Is Magneto a Villain Anymore? | X-Men Video Essay
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- čas přidán 19. 06. 2024
- Some say Magneto did nothing wrong. Magneto is the X-Men's first adversary, but is he truly a villain? Some might sympathizing with Magneto is proof that the X-Men have gone woke, but I think it's something deeper. Maybe we think Magneto is a hero or Magneto did nothing wrong...because we're radicalized.
Before X-Men 97 hits our airwaves, consider the question: is Magneto evil a villain anymore?
Link to KylaTea's Elvis Video: • Elvis Said Some of The...
Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
1:42 Grant Morrison's Magneto
3:20 The Magneto Question
4:51 Mutant Liberation or Supremacy?
7:32 Poison Ivy vs Magneto
10:19 Making a Revolutionary Evil
15:02 Ultimate Magneto
20:03 Real Life Subtext
26:05 Professor X is Not a Hero
29:47 Magneto Fighting Monsters
32:47 Audience Sympathies - Krátké a kreslené filmy
First comment woohoo my name will be memorialized for all of history I demand my comment to stay the first thing that people see when they open the comments tab, I deserve to be pinned if that’s okay with you video essayist senpai
Sure!
What was ur comment ??
@@greyjedi6430 This one?
@@agramugliaas someone who has analyzed the history of Marvel and the 60s i feel that part of your video has a mistake, specifically on the fact that you say that the X Men seemed to be defenders of thr status quo, but i think there are things you should take into account when analyzing the early X-Men. Although it's partially true that the idea of mutants was made by Stan so that the characters would be born with their powers, he made clear in interviews that the idea of using it as a allegory for discrimination was already there. This is clear in the story that introduced the sentinels and doctor Bolivar trask, but if you pay attention you will see that Stan didn't want it to be a metaphor for a specific type of discrimination, but discrimination in general, so it was more ambiguous. But besides that, we should also remember that the civil rights movement had the characteristic of not being a "david vs goliath" like the media has portrayed it as for years, both Eisenhower and JFK supported desegregation and later on LBJ and Nixon approved many civil rights laws, the divide between sectors of the civil rights movement was mainly because of that, as many saw it as neccesary to be inside the system to make it better while others argued it was treasonous and that it wouldn't work, as such the X-Men depicted that sort of conflict in those stories. This is clear if we look at the prototype of the X-Men, the Amazing Adult Fantasy story "The Man in the Sky", Written by Stan Lee and Drawn by Steve Ditko, the story is clearly a prototype to what would eventually become the X-Men, as the story depicts a species called mutants which are discriminated by society because of their abilities and a young mutant named Tad Carted is guided to a safe heaven by a wise telepathic mutant teacher who dreams of a world where mutants and humans can live together in peace. As such the end of said story serves as a way of showing the philosophy of early X-Men, which was a common point of view among many people in the civil rights movement "But we will bring you us now, and you will wait with us... We shall wait together until the world is ready to welcome us! We shall wait, in hiding, until that fateful day ... When Mankind Comes of Age". As such this is the philosophical way through which the early years of the X-Men should be analyzed.
Cool
Also, you gotta ask yourself why they keep sending Wolverine to fight Magneto
because magneto can kill wolverine but wont because he doesnt want to harm fellow mutants
Wolvy is the only Xman that's a full blood killer.
Why do they keep sending the guy with with adamantine skeleton to fight Magneto? Are they stupid?
Wolverine is one of the oldest and most skilled fighter, metal skeleton or not he will be useful af on the battlefield. Also everyone has metal on them at some point or is surrounded by it so you wouldn't accomplish much by just not sending logan. I MEAN WE HAVE IRON IN OUR BLOOD. We've also seen him kill a man with a coin, torture Logan (even though he basically always comes back), and Magneto definitely has been a very villainous person but if we're being honest at any point in time he could decide to really choose violence and end Wolverine to send a message but he doesn't. People forget at one point Charles made him relive the holocaust. IDC what he was doing that is beyond fucked. Magneto can be reasoned with even if he's willing to do some really vile stuff.
@@burner555Yeah, Man!
If someone was systematically killing a group I was a part of and I had the power to rearrange the polarity of a freaking planet then I wouldn’t be nice either.
Nobody would. The problem is that doing so would just kill everyone including you and your kin, making it a pretty damn stupid idea.
@@quantumvideoscz2052
And that’s what that plot line is: stupid. Magneto goes full omnicide for no reason whatsoever.
@@goroakechi6126 Thats it. Magneto going full omnicide and reverse the polarity of the planet can make for a compelling storyline, but it makes more sense as a reaction to events that would push him towards total nihilism and despair, as a final fuck you to life.
You'd punish 8 billion people because of a couple of loony scientists?
@batboy9997 I think you mean "The United Nations sanctioning an attack by giant robot that exterminates 16 million of my people in a single incident, and then being told by my friends and allies that it's an election year and I should 'Get Over It'." Where do you think Bastion, Gyrich, Trassk, and that treacherous snake who was LITERALLY the UN's ambassador got the money? Legit, how many world governments in the UN would you tolerate after learning that their people gave the overhead? How else would Bastion have gotten these new sentinels WORLDWIDE if he didn't have the means for global outreach? And its very heavily implied that the UN's got a good few members willing to do this, so, how do you want to separate the wheat from the chaff when the MUTANT RELATIONS OFFICER was part of the chaff and nobody knew?
Looking at the 90’s cartoon, it’s safe to say that Magneto actually has a second mutant ability. He’s the MOST JACKED senior citizen of all time!
I think he took super soldier serum
He is the master of attraction after all 🤭
@@ellie8272 very clever. I see what you did there.
For a guy who has his powers do all the heavy lifting, he looks like he lifts a lot himself
And he can attract Rouge@@ellie8272
“I know how you hated my mutant powers…”
“You have no idea.”
“Worry not, I will kill you with my bare fist… you will die pure.”
- magneto to red skull
When did this Happen? And what issue?
