Recasting Original X-Men Movie If It Came Out Today

3. Ralph Fiennes - Magneto

Ralph Fiennes at the revealing of the new James Bond film at pinewood Studio in Buckinghamshire.
Ian West/PA Wire

Ralph Fiennes just looks like he was born to play a villain. Whether it's that steely look in his eyes or his pointed facial features, the man's got an imposing presence about him and that would be a fantastic characteristic to bring to Magneto.

Sure, he played Voldemort in five Harry Potter films and may not want to be the big-bad of a major franchise anytime soon, but where the latter villain is outright evil, Magneto is layered, complex and has much more depth, giving the role a bit of meat and making it more likely that an actor of his caliber would consider accepting the part.

Fiennes is currently 54 so he's certainly around the right age to portray the Magneto we saw in the original X-Men movie, and that also means he'd be able to play the part for a good long while before reaching his late 60s/early 70s, and possibly wanting to tone down the more demanding blockbuster work.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!