X-Men Film Franchise

That movie is going nowhere. It's been apparent since stories of issues about the film first popped up in 2015, ranging from budgetary concerns to rumors of Channing Tatum apparently getting cold feet. But with X-Men: Apocalypse underperforming pretty hard and Deadpool - a film they had no intention of making - turning out to be a huge sleeper hit, it seems clear to me that Fox is really bad at planning a shared universe, and it's not surprising to me that Gambit is looking like it's going to be dropped entirely. (And they're still insistent on doing another period-piece trilogy, even though the only movie in the XMFC trilogy that made great numbers was X-Men 4 for all intents and purposes, which is why it did well.)

It's rather telling that Doug Liman jumping ship to work on another CBM project that ran into development issues (DC's Justice League Dark adaptation, which apparently has a finished script but didn't get a director's commitment from Guillermo Del Toro, who never finishes anything these days) now has a lot more progress done on it at the current point. I figured that Fox would be in hot water once DC got going with their shared universe - even if their movies aren't doing so well with critics, they're dominating Fox's efforts in terms of financial returns.

 

Not only does Suicide Squad fly past X-Men: Apocalypse at the box office, it does so without being screened in China and with worse overall critical reception (which typically affects word-of-mouth, but the movie is getting by just fine in spite of having more split reviews from the fanbase).

The ironic thing is that if X-Men: Apocalypse made nearly $800M worldwide and Deadpool $550M, then Twentieth Century Fox would be completely fine right now, even with the fact that the rest of their Summer has been pretty terrible overall finance-wise. That their flagship franchise is being overshadowed by a movie they had no intention of making is rather concerning for them, I'm sure. Especially since it seems as though they can't retain the X-Men rights as a whole with spin-offs, and they have to make more "main" installments in order to keep the license. Interest should be down because audiences only really care about Wolverine (who is being retired) and the legs on the last movie were pretty abysmal.

In other news, Ryan Reynolds had to pay the writers of Deadpool out of his own pocket to stay on the set while filming happened. Which to me, confirms that the movie was a fluke as far as a Fox production goes (they're notorious for meddling) and that it was only good because they stayed out of the way of the creative individuals working on the project. I really hope that Simon Kinberg is focused on getting a deal with Marvel ready, because as it currently stands, the franchise is pretty much screwed outside of Deadpool, and what's sad is that it shouldn't have to be.

 

Nah, though box office trends are things I'm somewhat interested in in this age of film franchises.

I think that Suicide Squad's main problem was that it needed a little more development time. For the most part, it got a lot right as both an adaptation and as a superhero movie, but there are some things that brought it down that could have been fixed if they put a little more time into the script and editing. There's room for them to make a better sequel in the future, and given that the movie is set to make near-Guardians Of The Galaxy numbers without the key market of China suggests that interest in DC movies that don't have Batman or Superman in the title is there.

X-Men Apocalypse, on the other hand, was overblown and lacking in depth. I didn't hate it, but I feel as though it tried to handle too much for a 2.5-hour movie that would have been better served with two theatrical productions instead of one. It ran into the same problem that X-Men: The Last Stand did in trying to adapt too much for one story. Honestly, I think The Last Stand is actually better than Apocalypse because it actually handled one of its two narratives well (the "Mutant Cure" story) and delivered a poor adaptation of the "Dark Phoenix" arc (which as its own thing was fairly competent in execution, but far weaker than what the previous movie built up to), whereas Apocalypse struggled with three story arcs (the formation of the "classic" X-Men team, telling a story of Apocalypse serving as the greatest threat to Mutantkind and Humanity alike, and capping off the story arcs presented in the other two period-piece movies), none of which reached their full potential. There was a general feeling of "been there, done that" to it (another wacky Quicksilver slow-motion sequence, another sequence of Wolverine near-naked and killing guards, and so on) that makes me feel as though the franchise needs new blood and better management.