@@thelordofthelostbraincells March to axis, he smashed his red skull in with a huge chunk of bricks
That line is so RAW I love it when magneto or his family fight Red Skull
Magneto being based and killing Nazis with his bare hands
@@goroakechi6126 Now we see how his chosen people act against civilians.
Everytime I think about Magneto and his villainy, I think to that issue of Uncanny X-Men where he and Kitty Pride go to a holocaust museum and meet some survivors. Kitty is shocked to find out that Magneto was a “Hero” and Magneto’s next line always stuck with me.
“Hardly. In those days, Heroism meant holding onto one’s humanity, while the nazi’s tried their best to turn us into animals. The way to defy them…to defeat them…was to lie, to hold onto hope, No matter what. Believe me Kitty, I was no one special. If I am a hero, then so is every other man and woman who survived.”
Erik despite his powers is only a man and unlike Charles, I believe some part of Erik knows that. It’s through humanity and cooperation with other mutants, that he’s able to accept that and can achieve anything.
that is really wrong take Charles does know he and other mutants are human that his whole point
what makes magneto a villain is that he ignores or downright refuses other peoples humanity
that's what he learned from the nazis
Are you thinking of the Trial Of Magneto story ?
He sees himself as above human. He calls non mutants "humans" as if he is not one.
The problem is, Magneto would look DOWN on the other Holocaust survivors for being 'merely human'. He would acknowledge their suffering, sympathize due to the shared trauma... but he'd always see them as his lessers. The guy is a supremacist at the core.
@@gottesurteil3201 -It depends on who is writing him.
A guy told me once that "Magneto will never be a hero because he is a revolutionary written by people in the most imperialist country of the world " and I believe that's why he usually has inconsistent characterization, he oscilates between being a revolutionary and a tool in a political narrative to justify the existence of opression with the fear of the opressed.
Pure truth. Perfect example of this are all the MCU villains that do have a point and question the status quo, such as killmonger or the flag smashers. They have to turn them into evil maniacs out of nowhere to show how change = bad and the heroes just remain as world police
Dumb. You mean that country that started with the most glorified revolution in history?
Idk, X-Men 97 did a pretty good job making him a hero.
@@Bojoschannel killmonger was a racial supremacist who would sacrifice traditions of his people in the name of power and the flag smashers are ultimately people who were angry that the return of those erased by thanos resulted in them not being the ones to sit by while others suffered the consequences of them being erased against their will
@@Bojoschannel you're ignoring the fact that the changes Killmonger and the Flag Smashers want to bring about are BAD THINGS.
imho Morrison's take on Magneto is pretty flat and boring. It's not that he can't be portrayed as a pure villain. Some of the most fun and memorable characters are mustache-twirling baddies. But just doing outrageous things, like having him break Professor X's neck, is not a substitute for compelling character writing.
He didn’t break his neck. He just took the nanities back out that were helping Charles walk.
That was Jeff Loeb in Ultimatium.
Hurting the Professor is something the Mainstream Magneto wouldn’t do.
@@ShockwaveFPSStudiosMaybe not directly, but Magneto beat the X-Men, captured them, cut off their abilities, and made Xavier think they were dead explicitly to cause Charles anguish. I don't recall the issue numbers, but it was in the lead up to the original Phoenix Saga in the early 100s of UXM before the X-Men broke free and most of them went into the Savage Land, only to be presumed dead yet again.
I would agree, had it not been for Xorn! I have a lot of thoughts about Xorn, that I'm actually saving for a potential video essay of my own sometime in the future, but-- I'd really advise you to reconsider Morrison's Magneto while constantly having Xorn as an entity in mind.
I feel like Magneto is a perfect example of an anti-villian he has heroic motivations but in desperation lashes out with radical and dangerous methods.
There's nothing heroic about being a supremacist who's attempted genocide.
But he doesn’t have heroic motives he believes in the complete destruction of humanity and he’s is just as bad as all the bigots he fights
His motivations are racial supremacy.
I would say Magneto has Heroic Motivations IN HIS OWN MIND. And his lashing out is partly desperation, partly bigotry, partly arrogance.
@@Ares99999where else would motivation lie if not in one’s own mind
Killing the designer of the Sentinels does kinda seem like a good thing imo. She invented a weapon which has the sole purpose of genocide, that's pretty monstrous.
You're 100% wrong. The sentinels are not for the purpose of genocide, they're for protection from super powered human beings, ie: mutants.
@@liteneyprotect? It outright hunts down mutants. They don't subdue they don't arrest they just slaughter that is my understanding of the sentinels.
@@zcgamerandreacts2762 Again you're lying, Sentinels are robot cops for super powered humans, and we've seen the sentinels apprehend mutants for years. They have wires that come out of their hands and entangle the mutants. Why are you so blatantly lying?
@@liteney not lying just my limited knowledge of X-men.
Saw the show from the 90s.
Then some of the movies but never read any of the comics except some readings from youtubers if I can recall but not much.
@zcgamerandreacts2762 you are in fact correct ther bassicly giant guns. The only times sombody is captured is when they surrender themselves then humains detain them while the sentinels still have ther blasters targeted on them.
Many versions of Magneto he goes from defending mutantkind and willing to use violence to do it, to mutant supremacy. If he is written as mutant supremacy it is bitterly ironic, because that makes his views morally equivalent to the nazis that tried to exterminate him in the holocaust.
@@Dimitris_BalfYou know they say that Magneto was actually not base off of Malcom X but rather Menachem Begin Isreal former Prime minister. Ironic that the people that like Magneto would hate him knowing who he base off of.
Which was the point, from the beginning he was modeled after Malcolm X and the Black Panthers who had branches that were Black supremacists and even allied with the KKK under the idea that they would be safe if they were cut off from the rest of the world or dominating it.
To be fair, with fiction, when you have ACTUAL superpowers, and in Magneto's case, contol a fundamental force of the universe, you can at least see the argument for an objectively superior race, the one with actual superpowers rather than just levels of melanin and hair colour
Mag does in some versions believe in Zionism but for mutants ffs he also lives in Israel
@@hyperion3145 I know some groups did work with the kkk, but did the black panthers ever do that?
