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10 most powerful X-Men villains, ranked from weakest to strongest

The world of Marvel’s X-Men has presented some of the most powerful villains in comic book history. Many superpowered mutants have wielded a variety of godlike abilities, making them formidable adversaries to Professor X’s team of heroes.

The X-Men have also fought against primordial entities, ancient aliens, magical warriors, and malevolent machines that have made their wars about more than just maintaining peace between humans and mutants. With that in mind, here is the list of the most powerful villains that the X-Men ever faced.

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10. Shadow King

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FX

The Shadow King once clashed with Charles Xavier while inhabiting the body of the mutant telepath Amahl Farouk. Since then, his evil spirit lingered in the astral plane, waiting to strike back against Charles and his X-Men, including the professor’s own son in FX’s Legion.

Wielding psychic powers on a par with the great Professor X, this eldritch horror can possess beings across the multiverse and siphon their energy until they become one with him. Though the Shadow King can be harmed through his host body, he can never be killed. He usually returns after rebuilding his spiritual form, so he continuously follows Charles and his loved ones like an actual shadow.

9. Juggernaut

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20th Century Studios

After being empowered by the Crimson Gem of Cyttorak, Cain Marko transformed into the hulking titan Juggernaut. He’s not just super strong and durable; Juggernaut has infinite stamina and can survive without food, water, or even oxygen. He can also generate a mystical force field that can protect him from any attack.

More importantly, his special helmet shields his mind from psychic attacks, making him a powerful foil to his stepbrother, Charles Xavier. All these powers make him a nigh-unstoppable force that makes even the Mountain from Game of Thrones look downright puny.

8. Nimrod

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Marvel Comics

Hailing from an alternate future, this highly advanced A.I. is the culmination of the Sentinels built to hunt down mutants. Along with firing energy blasts, creating force fields, controlling metal, and teleportation, Nimrod can analyze his opponent’s powers and adapt to battle any adversary he encounters.

He accomplishes this by making adjustments to his body and giving himself new abilities to combat his particular target. He can even reattach parts of his body that have been separated from him, making him the perfect hunting machine that could bring an end to mutantkind.

7. Sebastian Shaw

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20th Century Studios

This man earned the title of the Hellfire Club’s Black King for a good reason. Sebastian Shaw can absorb energy from any sort of attack, including punches, sword strikes, speeding bullets, exploding grenades, and energy beams. He can then take that power and add it to his own, increasing his strength, speed, durability, stamina, metabolism, and rate of healing.

All in all, Shaw is a mutant sponge, so it would be wise not to make the first move in a fistfight with this guy, as he can dish out some destructive counterattacks.

6. Madelyne Pryor

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Marvel Comics

If some readers think this sorceress looks a lot like Jean Grey, there’s a good explanation for that. Madelyne Pryor is a clone of Jean created by Mister Sinister that was eventually corrupted by a demonic force, turning her into the dreaded Goblin Queen.

Not only did she inherit Jean’s extraordinary powers as a telepath, but she also has access to powerful dark magic that enhances her powers and allows her to heal wounds, bring beings back from the dead, and summon all sorts of monstrous creatures like goblins and demons to do her bidding.

5. Emma Frost

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Emma’s telepathic powers have been known to rival those of Professor X, which already makes her one of the strongest mutants on Earth. However, she can transform her body into a diamond form that makes her immune to almost all physical attacks, as well as telepathy, at the cost of using her own psychic powers.

While Emma is currently one of the most prominent members of the X-Men, she once served as the villainous White Queen of the Hellfire Club. So despite her change of heart, it would still be wise not to get on her bad side.

4. Mister Sinister

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Image used with permission by copyright holder

Thanks to being genetically enhanced by the mutant Apocalypse, Nathaniel Essex became the immortal mutant Mister Sinister. This fiendish scientist has the power of telepathy and telekinesis, and he can even alter the cells in his body to change his appearance and heal wounds. He can also transfer his mind into other host bodies or one of the many multiple clones of himself he stores in secret like Emperor Palpatine.

