HBO
Calling Professor X: I need a mind wipe, stat. It’s going to be difficult to get over the mental images I have of Jean Grey, Cyclops and Storm in movie form. They’ve only really been Famke Janssen, James Marsden and Halle Berry. They have all been portrayed in younger form, too – Jean Grey by Haley Ramm in X-Men: The Last Stand, Cyclops/Scott Summers by Tim Pocock in X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Storm/Ororo Munroe in a deleted scene from the latter – but most fans hate those movies so even if those actors weren’t merely flashback and bit roles, they wouldn’t be employed for featured use of these three characters in their early years.
So, instead, we’ve got some more notable young stars cast as the X-trio for the next installment, X-Men: Apocalypse. Game of Thrones redhead Sophie Turner is Jean, Mud and Joe and The Tree of Life’s Tye Sheridan is Scott and recent Aaliyah portrayer Alexandra Shipp (in Lifetime’s Aaliyah: The Princess of R&B) is Ororo. Any complaints that these might as well be called the “X-Babies” should note that they’re aged 18, 18 and 23, respectively, and let’s not forget that Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult and the other new mutants of the prequels were also only around 20 and 21 years old. Of course, they weren’t replacing such major original figures of the franchise as these additions are.
Lionsgate
Combine this announcement, made officially by director Bryan Singer in a tweet, with recent confirmation that Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan will be nowhere near this one, and you’ve got yourself a property that’s pretty unrecognizable from the first couple movies, save for a likely appearance from Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. However, I don’t see Apocalypse retconning the meeting between him and these three eventual leading X-Men in their 2000 debut. Unless X-Men: Days of Future Past managed to change history enough. This series is too confusing. But who wants to see Jackman fawning over Turner?
Lifetime Television
X-Men: Apocalypse also adds Oscar Isaac as the title villain and brings back Lawrence, Hoult, James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender, all of whom we’ll see in theaters come May 27, 2016.
