If I was made a showrunner & given a decent budget & no adult supervision, I'd make this happen:
The style of the show would be Lost with a hint of 24 and a dash of True Blood - character-oriented, suspenseful & utilizing mutants and their powers effectively as metaphors. The cast would be large ensemble (like in Lost); some characters would be more prominent than others but no character would hog all the spotlight. Similar to Lost, individual episodes would usually focus on one or two characters, sometimes (but not always) with flashbacks. Focus would be on characters - as humans, not as superheroes, so there would be no flashy costumes - just practical & unifying field/battlewear. The show would take itself and its characters seriously, so the most outlandish and goofiest aspects of the comics (aliens, magic, time-travel, alternative universes, space adventures, vampires, non-mutant superheroes, giant robots etc.) would unfortunately not make it into this show for stylistic & budgetary reasons. The mutant gene & some science fiction-esque technical devices would be the only fantastic elements of this show.
The show would mostly be about the core aspects of X.Men - the mutants' struggle for equality & for the right to exist, and the different views each character has on the situation. The social allegories (mutants as a minority/mutants as others) would be strongly emphasized. There would be some action but (partly for budgetary reasons) the tension would mostly come out of a suspenseful plot full of mysteries and moral dilemmas (a la 24).
Primary cast would include Professor Xavier, Cyclops, Jean Grey, Wolverine, and Storm as the main adult residents of the Xavier institute (here, both a school and a sanctuary/help center for mutants of all ages).Yes, yes - it's a boringly traditional line-up, but this is my fantasy series, damn it! Hellion, Cannonball, Boom-Boom, Sunspot, and Blindfold would appear as the main student characters, to a varying degree. Jubilee and Rogue would join the institute in the first episode - Rogue (a twentysomething) would act as the viewer's guide to an adult's life at the institute, and Jubilee would provide the point of view of a teenager. Later episodes would add at least Gambit, Psylocke, and Angel as recurring characters (with at least Gambit turning later into a regular). Other characters like Dazzler, Domino, Quicksilver, Cecilia Reyes, and Scarlet Witch (and maybe Beast, if my imaginary budget would allow it) would appear as guest stars throughout the series, some making recurring appearances. Kitty, Colossus, and Nightcrawler would guest star as the team Excalibur, and Morlocks and the X-Factor investigations (featuring characters from the current comic book line-up) would also appear at least once. Later seasons would see the introductions of Emma Frost, Havok, and X-23 as regular characters.
Main antagonists throughout the series would include Magneto and his Brotherhood (including at least Frenzy, Sabertooth, and Pyro), Mystique and Destiny (+ their accomplices), Friends of Humanity, the Hellfire Club (including at least Sebastian Shaw and Selene), William Stryker, Senator Kelly & Trask, and a de-camped & more realistic version of Mr. Sinister - each with their own mutant-related agendas. Dark Phoenix and Dark Archangel (though Apocalypse would SO not be in this show) would also have their villainous moments. All these groups would include several line-up changes with changes of alliance.
(As a general rule, characters who demand too much difficult and costly prostetics & make-up to look like they're supposed to look like would have limited appearance or no appearances at all for budgetary reasons. I'm trying to keep my imaginary TV-show within budgetary constrains.)
So my dream show would be a pretty basic adaptation of the series (which I understand would make it difficult to sell, considering that many of these characters have already been seen in the movie series & the animated series have covered many of the major story arcs). I'd like to see many of the classic stories being adapted into a live-action TV-series and being written well. The Dark Phoenix saga, for instance, was pretty much watered down into an uninteresting subplot of the messy X-Men: The Last Stand, and and I don't even bother to mention how Wolverine's origin story was treated in the horrific Wolverine: Origins - both of which are great arguments of why these stories should be retold in a TV-series. Of course I'd like to see the good story arcs that haven't been adapted yet, too, as well as completely original stories, but a part of me just really wants to see rearranged versions of the classic stories, too. As far as the movies are concerned, there's also been a general lack of the gradual character developement & character transformations I like so much about X-Men - which, of course, is something that simply can't be done in the movie format because of the very limited runtime - so a TV-series could get a better grasp of the characters than the movies ever could. I've liked all the animated adaptations more or less (except Pryde of the X-Men, but that doesn't count), but I'd like to see a good live-action TV-show adaptation of the comics, too.
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