The X-Men Villain Perfect For Marvel Hasn’t Been Seen In Movies
The X-Men are coming to the MCU, and the injection of the X-gene might help Disney pull out of its recent cinematic slump. Right now, there are strong rumors that the Big Bad for the first X-Men movie won’t be someone familiar like Magneto: instead, the villain may be Mr. Sinister, someone who has not yet appeared in any mutant movies. We’re hoping this rumor is true because Mr. Sinister is, quite frankly, the perfect first foe for the X-Men in the MCU.
Here’s why Mr. Sinister is perfect.
Mr. Sinister is easy to insert into X-Men lore
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: the hardest part of bringing the X-Men into the MCU is explaining why we suddenly have hundreds of characters with superpowers running around. Such an intro will need to explain where the mutants came from, why they’ve been hiding, and why they have now gone public. As it turns out, Mr. Sinister can help the X-Men movie with all three of these things.
Sinister is a long-lived genetic expert and mutant
In the comics, Sinister is a long-lived genetic expert and mutant who has been doing mad science since the 19th century; it would make sense if the X-Men and other mutants somehow owed their powers to his genetic tinkering creating and his spreading the X-gene. It would also make sense for mutants to lay low for fear of Sinister hunting them down and transforming them into his own mutant guinea pigs. And if Sinister finds a way to weaponize enough mutants, he may finally pose a big enough threat to the world that it would make sense for Professor X to assemble a team to stop him.
Bringing in Sinister will help Marvel introduce other characters
One of the most ironic things about Mr. Sinister is that he will be far easier to introduce into the MCU than he would have been to introduce into the Fox films. That’s because the villain from the comics is intimately tied to certain characters: he’s manipulated Cyclops’ bloodline, cloned Jean Grey, and is obsessed with the idea that these two will one day give birth to the world’s greatest mutant.
Sinister will help us finally learn more about Cyclops
Needless to say, it’s difficult to introduce Mr. Sinister into an existing franchise, but it would be easy to bring him in as soon as the X-Men come to the MCU. Not only is he likely to be tied to the mutant gene developing (see above), but any background exposition on the villain will only help us learn more about characters like Cyclops and Jean Grey. That means we get a scary villain intro that will also make the inevitable origin stories of our heroes a little more exciting for audiences.
Mr. Sinister is campy and that will fit right in with Marvel
The last reason we want Mr. Sinister in the next X-Men movie is that the character’s campy tone will fit right in. From the very beginning, this villain modeled after Dr. Frank N. Furter has had an inherent silliness about him. Recent comics have really leaned into this, and the Krakoa era Mr. Sinister is presented as an arch queen who is just as likely to dish out fashion advice as he is to give a supervillain speech.
Sinister can go snark to snark with an mutant
While the X-Men have had some grimdark comics and movies, fans mostly latch onto the sillier stuff like Gambit’s bad accent and Storm’s over-the-top dramatic line readings. The MCU is already a quippy, pun-filled place, so it’s a safe bet the X-Men we’ll eventually see rubbing shoulders with the Avengers will be equally silly. If Mr. Sinister is the Big Bad they first square off against, we’re guaranteed to have a villain that can go snark to snark (and not just toe to toe) with everyone’s favorite mutants.
