Fans of superhero movies have been all abuzz since word broke of the $52.4 billion purchase of Fox assets by Disney. While this tectonic shift in the business landscape has pointed to ramifications beyond what we can currently imagine, many have chosen to focus on the fact that Disney will now be able to inject the X-Men into their ultra-successful MCU. And while this may be a cause célèbre for X-Men fans – Wolverine scraping his claws across Captain America's shield? Awesome! – one may also want to pause at this juncture to lament the possible end of what Fox had been doing with its X-Men characters.
The X-Men series was always unique when compared to its MCU brethren next door. Bryan Singer's X-Men was released in 2000, just before superhero films began booming in earnest, and contemporary audiences may notice that it differs from more recent films in many ways. For one, it has a unique aesthetic. Rather than choosing bold, comic-friendly colors and bright outdoor fight scenes, X-Men looked metallic, futuristic, and antiseptic. It took place in steely corridors and hidden laboratories. Rather than re-imagining the heroes as more realistic beings that could fit into the world we know, X-Men's filmmakers bent the world we know to fit around the larger-than life superhero characters; there's a reason the X-Men wore matching black costumes rather than reality-fied versions of their comic book suits.
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The X-Men series was always unique when compared to its MCU brethren next door. Bryan Singer's X-Men was released in 2000, just before superhero films began booming in earnest, and contemporary audiences may notice that it differs from more recent films in many ways. For one, it has a unique aesthetic. Rather than choosing bold, comic-friendly colors and bright outdoor fight scenes, X-Men looked metallic, futuristic, and antiseptic. It took place in steely corridors and hidden laboratories. Rather than re-imagining the heroes as more realistic beings that could fit into the world we know, X-Men's filmmakers bent the world we know to fit around the larger-than life superhero characters; there's a reason the X-Men wore matching black costumes rather than reality-fied versions of their comic book suits.
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