It's not just his age though. You have to also freeze Professor X's age too (assuming you want to keep the frenemies angle) and more importantly you have to explain away why Magneto has waited almost a century to do anything publicly for mutant rights (assuming you want to tell a newish x-men story).
They don’t even meet until post WW2 anyway, and post their meetings both Charles and Magnus travelled the world to meet and study mutants, with Charles specifically meeting and working with several people in that time. Charles settling on the idea of a school, and putting it together can take any amount of time, same thing with Magnus being slowly worn down by anti mutant events until he snaps.
So now you have two contrived plot points before you even start the movie...just because you don't want to update his story like they do for loads of comic characters.
Also, you didn't address why both men waited 70+ years to form the X-Men/Brotherhood.
Bottom line, McClellan and Stewart were already a decade younger than their actual comic counterparts that should have been more than enough of a sign that keeping a WWII origin was becoming quite a bit of a stretch.
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u/Rare-Cheesecake6591 6h ago
It's not just his age though. You have to also freeze Professor X's age too (assuming you want to keep the frenemies angle) and more importantly you have to explain away why Magneto has waited almost a century to do anything publicly for mutant rights (assuming you want to tell a newish x-men story).