As you may have noticed, the X-Men franchise has been big on bringing back the cast from the first trilogy of the franchise in the new Muppet Babies iterations, especially now that Bryan Singer is back directing. Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen were even in the posters for the last one. Famke Janssen’s Jean Grey had a quick cameo in X-Men: Days of Future Past, but she’s notably absent from X-Men: Apocalypse which looks to continue the cameo fest. That’s probably even more noticeable if you happen to be Famke Janssen, just hanging out, not getting paid for a few minutes of work.
Janssen recently was a guest on Sirius’ Entertainment Weekly Radio, where she was asked what it was like seeing her character played by Game of Thrones‘ Sophie Turner in the new movie, which opens May 27th. (You can see Turner in the background of this poster, with her torso on sideways). At first Janssen was like, “It’s great, I love watching these exciting young actors from the comfort of my cat couch, LOL!”, as you’d expect of every diplomatic actor who still wants to work. But things got real pretty quickly after that:
“I’m actually really excited about it,” she says of watching a young Jean Grey. “And its not the first time obviously that it’s happened. In the X-Men series, they’ve been doing this for years. Although women, it’s interesting because they’re replaced, and the older versions – or more mature, whatever the politically correct version of that is – are never to be seen again. Whereas the men are allowed to be both ages. Sexism. I think that I should be back along with my younger version and the way that we’ve seen it with Magneto and Professor X.” [Entertainment Weekly]
She certainly has a point as it relates to Jean Grey. Sure, many an Actually Bro would point out that Xavier and Magneto are kind of the main characters, and Jean Grey isn’t, and they wouldn’t be wrong. And we did get a Rebecca Romijn cameo as Mystique in Days of Future Past as well as a quick appearance from Halle Berry as Storm. But keep in mind, Romijn’s cameo did involve being a sexy naked blue lady, “mature” or not, so it’s not as if being f*ckable wasn’t a valuable, if not the main, asset there — which doesn’t exactly contradict Janssen’s thesis here.
In any case, I agree with Famke Janssen. If I have to sit through every idiot in the theater clapping for the stupid Stan Lee cameo in every Marvel comic-based movie (he’s about as recognizable as the Adidas logo these days, no one’s impressed you know who he is), surely we could bring back Famke Janssen. And of course, I have only the purest of motives for wanting this.