In 2012, we had one of the biggest comic book movies ever made grace our screens - Marve's The Avengers! Regardless of whether or not you liked it (but I think most everyone did), no one can deny what a ground-breaking success it was. We got to see Iron Man, Captain America, Hulk, Thor, and more together in one movie universe. But why can't Marvel heroes not owned by Marvel Studies join the successful Marvel Cinematic Universe?
(The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and Guardians of the Galaxy posters are fan-made and not official. I just found them on Google.)
It's an idea that's been thought up by a lot of fans already - even the one and only Wolverine! In a recent article, Hugh Jackman enthusiastically discussed his desire to have Fox, Sony, and Marvel Studios work together and crossover the X-Men, the Avengers, and Marc Webb's Spider-Man (http://www.comicbookmovie.com/fansites/JoshWildingNewsAndReviews/news/?a=83097).
Now, I personally loved The Amazing Spider-Man, but it's totally fine if you didn't. We all have out own opinions. I also like most of the X-Men movies, the exceptions being X3 and Origins. While Fox's X-Men franchise does have an awful lot of continuity errors and problems in general, I think it is good overall, and I truly believe it will only get better with The Wolverine and Days of Future Past. Since these are the versions of Spider-Man, Wolverine, and the X-Men that your average moviegoer will be familiar with, I believe it makes sense to cross over these films into one massive, studio-shared MCU.
There's also financial and fan benefit from this hopeful crossover. If these three studios somehow agreed and signed contracts for their characters to appear in each other's films, splitting the cost as Hugh Jackman suggested, then the resulting movies would be enormously, unfathomably profitable. For the fans, how cool would it be to have the great characters on screen together for the first time? Plus, if there are three different movie companies making Marvel movies, we'll get three times as many films as we would if it were only Marvel Studios owning the rights to all these characters. One studio can only handle one or two films a year, but with three companies, we're getting upwards of three to four films a year!
If this happened, then the hypothetical "New Marvel Cinematic Universe" would go something like this timeline-wise...
1940's - Captain America is created and fights Nazis in WWII; he becomes a Capsicle and takes a 70 year nap (Captain America: The First Avenger).
1960's - Xavier and Magneto put together an early X-Men team to stop Sebastian Shaw during the Cuban Missle Crisis (X-Men: First Class).
1970's - The future X-Men travel back to this time (the "past" of X-Men: Days of Future Past). Wolverine gets his adamantium and loses his memories during the Three Mile Island Accident (X-Men Origins: Wolverine).
1990's - The X-Men stop Magneto on the Statue of Liberty (X-Men). The X-Men team up with Magneto to stop Stryker (X2: X-Men United). Jean revives and the X-Men fight her, the Brotherhood, and the mutant cure (X-Men: The Last Stand).
2000's - A few years after The Last Stand, a lone Wolverine travels to Japan and fights the Yakuza (The Wolverine). Presumably, the X-Men's dystopian alternate future occurs around this time (the "future" of X-Men: Days of Future Past).
2010's - Tony Stark becomes Iron Man to the world (Iron Man). Bruce Banner is radiated into the Hulk and hides himself (The Incredible Hulk). Tony Stark fights Whiplash with War Machine (Iron Man 2). Thor lands in New Mexico and learns humility (Thor). Spider-Man emerges and fights the Lizard in New York (The Amazing Spider-Man). SHIELD brings together the Avengers to fight Loki's invading Chitauri (The Avengers). Iron Man and Iron Patriot put an end to the Mandarin (Iron Man 3).
My proposed timeline above places the X-Men trilogy's events several years before the events leading up to The Avengers. I don't know how X-Men: Days of Future Past will affect this hypothetical timeline, but I speculate that it will reboot the X-Men movies similarly to J.J.Abrams' Star Trek movies. I think it will create a new course of future events that places the original X-Men trilogy in an alternate timeline, and I believe the "new timeline" created could very well be the Marvel Cinematic Universe we all know and love. In short, the X-Men franchise could semi-reboot itself into the MCU.
I know this is all completely unlikely, but I believe it would actually work to bring us fans a MCU open to movies starring The Avengers, Spider-Man, the X-Men, Wolverine, The Fantastic Four, and cosmic characters like the Guardians of the Galaxy and Thanos. If the comics can have all these characters in one awesome universe, why can't the movies do the same?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thanks so much for reading my editorial! Nothing but my crazy opinions and theories, I know, but I hope you like them! If you don't, that's completely fine. Feel free to drop a comment giving your opinion on the possibility of Fox, Sony, and Marvel Studios working together. Would you want it to happen? Everyone please be polite and respect each other's opinions.