I think X-Men is meant for TV. Long-form, serialized storytelling seems like the best way to go for the franchise.

Finally, SOMEONE mentions Legion. I'd swear no one else watches that show, it's one of my personal favorites

Micheal from Vsauce lost a lot of weight

The biggest problem for an X-men movie is Wolverine. It becomes way too easy for him to become the dominate charater and X-men just a suporting cast.

The eyeroll accompanying "Jennifer Lawrence Mystique" is epic

Honestly, I would like a movie from the Brotherhood's perspective. I want to see characters question whether they become just as terrible as their oppressors and finally realize that fighting each other sows more seeds for more fighting.

The X-Men in the Marvel universe has always been weird for me. I love seeing Spidey and Wolverine interact, but it makes no fucking sense why the X-Men are discriminated while other heroes aren't lol.

'X-Pert' nicely done

You know, I've come to kinda love how utterly fucked the continuity of these films became. In a way it kind of makes it the most comic booky comic book series of all the franchises. Perhaps the X-Men comics that X-23 had in Logan were the actual films we've been seeing. I just view each film - the good ones - as individual films that are only tangentially linked by vague back story. Sorta makes it like modern folklore too . . .

Just let Wes Anderson make one.

I just want them to do Nightcrawler right. He's my favorite and I wish I could see charming swashbuckler Kurt with a heart of gold instead of Catholic Guilt and Funny Foreigner

Answer: 1. Give the property to someone who can utilize the source material to its full potential. They have a universe that is huge and can be expanded upon so immensely...but yet, they do nothing. Another thing they need to do is, FOCUS ON THE TEAM. First Class was the only one that did this.

I know everybody says X-Men "changed everything," but can we really be sure? The first movie was more of a '90s action flick that featured superheroes. I would argue Spider-Man, which was totally cool with featuring the silly side of superhero comics, was much more of a watershed moment for the "superhero genre" (whatever that even means anymore). It wasn't trying to blend in with any genres, it was purely its own creation, which I think made much more of an impact.

i hate how gambit never got introduced nor did jubilee. and i was mad when rogue got cut.

I think any future x-men installments should hold off on Wolverine. BUT if they do include wolverine he CAN NOT be a main character. Hot take here but wolverine is at his best as a side character. I want no explanation for his presence in the x-men. No introduction no weapon x. Nothing more than “this is the wild stinky man we found in the woods outback the school. We made the mistake of letting him inside and feeding him so lives here now I guess. The kids like him for some reason.” I want the X-men to treat wolverine like a feral cat they found in the gutter. Sure they love him but they also don’t pay him and he’s only part of the team on technicality. He is not a teacher at the school AT BEST he is a security guard. But in reality he is just the worlds most violent baby sitter.

Excited to watch this.

I'm fine with Fox handling the Xmen, the movies are fine, and Logan And DOFP are some of the greatest CBM of all time. But I think it's time Fox sells the Fantastic four rights to marvel. They can't get that right in a million years

I like this guy. I appreciate the way he talks about the franchise in a level headed, non fanboy way.

The one thing i love about the pre mcu superhero films is how they dont feel like superhero films. They are action/drama movies which happen to have costumed heroes in them. I'd love to see more superhero movies that dont feel like they need to fit in a superhero drama, but exist more on their own. Black Panther almost got there, Spider-Man Homecoming did A GREAT job of being a coming of age story (its my fav in the MCU so far, for a good reason), and of course the original Iron Man didnt realize that its tone would be a blueprint for a whole genre of cinema

Hard reboot. Twenty years of film, out the window. Gone. Make allusion to it having existed if you want to, maybe in the same vein as the comment about Wolverine's blue and gold spandex costume in the first X-Men. Emulate the idea of X-Men Evolution in that you have your core team (your Cyclops, Jean Grey, Professor X and Storm) already there and established with some introductory dialogue with your young adult true main protagonist (your Kitty Pryde, Jubilation, Rogue, etc.). Don't just immediately jump to Magneto, ease us into the character, build him up with dialogue from Xavier without showing us Magneto. Maybe something like your protagonist asking Xavier why his school exists, why with all their mutant powers they're expected to play nice with regular people, and Xavier mentions having an old friend who thought that way once and the two of them couldn't see eye to eye on the subject. When the inevitable "Government attempts to out mutants" occurs, then we get Magneto accompanied by Mystique reveal. The film's probably going to end up being a vehicle for some message about how all people, mutant or not, regardless of race, religion, etc. are the same, and ends with a kind of backing off due to Magneto's respect for Xavier as an old friend with several new mutants (some young adult, other older) arriving at the mansion to hint at more characters being introduced in the sequel. Your end credits scene would probably be similar, but with people already disillusioned by the way they're treated siding with Magneto to form the Brotherhood.