Likewise, his vast knowledge of genetics has allowed him to integrate genes from other mutants into his own, allowing him to take on their powers, making him one of the X-Men’s most adaptable and persistent adversaries. It’s just a surprise he hasn’t been used in a film yet.

3. Magneto

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Marvel Comics

While Professor X has control over the mind, Magneto has control over matter. As the Master of Magnetism, he can create and bend magnetic fields to his will, allowing him to accomplish many feats of superhuman strength. His powers include manipulating metal objects, flying through the air, creating force fields, controlling gravity, summoning wormholes, and sending out astral projections.

Once, he even wielded Thor’s hammer and used its power to cause global devastation. The X-Men are lucky that Magneto joined their side, as he has established himself as one of the most destructive forces on the planet.

2. Apocalypse

Image used with permission by copyright holder

The Avengers have Thanos, and the X-Men have Apocalypse. As the first mutant born on Earth, En Sabah Nur earned quite a reputation with his apocalyptic abilities, allowing him to take over the planet in an alternate future. Having been enhanced by Celestial technology, Apocalypse wields various powers, including immortality, regeneration, teleportation, telepathy, altering the size and shape of his body, and absorbing and releasing energy.

In X-Men: Apocalypse, the titular villain is given some additional powers that make him even more frightening. The film showed him creating objects from dust and turning them into dust, such as when he disintegrated most of Cairo to build a giant pyramid for himself. He can also enhance a mutant’s powers with a mere touch, which he usually does when he wants to make someone a member of his Four Horsemen. It’s no wonder the people of Earth once worshipped him as a god.

1. The Dark Phoenix

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20th Century Studios

Though Jean Grey started off as a relatively low-powered telepath, her merging with the Phoenix Force allowed her to achieve her full potential and become more powerful than Galactus. But unfortunately, her mind was overwhelmed by this all-powerful force, causing her to turn into an evil cosmic destroyer known as the Dark Phoenix.

As fire and life incarnate, the Dark Phoenix has unparalleled psychic abilities that make her one of the most terrifying forces in the universe. She can break down any matter at a molecular level, allowing her to disintegrate or revive any living thing. She can also absorb energy, shoot fire and psionic blasts, and fly through space beyond the speed of light. The Dark Phoenix was so powerful that she consumed a star just to restore her energy, resulting in the deaths of five billion aliens inhabiting a nearby planet. However, since the Phoenix nexus for all psionic power throughout the multiverse, Jean could have very well destroyed all of existence on a whim.

Simply put, the Dark Phoenix is a prime example of why you should not play with fire.

Anthony Orlando
Anthony Orlando is a writer/director from Oradell, NJ. He spent four years at Lafayette College, graduating CUM LAUDE with a…
Purdue vs. Michigan State: How to watch, results, and highlights
Michigan State basketball court from an aerial view.

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Purdue vs. Michigan State: How to watch
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Vin Diesel looks cool in black goggles and a black tank top in a still from the movie Pitch Black.

