Before there was aMarvel Cinematic Universe, another vastly popular team from the Marvel Comics universe monopolized the big screen with a far-reaching franchise of various super-powered individuals for our viewing pleasure.
The mainX-Menfranchise carried on from the year 2000 all the way to 2020, showing the life stories of Wolverine, Professor X, and Magneto, with other film franchises in the general universe such asDeadpoolstill going strong. In over two decades ofX-Menfilms, we have seen many different iterations of the same team with a vast array of powers. But among the best, the same names always come forth. Here are the strongest live-action X-Men.
5Wolverine
Weapon X
He’s been described as the best there is at what he does and what he does isn’t very nice. If by ‘what he does’ they mean cutting people up into pieces, then the person who created this quote couldn’t be more correct.
Wolverine has the deadly combination of being able to kill almost anyone, and immunity to most pain, harm, and sometimes, death. He was born with the ability to extract bone claws from his knuckles, whilst possessing the added ability of a healing factor to make this a more seamless process. As a result, Wolverine can dish out as much as he can take in, slicing up a room of bladed villains with rage whilst the slices he receives are healed immediately. To add to this, Wolverine was subjected to experiments in the Weapon X facility that infused his bones with adamantium metal, giving his biological retractable weapons a sharper and far more deadly edge.
With these sharp claws, superhuman strength, enhanced speed, and a natural disposition to rage-fueled attacks,the Wolverine cango up against almost anyone and get the win.
4Quicksilver
A Supersonic Mutant
Though he might come across as goofy and irreverent and doesn’t get as much focus as some of the other characters on this list, Quicksilver deserves to be among the list of the most capable members ofthe X-Men team. It’s not often that a character has such a good superpower that he has to be written out of a story for the main conflict to make sense. But that is the case with Peter Maximoff, with many fans having pointed out that someone who could run as fast as him should realistically be able to solve all the story’s problems.
Quicksilver has shown various impressive speed feats, such as his world-freezing time in a bottle scene inX-Men: Days of Future Past,as well as saving an entire mansion of hundreds of people from an explosive in one second, and being able to land several powerful solo hits on Apocalypse inX-Men: Apocalypse. It has been calculated that Quicksilver is able to run at approximately 2.75 million miles per hour, which is over three thousand times the speed of sound.
Quicksilver is so fast, that even during his supersonic speed scenes, when time is slowed down to a fraction of a second, he is still moving at super speed from a slow-motion perspective.
3Professor Xavier
Founder Of The X-Men
To sayProfessor Charles Xavierhas a powerful mind is an understatement. He has perhaps the most powerful mind in the X-Men universe in more ways than one. Not only is he exceptionally intelligent and persuasive, but he can peer into your mind and parse through it with his high-level mutant abilities.
The most obvious and well-known of his superpowers is telepathy. He can read a person’s thoughts or sift through their brain as if it’s a filing cabinet of documents to pull out the information that he needs. He can unlock minds as much as he can lock them, making it fortunate for those of the X-Men world that he does use these powers for villainy.
Charles' telepathy has a lot of other weird and wacky applications to it, giving him other abilities by default. He can play with people’s minds and freeze everyone within a certain vicinity. He can also mask himself, making them think he or whoever he wishes to sneak into a certain place is invisible. Charles Xavier is the unofficial leader of mutant-kind for a reason.
2Magneto
The Ultimate Mutant Villain
Magneto is another powerful individualwho could also be considered an unofficial leader of mutant-kind. Only he operates at the opposite end of the spectrum to his old friend Charles Xavier, wishing to spill blood instead of building bridges when it comes to saving his people. You’d be surprised at how much destruction one is capable of with just the simple ability of magnetism.
Throughout the movies, Erik shows complete mastery of his magnet-controlling abilities through grand displays of magnetic excellence, such as being able to extract the iron from a man’s blood through his chest and form it into a ball to use for other purposes. He can manipulate magnetic fields around him to give him a way of flight. He was able to move the Golden Gate Bridge as if it were a toy bridge made of straw.
For any piece of metal, big or small, Magneto can use his aptly named ability of Magnetokinesis to bend it to his own will. This, combined with his exceptional intelligence and his ruthlessness, make him themost dangerous X-Men villain.
1Jean Grey
The Phoenix
When first hearing about Jean Grey, it might confuse those who aren’t familiar with why such a character is at the top of a list of the most powerful mutants. She seems unassuming, not even having a superhero name like her peers in Cyclops and Nightcrawler. Telekinesis in itself is a quality superpower, the ability to move things and people without touching them, and having many applications. But even that is not enough to warrantJean Grey’s status as a top mutant. That’s where the Phoenix Force comes in.
In the original timeline, Jean Grey is known as the only mutant to be of a Class 5 rank, and it’s clear to see why. The Phoenix Force was an otherworldly force of energy that, once it arrived at Planet Earth, took over the body of Jean Grey, the young telekinetic/telepath being chosen as its host. We have seen in multiple films across different timelines in theX-Menlive-action universe, that once Jean and this force are one, it will take the entirety of the X-Men team to deal with it.
The Phoenix Force allows Jean to manipulate energy, especially of the red fiery variety, as well as regenerate and break down matter, making an already powerful Jean Grey as high and mighty as a powerful mutant can be.
