Maggie Cheung would have been perfect, if they could have convinced her to come out of retirement.
So, the origin story of Ms. Wolverine.
Nah, this is the 2010’s. No way you make a wide audience move that doesn’t get bitched about.
But the complaints would be from the small white comic nerd community who complain about anything that doesn’t put them in the center.
With this it made larger news because it become a white-washing Hollywood issue.
If they’d cast a Tibetan woman, the film wouldn’t have shown in China. If they’d cast a Chinese woman, it would’ve been outrage because of China’s policies toward Tibet. And if they’d cast a woman of any other Asian ethnicity, it would’ve sparked “white people can’t tell Asians apart” complaints.
Marvel was screwed no matter what they chose.
Likewise, with X-23. There’ve been decades of complaints about how underrepresented women are in comics. So, Marvel realized they had a perfect opportunity to do something about that with one of their most popular legacy characters - Wolverine.
Now we see they’ll get complaints about that, too.
What were all the other movies with little girl killer monsters?
[Not taking a position on the tropiness of it, just brain dumping]
Two that immediately come to mind:
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Kick-Ass
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Hannah
Other movies with young women in kick-ass action mode to some degree
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Hunger Games
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The Divergent Series
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Push
(1956) The Bad Seed …
(1960) Village of the Damned In the English village of Midwich, the blonde-haired, glowing-eyed children of uncertain paternity prove to have frightening powers. …
(1976) The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane
(1980) The Children
(1989) Pet Sematary …
(2000) Battle Royale …
(2002) The Ring …
(2007) Trick 'r Treat
The first I thought of was Firestarter. And I saw a trailer for something recently where a lab created some girl with psychic abilities and she goes on a rampage, can’t recall the name.
And don’t start with anime - in Japanese culture there seems to be nothing in the world as dangerous as a schoolgirl. They apparently wiped out all the samurai over there.
Well, if you want to reach down the rabbit hole of potential problems sure…
It still would have been a fraction of the online think-pieces and TMZ headlines.
Serenity.
My 15 yr old self would not believe I’m saying this but: I think I’m getting tired of Wolverine.
I was surprised by how young they were playing the character of X-23, as the actress looked to be around 12, but some Googling shows that she is in her 20s, just very short. A while back, when contemplating who would have the right look to play X-23, I settled on Sarah Hyland. But this one’ll do.
Too bad they didn’t introduce her with a NYX movie, though.
Dafne Keen is 11 or 12 (born in 2005)
Unless there’s some age progression with different actresses in the film.
Heck, doesn’t Eleven from Stranger Things count?
TV spots have started for this movie, and it’s apparently rated R. Interesting that the studio is willing to take that risk - I know Deadpool was R, but that had a very different tone than this movie. It’s listed as “Rated R for strong brutal violence and language throughout, and for brief nudity”.
I don’t know why they bother with the leaping and acrobatics. Always comes across really badly.
The bad guys in this are apparently Reavers. For those who don’t have an understanding of the X-Men convoluted and ridiculous history/histories, Reavers are bad guys who have been chopped up by Wolverine, and re-built with cyborg parts. They’re very mean and have a big burning grudge. In one story, they caught Wolverine and crucified him.
Hopefully we’ll see a bit of that bad guy motivation by vengeance in the movie. If the villains are just a bunch of guys with big guns, meh.
Introducing a slightly small and feral X-23 is a terrific idea. In the comic books, Laura’s healing power is apparently even better than Wolverine’s (reading “Avengers: Arena” where he head is irradiated and burned down to a skull, it would want to be.)
Shame they could not introduce Wolverine’s son Daken. Daken’s death in X-Force, written by the remarkable Rick Remender, where Wolverine holds Daken’s face into a puddle and drowns him, and then has flashes of what their life might have been, father and son, as he travels home seriously wounded in the plane and utterly traumatised by what he has had to do was one of the most haunting things I’ve ever read in a comic book.
Patrick Stewart and Hugh Jackman both say this is their last X-Men movie: 'Logan' Is Going To Be Patrick Stewart's Last 'X-Men' Movie | News | MTV
My favorite is Saya from Blood: The Last Vampire.
And yeah, the book and movie Firestarter were the first to come to mind when I read the OP’s complaint and bucketybuck’s query.
Logan is certified Fresh at 94% on Rotten Tomatoes at the moment. All of the usual comic geek sites that I frequent are gushing with praise for it… some even suggesting that Jackman and Stewart should be given Oscar consideration for their work in this one.