Fox’s X-Men producer knows how to introduce mutants into the MCU
By Ashley Hurst
Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe has brought together many beloved Marvel characters in a way that feels fresh and uncluttered. There have been a few big omissions, though, most notably the X-Men and the Fantastic Four. And until Disney bought 21st Century Fox, those heroes were just going to have to play in separate worlds. But now they’re all under one roof, and you can bet good money that Disney wants to bring these popular characters into the MCU fold.
Simon Kinberg, who worked on lots of X-Men movies for Fox, has some thoughts on how to do that. Kinberg made his directorial debut with 2019’s X-Men: Dark Pheonix, which flopped at the box office and got shredded by critics. However, he still has a long and successful14-year involvement in the franchise dating back to X-Men: The Last Stand. So when it comes to mutants, this guy knows his stuff.
Speaking to IGN about his love for the franchise, Kinberg revealed what him fall in love with these stories in the first place. “I love the X-Men. They were my favorite comic growing up.. for a lot of reasons, wanting to fit in growing up and being a bit of an outcast as a young teen, X-Men really spoke to me.”
As for how to introduce mutants into the MCU, Kinberg would do it “in a fresh new way.”
“One of the things the MCU does so well, and I have such a profound respect as a fellow filmmaker and then as just a fan, is that they’re really loyal to the comics,” he began. “They also are very unafraid of a more supernatural or science fiction tonality to their movies. They don’t feel like they need to ground them so much in a sort of physics-based reality. I think there’s something very great and liberating and spectacular about that. I think the X-Men could be very cool if you brought in science fiction elements and even the beyond Earth elements of the X-Men. That’s something as a fan I would love to see, because I don’t know that we’ve ever fully done that in a fully committed way in the Fox X-Men canon.”
It’s true that the MCU movies have been happy to explore the outer reaches of space, although I don’t quite know how the X-Men would play into that. They’ve always been a pretty Earth-bound bunch, at least at first. Maybe they’ve been off-world this whole time fighting some hostile aliens?
Anyway, the MCU has rarely misstepped, so however they choose to introduce the X-Men, I’ll assume they have the right idea until proven otherwise. And if Disney wants Kinberg’s advice on this, they know where to find him.
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