The Gifted: X-Men TV Series is “About Bigotry” in 2017; Den Of Geek, July 25, 2017

David Crow, Den Of Geek; The Gifted: X-Men TV Series is “About Bigotry” in 2017

"Of all the many, many creations in Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s extensive oeuvre, few have ever proven as potent for allegory and transmutative topicality as the mutants themselves. In other words, no superhero creation has been as fertile for political commentary as the X-Men. This is something that The Gifted, a new Fox network series set in the X-Men universe, is going to expand on in new and challenging ways for 2017. And it’s something the cast is very proud about.

“Yeah, I’m going to say straight-up you guys, our show’s about bigotry,” actress Emma Dumont tells me during an interview for The Gifted after the series’ San Diego Comic-Con panel. “I’m sorry, but we see it in the first scene when Blink’s running for her life and a cop could easily kill her dead with zero consequences, because of prejudice, because of prejudging her for something people are uncomfortable with, that they don’t understand, because people are born with this thing, and that is literally where we live.”"

Why it's time for the X-Men franchise to mutate; Guardian, 6/16/16

Ben Child, Guardian; Why it's time for the X-Men franchise to mutate:

"At the same time, the clamour for superhero movies to modernise has never been louder, especially since Marvel and DC Comics have already led the way in print. The current comic-book Ms Marvel is a Muslim Pakistani-American, while Gail Simone’s bravura 2011 reboot of Batgirl gave Barbara Gordon a transgender best mate. Meanwhile, several of the X-Men are gay in at least some versions of the comics. You’ll no doubt have seen the Twitter campaign urging Captain America to be given a boyfriend on the big screen: its point, I think, is that Hollywood’s superhero vision is inexcusably blander, hokier and tamer than what’s often seen in print.

Directors such as Guardians of the Galaxy’s James Gunn have warned against the idea of suddenly making every superhero movie an R-rated, “edgy” Deadpool rip-off. But in the case of X-Men, delivering a more grown-up take seems like a natural progression, especially since the saga’s colourful mutants have always made the most sense as an oh-so-subtle metaphor for the existential struggle of the societal outsider."