Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Twenty(ish) X-Men I'd like to see on screen (even though I probably never will because they're mostly girls)


(it seriously puts me in a specific time-frame that this is what I think of when I think of X-Men)
(also that I have all the comics that, side-by-side, make up this exact picture.)

X-men: Days of Future Past*, as you probably know by now, has approximately 98 characters who are featured enough to have posters out, and that's saying nothing of the Spot The Mutant characters that might be seen off to the side or in crowd shots. We do get Blink, who is one of my favorite characters ever, but she's not the only one I'd like to see in these movies! According to The Internet, the grand total of ALL the X-Men is somewhere around 300, and we've gotten...ten or twenty? A few more in the sidelines, and a lot that seem to have been made up new even though there were so damned many already existing to choose from?

Here's ten I'd like to see:
  1. Husk and Chamber - Husk, with the power to pull off her skin and by doing so transform into whatever is needed at the time, and Chamber, made almost 1/3 of psionic energy, are just begging to be in a movie where they could be so cool. Also, if Husk is there, it opens the door for her brother Cannonball--and wasn't there, like, six of those Guthrie children?
  2. Jubilee as an actual character with an actual role - Two or three girls have played Jubes, and through almost every incarnation, she's rarely taken seriously, and I think a character who can create pyrotechnics and explosions deserves a little serious, don't you? Plus, in the comics, she and Wolverine had a great friendship, and that would be cool, too.
  3. The Cuckoos - Somewhere between three, five and a possible thousand (depending on where in their story you are) clones of Emma Frost who share a group mind and a whole lot of telepathy? Sign me up!
  4. Cerise - Shi'ar alien warrior-chick who falls in love with Nightcrawler. And if she comes into the story, you can bet that there's the opportunity for Nightcrawler to come back, too (even if played by someone else), which also brings back the opportunity for that whole Mystique-is-his-mother storyline that I SO MUCH WANT.
  5. Synch - One of the Generation X kids like Husk and Chamber, who can match up with and copy other people's powers--I mean, think about the inherent awesomeness of a power like that on-screen, in a big fancy end-of-the-movie fight scene! He could synch with villains, too, and use their powers against them, without the killing-them-or-going-crazy side effect that Rogue has! He doesn't even have to touch them!
  6. Shard - We've got Bishop coming up in the movie, so maybe, just maybe we'll get Shard, too (probably to die dramatically and spur him to rebellion or something, tho**)--but I really want to see her as a real character. She's got offensive powers, she's a trained enforcer, she's from the future, and she's the sister of a character that's now movie-cannon. It's getting to be a pet peeve of mine how all the personal interactions and connections keep getting trimmed away*** from the characters we have, and it would be SO NICE if one of them was allowed to stay.
  7. Rachel Summers - This one is a possibility, since they've already made the Bad Future cannon, and we're getting Bishop out of it, which leaves the door open for other characters from there, but with how they handled Jean-Phoenix and Cyclops, well...it's hard to exist if your parents died before you were conceived, and we really don't need more complication with that timeline than this next movie is bound to give us! Still she was so much more useful as the Phoenix than Jean was, and so much fun with her violent backstory and heroic future.
  8. Widget and Lockheed - The movies are so not the place, so far, for sidekicks, but wouldn't it be awesome to have a trans-dimensional robot-AI and a miniature dragon? I mean, at least Lockheed, since we've got Shadowcat!
  9. Joseph - Either as a second role for Fassbender OR as a separately-acted character, depending on how they handle the story, I just think it would be awesome to have another Magneto around, especially one who has complete amnesia and doesn't know / remember that horrible and traumatic past that made Magneto who he is. Especially especially if the regular Magneto, old or young, was still around!
  10. Jean Grey Clones - Okay, we got Jean dying because she was getting ready to destroy everything (even though we didn't get the part where she devours a sun and kills a whole planet of aliens, alerting the intergalactic characters I'd like to see in the second bonus-list below). That means that it's possible we could get Jean Clones! They're basically intrinsic to her character, as far as I'm concerned, and if they insist on Scott being dead they can make Rachel one of them. I mean, Madelyn becomes a Queen in the Hellfire Club, which was brought together by Sebastian Shaw, who we already had (even though he died), and then becomes Cable's mom, so...
  11. Magma - She makes lava. What's not to want?
  12. Siryn - We have Banshee as a kid in the 60s; it's totally possible that we could get Siryn as a baby in the 70s, or, if they do one of the movies in the 80s, as a functioning person then. Although that storyline was messed up by Shaw not being Cassidy's cousin a little, and then, you know, dead.
  13. Magick - Colossus is cannon! Why not his metal-armed, kidnapped-to-hell and raised-by-demons sister? Plus, she can teleport, and that would be both awesome on screen and really convenient for stories where the jet couldn't possibly get them where they need to be on time.
  14. Domino - Badass anti-hero bounty-hunter with super-good luck, who then joins up with the X-Men? So. Cool. 
  15. Longshot and Dazzler - Okay, they're dumb, but they're also really charming, with powers that would look so cool on screen, AND they come with the storylines that involve Mojo and Spiral, which leads directly to how an English telepath happens to be Japanese when she comes back...though we still don't know why both have purple hair.
  16. Forge - Sometimes Storm's boyfriend, always the dude who can build or take apart anything. Plus, he has replacement limbs he made himself and he's sometimes shifty, which makes for all sorts of drama. He could be like Q for the field teams--and he could anchor the at-home support characters that currently don't really exist.
And as a quick BONUS, here's two more (sort-of) lists:

Ones I might get to see, if the X-Force movie goes through:
  1. Psylock - I seem to have a thing for telepaths who are better at being telepaths than Jean was / is. Psylock as a complicated storyline, but it ties up with some really interesting characters (mentioned above) AND broadens the world because of her being a) not American and b) sister to the greatest hero in Britain, the English version of Captain America--think how cool that could be played out. AND her psionic blades would just kill as special effects.
  2. Cable - But only if they keep his ridiculously giant guns and shoulderpads, and tiny spatula hands.
Related characters I really, really want:
  1. Lilandra - I love Moira, and she's nice and dynamic in the movie, but if Charles needs a new girlfriend, I vote for Lillandra. She's an Empress of a star-spanning, futuristic, bird-descended race of awesomeness. Who wouldn't want to be Consort to that? And with Guardians of the Galaxy out soon(ish), this right here is a perfect way for the X-Men franchise to expand into space in an X-Men way and keep up!
  2. Corsair - Cyclops's and Havok's dad is a space pirate who is engaged to a woman who looks like a reverse-color anthropomorphic skunk, who doesn't mess around. If the X-Franchise goes into space and he doesn't show up, I'm going to be SO ANNOYED.

So who would you most like to see on screen?




NOTES:
* X-Men: First Class 2: Days of Future Past, or The One Where The Old Movies And The New Ones Meet Up And So Actually X-Men 5?
** grumblegrumble Man Pain = dead women grumblegrumble
*** Like how, reportedly, they've made it so Quicksilver isn't Magneto's kid in the new movie AND in the other-company-owned new Avengers movie?  

2 comments:

reimagination said...

I second Psylock, though she was supposedly in X-Men 3 in a very minor non-speaking role.

Some characters I'd just like them to be done well. I wish they'd stop rehashing at this trying to make it work and maybe do a reboot like they did with everything else. I'd love to see the Storm, Mystique, Nightcrawler, Rogue, and Iceman from the comics on film. Instead of Model, Model, Weird Masochist, Wooden, and Cheese.

If you read Wolverine and the X-Men, there are so many fun characters that would be awesome, but the make-up and CGI budget would be way through the roof.

Samantha Holloway said...

Oh my god, I know. I wanted so badly for the old X-Men to not be cheesy, and never never quite got past it--and then that third movie is just bad across the board. First Class was amazing, but again, changed the characters so much. At this point, really, I'd be happy with a really good cartoon that would do them justice and could have a massive cast and not worry about SFX budgets!