Way back in the 60s, Magneto's goal wasn't just to have mutants be the dominant species. It was to have mutants be the dominant species UNDER HIM. He undermined other mutant revolutionaries because he wanted the new order to feature him at the top. He wasn't just a revolutionary, he was a narcissist and a megalomaniac. If you want Magneto in full villain mode, that's the side you'd have to bring back. But then he's pretty much just diet Dr Doom and I like him better this way anyway.
Yeah. There are ways one could make magneto a real villain again but then he wouldn’t be the unique character he is
@@hopekeeley2122And this backsliding has angered a lot of people.
Remember what happened with Emma Frost in Inhumans vs Xmen? Yeah. That was an attempt to make her a full villain again but then people got angry.
Yea, that's how I always saw him - a man whose ultimate goal is not just a world for mutants, but a world for mutants where HE is on top. And if other mutants oppose his dominion, he's willing to turn on them in an instant
@@user-vq8lp3nc4j Whilst I do prefer post trial tiddy-top Magneto, it does remind me of the Xorn we see in New Xmen. How he was so quick to chastise Dust for not fitting his ideal of mutant identity since she’s religious.
You do get some flavour of that in Krakoa but more in the sense of Magneto going “see what I’m willing to compromise on?” When you see Fenris of all mutants swanning around on the island.
Then, after the trial when he finds out that Anya can’t be resurrected, he bounces and gets reclusive because Krakoa couldn’t provide what he wanted.
Humanity in Marvel keeps proving his point for him.
As well as humanity in real life
Humans are the true monsters. Good people are the exception, not the rule, both in comics and in real life
@@RetroRadianceLight
@@AngryPug76If that was true, or Magneto was really right, my life would be significantly worse.
Having a valid point does not mean that your prescruption for the problem is either good or correct. The same could be said for humanity. Humans actually have very good reason to fear and be wary about and around mutants. They are the next stage of human evolution, and their prosperity means the extinction of homo sapiens, not to mention mutants often cause death and destruction with their abilities, and regular humans have little recourse to protect themselves effectively. Their grievances with mutants are just as valid as Magneto's skepticism toward humanity. That's why the X-Men doesn't work as a direct allegory for persecuted and marginalized groups. X-Men only ever works when tackling broad, universal themes. If there's any point to be made with the X-Men, it's that if humans and mutants, two groups with real defferences, grievances, and conflicts of interest, can strive to live at peace and learn to cooperate for a mutually better future, then how much more can we jn the real world when our differences are so much mire trivial in comparison?
Is Magneto right? Well, the answer is actually a cliched one. Yes and no. He’s right in wanting to protect his race from humans, being prepared for war, and creating a nation for mutants. But at the same time, to say that he’s done nothing wrong is false. He’s wrong in how he goes about things because he’s ruled by the past. Innocents on both sides have suffered and died, who had no say in any of the violence. Magneto’s one flaw is that he’s too quick to choose violence.
As for Charles Xavier, he too is right and wrong. He’s right for wanting to be a diplomat between mutants and humans, to want to improve relations and more peaceful. But he’s wrong for having too much faith in humans.
It’s the never ending cycle between two points of view. One side is never truly right. And the irony is that despite humans and mutants being labeled as different species, they’re ultimately still part of humanity.
I agree with your take, no civil rights movement ever won peacefully. Yet at the same time, mass crimes against humanity isn't the way to bring change.
If I had powers I would hope that I would use my powers to make the world a better place, to do good and be good. But I know…deep, deep inside my heart…that if I had powers and went through what Erik went through…I would be just like him, maybe even worse that Magneto. That absolutely terrifies me.
But that also makes Magneto feel so very real and more than just a comic character.
Hear, hear.
You'd be a supremacist and attempt genocide? Not something you should admit.
You're wrong, allot of people suffer horrible things, and do not turn out to be villians, only villians are villians, as they feel justified in harming others.
@liteney thats just because a lot of them dont have the power to back it up. Plus last time i checked no one really goes threw the holocaust like that.
@@UnlimitedIvory I'm Slavic, 10's of millions of us went through the holocaust like that, please don't speak nonsense. You have no idea what you're talking about.
I love that in the first iconic Secret Wars the Beyonder landed Magneto in with the Heroes and not the villains
Hence his ascent to heroism. Marvel has officially put him on the side of heroes
And Wolverine even says in that event that Magneto was right.
I don’t know if any comics have done this, but I think an important thing to consider about Mutants is, despite being TOLD they’re another species… they aren’t. The mutations they have, while extreme, don’t make them a separate species from humanity. At their core, mutants are just humans.
As a young black person, i was always told by older people "theres a right way and wrong way to change things." And cite dr. King.
They always got quiet when I said "Dr. King was a man of peace and reason and you shot him in the head anyway. I will not be protesting in a way you find easy to ignore."
Fuck yeah.
I believe that they shot King in the head because he couldn't be ignored.
But Dr. King wasn't ignored.. and he used peace and reason at a time when the opposite would have been more than justified and he made significant legal change with that methodology.
@@sifuhotman8595 he still got shot tho
@@RealTalk720 So did Malcolm X so if being shot means you can be ignored I guess there are no civil rights period in the U.S (whether they're enough is a different matter)
I think what people often never adress be fans or writers is Magneto's hypocrisy wether he realizes it or not.
He is a Holocaust survivor, he was oppressed and almost killed by a group of people that believed they were genetically superior to anyone else, and yet here we have Magnus talking about "the next step in evolution", those "inferior Homo Sapiens", how humans are afraid of mutant superiority and fight the natural order.
History is repeating itself and Magneto realizing it or not now he's on the other side since a lot of his talking points devolve into mutant supremacy.
This. I cant believe people don't pick up on this. It's literally trading 1 evil for another.
@@IbnRushd-mv3fp
Incorrect. Not only were there prominent Jews like Einstein opposed to racism and ethnic bigotry of all sorts of the day, there are Jews and even Israeli Jews who stand up for example the Palestinians and their plight.
