How great would a new tetralogy be, if it was based around the Paul Smith run of Uncanny X-Men?
Let’s face it, these X-Men movies are getting expensive and largely due to the cast being in demand, and thus, they warrant getting paid more.
Let’s start the franchise completely over with this tetralogy idea.
Maybe keep James Marsden as Cyclops and Ellen Page as Kitty, why not? It will make the transition a little better. Maybe even get Alan Cummings back for Nightcrawler, and you might as well keep the kid who played Colossus. Ben Foster, if he doesn’t mind just being tied up and unconscious the entire film, can even play Angel again for the second film, it will be a completely thankless role.
The cast will have to be:
(I just went to comicbookdb and started with 165 and wrote all of the characters down – it looks like a lot but most of them, you use barely twice).
X-Men: Colossus / Cyclops / Kitty Pryde / Lockheed / Nightcrawler / Rogue / Storm/ Wolverine
Definitely will have to get a new Storm, one who will know that the movies are not all about her, but now that I typed that, the second one and the third one are pretty Storm centric, her subplot in the third one is pretty crucial.
Carol Danvers will be important for the First Movie only. Which already throws a wrench in the whole thing, as I’m sure Marvel wants to make their own Captain Marvel film. Maybe they can have her as that, and if FOX agrees to only call her Binary, the entire time, we can keep her over here for that role. She will be important to the second one as we need her to punch Rogue, but you can film that at the same time.
Probably end up filming these as close to back to back as possible. Then it would take the special effects team years to complete. Cheaper to produce that way too.
Get a couple to play Joseph Danvers Sr. and Marie Danvers for issue 171
New Mutants : Cannonball / Dani Moonstar / Magik / Sunspot / Wolfsbane
Maybe throw in Doug Ramsey and Warlock, or have them be introduced in their proper film. That would be better, as we want this to be as close as possible.
Professor Xavier and Lilandra, Patric Stewart would be amazing and it would be nice to see him interact with Ellen Page for once, but would he look too old next to the hottie they get to play Lilandra? Probably but maybe they get an actress in her 30s and that could work out.
Angel and Candy Southern
Amanda Sefton (for like ten minutes)
Mariko, keep the actress from the Wolverine film as she was terrific
Yukio, you can keep the same actress but if they change her, I can understand why. Didn’t feel carefree enough. But that’s the script more than an issue with her.
Silver Samurai & Viper (get new actors!)
Morlocks : Caliban / Callisto / Leech / Plague / Sunder / Masque – a slew of other nameless ones
The Brood, thousands of them. Make sure they look brown and not black and slimey, we don’t want a law suit on our hands.
Stevie Hunter
Moria MacTaggert (you can keep Rose Bryne, too! or the actress from X3)
Star Jammers : Ch’od / Corsair / Cr’reee / Hepzibah / Raza / Sikorsky
Gladiator
Fantastic Four : Human Torch / Invisible Woman / Reed Richards / Thing (for 167’s section – where Lilandra tells them how things are going to be).
Lee Forrester
Havok & Polaris, I am all for Havok being kept the same actor but this time, he will be Scott’s younger brother and no one is going to care about First Class by the time these movies come around.
Madelyne Pryor
Hellfire Club : Sebastian Shaw / Tessa / Emma Frost (probably not use January Jones) / Mastermind
Destiny and Mystique (for 170) either go with Rebecca Romijn if you want)
Beast, either go with a third actor (fourth if you are being generous to the gentleman from the first movie’s cameo)
Banshee, can use the kid from First Class as well.
Iceman, probably should recast but it is only for a wedding scene so you might as well keep Shawn Ashmore.
Deborah and Phillip Summers
First Movie
Just straight up start right where 165 starts, with a hole on the side of a spaceship and the X-Men have to stop themselves from being sucked out into outer space.
How exciting of an opening would that be? Extremely!
