Your starting lineup for the X-Men in the MCU?

[bell]

Mines would be

Cyclops
Emma
Cable
Gambit
Storm ( later showing some sort of romance with BP )
×-23

[yogaflame]

But when you start getting that big letting her go crazy with her powers it kind of renders the rest of the team useless. If they use her as just disaster porn I would rather not see her for a movie or two. I don't want them coming right out of the gate doing monster epic destruction scenes like we saw in Apocalypse.

I think I'd rather go big with Storm out of the gate(I want her in goddess mode in BP2, and Krakoa for their first team movie), then explore her powerless phase as team leader if you are so concerned with her dwarfing the rest of the team. She's the most important X-Man to me, though. I'd be fine with minimizing her powers on the team movies if she gets her own trilogy.

[yogaflame]

Regarding the student body: the whole gimmick of the the X-Men is that they are a school and teachers.
Regarding Storm: If she's not the center, she's going to get sidelined.

Which is why the next movie should be about Storm struggling to follow Xavier's example as headmistress of the school. That means the "X-Men" are a team of search and rescue operatives, and not vigilantes or mercenaries like certain other superhero teams. Aside from rescuing each other, they should be out rescuing kids. A small -rescued- student body allows for Nightcrawler to teach fencing, Colossus to teach drawing, and showcase what makes the X-Men so great.

I am firmly against the notion of the X-Men as teachers. The X-Men are superheroes. Xavier gathered his 'students' to train them to be effective superheroes. The 'school' was just a front, for the UNDERCOVER vigilante superhero team. Not teachers. That is a very recent development in the franchises' history, which spun out of Fox's X1! In my opinion, only Morrison actually made that concept work, and he only did so for 40 issues. We had almost 500 issues of the X-Men as superheroes before the teacher thing was a thing, and that run represents the franchises' commercial and creative peak.

I think the MCU should start with Giant Sized #1 and work through the Claremont run from there. If in a decade or two they want to try the X-Men as teachers of a huge student body of losers, fine, but adapt the classics first.

[CRaymond]

I am firmly against the notion of the X-Men as teachers.

Well THAT strikes me as an incredibly unique perspective.

Otherwise, I feel like we agree. I'd have an act two skirmish between X-Men, Acolytes and Sentinels in downtown Sydney ...and end up finding Master Mold ON Krakoa.

[Grimsmack]

My lineup would be:

Cyclops
Storm
Rogue (no Captain Marvel powers, yet).
Psylocke (Asian version, resident telepath)
Nightcrawler (If good make-up cannot be had, then scratch him from the team for now)
Thuderbird
Forge (Home base tactician, responsible for some of the more impressive gadgets the X-Men might have)
Dazzler (new recruit)

No Magneto, other than to imply he's been a villain in the past. Save him for later.
No friendly relationship with the Avengers to begin with. The teams are great when they are at odds with each other.
No heavy focus on Professor X, other than to establish he's a mutant rights activist and the X-Men have been established for awhile up to this introduction.
No ambiguous supervillian/entity/organization as the antagonist. Start off "small", and build from there. The X-Men don't need to save the world first time out.
No bustling school, with scads of teenage mutants running around. Just the X-Men, at least to start, or maybe a handful of teenage students in a prep school. If there are students, then the X-Men should be teachers. It's silly to think Professor X or Storm or the other X-Men would condone putting a kid's life in danger, and I don't think it plays well on the big screen. If students were to enter combat, they do so disobeying orders.

Yes to diversity. It's easy to do with all the characters they have to choose from. Producers do not need to resort to tokenism.
Yes to having the X-Men fight another super group, perhaps Emma Frost's Hellions or the Marauders. It would be cool to see some team dynamics from both sides, not just separate one-on-one battles.
Yes to showing the team having "fun" once in awhile. Perhaps a game of baseball or maybe enjoying their powers. Who wouldn't want to teleport or cause a rainstorm or pulverize an obstacle?
Yes to showcasing the women on the team. I'd like to see the women interact with one another as friends or antagonists, and use their powers together in an intelligent way. To me, this is the X-Men's strong suit. They have so many interesting women, much more than other popular teams such as the Avengers, Justice League, or Guardians of the Galaxy. There is no need for a character like Wolverine or Magneto to suck all the oxygen out of the room right away, like in past adaptations. Let's see Storm as the main protagonist, perhaps, and not as some love interest/triangle.

[Zero Hunter]

Well THAT strikes me as an incredibly unique perspective.

Otherwise, I feel like we agree. I'd have an act two skirmish between X-Men, Acolytes and Sentinels in downtown Sydney ...and end up finding Master Mold ON Krakoa.

Not really. For the bulk of their history the Xmen were not teachers. That only real became a thing in the last 10 or 15 years. Before that Xavier or Emma were really the only ones considered teachers.

[Nopozyzy]

X-Men:TAS line up or something more risky like:
Emma Frost
Havok
Gambit
Jubilee
Bishop
Nightcrawler
Polaris

[yogaflame]

Not really. For the bulk of their history the Xmen were not teachers. That only real became a thing in the last 10 or 15 years. Before that Xavier or Emma were really the only ones considered teachers.

Exactly. And if they don't end up adapting the Dark Phoenix Saga again at some point for the MCU, I would just use Emma for a New Mutants spin off franchise down the road as leader/teacher of the Hellions.

[Tazpocalapse]

I would start with the 05 as the very first students. They would appear sorta like the opening to Watchmen showing brief scenes of them being the first class and moving on to other things ( Beast joining the Avengers,Warren taking over the family business, Bobby going to college)Then i would start with Prof X recruiting Storm, Nightcrawler,Colossus,Banshee. Warpath,Sunfire. Rogue is brought to Prof X attention and he invites her to the team.