Nobody pays attention to them because the US has backed Netanyahu's regime for decades now, and America lacks any drive to keep its client states on a leash. Same as how the Saudis are allowed to commit atrocities in Yemen, Qatar is allowed to do slavery, and how Afghanistan warlords were shielded by US interests despite individual soldiers speaking up about their horrendous brutality.
It's not about Jews, it's about American hegemony and the price in innocent blood a superpower like the US is willing to pay to pretend it can control the world.
@@fluidthought42 American hegemony is another issue, but culturally and historically the supremacy among them is hard to shake off even in comparison to other faiths which have been liquidated by some of these culturally j individuals.
@@IbnRushd-mv3fp
Supremacy? My dude, they have been minorities for over a thousand years before the creation of modern Israel. Modern Israel is practicing what it is because it's a colonialist state, not because it has Jews in it. See for example Rhodesia or the Afrikaaners in South Africa. Hell, look at how colonialism exacerbated tensions in Rwanda!
It's not about any individual culture being prone to domination, it's about an inherent human quality, expressed along a spectrum, that can make individuals and eventually countries vulnerable to authoritarian ideology.
@@fluidthought42 the problem with your framing is that you expect me to blame colonialism (which is fact of human life) for something very SPECIFICALLY in the vain of proxy warfare, really Israel isn't a huge colonial force it's a small like you said "minority" that uses bigger friends as enforcement, everything is in quasi religious terms and very calculating fashion, it's a personal vendetta on a large scale.
and don't mistake me for a *social darwinist* because it's not the fact that people are ethnically jewish, it's simply that we all know judaism is an inherently left brained philosophical tradition that works well in environments like liberal capitalism because of its moral ambiguity and "CYOA" = "cover your own ass" attitude.
Magneto was wrong to lead with his approach back in the 60's, but now? Now that mutants have been killed and beaten and even when they are far from humanity, in sanctuaries built for them, slaughtered? Even despite the X-Men saving the world multiple times, humanity has proven their inability to cohabitate with mutant kind. Magneto, for his part, has left behind the ways of "The Brotherhood Of Evil Mutants" and has instead focused on the protection of mutants in danger. I don't think he's so in the wrong anymore.
Considering how many hundreds of times Wolverine pulled his claws out on magneto I think ripping the adamantium from his body was completely justified... And seemingly the only way Wolverine would understand the principles of magnetism
What you missed with your bit about Griffith, I'd argue, is that the story makes it obvious that he's not actually interested in any grand or noble goal, he just wants to be a Monarch with power over people. That's the only way to really write a "revolutionary" turned villain, by pointing out that revolution was never their actual goal, as this actually happens in reality, unlike fictional media where antagonists who are correct the whole movie or show get taken down because they randomly decided they wanted to kill innocent people, while still fully believing in their goal.
This is a good point, and honestly, i feel Griffith deserves his own deep dive.
Yup Griffith wanted "legitmancy as a noble" which is hard due to him just not being such. He was broken due his spiral downward as he wanted to do more. Guts was a warrior realizing he had nothing else to prove by slaughtering armies. Griffith on the otherhand was obsessed with being a noble this meant he wasn't placated until he finally was such. Griffith was never a revolutionary he was mercenary trying to be a lord and lost everything.
I would argue that he has noble and grand goals as a ruler, the issue is that those don't stem from genuine ideals, but from his own childish power fantasy that he tries to creat. Not disagreeing with you here, but I think its an important facette of his character. He wants to live in a power fantasy, where he is the hero and he sacrifices the entire world to do so.
@@shizachan8421That's because he realized after maybe after decade maybe of fighting he wasn't going anywhere. He was just a super good mercenary band that people above him used to suit their ends. They lashed out Griffth for playing in their world when really Griffith could have taken theirs if he didn't want to play fair.
That's why he did what he did. He wanted to be a Lord by legit means yet most of those lords murdered to get that power. He only realized his mistake after they took him. Thus the sacrfice should be been towards to nobles that destroyed him not the people that loved him. Yet that's not how the God Hand works.
@@ExeErdna Sorta, he wants to be the god of a idyllic society. But he has levels of humanity within him, which is why he could use the behelit.
He loved and cherished his band of the hawk. The biggest point of contention comes from seeing them as individuals and friends or just pawns he cares for and whos awe belongs to him.
I'd have to say something in the middle. He hates them dying, even if it progresses his dream, but sacrifices them anyway as they looked up to him. Even with all of fantasia he doesn't feel content unlike other godhand members.
But with Guts and Casca even when he was broken he had some moments where he envisioned a life with them. Sure he wasn't happy about it, but he tried to force Casca down and end himself in that same moment. I always saw that as him being possibly content but in his state of mind he couldn't accept or understand anything.
He was never a revolutionary sure, he never wanted to reform anything, just be a slightly better king (anyone would have been atp lol).
But he had a strange amount of depth and hypocrisy which I doubt we'll ever get answers too.
I originally HATED Xorn being revealed as Magneto because I loved the idea of Xorn as a character. But I would LOVE if they used it for a big climactic reveal in Deadpool 3
Of literally all of the Villains that are getting Lionized in reboots: Magneto is the one who deserves such treatment the most in my eyes.
Imagine having the heroic X-Men fight against Magneto, but he's not some some silver-tongued terrorist, but a man at the end of his rope, who has goals and objectives that align with the X-Men frequently, but in many instances they butt heads, they disagree on things, but not on fundamental moral issues, and they still operate separately.
Antagonist doesn't equal villain, and I for one think X-Men would go to remarkably interesting places if Magneto was a non-villainous Antagonist, especially with how many people are finding out his inspiration: Malcom X, is being vindicated in many many regards.
Isn't this just First Class though? By the end of the film, Erik takes things into his own hands.