Plus, Chris Claremont wrote these issues so there already is the built in “what came before” sequence so you are already taken care of right there.
So you have Lockheed show up in 166, 167 is the big confrontation with Profession Xavier as he has just turned into a full Brood.
End the movie with 168, with Kitty proving herself to Xavier and staying on the team. This will be the only film with the New Mutants but once you cast them, you can use the cast for their own film.
Second Movie
The second movie might be the best one!
Opens with the trip down to the Morlock Tunnels, you get some Amanda Sefton action, which is pretty good right at the start.
Storm v Callisto will be an amazing moment. Have to get two amazing actresses for pull it off.
Now I was envisioning these movies as at least two-hour blocks but I wonder if they should be broken up into four films. Then you can do some real justice to the movie and fill it with all of the character moments. That way the movie ends with Rogue joining the team and it works as it will be the last we see of Binary. Only downside is that this will be known as the Wolverine-less movie. But the Morlocks more than make up for it.
Third Movie
This will work as a direct sequel to The Wolverine. If you could get Hugh Jackman to sign on for three more films, I’m okay with him being part of these four. He will only be in three of them and doesn’t really do much in the fourth one. The first one will have the most action scenes by him, and plenty of maskless time. This third one will be the full out performance.
If you break it up to four films, you can really do these epics in 90 minutes. The first one will have to be two hours though.
Now that I think of it, if Anna Paquin wants back and wants to play real Rogue, I’m fine with that, but I can see them wanting to cast someone who can portray the strength of the character with Binary’s powers. But like a lesser Binary power set.
This will be the film that gives you room to explain Maddie Pryor, as that will be the main tricking part of the new reboot. The nice thing is, you can just play it straight as if she just looks like Jean, but is not her. It isn’t like we are going to be adapting Inferno or anything. Actually, once you film these four, you can start all over again as even at one every two years, that’s eight years of X-Men proper movies. And let’s face it, be lucky if its one every three years. Twelve years of X-Men films!
Fourth Movie
Mastermind’s revenge ploy on the X-Men. Whoever portrays Cyclops and Maddie, are going to have a field day with this one. At least Cyclops will get a bunch of screen time, and gets to fight the X-Men in the best battles of the series. The director and the DP will have a blast filming the scenes where it looks like either Scott or Dark Phoenix are talking. I wonder how they will handle the Avengers section of the movie, you really don’t need Captain America at all, maybe just swap him out with whoever will be their new Reed Richards for that relaunch. If I had my way, they would keep the actors who played Reed and Grimm, they both did great jobs. But without Chris Evans, you might as will recast Sue while you are at it. Maybe go older so that Reed and Sue will be married already and seasoned heroes.
Movie ends with a wedding, which is super uplifting and full of cameos. Which is why you will want to reboot the franchise again as you don’t want to get into Cyclops’ worst character work with that whole mess that follows.
Of course, if they would just give us a Motion Comic of this run, that would satisfy me as well, and would be less expensive to produce.
Really wish Marvel had an animated arm like DC does, they get one or two direct to video animated films a year. Maybe they do too many though as I know I must be like ten behind on those, but at least they exist and I can visit them anytime.
This could work as a complete season of an animated series too.
What I am getting at is, these nine issues should be adapted and as closely as possible.
Since my last epic Paul Smith post, Comixology still only has issue 167 as an option to download. Sent them an e-mail a while ago, they didn’t know when the release date is going to be for the rest of the run.
I keep being tempted to download 141 and 142 for next year’s movie but I figure I will do that closer to that film’s release.
It would be quite the sight that we would get an X-Men movie without Magneto, not even a hint of him. But with these, you get some interesting foes with the Brood / Viper and Silver Samurai (properly) with the Hand / X-Men essentially fighting themselves – which happens plenty of times.
The first and the last films will be the longest and the middle two probably the shortest but I bet all four of them could be right at the two-hour mark.
Shadow and Flame with Magik 