Obviously there are a lot of things going on in the world right now that people have every right to get upset about, but in other situations, it can often feel like society is actively looking for something to be offended by, with so-called ‘cancel culture’ frequently adopting a mob mentality in calling people out for things that they’ve said and done years in the past.
You’ve got a cabal of Karens calling on families to boycott The Eternals because it features a same-sex relationship, while the younger generation recently made themselves look like complete idiots by trying to raise hell over Robert Downey Jr.’s role in Tropic Thunder from over a decade ago, even though the entire point of his performance was to make fun of Hollywood’s views on race, whitewashing and elitist actors.
For the most part, it doesn’t affect any major studio blockbusters, and the higher-ups generally refuse to acknowledge the online discourse with the notorious exceptions of Sonic the Hedgehog’s title hero and the Justice League Snyder Cut. However, we’ve now heard that Marvel Studios are said to be considering a move that’s designed to be inclusive, but will no doubt only result in a huge wave of backlash from comic book fans if it ends up happening.
According to our intel – which comes from the same sources that told us both Now You See Me 3 and National Treasure 3 are in development, long before either one was confirmed, and that Percy Jackson is being rebooted as a streaming series – Marvel are reportedly not too keen on the idea of calling their upcoming mutant reboot X-Men because it sounds like an all-male group and the studio are in the midst of a huge push for more diversity. As such, they’ve had discussions about changing the name to make it more inclusive.
Nothing has been decided on just yet though and while we can understand where they’re coming from, we’d also be pretty surprised if they actually go through with this. After all, the X-Men have existed in the pages of Marvel Comics since 1963 and the team has always had an important female presence, and that extended to the Fox franchise that ran for two decades. There are plenty of offshoot groups from the comics that have the letter X in the name, but if you’re making a movie about the mutants founded and led by Professor Xavier, then you’re talking about the X-Men, and changing it is only going to confuse a lot of people and make even more of them mad.
Ignoring almost 60 years of history just so nobody gets offended by a superhero blockbuster that has ‘men’ in the title seems more than a little silly, especially when you consider that nobody brought it up once while their first dozen outings racked up over $6 billion at the box office. But given the current political climate and what’s going on in the world, the possibility of the name being changed can’t be entirely ruled out.