Is Magneto a Villain Anymore? | X-Men Video Essay

it is 1962 Stan leye and Jack Kirby have just created the X-Men and need a villain for them to fight they create Magneto the master of magnetism a mutant fanatic who wants to harm humans and take over the world in many ways he Bears much in common with Dr Doom another villain they recently created to fight the Fantastic 4 another superhero team but the X-Men is a dull comic series that doesn't draw the attention they were hoping and Magneto seems like a disappointment it is 2024 and Magneto is commonly regarded as one of the greatest comic book villains in creation you homers sapiens and your guns a survivor of one of History's Greatest atrocities he sees the writing on the wall indicating that history will repeat itself to avoid this end he fights Against Humanity sometimes for the survival of his race and sometimes for Dominion they used reason While others used tanks and they were destroyed for their trouble I won't stand by and watch it happen again given the many many horrible human villains the X-Men face the X-Men being one of the most popular Superior teams by the way even more so than Fantastic 4 many hesitate to even call him a villain both inside the comics and outside make no mistake the humans will strike first and when they do we will be ready it's not that Magneto hasn't done villainous stuff he he clearly has several writers have told stories featuring this character and many write him in a manner that's contradictory Grant Morrison famously wrote Magneto disguised as Zorn a mutant hiding away at the Xavier School as Zorn Magneto manages to break Xavier's spine after previously healing it before enslaving New York City and threatening to reverse the planet's polarity in order to destroy the human race zor manages to fatally injure Jean Gray and it's ultimately Wolverine who kills him Morrison intended Zorn to be Magneto from the beginning dropping Clues to the nature of his true identity in interview with pop image Morrison said what people often forget of course is that Magneto unlike the lovely sir Ian McKellen is a mad old terrorist [ __ ] no matter how he justifies his stupid brutal Behavior or how anyone else tries to justify it in the end he's just an old bastard with daed old ideas based on violence and coercion I really wanted to make that clear at this time I'm offended by your accusation however after they finished their run on new X-Men Morrison's entire plot was tossed out the window Chris Claremont was quick to reccon Morrison's zor storyline revealing that zor was just a mutant who had convinced himself he was Magneto while the real Magneto was resting in josha stunned anyone could ever believe he'd do anything as evil as what zor was doing oh it's not so surprising really mankind has always feared what it doesn't understand writers for decades have wrestled with Magneto's morality is he a freedom fighter or a tyrant in the making both sides of this debate have ample evidence since again so many writers have had different interpretations of the master of magnetism and ultimately the question becomes which version of the character resonates with you most the freedom fighter or the monster I will bring you home old friend and I ask only one thing in return don't get in my way either side of the argument has plenty of issues they can cite that that's not interesting to me I'm more interested in looking at why people have over the years shifted their interpretation of Magneto why has he gone from a generic villain to a rallying point a cry for breaking the status quo and yeah sure when Ian McKellen played Magneto people had already begun to see him as an anti-villain but in 2024 people will outright say Magneto is Right Magneto did nothing wrong and why is that what in our real world has led to this and what is about villains who aim to break the status quo what people have to try hard to make them seem villainous now before we begin if you like what I do take the time to like And subscribe it helps the channel grow let YouTube know that you want more content like this by leaving a comment social issues I try to get in in the background or underlaying a plot audiences are used to villains who want to up turn to status quo but over the last few decades there's been a shift in how we watch these villains Richard III one of the classic Shakespearean bad guys wants to be king to upturn the entire hierarchy so he can rule and therefore since I cannot prove a lover I'm determined to prove a villain why he wants to rule doesn't really matter he wants to be on top and will carve his way up there to get it but we don't question that accept that they want to rule and that's bad the hero comes back Saves the Day ORD restored and the rightful King takes his place the status quo is fixed audiences tend to see the pursuit of power for power's sake as motivation enough for a bad guy provided he's entertaining enough however over the last century we've been seeing storytellers explore the question why more and more why do you ask questions to which you already know know the answers nowhere is this more true than with comic book villains who often were created to hit a deadline before building over time into Mythic figures of Storytelling and I said we'll make the mutants and we'll call the book The mutants and he said no Stan that that's no good because our readers wouldn't know what a mutant is I have no doubt personally that Stanley and Jack Kirby made