Chris Claremont Throws Shade at Fox's X-Men Movies

Chris Claremont is synonymous with classic X-Men comics during his decades-long run on Uncanny [...]

By Adam Barnhardt

Chris Claremont is synonymous with classic X-Men comics during his decades-long run on Uncanny X-Men. As it turns out, he's not too big of a fan of the X-Men franchise 20th Century Fox has released since 2000. During an X-Men panel at New York Comic Con — where it was revealed Claremont was returning to Marvel to write an all-new X-Men title yet to be announced — the writer threw a hefty amount of shade at the X-Men movies.

"I wish they'd gotten my films right," Claremont said during the panel. The comment came after the panelists discussed how Stan Lee's stories were adapted for the silver screen.

Claremont's most recent Marvel story was a New Mutants one-shot he wrote with Bill Sienkiewicz last month.

"The irony is that Bill's and my first reaction when we got the invitation...was to immediately ask for more pages," Claremont told Marvel.com. "From my perspective as a writer, and from Bill's perspective as an artist, we could have slammed this out of the park two or three different ways, but for me, if you have a visual talent like Bill and a serious concept such as the New Mutants, I would say you hit for the fences."

"When you're working with a visual creator as gifted and as outrageous as Bill is, it's hard to pick a specific moment and say 'That's it,'" Claremont continued. "Because I can guarantee that the next panel, the next page will come up with a moment that's even more enticing but in a totally different direction."

Dark Phoenix, the latest X-Men film largely based on a Claremont story, was critically panned, only reaching a 23 percent Rotten rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The review aggregator's Critics Consensus says the film "ends an era of the X-Men franchise by taking a second stab at adapting a classic comics arc — with deeply disappointing results."

X-Men: Dark Phoenix is now out on digital and physical home media.

What's your favorite X-Men movie from Fox? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section!

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