iphignia939

Look, shit like this happens on a Saturday, what can I tell you?

(For the record, I have no problem with "why do Magneto and Professor X look in their late fifties/early sixties when they were like thirty in 1963?" It's Marvel Comics math; remember, in comics time, the original X-Men adventure--where the Professor and the original X-Men fought Magneto--was in '63, but the time lag between that and Jean and Scott getting married--some 40+ years later--was stated to be ten or eleven years. Shit gets compressed. I read comic books; this is not so much of a hang-up for me.)

1) The Moira Thing

So somewhere between XMFC and X-Men: The Last Stand (TLS), Moira quits the CIA and becomes a geneticist. Not that crazy, as far as such things go, and mildly...not suspect? But presumably this is after she and Charles become romantically involved (and break up), so. IDK. Something to consider.

(Also canonically, Moira and her ex-husband Joe have a son named Kevin, who is an incredibly powerful and dangerous mutant that names himself Proteus.)

2) You Guys, No For Real, I Hope If They Do X-Men 4 They Do Gambit/Rogue Stuff

because that is exactly the kind of person I am. Seriously! Anna Paquin and Taylor Kitsch! BEST MOVIE EVER.

3) The William Stryker Thing Is Kind of Hilarious

in that Charles kind of needles his dad in XMFC--and the guy is openly "ihhhhh, they're like homosexual Commies!" about mutants, and dismissive of Moira being a lady and a CIA agent--but William ends up like his dad, only cubed, and William's son Jason is a mutant. I don't know, man. It appeals to the part of me that hopes the Langs show up at some point, because we have had five movies in this series in different time periods, but no Sentinels.

4) The Emma Frost Thing

becomes substantially less weird when you realize that canonically, at one point Magneto was de-aged to a baby and Moira spent a year or two raising him before mutant activists kidnapped him and made him thirty again, albeit a white-haired thirty-year-old with all his memories. So if you assume at some point someone does that to Emma and makes her a teenager in Wolverine, it makes--okay, no sense, but it works in movie canon.

5) When Did Kevin Bacon Become the Orator of His Generation?

Because Erik seemed okay with just killing him for killing his mother, but a two-minute speech and bam! fucking Magneto. That is either hysterical or extremely depressing, because it means Erik was heading that way all along, and that--that gets really sad, when you consider later events (that I'll get into).

6) I Really, Really Hope We Get Charles Francis Xavier Losing His Goddamn Shit In the Next Movie

Name me someone else who deserves it more: his sister and his best friend (and the love of his life, depending on your interpretation) abandoned him to idealogically oppose him, and said best friend/soulmate fucking crippled him. Patrick Stewart does a really great job of playing the Professor a lot of us grew up with--the guy who's a little above things, who's removed himself from a lot of concerns of the world--but James McAvoy does an equally great job with something I think we need to see: the Professor who's sustained the two greatest body-blows he ever will, and who is not even a little over it yet.

7) Charles Xavier's Shitty Bar Pickup Line Is Now His Recruitment Speech

The fact that what Charles says to get laid is part of his speech to Logan years later is still fucking delightful.

8) Ten Bucks Says They Make Alex Scott's Dad or His Uncle

I mean, if they do the time compression, making him Scott's much older brother isn't impossible. It's just funny, considering Scott's actually older than Alex by two or three years.

9) Sadly, This Means We Will Be Denied Christopher Summers, Space Pirate and Noted Furry

Actually, cutting out the whole Shi'ar thing means we're denied a lot of awesomeness, like the fact that Charles is canonically the ex-husband and prince consort of Lilandra, the empress of a race of humanoid bird people; but it also means we don't have to deal with that "third Summers brother" bullshit or Vulcan, so. Trade-off.

(Yes: Christopher Summers, Alex and Scott's dad, ended up captured by the Shi'ar. He managed to escape and join the Starjammers, a group of space pirates and adventurers, and was common-law married to Hepzibah, who was a humanoid cat-woman. THIS REALLY HAPPENED. I FUCKING LOVE COMICS.)

