It’s undeniable: without the success of the X-Men movies, going back to 2000, you’d have no Marvel Cinematic Universe today. The mutant franchise und
It’s undeniable: without the success of the X-Men movies, going back to 2000, you’d have no Marvel Cinematic Universe today. The mutant franchise under 20th Century Fox gave us Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, Patrick Stewart’s Professor X, Ian McKellen’s Magneto and many more – and the response from audiences proved there was a place in Hollywood for full-fledged comic book blockbusters. Now, over 25 years later, the original X-Men (or, a handful of them at least), will return in Avengers: Doomsday – a neat part of the Multiverse Saga’s premise meaning that the venerable X-Men movies can be, in their own way, canon.
The result is that Doomsday will see several X-Men characters – including James Marsden’s Cyclops, Rebecca Romijn’s Mystique, the aforementioned Professor X and Magneto, and more – share the screen with the current roster of Marvel heroes, like Pedro Pascal’s Reed Richards, and Anthony Mackie’s Captain America. For Marvel boss Kevin Feige, it’s the fulfilment of a long-time dream. “You see interviews of Hugh Jackman 15, 20 years ago saying, ‘People say it’s impossible, but maybe someday the X-Men and the Avengers can all get together,’” explains Feige, who was an associate producer way back on 2000’s X-Men. “It just felt right. It just felt like the fun way to culminate a quarter-century of storytelling.”
For Marsden’s Cyclops, aka Scott Summers, it means a chance to truly become the X-Men’s leader on screen – after his baffling demise in X-Men: The Last Stand was mercifully undone by the timeline-altering events of 2014’s Days Of Future Past. “I like to think of Scott as a noble and good man, who, at the end of the day, will do the right thing,” Marsden tells Empire. Though, the multiverse-collapsing stakes of Doomsday mean there are no uncomplicated decisions to be made. “It probably reveals quite a lot about your character, what you’re willing to do,” he teases. “And it’s not black and white. It has a lot of very serious, potentially catastrophic implications.”
All that, and audiences will get to see more of Channing Tatum’s Gambit – whose inclusion in Deadpool & Wolverine paid off a years-long real-world piece of development hell lore (for years and years, Tatum was expected to play Gambit in a film that never came to be), and now finds himself in the hallowed halls of the X-Mansion. “He’s a standout,” promises Feige of Tatum here. “It’s fun to see Gambit be as charismatic as he was in Deadpool & Wolverine, and yet in Doomsday it’s not all for laughs. He’s a fully-rounded character.” Bonne chance, mon ami.
Read Empire’s full 22-page Avengers: Doomsday coverage – speaking to Kevin Feige, Joe and Anthony Russo, Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Pedro Pascal, Ian McKellen, Florence Pugh, Anthony Mackie, Simu Liu, David Harbour, Vanessa Kirby, Sebastian Stan, Letitia Wright, Tom Hiddleston, Hannah John-Kamen, James Marsden, Rebecca Romijn, and Winston Duke – in the January 2027 issue, on sale Thursday November 19, with four covers to collect. Limited copies of each cover are available to pre-order online here. Avengers: Doomsday comes to cinemas from December 18.