I have never understood why people try to make the Adamantium scene Magneto's crossing the Rubicon
Especially since it was in reaction to Wolverine LITERALLY TRYING TO DISEMBOWEL HIM🤦
Here's the question I would ask you, if you consider Magneto a hero: Does he view any humans as good or have the capacity to befriend them? Or does he judge the whole as evil? If he does, by what right is he justified or heroic? Oppression is not an excuse to harm those who have done you no wrong, and then to retroactively paint them as 'evil' because of what they ARE rather than what they've DONE. Magneto harming people but viewing it as a cruel necessity? That's one thing. Mags happily harming humans because he fundamentally sees them as inferior? How can he do so and be sympathetic still?
Yada yada prejudice plus power or something like that is how they usually justify it
I wouldn't say I see him as a hero but I understand why he's doing what he's doing. America literally has Neo Nazi rallies every year now I can't get on twitter without seeing thousands of racist accounts spreading hate. As time goes on my worst fear is that humanity will prove magneto right.
@@citysmall3427 an omega level mutant is still not more powerful than a culture that fundamentally reviles his kind.
You’re saying that about the universe where humans consistently commit genocide or stand by while it happens? 😅
I think you need to go bad to the drawing board with this thought exercise
@@TheBiggestMoronYouKnow except for the ones that dont. Like Moira MacTaggart. Those are the ones hes talking about.
I'll throw in my worthless opinion(s) on this one:
1. Magneto is Jewish and a Holocaust survivor. Having him commit villainy because of his origins provides a hypocrisy that can be pointed out to take away from the issues that make him act evil.
2. Xavier's intent is to convince people mutants aren't a threat to be feared or hated by having mutants do "comunity service" vigilantism & training mutants to "properly" control & live with their mutant traits ('Cause many mutants' powers manifest in an out of control manner). Detractors may decide to see this as Xavier being a "pick me" or "Uncle Tom" mutant.
Yeah, people seams to forget that often time mutant Power manifesting is often lethal to those around them, it not uncommon for a mutant to accidentally kill people or their entire family the first time their power show up. Hard to not make people afraid if anytime this can happens.
14:28 Nathanial Essex never stopped being villainous and is set to be the Big Bad of the Krakoa era (or a version of him is).
His "second chance" is very much meant to be Krakoa's own Operation Paperclip, with represcussions in the long run.
Was literally gonna type this
Magneto walks the line between anti-hero and villain more often than not. Does he have a point? Yes. Is he often right? Also, yes. He takes things too far though, often making those who would have been his allies into his enemies. Indeed, his viewpoint is far too black and white, he needs to acknowledge more often the grey. There are humans who don't hate mutants, who are not guilty of the atrocities he would seek to stop, however by refusing to see this he becomes the type of bigot he would seek to destroy. This is what makes him cross the line often into villain status. If you view all of a group as a monster, it is easy to become a monster. He see and treats humans the same as the humans often treat him, and in so doing he is guilty of the same wrong.
Your analysis of poison ivy is completely wrong The whole environmentalism motivation is a lot more of a relatively edition
She's been an environmentalist since the 1992 animated series. Before that, the concept of her being an undergrad preyed upon by her much older college professor has been around since the 70's.
To me Magneto will always be an example of a tragic villain. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions, and he became the very type of thing that he had wanted to save Mutants from.
The best written villains are those that are only a step or two away from being antiheroes.
Their ideas are right, their methods are not.
Magneto makes me think of a quote
Today’s monster is tomorrow’s hero, today’s hero is tomorrow’s monster
Reminds me of the plot of Metal Ger Solid 3: Snake Eater. Though that theme is shown throughout the story of the Metal Gear games, from Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater to Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance.
That applies more to Beast than you think
Makes me think about before; Superheroes would be shown stopping bank robberies and nowadays people will look at that and ask why a superhero is protecting companies.
Basically, Godzilla.
Once a nuclear horror that will forever have a grudge against humanity, especially the Japanese, into a force of nature that humanity cheers on to stop major threat, be they alien invasion or malevolent gods, hellbent to destroy Planet Earth.
I think Americans(you should read that in a strong accent) have a bit of an overall rosy view of violent revolution in general that kinda paints it as something you just do and just win and not, as it often is irl, something where you just go just kill, just die and leave things no better off than before. In a way Ultimate Magneto is just kinda what it is if you go for a full violence approach to change. What, you think you're gonna get to the rich and powerful without going through all their security and their families? You think your pipe bombs are only gonna get The Bad people?
There's a group of people called accelerationists. They believe that the only way to uppend the status quo is to ruin things so much people will drop their complacency of systems and will want to Do a Revolution/ You can find them rooting for the worst candidates in politics knowing they are the worst . These people believe that a good enough bad status quo makes people too comfortable to want that change bad enough to be willing to fight the government in a fistfight for it.
But so far all their ambitions have been thwarted by reality. When things get bad as the result of the worst people taking over , people (broadly speaking) retreat back into The Status Quo. It is, after all, better than Far Right Regime and way better than writing liberty with your blood.
So to me if you want to do villain Magneto today you have to make it so there's SOME advancement in Mutant Rights and their perception by regular humans, with some strong backlash by human forces, and Magneto and The X-Men caught in the middle. X-Men want to keep advancing their small gains, "Magneto is like this is incremental bullshit that will be rolled back the minute they can" and he's like trying to get people on hi side to do a revolution, which would be bloody and costly and might end up not even succeeding. And they can team up when you know something's a big threat to mutants or everyone and whatever, but they fundamentally recognize what he wants is too terrible to consider.
An accelerationist version of the character could definitely make for an interesting run.
"Magneto is like this is incremental bullshit that will be rolled back the minute they can".
This is a factual statement that we've seen play out time and time again.
Ever hear of a little something called Roe v. Wade?
Even the Civil Rights Movement was almost an abject failure. You don't know anything about that period in history if you don't think it was.
Incrementalism is hubris. It doesn't work. A system whose purpose is oppression cannot be "reformed" away. That's impossible by the very definition of the word "reform": to improve within the constraints of a particular system.
Nobody has the right to determine the timetable of another person's freedom. Liberation is not an unreasonable demand!
Tell me you don't know anything about Accelerationism without telling me you don't know anything about Accelerationism.
@@thebigboss1824 It’s accurate enough, especially since we're talking about using it in a slightly different context.
