But who should play Xavier's rival? Though he'd probably hate every moment of it, Daniel Craig - who's set to finally retire his tenure as James Bond in Danny Boyle's upcoming film - would make the perfect Magneto.
Charming, intellectual, but with the drive to see his vision through, Craig is everything Erik Lensherr should be in the rebooted X-Men series. As with Fiennes and Professor X Craig has some pretty big shoes to fill, with Ian McKellen having captured the essence of the anti-villain in every X-Men film he starred in. It's a task Craig can easily accomplish though, providing he deems the Brotherhood of Mutants to be more mature than Ian Fleming's globe-trotting super-spy (which they are).
In any case, this new series of X films should look to provide nuance to the divide between the X-Men and the Brotherhood. Craig himself is more than capable of injecting that complexity into the role, and perhaps make audiences question whether it really is Charles who's right about the path to mutant liberation, or Erik instead.
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.
