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 sexy femme fatale who does the bidding of Magneto, and little more. While there is conflict between the two in "X-Men: Days of Future Past" and the films that follow, Mystique still mostly serves as a foil for Magneto (or, occasionally, Xavier). That stinks, because in the comics, Mystique is a fully independent baddie who can make life hell for the X-Men all on her own. She's been the leader of the anti-X-Men group The Brotherhood of Mutants on and off since 1981, when she revived the group after Magneto's original team disbanded. Plenty of other villains have led the Brotherhood, but Mystique has done it the most times, making her at the very least an equal to Magneto, not just a sidekick. The cartoon series "X-Men Evolution" drew from comics history and did a great job with a somewhat family-friendly version of Mystique, showing future X-Men movie makers that it is possible to treat her right on screen.

There are some other things the movies totally ignored, from Mystique's truly terrible parenting of her foster daughter Rogue and her son Nightcrawler to her complex romantic relationships, but relegating her to sidekick material is definitely the most egregious. 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 will do anything to right the wrongs of the previous "X-Men" films. Oh well. I'll always have my comics.