Sleezy Recasts the X-Men

Also - We need a flick with more Psylocke!!

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Perfect! Sabretooths dialogue is hilarious when read out loud, and Mickey Rourke would be exactly the actor that could portray his not so subtle savagery.

PORTIA DE ROSSI / EMMA FROST
One of the best shakeups in recent X-history was Marvel's decision to put the White Queen on the team. Not quite a "good girl," she's sneaky, snarky, seductive, and occasionally more trouble than she's worth. But she's loyal to the group and dedicated to being an educator and a force for the X-Men in the field. Portia de Rossi has the beauty, the shiftiness, the uppish demeanor. But more than that, she's got the presence of authority, a teacher, someone who can lead.



GUY PEARCE / GAMBIT
Oh yes. My favorite character from back in the day, and I thought about who should play him for all of two seconds. This has been a dream cast of mine for a long time. The guy oozes charisma and roguish charm, plus he's been a formidable fighter in several roles. There's a gruffness to him, but it's got just the slightest dip of refinement that says Cajun to me. And that natural smirk of his... I mean, who else but Guy Pearce?

And boom! Sleezy drops a Frank Quitely rendition of Emma Frost. The man knows his comics! The first couple of arcs from Morrison and Quitely is some of my favorite X-Men material of all time, and Emma is a big part of it. Yeah, Quitely does weird faces, but his overall vision combined with the dark, twisted writing of Morrison suited my palette perfectly. After an abysmal 1990s drought in comics that saw me giving up reading completely, The New X-Men, along with gems like Planetary, are largely responsible for getting me back into comics again.



And I don't think anyone is going to argue with you on Pearce! Perfect!

Yep. That run was fantastic. I went a long time not following comics until I read that first trade. Excellent stuff. Too bad Chris Claremont came in and ruined all of the great new characters and plot lines that Quitely set up.

Also, I really wanted to get into Planetary (and read a few issues), but didn't it come out like every few months or something?

Oh man, I could never figure out the release schedule beyond "whenever we feel like putting the next issue out." Super creative and mind-bending, but notoriously erratic in more ways than one! However, it started me on the path to reading more small-label stuff by better authors, like Powers, Preacher, Top 10 etc.

Yeah, I got into Powers around that time too (which led into Brian Michael Bendis' existing catalogue of graphic novels), as well as Ex Machina, Astro City, and Invincible. And I actually read some Cross-Gen stuff before they went under. Sojourn was pretty silly fun.

IMAN / STORM
Hear me out. I know she's nearly 60, a fashion model, and hasn't been in a film since the 1990s. But I still think she's the absolute best choice for Storm. Why? Besides the fact that she's a tall, beautiful Somali woman with that deep, elegant voice, I've always seen Storm as the motherly matron of the X-Men. She's been through more than any of the others and, in terms of leadership, is the female counterpart to Cyclops. Iman absolutely has these qualities, and something tells me she's still physically fit enough to handle the action too.

This is an interview featurette with Iman during the filming of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country back in the 1990s. She's obviously a bit older now, but this should give some of you younger folks a look at how Storm really could have been.

Ohhhhhh I would love Guy Pearce as Gambit!!! If only Guy was younger. Dont get me wrong, Taylor Kitsch was good but Guy would be PERFECT!

Im a huge Xmen fan and my perfect Jean Grey would be, a young............



Gates McFadden.

A few things. I liked the Joss Whedon run of the Astonishing X-Men, and am surprised there are soooo many detractors of it. You want to get the closest thing to the Claremont/Byrne run of X-Men, then read that.

Planetary was incredible. All the issues have been released now, and you might be able to find a TPB of the entire run, I dont know. That was Warren Ellis' finest run.

Charlize Theron would be my pick for the White Queen, she was older in the comics, but all your selections are surprisingly spot-on

I liked Joss Whedon's run, as well - who said they didn't like it?

I don't like later Claremont though - terrible stuff.

Portia de Rossi is actually two years older than Charlize Theron. And I certainly did think about her, as she's a popular choice among fans who would like to see Emma Frost in the X-films (the modern take). And Charlize Theron would be a fine choice, but I didn't pick her because I feel like she's a bit too famous for the role and I've honestly never liked her acting. She tends to overact, especially when she's playing strong characters.

Also, Joss Whedon's Astonishing run was great, but I found it to be largely what he does best: a bunch of characters who really don't like each other much forced to work together (snarky quips ensue).

Whedon detractors was no one here.

Claremont is incredibly overrated. His stuff is waaaaay too wordy, and its like he has something against story flow. Byrne complimented him nicely, and overall I think overtook him as a quality storyteller throughout their careers.

Excellent point - I got sick of the first 4-5 pages of each issue of Claremont X-Men introducing the damn team again. I know about the stigma of "well, what if this is a kid's first x-men comic???" that Claremont always mentioned, but writers like Morrison and Whedon blew that off and hey! people still read the books, and they retained adult readers (with more money) because they respected their audience to know who the characters in the comics they are buying are.

What's interesting to me about comics is the same thing that interests me about video games. You see generational changes over time, where the folks who grew up reading comics or playing games as kids begin to create them as adults for an adult audience. Obviously there are still comics and games out there for kids, but the trend among the highest profile titles in both areas have been toward content for older readers.

Exactly. Heck you can even refer the success of The Big Bang Theory to this theory. I mean it sure as hell isnt the science jargon. The guys writing Big Bang are fanboys, and comic book shops were "the thing" back when as was the collecting culture. Now its less than a third of the shops that were around and its all TPBs.

I wept when I saw that last Wolverine movie. It was better than the first, but they stil managed to butcher to smithereens Claremont & Frank Millers Wolverine limited series arc. By halfway thru the film the original material was lost in all the derpyassed big exploding robots and crap. Augh! Hugh Jackmans production company is ass!!

Professor X is still Patrick Stewart right? I mean ya just gotta

I didn't care for The Wolverine. It was a fun enough movie, I guess, but not terribly engaging and they've turned Wolverine into a product. Why does he have to spend half the movie with his shirt off?

Nope.

Now for an inkling of what my X-Men film would actually be about.



JOHN NOBLE / APOCALYPSE
Apocalypse is a staple baddie in X-Men lore due to his propensity to want to take over everything and generally cause chaos. He's also a physical monster of sorts, so CGI is to be expected here. But at his core, Apocalypse is something of an old-fashioned villain, spouting long-winded declarations of power and superiority. John Noble has a great deep, commanding voice and an almost unsettling quality (on display in LOTR and Fringe), not to mention he's an incredibly gifted actor. All the right ingredients for my film's chief antagonist.



JOSH HOLLOWAY / ARCHANGEL
Once a founding member of the X-Men, Angel is forced into service by Apocalypse as the leader of his Four Horseman, turning him into an unwitting villain. I like Josh Holloway for this role because, for one, he just looks like a young billionaire. But he's also got a wounded quality that I've always felt Warren Worthington has had, made all the more plain when he's forced to turn against his friends. Archangel would be a critical part of the film.

John Noble is Perfect!!

My choice for Warren Worthington/Angel/ArchAngel would would be hard to pick.