Where On Earth Have All The Women Been In The X-Men Movies?

2019’s Dark Phoenix begins with Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) chastising Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) for his many mistakes after a particularly hazardous mission. While airing her grievances, Mystique remarks “by the way, the women are always saving the men around here. You might wanna think about changing the name to X-Women.” It’s a horrific piece of writing that not even Lawrence can salvage.

It’s also a prime example of late 2010s blockbuster “Girlboss” feminist energy. A white male screenwriter/director has a woman acknowledging gender inequality…and then the film itself doesn’t deal with that theme. One line is supposed to make a motion picture “based”. The rest of the text indulges in conventional gender norms for American blockbusters. This includes no primary crew members being women. That one line recognizing sexism's existence is enough. Filmmakers like Lizzie Borden, Dee Rees, Karyn Kusama, and so many others would roll their eyes so hard at that writing.

Unfortunately, this Dark Phoenix moment is emblematic of how the X-Men movies often gave women characters the short shrift. Long before the “X-Women” line came about, these features put women mutants on the back burner. That's despite some of the most beloved X-Men comics characters being Storm, Jubilee, and Kitty Pryde, to name just a few!

When the X-Men characters debuted in The X-Men #1 in September 1963, the only gal on Xavier's roster of friendly mutants was Marvel Girl, A.K.A. Jean Grey. Polaris joined the good guys team before the 1960s wrapped up. Baddie Magneto always had Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch following him. However, female mutants were few and far between initially in the comics. Then, Giant-Size X-Men #1 rebooted the characters in May 1975. Ororo Munroe/Storm was at the forefront of this new incarnation of the team. Under the direction of writer Chris Claremont, Uncanny X-Men delivered countless new women characters now indispensable to X-Men lore. Jubilee, Wolfsbane, Kitty Pride, Psylocke, Rogue, Emma Frost, Mirage, Mystique, these and so many others (including iconic male mutants like Gambit and Sabretooth) were co-created by Claremont.

In May 2014, Chris Kaye of Refinery29 wrote an insightful essay about Claremont's emphasis on women superheroes in his X-Men run. This element apparently stemmed from the heavy presence of influential women in Claremont's personal life. "By the '80s, a punked-out version of Storm — complete with head-to-toe leather and a mohawk — would replace Cyclops as team leader,” Kaye observed in this essay. “Making a black woman the lead character in a top-selling title was bold, but par for the course for Claremont." Entire academic texts surround Claremont’s beloved subversive handling of gender in X-Men comics. The emphasis on marginalized genders in X-Men stories continued into the X-Men: The Animated Series. That beloved 1990s program began its 76-episode run with a two-part premiere told from the point-of-view of Jubilee. From there, the primary team of mutants included that teenager as well as Rogue, Jean Grey, and Storm.

Pushing women to the forefront of X-Men stories only makes sense given that these mutants are supposed to be allegories for oppressed American communities. The metaphor of “mutants=PoC/queer people/women/disabled people etc.” doesn’t 100% work. For one thing, save for Storm and Jubilee, the characters are too damn white!" Deadpool wasn’t wrong when he bellowed “Everybody calm down. The X-Men are here. A dated metaphor for racism in the '60s.” However, the best X-Men stories vividly tap into being an outsider and uncovering a found family that accepts you. Compared to other Marvel properties that often only had one token woman around, the plethora of gals in X-Men comics and cartoons made those “outsider” narratives extra potent. Viewers who often felt like “outsiders” watching conventional or reading superhero media could finally see super-powered folks who looked just like them!

Then the first X-Men movie came around, which initially seemed intent on continuing the franchise’s emphasis on women's perspectives. After a prologue depicting 14-year-old Erik Lehnsherr losing his parents at Auschwitz, David Hayter's script shifts to Marie/Rogue's (Anna Paquin) perspective. Her mutant superpower of absorbing people's life force proves fatal when she's trying to kiss her boyfriend. Facing the horrors of the newly mandated "Mutant Registration Act", Rogue goes on the run. This start puts viewers right into Rogue's head. It also nicely continues the legacy of X-Men stories dealing with melodramatic plot turns extra relevant to teenagers. It’s incredibly fitting and effective to have a make-out session go awry and spur Rogue into discovering her powers. That kind of situation is already incredibly awkward in grounded reality. Throwing deadly mutant powers into the equation would be any teenager’s nightmare!

Alas, Rogue doesn't get much to do in the ensuing plot. Her primary purpose in the third act is to be a damsel-in-distress that the other mutants save. Jean Grey and Storm barely have any personality traits to speak of. At least the villainous Mystique (Rebecca Romijn) gets some of the most striking action beats of the entire piece.