Magneto just to serve as that issues bad guy the brave are always the first to die Chris Claremont is honestly the real reason why Magneto as a character has become such an icon the difference the official difference I suppose between my vision of him and Marvel's is I don't see him as a villain I see him as an adversary ultimately Magneto was a bad guy because he wanted to upturn systems of control the problem is since 1962 it's become ever clearer how awful these systems of control are I know your kind fully I've seen your kind all my life a fine upstanding bigot so people are more sympathetic towards a figure whose primary objective is to deconstruct an unjust system civilians are reacting to a news broadcast dealing with mutants as villains hostile enemies whereas there's another character who holds the opposite point of you it's a series of ongoing moral and reality choices which for me is what magn Mago exemplifies throughout the entire series and this isn't just Magneto this is across the board take poison ivy a character who primarily is motivated to liberate women and protect the environment this little Rose would be extinct today if I hadn't saved my precious from those horrible bulldozers perhaps in the 50s and 60s Society saw these Concepts as radical but it's 2024 fourth wve feminism and Environmental Protection are more mainstream than ever Poison Ivy's desperate push doesn't seem so radical anymore when we're seeing the environment crumble when we're seeing women suffer horribly at the hands of sexism of course Comics tried to justify Poison Ivy's place as a villain for years but even during the '90s it was clear audiences just weren't buying her as a villain all that much their values aligned too much with poison iys I've got some Wild Oats to sew consider Batman and Robin where Uma Thurman plays poison ivy now arguably this is the last time a mainstream story really tried to sell her as unambiguously Evil 7 million never leave the cave without her but how does her motivation to protect women in nature factor into any of her actions in the film I don't think it really does she even tries to kill M Mr Free's wife wife just so she can control him to freeze the planet I I don't think ice is conductive for plant growth Pamela but I don't know I'm not the botanist here I'll help you grab your rocks when Harley Quinn was introduced in the '90s that was it for pois Ivy as a villain you'd think after living with Mr J I'd be used to a little pain why do you put up with that clown Ivy becomes a positive influence for Harley her motivation to protect women now gained a positive outlet and from there villain status gone you know you still got me and I care about you so much that I spent my entire Saturday setting up something this [ __ ] stupid that's true previously Ivy was primarily depicted hating men but now she could be shown loving women I you came to save me look I always do my entire existence seems to be spent cleaning up your [ __ ] messes it's hard to vilify someone who wants to help someone out it's just not easy Magneto on the other hand wants two things he wants to protect mutants from Humanity's cruelty and he believes mutants should be the dominant species on the planet so the question becomes what do writers focus on now his drive to protect mutants who his drive to subjugate Humanity we are the future Charles not them they're no longer matter so how does one make a revolutionary Evil by giving him traits outside of his gold of societal upheaval the perfect example of this is Griffith from berserk by all accounts berserk universe is a terrible Place between the Waring kingdoms and multitude of demonic Apostles the world is due for a new order and griffith seemingly seems the ideal candidate to bring about this revolution using his military strategies to gain favor with the kingdom of Midland slowly ascending the ranks despite his lack of nobility Griffith should be the hero which is why both guts and Kasa as well as the rest of the band of the hawk Revere him so much so why is Griffith so fundamentally different from characters like say poison ivy or Magneto why is it when people say Griffith did nothing wrong they're trolling you are amazing the simple fact is that Griffith's evil has very little to do with his goals of evolution the latter parts of the manga indicate he might even be a good leader kind of the problem isn't that Griffith is trying to upheave society the problem is that Griffith is a sociopath who treats every single person in his life as a tool for his Ascension Human Relationships mean nothing to him he manipulates others emotions on a psychological emotional and sexual level as leverage when Griffith doesn't get his way he throws an angry fit guts choosing to act on his own drives Griffith first to angrily make love with the princess which you know of his downfall but also leads later on to the black Eclipse where Griffith assaults Costa INF front of guts just to prove a point he has control he has the power for me to call a man my friend he must be equal to me in all respects Griffith's intentions for Dominion don't really matter when his pettiness drives him to commit such acts of Cruelty the evil lurks outside of the Revolution this is why guts has very little interest in Griffith's goals after the black Eclipse he just wants revenge because of the personal cruelty not because of the societal greater plot this is where a lot of writers have attempted to make Magneto appear to be