After 26 Years, Avengers: Doomsday Has Already Fixed One of the X-Men Films’ Biggest Mistakes

FOX’s X-Men movies were great, but they were far from perfect, and Avengers: Doomsday has already fixed one of the most glaring issues from the original series. The FOX X-Men movies were arguably the first superhero cinematic universe, with various spinoffs, series, and sequels creating an interconnected story that follows the mutants across decades. The franchise obviously had a lot of missteps, with entire movies like X-Men Origins: Wolverine being despised by fans, but the MCU’s Multiverse Saga has given the series a chance to redeem itself.

FOX’s X-Men characters first returned in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, in which Patrick Stewart’s Professor X ran the Illuminati in an alternate timeline. Then, Deadpool & Wolverine acted as a love letter to the FOX movies, seemingly capping off the series. However, this has turned out not to be the case, as several prominent characters from FOX’s initial X-Men trilogy are returning in Avengers: Doomsday, including Professor X, Magneto, Cyclops, Beast, and more.

Rebecca Romijn’s Mystique Finally Has A Costume In Avengers: Doomsday

An interesting addition to the cast of Avengers: Doomsday was Rebecca Romijn, with her reprising her role as Mystique from the original X-Men movies. The team seen in the Doomsday trailers seems to be from a different timeline than the FOX movies, as implied by their new costumes and character designs. Since Mystique was a villain in the original films, it is odd that Doomsday is positioning her as another member of the mutant superhero team. However, this isn’t a bad choice, as the film is in fact improving on the character in one major way: her costume.

In all three of the original X-Men movies, Mystique isn’t wearing any clothes. Instead, Romijn was covered head-to-toe in blue paint and scaly makeup, with the movies making it seem like she is baring all in each scene she’s in. This was a strange decision for the early FOX movies, as this isn’t the case in the comics. In Marvel Comics, Mystique is typically seen wearing a skin-tight white bodysuit with a flowy bottom, as well as white boots, white gloves, and a skull headband. None of this outfit is found in the FOX movies, with the live-action Mystique having a design that completely moves away from her comic book origins.

While Jennifer Lawrence’s Mystique was allowed to wear clothes in the X-Men prequel movies (mostly due to the practical reasons associated with the time-consuming full-body makeup), Romijn’s iteration of the character never got an outfit in the original movies. However, the MCU is here to fix this. The Avengers: Doomsday trailer features a scene of Yelena fighting Mystique, showing that the mutant has gotten a total redesign. Now, Mystique wears a white suit that looks like it is pulled straight from the comics, with it only having a few changes, such as blue padding instead of holes that show Mystique’s skin.

This isn’t a surprising change, as we already knew that Doomsday would feature some more comic-accurate costumes for the mutants. The Doomsday trailer that focuses on the X-Men showed James Marsden’s Cyclops wearing a more 90s blue and yellow spandex, moving away from the black leather that the mutants frequently wore in the FOX movies. So, Mystique’s Doomsday outfit is only one of several examples of this new design philosophy, and it’s an absolutely fantastic one.

Mystique’s Comic-Accurate Costume Needs To Carry Over To The MCU’s X-Men

Doomsday‘s more traditional X-Men costumes are incredible, and they need to carry over to the MCU’s own mutants. The FOX X-Men seen in Doomsday probably won’t be the mutants that we meet in the MCU, with the franchise likely introducing its own slate of mutants in future movies. The MCU’s X-Men characters will undoubtedly be different, but hopefully they err closer to the design philosophy seen in Doomsday than the ones from the FOX movies. After all, these characters will be the future of the MCU, so Mystique and the rest of the characters need to properly represent their comic-book counterparts.

Luckily, this shouldn’t be a concern. Recent MCU projects like The Fantastic 4: First Steps and Spider-Man: Brand New Day have featured campier, comic-accurate costumes, meaning that the franchise is no longer scared to head in this direction. Plus, the popularity of X-Men ’97 means that these designs are more talked-about than ever, so it only makes sense for the MCU to reuse them in live-action.

What do you think? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!