It's me whose been claiming that if they stuck more to the source material it would have produced higher quality movies, and made the franchise a much bigger success.
And I really do think that. But end of the day box office success is the studios problem. I just want great quality superhero movies, which the Fox X-Films have on the whole failed to provide Imho.
Originally posted by DARTH POWERObviously because Wolverine has been Marvel's most best-selling character (next to Spider Man at least) for the past 30+ years, and was right there when X-Men really took off in their second incarnation in 1975. They were never going to make a film without him.How did the people behind the X-Franchise at Fox even decide that Wolverine was the most popular so to focus all the movies and all the marketing around him? The X-Movies have been focused around him from film 1. Why?
He's the Han Solo type that everyone loves, plus he functioned as the outsider figure that people (the film audience) could identify with, as the world of mutants gets opened up to everyone outside the fanbase. He's the one who gets to decide whether to stay with the Xavier institute or not, rather than feeling he has a destiny born to it.
Maybe things might have made slightly different today, but back in 1999 when such a film wasn't a safe bet - and comic book/graphic novel films weren't a dominant film genre - that's what was necessary to make the film a hit.
TV series animation, with all it's air time and episodes to play with, is not big budget live action. And no one at that time had ever attempted a super hero team film before (no, I'm not counting Mystery Men.) They were trying to get Beast in until the last minute but couldn't get him screen time so he got dropped. You can't get such a large number of characters in one film at once. Avengers solved the problem by making five solo films beforehand, before the teamup - which wouldn't have worked as well with X-Men, as few of them could carry a film on their own.
The solo films marketed them all for the Avengers. But many many people saw the Avengers without watching all the solo films. The reason Avengers worked so well as a team up movie was because it centred the movie around the 4 of them. Heck even centring it around 2 of them can work- Kirk and Spock in Star Trek.
If Fox doesn't have the confidence in focusing a team up movie movie around more than 1 character then that just proves they were simply the wrong studio to pull this off.
There's absolutely no excuse for focusing those movies completely around Wolverine only to go onto spin-off Wolverine "solo" movies from there. That's just giving little respect to the X-Men franchise as it is Imho. And yes I'm convinced it would have been a far bidet and more lucrative franchise had it been done right.
Originally posted by DARTH POWER
The solo films marketed them all for the Avengers. But many many people saw the Avengers without watching all the solo films. The reason Avengers worked so well as a team up movie was because it centred the movie around the 4 of them. Heck even centring it around 2 of them can work- Kirk and Spock in Star Trek.If Fox doesn't have the confidence in focusing a team up movie movie around more than 1 character then that just proves they were simply the wrong studio to pull this off.
There's absolutely no excuse for focusing those movies completely around Wolverine only to go onto spin-off Wolverine "solo" movies from there. That's just giving little respect to the X-Men franchise as it is Imho. And yes I'm convinced it would have been a far bidet and more lucrative franchise had it been done right.
We're just running around in circles, here. If you can't acknowledge the studio did what they did because Wolverine is far and away the most popular and best-selling character in X-Men - it's why he's had so many solo series, plus comics and animation shows actually called 'Wolverine and the X-Men' - they you are just choosing to ignore reality.
BTW, Logan didn't save the day in X2. That happened by a combination of the efforts of Jean, Magneto, Mystique, Storm and Professor X (who gives a sideways mention to the efforts of Kitty Pryde.) All Logan dealt with in X2 were his personal demons, in the end. So the films are not always about Logan coming to the rescue.
Originally posted by roughrider
We're just running around in circles, here. If you can't acknowledge the studio did what they did because Wolverine is far and away the most popular and best-selling character in X-Men - it's why he's had so many solo series, plus comics and animation shows actually called 'Wolverine and the X-Men' - they you are just choosing to ignore reality.
Of course I acknowledge that's "Why" they chose that route. It's obvious WHY they chose that route.
What you don't seem to understand is it was a bad decision when making an X-MEN movie. You just don't make TEAM-UP movies with that kind of backward thinking. You don't make a Star Trek movie just all about Kirk ignoring Spock, Mcoy and Scotty. You don't make an Oceans 11 movie all about George Clooney, just ignoring Brad Pitt, Matt Damon e.t.c.
So why the heck would you make the first Superhero Team up movie by just having 1 main character? It makes no logical sense and it did put down the quality of the movies.
And I'll ask you again, would you have found Avengers anywhere near as entertaining if it was all focused on Iron Man? After all he is by far the most popular of the MCU characters. If they just left out Thor vs Hulk, and gave us some more IM instead. If Thor and Hulk were left powerless at the end just to let IM fight all the aliens. If IM took charge of the team instead of Cap?
How shit would that have been? And all under the excuse that "Oh that's what we have to do to bring in audiences because everyone loves IM!"
And Singer seems to hav even realized that himself now with his comments at the start of DOFP (I think there's a real desire from audiences to want to see all these heroes come together),
Yes all of them as main characters, not just as cameos. Which is the only reason now that this next movie won't just be ALL Wolverine. Xavier and Magneto will be equally highlighted in this next movie. But unfortunately Hugh will still end up getting more screen time playing both his older and younger self.