When Avengers: Secret Wars ends, the MCU will likely reboot everything and start over with a new world of stories. The new MCU seems like it will center on two teams: The X-Men and The Fantastic Four. For The X-Men, it is essential that the MCU takes the characters in a direction different from what Fox did.
The X-Men spent their time at Fox telling stories where mutants fought each other, with the X-Men proving they were heroes and setting out to stop Magneto and his evil mutants from ruining their reputations. This included the mutant cure storyline, the Dark Phoenix Saga, and Apocalypse. The MCU needs to do something different.
The X-Men Need To Fight These Cosmic Villains In The MCU
One of the big ideas is to bring in the classic Stan Lee idea of The X-Men serving as stand-ins for the racial tension between minorities and the white ruling class. For years, the X-Men told stories of humans who hated mutants because mutants were born differently. It’s a story that paralleled racial tensions and LGBTQ+ issues.
However, if the MCU doesn’t want to take on such a hot-button topic in its X-Men movies, there’s another option that could provide a lot more fun and a lot less thinking. When the X-Men aren’t fighting for their own human rights or against other mutants, they also have a significant legacy in space sci-fi storylines.
This started when the X-Men fought the Shi’ar to save Jean Grey’s life, and failing to do so, in the Dark Phoenix Saga. However, this opened the idea for the X-Men to go into space and deal with alien threats, some of which made their way to Earth to threaten the entire planet. This was the Brood storyline.
The Brood are an alien race of insectoid beings. They look a little like the Xenomorphs from the Alien franchise, but they are very different. They are a violent and destructive race of aliens who consume every available resource they find. They have powerful endoskeletons and exoskeletons and fanged jaws. They are terrifying.
However, they not only can use their stinger to kill or paralyze victims with venom, but they can also implant eggs in any other sentient organism, like the Xenomorphs. However, when the Brood egg hatches, it kills the host and then mentally attacks and assimilates the host, similar to the John Carpenter movie The Thing.
This gives the entire story enough similarities to what movie fans might recognize from the past to allow it to introduce the Brood into X-Men movies without much explanation, and will enable the team of mutants to battle an alien invasion, something that could help the new franchise stand out from past MCU films.
The MCU Needs To Completely Change The X-Men To Succeed
It’s vital for the X-Men movies to be completely different from what came before. The first two X-Men are among the best Marvel movie releases ever outside the MCU. However, from the third movie on, things were so hit or miss. The final of the original trilogy was highly derided, and Wolverine’s first solo movie was a flop.
The relaunch started well, with X-Men: First Class highly praised and X-Men: Days of Future Past remade as one of the best X-Men movies ever made. X-Men: Apocalypse left a lot to be desired, and X-Men: Dark Phoenix is considered one of the worst X-Men movies ever made. The misses almost overshadowed the hits.
There is still love for the X-Men movies, especially for older fans who remember how great they once were. However, the MCU needs to pay off that love by creating something very different, yet still with the same feelings that the first two movies from each part of the franchise gave off.
X-Men: First Class proved this was possible, and the MCU needs to exceed that to allow its mutant heroes to pick up the ball the Avengers are leaving behind and run with it to get the MCU back to the heights it once knew.
The X-Men Are The MCU’s Only Chance At Rebounding After Secret Wars
The biggest thing to take into account is that this might be the last chance for the MCU to regain its footing. That might be harder than people expect. The past few years have featured some great projects, but fans seem unwilling to give them a chance until much later, when they realize they were better than they’d heard.
There is a chance that vocal fans, and especially YouTube personalities who gain views from complaining about everything the MCU does, will continue to slam the movies, even when the X-Men films start to arrive. It’s essential that the X-Men movies are so good that even the loudest voices can’t stop them from succeeding.
Avengers: Secret Wars is supposed to reboot the MCU, and that is critical for its future. The X-Men have the best chance at bringing fans back to theaters. However, the MCU has to tread carefully so they don’t rely too much on the past and offer up something great for the future. It might be the MCU’s last chance to get back on top again.
