Kevin Feige’s recent confirmation of the X-Men reboot’s age range provides a major clue about Magneto‘s MCU story and casting. Marvel Studios’ X-Men reboot is already taking shape with Jake Schreier at the helm and Michael Lesslie penning the script. No cast has been announced yet, as Fox’s original X-Men cast will have a final big-screen appearance in Avengers: Doomsday and possibly Avengers: Secret Wars.
Marvel Studios CEO Kevin Feige has offered several updates on the MCU’s future, encompᴀssing тιтles such as Blade, Avengers: Doomsday, and the upcoming X-Men reboot. Among the details he provided, Feige confirmed that the MCU’s first X-Men movie will introduce a brand-new cast composed of young actors. According to Feige, the MCU’s X-Men тιтles will focus on “young people” who “feel like they don’t belong.”
The MCU’s Young X-Men Cast Means Professor X & Magneto May Need To Be Proportionately Younger
The MCU’s Charles Xavier And Magneto Must Be Young Enough To Reprise Their Roles Indefinitely
To meet Marvel Studios’ goals for the characters, the MCU’s X-Men actors may only be cast close to the first movie’s release. Likewise, to suit this young cast, the MCU’s Professor X and Magneto must be considerably younger than Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen. Charles Xavier and Magneto are central figures in X-Men lore, meaning that their casting will likely be tethered to that of the MCU’s main mutants.
Both Professor X and Magneto’s actors will need to be willing to reprise their roles for several years. While mutant stories aren’t always centered around Xavier’s main X-Men team in the source material, Xavier and Magneto are the mutant equivalent of Captain America and Iron Man. Hence, it would be reasonable for their MCU actors to be in their fifties, even though their comic book origins have a strong basis in the early- and mid-twentieth century.
Magneto’s MCU Backstory Needs To Be Properly Addressed
Magneto Needs A Significant Change In Order To Work In The MCU
An accurate MCU adaptation of Magneto’s origin, which is inherently tied to WWII, would require him to be almost a hundred years old by the time Marvel’s X-Men comes out. It would be possible to update Magneto’s story by changing the events that shaped his beliefs. Both Marvel Comics and the MCU have done just that with characters like Iron Man and the Punisher, whose origins have been based in more recent international conflicts.
However, the context of Tony Stark and Frank Castle’s origins isn’t nearly as influential on their character as the Holocaust is on Magneto. So, in order to avoid eliminating such an important part of Magneto’s story, the MCU could take a page from the comic books and explain that Max Eisenhart has developed decelerated aging. Whether as a side effect of his mutation or from an external force, the MCU’s Magneto could be a centenarian in a fifty-year-old body.
