Bust out your pouch vests and your gigantic pulse weapons: Fox is bringing X-Force to the big screen. The question is, though, which version of X-Force?
For those unfamiliar, X-Force is essentially the X-Men’s black ops unit. Whatever situations the X-Men can’t touch, or might require a show of force the team is unwilling to make, X-Force deals with. At least in theory; this being Marvel that concept is a bit more fluid than one might think.
Here’s what we know about the movie; according to Rob Liefeld, this has been in the works since March:
It’ll be a spin-off of the current X-Men franchise. And that apparently, Kick-Ass 2 is really, really good, because Fox immediately tapped its writer and director, Jeff Wadlow, to start making X-Force a reality in script form. Which leaves one question… what will be the roster? Let’s do a little handicapping; here are the five characters we’re pretty sure will be part of the team, even if only for the five minutes it takes to establish movie continuity.
Wolvie is almost certainly going to be in this one, although whether as a main character or showing up for five minutes to stab Deadpool is likely still to be decided. First of all, Hugh Jackman is pretty much the face of the franchise. Secondly, he’s also the only recognizable face from the X-Men franchise at this point who isn’t busy doing something else.
Let’s not even pretend Fox’s plan isn’t to try and use X-Force to try and launch a whole string of new franchises. Considering what a mess they made of Deadpool in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and that work on the script is still ongoing, this might be the closest Deadpool gets to the big screen.
How, precisely, they’ll explain Cable when the third movie pretty much put a bullet in the guy’s origin story is anybody’s guess. But he’s a key part of X-Force, so he’s likely to be a key part of the team. And, hey, anything that sets up a Cable and Deadpool movie is a good idea.
All that said, it’s unlikely this will be a totally male-dominated team. And since Fox used X-Men: The Last Stand to lock down the rights to Psylocke, it’s a safe bet she’ll be in this movie.
Yeah, they’ll probably use Boom-Boom, for two reasons. One, she’s an attractive blonde who blows things up. And two, it will pave the way for the most important superhero team movie of all time, and possibly the most important achievement in cinema:
Make it happen, Fox.