I really wanted to see this lineup (with the exception of swapping out Rachel Summers for Jean Grey). It incorporates pretty much all of the big iconic players in the Chris Claremont run of the comics which includes the most iconic stories in the X-men's canon.
However, now that Dark Phoenix is getting really questionable reviews, I'm not so sure about revisiting the Scott/Jean relationship angle.
At this point, I think it might make more sense to write Jean Grey as a posthumous character who died before the events of the first film.
I'd like to see them
base the movie off of Giant Sized X-men #1, personally.
Establish that the Original 5 existed in the backstory, but have since broken up, and focus the movie on Professor X and Cyclops recruiting a new team of mutants to join the fight for Xavier's dream.
* Cyclops (dude needs to be Captain America status this time around)
* Nightcrawler
* Storm
* Colossus
* Rogue (since she's quite a bit more popular than Banshee)
* Wolverine (he should have 10-15 minutes of screentime TOPS)
* Professor X as the founder and mentor of the group
-
Tease Kitty Pryde and Emma Frost for the sequel. Use
Emma Frost as the love interest for Scott, since Fox has pretty much botched the Scott/Jean romance twice.
- Beast shows up as a side character who has since left the team to join the Avengers.
**Don't use Magneto as the first villain. Drop hints that he exists and maybe give him a cameo even, but don't have the heroes fight him until the second or even the third movie. He should be that villain who has a strong presence even before he officially shows up.
Use Sentinels for the first movie, since they effectively personify humanity's hatred of mutants. If Marvel's in the mood to take risks,
they could go with Mr. Sinister or even use Mystique and her variation of the Brotherhood as the villains as a screw-you to Fox for trying to make her the hero just because of JLaw.
** I'd also be fine with the movie using Kitty Pryde as the viewpoint character and have an already established team with the characters mentioned above.
Unpopular opinion: I completely agree that Wolverine is done to death in the Fox movies and they need to put some respect Cyclops and Storm for once. HOWEVER,
unless they're specifically aiming to make a movie about the original 5, I think Wolverine SHOULD be included. Like I've said in other threads,
they need to treat Logan the way they treated Vader in Rogue One. Have him show up in a couple of scenes just to establish that he's part of the team, but keep him low key until the very end, where you get *that* one scene of Wolverine straight wilding out.
Give him 10-15 minutes of screentime tops. Cyclops, Storm, and/or Kitty Pryde should be the protagonist characters that move the plot forward, not Logan. Wolverine should be more of a Han Solo type, the side character who gets a dope scene every now and again.
Some people are saying that Logan should be kept out for two or even three movies, but I think that's way too much. It's like making a whole trilogy of Justice League movies without Batman, or having a whole Ninja Turtles series with no Raphael. As overused as he is, Logan is way too iconic to get rid of completely like that.
EDIT: on a side note, Hugh Jackman isn't as irreplaceable as people think. We're already on our third Spider-man, so there's no need to wait a whole decade to recast Wolverine. What they need to do is make Logan more accurate to the comics to differentiate themselves from Jackman's version. Make Logan short, and give him a nastier attitude to match the comics. Give him an actual costume (IMO the yellow/brown suit would work best). He needs to be the X-men's Han Solo, not the the main character leading the group. Also,
Scott should give Logan the hands at least once just to show us why Cyclops really is that dude.
Also the simple fact that X-men won't be their own stand alone universe makes it different this time.