@@kingofhearts3185 Should be noted that for mutants, like the LGBTQ+ people they have often represented, a lot of mutants have families and friends who aren't mutants. The violent revolution would pit one against the other, and have these people the mutants love killed. This would of course, make many of the mutants side against Magneto.
The situation simply can't be resolved by violent upheaval and nothing else.
Magneto is neither villain nor hero but something in-between.
He's an anti hero whose also a antagonist because his morals go against the X mens
Complex Sympathetic villains are a double edged sword because the more you do it the more their status as a villain comes to question.
He was a generic villain created by Jack Kirby and then they made this Holocaust survivor backstory after Kirby left Marvel.
Unfortunately Magneto has become a template for revolutionary villains, such as Killmonger, Amon, Kuvira, The White Fang, The Flag smashers, Grindelwald, etc.
Its all part of a project of conditioning to make liberation abhorrent to us, and it is to protect the status quo.
It would honestly be kind of interesting to do a story that's basically the opposite of Breaking Bad.
START with a cold, calculating monster of a character, but that has ostensibly noble aims like the characters you mention. And then, over the course of the narrative you see them get BETTER. They accept that some of their tactics went too far, but are still able to use the attention and reputation these earlier acts give them to actually progress their cause. Have the show end with a fundamentally different "status quo" than it started with BECAUSE of this revolutionary's direct actions.
What is the status quo?
@@pn2294 general phrase meaning "how things are". In many stories, the entire fight is about restoring things to that state, the villain has "disrupted" society and they must get back to that.
Handful of stories explore changing how things are for the better. (And some very rare "for the worse")
Killmonger did nothing wrong
magneto is just a supremacist who can't look in the mirror and realise he's just like Mr mustache man.
And the last time marvel tried to change the status quo of the x men (krakoa), they turned them into xenophobic isolationists that would make wakanda and latveria blush, build a literal ethnostate and then start demanding countries across the planet to hand over any mutants they have.
The real issue is that the x men and mutants in general just do not fit a traditional allegory of civil rights, because they're people with literal superhuman abilities (or in some cases disabilities). The fear people have for mutants within the comics is very much a natural response, since unlike inhumans (who have identifiable Kree genes and their power is awakened by exposure to terrigen gas), the X gene can appear out of nowhere, can't be traced, and it's effects range from growing a 3rd arm to sneezing with the force of a nuclear bomb. Senator Kelly and his mutant registration act on surface sounds reasonable as you could log all mutant abilities and figure em out (of course the comics showcase the flaws in this). Even the Sentinels, as ridiculous as they are (seriously, the US government builds big ass robots that could very well be deployed for any form of conflict but they choose to make them only be for mutant suppression) make a bit of sense considering the insanity of Earth being filled with 20 different forms of abnormal shit.
Xavier's school would attempt to remedy this fear by enrolling mutant kids and educate them on their mutant ability, and hopefully master it and live with it, or use it for good. This would prevent scenarios where mutants could pose a threat for themselves and others, living in fear of their power, or abusing their power for selfish gain (with great power comes great responsibility more or less).
Magneto on the other hand is a holocaust victim who saw the fear around mutants, got auschwitz PTSD thinking history was going to repeat again and then turned into a mutant supremacist to combat this.
I think it's quite easy to view Magneto as a villain. He doesn't just want liberation; he wants supremacy, to essentially replace a hierarchy. True liberation would be a complete dissolution of these structures that uphold the bigotry Magneto's brotherhood would essentially update to favor and propogate mutantkind supremacy as opposed to humankind supremacy.
I think the point is that since Magneto has teamed up with the X-Men he doesn't really want that anymore. The Michael Fassbinder Magneto generally wants deterrence (making sure humans know that mutants can defend themselves against any human attack) not supremacy. Arguably the Powers of X version does want mutants to rule though
Yup. Motivations mean nothing. Actions define who you are. Magneto can be heroic, but at the end of the day, he's the warning modern society doesn't want to acknowledge, that the oppressed can easily become oppressors themselves.
@@Tyler_Wbut if the oppressed weren't oppressed, there would be no danger of them becoming oppressors, no?
Most people don’t have a problem with oppression they only dislike that they are the ones being oppressed. Look at Liberia for example where the former slaves immediately enslaved the native Africans.
Depends on the version of course but the problem with his plan isn't that it wouldn't work it's that it would work in keeping mutants safe but it would make the hate perpetual. The only way to truly fix things is through the potential early danger of coexistence.
14:51 Outside of the mass deaths incidents like the EMP, I think some of the genuinely unjustifiable things he does is how he treats those under him like his children or his followers. Such as murdering Pietro that one time.
It's not nearly to the same extent as Griffith, but it is in that same vein. That he doesn't always treat his fellow mutants as equal to himself and can buy in to his own reputation.
It's something about him that never got retconned since the silver age, and while he tries to do better he can slip up badly. And I like that.
Being flatly good is as uninteresting as flatly bad, and it's entirely possible for someone to be sincere in their beliefs and ideals while failing to wholly practice them. And unfortunately, centralised power over others is really is easy to abuse.
I liked the recent issue of Resseruction of Magneto where he confesses to having condemned lower status Mutants unjustly to a form of conscious stasis for eternity alongside Charles, and feels really bad about it...but shows no inclination to go back and free them. It's not untill he learns of what happened to/with Xavier is he inspired to return, which is both sweet and horribly self-interested of him.
He's a person, with biases and priorities which is fine untill you give that person absoloute power with no checks and balances.
Might be why Emma Frost is my favourite X men character. Shes got the edge but, when written accurately, the children come first for her. As opposed to Wolfsbane where the kids need to flee from her.
There is one thing I’d love to know about Magneto during the Krakoan era; was he the one that granted the pardon to Fenris? And, if so, why?
@@christopherbennett5858 I think the Krakoa'n invitation was open to ALL mutants (though secretly, perhaps not precogs) so everyone (well, it's complicated for Sabretooth) got an oppertunity for a clean slate, including the Fenris twins.
They do squander it eventually and turn enemies of Krakoa, but I don think Magneto is involved in any of those storylines.
