After the box office failures of "X-Men 3: Battle of the Waters" and "Wolverine", Fox decided to regroup and make a new plan for its Marvel IP from a new perspective.
After having experience with the first three X-Men movies, Fox found it difficult to expand the market for comic book fans.
Especially after the first three X-Men already have a complete story closed loop, the soul of X-Men: Professor X and Magneto are dead respectively, X-Men second-generation leader Laser Eye is not popular in the film field, and it is difficult to take over the X-Men banner.
As a result, restarting became Fox's choice.
Compared with the niche american comic fans, non-comic fans are obviously a larger group and contain a larger market.
This time, Fox put the background of the X-Men to the time when Professor X and Magneto met.
For those who are already big fans of the X-Men, what kind of relationship did Professor X and Magneto have in the first three films? What kind of grudges do they have between each other and call each other "old friends"?
In such a situation, Fox naturally hopes to be able to present it.
This will not only activate the audience precipitated by the first three films, but also absorb a new group of fans through this origin story, injecting new blood into the IP that has been released for eleven years.
Marvel and DC have swept the American comic book industry for many years, each with its own characteristics.
Dc's characters and stories mostly take place in fictional worlds, such as Batman in Gotham, The Flash in Central City, and so on.
Marvel's characters and stories can basically find corresponding historical events and cities in the real world, and even prototypes.
Captain America, born in Brooklyn, Spider-Man in Queens, these can all find corresponding cities and historical events in the real world.
Even Iron Man's father, Howard Stark, is based on the super-rich second generation and super genius Howard Hughes in the United States in 1905.
Even the growth of the character has a corresponding historical period.
When Fox restarted the X-Men, he set the historical background to the climax of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union in 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis.
After the end of World War II in 1945, there were only two superpowers in the world at that time, the United States and the Soviet Union.
The world has not yet recovered from the throes of the Second World War, and it has fallen into the Cold War between the two superpowers, and the international environment is on the verge of erupting.
The Cuban Missile Crisis in the Caribbean in 1962 was the climax of the Cold War, and it was also the moment when the arms race between the two superpowers was closest to World War III in the 17 years after the end of the Second World War.
In just 13 days (October 15, 1962 - October 28, 1962), the international situation was changing, and the contradiction between humans and mutants began to slowly surface.
At the beginning of the story, the two souls of the mutants, Professor X and Magneto, are told about their childhood encounters.
Telepathy led Professor X to begin studying mutant genes and earned the title of professor at New York University.
And Magneto, because of his Jewish identity in childhood, the whole family was persecuted by the Nazis, disguised as a scientist " Sebastian Shaw " in order to confirm the identity of the Magneto mutant, in front of the young Magneto, killed his mother.
And Magneto has also been pursuing the murderer who murdered his parents.
The story has a basic explanation of the background of the two characters.
In the short plot, there is a good explanation for Professor X's seemingly "virgin" personality.
Because the professor's original family is happy and highly educated, he has not been discriminated against at all, so in professor X's growth, he feels the brilliance of human nature and the warmth of the world.
As for Magneto's malice toward humanity, it is due to the abuse he was abused by the Nazis in the same year, and under Shaw's conception that "mutants are the future of mankind".
The camera turns to Moira, a young female CIA agent, who discovers the presence of mutants during her mission.
But her boss didn't believe it, so she decided to find the world's most famous mutant gene professor, that is, Chazel (at that time, it was not called Professor X, for the sake of convenience, we still called it Professor X).
After some time, the crowd did not believe it, but when the protagonist showed his ability and the dragon set character expressed a stunned cool drama set, the movie came to the first conflict.
Although the world is suspicious of mutants, CIA still has Shaw's archives.
Because the Shaw gang, with their own ability, has been constantly stirring up the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union, thinking of triggering a nuclear war, which will lead to the emergence of more mutants.
With the help of Professor X, Moira also decided to confront Shaw.
That night, Professor X meets Shaw, as well as Magneto, who wants to take revenge on Shaw.
In the use of ability, the scheming Shaw is more skilled than the young Professor X and Magneto, and this operation fails.
In order to have someone to fight against Shaw's team, Professor X and Magneto set out to find help from other mutants.
In the process of searching, there is a small Easter egg.
It was Professor X and Magneto who had found Wolverine, but Wolverine said "Get out of the way" to the two of them.
