Casting The X-Men For The MCU

10. Jean Grey - Evan Rachel Wood

evan rachel wood jean grey
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Although there have been calls for Marvel Studios to introduce a younger group of X-Men to set it fully apart from Fox's films, it's important to take note of what they did well. The first film, for instance, managed to handle the history of Xavier's school well enough, with a clear delineation having been made between the school's teachers, and the pupils themselves.

That generational divide has been commonplace in the X-Books for years, with the likes of Cyclops, Jean Grey, Storm, Beast and Wolverine usually the ones to take on leading roles at the school, while characters like Jubilee, Shadowcat et al. are put on a journey to reach those positions themselves.

Keeping in with the theme of this new X-Men series having a clear distinction between each generation of Xavier's school, it makes sense to have both Wolverine, Cyclops and Jean Grey retain their roles from the Fox films.

If Marvel were to follow the character's recent runs too, then Jean would very much be the leader of the team. Evan Rachel Wood - who's already taken on a leading role in HBO's Westworld - would be the anchor of the group and their key tactical mind, providing the character with real agency and not casting her as the victim of a ham-fisted love-triangle.

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WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.