The MCU’s latest update about the upcoming X-Men movie makes one 2025 Marvel film even more important for the franchise. With Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine now being a part of the MCU multiverse thanks to ᴅᴇᴀᴅpool & Wolverine – and with more X-Men returns on the way in the cast of Avengers: Doomsday – Marvel’s mutant heroes are more important than ever.

This has meant news about the upcoming X-Men movie is more exciting than ever too, since the film promises to focus on the team in a way Marvel hasn’t in decades. Perhaps the most interesting update about the X-Men movie is its most recent, since this also makes a 2025 MCU film look all the more important now too.

The X-Men Movie Director’s Latest Update On The Movie Makes Thunderbolts* Even More Important For The MCU

X-Men movie director Jake Schreier’s latest comments on the upcoming MCU film delved into not only the progress that’s been made on the upcoming project, but also how the installment is influenced and ᴀssisted by the prior efforts on Thunderbolts*. Schreier stated:

I can’t say anything about it, but we’ve started work on X-Men, and that’s obviously very, very exciting. There are so many things that I didn’t know about before I started [Thunderbolts*.] The biggest learning curve for me was the proportion of the action to the more emotional, character-driven scenes, and how, even though it’s more shooting days than I’ve ever had, they get eaten up quite quickly by the action stuff. By the time we got to the end of it, it felt like, ‘Oh, now I feel like we get how to do this a little bit better.’

Based on Schreier’s statements, it seems that his prior work directing Thunderbolts* served as a way for the director to further hone his craft, and learn some of the nuances in terms of handling superhero movies specifically. This means the work done on making Thunderbolts* as strong as possible should also pay off for the X-Men film as well.

Schreier’s comments about balancing action and more character-driven scenes bode especially well here, given X-Men movies have historically needed not only a metric ton of action-packed sequences, but also time to dedicate to a range of different characters and their complicated and intertwined arcs.

With Thunderbolts* receiving critical praise but a weaker box office result, this is an exciting prospect, as it ensures that the lessons learned from Thunderbolts* – and the ways in which it succeeds – can be capitalized on by another MCU movie that looks set to be even more integral to the MCU’s future.

How Thunderbolts* Already Seems To Be Making X-Men Better

The X-Men movie roster has brought forth some of the most praised and criticized superhero films in the genre’s history. This isn’t surprising, since Fox’s X-Men movies began at a time where the genre and how it was being approached was very different, and since getting the X-Men right is no small feat for a film to pull off.

Broadly speaking, the X-Men movies work almost in the way the Avengers movies do, but without the same level of tie-in movies the MCU had to establish its leads and their stories. As such, the challenge of giving all the main X-Men team their own time in the spotlight while also furthering the events of the story is undeniable.

This is doubly true for any film that attempted to focus on the different generations of X-Men and mutantkind more broadly speaking, as this could easily balloon the superhero side of the cast into the dozens, making it effectively impossible for the majority of these figures to get any more dedicated screentime or focus.

This all means the MCU X-Men movie drawing from Schreier’s experience with directing Thunderbolts* is particularly pertinent. One of the true strengths of Thunderbolts* is the film’s ability to ensure all the main team get their own arc and own time in the spotlight, being focused on in big and small ways.

Hopefully, this strength can be also carried into the MCU X-Men movie, and used to help nail one of the more complicated parts of pulling off the superhero team on-screen. That said, the fact the New Avengers and X-Men have some overlap conceptually seems to suggest this will be par for the course.

Thunderbolts* & X-Men’s Similarities Tease A Strong MCU Movie Debut For The Team

While the X-Men are decidedly different on several levels to the New Avengers, they also have some striking similarities. Thunderbolts* sees its team serve as true underdogs who are able to relate to one another and their struggles powerfully enough to eventually risk it all for their teammates, and overcome the odds to become a major Marvel superhero team.

Though we can’t yet definitively know the story of X-Men, the team has historically revolved around essentially identical ideas, with characters that are mutants having often been rejected by society or otherwise made into outcasts, who are able to band together and connect with one another as members of the X-Men.

Similarly, Sentry having immense powers that he has little control of in civilian form – and that come with grave risks should he attempt to use them – is conceptually identical to X-Men stories about various members’ powers that have been explored in both the films and the movies prior, and are no doubt set to appear in some capacity in X-Men.

As such, these narrative overlaps seem as though they will help make the upcoming MCU X-Men movie stronger, since this means director Jake Schreier has essentially gotten experience with a lot of the core concepts that make X-Men stories work so well. Ultimately, this makes Thunderbolts* all the more important, and X-Men all the more exciting.