Writer Chris Claremont was recently at New York Comic-Con on the Marvel Comics panel for the announcement of a new X-Men title he’ll be tackling. During a discussion about Stan Lee’s legacy and the MCU films inspired by him that’ve enjoyed such tremendous success at the box office, the comic book legend was all praise. But he had this stinging criticism to offer on Fox’s X-Men series:
“I wish they’d gotten my films right,”
Though that may sound a bit harsh, Claremont is certainly in a position to comment on Fox’s poor handling of the franchise. After he was hired as the head writer by Marvel on their then hugely underperforming B-class comic title, Uncanny X-Men, back in 1975, Claremont turned things around drastically and the series achieved success like never before, becoming one of Marvel’s most beloved comics.
Claremont is credited for turning the entire property around, introducing sophisticated narratives and complicated philosophical underpinnings to the world of the X-Men while also creating iconic characters like Rogue, Phoenix, Psylocke, Emma Frost and many more.
Talking about his latest title for the X-Men comics, he had this to say:
“The irony is that Bill’s and my first reaction when we got the invitation…was to immediately ask for more pages. From my perspective as a writer, and from Bill’s perspective as an artist, we could have slammed this out of the park two or three different ways, but for me, if you have a visual talent like Bill and a serious concept such as the New Mutants, I would say you hit for the fences.”
“When you’re working with a visual creator as gifted and as outrageous as Bill is, it’s hard to pick a specific moment and say ‘That’s it. Because I can guarantee that the next panel, the next page will come up with a moment that’s even more enticing but in a totally different direction.”
So, if anyone’s earned the right to comment on the direction taken by the X-Men movies, it’s Claremont. It’s not difficult to understand his dislike for the films, either, especially given that the last few installments were both critically panned and also failed at the box-office. While the X-Men enjoyed success with the first two movies, the derailment of the narrative began with the poorly received Last Stand.
A soft reboot of sorts was achieved with X-Men: First Class, with a certain degree of success, but it wasn’t long before that series also suffered audience fatigue, with the latest offering in the franchise, Dark Phoenix getting the worst reviews yet despite it being Fox’s second attempt at adapting the saga of the same name for the big screen.