Vin Diesel in Pitch Black USA Films
More than almost any other movie star working today, Vin Diesel seems to think only in franchises. Skim the last two decades of this muscle man’s filmography, and you’ll see almost nothing but sequels or movies designed (not always successfully) to spawn sequels. Once Vin got a taste of life in the fast lane, he never really looked back. Maybe he was always just destined to become a Hollywood action hero: When you’re built like a bullet and talk like a subwoofer, the Italian Stallion career path makes a lot more sense than anything else.
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What’s wild is that you can pinpoint to the day the pinnacle of Diesel’s time as a dramatic performer as opposed to a box-office draw. Said day was 25 years ago tomorrow, when not one but two movies featuring the future star hit theaters nationwide. There he was as a likable off- Wall Street stock broker in the financial drama Boiler Room, and there he was again as a mythic outlaw in the deep-space creature feature Pitch Black. Diesel has never been better than he was in these two very different movies, which kind of makes February 18th, 2000 the best day of his career — and also the last moment before that career changed directions.
Boiler Room (2000) Official Trailer #1 - Vin Diesel Movie HD
Of the two films, Boiler Room is the more obvious acting showcase, though Vin has a much smaller part in it. Written and directed by Ben Younger, this Martin Scorsese-indebted procedural essentially fictionalizes the true story the actual Scorsese would later dramatize with The Wolf of Wall Street. Younger looks at the fraudulent practices of brokerage houses like Stratton Oakmont from the perspective of one of the cold callers, a Long Island entrepreneur played by Giovanni Ribisi. Maybe fourth or fifth booked in the cast is Diesel, who steps in as one of the more experienced brokers who takes Ribisi’s snake-oil salesman under his wing.
“He’s like gravity —everything gets pulled to him,” is how someone describes Diesel’s most famous character, Dominic Toretto, in the following year’s franchise-launching melodrama The Fast and the Furious. But he’s much more conventionally magnetic in Boiler Room as a slick but approachable young millionaire swindler. Vin’s first big scene in the movie puts his signature bravado to good use, as he gregariously coerces a doctor into buying a bunch of shares over the phone — a hard sell that he makes look effortless. It’s a kind of initiation, laying out the seductive thrill of how these chop-shop frat boys make their fortune. They’re really just actors, playing a part for the clients they unscrupulously exploit.
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Pitch Black Official Trailer #1 - Vin Diesel Movie (2000) HD
A secret flicker of decency also defines Richard B. Riddick, the apprehended mercenary Diesel plays for the first time in Pitch Black. In terms of temperament and vocabulary, he’s a much different animal than Varick: a stony Western archetype unleashed onto the final frontier, like Clint Eastwood’s Man with No Name airdropped into an Alien knockoff. Writer-director David Twohy builds Riddick up, establishing his fearsome bona fides by keeping him chained, shrouded in darkness, and silent for the first act, when the ship carting this dangerous fugitive crash-lands on a planet with three suns and some deadly nocturnal wildlife. Beyond the opening voice-over, Diesel doesn’t utter a word for the first 30 minutes of the movie.
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Less blockbuster than glorified sci-fi programmer, Pitch Black didn’t make boatloads of money. But it was a successful proof of concept; what it sold the world was Diesel’s suitability for action-hero duty. Those who caught the movie in theaters, maybe even on a double bill with Boiler Room, could clearly see into his future as a post-millennial Rambo. But few of the big Hollywood projects that followed better capitalized on his rugged, monosyllabic qualities. No wonder Diesel returned to the film’s treacherous star system, reprising the role in two sequels — the goofier, more expansive Chronicles of Riddick and the back-to-basics Riddick — even after he had moved on to more lucrative multi-picture engagements.
Boiler Room Prospecting Scene - Vin Diesel Closing
In retrospect, 2000 was as much a last hurrah as it was a highpoint for Vin Diesel, the actor, not the brand. A year later, he’d buckle in for the comparably low-key first entry in a series he’d eventually makeover into a multi-billion-dollar vanity project. There was really no turning back from the road Fast & Furious put him on. It’s been basically all intellectual-property bids since, as Diesel has balanced his cash cow franchise with attempts to develop new ones. You have to strain to see any real artistic ambition in any of the work he’s done since the day the multiplex served up double, clashing doses of his cowboy swagger. Besides a supporting role in Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, it’s been one star sleepwalk after another.
Maybe Diesel never had a character actor's range. As a performer, he mostly offers different shades of macho — brooding, sentimental, or arrogant as needed. But on one winter day at the start of a new century, he demonstrated that his particular steroidal charisma could be stretched a little, and applied to projects with wildly different aims. February 18 was a crossroads for this modern tough guy. He took the path to marquee immortality that Pitch Black opened up before him, while leaving us wondering how many Boiler Rooms he bypassed along the way.
Boiler Room and Pitch Black are both available to rent or purchase from the major digital services. For more of A.A. Dowd’s writing, visit his Authory page.

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