The MCU's X-Men Should Skip Wolverine For Now
With Insomniac’s game putting Logan front and center, the movies should steer clear.
The X-Men have one of the most storied and complex histories in comic books, and there’s no one main character. Because of the team’s ensemble nature, many mutants have had their time in the spotlight as the central hero of the group’s biggest events. Xavier, Cyclops, Jean Grey, Storm, Kitty Pryde, Magik, Cable – so many mutant heroes have become fan favorites because the comics gave each of them a chance to be the star, a fact you’d never pick up on from the X-Men movies.
Even though films like X-Men: First Class, X-Men: Apocalypse, and Dark Phoenix went back and told the story of the Xavier Institute’s early days, it’s easy to see that those movies were the Wolverine show from day one. All three films in Bryan Singer’s original trilogy center Logan at the expense of the other X-Men being left underdeveloped on the sidelines (he even steals Kitty Pryde’s main character status in Days of Future Past), and he’s also the only member of the team to receive an entire spinoff trilogy. Now the upcoming video game Marvel’s Wolverine seems to be once again giving Wolverine an outsized role in the early days of the X-Men, and while it might work for the game, hopefully the MCU’s X-Men reboot steers in the other direction.
Developed by Insomniac Studios, Marvel’s Wolverine takes place in the same universe as the developers’ Spider-Man series, which gives them an opportunity to craft a vision of mutantkind from the ground up. Shockingly, that vision doesn’t yet involve Professor Charles Xavier or the X-Men. Unlike traditional Marvel Comics canon, where Logan is recruited alongside Storm, Nightcrawler, and Colossus by Professor X to save the original team, the game implies that Wolverine was recruited by Nathaniel Essex (the human version of Mister Sinister, here portrayed as an unassuming ally of mutantkind) to join Sabertooth and Mystique on Team X, a task force dedicated to saving mutants from oppression.
Naturally, a Wolverine game is going to center on Wolverine, and Team X does have a precedent in the comics as the federal hit squad Logan was once a part of. None of these decisions suggest that the game will be bad or that the liberties it’s taking are inherently wrong. But they do exist within a pattern of X-Men media changing canon just to give Logan a bigger role on the team, or to justify his inclusion in a group that was around for 12 years before he joined. Only time will tell whether Wolverine will be part of Insomniac’s future X-Men game, but if he is, then hopefully he takes a back seat to other members for a change.
Despite being formed under dubious circumstances, Team X in Marvel’s Wolverine will function as something of a prelude to the X-Men proper.
There have already been a handful of casting announcements for the MCU’s X-Men reboot. Sadie Sink made her debut as Jean Grey in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, and D23 revealed Kit Connor as Scott Summers, Inde Navarrette as Rogue, Maya Boyd as Storm, Christopher Abbott as Professor X, Samara Weaving as Emma Frost, and Adam Driver as Nathaniel Milbury (most assuredly a version of Mister Sinister).
Curiously absent was any casting information about Wolverine, and unless the MCU plans to pull an Old Man Logan and keep Hugh Jackman around as a Multiverse-displaced mentor to a new generation of X-Men, giving us a reboot without the character is a smart choice. Wolverine has become so popular that he’s transcended the team itself, so giving a new cast the opportunity to lead a film and endear themselves to audiences before discussions about a new Logan hijack the conversation is the best way to actually give the other members of the X-Men the attention they never got from the Fox films. Marvel’s Wolverine has every right to put Logan front and center, but the MCU should keep him away for as long as possible to remind general audiences that the other X-Men have just as much story potential as Wolverine does.
