When X-Men was released in 2000, and audiences saw their favorite Marvel characters on the silver screen for the first time, they had no idea the decades of superhero franchise films ahead of them. Now, after over two decades’ worth of movies, the X-Men films are still going strong.
Unfortunately, in that time, there have been quite a few films —and quite a few different creators across those films. In cases such as these, there will always inevitably be a few plot holes missed by one director, or ignored by another. To make things easier, these X-Men plot holes are pretty much just ignored by everyone, fans and creators alike.
10 The Unkillable Mutant Was Killed In The Same Movie He Was Introduced In
The prequel film X-Men: First Class is still inarguably one of the best movies in the entirety of the Fox X-Men franchise. Unfortunately, this movie also had a couple of major fumbles. One of the characters they introduced to the first X-Men team, Armando Muñoz, was killed far too quickly, for one thing.
Also known as Darwin, Armando’s mutation is the ability to adapt to survive literally anything. Of course, this makes it relatively bewildering that Armando is killed in the same movie.
9 Characters Get Recast In Ways That Just Don’t Make Sense
There are multiple timelines and different age phases in the X-Men universe of movies, and so a degree of suspension of disbelief is necessary for watching these characters. Charles Xavier obviously looks different when he’s portrayed by Patrick Stewart as opposed to James McAvoy, but he’s supposed to be a younger and an older version of himself, and so it makes logical sense, at least.
However, there are a couple of characters who simply slipped through the cracks and were just cast multiple times. Among those characters were Bolivar Trask, Moira MacTaggert, Angel, and Emma Frost.
8 Something Is Wrong With Sabretooth, Quite Frankly
Another character who was recast in the X-Men films was Sabretooth. Not only that, but Sabretooth in the past and Sabretooth in the future are wildly different.
While Wolverine and Sabretooth are biological brothers, and they spent a lot of their young lives together, the Sabretooth first introduced to the franchise is a feral man-beast who doesn’t recognize Wolverine at all —or even act remotely like himself. Sabretooth’s prequel appearance made this character all the more confusing and incoherent overall.
7 Wolverine Gets His Metal Claws Back At Some Point, Somehow
At the end of the film The Wolverine, the eponymous Wolverine gets his adamantium claws chopped off of his body. However, he is able to grow the claws back as bone claws when his healing factor kicks in.
As such, he should still have bone claws at the beginning of X-Men: Days of Future Past, because there is no conceivable way for him to have bonded new adamantium to his skeleton in the meantime.
6 The Movies Picked The Wrong Mutant For Trask To Copy
The entire motivation for Bolivar Trask to want to hunt Mystique in the first place is his desire for her mutated DNA. Because she can shapeshift and change her appearance into absolutely anything, including another mutant, Trask believes he can use her DNA in the Sentinels in order to get his robots to imitate mutants.
However, Mystique can only copy others —she can’t actually take on their mutations. The mutant who actually can drain other mutants’ energies and abilities is Rogue, who would have made much more sense —but wasn’t alive in the past, which ruins their time-traveling plot. Ultimately, the story ends up full of plot holes because of this mistake.
5 X-Men: The Last Stand’s Ending Has Been Largely Ignored
The original X-Men trilogy consisted of X-Men, X2: X-Men United, and X-Men: The Last Stand, the last of which is considered to be one of the worst films in the entire franchise. The film has several major missteps, many of which happen towards the end of the film. At one point, Magneto is given the mutant “cure,” but by the end of the film, he starts to regain his powers.
Later on, Magneto has his powers back full-throttle, and there are no consequences from this. Perhaps even more shocking, Professor X was literally disintegrated in this movie —but he still returns. It was said he put his consciousness into another body, but then he’s just Patrick Stewart again anyway, so none of it ends up making any sense.
4 Cerebro Has Multiple Claimed Origins
The master machine Cerebro, which Professor X uses to locate and interact with any and all mutants on Earth, has several origins in the X-Men universe. At different points, both Magneto and Professor X have separately claimed that they were the ones responsible for creating Magneto.
However, the movie X-Men: First Class showed that it was Hank McCoy, or Beast, who built the first Cerebro prototype. Professor X tested it, and Magneto was present, but Beast was the one who built it, all by himself.
3 Mystique’s Stryker Disguise Fell By The Wayside
There are a few cliffhangers in the X-Men franchise that ultimately end up ignored. Nobody follows through on these plots, as interesting as they may have seemed when they were first posited in the films. The end of X-Men: Days of Future Past sees one of these forgotten cliffhangers, unfortunately.
Here, Stryker recaptures Wolverine —or so it seems. It was revealed to the audience that Stryker was actually Mystique in disguise. Later on, Mystique is not Stryker, and nobody references this —so it’s completely unknown what, if anything at all, actually happened with this plot.
2 Wolverine Has Incredibly Selective Amnesia At Times
The explanation given for Wolverine not remembering key elements and characters from his past is that he has amnesia from his trauma. As such, he has forgotten pretty much everything from his early life —he only remembers becoming Weapon X and everything after that point.
In the movie The Wolverine, though, Wolverine is fully capable of referencing memories he has of being in Japan during the Second World War. He has selective memory loss, it seems, if he can remember these events but nothing else.
1 The Aging Jump Between The Younger Actors & The Older Actors Is Absurd
Much like Ewan McGregor somehow becoming Alec Guinness between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope, the characters in the X-Men franchise age shockingly quickly and relatively badly, for their ages. Actors like James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender played Professor X and Magneto well into the ’80s and into the early ’90s.
However, in order for them to look like that in 1992, but to look like Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan by 2000 —only eight years later— something would have to go horribly awry. Of course, many fans just ignore this because the performances are just that good, but, ultimately, this makes no sense at all.
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