“It was just too sad”: The movies Channing Tatum was too “traumatised” to watch for years
One of the reasons that Channing Tatum has succeeded, when many of his contemporary young male actors have failed, is that he has avoided being associated with a superhero role.
The issue that many actors face is that the character becomes more popular than they are, meaning that audiences don’t seek out the work that they do outside of that franchise, but Tatum has been able to establish a real fanbase because he has shown versatility and flexibility, which makes him the ideal leading man.
He got to prove that he was a ‘serious actor’ by working with Steven Soderbergh, took on a fun supporting role when he appeared in a Coen brothers’ film, showed he had a sense of humour with the 21 Jump Street comedies, gave an awards-worthy performance in Foxcatcher, and even made his own directorial debut. This year’s Sundance included the debut of the indie drama Josephine, in which Tatum’s heartbreaking performance as a struggling father will hopefully earn him his first Academy Award nomination.
One reason Tatum hasn’t completed the cycle and picked up the superhero mantle is that he had his heart set on the X-Men character Gambit, who was very popular in X-Men: The Animated Series in the ‘90s, and was later played briefly by Taylor Kitsch in X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
The actor had been developing a standalone Gambit film for years, going through multiple different directors, and was feeling increasingly burnt out as a result, so when the project never came to fruition due to 20th Century Fox (who owned the X-Men franchise rights) being sold to Walt Disney Pictures, it left him with a sour taste for superhero movies.
“Once Gambit went away, I was so traumatised,” Tatum said, “I shut off my Marvel machine. I haven’t been able to see any of the movies. I loved that character. It was just too sad. It was like losing a friend because I was so ready to play him.”
He eventually got his wish, however, in an unexpected way, thanks to his friendship with Ryan Reynolds, where at the end of Deadpool & Wolverine, Wade Wilson and Hugh Jackman’s Logan team up with a number of characters from previous Fox Marvel films, including Jennifer Garner’s Elektra and Wesley Snipes’ Blade, as well as Tatum’s version of Gambit, homaging the fact that the project had been in development hell for a decade.
While at first this seemed like nothing more than a wink to the fans who had been following the story of the X-Men saga behind the scenes, it ended up as confirmation of Tatum’s inclusion within the MCU, where he is set to reprise his role as Gambit in Avengers: Doomsday.
While it’s unknown how big a role they will end up playing, the highly anticipated MCU film is set to include the entire X-Men team of Patrick Stewart’s Charles Xavier, Ian McKellen’s Magneto, James Marsden’s Cyclops, Kelsey Grammar’s Hank McCoy, Alan Cumming’s Nightcrawler, and Rebecca Romijn’s Mystique, in addition to Tatum’s Gambit, for the first time since the Fox acquisition.
