In todays gender equal society should they be called X-People?
With Fox announcing thier two new X-Men related shows coming to a Tv screen near you you. I thought I’d take time out of my busy-ish schedule and give me opinion on the new shows and what they might entail using my miss spent youth of reading X-Men comics and generally Geeking -out over every morsel of new stuff we get from our Mutant friends. Pro-Mutant and Proud baby.
Fox and The Hellfire Club
Skatronixxx will be happy if Emma Frost is in it *faints*
The first of two shows will air on Fox’s own channel and will centre around the formation of the Hellfire Club. That evil faction of Mutants lead bu the Bacon guy from Footloose in Matthew Vaughn’s X-Men: First Class. The press release revealed some story details about a young special agent who learns that a ‘power-hungry woman with extraordinary abilities is working with a clandestine society of millionaires to take over the world’. With this series set during the 60’s I can’t help but experience deja vu when considered that this was the premise for The Hellfire Club within Vaughn’s 2011 film. Could this be a prequel to that? It sounds logical when the description for the ‘power-hungry woman’ could be a veiled attempt to disguise the character as the one and only Emma Frost.
Ah Emma Frost. A Seminal part of X-Men comic lore has been somewhat maligned and mishandled within Fox’s X-Men cinematic universe. From her semi-quasi and later redacted entrance in Wolverine Origins (2009) played by Tahnya Tozzi. To the prettyu weak characterisation of Frost played by January Jones (that one-out-of-Mad Men) in First Class. My favourite bad-girl-turned-good has recieved a bum deal when it comes to character adaptation on screen. The Emma Frost that I know was rebooted by Grant Morrison’s stellar comic-book run with the New X-Men (2001) whose no-nonsense attitude and cold persona a carry over to Joss Whedon’s run as writer for the Astonoshing X-Men (2005). Who whose portrayal evolved into an infiltrator for the new Hellfire Club yet became a key member of the X-Men who constantly had to compete with good and bd sides of ehr nature. Think Darth vader if he wore white and had a really noce rack. With X-Men producers Lauren Schuler Donner, Simon Kinsberg and Bryan Singer producing the new series; it leads me to believe that the connection to films may obviously be front of mind for these people. Coupled with the fact that Fox is not only funding the series but airing it also, it basically serves as free advertising for thier cinematic universe. When casting for the main female antagonist is announced, we will get an idea of where this iteration of X-men lore is going. But a cat-and-mouse game with a secret agent and a Mutant on opposing sides, sounds like Homeland with powers, which gets a big thumbs up from me.
Breaking Legion
This one looks different, good different
The second show sounds more experimental than an obvious hit. With a character who is probably more familiar with ardent comic book fans than the general masses. This show that will appear on FX has an intriguing if not worrisome central figure that may see an uphill battle when the show comes to air.
‘The pilot introduces the story of David Haller: Since he was a teenager. David has struggled with mental illness. Diagnosed as schizophrenic, David ha sbeen in and out of psychiatric hospitals for years. But after a strange encounter with a fellow patient, he’s confronted with the possibility that the voices he hears and the visions he sees might be real.’
To uninitiated, David Haller is Charles Xavier’s son whose telepathic abilities may-or-may-not (it’s never explicitly stated in the comics) have lead to his schizophrenia. Either way, David often reverts to his numerous personalities that all despise his father and the Mutant-human utopia that he fights for.
Legion is an interested if not progressive character to centralise within a show that could serve to catapult an often misunderstood condition like mental illness into the consciousness of the masses. The problem is that David is often placed as a villan within the X-Men mythos with no small part being because of his severe mental faculties that often causes him to be unable to disassociate good from bad.
I can’t deny that the character would make fascinating television if handled properly, I just don’t see who the audience for the show is besides those Legion fans. Is there enough of them out there to make this a hit? I suppose in order to hook those would-be converts is how the show works format wise. A Breakign Bad style of show could work for such a complicated character, with deep character explorations in over-arching stourylines would work but I still believe that those types of audiences is still such a niche market to gamble an X-Men show on.
Either way I am quietly confident that with the combined efforts of FX and Bryan Singer that they can produce a character driven narrative in the same vein as Breaking Bad but with the visual style of Hannibal, but that’s just my wishlist.
It is reported that The Hellfire series is in development while Legion has been ordered to pilot, which confirms that 20th Century Fox and Marvel have been in negotiations for some time, with Fox’s Dana Walden mentioning that they were talking with mavel back in August. While Fox owns the rights to any movie produced X-Men product Marvel still owns the Tv rights for the characters, which means Marvel has already signed off on the proposed plans for Fox’s X-Men Tv series.
With an endorsement from Marvel, Im quietly eager to see these shows when they air.
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