a villain employing unnecessary cruelty Beyond his goal they know they can't make his cause to defend mutant kind appear evil so instead what they do is they try to add layers of evil beyond that often it's an example of magneo taking a cause too far I can't believe you're actually willing to sacrifice lives if the loss of a few mutants will ensure our rightful place in this world then yes I will make that sacrifice Magneto wants the UN to recognize Genosha as a sovereign state so he threatens a massive gigantic disaster Magneto encounters a scientist who designed Sentinels so he kills her things like that they're extreme but the ultimate goal isn't selfish pettiness but ripping the adamantium from Wolverine's body out of rage is because that's simply a way to squash an adversary but what's odd is that while in the comics the characters treat this as an act of supreme evil I don't think a lot of comic readers saw Magneto ripping the adim Wolverine as a real moral Event Horizon I mean the X-Men face people like Biv tras and the others people who made the Sentinels and these are machines that would in some alternate Futures create a hellscape of genocide where mutants are rounded up like animals and anyone who stands in our way will suffer the same fate as these men you see before you Nathaniel Essex uh Mr Sinister started as a monstrous scientist who experimented on mutant genetics before strangely being rehabilitated into this quirky flamboyant guy I I I don't get why people are rehabilitating the guy who partook in the Holocaust experimentation but you know that's a little weird to me I don't get that by comparison Magneto ripping out Wolverine's metal skeleton thus giving us Logan's bone claw era is pretty tame and that's one of the worst things Magneto did in the 616 continuity if that's as bad as it gets hurting a guy who can heal from any injury that's not really that terrible but then there's the Ultimate Universe which was the last real mainstream push to make Magneto irredeemable and I'd like to say I think it failed for a few key reasons ultimate Magneto is honestly nothing like any other mainstream depiction of Magneto for one he's the son of someone who worked on Weapon X he has no ties to any previous genocide for another Magneto's base of operation becomes The Savage lands not josha or asteroid M or whatever as a great man once said the price of freedom is eternal vigilance we are under attack he and Xavier after leaving their wives formed a Brotherhood of mutants together which Magneto basically turns into mutant Taliban it's very clear that Magneto is inspired by the terrorists in American history in the Ultimate Universe Magneto and the Brotherhood undergo terrorist bombings political assassinations humiliating the US president by dragging him out naked on the front lawn of the White House things that offend American sensibilities also uh Xavier defeats Magneto not by engaging in a real debate of morals but by just brainwashing him with psychic powers great love that but Magneto gets better and then decides to flood the Earth the ultimatum storyline is essentially one where we see Magneto isn't just a terrorist but a very Bland very flat very angry villain he kills millions of people in one event by reversing the planet's polarity he personally snaps Xavier's neck with his bare hands kills half the X-Men as well as half the the named characters in The Ultimate Universe and ultimately Spurs on hatred towards mutants Cyclops gets assassinated after this event we also learned an ultimatum that mutants in the Ultimate Universe are not naturally uring they are byproducts of the super soldier program which is uh deeply awful for a number of reasons it really undermines the idea that mutants are a minority they're a byproduct at best and people identify the mutants with minority groups they see them as an allegory for people of color for the lgbtqa community have you tried not being a mutant and to say outright that they're just unintended byproducts of experimentation and not naturally occurring people it creates this deeply uncomfortable message and this information is revealed to magnito in order to Humble him and that feels really wrong for a number of reasons ethically Magneto's actions seem driven also more by erratic fear than Justified resistance Magneto makes his helmet out of fear Professor re will retaliate against him those fears are Justified he denies ever being romantically involved in with a normal human based purely on how he'd be perceived he changes his name to cut off any remnant of his human life ultimate Magneto feels created to Humble those who support Magneto and I don't know it just feels deeply messed up to me in order to justify Magneto being a villain they go far out of their way and it feels cheap it doesn't feel like Magneto they change the core of the character on every level I feel comic audiences generally dismiss this iteration of Mago while those who know nothing about Comics use ultimate Magneto's actions in a way to argue against anyone who claims Magneto has a point because to them Magneto isn't a character he's just a guy with magnetic powers and a helmet they see him as a superficial villain the years have been kind to you Charles A pity they haven't brought you wisdom but there's something more Sinister at play with ultimate Magneto though I haven't really touched on Magneto in the comics at this point this is the early 2000s uh bounce between being a com book bad guy