James McAvoy was faced with a mammoth task when he joined the cast of X-Men: First Class as a young Professor X, though he did the role - and Sir Patrick Stewart - justice. Despite having some hit-and-miss material to work with, the actor proceeded to knock it out of the park in X-Men: Days of Future Past, X-Men: Apocalypse, and even Dark Phoenix.
Following the Disney/Fox merger, the actor's time as Charles Xavier appears to have ended, and in a recent interview with GQ, he called his tenure as the X-Men leader "one of the most positive experiences I've had with a studio." He'd add, "I don't really [see them as just] money gigs. Days of Future Past I think is one of the better films that I've been involved in."
Despite having fond memories of the experience, McAvoy would also share a brief complaint.
"My biggest criticism of what we did throughout the four movies was that after the first movie, we didn't take advantage of the relationship between [Xavier and Michael Fassbender’s Magneto], which really formed the backbone of the first film. So it was like, why did we just eject that massive weapon?"
X-Men: First Class director Matthew Vaughn decided to play with that dynamic, but when Bryan Singer returned to the franchise, he shifted focus back to characters like Wolverine and Mystique. As a result, it fell by the wayside as the series continued, with all those time jumps doing little to help matters.
Stewart recently got to reprise the role of Professor X in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, so does McAvoy now anticipate returning to pick up where he left off? "I'm very quick to say, ‘No, I'm done.’ Or ‘I'm not that bothered about coming back,"" he admits. "Because you move forward."
As for whether Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige has come calling about Avengers: Secret Wars, the actor says, "I’ve definitely not got the call. And if I did I would definitely not be telling you."
Read into that as you will, but something tells us McAvoy isn't saying goodbye to this character quite yet. If nothing else, we have to believe he and other actors from this era of storytelling will appear either in Deadpool 3 or the next two Avengers movies as a way of finally saying goodbye to Fox's X-Men Universe.
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