Let’s dreamcast the X-Men before they appear in the Marvel Cinematic Universe

Even now, Disney draws up plans to introduce the X-Men to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Here are 20 mutants we want to see, and who should play them!

We don’t know how it will happen, and we don’t know when…but we know for sure that in the near future, there will be mutants loose in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Now that Disney owns the film rights to the X-Men, it’s only a matter of time before they’re brought into the MCU.

But when it happens, who will Disney cast to play these well-known heroes? It’s dreamcast time!

One of the most difficult things to deal with when imagining who could play Marvel’s mutants is pinning down the ages of the characters. In the original comics, the X-Men are introduced as teenagers. But in other iterations, such as in the movies from 20th Century Fox, we meet most of the main characters when they’re full-grown adults.

For the sake of this list, we’re going to use the Scarlet Witch, aka Wanda Waximoff, as an anchoring point, since she already exists in the MCU as played by Elizabeth Olsen.

Marvel Studios’ AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR
Scarlet Witch/Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen)
Photo: Film Frame
©Marvel Studios 2018

In the comics, Wanda is a child of mutant arch-villain Magneto. Should the MCU bring in Magneto — and it’s almost impossible to imagine that they won’t — then it would make sense for them to keep this link between him and Scarlet Witch, which means he would need to be old enough for it to make sense. That would put Magneto in his late 50s or early 60s, right around the age he was in Fox’s X-Men movies, as well as in X-Men: The Animated Series.

Obviously, this is all speculation. Marvel Studios could just as easily give the X-Men a teenage origin story that’s in line with the comics, like they did when they introduced Tom Holland’s Spider-Man. If they did that, it would make sense to choose up-and-coming actors. But considering that the last generation of X-Movies went that route, we’re hoping that they’ll deliver a multi-generational cast, one where heroes like Cyclops, Wolverine and Storm have already seen their fair share of action, and younger heroes like Jubilee and Kitty Pryde represent the new class who will one day carry on the legacy.

There are no shortage of memorable X-Men characters to choose from, and this is by no means an all-inclusive list. If we tried to dreamcast every mutant, we might still be here by the time the movies actually come out.

So here are 20 of the mutants we want to see in the upcoming X-Movies, and 20 actors who would knock the roles out of the park so hard that we might forget there were other X-Men films in the first place. (You can use the arrow keys to go to the next slide, or hit the button below.)