill-Defined Power-Set’, Says Kevin Feige – Exclusive Images

 

[Marvel united]

Did anyone else see this because what Feige said here about WandaVision is interesting.

Spoiler

WandaVision Explores Scarlet Witch’s ‘Ill-Defined Power-Set’, Says Kevin Feige – Exclusive Images

Yup. Mutants are totally gonna be tied into the Infinity stones. Calling it now

Been saying for months that this is what makes the most sense

 

[universeman]

Yup. Mutants are totally gonna be tied into the Infinity stones. Calling it now

Been saying for months that this is what makes the most sense

Yup, the evidence of it keeps coming doesn't it?

It does, and with the theories that MCU Storm will be from Wakanda, what if when Thanos did the snap in Wakanda instead of being dusted her powers was awoken?

 

[CaptainWagner]

I'm going to be very concerned if the Infinity Stones route gets taken. There's just so many holes that opens up. How are they going to handle older mutants?

 

[Zant]

I'm going to be very concerned if the Infinity Stones route gets taken. There's just so many holes that opens up. How are they going to handle older mutants?

Mutants shoehorned into the MCU at this stage...... is just messy and extremely forced..

 

[Marvel united]

Yup, the evidence of it keeps coming doesn't it?

It does, and with the theories that MCU Storm will be from Wakanda, what if when Thanos did the snap in Wakanda instead of being dusted her powers was awoken?

Certainly possible. There were 3 waves. Thanos' in 2018 and Hulk and Stark's in 2023. Rocket Raccoon said that Earth had an unprecedented surge of energy

Mutants could've started showing up en masse after Thanos' first snap. There was no time to show this in Endgame but other movies set within the 5 year gap, could.

Multiple mutants are rumored for Shang-Chi and that movie apparently takes place in 2020, 2 years after the snap.

I'm going to be very concerned if the Infinity Stones route gets taken. There's just so many holes that opens up. How are they going to handle older mutants?

Mutants shoehorned into the MCU at this stage...... is just messy and extremely forced..

I imagine that they would say the snaps caused a surge in the mutant population

Mutants and mutancy could exist in the MCU but it could be rare. This splits the difference. Obviously, mutants have to exist in order for XM lore to not be broken but at the same time, it's a sensible, simple explanation for why we haven't seen or heard from any of them up until the forthcoming films.

Mutants existed but there were few. Now, post-Endgame, there are many.

 

[Iceman]

Did anyone else see this because what Feige said here about WandaVision is interesting.

Spoiler

WandaVision Explores Scarlet Witch’s ‘Ill-Defined Power-Set’, Says Kevin Feige – Exclusive Images

Good to hear. They obviously have some solid plans for her.

 

[Jordacar]

I just thought of this...

The thing about Thunderbird and Warpath is that John got such a chump death back in the day, so the easy fix for the adaptation is he instead lives to fight another day. With that, you could just have Thunderbird stay around and even give James' story to him. But of course, there's another opportunity there to actually see the Proudstar brothers as brothers, beyond the old soap opera "this guy died and now his identical twin wants revenge" deal. (Btw, they're not twins and they don't have to be, they just have the same powers and dress the same.)

So while we're on the soap opera mindset, you could have John on the team when his hot-headed little brother James shows up kicking it with the bad guys (Brotherhood, Hellions, Hellfire Club, whichever faction makes sense at the time), so now we get some of that sweet brother-vs-brother action that the comics missed out on.

Now of course we don't have to kill either of them. However, if some world-ending big bad rolled in that forced the X-Men and the bad guys to team up, and John goes all in for the heroic sacrifice and dies in his brother's arms? Now that's something I would be more interested to see...

 

[Jordacar]

I'm going to be very concerned if the Infinity Stones route gets taken. There's just so many holes that opens up. How are they going to handle older mutants?

I don't know why this keeps coming up (well, I kinda do) because the answer is right there in the text. There used to be a few mutants (ie. the older ones), and now there are lots. It's generally accepted that at some point mutants could no longer stay hidden, and the most logical reason for that is now they're everywhere. In First Class it was credited to the rise of the nuclear age, so now it's credited to Earth becoming a crossroads for countless cosmic forces.

 

[KRYPTON INC.]

 

[Silvermoth]

On nightcrawler, I was wondering do you still think they could do the circus angle? Because they’re a bit out of fashion now.

I could see him as a bit of a YouTuber/twitch/tiktok type guy who’s a bit extreme and fun

 

[Marvel united]

I just thought of this...

The thing about Thunderbird and Warpath is that John got such a chump death back in the day, so the easy fix for the adaptation is he instead lives to fight another day. With that, you could just have Thunderbird stay around and even give James' story to him. But of course, there's another opportunity there to actually see the Proudstar brothers as brothers, beyond the old soap opera "this guy died and now his identical twin wants revenge" deal. (Btw, they're not twins and they don't have to be, they just have the same powers and dress the same.)

So while we're on the soap opera mindset, you could have John on the team when his hot-headed little brother James shows up kicking it with the bad guys (Brotherhood, Hellions, Hellfire Club, whichever faction makes sense at the time), so now we get some of that sweet brother-vs-brother action that the comics missed out on.

Now of course we don't have to kill either of them. However, if some world-ending big bad rolled in that forced the X-Men and the bad guys to team up, and John goes all in for the heroic sacrifice and dies in his brother's arms? Now that's something I would be more interested to see...

Sounds good. a fresh dynamic for the X-Men films to explore

I don't know why this keeps coming up (well, I kinda do) because the answer is right there in the text. There used to be a few mutants (ie. the older ones), and now there are lots. It's generally accepted that at some point mutants could no longer stay hidden, and the most logical reason for that is now they're everywhere. In First Class it was credited to the rise of the nuclear age, so now it's credited to Earth becoming a crossroads for countless cosmic forces.

Exactly. And First Class got that from the comics -- "Children of atom": they are sometimes referred to for a reason.

Xavier's mutant gene was activated early in his life due to his father's experiments (Nuclear physicist).

Put POC mutants in the follow up panel & that drives the point home even further.

Btw I'm curious to hear what your ideal starting lineup would be