10) Something Happened In the Next Two XMFC Movies, And I Really Hope Vaughn Goes Into It

At no point do any of the involved parties--Magneto, the Professor, Mystique--mention the fact that Mystique is basically the Professor's adopted sister. She also has no problem trying to kill other mutants on Magneto's say-so. What the shit happened, Raven?

11) And While We're On the Subject, Kurt Wagner? Is A Brotherhood Baby

His parents are Mystique and Azazel! This is never touched upon! Even by Mystique! I HATE IT WHEN I START HAVING QUESTIONS ABOUT THIS SHIT.

12) As A Sidebar, Prometheus Is Gonna Be Kind of Weird

if only because you have Heimdall, Magneto and Warren Worthington III fighting what may or may not be xenomorphs. And Nite Owl II is in there somewhere, too.

13) When You Realize Only Four People (That We Know Of) Know About Any of What Happened in XMFC, It Gets Incredibly Depressing

Seriously: Erik, Charles, Raven, Hank. That's it. No sign of Alex or Sean (though presumably Sean's reproduced, because the little girl screaming when Stryker's guys attack the mansion is his daughter Theresa). I don't think even Jean or Scott know any of this shit, and Jean and Scott are basically the Professor's kids. That breaks my heart.

14) At Some Point In the Intervening Time, Magneto Becomes A Total Asshole

I mean, not totally, but like 85 percent, yeah.

It really comes down to X2 for me on this one: Jason Stryker (Wyndgarde, but whatever, Stryker) has whammed the Professor into using a Stryker-built Cerebro to kill all the mutants on the planet. Magneto (and Mystique, but she's mostly his stalking horse on this one) goes in and magnetically switches a bunch of panels around, then Mystique shifts into William and tells Jason to make the Professor kill all the humans. And then THEY FUCKING BOUNCE, knowing that, as with killing all the mutants, using his powers on that kind of scale will kill Charles.

MAGNETO YOU FUCKING COCKSOCK.

Never mind that his grand plan in the first movie involves Rogue absorbing his powers, then putting her in the machine and using her to mutate humanity, knowing it'll probably kill her (and the following "we love what you've done with your hair" dick move in X2): you're going to use your best friend to achieve your ultimate goal and break his heart before it fucking kills him. I just. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME.

And AGAIN never mind that right after Jean/"Phoenix" (ugh that storyline fail forever) kills Charles right in front of him (and Ian McKellan breaks my goddamned heart with his yell of "CHARLES!"), Magneto pimps away with the chick who just murdered his soulmate. Like, WHAT? No, really, WHAT? That's enough to make me want to hide the Magneto Was Right shirt XMFC convinced me I need in my life.

(We will not speak of the utter bullshit of Mystique taking the cure bullet aimed for him and Magneto abandoning her, mostly because in the original script she's on the bench beside him at the end, thus proving that he never really abandoned her and she never really betrayed him in turn, which is a lot more in-character than the nonsense they showed. ANYWAY.)

I just. At some point between XMFC and X-Men, in an in-movie thirty-year span, Magneto turned into Shaw. And he doesn't even see it. That is the fucking saddest thing about these movies, to me.

15) The Only Thing That Is Kind of Baffling Me

is how we get from "Charles is paralyzed and they are enemies" to the TLS flashback at the beginning where Charles, totally not paralyzed, and Erik go to meet a young Jean. That...that's gonna involve some dancing, guys.

16) It Still Pisses Me Off The Marvel Cinematic Universe Is Non-Canon With the X-Men Movies

The kid playing baby!Erik in XMFC was supposed to make a cameo in Captain America. I WOULD HAVE CLAPPED SO HARD.

17) As A Sidebar, I Really Like the MCU

Say what you will about casting--and you can make a lot of arguments, here--but they do a really good job of making me think this is all possible in the same world: Ben Affleck patrols Hell's Kitchen as Daredevil and misses the hell out of Jennifer Garner's Elektra; Wesley Snipes' Blade kills vampires and Ryan Reynolds and Jessica Biel take care of what he misses. Jessica Alba and Ioan Griffud deal with cosmic forces in the Quinjet with Chris Evans and Michael Chiklis. (Johnny Storm looks a lot like Steve Rogers; Happy, Tony Stark's driver and friend, looks a lot like Foggy Nelson. No one ever comments on it.) Toby Maguire--Andrew Garfield, now--deals with smaller criminals in New York City, while the Avengers save the world every day and the X-Men handle their own shit, because no one ever notices mutants when mutants want them to.

