I've Been Reading Comics For 28 Years. Here's What The X-Men Movies Get Wrong About Mystique

Nearly 30 years ago, I walked into a comic book store for the first time, wowed by the rows of colorful artwork. I picked up my first "X-Men" comic because I liked the animated series and began my lifelong appreciation for being mutant and proud. One character stood out above all of the others, her fiery personality as vibrant as her bright red hair: Mystique. 

In the comics, Mystique is pretty complicated. She's a rather mysterious shapeshifting mutant who can transform into anyone, including mimicking their voice. While she's usually a villain for the X-Men to face off against, she's also had a few great runs as an antihero as well, though her penchant for violence means she's not really great X-Men team material herself (though she has tried). She's a lover, a fighter, a parent, and an absolute bisexual legend. Unfortunately, the movie versions of her are an inaccurate mess. 

In the first three "X-Men" movies, Mystique (Rebecca Romijn) pretty much only served as a henchperson for the main villain, Magneto (Ian McKellen), while in "X-Men: First Class" and its sequels, Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) was childhood friends with Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and the love interest of Magneto (Michael Fassbender). She only really existed to forward their character arcs, save for when she broke good herself in the abysmal "X-Men: Apocalypse" and became the new de facto leader of the X-Men. 

Mystique is one of the coolest characters in all of comics, and it's deeply frustrating that the movie versions just don't even come close.

First things first: For some reason, Mystique is always nude in the films, covered in blue scales, while in the comics she is still blue but has a pretty great white costume with a golden skull belt. Shapeshifter or no, get this poor mutant some clothes! 

Getting past the weird design change, the biggest issue with Mystique in the "X-Men" films is that she's pretty much always a sidekick of some kind. For the most part, she's paired with Magneto, and in "X-Men: Days of Future Past," she even sleeps with him, though we never get a hint of her bisexuality. The closest we get to Mystique's real sexuality is in "X2," when she tries to seduce Hugh Jackman's Wolverine by shapeshifting into Jean Grey, but even that is played as an evil move and not just her well-documented centuries-long comics lust for the furry Canadian. That's right, in the comics, Wolverine and Mystique have had an on-again, off-again fling since at least the early 1900s, because like Wolverine, she barely ages. (This makes her being the same age as Xavier in "X-Men: First Class" totally bogus, too.)

Instead of attaching Mystique to either Charles or Magneto, she deserves to stand on her own as the independent, one-of-a-kind baddie she is in the comics.

Perhaps the most frustrating part of Mystique's characterization in the movies is that she's mostly used as a sex symbol, a femme fatale who uses gymnastics-like moves to take out her opponents. While the movies do show off her considerable espionage skills, she's much more likely to use guns than she is hand-to-hand combat in the comics. 

The movies also fail to show her most important relationships with her foster daughter Rogue and her son Nightcrawler, though there is a cute nod to the latter in "X2." 

The "X-Men" comics are full of complex women who don't fit neatly into any tropes or stereotypes, but unfortunately, the movies reduced them all to the most simplified version possible, and Mystique was among those done dirtiest. While Rebecca Romijn is set to reappear as the character in the upcoming "Avengers: Doomsday," I'm not holding my breath that the Russo Brothers and screenwriters Michael Waldron and Stephen McFeely do anything to right the wrongs of the previous "X-Men" films. 

Oh well. At least we'll always have the cartoon shows, which have mostly done her justice. Thank goodness for "X-Men: Evolution."