How would you fix the X-Men franchise? Or do you think it's fine the way it is? Let us know!

I don't like the idea of X-Men in the MCU--they've always been the outliers of the Marvel universe in the comics and really it's way too late to integrate them in the wider Marvel universe. They work best separate from the rest.

I honestly think that a good way to "fix" the timeline in the franchise is to have Deadpool show up at the beginning of the next X-Men movie and tell the audience to ignore everything from the other X-Men movies except for "Deadpool" and just start everything again.

Hyped to watch this. After Logan, I honestly believe that Fox should move away from the core characters and focus on the new mutants we saw at Logan and tell some new stories in new worlds.

As a Cerebrocast listener coming in years late... shocked-not-shocked for Candy Southern to make an appearance.

Sorry, but I disagree with the idea that the Xmen do best why sectioned off. While most of the best x-men stories are absolutely just the x-men, the individual characters, (especially Wolverine, Beast, Storm, and I'm going to include Deadpool), are best when interacting with the larger marvel universe.

The more you guys spoke, the better it got. Great stuff that we all have been begging FOX to do

The Joss Whedon X-Men comic is one of my favorites. If they adapted that, especially if they got Whedon to direct it, I guarantee it would be the best X-Men movie ever made. At least, best movie about the whole team, not just wolverine or Deadpool.

I wish they didn't go with those black leather suits in the X-Men movies. Add a little color!!! They are still using the darker colors now!!!

If a young pyrokinetic girl POV character is always required, I think I can accept Negasonic Teenage Warhead going forward.

I wrote a reboot screenplay. Here was what I did: What I saw in Deadpool was Wade talking about the X-Men movies as though that's what they were in his world...just movies based on characters that actually existed in his world. I took the Colossus character that we saw in DP and built a new X-Men franchise based on him. The X-Men I wrote about are the ones who exist in Deadpool's cinematic universe, not the Bryan Singer version. And, they are 100% faithful to the comic book. It runs about 2h20m with 2 after credit scenes that set up 2 separate franchises. Here's are some examples: 1. Jean Grey is Marvel Girl, and not an important character "yet". The Phoenix Force is not her mutation. 2. Wolverine wears the yellow and blue suit. 3. Mystique is not THE main character.

Awesome video! Keep up the great work my friend

Why is Sophe Turner a draw? She's not a good actress. They need to ditch JLaw too. She seemed to forget to act in the last movie and they've made her character really bland now she's become a hero too.

Want to know how to fix the continuity. All the X-Men Fox films are from the Mojoverse. All are fictional films within a film.

As much as i'm really love X-Men films, you're making an excellent point Hell i don't even want to watch about Jennifer Lawrence led the group and she's "important" character for the franchise, like nobody cares

I know you guys said the odds are low that any of this stuff will actually happen, but with Disney acquiring Fox, I think it might actually be a possibility. Disney isn't exactly shy about completely rebooting newly acquired properties if they don't think they're working.

I wouldn't be surprised if they just eventually try to rap it up and just go for a straight reboot. I think it's too hard to change course after dropping the ball with the potential left after DoFP and Apocalypse. Maybe they'll just straight up change series. I'm still holding out hope for a Remender's X-Force adaptation.

I think the current X-Men universe is generally a mess, with the exception of Deadpool (which works so well because of how much love Ryan Reynolds has for the character) Logan (which we won't get more of because Hugh Jackman has retired from the role). While the fixes you mentioned in the video would be great, especially establishing a POV character, I think it would be even better to do that AND include the X-Men in the MCU. The MCU has people actually passionate about these characters, which leads to success (like I said about Ryan Reynolds). Plus we'd get to finally see characters like Wolverine interact with the Avengers, or Storm interact with Black Panther. Regardless of whether or not this ever happens though, whatever X-Men content that comes out is sure to be better than Sony's cash-grab Spider-Verse movies (Sony makes me sad)

This video was great Patrick, your thoughts as well as Connor's were solid. Keep up the great content!

They're gonna blow it with New Mutants by not having Cypher as a POV character. He's basically the Human Stain of mutants (he's got a power, but it's hard to tell that he does) and would make an excellent every man character around all of these hot headed teens. You can have him start off feeling completely useless, but then using his seemingly mundane powers to do something great and prove himself to the team. Kind of like what they TRIED to do in Hellboy with John Meyers (Which clearly should've been Kate Corrigan), but failed to pull off. It doesn't have to CENTER around him, but he's a perfect entry level character that has gotten shit on by terrible top 10 worst mutants lists. When he died, you felt the emotional weight because he was just a kid trying to really push himself to be part of this team. I'd also make him legitimately dorky, instead of casting a good looking kid. Get like that weird Ryan Lee kid with from Goosebumps to play him.

