The Marvel Cinematic Universe X-Men reboot has been one of the hottest topics in Hollywood for the last month, as Marvel Studios finalizes the cast. However, most of the chatter has been about different actors all circling the same sets of characters, namely Professor Charles Xavier, Magneto, Scott Summers/Cyclops, Rogue, Hank McCoy/Beast, and a few others. But the world of the X-Men is much bigger than that, and now some new additions are popping up in the rumor mill.
One industry scooper claims to have confirmed that two additional X-Men legacy characters will be part of the MCU team. If that’s true, their addition may confirm just what era of X-Men lore is being mined for this new film.
The new post from scooper “James Mack” said that he was hearing word about “the actors for Angel and Iceman in the X-Men movie.” Marvel fans were interested in the possible casting choices for the two X-Men characters (we’ll get to that), but they were far more excited to hear that Warren Worthington/Angel and Bobby Drake/Iceman are part of the film.
If you don’t know the lore, the X-Men team that appeared in the first issues of the comic book (back in the 1960s) consisted of Cyclops, Marvel Girl (Jean Grey), Beast, Iceman, and Angel. It wasn’t until the 1975 special issue, Giant-Size X-Men #1, that the roster was expanded to include “international” characters like Storm, Colossus, Nightcrawler, and Wolverine. There were 12 years of stories featuring the ‘O.G. 5’ X-Men, plenty of lore for the MCU to draw upon.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day was a backdoor pilot for the MCU X-Men reboot, by (SPOILERS) introducing Jean Grey (Sadie Sink) and giving her a whole new backstory. Jean’s traumatic loss of family and her conflict with the Department of Damage Control unlocked a terrifying new level of her mutant power, including both telepathy and telekinesis. However, Jean was still very emotionally broken and needed some kind of found-family or community to help her overcome her grief and loneliness.
That was the very same premise of the original X-Men comics: a group of awkward-yet-powerful teenage kids trying to come together as a team unit and defend against “evil mutants,” while also going through their own versions of young adult angst. However, there are a lot of rumors claiming that even though some of these original X-Men characters will be on the younger side, they will reportedly be paired with an older class of X-Men, who are now working at Xavier’s school as instructors (like Storm). It would be a 180° flip on the classic X-Men and Giant-Sized X-Men formula, but it could definitely work.
The X-Men is currently in production, with Thunderbolts* director Jake Schreirer at the helm. No official release date yet, but we expect more announcements during the D23 Expo later this month.
