By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Even though Captain America: Brave New World sunk more than it soared, the hype for upcoming Marvel projects remains high. The most hyped film of them all is Avengers: Doomsday, a film where Robert Downey Jr.’s Doctor Doom will appear alongside iconic actors from 20th Century Fox’s X-Men films. Confirmation that stars like Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen will be in Doomsday has convinced many fans these will be our new MCU X-Men, but the truth is that Disney is secretly planning to reboot the MCU and bring in a different cast.
The Avengers: Doomsday X-Men Switcheroo
So far, we know that Avengers: Doomsday will bring back several legendary X-Men characters, including Professor X, Magneto, Nightcrawler, Mystique, Cyclops, and Beast. They will be played by the same actors that portrayed them in the original X-Men films, implying that these actors could become our main mutants in the MCU. However, the Doomsday sequel Secret Wars is based on a comic that rebooted the entire Marvel comics universe, so it’s a safe bet that these returning X-Men actors are meant to distract us from the fact that every character not named Wolverine is going to get recast as part of a reboot.
Now, this doesn’t mean that Avengers: Doomsday doesn’t offer fans a great excuse for fans to revisit these X-Men characters on the big screen. Without the popularity of those early films starring the likes of Patrick Stewart, the MCU may never have been created. It only seems fitting, then, for these classic X-Men to show up right before the MCU is transformed into something else altogether.
Avengers: Doomsday bringing back these classic X-Men also means that Kevin Feige can kick the can further down the road when it comes to announcing who will be playing these characters in future MCU productions. It’s downright difficult to replace these original actors, which is why producers caved in and simply brought Hugh Jackman into the MCU rather than trying to re-cast Wolverine. And the success of the X-Men ‘97 cartoon means that the performances of any new live-action mutants will be compared to the performances of their animated counterparts.
Still, we can’t fault the creators of Avengers: Doomsday for bringing these original X-Men back…the truth is that no matter how talented the new actors are, there will be major fan pushback to any kind of recasting. Getting to see the original actors suiting up as X-Men for one last adventure may very well serve as a palate cleanser before we discover who the new faces behind our favorite characters will be.
And who knows? The new cast may very well have an “uncanny” resemblance to the old one. Either way, some more new blood in the franchise will go a long way, which is something fans learned with the pitch-perfect casting of James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender as (respectively) Professor X and Magneto for X-Men: First Class.
Only time will tell if the sequel to Avengers: Doomsday will bring in any new X-Men actors (though you can bet your shiny claws there will be a surprise Wolverine cameo). Hopefully, the new cast will win fans over as easily as the original did. Those newcomers have some big boots to fill, and we’re dying to know if their costumes will be as comic book colorful as Logan’s was in Wolverine & Deadpool.
