X-Men: Dark Phoenix

Costume upgrades are pretty standard when it comes to superhero movies, and for the next X-Men outing, Dark Phoenix, our good super kids are getting some new gadgets too. Most importantly, Cyclops will have a new visor that’ll make him look a whole lot more like his older James Marsden counterpart (and a little less sillier than his Apocalypse look did).

For those of you who read the comics, you’ll know that Magneto doesn’t really feature that prominently in X-Men’s Dark Phoenix storyline. But because Michael Fassbender is such a star, and because Magneto and Professor X’s relationship with each other is so integral to the X-Men film series, it sounds like Magneto’s gong to have a much bigger role in turning Jean Grey over to the Dark Side.

Although X-Men: Apocalypse and the latest Fantastic Four reboot were fairly notable disappointments for 20th Century Fox, the studio is doing pretty, pretty, prett-ay good in the Marvel department. Thanks to the critical and commercial success of Deadpool and Logan, Fox’s X-universe has been revitalized, and even if the next X-Men movie underperforms, they still have New Mutants, X-Force and Deadpool 2 on the way — and it looks as though that may be the tip of the iceberg.

X-Men: Days of Future Past was great; X-Men: Apocalypse was kind of meh. But in both cases the highlight was the same: Quicksilver, played by Evan Peters performing an incredible super-speed rescue (filmed in super slo-motion with cool music and lots of effects.

She’s a rock star, a mutant, and a superhero. She is Alison Blaire, known as Dazzler, and she has had no luck getting into one of the X-Men movies so far. In the past there have been rumors that superstar Taylor Swift might appear in the character, and in X-Men: Apocalypse, there was even a very brief cameo for the character, on the cover of a record in a music shop, that wound up getting cut from the finished film.

X-Men: Apocalypse wasn’t so apocalyptic for the X-Men; their next movie is on the way, and it’s got a director and a release date lined up.

Even when the recent X-Men movies have veered into nigh-unwatchable territory (lookin’ at you, Apocalypse), Michael Fassbender gives us a reason to stick it out. The consistently compelling actor can make even the most lackluster films more interesting, and whatever your feelings are about some of his movies, I think we can all agree that Fassbender is always great. So it’s definitely not disappointing to learn that he may very well be reprising his role as the young(er) Magneto in the next X-Men movie.

Out with the old X-Men, in with the new. Neither DC nor fully Marvel, the odd-duck X-Men cinematic franchise has been in the process of reinventing itself over the past couple installments by gradually integrating its past and present. I mean that literally — through a whole heap of time-travel tomfoolery, the original X-People we came to know during the original trilogy of films in the early ’00s have been commingled with the new generation of throwback X-Folks as shown in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s in First Class, Days of Future Past, and Apocalypse. The chronology can be a lot to swallow, and it’s about to get even more confusing: we may now have two Rogues.

It looks like 20th Century Fox is in a release date kinda mood. After James Cameron used his film’s Facebook page this morning to share the premieres of his next four Avatar sequels, Fox has also announced the release dates for its upcoming slate of Marvel movies, including Deadpool 2, New Mutants, and the next film in their X-Men franchise, X-Men: Dark Phoenix. For the five Gambit fans in the house who thought this might finally be their moment, well, sorry guys, that one’s still in development hell.