@@gota7738 No, he isn’t. I did love Monet and Angel trolling them in X corp.
Well, all mutants aside from Maddie.
So I’m like “Xavier, you let Sabretooth, Selene, Apocalypse, Sinister AND Thing Ein und Zwei in. Even Cassandra Nova who is really more of a doppelgänger… but we couldn’t have Scott’s ex.
@@christopherbennett5858 To be "fair" I think the rule against clones was in regards to resurrection since Gabby was allowed ON Krakoa. The no "pre-cogs" rule apparently functioned like this since it wasn't official.
There was a lot of shifty-ness though. Sabertooth was only allowed in for a minute before he got sentenced to the pit for breaking a law that didn't exist yet. Some Mutants got more leniency than others.
Griffith murders people to save Humanity. Magneto murders people to subjugate Humanity. Griffith sacrificed those for a tangible good, one that furthered the whole of the race. Magneto is an active enemy of Mankind, who sees no qualms in murdering non-mutants.
Magneto is pretty flatly bad. You'd have to be ignorant to believe otherwise.
I won't go so far as to say Magneto did nothing wrong. But I will say that much of the time, Magneto is right about a lot. Especially when it comes to human nature.
This is an excellent essay on Civil Rights. As an African American and a reader of comics, I have always observed the comparisons of Magneto and Professor Xavier to MLK and Malcolm. Also, as a student of history there has always been a saying through the 20th Century, One Man's Terrorist is another Man's Freedom Fighter. Anyone that is fighting for Human Rights of others is a hero to one group and a villain to another. The reality is that when people, or mutants, who are trying to be tested with dignity and respect, peaceful or violent means, people just want to be respected as an individual or a group. This was an awesome essay about societal choices of how to be treated with dignity.
That's simply false, and it's easy to understand the difference. Terrorists attack civilians, freedom fighters attack military targets.
@@anonygent It depends on your perception. What you see as a Terrorist, someone may see a Freedom Fighter. It depends on what side you are sitting on.
@@cassiewatson3870 It doesn't always depend on that. I feel people use that 'It's all a matter of perception' so much and so often that its more of an excuse than anything else. Magneto is a Terrorist fighting other Terrorists. Have you ever considered that both sides are bigoted, that both sides are wrong?
@Ares99999 So the solution is to take both bad sides down? What then?
Edit: I agree that they should be taken down, but violence is only removing the tumor, not curing the cancer.
@@quincyconnors9391 I'm saying both sides are fundamentally wrong, and peace will never be achieved with these elements leading the relations between the two sides.
We don't need a Video Essay on this. YES he's still a villain.
I'm sorry but if someone's stated goals is to wipe out Humans to make the world free of their hatred, they're the villain. His dream isn't to live along side, to change their mind, to help them see the error of their ways. That's the dream of the X-Men. It's not even "separate but equal"(also evil), that least would have normal human live under his totalitarian rule(he very much wants to be the king of all mutants as well lets not kid ourselves). His dream, it's genocide. Magneto became the thing he hated the most, a fascist racist.
Poison Ivy also, she's still an Eco Terrorist. She was sure as shit willing to kill Alfred and his girlfriend(a woman) for the supposed crimes of his employer, things he may not have even had any knowledge of. Those same crimes she wants to kill Bruce Wayne for? Unknowingly working with someone was doing ecological damage, and it's well known during that episode that as soon as it was made clear to Wayne the problem, he cut ties with the company and he wasn't pressured into it. None of that context matters to Poison Ivy. We're not even talking about yet how Poison Ivy whole power set is about taking away free will and enslaving people for her own gain.
The older I get, the more bigotry and it's violent expression I see, the more I see Magneto had a point.
The oppressor always tries to tell the oppressed what is an acceptable way to respond, which usually a double standard.
Magneto was right
Right but...Magneto has on several occasions professed that he wants the complete obliteration or subjugation of humanity, which either just upholds existing power structures within the context of their universe or is literally just another genocide.
Well, in Magneto’s case, when you use your unique power to subject others and genocide a race, with the only people who can stop you being other superpowered beings, your not as oppressed as you may see yourself as, your no longer just only a vicitm when you try to subject other races that you see as inferior to you. Being told to not be genocidal isn’t oppression, and it’s being said by not only the oppressor but also the oppressed ones within your group telling you not to genocide and make others suffer. It’s not a double standard, it’s telling you not to do the same exact thing that you seem to be more holy than or at least pretend to be. Genocide just staight up isn’t a acceptable way to respond I’m saying this as a young black man.
What country are you from?
@@anotherrandomguy8871if the only way to not be oppressed is to utilize power, then I would say a group of people are being oppressed.
If people can't go through their lives normally, without having the even the scales with their powers, then oppression is at play.
Magneto was such an interesting villain because, especially in the context of X-Men which was such a heavy metaphor for minority groups facing hate and bigotry, Magneto was very easy to side with. A lot of us know the feeling of wanting to just live life but the laws and bigotry make things hostile for no reason, especially now after the Trump situation making bigotry a huge open issue, it's not difficult to side with the guy saying "Peaceful protesting doesn't work, these people have proven they will never accept you and treat you as equals no matter what you do so instead of trying to gain their approval, let's take them out and claim our place in the world, if they don't like it and get in our way, they will be destroyed". That's such an understandable feeling that it's almost impossible to view Magneto as a villain, especially with his history, unless they make him do something wild and insanely over the top.
I think you've really hit the nail on the head with this
Magneto in x-men 97 is amazing ❤.
My favourite Magneto versions are the ones who really believes that he is helping his people, but just might act a bit too far in a way that be attributed some to his trauma. And all the same these Magnetos can sometimes be shown to have been correct, that some of his fears can be very justified.
He can be wrong, but how he is wrong should not be something like a pure evil. To some, who might be at risk to the things he fights against, he can be a hero. He should at least be as right as Xavier himself can be flawed and have blind spots.
Like in X2? He tried to use Xavier to kill humanity .
