Magneto
Character » Magneto appears in 5887 issues.
Among the most powerful, recognizable, and infamous mutants to inhabit the planet Earth, Magneto was the X-Men's first major nemesis. Now known as a revolutionist and terrorist, Magneto has fought for the X-Men as many times as he’s been against them.
X-Men: First Class—Did the Movie Make Magneto More Hero Than Villain?
In many ways, Magneto was the hero of the film because despite everything he did in the film, he was never as cruel as Shaw was. Eric didn't kill for pleasure or just to prove that he could kill someone, he was on a mission to avenge the senseless deaths of his family and let's face it, the people that he killed weren't exactly saints.
At the end of the film, he had pretty much saved the world only to be thanked with a multi-national missile strike at him and his friends, facing another government approved extermination of him and other mutants. I wouldn't call him a villain so much as an anti-hero, he took out the true villain of the film and wanted mutants to thrive without fear of persecution.
This is the problem when every you do an Origin story on a villain.
The Problem is unfortunately simple and always overlooked.
Every Villain has Parents...Every Villain has a Mother....Every Villain was a and had CHILD Like Innocence in them.
This is what makes Villains SO interesting in Lore and Reality! How does someone who is like me, how has these things become a bastard.
I haven't seen the movie...BUT I don't need to see the movie to realize Eric is a take no prisoners fight for justice kind of guy. Somewhere being weak, by showing trust and compassion for anyone or thing, will gets in his way, he'll feel is dangerous to his survival.
Some villains are crazy or psychotic...Magneto is paranoid...which gets psychotic. Which puts him on the boarder with real life leaders who want you dead for just helping and call it invasion.
This is why Magneto is great. He has fear, pain and paranoia of people with real power everytime you read about him in an X-men story arc.
You'll always feel you understand...cause in some ways you do, you just don't like the bloody results he's willing to do in the end...thats why he's a villain.
it's understandable for the USSR and the US to turn on the mutants at the end of the movie since half them wanted to kill most of humanity including magneto (he said he agreed with everything Shaw believed in, but he did kill Magento's mom, so he had to go) and isn't Magneto a hypocrite cause i don't think he wants to kill all Jews too? or do they get a pass on the kill all humans, or is the movie saying that all Jews are mutants, which in that case this movie is giving anti-Semitic propaganda. I just think Magneto's doesn't know what he really wants which is maybe acceptance.
I have never thought of Magneto simply a villain. That is really just too simplistic. In the context of this film, I didn't see anything Magneto did that clearly did not place in the context of a hero. An angry hero sure but clearly a hero. His admission at the end to Shaw ended up being validated by how quickly the order came to fire upon them. For it was the one miss note of the film. Bureaucracy just doesn't move that fast. I just don't believe a decision like that would be made so quick and I think the film would have been better if the question was left a bit more gray at the end.
As it is Magneto was proven right and Charles wrong.
Magneto is an interesting antagonist because from his side of the table is basically right. It's just that we happen to be on the other side.
I thought a more interesting parallel was who that cast Charles as the Martin Luther King and Magneto as Malcolm X.
magneto is a villain for trying to rule over another race. A hero tries to find a way for all races to work together. He wants only the mutants to have authority. Magneto is no better than the politicians that fond secret operations to hunt mutants. Xaiver is even worse because he knows Magneto's goal and lets him run wild for years before confronting him. He could have easily blocked Magneto's painful memories and helped to make him a better person but noooooooooooohhhhhhhh.com.
I certainly can respect what the people who are criticizing Magneto's decision to kill Shaw are saying. I even get the part where his admission that he agreed with Shaw's politics might give anyone a reason to see him as a villain. However Shaw was a mass murderer attempting to continue his rampage. If killing is never acceptable when a man is helpless or defenseless, I wonder how most of the people here feel about Osama's killing. The story (so we're told now) is that he was unarmed. There was no attempt to simply arrest him. There was no attempt to have him tried for the people he murdered. I, for one, think his killing was a good thing. Just as I feel that Shaw deserved to die as he lived. He was a monster who killed people who were defenseless against him. What better way for him to die then by the hands of another "monster" (one he helped create) while he was defenseless?
