What if I told you that the enormous success of Deadpool & Wolverine is a huge win for the world of the X-Men in the short-term, but it could have some dire consequences in the long-term?
It’s hard to tell what’s going on in Kevin Feige’s head under that ever-present baseball cap of his, but you can bet he’s absolutely building more of Marvel’s future around the characters from the recent box office-thrashing threequel. Case in point, there’s a distinct feeling in the air that we haven’t seen the last of Hugh Jackman‘s Wolverine, with he and Ryan Reynolds pretty comfortably expected to team up once again for at least an extended cameo in Avengers: Secret Wars. And while the idea of those two battling Robert Downey Jr.’s Doctor Doom would be the ultimate way to end Jackman’s historic legacy as Logan, rumor has it that the MCU plans to milk this mutant even further.
According to the latest word on the grapevine that’s got the Marvel fandom in a tizzy, the upcoming X-Men reboot allegedly won’t feature a new Wolverine. That’s because Jackman is apparently settling back into the role for the foreseeable future, with his Foxverse variant apparently continuing to pop up even after the end of the Multiverse Saga.
On paper, this might seem like a dream come true, but actually — after 24 years of (almost) no one else playing Wolverine — X-Men maniacs are ready for a new, perhaps more comic-accurate take on the character to emerge.
Besides, is Marvel really asking us to buy into the idea of an X-Men team that doesn’t have a Wolverine? What’s next a Spider-Man who doesn’t have an Uncle Ben? Oh, wait…
Ryan really wasn’t joking with that “Til you’re 90” line, was he?
Why is Marvel chaining Jackman down when Henry Cavill’s “Cavillerine” is sitting right there?
We’re going to need some time to process this.
Can the 616 universe really be called complete unless it’s home to its own Wolverine variant?
Or, to put it plainly, “there is no X-Men without Wolverine.”
X-Men fans may take some umbrage at this last comment — there are certainly plenty of excellent X-Men stories across the mediums that don’t feature Wolvie in a major role, if at all. And yet it must be said that the movies are a whole different ball-game. Note that the only Fox X-Men films not to feature or reference Logan in any way are Dark Phoenix and The New Mutants, very possibly the two worst of the whole lot (both critically and financially). The X-Men, it seems, need the Wolverine to survive. The fans are confident that doesn’t have to mean Jackman’s version, but Marvel may be more hesitant to test that theory.
Published: Sep 13, 2024 01:43 pm