The thoroughly unimaginative treatment of women characters in the original three X-Men characters reflects larger blockbusters norms devaluing perspectives from marginalized genders. However, they’re also byproducts of innately dehumanizing filmmakers launching this franchise. Filmmaker Bryan Singer has endless allegations of sexual assault and rape floating around him. Looking back on the experience of making the first two X-Men movies, multiple people, including X-Men producer Lauren Shuler Donner, accuse the filmmaker of behaving cruelly towards his performers. One unnamed executive involved with the X-Men movies remarks that 20th Century Fox's tolerance of Singer's allegedly abusive behavior on these features "created a monster.” Elliot Page, meanwhile, has accused X-Men: The Last Stand director Brett Ratner of engaging in "homophobic and abusive behavior" on that movie's set. Furthermore, Romijn alleged she had “a major issue” with Ratner on the Last Stand set. She didn’t offer further details on the matter.

All these allegations surrounding Singer and Ratner paint them as treating others as just objects for personal gain. These horror stories reflect a dehumanizing tendency in their work. Inevitably, that seep into how they handle women characters in their movies. Singer and Ratner allegedly don’t care to treat their co-workers like people. Why would they also have respect for the fictional characters they’re bringing to life? Claremont’s Uncanny X-Men characters, meanwhile, regardless of gender, are informed by deep interest and respect for other people. Claremont’s vivid anecdote about a war journalist or his mom inspiring the beloved women mutants he writes about demonstrates a deep consideration for other people. There was no way the original women X-Men movie characters could live up to that legacy under Singer and Ratner's direction.

Immediately after the original X-Men trilogy came the all-time bad feature X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Among its many egregious flaws, the script didn't provide much of a role for Kayla Silverfox (Lynn Collins). Her primary role here was to motivate Wolverine first by dying and then (in a twist!) actually being in cahoots with the baddies. The thankless role came with the additional problem of being yet another example of Hollywood whitewashing. Silverfox is an indigenous character in the comics belonging to the Blackfoot people. Having a white woman inhabit the role continued another troubling larger trend the X-Men movies kept stepping into. Women of color either had minimal or absolutely no presence in these movies. Most egregiously, Halle Berry's Storm in the original trilogy of X-Men movies barely had any character traits to speak of.

Director Matthew Vaughn’s X-Men: First Class arguably had the best presence of women yet in the franchise. That achievement transpired simply because oodles of gals inhabited the story! Moira McTaggart (Rose Byrne) was a love interest for Charles Xavier (James McAvoy). Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) was a co-lead character grappling with where her allegiances stood. Angel (Zoe Kravitz) is one of the new young mutants. Hellfire Club occupant Emma Frost (January Jones) was one of the central antagonists. Even with more women around, First Class still continued some of the franchise's gender-related issues.

Most notably, Vaughn injected a flirty vibe for the entire movie. These were younger X-Men prone to hormones while the 1960s backdrop led to cheeky retro displays of sexuality. Charles and Erik (Michael Fassbender), for instance, introduce themselves and their powers to Angel (who is working as a stripper) by saying “we’ll show ours if you’ll show us yours.” As part of this visual landscape, leery shots of McTaggart and Frost in barely any clothes make up much of the screentime.

To be clear, the presence of scantily clad ladies does not make something “unfeminist” or any nonsense like that. Instead, Vaughn’s framing of these characters felt distractingly incongruous to the time period. The camera lingering solely on the various body parts of these women evoked how Michael Bay shoots ladies in the first three Transformers movies. Channeling Bunny Yeagar’s photography of Bettie Page from the mid-20th century or how 1960s Bond gals were photographed would've lent visual consistency to the feature. Indulging in distinctly 21st-century male gaze filming of women undercut First Class’s often quite fun period piece vibes.

If any filmmaker came close to achieving something resembling gender balance in X-Men movies, it's, ironically, the master of dad movies, James Mangold. Speaking to Vulture back in 2013, Mangold emphasized his insistence that The Wolverine's women have more dimensions than their relationship to the titular male lead. The movie also featured four prominent women characters occupying different roles. These included the villainous Viper (Svetlana Khodchenkova and Wolverine's bodyguard Yukio (Rila Fukushima).

Granted, The Wolverine doesn't suddenly turn into Portrait of a Lady on Fire or The Watermelon Woman because of these flourishes. Viper is a forgettable baddie with little personality to speak of, for instance. The villains still kidnap Mariko (Tao Okamoto) just in time for the third act to motivate Wolverine. Improvement is improvement, though, at least. Mangold would maintain this trait somewhat for Logan. Here, co-lead X-23 (Dafne Keen) is more feral and morally complicated than most previous X-Men lady mutants.