Yes i think Magneto is still a villain, and it took Xavier for that to happen. I think that if Magneto had never met Professor X, he would never have gotten a handle on his powers, and he would have died facing Shaw. His rage would have blinded him. But because Xavier got him to move past the rage and find his center, thus he created Magneto. And one hell of a villain.
If Xavier had never been, Magneto would have been the Leader and Mentor of the X-Men ala Age of Apocalypse. Not only would Magneto STILL be able to get a hold of his powers, he would also defeat one of the greatest X-Men Villains of all time...Apocalypse! I digress though, as we speak of the Film incarnations of the characters. I disagree that Magneto was a villain in that he saved the future of mutant kind by protecting Charles and the fledgeling mutants near the Bay of Pigs. Magneto believes that an attack on a mutant is an attack on mutant kind, very similar to another phrase in which "an attack on Americans is an attack on the United States."
Agreed. How many more innocents would Osama Bin Laden have killed had his compound never been raided? Much in the same way, how would the future of Europe been had Adolf Hitler not been confronted and cornered. Freedom is very much a product of bloodshed and the continued bloodshed because it is basic human nature to desire something that belongs to someone else. It was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that had once said, "I submit to you that if a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live.” in his speech in Detroit, Michigan, circa 1963.
I hate it when people say, "Maybe they wanted to make him interesting."
To who? People who simply cannot be bothered to read a comic? He's interesting enough as it is. That's just like Hugh Jackman giving the excuse of sibling rivalry being relatable, and that's why they made them (He and Sabretooth) brothers in X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
They have enough comic history in the bank to make a rivalry work without it being of the sibling variety. Magneto has enough great history to be what he is. If he was trying to make Magneto likable, that's not right.
All you need to know is what he went through to understand WHY he does what he does. Vaughn seemed to want to make us support him for it, though. I get why Osama did what he did, but he was wrong. The same for Magneto. I understand he had a bad life and it shaped his previous (Possibly remaining) views of humanity, but he's still wrong to go about it the way he does, in my opinion (Since morality is subjective).
No amount of terrible upbringing should make you a person worthy of support when you then use that upbringing or childhood as an excuse for evil or bad action. Lots of people suffer, not all of them turn out bad. To excuse someone for being bad due to them suffering at a young age is a slap to those who also suffered and yet, didn't lash out at everyone else.
-The Mast
I dont think that MAGNETO can be good, BUT i dont really think of him as EVIL either. He's the happy medium between the two.
I see Magneto as a Tragic Villain. He's not really "evil" he's just doing what he thinks it's right for his kind. Unfortunately he fails to realize he's become what he hates (that's the tragic part); and that he causes more pain than help.
Also he could use a class or two on Evolution. You see there's no such thing as a "new stage of evolution", evolution doesn't have stages, it's a continuous process and no stage is "superior" to the others; just better adapted to their current context
Magneto had to be somewhat well intentioned or his association with Professor X (who could obviously read his mind) would have never made sense, but it clearly showed his tipping point when revenge and power were more important to him than the well being of his friend. He brutally murdered Shaw while X was telepathically linked to him, forcing Xavier to feel it AND be complicit in his murder. In the end, it was shown that his personal goals were more important to him than anything or anyone else. So I'd say he definitely wasn't a hero.
magneto is a villain for trying to rule over another race. A hero tries to find a way for all races to work together. He wants only the mutants to have authority. Magneto is no better than the politicians that fond secret operations to hunt mutants. Xavier is even worse because he knows Magneto's goal and lets him run wild for years before confronting him. He could have easily blocked Magneto's painful memories and helped to make him a better person but noooooooooooohhhhhhhh.com.I don't think brainwashing someone is something a hero would do. It's kinda villainous don't you think so?