You should do an update version of this, now that the X-Men will be shifting into the MCU. I know neither of you particularly want that (and personally I agree) but how do you want it to play out now that it seems to be happening?

I think X-Men Apocalypse should have taken place with the original cast, and been the last movie with them. I mean the term “Apocalypse” literally means the end lol, so it fits. If they wanted to go back in the past, it should have been to show that maybe they had heard of him when they were younger or something, so like the story threads could have been connected via flashbacks. Then it builds up to this big confrontation in the future where some of them die (as Beast said in DOFP, time resets itself or whatever) so now instead of sentinels it’s this super powerful ancient mutant that’s killing off mutants with his horseman. Imagine Old Xavier seeing Wolverine get brainwashed into being a horseman and him being emotionally torn apart by the concept of having to fight someone who was like a son to him. The emotional conflict would have been at all time high with everything going on, and it could have been a great ending to that phase and paved the way for the new generation. But instead, we got a hamfisted setup for the phoenix story. Nice job guys.

Why do they have to do another dark phoenix saga? The X-Men franchise has so many other great unused stories, why not adapt one of those for the big screen?

Days of the Future Past is one of my favourite superhero movies

I've got to agree with some of the other comments: you kind of went from 'X-men was the watershed' to 'and then came Nolan's Batman & Iron-Man', skipping over Spider-Man, which was probably _the_ watershed release (along with its sequel) that thrust comic book films to the cultural fore - even if X-men set the stage for it. (sorta interesting that both the X-Men & Spider-Man trilogies have similar trajectories, in that the first two were decent-to-awesome, and the third basically sucked).

The introduction of the Shi'ar empire would really shake things up. Gives the X-men a greater presence. I also really agree with the idea that we are past the blind bigotry and hiding. The mutants should just be the minority and go on with a plot that isn't kill them all or exterminate.

I dig the music on the title sequences. Also, love Connor's intense knowledge of the X-Men universe!

My explanation for why they look the same age in the 80s as they did in the 60s is the same explanation you get for why Peter Parker has only aged a few years since the 60s even though he should probably be in his 70s or 80s and that explanation is "comics"

Get Connor to write the MCU reboot

Joss Whedon's run on Amazing X-Men was just amazing. Everything you talk about, Kitty as the POV character, soap opera stuff, is there; with Whedon's great humor.

Xavier is not British. They just cast Patrick Stewart because he looks like the comic book illustrations and now everything thinks Prof X is British. He's from Westchester County, NY. That said, I think Mark Strong (sans the British accent!) would be a good Charles Xavier.

In terms of PoV characters, clearly Wolverine was effective in Logan, and I would argue that Mystique was also fairly effective in First Class. Barring those two films (and the two obnoxious Wolverine spin-offs) we've never really had X-Men films with consistent PoV characters. I think that one element being consistent would dramatically help the quality of these movies.

Dark Phoenix is coming out in 2018 btw

FOX relied way too much on Logan, Magneto, and Prof. X for the movies. X3, DOFP, Apocalypse, and Dark Phoenix did not need them at all but they were made main characters.

I think X2 is the perfect blend of comic booky and grounded realism. And is one of the most under rated super hero movies.

Great job!! Really enjoyed this.

i always kinda thought of blade as a hero. i would want someone to save me from vampires with violence... :)

Connor knows his stuff, as a life-long X-fan, he answered everything like a true X-fan would.

Great Video dude! Glad your getting sponsors and stuff

9:24 The Asgardian Saga is probably my favorite X-story ever! Thank-you for mentioning it.

Watching this after Dark Phoenix... you guys were right. But everybody already knew it was a massive mistake to make. Which is why it made no money. I'd like to see an update for prognostication on how Feige can integrate into the MCU.

HAVE WES ANDERSON DIRECT

Love your content Patrick! Keep it up!

Young Justice did one of the things you mentioned. Third season is on the way. In each season, the “Titans” has been comprised of a younger team, while the older ones have adopted mentor roles. It keeps rotating the core cast. It’s been cool so far.

Welp. Watching this after the merger now feels strange

i call bs on the no cosplays of the fox designs. Hugh's wolverine alone is a hugely popular cosplay. My only nitpick on talking points haha

Totally agree with the Morrison interpretation. He's gotten some complaints about "Ruining Magneto". But he created pretty weird world that fit the X-Men well.

