The Uncanny Reveal
Aaron Couch
There's burying the lede and then there's burying it in an um, five-and-a-half hour livestream. I'm not kidding, it's that long. It's sort of a masterful troll by Marvel, but it also nearly completely bogs down the big reveals in tedium. Luckily, we have social media for that, I guess. But that too just doesn't lend enough weight to formally bringing the X-Men into the MCU, IMO. It's almost the opposite of what they did with Robert Downey Jr.'s return reveal.
Everyone assumed that most of the main Avengers cast would be reuniting here once Downey Jr. signed back on (in his new role), and obviously the forthcoming new Fantastic Four cast was going to be in. Ditto for the upcoming Thunderbolts team. But the big actual reveals are sort of sandwiched there in the middle:
The cast reveal also included X-Men actors Patrick Stewart (Prof. X), Ian McKellen (Magneto), James Marsden (Cyclops) and Rebecca Romijn (Mystique), who kicked off the modern era of superhero movies with 2000’s X-Men, the film Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige cut his teeth on as an assistant.
They will be joined by X2: X-Men United‘s Alan Cuming (Nightcrawler) and Kelsey Grammer (Beast), who starred in X-Men: The Last Stand for 20th Century Fox and had a cameo in The Marvels. Channing Tatum, who once was attached to a Gambit movie that never happened, will also appear in Doomsday after making his debut in Deadpool & Wolverine.
Yes, Stewart had sort of already been re-introduced in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (and Beast ever-so-briefly in that cameo as mentioned). But the John Krasinski-as-Reed-Richards element just made it seem like that may have been a one-off multiverse twist device (especially once Pedro Pascal was actually cast in the new role).1 And yes, there's Deadpool & Wolverine. But this is clearly meant to be the true unification of the X-Men and the Avengers.2 And it's sort of wild that it's (some of) the original cast. But that also makes some sense as it's a nice bookend homage for Feige per above.
Also, is there any chance that Hugh Jackman is not in this movie? I would put that at roughly a 0% chance, especially considering this aside:
Sources say that even with 26 actors announced, Marvel wasn’t done with revealing the entire cast, although when and how another unveiling will occur was unclear.
They're clearly holding some reveals back for latter events. That will undoubtedly include Chris Evans and presumably Jackman too. And obviously Tom Holland is being held back (is this non-reveal a bargaining chip in the Sony/Disney Spider-Man dispute?!) – Mark Ruffalo and Jeremy Renner are less clear, but if all of the others are back, they'll probably be there too. Benedict Cumberbatch says he's in, but wasn't here (left out because of his slip?). While it may seem impossible given the sheer size of the cast announced, there are still many other unaccounted for.
Perhaps some of the newer "younger" X-Men cast members will make it in here as well?3 I'm still waiting for the whole Peter/Pietro Maximoff situation to be rectified in a humorous way (after WandaVision completely and utterly teased us only to slap us in the face with a dumb plot twist when an awesome one was right there for the taking).
Anyway, beyond the exhaustive livestream, this is an exhaustive cast list, to say the least. The Russo Brothers have joked/not joked about how they managed it in the past Avengers films, but I'm really not sure how they handle this many stars in an actual movie that's not just a cut of constant cameos. Honestly, maybe it should have been a several-episode show? One that they could still release in theaters! There are no actual rules against doing that, Disney!
One more thing: where will the overall budget end up here? The Russos are getting $80M (for both movies). Downey Jr. is clearly getting over $100M. Just when people are gobsmacked by Mission: Impossible 8's rumored $400M budget, it's pretty clear that these new Avengers films are going to soar past $500M, each.
1 Have I mentioned that Patrick Stewart is 84 years old? Or that Ian McKellan is 85?! (But also not seemingly not slowing down.)
2 Some of us have been waiting in anticipation of this for years and years...
3 I'm still not sure how I feel about the Tatum-as-Gambit thing being fully legitimized. I think it was a fun part of Deadpool & Wolverine in the most meta way possible, but it worked in part because it made fun of how ridiculous Tatum was likely to be as Gambit. He needs to be an actually serious character here, obviously!