We know that a long-term project for Disney right now is getting the X-Men into the MCU now that they have purchased the rights to do so through 20th Century FOX. There has already been a lot of talk about who would be cast as the new crop of MCU X-Men, and yet…everything I’ve seen makes me wonder if they are actually going to get a new cast at all.
Time after time, every time the X-Men come up in the MCU, both in obvious ways and in secret credits scenes now, there is a common thread. These are already the X-Men we very much know from the FOX era. Cases in point (spoilers for The Marvels follow):
Obviously we have Deadpool 3, which co-stars Deadpool, sort of an X-Man, kind of, carrying over Ryan Reynolds’ Wade from the FOX universe. And of course this third film co-stars Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, supposedly a version still canon with the Logan timeline, but at an earlier point, and this is very much an MCU feature. Further rumors suggest Jackman’s Wolverine could be a lead of Secret Wars after this.
Then the newest update, The Marvels, where Monica Rambeau travels through a multiverse hole and ends up in…the FOX X-Men universe. Here, we see Kelsey Grammer return as Beast, and then reference that “Charles” needs to be informed of what exactly happened here.
And speaking of Charles, we have that FOX Charles in the Beast universe, but he’s already been used as an alternate earth Patrick Stewart Charles Xavier during Multiverse of Madness, meaning he’s already appeared once.
I guess I am not understanding why Marvel would spend all this time reassembling so many FOX X-Men actors and then not simply use them as their own X-Men. Is the idea that they last as long as the Kang Dynasty and Secret Wars then the multiverse blows up and…then the MCU casts new actors in every single X-Men role?
It seems like it is certainly not impossible to simply go back to the original FOX X-Men cast, despite it first starting 20+ years ago. Tell me which of these actors would be “disqualified” from coming back, or have aged out at this point? I’d argue none:
- Jackman – Wolverine
- Stewart – Professor X
- Grammer – Beast
- Ian McKellen – Magneto
- James Marsden – Cyclops
- Famke Janssen – Jean Grey
- Anna Paquin – Rogue
- Halle Berry – Storm
- Rebecca Romijn – Mystique
- Liev Schrieber – Sabertooth
- Ben Foster – Angel
- Vinnie Jones – Juggernaut
- Shawn Ashmore – Iceman
And of course, if need be, there are younger versions of many of these heroes as per the First Class earlier timeline. I just don’t really understand why Disney is bothering bringing over at least four FOX members so far, with more to come no doubt, if they’re going to eventually erase them and have to cast a whole new crop of X-Men for what will effectively be the third time in 20 years. Plus, there are some they never added like Gambit who could still show up as originals.
It’s just a strange situation. The original X-Men lineup remains one of the best superhero casts in history. I think there would be more than ample opportunity to keep the FOX group almost entirely intact while adding some new members and have that merge into the MCU. Otherwise, why bother with any of this multiverse stuff right now? It’s different than the three Spider-Men, which was a fun little project, it’s an entire cast that current does not exist in the MCU. We’ll see what happens.
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