James Marsden talks X4, X5 and X3 death!

It was recently announced that Fox was actively developing X-Men 4 and 5, perhaps to be directed by Bryan Singer. Now, the man who played Cyclops, James Marsden (Hop), is talking about whether or not he wants to participate in the sequels and how he felt about his death in Brett Ratner’s X-Men: The Last Stand.

On the subject of whether or not he would like to take part in the new X-Men sequels, Marsden said in his interview with Movie Line:

“Yeah, I would love to! Honestly, people ask me more about that than anything and it’s almost embarrassing how little I know about what’s going on with X-Men: First Class. But I guess it’s obviously a prequel and it takes place before our movies, so I’m excited to see it, and I’m excited they’re making it. I think they’re smart, they know they can make X-Men movies as long as they want. There are plenty of characters and plenty of backstories, so I’m happy that they’re continuing the mythology. And I’m happy to have been a part of it at some point. But it would be great to get Hugh [Jackman] and Famke [Janssen] and Patrick [Stewart] and Ian [McKellan] and Halle [Berry] and everybody back together again to do another installment, our next chapter.”

When asked if he was disappointed about not receiving a proper “send-off” in the universally-loathed X-Men: The Last Stand, Marsden laughed and said:


“Well, the thing is I appreciate all the fans that have said that he didn’t get his due, or whatever. But for me it’s very difficult to look back on that experience with any sort of disappointment or regret. I feel really lucky to have been in those movies and feel very proud of what I do in those movies; it’s difficult when you have however many — 12, 15 — new characters that you’re trying to introduce to an audience in 90 to 120 minutes, to give everyone their due. That’s one of the reasons you’re seeing so many spin-offs, because every character could have a spin-off. You could have a Cyclops spin-off, you could have a Jean Grey spin-off — there’s an enormous wealth of backstory and character that you could make a franchise out of each of these characters. So in our X-Men they were always written from Wolverine’s standpoint. He was the lead protagonist. But that could have easily been Storm’s, or Beast’s — it just so happens that the ones I was a part of were very much focused on Wolverine, who was a very popular character in the comics. But I think there’s a lot more story to Cyclops, there’s a lot more depth that exists in the comics. But again, I’m also really realistic about the challenge of introducing and bringing all that depth to however many characters there are within the average running time of a movie.”