14 times ‘X-Men’ films strayed from the comic

In the movie, Moira attempts to shoot Magneto, but the bullet goes awry and lands in Xavier’s spine, crippling him. In the comics however, Xavier is punished by an alien named Lucifer who crushes his legs with a giant rock. 

In the comic books, Mystique prefers to romance the ladies, not Beast, like in the movies. 

In the comic books, Havok is Cyclops’ baby brother who was raised in an orphanage and has trouble controlling his plasma blasts. In X-Men: First Class, he’s a prisoner who’s rescued by the X-Men after it’s discovered Havok is using Xavier’s Cerebro device — which may prove helpful to the X-Men.

In the comics, Xavier has very strong telepathic powers, making his mental abilities very sharp. In the movies, Jason Stryker is able to brainwash Xavier, which technically shouldn’t be allowed to happen.

In X-Men: First Class, both Beast and Mystique are blue and there is a romance between them, causing Beast to do more experiments on himself that go wrong. In the comics, they are not teenagers, but much older. 

In the movies, Moira is a CIA Agent and expert in all things mutant. In the comics however, she’s one of the world’s leading authorities in genetic mutation, having earned a Nobel Prize for her work. 

Banshee is Irish in the comics, but American in the movie X-Men: First Class. He’s also much younger in the movie (he’s just a teenager), so the romance between he and Moira doesn’t really exist, though the potential is there. 

In the comic book, the Days of Future Past story line is filled with bad news in the year 2013. Since the film was released in 2011, only two years before 2013, the filmmakers decided to set the story in 2023 to give the earth another decade to fall on bad times. 

Though we met Quicksilver as an arrogant kid who can move very, very fast, he’s now being called upon for a very important mission: rescue young Magneto from prison. 

People familiar with the comic books know her as Elizabeth “Betsy” Braddock, the twin sister to Brian Braddock. Having telepathic abilities, she also had a modeling career, but the movie seems too full of plot to include that. 

In X-Men: First Class, Mystique and Xavier’s backstory gets reinvented. Instead of being strangers with a 15-20 year age difference like in the comics, they meet as children and have a brother/sister-type relationship.

The filmmakers seemed to pick and choose Jean Grey’s, a.k.a. Dark Phoenix’s, powers in the movies. While seen able to move an entire airplane full of people with her mental powers, by the third film she’s unable to move her leader, Wolverine. If Magneto was able to move Wolverine, why wasn’t she?

In the comic books, Wolverine is literally a lone wolf who doesn’t like to be part of groups, let alone be a leader. But his role in the gang was reimagined in the movies to make him the leader, instead of Cyclops or even Storm. Wolverine’s abilities are also much more exaggerated in the movies. 

In the comics, Juggernaut has been bestowed with superpowers from the Crimson Cyttorak, Lord of Oblivion; Juggernaut is not simply a mutant like he’s portrayed in the movies, where he’s easily defeated by getting knocked out, which disables his powers.