This sentence also corresponds to the X-Men: Reverse Future, when the future Wolverine finds Professor X, Professor X says to Wolverine, "Now give this sentence back to you, get out of the way." ”
After a period of training, the X-Men were formed!
On the other hand, Shaw's actions were also very rapid, and it also directly contributed to the Soviet high-level decision to transport missiles to Cuba.
The United States was also the first to receive the information, swinging its own pair at sea level.
The two armies are facing each other, and war is about to break out.
And the X-Men and Shaw and his party also fought. In the end, the victory of the X-Men was the final result.
At the same time, it was also because of the battle between the X-Men and Shaw that the existence of mutants appeared in front of the world, and the leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union did not think much about it and directly fired shells at the X-Men and his party.
At this time, Magneto also no longer had any hope for human beings, thus embarking on the path of mutant talents as the future of evolution, and parted ways with Professor X.
During the dispute, Professor X was shot in the spine and incapacitated. Magneto and his party then left.
This is the end of the story.
Despite this reboot of Origins Production, for personal reasons Brian Singer was only involved in the executive production, not in the direction, but in the hands of Matthew Vaughn, the director of the anti-routine superhero film "The Sea King" released in 2010.
As a superhero movie, "Hai Bian King" combines elements such as youth campus, romantic love, black humor, and sci-fi action.
And director Matthew Vaughn has an excellent control of the rhythm of the film, so that many elements are together, and it does not become a messy hodgepodge, but makes the film look absurd, some crazy funny. (Of course, for comic fans, it may be completely different.)
It was Matthew Vaughn's excellent handling of many elements that led Fox and Brian Singer to let Matthew Vaughan direct X-Men: First Battle.
Before the release of "Avengers" in 2012, the concept of the cinematic universe was basically non-existent except for marvel studios.
Shooting superhero movies, basically fans are two major genres, one is a series of superhero personal movies, represented by Sony's Spider-Man series of movies. One is a group portrait movie represented by Fox's first three X-Men films.
The origin of the personal series of movies, very good to shoot, as long as the protagonist from the ordinary people into superheroes process of shooting out, it is already a mission, in the film narrative is a one-line structure.
However, as a group portrait film, X-Men must not only balance the contradictions between the two mutant camps, but also take into account the contradictions between humans and mutants, but also take into account the main plot of the movie.
The three lines are staggered and advance together, which is the basic operation in the first three works.
As mentioned earlier, in order to get bigger and more box office, Fox must take care of non-comic fans, so in terms of plot, there is no threshold for the first three films.
Therefore, in the plot line, it is only around the contradiction between Xiao's side and Professor X and Magneto's side.
Although the plot line is reduced, it is necessary to explain the origin, concept and transformation of each person, which is naturally a test for the director.
And Matthew Vaughan met that requirement.
Watching the whole movie, it can basically be said that it is very X-Men, but it is very non-X-Men.
If you are a viewer who has just entered the pit X-Men, you may feel after watching "First Battle", that is, the relationship between the characters in it is so chaotic and complicated.
The Shapeshifter first got along with Professor X, then had a little affair with the Beast, and then ran away with Magneto? What is the relationship?
You may even scold the screenwriter and write about what kind of character it is.
At this point, it can be said that it basically retains the characteristics of the X-Men series of movies.
Because among mutants, there are a lot of different ideas, and their unique experiences, that lead to their behavior. So in X-Men: Dark Phoenix, released 8 years later, due to the death of the Shapeshifter, the disagreement between the Beast and Professor X is also the reason.
Also, some of the superpowers in the movie are basically X-Men's signature skills. This is also a feature of the films that belong to the X-Men series.
But "First World War" wasn't very X-Men either.
As we all know, the birth of the X-Men was born after Stan Lee personally experienced the Black Movement in the United States, and only began to have X-Men out of conscience.
Therefore, the theme of X-Men is discrimination and tolerance, which is also reflected in the first three works.
However, in "The First World War", this core feature is completely lost.
In this movie, it is completely possible to change the name of the character to another hero or character, and such a plot can be established.
As a series of movies, as an IP movie, the core is to maintain their own characteristics, losing the X-Men's most core of the "First War" finally with a production cost of 160 million, won the global box office of 350 million, can only say that Fox's abacus failed.
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