It’s safe to say Cyclops didn’t get the respect he deserved in the Fox X-Men movies. From the 2000 original onwards, he was the straight-laced butt of the joke, with Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine taking every available opportunity to clown on him and flirt with Jean Grey right under his nose.
The low point came in X-Men: The Last Stand. Actor James Marsden had taken a role in Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns over at Warner Bros., and so in a supremely catty retaliatory move, Fox unceremoniously killed off Cyclops in the first act. He went on to reprise the role in Days of Future Past, with Tye Sheridan stepping in to don the visor in Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix, but the character never got his deserved moment in the spotlight.
With the X-Men on their way to the Marvel Cinematic Universe at long last, the time might be right for Cyclops to shine at long last, but does he need a power boost to compete with the franchise’s heavy hitters?
The best suggestion we’ve seen is that Cyclops’ true power isn’t his eye blasts. In the comics, he’s considered an exceptional leader and tactician, often assuming Professor X’s place as the de facto head of the X-Men, taking a hardline view towards mutant rights, and pushing back against human oppression more frequently than you might expect from the clean-cut good guy image:
Perhaps the initial focus could be on his other skills?
We also think the Wolverine-Cyclops-Jean Grey love triangle is very played out at this point:
And, if his comic powers are depicted accurately, the guy would be a beast in the MCU:
Marvel Studios is taking its sweet time in introducing the X-Men, who likely won’t show up until the second half of the 2020s. Let’s hope the time is taken to make them distinctive from the Fox versions, and that Cyclops is treated with the respect the character deserved, rather than being a stuff-shirt foil for Wolverine.