This movie should have been called X-Men Origins: MagnetoIt was originally going to be. It was modified into an X-Men origin after they realised McKellen was just too old for it.
I see Magneto as a Tragic Villain. He's not really "evil" he's just doing what he thinks it's right for his kind. Unfortunately he fails to realize he's become what he hates (that's the tragic part); and that he causes more pain than help. Also he could use a class or two on Evolution. You see there's no such thing as a "new stage of evolution", evolution doesn't have stages, it's a continuous process and no stage is "superior" to the others; just better adapted to their current contextThat makes a lot of sense to me. I see him not really as being a villain but as being an Anti-Hero. A man of circumstance and really his arguments make a hell of a lot more sense than his counterpart Xavier. I mean, even in the movie Charles was reading an excerpt from the Theory of Evolution that when a new species arises it follows the extinction of the previous. Not sure if anyone else caught that.
I hope the sequel will bring the "Legion's Quest" story arc into play. Throw in Gabrielle Haller, Legion, and Bishop and you're all set to go ;) And maybe part 3 of the First Class trilogy will be "Age of Apocalypse" ? :)
@Maki_P said:Actually I do believe Magneto is a villain, just not a cackling evil villain, more like Well-Intentioned Extremist. Many of his actions are wrong, and he's not right, but he's not entirely wrong either.I see Magneto as a Tragic Villain. He's not really "evil" he's just doing what he thinks it's right for his kind. Unfortunately he fails to realize he's become what he hates (that's the tragic part); and that he causes more pain than help. Also he could use a class or two on Evolution. You see there's no such thing as a "new stage of evolution", evolution doesn't have stages, it's a continuous process and no stage is "superior" to the others; just better adapted to their current contextThat makes a lot of sense to me. I see him not really as being a villain but as being an Anti-Hero. A man of circumstance and really his arguments make a hell of a lot more sense than his counterpart Xavier. I mean, even in the movie Charles was reading an excerpt from the Theory of Evolution that when a new species arises it follows the extinction of the previous. Not sure if anyone else caught that.
About the evolution theories in the Film, I blame it on being the 60s. Nowadays we know we didn't drove the Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis to extinction, they just weren't as well adapted as we were to the climate changes going on at the time. Also at the time they probably hadn't realized the hunchbacked deformed skeleton came from an old guy with arthritis
it's insane to think a guy in the original comic, his power is LAME magnetic field powers, his costume lame Purple and Red Spandex...yet somehow the writers, the artists Lee, Kirby, Claremont, Morrison added so much to the mutant story, going back to the ethnic divisions, his history with the concentration camps, his quest to fight and save mutants. The movies have taken Magneto to a whole new level of quality and complexityMagneto is a very complicated character and it is nice that First Class showed that
I think he's one of the best villains of all time
Far more deep than lame bad guys or bad gals like Vader or Cruella de Vile or Jason Voorhees
Magneto is just a great character period
I like stories where Magneto isn't really a villain. He is a sympathetic villain that has a good cause
I enjoyed Magneto's portrayal in this film. I was pleasantly surprised by Fassbender's ability to convince me that he was doing the right thing. I've never had a problem with murdering Nazis. I'm expecting to see a similar character exposition of Bane in the Dark Knight rises. In all seriousness, it shows how remarkably naive Xavier is. Oh, they'll understand us, never mind the fact that Russia and USA tried to use their battleships to eliminate them.
I still find so much supprise when I tell them that Professor X and Magneto must have been inspired by Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.
Professor X has to be based on King with his "Dream" that Mutants and Humans can coexist just like King's "Dream" that Blacks and Whites cold coexist as equals.
Magneto has Malcolm X's philosophy of protecting his people "by any means necessary".
Both characters are a product of the turmoil of the times they were created in, and I think that makes them the fascinating and enduring characters we are still reading about today.
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