Earlier this month, Fox surprised the masses with a big revelation -- no, not the possible deal with Disney for X-Men and Fantastic Four rights, but rather that a new movie in the X-Men cinematic universe was coming, one centered on Jamie Madrox, the Multiple Man.

Gifted with the ability to create duplicates of himself, the solo film will have Tommy Wiseau clone James Franco take on the title role. What makes things weird, though, is Franco’s insistence that the film will be “hard R,” not entirely unlike last year’s Deadpool (and presumably next year’s sequel). “They are going to go hard R," he said in a recent interview. "And we’re going to take this superhero thing and really just push it into a new genre. So we’re working with Simon Kinberg on an X-Men property.”

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On one hand, this logic makes some degree of sense from Fox’s perspective. Prior to the release of Deadpool, it was hard to argue against the claim that superhero movies were in something of a creative rut. There was no better opportunity for Fox to swoop in with a raunchy, violent, and more importantly funny superhero movie that give a middle finger to CGI third-act punchfests. After spending nearly an entire decade in development hell and positive word of mouth from the leaked test footage, Ryan Reynolds and crew suddenly found themselves the king of the superhero movie hill.

It’s hard to argue that with the exception of Logan, Deadpool and First Class, Fox's X-films had been uninspired for a number of years, delivering experiences that were largely serviceable, but also incredibly repetitive. Smartly, Fox has used this opportunity to go forward and give us X-Men properties that have made the brand much stronger, in some ways showing that they may be better suited to TV than we could’ve imagined. In addition to Logan and Deadpool, everyone’s favorite Mutants have made a welcome return to television via Legion and The Gifted, a pair of shows that offer very different takes on the X-Men genre, despite being unconnected (maybe) to the cinematic universe.

It also helps that, if any character was going to be the perfect vessel for an R-rated action-comedy film in the vein of Deadpool, you could do worse than Multiple Man. After becoming a member of the second version of X-Factor, Madrox settled into a role as the prankster, lending credence to the comedy aspect of things. With an extensive resume of comedy films ranging from Pineapple Express to This is the End, it’s hard to argue against the idea of him playing the character. The man is extremely funny, and with The Disaster Artist now on everybody’s radar thanks to that critical acclaim, the idea of him headlining a superhero movie would definitely get everyone to sit down to watch for two hours.

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But on the other hand, using the “hard R” as a selling point for Multiple Man, as was the case with Logan prior to its release back in March, feels kind of...off, for lack of a better term. There’s nothing wrong with an R-rated superhero movie in and of itself, as both the Blade films and Logan have shown that the more mature rating allows you to get away with a lot more in terms of violence and spectacle that one could argue are both vital to the character. And since there’s clearly a vocal audience that wants superhero movies more mature and aimed at them, by all means, tap into that market. It’s not like movie ratings mean much anyway, and the R-rating isn’t as much of a box office deterrent as it used to be these days. But instead of realizing that an R-rating worked for Deadpool and Wolverine because of who they intrinsically are, Fox seems to think the other way around--namely, that a character can work for an R-rated superhero film just because it’s R-rated. And that’s not the best of lessons to take from this runaway success, especially when that includes only two out of eleven movies.

RELATED: Franco Teases ‘Hard R’ Multiple Man X-Men Film, like Logan, Deadpool

Both Deadpool and Wolverine are characters for whom violence is a part of their DNA. The Merc with a Mouth and Best There Is At What He Does don’t exactly lend themselves to clean violence in the way that certain people who have a shield or hammer do, and if there’s one thing that can be agreed on by fans, it’s that Wolverine’s claws not being streaked with red in prior X-Men movies is just silly. In Logan, because director James Mangold pushed heavily for it and it because made thematic sense for the story, the blood and guts sell the brutal and nasty world Logan, Laura and Charles find themselves a part of. And for Wade Wilson, all the cartoonishly gory violence fits in with his already incredibly screwed up view of life and reality.

Multiple Man, though? He doesn’t really have a hard edge in him that warrants such an R-rating. He was a prankster in X-Factor, sure, but he’s primarily known for starting a mutant detective agency, through which he got into some messed up adventures. There’s potential there for an R-rated film, yes, but a “hard R” in the vein of Logan or Deadpool? That may require some more work to make it actually, well, work.

More problematically, the humor of a James Franco Multiple Man film could be a huge turnoff. Franco’s humor has a reputation, as being a bit much. If you’ve seen any of his raunchier movies, or even just get that they’re going to try and replicate the feel of Deadpool, you can likely guess a few of the gags that they’ll try to do with a guy that can make copies of himself. He’s undoubtedly going to have sex with himself, just to see what it feels like, one of them is gonna come out as James’ brother Dave. Oh sure, it’ll definitely be funny, but those are two bits that we can all call with no problem. But the whole thing about Deadpool that made it work is that he’s not bonkers and irreverent, you didn’t really know how his humor was going to entirely manifest, whereas a dude who makes copies of himself has some more limited range.

A Multiple Man movie can work, of course, like pretty much any superhero movie with the right team and actor. But to take what could be "Orphan Black, but with a dude” and not use it to explore themes of identity and personhood would be a waste of an interesting character. Just as how not every superhero movie needs an act three CG spectacle, not every superhero movie needs to be R-rated in order to be different from the rest of the pack.