The next three mainline X-Men movies (Days of Future Past, Apocalypse, Dark Phoenix) unfortunately exemplified recurring gender issues not just with this franchise but with American cinema as a whole. Women in these installments didn’t just often have subdued roles. They also had to play straight-man to wildly over-the-top male characters...if they even got a role at all. Poor Kitty Pryde got to join Wolverine in going back in time in Days of Future Past in the comics. She’s left behind in the movie version of the same storyline. It's all Wolverine all the time in these movies, which means less room for ladies.

Across Future Past and Apocalypse, Quicksilver gets multiple set pieces showing off his powers. Jubilee, meanwhile, is forgotten in Apocalypse after a few minutes of screentime. Most devastatingly, Jessica Chastain plays the nefarious shape-shifting alien Vuk in Dark Phoenix with all the fun and energy of a checked-out lecturer. She’s a “woman villain” so she has to be serious and stiff, not fun and preposterous. Chastain is the queen of theater girl energy, she'd be so good as a campy superhero movie villain! She should be playing a character with the energy of Parker Posey in Josie and the Pussycats or Eddie Redmayne in Jupiter Ascending!

Unfortunately, these three titles exemplified how the X-Men movies, like so many motion pictures, have incredibly limited views of women. Specifically, there’s a viewpoint that women can only be “stern” or “paternal.” They can’t be fun, flawed, or ridiculous, lest they ruin the sexual attraction of cis-het male audiences. Jean Grey's lack of truly unhinged villain behavior in Dark Phoenix exemplifies this trait. This was a second attempt at adapting the Dark Phoenix comics storyline depicting the character's descent into villainy. Simon Kinberg's directorial debut could've had lots of fun with Jean Grey being malicious. Instead, the somber atmosphere of the film necessitated her being all buttoned-up even when she was getting vengeful. Kinberg seemed so uncomfortable dealing with a woman behaving badly that Jean is just unconscious in a train boxcar for most of Dark Phoenix's third act!

The X-Men comics suggested that women could be anything. They could be mutants with tiny dragon sidekicks. Ladies could be Dazzler, the coolest comic book character of all time not named Lockjaw or King Shark. Folks of this gender could control the weather and be princesses, simultaneously! The X-Men movies, meanwhile, have had far more limited views of how women should behave. Even the supposedly “anarchic” and “unpredictable” Deadpool movies succumbed to killing off Wade Wilson’s (Ryan Reynolds) love interest Vanessa (Morena Baccarin) in Deadpool 2 (the character is later revived in the film’s mid-credit scene). Vanessa's got mutant powers in the comics and fights crime under the name Copycat! Deadpool 2 could only think to kill her off, though, to further Wilson’s growth. How wacky!

Perhaps it’s fitting then that the original series of X-Men movies concluded with The New Mutants. Technically the first X-Men installment headlined by a woman, Danielle "Dani" Moonstar/Mirage (Blu Hunt). The indigenous ancestry of this character also makes her the first protagonist of color in the X-Men franchise. Naturally, she spends much of New Mutants receiving racist insults from fellow mutant teenager Illyana Rasputin / Magik (Anya Taylor-Joy). Credit where credit is due, The New Mutants does make four of its six principal characters women. However, numbers and physical on-screen representation do not equal good screening. That surface-level detail doesn't distract from its disgusting treatment of Moonstar. Nor does it erase how shoddily conceived every character is in this production.

Liking the X-Men movies doesn’t make you misogynistic. Nor are the recurring gender-related problems in these film’s issues exclusive to this saga. Everything from the Marvel Cinematic Universe to Star Wars and so much in between similarly struggles representing marginalized genders. The same goes for treatment of other oppressed groups like people of color, disabled folks, LGBTQIA+ individuals, and more (not to mention intersections of those communities). That’s what happens when you make art in a capitalistic society that intrinsically favors cis-het men. However, the revered history of beloved women mutants in X-Men comics makes the two decades of X-Men movies so extra frustrating. There's a template for great storytelling involving lady mutants! Alas, these films keep avoiding that template at all costs.

Nothing better encapsulates the death of imagination applied to X-Men women than the eventual appearance of Dazzler. The possibilities for grandiose femme/campy set-pieces for Dazzler are endless. However, Dazzler shows up for a fleeting cameo in Dark Phoenix (played by Halston Sage). Her big costume is a head-to-toe white outfit making her look like a High School fan film version of the mutant. Perhaps that attire and “grounded” approach was inevitable in a saga built on mocking “yellow spandex.” However, shoving Dazzler to an unfun background cameo exemplifies the wasted potential of women mutants in X-Men movies. We’ll see if the director of The Internship and The Adam Project improves this facet with Deadpool & Wolverine. Surely he can't do worse than the "X-Women" line...I hope!