Is this the right guy for X-Men, I haven’t really seem anything he’s made before. Is hiring a (straight?) rich white guy the best idea to direct a movie essentially about oppression.
I mean there are a lot of moving parts to a film, if a director can pull those together then yeah they’re the right person.
He directed Thunderbolts which turned out great so he’s a known quantity. If we get a Thunderbolts quality film but X-Men then that’s a win.
Sure, I’m not saying he doesn’t have the technical skill and knowledge to make the movie. But its like hiring a white guy to direct Black Panther, a black person would have a better understanding of the characters. I haven’t watched Thunderbolts yet but, I’m assuming it doesn’t cover social issues that ate key the X-Men. Or am I wrong? Maybe I’ll give it a watch this week if I can.
So certainly there are potential personal advantages to hiring a black director for a film based on the character Black Panther. Ryan Coogler did an excellent job with the first Black Panther film. The second film struggled a bit more, but he also had to tell a nearly impossible story (with the passing of Chadwick Boseman). However the character of Black Panther was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, two white dudes, or to be more specific Jewish-Americans.
Maybe we say “well that was the 1960s/1970s”. Let’s look at Miles Morales (Spider-Man). Created in 2011 by, Brian Michael Bendis, again another “white dude” or Jewish-American.
I absolutely don’t want to discount the potential a black director might be able to bring to an X-Men series. However it’s not a strict requirement for the X-Men. X-Men storylines are often a mirror of racism and civil rights movements. If the films completely ignored that, then it will probably not be a good film, or at the least not a good representation of what the X-Men are.
Going back to the Thunderbolts, no they do not cover social issues that are key to the X-Men. They are both outcasts, but Thunderbolts deals more with the idea of identity, depression, self-worth, themes like that. Certainly X-Men also deal with those themes, but I they are not the same story. You wouldn’t swap X-Men into the Thunderbolts story, at least not without making some specific character changes.
Thunderbolts tells a good story. I have my complaints, but overall we get a good story. If we can tell a good story with X-Men, then we’re in for a good film.
The two characters you gave are great examples of what I’m talking about. Original Black Panther is more a white fantasy of blackness than anything else. Do Lee and Kirby takle issues unique to Africans or write about the African experience? Not in any of the OG comics I’ve read. Representation is important and what they did at that time is a positive but, it lack the depth and incite I’m talking about.
Bendis has definitely tried to cover the issues I’m talking about but, has also received criticism for how he wrote them. Some of that criticism may be just because he is a white person writing about a Black/Latinx characters experience, I’m not qualified to say. It’s definitely weird that Miles’ dad shares a name with the President of the Confederate States though.
