Alan Cumming's Nightcrawler may have starred in one of the best opening movie sequences of all time, but his character was wasted in every X-Men film after the fact. That's mainly down to the fact he didn't make another appearance until 2016's X-Men: Apocalypse, where he was then played by Kodi Smit-McPhee. He's due to reprise the role in next year's Dark Phoenix, but after that, it's likely that Fox's X-Men will draw to a close.
Coming off the back of a formidable performance in Call Me by Your Name, Chalamet is well on his way to rising through Hollywood's ranks. He'd also be perfect for the part of Nightcrawler, should the character be included in a future on-screen interpretation of Marvel's mutants.
Marvel Comics
Seeing as how Kurt Wagner is a top-tier X-Man, that should already be a given. Introduce him as a student at Xavier's school too, and you have a compelling lead to represent the newest generation of mutants.
Given him a fuzzy beard ala X-Men: Red, and everything will be spot on.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