Make a podcast! I could listen to this stuff for hours

I have been meaning to watch this for months, and I finally got around to it. This is a great idea for the Fox made X-Men franchise! But now, with all these currents talks with Disney acquiring some of these assets and IPs from Fox, talks of where X-Men is headed are more relevant than ever! I would love to see Connor back to talk about this (he reminds me so much of my comic-encyclopedia friend!) Specifically, do you think Marvel should integrate the mutants into the MCU - or is it too late with all the time spent ret-conning in the inhumans? AND if they were to introduce the X-Men into their current universe, how would you like to see it done?? Cheers guys!

I...i actually like X-leather jackets....

all great points, awesome video!

Hey, Don't make fun of "have you tried not being a mutant" as a lesbian that was a moment where I felt like the X-men movies really got being an invisible minority.

Hey vsauce fake Michael here

hey Patrick please do a how to fix the Fantastic Four movies, that would be a really awesome and informative video to see

Don't know a lot about x men beyond the movies but damn do I love to see two knowledgeable people analyse and think up ways to make stuff better!

Dude you can tell Connor has been holding this in for a long long time

I love all this constructive stuff. I've been seeing too much cynicism for cynicism's sake all over the internet lately and i needed to hear from people express their enjoyment of something and try to actually fix its flaws. Thank you! ❤

Please. For the love of God. Button up your shirt

Sounds pretty great! I love all of your videos! Connor was cool, I'd be down with seeing him in more videos! Think you can pitch the Doctor Doom movie next?

Addressing the points as they come, except from the point of view of hard rebooting the franchise: 1 - POV character) Start the franchise over, and make this character Jean Grey. This gives us a Cape Citadel fight against Magneto and a solid introduction to our protagonists - and their home! - , which is something I felt the originals lacked. We'd also give a damn about her when bad stuff happens to her. And blue/gold costumes. 2 - Soap opera elements) Show Xavier's recruitment of his first class of students - Cyclops from a life of crime, Bobby from a lynch mob, Warren from a misbegotten vigilante life, and Hank from a "normal" school background that is too slow for him. Introduce Scot and Jean's romance - heck, throw in Warren as a rival - and make us believe that the characters give a crap about each other. 3 - Go big) Heck yeah. Colorful costuming, Danger Room, Stratojet, classic Rocky training montage, the whole works. As far as integration goes, mutants were largely unknown for quite a while in the comics, and they can be treated largely the same way Inhumans have in the MCU, with little challenge. Keep the overall mutant population small to begin with, and make us care about their plight. 4 - Update/Modernize the Plight) Subvert it with the Cape Citadel fight making live news feeds, showing the X-Men as heroes, and Magneto as villain. We immediately get a public eye on this new species of humanity, complete with its built in dichotomy of peaceful integration/supremacy, which, in turn can be over-analyzed by the news pundits within the world. We already live in a culture where many people accept their opinions being fed to them by a media that enjoys divisiveness. Use that as a storytelling narrative. 5 - Asthetics) This just comes down to not being afraid to be a little comic bookish. It's not difficult to do, it was just a reaction to "possible" backlash or not being taken seriously that the black leather outfits were used. I think the audience is past that now. 6 - The Core Cast) I think I've pretty well addressed this, but let's add an epilogue scene with Magneto recruiting his Brotherhood originals - Blob, Unus, Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, and Mastermind - along with another featuring the X-Men detecting a mutant signature and taking off for the isolated South Pacific island.... Krakoa. Start the next movie in the series with Xavier recruiting the ANAD X-Men, then flashback that island adventure. 7 - What about continuity?) Screw it. Hard Reboot.

IMO X-Men should not go to Marvel. X-Men, X-Men 2, Logan, Deadpool, First Class, Days of Future Past, and The Wolverine are all at least 8/10. As long as Fox doesn't fuck it up and they keep making good movies I'll be happy. But I definitely think they need a hard reboot, they made the original trilogy without really planning out the future films. They should start fresh, fix the mistakes they've made, and plan a timeline in advance.

Deadpool is Unique to the Fox X-MEN franchise because Deapool is a New Character whose a SOLO character not really connected to X-MEN lore & his creator helped directly with the movie. But Chris Claremont cannot help 20TH CENTURY FOX & Fox cannot USE the actual source comicbooks for their SORRY RENDITIONS of X-Men until they share with DISNEY so I say boycott all 20th century FOX X-MEN MOVIES until they renegotiate with DISNEY like Sony & Universal Studios has done!

