It’s About Time Disney Let’s Brad Bird Direct An MCU X-Men Film

Summary

Peter Sohn will direct The Incredibles 3, not Brad Bird, who might excel in a live-action X-Men adaptation.
Brad Bird’s Tomorrowland reception was mixed, despite visually stunning scenes.
Bird’s talent lies in mature narrative themes, making X-Men a perfect match for his skills.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Elemental‘s Peter Sohn will be responsible for Pixar’s The Incredibles 3. It won’t be under the direction of Brad Bird, who famously wrote and directed the excellent original film along with its sequel. In a perfect world, Bird would not be forced to do a live-action Incredibles remake (please, Disney, don’t do it). Instead, he should get the chance to apply some of that Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol energy to X-Men.

The animation guru took a tumble with his live-action Tomorrowland movie in 2015. However, it’s time he dusted off and redeemed himself with the perfect live-action franchise for his eclectic tastes and strong character-building talents.

Every X-Men Movie From Worst To Best

With the X-Men’s Foxverse adventure ending with 14 movies, it’s time to rank the highs and lows of this merry band of Marvel mutants.

Brad Bird’s Live-Action History

Brad Bird has directed two live action films: Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, and Tomorrowland. One of these films was a high point of action cinema and is routinely lauded as the peak of its franchise. The other is Tomorrowland.

Tomorrowland was based on Disney’s theme park of the same name, and was meant to be Bird’s live-action original passion project. This film was especially anticipated at the time, as it was coming off the heels of his brilliant work on Ghost Protocol. But somehow, despite Bird’s persisting belief in the Disney park-inspired movie, it bombed. Bird wrote and directed the outing, which was successful visually and conceptually, but failed critically and financially due to both poor marketing and the one film aspect Bird is most revered for: his story.

In a baffling turn of events, Tomorrowland, featuring a scientifically gifted teenage girl who’s transported to a futuristic metropolis whenever she touches a magical pin, was panned by critics for its meandering and overstuffed narrative. So what happened? According to an interview between Bird and The Wrap, the director believes audiences expected the entire film to take place in a futuristic vision of Earth. Instead, Bird said the film was actually intended to play out just as it did, featuring the journey traveled to get there.

In Tomorrowland‘s defense, the movie is visually stunning, and further demonstrates Bird’s technological ingenuity. Moreover, the metropolis scenes in the film hint at what the director can do when blending his animated mastery with live action presentation. Of course, there are cinematographers, VFX teams, and a host of other departments who assist in CGI implementation, but Bird’s painstaking vision is the north star toward which all of those factions march.

Brad Bird Excels With Mature Themes

Though Bird’s Disney live-action adventure film didn’t hit the way he wished it would, he does hit a consistent bullseye in one common area in his movies, animated or otherwise. Brad Bird is a maestro when it comes to injecting compelling narratives into action-heavy films. Take, for instance, The Incredibles.

At the top of the movie, viewers are introduced to the film’s protagonist, Mr. Incredible, or as we find him here, ‘Bob.’ Bob Parr is in a soul-sucking grayscale cubicle managing insurance claims, and everything around him suppresses his freedom. His chair’s too small, his shirt’s too tight, and he’s as removed from a corner office as he could get, with a building support pillar taxing nearly half of his already oppressively limited cubicle space.

This scene introduces us to Mr. Incredible as a consummate hero even before he comes out of retirement to wear a supersuit once more. At the risk of the heartless company’s bottom line and his own employment, Mr. Incredible quietly points an elderly woman with a recently denied claim to the appropriate powers that be. This occurs to the chagrin of his aggressive boss, who scolds Bob for having a conscience. The sequence, while drab, is made vibrant by the colorful dialogue and performances of Bird’s cast and characters, along with its shockingly poignant and mature subject matter.

The MCU’s X-Men Would Be Perfect For Brad Bird’s Talents

X-Men as an entity has historically dealt with themes of prejudice and discrimination among its tales of mutants fighting for tolerance while uniting against threats to humans and mutants alike. This sort of conflict is catnip to someone like Brad Bird, whose filmography is littered with tales of outcasts, championing ambition and individuality. The Iron Giant, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, and others are all cut from the same original oddly-printed cloth.

X-Men presents Bird and Pixar with a pristine opportunity to subject the Marvel mutant franchise to Bird’s tested and approved skills, weaving engaging stories into larger-than-life hero team action movies. It’s actually a wonder his name hasn’t been floated more publicly in the MCU space given his connection to Disney and the fact that The Incredibles is, in essence, a riff on The Fantastic Four.

Bird is currently working on another passion project, which is welcome, especially considering he’s not making Incredibles 3. This is honestly forgivable, given that Incredibles 2 didn’t reach the narrative heights of its predecessor despite being a fine film. We’ll wait and see with Jake Schreier’s X-Men and whatever happens with the mutants in Avengers: Doomsday. But, after that, when he is finished with Ray Gunn (2026), X-Men should undoubtedly, if unlikely, be at the top of Bird’s to-do list.