I'll take Mamoa as Wolverine any day, possibly shirtless.
I'll take Mamoa as Wolverine any day, possibly shirtless.
It's a good question what the next X-Men films will be like. If they go with Magneto in the first one, it might be too much of a retread of the first one, and if it's about the collapse of Magneto and Professor X's partnership, that's too close to First Class.
One way to do it...
MCU Film 1: X-Men emerge, and take on a bad guy who has nothing to do with mutants. Breakworld?
MCU Film 2: X-Men VS Magneto and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. The public gets kinda scared about the mutants.
MCU Film 3: Sentinels.
It's also possible that they'll reintroduce mutants in another franchise, maybe an Avengers VS X-Men film which sets up a different structure.
Sincerely,
Thomas Mets
I think waiting a while to do Magneto would be a good idea, and when they finally do him, he should be more like a charismatic terrorist/cult leader, and do the Avalon/Asteroid M version with the Acolytes. That would be sufficiently different from what Fox did with him[ad nauseam]. And for Goddess's sake, he better have his electrified forcefield this time!
Let the flames destroy all but that which is pure and true!
I would actually have he Shadow King as the first villain the X-Men face. They'd have to be careful not to make him too much like Ares in Wonder Woman, but I'd like to see the MCU's take on him.
The problem with Shadow King is that it would make the movie too Xavier centric again.
I would have loved a great XMen with Shadow King as the villain showing Amahl Farouk and explaining the situation. But instead of all Xavier, Jean would have a lot of screen time using her psychic powers, while the other members use their physical powers to thwart the villain. Xavier would be there too, but not more than Jean.
In Claremont canon, Shadow King is the reason Charles formed the X-Men, as their fight in Cairo after little Ororo picked his pocked was the first time he met other mutants, and the first time he had to fight an evil mutant. So SK is extremely important in this regard. I would take SK even further and have him be the reason mutants are feared and hated so much(in comparison to other superpowered humans). Claremont wasn't able to finish the Shadow King/Muir Island Saga the way he wanted towards the end of his first run, but even in the bits that made it to page, you can see he sees SK as a great evil in the hearts and minds of men.
Also, while Xavier is integral to SK stories, he does not have to be the only important character involved. With his telepathy and propensity to corrupt, you can explore all of the X-Men's mindscapes visually, which makes for great character development for them all. Properly played, SK could be their great nemesis, pushing and pulling from the shadows until things explode(over the course of many movies).
Let the flames destroy all but that which is pure and true!
It might be better to do what the Nolan Batman films did, and save the big villain for the sequel, where you don't have to worry about origins.
That could work.
He's an A-lister who hasn't been used to his full potential in the films. A knock against him is that he appeared recently in Deadpool 2.
There's potential in an arc for him as someone jealous of his stepbrother's natural talents who is willing to use dark magic to get power. Since it's a team series, it could make sense for someone else to be the main villain.
Sincerely,
Thomas Mets