Perfect reading of the world of the x-men..and also excellent layout for a reboot of the series.. well done!!

Fantastic and knowledgeable guest, as aware of the themes as the trivia.

Sell them to Disney. And the Fantastic 4. Problem solved.

The X-Men aren't broken. You don't need to fix anything. In the seventeen years they've been making X-Men movies they've only had two really bad ones, The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Everyone movie that has come out since those two bad ones has been either good or great.

You and your guest hit the nail on the head, wow.

Connor Goldsmith is amazing. I could listen to him talk about X-Men all day.

Domino looks exactly like the comics... Assuming we are all color blind here, what about the hair? Sorry, it's about racism or anything. I am not against the casting choice(well, I don't like the hair design. Also they could have used body paint like Gamora.) I don't need to be racist to see the difference, sorry, I accept changes in comic book movies, but first at least people should recognize it's changes from comics, instead of "hey, it's exactly like in the comics." Well, the rest of the content is very solid. So I just assume it mean "similar enough".

Yay can't wait for the progressive Xmen...

Costume changes are less about what audiences will respond to, and more about executives being ashamed of fun, kiddy colours. When audiences pay to see a superhero movie, they're 100% picturing the colourful costumes from the comics, nobody cares what the heroes are dressed like.

What a great discussion and hilarious too!

Constantly comic book nerds are saying how this or that storyline came too early, like here them saying that two movies just isn't enough to set up for the majesty of the Dark Phoenix story. Funny, because for almost the entire history of cinema one movie has been plenty to set up plots, make us care for characters, and have all that pay off IN THE SAME MOVIE.

The X-Men films are awesome.

What Fox lacks in creating team based movies they make up for it by focusing one character in solo films. This obviously includes Deadpool and Wolverine, but it also includes Magneto as well with his portrayal and internal conflict in the prequel movies being spot on, as well as the present day films. If a deal is to be made between Fox and Marvel for the X-Men to be in the MCU, I would see as Marvel studios would focus on the team based movies while Fox focuses on the solo based movies.

You are exactly right!

Good ideas for the most part, but one minor gripe: the new Domino looks awful, and it has nothing to do with race. The original Domino wasn't Caucasian-white. She was ghastly-white. 100% completely lacking any pigment. #FFFFFF on the hex pallet. And the spot on her eye was completely black. Not kinda black, not dark grey, it was all the way black. These colors provide her name, you know like an actual domino playing piece. If you want to race-flip the character, that's fine. But the color scheme should stay. I suppose if you want to get subversive with it, you could flip the color scheme and have the majority of her skin be actually black. Not African-American black, but complete ebony black, and her eye-spot should be drastically white to match. The costume as presented looks like a cheap cosplay. The kind of cosplay that no one would even realize IS cosplay unless you specifically told them. Given the attention to detail on Deadpool, Colossus, and Negasonic, it's really disappointing to see such slapdash work on the Domino costume. (and to be frank, I'm not totally enamored with the new Cable costume either. Not saying that it needed to be garish blue and yellow, but a nod in that direction would be nice.)

I like a lot of the ideas pushed forward in this, but I don't really like Connor's little bit about Domino and saying anyone upset over her look are racist. The Domino look is honestly in my viewpoint akin to what they did with Deadpool in X-Men Origins Wolverine. Taking away her look that many view as iconic for the purpose of making her look like some homage to Pam Grier. It tosses away what she once looked like, it is a step back honestly for a sequel to a film that really seemed to respect the source material it was being adapted from. So much great story development could have been had between Deadpool and a proper version of Domino. The actress was a great pick, but not painting her the chalk white like the comic just does a disservice to what she is. There could have been a great scene exchanged between her and Deadpool with her longing to be what she once looked like before her mutation took away her skin color. Having her feel like someone trapped in skin that isn't hers could have totally been something Deadpool could relate to on a very personal level, and even the audience for that matter. Because most people have days where they feel like they are in someone else's skin. I don't know I feel like going the route they did stole a lot chances for really great story moments for this film, all for the purpose of trying to ground that character. Just my opinion, apart from that bit a lot of what was discussed was really great here. I will say before we have a Storm led film, I would really like at least one film to do Cyclops proper and have him be a great leader. Because he is and always has been the best leader of the team, before some recent comics butchered him like they did.

yooooo this is the dopest discussion about x men and what it means to culture and social norms. this was a well crafted talk. thank you!!!!!!!

Thanks for taking the time to make this video I hope Fox Studio that makes X-Men will watch this and make major changes to their future movies