[Hypestyle]

Iceman, Cyclops, Beast, Phoenix, Angel, and Firestar.

[Sutekh]

Cyclops
Storm
Rogue (no Captain Marvel powers, yet).
Psylocke (Asian version, resident telepath)
Nightcrawler (If good make-up cannot be had, then scratch him from the team for now)
Thuderbird
Forge (Home base tactician, responsible for some of the more impressive gadgets the X-Men might have)
Dazzler (new recruit)

A cool lineup and nicely diverse. I like the idea of focusing on a version of Rogue who is using (and learning to control) her own mutant power, and not leaning heavily on some Avengers hand-me-down power set.

No Magneto, other than to imply he's been a villain in the past. Save him for later.
No friendly relationship with the Avengers to begin with. The teams are great when they are at odds with each other.
No heavy focus on Professor X, other than to establish he's a mutant rights activist and the X-Men have been established for awhile up to this introduction.
No ambiguous supervillian/entity/organization as the antagonist. Start off "small", and build from there. The X-Men don't need to save the world first time out.
No bustling school, with scads of teenage mutants running around. Just the X-Men, at least to start, or maybe a handful of teenage students in a prep school. If there are students, then the X-Men should be teachers. It's silly to think Professor X or Storm or the other X-Men would condone putting a kid's life in danger, and I don't think it plays well on the big screen. If students were to enter combat, they do so disobeying orders.

Yes to diversity. It's easy to do with all the characters they have to choose from. Producers do not need to resort to tokenism.
Yes to having the X-Men fight another super group, perhaps Emma Frost's Hellions or the Marauders. It would be cool to see some team dynamics from both sides, not just separate one-on-one battles.
Yes to showing the team having "fun" once in awhile. Perhaps a game of baseball or maybe enjoying their powers. Who wouldn't want to teleport or cause a rainstorm or pulverize an obstacle?
Yes to showcasing the women on the team. I'd like to see the women interact with one another as friends or antagonists, and use their powers together in an intelligent way. To me, this is the X-Men's strong suit. They have so many interesting women, much more than other popular teams such as the Avengers, Justice League, or Guardians of the Galaxy. There is no need for a character like Wolverine or Magneto to suck all the oxygen out of the room right away, like in past adaptations. Let's see Storm as the main protagonist, perhaps, and not as some love interest/triangle.

I love your 'Yes' choices. I love the idea of group on group action, and not 'everybody attack the one villain, more or less one at a time, like some sort of superpowered Bruce Lee fight scene.' One of the X-Men cartoons had a great fight scene in which the entire team was fighting a rival team (someone like the Nasty Boys?), and the 'camera' sort of panned through the battle and I wish they could do something like that cinematically. Also love the idea of showcasing some of the women on the team. I remember when Storm, Rogue, Psylocke and / or Dazzler were some of the 'X-Women' and the 'big guns' of the team, and definitely liked that. And it would definitely put the X-Men apart from the standard superhero team of 'five guys and a chick, who may or may not even have powers...' (I'm looking at you, Black Widow! I love you, but on a team with the Hulk, Iron Man and Thor, yikes. Your claim to fame as a founding cinematic Avenger is that at least you aren't Hawkeye....)

I'd also definitely like to see some good teamwork feats. I feel like it's kind of off-theme for a team that spends so much time training in the Danger Room to have exactly one 'team feat' and that's 'Quick! Someone throw Wolverine at the bad guy!' Seeing Dazzler flash-blind a bunch of enemies before Nightcrawler ports through them and takes them out with no fear of retaliation, or something similar, or Psylocke mentally disorient someone with quick reflexes with her telepathy and set them up for a slower heavier hitter to take out.

[Grimsmack]

... Seeing Dazzler flash-blind a bunch of enemies before Nightcrawler ports through them and takes them out with no fear of retaliation, or something similar, or Psylocke mentally disorient someone with quick reflexes with her telepathy and set them up for a slower heavier hitter to take out.

You read my mind - I have thought that if Dazzler and Nightcrawler were in a movie together, this combo would be great to see (i.e. Dazzler blinding a speeding Iron Man, then Kurt teleports him so that he bulldozes the side of a building or his teammates).

It'd be great to see Psylocke using her telepathy to keep the team in sync or Storm and Cyclops leading the team.

[Fokken]

Given the complexity of balancing/juggling a LARGE cast and how INFREQUENTLY such an endeavor succeeds, I would LIMIT the cast count SIGNIFICANTLY.

5 MAX -- in order to HOPEFULLY provide adequate TLC to each character and develop them well enough for the audience to CARE about them.

I teeter totter back and forth between wanting:

Astonishing line up: Scott, Emma, Piotr, Hank, and Kitty (sans Logan)
and
Just folks I'd love to see done right: Scott (insecure in life, exceptional in work), Ororo (gorgeous and captivating), Remy & Rogue (the odd couple), and Kurt (jovial and charming)

[H-E-D]

My answer differs pretty greatly depending on if I’m answering with my personal dreamteam or if I’m trying to make something a little more realistic.

Though it’s tricky either way to say if you don’t have an idea as to what the mutant status quo will be. My answer would be different for a movie that’s an X-Men origin story versus one where the X-amen have canonically existed for a while. I love Pixie and Surge but it wouldn’t feel right to have them be contemporaries of Jean Grey, for example.

[WTHIOTina]

Wolverine
Cyclops
Storm
Rogue
Gambit
Beast