and a more romanticized tragic figure depending on the writer this attempt to conflate him with terrorists who had at this point recently finished their attack on the United States conflates Revolution with terrorists there is the phrase one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter and that exists for a reason perspective affects whether or not you see a revolutionary as a hero or a villain trying to upend the status quo but by turning Magneto into a caricature of of a terrorist it indicated to audiences that there's a bad way to be revolutionist when mutant hatred gets worse post ultimatum it's shown to be Magneto's fault that human beings are bigoted that human beings bigotries become worse it's not just one mutant was bad and did something awful it's that all mutants are bad and Humanity isn't held accountable for their anti- mutant bigotry it's mutant kind who's held accountable for Magneto's action Magneto did Revolution wrong it's going to be The Ballot or The Bullet people sympathize with those who bring about Revolution especially if they're opposing a villainous system of power and authority however there are also those in real life who tend to villainize revolutionary individuals if their interests put them against the interests of powerful Authority we are oppressed we are exploited we are downtrodden we are denied not only civil rights but even human rights a good example of this is Cuba Fidel Castro overthrew feno Batista Batista was for all intents and purposes a very dangerous man who was beloved by the wealthy in Cuba and the men of business outside of Cuba most specifically the Italian mafia it's telling that The Godfather Part Two is arguably the most mainstream criticism of Batista's policies with Castro's Uprising proving to Snuff out the criminal activities of Hyman Roth the soldiers are paid to fight the rebels aren't what does that tell you they can win American Business had good reason to hate Castro he cost them a lot of money do not have your same conceptions our concept of freedom of the press is not yours if you ask us if a paper could appear against socialism I could say honestly no it cannot appear it will not be allowed by the government Castro's story has become spun into a very simple message he who fights monsters will become a monster themselves we ignore the monster that's overthrown and just focus on the man who overthrew him the new monster American Media tried to do the same thing with Malcolm X as well but unlike Castro Malcolm X's mainstream perception was altered over time thanks to continual effort to preserve his words thoughts and actions in both archival media and Modern Art our forefathers weren't the pilgrims we didn't land on Plymouth Rock The Rock was landed on us we didn't come over on the Nina the pent and and and the Whatchamacallit we didn't land on Plymouth Rock Plymouth Rock landed on us landed right on top of us plus let's be honest Malcolm X 's opinions have become much more mainstream than castros have Malcolm X also wasn't the leader of a country so that helped too politicians have to be held accountable for their political actions that's that's beside the point who taught you to hate the shape of your nose and the shape of your lips who taught you to hate yourself from the top of your head to the souls of your feet for a while history pitted Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X despite the fact that both were villainized in their day by the dominant white mainstream culture in the name of the greatest people that have ever T this Earth I draw the line in the dust and Toss The Gauntlet before the feet of tyranny and I say segregation now segregation tomorrow and segregation forever but nowadays both are celebrated for their statements but only MLK is exploited by white conservatives trying to justify their bigotry and they always cite that one speech they actually remember Martin Luther King's saying as opposed to the rest of his body of work the Cry of black power is at bottom a reaction to the reluctance of white power to make the kind of changes necessary to make Justice a reality for the Negro I think we've got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard while Castro's story is one of a revolutionary becoming just as bad as the person they're fighting after victory MLK and Malcolm X's story for some time became there's a right way to change a system and a wrong way there is an increasingly vocal minority who disagreed totally with your tactics Dr King there's no doubt about that I agree that uh there is a a group in the Negro Community advocating violence now MLK was perceived as more passive while Malcolm X was more violent and thus wrong this of course ignores the MLK's specific actions like the cens were perceived as violent at the time and were strategically focused on particular segregative practices I like also to point out that the majority of people who violently abused the black men and women partaking in those cens probably went on to site MLK to silence all opposition to the status quo many of the people who protested the cens are still alive and how many of those older conservative individuals probably cite Dr King one of my favorite quotes from Dr King was now is the time to make real the promises of democracy you think of how he changed America he inspired us to change through the legislative process to become a more perfect union we want to make them pass the strongest Civil Rights bill they've