10 Best Movies Where We Meet The Villain First

10. X-Men: First Class

After three movies exploring and dissecting the relationship between Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr, X-Men: First Class took the franchise decades into the past to how the two iconic mutants first met. It was, at the time, exactly the reboot the franchise needed.

The movie kicked off with a gut-wrenching scene, in black and white as it followed a young Erik and his mother through a Nazi concentration camp in occupied Poland in 1944. The two get separated, bringing the young man’s anger to the point that he is able to destroy the metal gates keeping them apart.

The pace keeps going and quickly shifts to a young Charles Xavier in Westchester, but the opening was enough to know about Erik’s motivations in the movie. Where his powers came from, what triggered him, and a deeper look into his heartbreaking past.

For much of the movie, the man that would be called Magneto isn’t actually a villain, instead working as a part of the X-Men himself. However, by the end he has murdered Sebastian Shaw and split the X-Men in half, taking Mystique, Azazel, Angle, and Riptide to form the Brotherhood. Fans all knew who Magneto was, but that further depth given by the opening scene was vital to crafting an even more compelling version of the character.