Patrick Stewart, who recently participated in a Star Trek-related Q&A at the Montreal Comics convention,fielded a question about reprising his role as Professor Charles Xavier in the upcoming X-Men film.
“I think there is every possibility,” he said.
The most recent X-men film took the famous X-Men characters back to their roots, and studied the first interactions between Charles Xavier, who would eventually lead the X-Men, and Erik Lehnsherr, who would ultimately head up The Brotherhood of Mutants as Magneto, depicting the origin of their ideological differences.
The next film will be based, at least partly, on the plot-line of the book Days Of Future Past. The essence of the plot? Depicting the ‘current’ X-Men team of the past alongside their older counterparts from the present. The primary cast will all be the same actors from the previous film, but who will play the parts of the ‘old’ X-men in the flashes forward? That’s what the fan question was about.
” Halle Berry! Famke Janssen! Rebecca Stamos! Anna Paquin!” Stewart continued, apparently running down a list of his female co-stars from the three X-Men films in which he played Xavier. “Yes, I’ll be reprising -“
He was cut off then by his son, David, who threw out the names of the male stars, Stewart left off of his own list, Hugh Jackman and Sir Ian McKellen.
The moderator then stopped the two from discussing it any further, in a desire to return to questions about Star Trek: The Next Generation.
It seems like Stewart was on the verge of fully confirming that he would be in the role, but perhaps he was only about to finish with “… if they ask me to.” And why list off all of those names? Will they be joining Stewart in reprising their original roles, or was he just trying to get the crowd riled up. Without a recording of the event, it’s difficult to gauge the tone.
Perhaps it is only wishful thinking. It would be great to see all those start from the previous trilogy return for small roles in the new film. The stories are not really intended to be directly connected – there are glaring differences between the supposed past of the previous trilogy and the story being told in the new trilogy (for example, how Xavier lost use of his legs is completely changed) – but we’ve already had one cameo from the previous stars. Hugh Jackman, who plays Wolverine in all of the films so far, appeared for a quick gag in First Class, making one of the best funny moments in the film.
20th Century Fox, who owns the X-Men film franchise, and oversees the production of the films has not commented on the possibility, but now that the can has been opened, we’ll likely get an official statement soon.
X-Men: Days of Future Past will enter production in the Spring (they are apparently waiting for Jennifer Lawrence to finish filming the Hunger Games sequel) and is slated to hit theaters on July 18th, 2014.