ever passed because we know even after they pass it they can't enforce it let that sink in a little bit let that steal how the how the words of the people they fought are now being stolen from those people by contrast Malcolm X later changed course on some of his beliefs after seeing how outside of the American conservative culture it is possible for coexistence to occur one thing that I found in all of my travels was that uh all of the Africans not only the Africans but the Asians and the Muslims look upon us as their long lost brothers and America had actually tricked many of them uh into a hands-off policy by giving them the impression that she was honestly trying to do something to solve the problem so why am I bringing Martin Luther King and Malcolm X so much into discussion about X-Men well that's because for a while it was very popular to compare Professor X and Magneto to MLK Malcolm X respectfully but I I think there's it's very clear that Stanley did not intend on this nor did Jack Kirby and I don't think it's fair to either real person to compare them to fictional characters whose behavior and actions have shifted drastically over the years especially comparing MLK to professor Charles Xavier I mean let's be fair Professor X has a school where he created a paramilitary force that directly battles Humanity when they create death traps Killer Robots or angry mobs you know that's really different from the real life civil rights movement that nonviolence is the most potent weapon available to the Negro in his struggle for freedom and Justice welome to my and on top of that Professor X fights other mutants sometimes constantly in the comics your blindness has sealed your [Music] fate the X-Men can sometimes spend more time fighting other mutants than they do fighting for mutant acceptance depending again on the writer Professor X is more interested in helping mutants control their powers rather than gain equality at least again in the early years it felt like the X-Men were at times more interested in maintaining the status quo than really pushing for mutant equality they were more interested in keeping humans comfortable than challenging them on their bigotries it was a long time ago mankind has evolved since then yes into us until again Chris Claremont took over and then the book started to shift into a very realistic discussion of civil rights that has continued on ever since the philosophical divide between Magneto and Exavier grows more interesting when we realize that Professor X himself is not a saint as he's often depicted in other media but actually a very manipulated very underhanded leader there are some over examples of this of course the deadly Genesis story line is one example the X-Men are captured by a sentient Island kcoa and Professor X sends a team of mutants led by Cyclops to save the original X-Men this team of mutants other than Cyclops all die when Cyclops returns home defeated Professor Rex erased the memory of the other mutants from cyclops's mind and just sends him back to ccoa with another team one that would become the iconic X-Men that first collectively appeared appeared in giant sized X-Men number one this say nothing about how Professor X's actions as part of the Illuminati led to the events of world war Hulk and oh yeah while Magneto is on the front lines of his battles Charles hangs back and lets his multiple armies of child soldiers fight for him so yeah Professor X he's not a saint and comparing him to nlk is a little problematic they are acting out of fear some might make the argument that Professor X's underhanded tactics are more Insidious than Magneto's more overed actions at least Magneto when he led the X-Men would fight with them the general does not command his soldiers to fight where he himself would not walk you are a God among insects let different it also doesn't hurt that Magneto tends to fight complete monsters God loves man kills opens with Magneto uncovering a brutal mutant Massacre courtesy of William striker by comparison yeah Magneto is the obviously heroic figure ins sides against Striker X-Men 2 would later adapt God loves man kills and the filmmakers decided to make Magneto the last minute bad guy of the film by having him invert Striker's mutant killing scheme to Target Humanity instead and it's hard not to somewhat sympathize with Magneto after seeing how awful Humanity has been both in this film and the prior film in the fil Magneto he escalates from film to film his first scheme in X-Men one is to turn humans into mutants which unintentionally would have killed people but he doesn't intend that women and children whole fam is destroyed simply because they were born different from those in power well after tonight the world's powerful will be just like us he's just desperate to level the playing field in fact look at all of Magneto's adversaries in the X-Men films aside from the men he fights bigoted Senators genocidal military complexes medical experimentation and just the worst people in history but everything I did I did for you to unlock your power to make you Embrace after everything he experiences in these films it's hard not tode with him our course will be F moving on to the comics there are several instances in the comics where people try to argue Magneto is just as bad as humanity and it's never convincing a great example of this is during the AXS of Vengeance event where several villains teamed up to defeat their respective Heroes this Alliance