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The X-Men will return again in Avengers: Doomsday. To put a finer point on it, 20th Century Fox’s version of the X-Men are having what must be their umpteenth swan song in the next Avengers movie (or two). For some fans, this is mixed news since we’ve been waving goodbye to the Fox-verse since the conclusion of 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand 20 years ago, and certainly after 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past, which also used timey-wimey sci-fi logic to present a story where major characters died but then got better. Come to think of it, that made it also a dry run for Avengers: Infinity War too…
All of which has left some frustrated that this version of the X-Men is central again in next December’s Doomsday. For proof, look no further than the latest teaser trailer, which is now online nearly a full year before the movie’s release. In the bit of sizzle footage, the forever-welcomed Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart give events their familiar gravitas, and James Marsden is seen at last rocking Cyclops’ iconic costume design by Jim Lee from the early 1990s—although to most, it is synonymous with X-Men: The Animated Series from the same era and its sublime sequel series now on Disney+, X-Men ’97.
The shameless but superb fan service of seeing Marsden’s Scott Summers get promised his long overlooked due, complete with costume and pride of place in marketing, signals a few things: first there is at least one more X-Man who didn’t get his proper send off between Days of Future Past, Logan (2017), and even the Marvel Studios-produced Deadpool & Wolverine from 2023. And secondly, we deep down cannot help but enjoy saying goodbye to these prized pieces of 2000s geek culture, no matter how many encores they get.
And for that same reason, we have one tiny, infinitesimal, but (we’d argue) significant suggestion to make for this year’s Avengers movie: send them off using the John Ottman’s X-Men themes from X2 (2003) and Days of Future Past instead of The Animated Series theme song.
Obviously given Marsden’s glorious costuming, Avengers: Doomsday will be melding nostalgia for the 2000s and 2010s X-films with that of The Animated Series, and if we are speaking purely X-Men music, nothing is quite as iconic as the opening credits suite written by Ron Wasserman. To children of the ‘90s, that piece of music was more epic than all of the prose and tales of Homer put together. And Disney/Marvel Studios has been shrewd to tap into this vintage of member berries, as proven when a few bars of the theme were played during the first crossover between the Disney and Fox eras in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022). There we saw Patrick Stewart briefly reprise the role of Charles Xavier for a cameo that felt more like a wink than a sign-off.
Given how Marvel Studios still taps into the even older 1960s cartoon theme song for Spider-Man after all these decades, there is no doubt that the Mouse House will be using ‘90s nostalgia when adapting X-Men for many, many years to come. But the Fox era of X-Men seems like it must be coming to an end for realsies this time. And if so, this is the perfect time to send them off with their own sound and vibe.
Plus, for whatever else you can say about the uneven and checkered history of the Fox-verse era, they had plenty of highs, including in the music department. The perennially underrated Michael Kamen provided a pounding, almost terrifying soundscape to the original X-Men movie more than a quarter century ago, and Henry Jackman’s theme for Magneto in X-Men: First Class (2011) remains sadly forgotten despite its intensity.
But the sound that defines the Fox era, warts and all, is the undeniably thrilling and lush compositions Ottman offered three X-Men pictures between 2003 and 2016. And wouldn’t you know it, two of them remain among the better superhero movies ever made. So if this must be the end of the Fox-verse—and it really should be at this point—let them take a bow to the beat of their own drum.
Avengers: Doomsday opens in theaters on Dec. 18.
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