In what, if true, would go down as history as perhaps the most predictable Marvel Studios decision of all-time, a new whisper on the street has suggested that X-Men’s debut outing in the Marvel Cinematic Universe will not focus on any of the titular team’s iconic incarnation, but instead tell a story centered on the female mutants amongst their ranks.
This latest rumor regarding the cinematic return of Marvel’s Merry Band of Mutants was first raised to the public on December 18th, courtesy of a post made by noted scooper Daniel ‘DanielRPK’ Richtman to his personal Patreon account.
Therein, per a recap provided by numerous outlets including the @XMenReboot fan Twitter account, Richtman provided three new alleged details regarding the X-Men’s cinematic reboot, including that Mr. Sinister would serve as its main villain, that Magneto would be left out of its cast an attempt to differentiate the MCU’s mutant films from the previous, Fox-helmed ones), and that the film’s plot would focus squarely on the team’s female characters.
Though the scooper did not provide any details as to which specific heroines were currently being considered to bring the fight to the aforementioned mutant geneticist, it’s likely that the Iman Vellani-portrayed Kamala ‘Ms. Marvel’ Khan will be among them, as she is both the MCU’s first official mutant and one of its currently-favored female characters.
Notably, though Richtman’s scoop has yet to receive any official confirmation, its information is lent credence by the fact that Marvel Studios has an established habit of ‘subverting audience expectations’ in order to artificially bolster the franchise’s female representation.
Such subversions come from the studio in one of two forms, the primary one being the act of gender-swapping.
Thanks to Marvel’s adoption of this practice, a variety of established, male Marvel Comics characters like Ghost, Captain Mar-Vell, and Taskmaster make their cinematic debuts as the opposite gender, thus denying fans the chance to see the characters they’ve known for years accurately brought to life in favor of low-effort pandering.
And while not as common, the second comes in the form of ham-fisted, virtue signal-heavy storytelling wherein one of the franchise’s male characters has his character completely shredded and disrespected in favor of boosting the profile of their female successor.
From Flag-Smasher being heralded as morally superior to The Falcon in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, to Jane Foster proving herself more easily able to wield Mjolnir than Thor himself in Thor: Love and Thunder, to the entirety of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, ever since Marvel went full identity politics with Avengers: Endgame‘s forced ‘girl power’ moment, this ‘subversive’ writing technique has become one of the studio’s main tools in attempting – or more accurately failing – to endear their new characters to long-time audiences.
Further, such a subversive treatment of arguably the company’s second-most profitable franchise (the top-spot unsurprisingly belonging to Spider-Man) should come as no surprise in light of its constant thrashing of the team’s ‘male-centric’ name at the hand of Marvel themselves.
For example, June 2019 saw the release of the final film in Fox’s second X-film series, Dark Phoenix, which features the infamous scene wherein after bringing up her issues with his willingness to throw mutant life after mutant life into the fray in service of his dream, Jennifer Lawrence’s Mystique tells off Professor Xavier, “By the way, the women are always saving the men around here. You might want to think about changing the name to X-Women.”
Further, speaking to entertainment news outlet Nuke the Fridge that same month, then-Marvel President of Physical, Post-Production, VFX, and Animation Victoria Alonso likewise opined of the team’s possible arrival in the MCU, “I don’t know where the future is going. It’s funny that people call it the X-Men, there’s a lot of female superheroes in that X-Men group, so I think it’s outdated.”
As of writing, Richtman’s scoop has yet to receive any official confirmation from either Disney or Marvel.