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A few other characters that should be on their way out the door are Professor X, Magneto, Cyclops, and the rest of the mutants who will appear in Doomsday. While their parts are sure to be small, it’s hard to believe they even made the cut because they’ve had their fair share of send-offs in recent years. In fact, I’m getting tired of having to pretend that Fox’s franchise is worth celebrating in the 2020s, and I hope you feel the same way.
Fox’s X-Men Franchise Continues to Get Second and Third Chances
The first two X-Men movies deserve a lot of credit for showing the world that the superhero genre could be more than campy. They take their themes very seriously and never miss an oppurtunity to have their characters show off in the action department. However, the magic is gone by X-Men: The Last Stand, and it doesn’t return until X-Men: First Class, a full-blown reboot. Now, the new generation still wants to show respect to its predecessor, so they meet on common ground in X-Men: Days of Future Past, which serves as a perfect bookend to the series, righting all the wrongs from The Last Stand, including the deaths of Jean Grey and Charles Xavier. But that’s not the end of the story because we do it all over again in Logan.
At least James Mangold’s film has the decency to kill most of the X-Men off-screen rather than showing them in agony again. However, it still covers similar ground, following characters who have seen better days as they hand off the baton to younger, hungrier heroes. The end of the movie even sees Laura change the cross on Logan’s grave to an “X,” marking the end of an era. It’s a beautiful moment, but once again, the story continues. Wade Wilson visits the grave in Deadpool & Wolverine, and while he doesn’t bring that version of Logan back to life, he goes and recruits another one, also played by Jackman. And as if that isn’t bad enough, a number of Jackman’s former castmates are about to join him in the MCU.
