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Two years in a row, the folks over at 20th Century Fox have flipped the comic book movie genre on its side with their R-rated films. Last year, it was Deadpool — a movie that, by all accounts should not worked as well as it did — and this year it was Logan — a film that was the long-awaited violent bloodfest that fans have wanted from the characters since he first appeared on screen in X-Men back in 2000.

If you look at those two films and then look at last year’s X-Men: Apocalypse, it’s hard not to feel like that latter film feels a bit safe in generic by comparison. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed very many aspects of X-Men: Apocalypse, but that third act really did sort of epitomize everything wrong with the comic book movie clichés in one fell swoop. The villain was boring, and the...

You know, you have to give 20th Century Fox some real props for the work they’re doing on the X-Men universe. Yes, it’s a bit frustrating on an Ocd level. In a world where the Marvel Cinematic Universe has all their films interlinked in an intricate way, it’s hard to look at the X-Men films and appreciate it for that very same “architecture,” as it were.

However, one thing the X-Men universe has always done well is allow their films to essentially exist in a vacuum. Sure, a good number of films are sequels, but for the most part, they can be enjoyed in and of themselves. It’s also given them the opportunity to allow for outside-the-box ideas like Deadpool of Logan, which would have had no place in an established, set-in-stone universe.

This could, in part, be credited to Simon Kinberg, the producer of most...

The X-Men franchise has certainly become a unique beast in the world of cinematic universes. Not only do they tend to plan their films in smaller batches — with actors generally signing up for three or so at a time, as opposed to Marvel’s “sell your soul for eternity” deal that’s become the standard — but they also have the added layer of difficulty in their multiple timelines and their willingness to hop from one time period to another.

All of a sudden, it’s no longer as clear cut as, “oh, we need this actor for the next one,” because the next one may not even be a true sequel — and to top it all off, it may not even be set in the same actual universe. As such, we never truly know what actors’ roles could be in upcoming films. However, a couple week’s back, it was...