Teenaged Franchise Filled with Mutant Angst

Marvel franchise producer Lauren Shuler Donner announced today that X-Men: First Class is not going to be a spin off but the beginning of another X-Men franchise. “It’s young Scott, young Jean, young Beast and that’ll be really fun,” she said. “The plan is to follow some of the characters into their own stories, and weave them back into the X-Men world. And hopefully First Class will become its own franchise and we can follow them as they grow up.”
Because the characters of X-Men: First Class, Beast, Angel, Iceman, Cyclops and Marvel Girl (Jean Grey), have already been portrayed at differing ages in the previous X-Men films, First Class will have to be not just a spin-off but a reboot.
Christopher Nolan gave us eight years to forget Batman and Robin before he rebooted the Batman franchise whereas X-Men: The Last Stand came out only three years ago. The Wolverine spin-off hasn’t been formally released yet and X-Men Origins: Magneto is still in the works to be made. Fox is certainly taking every opportunity it can to capitalize on their superhero property now that Marvel has its own production company and it is only a matter of time before the mutants get back where they belong.
I am a fan of superheroes as teenagers and an especially big fan of the comic series. Every time I have seen this done before, however, has been on a television show. Superman had Smallville, Batman had Batman Beyond and even the X-Men had X-Men: Evolutions. The serial quality of television works well at dealing with the melodrama of teenage angst, especially when that angst is coupled with new powers. Which leads me to believe that the films writer, Josh Schwartz will be able to script a quality film.
Schwartz earned the title of the youngest show-runner for a one hour drama while writing The OC and later adapted the teenage books, of the same name, into the hit series Gossip Girl. Likewise, this will not be his first time rebooting a series with a teenaged spin-off. The mother of one of the Gossip Girl characters is getting her own show, tracking her time as a troubled teen and starring Brittany Snow. The episodes that Schwartz writes are infused with a semi-satirical quality reminiscent of a young Cameron Crowe. Hopefully he can harness that quality into something that pays tribute to the genre of comic books while at the same time embracing the melodrama that made Raimi’s Spider-Man originally so strong.