Fans of superhero movies have been all abuzz since word broke of the $52.4 billion purchase of Fox assets by Disney. While this tectonic shift in the business landscape has pointed to ramifications beyond what we can currently imagine, many have chosen to focus on the fact that Disney will now be able to inject the X-Men into their ultra-successful MCU. And while this may be a cause célèbre for X-Men fans – Wolverine scraping his claws across Captain America's shield? Awesome! – one may also want to pause at this juncture to lament the possible end of what Fox had been doing with its X-Men characters.

Dark Phoenix: Every Character Confirmed for Fox's Next X-Men Movie 13 IMAGES

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Comic Book Movies that Preceded X-Men 46 IMAGES

The X-Men series was always unique when compared to its MCU brethren next door. Bryan Singer's X-Men was released in 2000, just before superhero films began booming in earnest, and contemporary audiences may notice that it differs from more recent films in many ways. For one, it has a unique aesthetic. Rather than choosing bold, comic-friendly colors and bright outdoor fight scenes, X-Men looked metallic, futuristic, and antiseptic. It took place in steely corridors and hidden laboratories. Rather than re-imagining the heroes as more realistic beings that could fit into the world we know, X-Men's filmmakers bent the world we know to fit around the larger-than life superhero characters; there's a reason the X-Men wore matching black costumes rather than reality-fied versions of their comic book suits.Secondly, the X-Men series staged its conflicts over ideas rather than power. The films in the MCU have almost all been about who could win in a fight. There are doomsday monsters and evil robots and the climaxes frequently boil down to mere punching contests. The central conflict in the X-Men series was between the need to live in peace with one’s oppressors and utterly destroying them. Professor X and Magneto have famously been cited by comic book pundits as analogues to Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. And while the X-Men film series did eventually succumb to the occasional doomsday monster – the title villain from X-Men: Apocalypse was a pretty boring construct – it largely mined its drama from the conflict between those two characters.The X-Men series also wasn't afraid to swing for the fences when it came to reimagining its characters. Although careful analysis does reveal myriad plot holes and causality loops, the X-Men's time travel and alternate-timeline plotlines made for some pretty thrilling storytelling creativity. The MCU's strength, one may consider, has been herding characters slowly together over the course of several films into progressively larger climax events. The X-Men series was deftly herding large groups of characters as early as X2: X-Men United. The MCU is not ready for the convoluted fun of something like X-Men: Days of Future Past. They have too much more wrangling to do.The X-Men series has also been exploring the deeper facets of its universe more creatively on television. While the MCU's network shows have their fans – Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is currently on its fifth season – they seem like footnotes to the central action in the MCU feature films. The MCU television shows – and that includes the Netflix series – are filling in narrative cracks in a world that now includes many characters. And while this massive super-narrative construction is an impressive media undertaking, it's often argued that MCU products all feel a mite the same. Although one chapter may be a space opera, one may be a spy thriller, one may be a violent revenge story, and one may be a teen drama, there are tonal similarities to keep the universe as a whole bound in. Many tales can be told within said framework, but such a master framework can be limiting.The X-Men series, in contrast, has been using television to look at corners of the X-Men universe we may not have been considering, and using weird, creative aesthetics to communicate those stories. Consider a show like FX's Legion, a series that takes place in a mental institution, and makes few direct references to the X-Men universe. It's a diary of a madman, using wild '60s-inspired production design, and a near-surreal narrative to express what the world may look like through the eyes of a superpowered schizophrenic. That's not something, it seems, that Disney would come up with. Or take The Gifted, a TV series that takes place in a universe wherein the X-Men have mysteriously vanished, and mutants must now fend for themselves again. These shows don’t take place in the standard X-Men movie continuity, and that’s fine. Alternate timelines may be the bread and butter of comic books, but the MCU has been keeping on the straight-and-narrow, studiously avoiding them so far.And consider, finally, the feature films Logan and Deadpool, two R-rated superhero movies that explore new facets of the genre, feel unique, and may count among the best of their kind. Logan, taking its cues from revisionist Westerns, finally gives to superhero movies what the genre has been lacking: a definitive ending. When one devotes their life to fighting and violence and superhero mayhem, one kind of loses their soul. We see a beloved character eroded down to a husk, the logical end point of the life of a superhero. It seems the X-Men series has decided it's bold enough to finally give its story a third and final act; it's daring enough to not continue the series indefinitely.Deadpool, meanwhile, took a self-aware bent, allowing its title character to break the fourth wall and address the audience talking about how the film he's in functions, and how silly a lot of it is (indeed, an early draft featured Deadpool beating bad guys with a boom mic he grabbed from the filmmaking crew). What's more, Deadpool was refreshingly crass, featuring sex, naughty language, and a hero who didn't give a damn.So while we may have a lot to look forward to in mixing the gaggle of X-Men characters into the comforting pot of popular Avengers stew, we should perhaps appreciate that we may be losing a great deal of range and creativity from a series that has often strained to innovate. It's a series that was based on ideals, history, and aesthetic boldness. Its characters were more textured and varied than the bold “good guys” of the Avengers. We're gaining something in this grand Fox merger, but we're losing something as well. It's okay to mourn that.