X-Men '97 Director Teases Captain America and Marvel War

X-Men '97 director Jake Castrorena is teasing Captain America and the incoming Marvel war the team might find themselves in. ComicBook.com's Phase Zero podcast had the chance to chat with Jake again after a devastating Episode 5. The mutants are reeling after the attack on Genosha. But, the tease put out last week that included Captain America heralds the widening of the world in more ways than one. Castorena indicated that the shield that fell in that teaser does belong to Steve Rogers. But, if you're expecting him to be like the MCU, you might be surprised. Cap had some complicated feelings about Mutants in the 90s, and that might make its way into his characterization for X-Men '97.

"Magneto is kind of not matter right now?," Castorena joked before things got serious. "it is just that question, right? It is: How does our team, these characters we know and love, how do they go into this honestly overnight? It's a new world and what are the consequences of that? What are the ramifications worldwide of mutant and human coexistence now?"

"The the thing that Charles died for, that was sacrificed for, that Magneto ended up carrying the torch, only to be crushed down in his prime. Right? But, that he rose to the occasion of. It's exactly that. How do you deal with consequences that are just so big? And also again, speaking of consequences: What are those ramifications? What are those echo effects? How does it affect human relations? What political aspects does that roll into different schools of thought, pro or against. And, neutral people, not even getting into the team aspects of it. All the different derivatives of mutants and superpowered beings, right?"

Captain America Could Seem A Bit Unfamiliar When He Shows Up

"I mean, call space spade. We saw Cap's shield. You know what, a lot of people tend to forget that Cap of the nineties wasn't the same as our Steve Rogers. (Referencing the MCU's popular portrayal.) Steve Rogers in the 90s had a little bit of a bias against the mutants… But, yeah, what I will say is, the reason why I love the X-Men so much, and why I value them over a lot of the other Marvel teams that we have, because there's a lot of great ones at the end of the day, is they've got the danger room. Man, the X-Men trained for this stuff. They have a danger room, and everybody else just wings that stuff."

"So, this is knocking the team off off their rocker a little bit. This is gonna be some non-sequitur stuff that they have to face. An experience that they've never had before. But, I would love to see how the audience reacts to how the X-Men  handle it. Do the X-Men come together? And if they do, How do they do it? Especially after, something like this. And, how does our team dynamic shift? Does it shift? Or does it strengthen? We don't know, because just like 9/11 or COVID or anything in between, it brought people together and it separated people. And, it did some stuff in between.

"There's a lot of people on this planet, we all got to coexist," he concluded. "So you know, I really look forward to the audience watching our X-Men catch up to the future."

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