The Sentinels were the best Marvel villains ever and Avengers’ Ultron ought to have taken some lessons from them.

Fox’s X-Men movies have been integral to bringing the mutants to live-action, laying the groundwork for the live-action debut of several other Marvel characters. While the movies showed that tales of mutants are well-liked by the audience, they are at the same time among the most criticized Marvel movies. From their inconsistent quality to lack of character representation, there are several things fans found an issue with.

However, one villain from one of the franchise’s most acclaimed movies was so accurately depicted that even Avengers’s Ultron looks like a joke in from of them.

Ultron is Nothing Compared to This One X-Men Villain

The X-Men franchise is often criticized for its inconsistent quality, lack of character development, lack of convoluted timelines, deviation from the source material, and so much more. Yet, the $6 billion grossing franchise (via The Numbers) has made significant contributions to the Marvel-verse and the overall superhero genre.

Among its most significant contributions is the movie X-Men: Days of Future Past. The seventh installment in the franchise, the movie is among the best-liked ones in the entire film series. One of the reasons for its grand success is how comic book accurate it was, especially when it comes to showing its deadly villains, The Sentinels.

As is in the comic books, the Sentinels were depicted just as formidable and fatal and are certainly the most entertaining elements of the film. Considered by fans as a spectacular comic book entry, the Marvel Cinematic Universe ought to have taken some lessons from the 2014 movie while creating their 2015 Avengers: Age of Ultron. An equally iconic and formidable villain from the Marvel comics, Ultron was reduced to a luster-less robotic villain.

A disappointing movie for a villain as grand as Ultron, it made him look like a robot with rampant daddy issues and a lack of depth compared to the menacing presence of the Sentinels in X-Men: Days of Future Past.

Fans React to The Sentinels from the X-Men Franchise

The MCU and Fox’s X-Men franchise are undoubtedly among the most successful comic book movies ever. Yet, while Fox’s movies might enjoy the success MCU movies have, they did excel in bringing one of the best live-action portrayals of Marvel villains. The Sentinels are ruthless anti-mutant forces and the Days of Future Past does absolute justice to them compared to how the Avengers treated Ultron.

As fans recalled how traumatizing the Sentinels were from the movie, this is how several Marvelholics reacted:

The contrast in portrayals of the Sentinels and Ultron highlights how the X-Men movies were a hidden gem when it came to treating their antagonists right. Although there were several hits and misses and not all antagonists got justice, the depiction of the anti-mutant robots alone serves as a reminder that even comic book villains deserve the same level of attention and depth as the heroes.

And moving forward, the Marvel Cinematic Universe should take notes from Fox’s movies while developing their own mutant saga.

X-Men: Days of Future Past and Avengers: Age of Ultron can be streamed on Disney+.