falls apart almost immediately because someone has the bright idea to pair up Magneto with the Red Skull you know the one who partook in the [Music] Holocaust Red Skull tries to convince Magneto that they have a lot in common um Magneto does not take this very well Red Skull never really stands a chance actually Magneto doesn't kill Red Skull he just locks him in a bunker with meager supplies and locks him in so he can experience the same fear Magneto felt as a child but then again Magneto also ripped the adaman out of Wolverine skeleton one time so you know clearly he's just as bad as Red Skull by some people's logic I don't know the point is that each writer writes Magneto differently it's hard to cite a specific version of Magneto as the true version but it is very easy to look at Magneto and go you know what I sympathize with his cause because there is no land of tance there is no peace of here or anywhere else audiences have been conditioned over the years to be more sympathetic towards Magneto thanks to popular media but even in the comics the writers are more sympathetic towards him than ever before the origins of this character are kind of irrelevant when you look at the Legacy the characters left behind in extended expanded media but also the landscape of Storytelling has changed especially with superheroes audiences are growing tired with a specific Trope Marvel Studios in particular keeps employing tell me if this is familiar to you a superhero movies villain is someone who wants to change status quo But ultimately is vilified for going too far they do one thing that's pretty bad or out of line a great example of this is in Falcon and the Winter Soldier where the flag Smashers are ultimately fighting a system that has displaced and disenfranchise them due to their inability to respond to admittedly massive world events but rather than sympathize with the flag Smashers or illustrate the problems the system has when dealing with displaced people the show makes the flag Smashers into generic bad guys while it heriz the jingoistic brutal us agent oh but don't worry the Falcon tells leaders of the world that they need to do better you've got to do better Senator you've got to step up because if you don't the next Carly will oh and all of this has the backdrop of a profoundly unsettling story about medical experimentation on black people something that really has happened in the US you think things are different you think times are different you think I wouldn't be dead in a day if you brought me out pledge allegiance to that my brother and that plot's resolved by bringing him to a museum essentially by the way this museum by the way features uh the medical experimentation put font in Center so I guess the resolution to that isn't you know reparations it's giving people credit for the horrible years they suffered in obscurity no compensation just a little plaque that's your that's your compensation for your suffering for the next 30 Years Earth they experimented on me you were an animal then you're an animal now I just gave you Clause I made the argument that audiences are increasingly sympathetic to Magneto I don't want to pretend here that they are only sympathetic to him protecting mutants I think a lot of people are very fed up with how Society has gone seeing violent events endorsed by World governments I think we've got to see that a riot is the Lang of the unheard they might want to start that Revolution they might want to see the upheaval it's not simply that Magneto was defending a minority group it's that he's actively opposing an authority group some writers try to overemphasize the sympathetic sides of Magneto while deemphasizing the less sympathetic sides but I think the place that people are at right now both angles of his character are sympathetic Charles Xavier had you break into to the mutant control agency reluctantly I assure you and he would leave you to rot in prison and while some people might fear the consequences of upheaval in real life fictional revolutions don't have any tangible impact on our day-to-day lives you can watch a character do something horrendous but because it's done in fiction and not to real people you can feel catharsis seeing these things happen because they don't really have any tangible true impact Magneto turning Strikers scheme to destroy all mutants and X-Men 2 against humanity is not real so we can look at it from a removed perspective and when all of humanity and even Humanity's protectors seem pretty underhanded and unwilling to address the societal problems that plague everyone in real life and there's a series of films that continues to show how awful humanity is across time across decades across centuries yeah maybe Magneto does have a point you built these weapons to destroy us why maybe in fact Magneto is right I want to extend a special thank you to Kyla t for taking time to look at this script before I sent it out and wrote and recorded this whole thing if you haven't watched your channel do so here's a fantastic video on Elvis out right now that I'll be linking [Music] here

Channel: Anthony Gramuglia

Views: 127,707

Keywords: x-men 97, x-men movies, magneto ian mckellan, magneto ian mckellen, x-men the animated series, wolverine and the x-men, poison ivy, poison ivy magneto, Malcom X Magneto, MLK Professor X, professor x magneto, chris claremont

Id: azYTF5QlTJw

Length: 37min 26sec (2246 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 15 2024