Recasting X-Men: 14 Actors Who Need To Replace Singer's Mutants

14. Mark Strong - Professor Xavier

The timeline is so royally screwed in this franchise that audiences are supposed to believe the 36-year-old (at the time of shooting) James McAvoy was playing a 51-year-old Professor Xavier in X-Men: Apocalypse.

Hilariously, Patrick Stewart was actually much closer to that age when he filmed the original X-Men movie, which just underlines how absurd the aging process is in these movies.

With the belief that Apocalypse brings the McAvoy-Fassbender-Lawrence trilogy to an end, it doesn't seem terribly likely the A-list trio will return, and though Patrick Stewart continues to defy the laws of aging and could probably just about get away with playing Xavier in his 60s for the next core movie, a recast seems a lot more reasonable.

If the gap between McAvoy and Stewart needs to bridged, it's hard to imagine a better choice than Mark Strong: firstly, he's a lot more age-appropriate at 53 years old, he's got an awesome voice, a bald head and a track record of scene-stealing in great movies.

Again, Fox may just go for the known quantity with Stewart once again, but when Stewart's no longer with us further down the line, Strong would be a fantastic replacement for an upper-middle-aged Xavier.