- Imagining a pre-MCU X-Men with 80s actors brings a fresh perspective on iconic characters and alternate timelines.
- A fan art collection reimagines the cast for the first X-Men movie, hinting at what could have been in a different era.
- Marvel's upcoming MCU X-Men projects spark new excitement for the beloved mutant team.
While fan casts ramp up as the MCU's X-Men approach, creator stryder HD has decided to look back at an alternate history and reimagine what the X-Men could have looked like in live-action in the 1980s in a video posted to YouTube. Among the 24 X-Men characters depicted are iterations of Magneto and Professor X that look decidedly younger than the post-millennium iterations that Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart made so iconic. These versions of the characters offer a hint as to just how different the team could've been had the Fox X-Men timeline seen its first release decades prior.
Actor
Character
Kurt Russell
Wolverine/James "Logan" Howlett
Rutger Hauer
Magneto/Erik Lehnsherr
Michael Biehnn
Cyclops/Scott Summers
Peter O'Toole
Professor X/Charles Xavier
Sigourney Weaver
Jean Grey
Val Kilmer
Iceman/Bobby Drake
Phoebe Cates
Jubilee/Jubilation Lee
Johnny Depp
Nightcrawler/Kurt Wagner
Angela Bassett
Storm/Ororo Munroe
John Cusack
Angel/Warren Kenneth Worthington III
Jennifer Connelly
Shadowcat/Kitty Pryde
Clint Eastwood
Cable/Nathan Summers
Emilio Estevez
Quicksilver/Pietro Maximoff
Lance Henriksen
Sebastian Shaw
Jeffrey Combs
Toad/Mortimer Toynbee
Sylvester Stallone
Beast/Henry McCoy
Ron Perlman
Sabretooth/Victor Creed
Michelle Pfeiffer
Rogue/Anna Marie
Jean-Claude Van Damme
Gambit/Remy LeBeau
Alex Winter
Pyro/John Allerdyce
Sharon Stone
Emma Frost
Brigitte Nielsen
Mystique/Raven Darkhölme
Dolph Lundgren
Colossus/Piotr Rasputin
Bruce Campbell
Deadpool/Wade Wilson
Related 10 X-Men Characters Who Would Never Work In The MCU Even though the integration of mutants and the X-Men into the MCU is exciting, there are several mutants from Marvel Comics that should be ignored. How The X-Men Movie Would've Been Different If It Was Made In The 80s The Actors Playing Professor X And Magneto Wouldn't Be The Only Difference Close Where X-Men: First Class and its sequels capably depicted a much younger version of the mutants that the original X-Men trilogy popularized, an X-Men movie made in the '80s would likely do the same for Magneto and Professor X. Interestingly, however, not all of the characters shown in the fan video above could have appeared in the first place. This includes Gambit, Cable, and Deadpool, who all made their Marvel Comics debuts in 1990. Other characters like Jubilee, Pyro, and Rogue were introduced in the 1980s, meaning a large chunk of the cast would have only appeared in a late-1980s production. Depending on when the movie would have been released, Jean Grey was also dead in Marvel Comics canon in the '80s, though a movie might have retconned this.
It's also clear that a 1980s X-Men movie would not have been so rife with CGI as modern-day iterations. This may have hampered how certain mutants' powers were depicted, though movies like Star Wars, which was released in the 1970s, help to illustrate how things like Cyclops' optic blasts could have been handled. Meanwhile, casting Sylvester Stallone in the role of genius scientist, Hank McCoy, may be questionable, but probably isn't too far off the mark of what could have been considering his star power at the time.
The storylines, meanwhile, might have ironically looked identical to those depicted in Fox's X-Men franchise, as the comic book runs on which the Dark Phoenix and Days of Future Past plots were based both debuted in the 1980s. A scrapped James Cameron-led X-Men movie also proves that Wolverine would have also remained a central figure. Given that Angela Bassett was also on the cards to play Storm in that same movie, the fan video certainly has some on the mark ideas about what could have been.
X-Men '97 AnimationAdventureActionSuperhero Where to Watch *Availability in USstream rent buy Not available
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X-Men '97 is the direct continuation of the popular 1990s animated series X-Men: The Animated Series. Taking up where the third season left off, Marvel's revival brings back famous mutants such as Wolverine, Storm, Rogue, Gambit, Cyclops, Beast, Magneto, and Nightcrawler, who fight villains like Mr. Sinister, the Sentinels, and the Hellfire Club.
Cast Jennifer Hale , Chris Potter , Alison Sealy-Smith , Lenore Zann , Cal Dodd , Catherine Disher , Adrian Hough , Ray Chase , Chris Britton , George Buza Release Date March 20, 2024 Seasons 1 Source: YouTube
