X-Men: First Class Should Have Had a Different Villain

gamerant.com:

Despite being over a decade old, X-Men: First Class is still regarded as one of the strongest entries in the X-Men film series, due in no small part to the masterful performances of James McAvoy as Professor X and Michael Fassbender as Magneto. However, there’s one other major character in the film whose portrayal is likely to raise a few eyebrows among die-hard X-Men fans.

The character in question is the film’s main antagonist Sebastian Shaw, leader of the Hellfire Club, played by Hollywood legend Kevin Bacon. But aside from his name, the Shaw depicted in First Class has very little in common at all with his comic book counterpart. In fact, there’s another prominent X-Men enemy from the comics who would have been an even better choice for the villain of First Class.

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Kevin Bacon’s Shaw is first introduced as Dr. Klaus Schmidt, a Nazi scientist performing cruel experiments on a young Erik Lehnsherr, aka the future Magneto. He even goes so far as to murder Erik’s mother in cold blood in order to activate his mutant powers, earning him a place as Magneto’s most hated enemy. Schmidt reappears in the 1960s under the name Sebastian Shaw, now the leader of the secret society known as the Hellfire Club. With the help of his lieutenants Emma Frost, Azazel, and Riptide, Shaw manipulates world leaders in order to kickstart a nuclear war, setting the stage for mutants to take control of the entire planet.

While the version of Sebastian Shaw depicted in X-Men: First Class serves as an effective antagonist for the film, especially with his role in Magneto’s character arc, he bears only the most basic surface-level resemblance to the Shaw of the comics. Shaw was originally created by the