Compare that to the Batman and Superman franchises, and the ongoing bullshit about why we don't have a Wonder Woman movie.

18) And Yeah, I Totally Have A Way to Make All This Work:

After dealing with Loki (again) and the Skrulls (maybe), the Avengers are settling in for some much-needed time off. Thor visits Jane Foster; Steve tries to ask Sharon out on a date that's been too long in coming; Pepper doesn't know whether or not to smack Tony or kiss him because he's all right. (She eventually decides on "kiss, then repeatedly smack because he's missed like three meetings".) Natasha goes on vacation, while Bruce tries to reconnect with Betty and Clint checks in on Darcy (who's started teaching herself to use a nighstick and is strongly considering fighting crime under a blonde wig and calling herself "Mockingbird", because apparently part of being a superhero is a lame-ass codename).

And then, somewhere in a small village in Europe, a dark-haired girl sweats out a fever dream and mumbles that this is wrong, this is all wrong, but she can fix it.

In Westchester, Storm is assailed by incoming messages from Cerebro: there are two--no, three--no, four powerful mutant signatures suddenly appearing, as if dropped in by the hand of God. She dispatches X-Men to the sites to investigate. She and Logan arrive in San Francisco to find Jean Gray, whose last memories are of Alkali Lake--but with all the power she had as Phoenix.

(Speaking of Alkali Lake: Scott Summers wakes up there, confused, and tries to call the mansion.)

(In her ancestral home of Muir Island, Moira MacTaggart--and her longtime lover, Sean Cassidy, now an FBI agent; and her ward, Rahne, a mutant herself capable of shifting into a wolf--watches, despairing, as the man whose body Charles Xavier transplanted his mind into suddenly flatlines. She, too, tries to call the mansion.)

Senator Hank McCoy travels to Europe alongside Father Kurt Wagner and finds a set of twins: the dark-haired girl, whose fever has broken, named Wanda; and her brother Pietro. Both are mutants, both are confused, but they agree to return to the States with them.

(In the middle of her sophomore year history class, the girl who once called herself Rogue hugs her roommate--who just got good news--and watches, horrified, as the girl falls over in a coma. Before the crowd can riot, a young man with red eyes calling himself Remy spirits her out of there. "Take me to New York," she says, shaken, and he does.)

Jean, alongside Storm and Logan, arrives in Cuba, the site of the second-strongest signature, only to meet a young man approximately their own age who speaks like he knows them. Jean scans his mind to see who is, and is startled to learn it's the Professor, only thirty years younger and no longer paralyzed. Not to mention not dead. ("Of course," Jean points out, "neither am I--" and, expression growing with dawning horror, vanishes in a blaze of light to find the now-alive Scott.)

("What the hell did I miss?" the Professor--no, Charles--demands. "What the hell is going on?"

Logan is somehow unsurprised to realized Charles looks familiar.)

And in the middle of Central Park, Bobby and Kitty, dispatched to find the fourth mutant signature come face-to-face with a man identifying himself as Erik Lehnsherr, if Erik was thirty again and had full control of his powers. Both of them are understandably freaked out, but Erik agrees, fairly easily to return to Westchester with them, if only to find out what the hell's going on.

A day later, with all assembled mutants at the mansion, the X-Men have to discover why three people have come back from the dead and a number of them have been re-powered, not to mention why Magneto and the Professor look thirty years younger but have all their memories.

This becomes slightly clearer when Wanda steps forward (Pietro by her side like a guard dog) and says, hesitantly, "...Father?"

Erik and Charles stare at her, gobsmacked.

Which is when The Avengers, alerted that Magneto's apparently got his powers back--and is the same age he was when he almost shot the fuck out of a couple of subs with their own goddamned missiles--and that Charles Xavier is still alive and harboring a mutant capable of reshaping reality, arrive. With weapons. And SHIELD agents. A lot of SHIELD agents.

TELL ME YOU WOULD NOT WATCH THE EVER-LOVING FUCK OUT OF THAT MOVIE.