‘The Gifted’ Teaser: Bryan Singer Brings The X-Men To Fox
By Jacob Hall/May 9, 2017 2:58 pm EST
You can watch the first teaser below.
Perhaps the strangest thing about this teaser is that there’s no mention of the X-Men anywhere. If not for the small Marvel logo at the bottom of the title screen, you could think this was just another TV show about kids with superpowers going on the run from the government with the help of their parents, which is an entire subgenre at this point. The second strangest thing about this teaser is that it’s so very…bland.
Okay, maybe that second part isn’t too surprising. While Bryan Singer has made a few good X-Men movies, he also made the lethargic X-Men: Apocalypse, a film that seemed about as bored with this superhero universe as possible. It certainly doesn’t help that The Gifted is arriving in the wake of Logan, Deadpool, and FX’s Legion, each of which proved that there’s plenty of gas in the tank for Mutantkind, provided that everyone involved is willing to really shake things up and go for broke. It feels like we’re at the point where our superhero TV shows need to be unapologetic about their origins and embrace the colorful costumes and more colorful demeanors of their characters. Heck, just look to The CW, where The Flash, Arrow, and Supergirl have been taking full advantage of mainstream audiences being totally okay with gonzo comic book storytelling at this point.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m very disappointed by the lack of yellow spandex in this footage.
Then again, we warned about this. Singer himself noted that this wasn’t going to be like Legion and that it was going to be a family story:
The official synopsis for Gifted follows:
I’ll tell you, it’s very different from [Legion], visually, and yet it’s very different from the X-Men films as well. It’s mostly about a family. It’s a family drama. There’ll be effects, powers, and things like that. But at its heart, it’s about a family. It’s an emotional story. […] It’s another standalone. That’s our design. We developed it together — not together, but like at the same time. The only reason I was able to direct it was because the movie I want to make next, I’m not going to be able to make until September, so it gave me four months, and I suddenly said, “Why don’t I take the helm?”
