The Harry Potter Connection:
Harry Potter is a clear cut carbon copy of X-Men in some respects. Gifted youngster with unfathomable powers gets accepted into a special institute created by an old man for children with powers. The story of any random mutant in the Marvel universe or Harry Potter? Choose your pick. I mean, Professor X is pretty much a crippled Dumbledore. X-Men and Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (not Sorcerer's you Americans!) both came out in the same year. While one franchise, even in the novels, showed a sheltered, not so racist world between those with powers and those without whereas the other displayed the racist, discriminatory attitudes that do marr our everyday world. That isn't to say that Harry Potter never got to exploring these issues, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets started a trend of exploring inter-wizard relationships, especially between those of purebloods, half-bloods and mudbloods. An interesting parlay, sure, but it doesn't hold a candle to human-mutant politics. The focus on human-mutant politics, though, never allowed X-Men to showcase and focus around Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters.
How Has the School Been Used?:
Instead, in each film, we get a storyline that is based around the school while never actually delving into it. X-Men showed us plenty of glimpses of the school, shots of Professor Xavier teaching, kids fooling around in class and using powers while playing basketball. At most, though, they were just glimpses and through her brief time at the school in the film (before Magneto kidnaps her), Rogue was our conduit to school life. In X2, students are kidnapped or on vacation I believe and we again don't see school life at all beyond a field trip in the beginning. Yet that field trip scene is one but many exceptional scenes in an exceptional movie. Then there's X-Men: The Last Stand, which tries to give a bit more of the school but then Professor X dies. X-Men Origins: Wolverine doesn't include the school, X-Men: First Class is set before the school and X-Men: Days of Future Past is set when the school is closed. Now I'm a fan of all but two of the films listed in this paragraph, but it's not hard to accept that the X-Men film series haven't utilized the school on Graymalkin drive very well.
What is Spider-Man: Homecoming Doing?:
In Spider-Man: Homecoming we are getting a pure, unadulterated high school Spider-Man movie. The Sam Raimi trilogy, which is the golden standard of Marvel comic book movie trilogies (Captain America: The First Avenger pales in comparison to even Spider-Man 3), only featured high school for a little bit of Spider-Man. We did get that amazing food fight sequence though, nerdy Peter at the field trip - two scenes which showed a Spider-Man movie at high school could work. Now the Marc Webb series were both mostly set in high school if I reclal correctly, but were more focused on teen romance. Now I have my doubts about Jon Watts, most of his movies have been trash, and the original announced screenwriters were ill suited for the job, and then when I found out there were four more screenwriters? From a production standpoint, that all seems wrong... yet everything I hear about the movie persuades me otherwise. Sure Spider-Man was only in high school for around thirty issues of the comic, but it still proved to be the genesis of his character. It's in the high school issues he becomes Spider-Man, meets Mary Jane, overcomes his bullies and fights the likes of Dr. Octopus and the Green Goblin. So Spider-Man: Homecoming is doing exactly what those first thirty-so issues did, giving us the genesis of Spider-Man. The sequels too will be in high school, and I'm all right with that.
I'm not sure if it was Jon Watts or one of the six screenwriters who brought it up, but they mentioned a Harry Potter parallel with Spider-Man: Homecoming. Sure, in terms of Spider-Man it can only go so far as him being in school and maybe each film being set in another school year. First film is Grade Eleven, then Grade Twelve and then university - like year one, year two and then year three. Same concept, right? They've changed it so that the high school cast are also in parallels. Flash Thompson will take on Draco Malfoy like presence, the Hobgoblin fat Ned Leeds will be Ron Weasely and such. His high school class will be a huge part of making the movie a film like Harry Potter. In a way, that's what Spider-Man: Homecoming is trying to do, fill in the void left by Harry Potter that City of Bones, The Hunger Games, Divergent and the Maze Runner all failed to do.
So What Should the Next X-Men Film do?:
Fill the void left by the Harry Potter film series. As much as it wants to, Spider-Man: Homecoming won't be able to do it because Spider-Man is the only superpowered high schooler that we care about at that school. Their Ned Leeds isn't becoming Hobgoblin, their Flash Thompson isn't becoming Venom, their Gwen Stacy isn't becoming Gwenpool and their Michelle isn't becoming the female White Tiger. Plus, their teachers aren't going to start teaching them how to control their powers and be an integral, productive part of society. If they did that, then yeah, Spider-Man: Homecoming could fill in the Harry Potter void, but then it wouldn't be a Spider-Man movie anymore. However, what Spider-Man is attempting to do is what X-Men could learn from Spider-Man: Homecoming.
What were the best scenes of X-Men: Apocalypse? Pretty much every scene centered around the school. It was fun seeing McAvoy's Professor X teach like Stewart's did. It was fun seeing what little we did of the mall scene where teenagers were teenagers. It was especially fun seeing Quicksilver rescue everyone frozen doing their high school antics from the X-Jet blast. To some, the movie falls apart after that. I still love it, but that analysis is an editorial for another time. The point is, this movie had the most memorable high school scenes. Yet they weren't enough, what they did prove was what the next X-Men movie should do.
That's be like Harry Potter, which is ironic because Harry Potter was like the X-Men. Set the next X-Men a year after the fight with Apocalypse or a month afterwards. Put the aftermath of that destructive battle in the background, address it but don't make your plot obsess over it. We saw that movie several times already. Now show us a film where Beast teaches mutant basketball, where Professor X gives one on one classes to Scott Summers to try and get him to calm down. Kind of like the mutant lessons in X-Men: First Class, but slowed down because this time, it is the focus. Of course you need an antagonist and you need a way to nerf Professor X, but rather than be secondary to the plot of Jean, Scott, Kurt and Ororo being teenagers, it should supplement it.
Maybe Apocalypse wasn't eradicated and still has a mental presence in the Astral Plane, which he uses to disturb Professor Xavier from. Perhaps Mister Sinister and his Marauders are on a collision course with the school, with trying to get the DNA of Scott and Jean. Whatever the case, it has to supplement rather than hinder. Case in point, mutant cure hindering the Phoenix plot.
In Conclusion:
I loved X-Men: Apocalypse, but it's not hard to deny that while there were several reasons it got the undeserved score it did (chiefly the marketing campaign and Kinberg), there were sequences, not just moments, in the film that felt amazing. Which sequences were those? The same ones the X-Men comics laid the foundation of their multi-million dollar franchise with by introducing us to Professor X teaching Scott Summers, Jean Grey, Hank McCoy, Warren Worthington III and Bobby Drake all those years ago. There were sequences in this film that capitalized on that genesis and if the next X-Men film manages to do it as well, I'd say we're in for a treat everybody.
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