@@matthewschwartz6607 After humans tried to do it first, by brainwashing a mutant.
Every time Magneto isn't morally grey, he's awful. Magneto is nice to follow because of how ironically human he is. Magneto is someone with huge empathy for those he sees as his equals, but is also a supremacist that doesn't want to live in piece, putting himself above every single thing that he considers hostile to him. He's no hero, he's no villain, he's an asshole that doesn't know what is the meaning of "ponderation" and should go seek a therapist for his traumas.
I agree that Magneto is a very sympathetic character. I think he's astonishing at tactical direct action. But he fails at alliance building. And that's crucial. Mutants need Magneto and Xavier,for their varying skills. To speak about IRL,the Resistance will need supporters in major institutions like Hollywood and even foreign governments like China or Sweden in order to have a lasting impact. We must be both Magnus and Xavier.
Great post.
Resistance to... what exactly? And what will you do? Kill those in charge and put your people over the rest. Because mark my words, Magneto would establish a world that would have mutants as first-class citizens, 'mutates' as second-class citizens, and humans as third-class citizens. And even in the first-class citizens, it wouldn't be equal. You think Magneto would ever, EVER think himself equal with a guy whose mutant power is to far gas that happens to be blue?.
Magneto would tear down a bigoted system to install one just as, if not more, bigoted. That's not a solution. The only lasting solution would be to erase the bigotry itself. That's the true battle.
Worst things Magneto has done don't come close to half the shit Xavier has pulled, I genuinely wonder why he is seen as evil when Charles regularly mind controls people, warps the truth, holds sentient beings in captivity and sacrfices mutants only to wipe their existance from memory. Seriously nothing Magneto has done comes close.
Well done, i personally think that the definition between hero and villain change as the general public loses the ability to ignore the systemic societal issues that continue to wreak havoc on our day to day lives. Given recent events such as the murder of nex benedict, any number of recent "lone wolf" shooting sprees, and cops killing children with no repercussions normal people are starting to warm up to the idea of bad guys changing the laws instead of simply breaking them while doing nothing to address systemic societal issues. Case in point the authority tackles the idea villainous governments pretty well and even asks the question "why don't superheroes change the world" with the titular super hero group halting a genocide by overthrowing the regime executing it and taking in the refugees. Overall the shakeup in the definition of villain and hero i think is going to start asking a broader question of order vs justice, weather or not the comfort promised by an orderly society is worth the yearly, monthly, daily, and in some cases hourly injustices endured by people who don't fit in.
It’s why a lot of X men readers grew to dislike the Avengers during the civil war/decimation era.
Especially when they stopped fighting criminals and started turning on each other for government brownie points.
And then there’s the issues of war and how that wages on in-universe.
And the X men are a franchise which has a history of having characters from nations the US at the time were/are warring against and/or within. All civilians to show that they suffered under it.
Those being Colossus and Magik from the USSR/Russia, Karma from Vietnam and Dust from Afghanistan.
Although, we do see that, when she’s not on the X men, Dust makes trips back where she liberates villages and towns from the Taliban. She’s cool.
It's because you have to look at the bigger picture and beyond yourself. Are the people breaking laws worth a damn or are they just as bad as people upholding the laws? An underdog doesn't equate to any sort of morality by default, if so people wouldn't be treating The Punisher how they treat him because of how his fanbase acts. Which is ironic because of how people go "Magneto is right" Yet "Punisher is a bad man" You can't have both. Punisher goes after issues like human trafficking which is a serious problem in Marvel due to they have the ability to clone thus easy DNA is what they want. Magneto goes after the top he'll battle government officals signing off on illegal acts. Punisher goes after the roots so they harder to grow back. Both considers "villains" because they rather leave bodies to be cleaned up yet are willing to solve problems other heroes keep letting happen.
@@ExeErdna The problem is that, often in this situation, the people saying that Magneto is right but the Punisher is bad are usually different people.
X men gets so cornered off that it’s often seen as an appendix to the rest of Marvel.
Especially after the 2000’s where so much stuff revolved around Steve and Tony’s legislative wang measuring contest, even before AvX, a lot of X men fans disliked the Avengers. It got to the point that a bunch of us referred to the Avengers as “Earth’s mightiest cops”.
Heck, one of my favourite Marvel characters is Emma Frost; a character Marvel got so much hate over regarding the Editorial mandate of IvX.
But, similar to the Punisher, Emma will mess someone up if it means getting to the root of the problem but often doesnt resort to killing because she is capable of literally changing people’s minds.
Seriously, in Marauders, not only does she make a group of hired mercenaries forget about their month long surveillance mission, she also implants a trigger into their mind. That, if they think of enacting violence on anyone they deem lesser than themselves (mutant, gay, disabled, trans etc.), they will feel violently ill until they stop.
Is it messed up? Yes.
Is it a situation that stops them from violent hate crimes? Most likely.
Is it something only she can do because of her powers? Absolutely.
That’s why I get the Punisher; he doesn’t have that choice with a lot of these enemies.
Can’t trust the systems in power? Can’t trust the avengers if it messes with their bosses’ status quo? It’s a world where organisations like Hydra exist to the extent that a good PR campaign can make people forget that two of Marvel’s most disgusting characters, Fenris, can easily work with human businesses?
What are you supposed to do then!?
That’s why, whilst I don’t like the idea of characters not seeing killing as anything other than the final option, I get the Punisher.
Magneto has personally killed hundreds of thousands of people, to quite possibly one million plus. If you dont know this, dont comment on videos about comic book villains who have been around since the 60s. If you do know this, yikes
@@RestrictedAudiencesOnly It also doesn’t help when other villains take greater priority or when even larger numbers get killed and the culprit is either under the influence of something else or retconned into being absolved due to faked identity.
Something that Magneto has had happened to him with Xorn. And then there’s all the people that Magneto didn’t directly kill but did ultimately play a part in their deaths whether it was dying for the cause of Magneto or someone like Fabian Cortez co-opting everything.
Should Magneto face justice for the innocent lives he’s killed? Yes and he has.
Does the nature of comics mean that he’s too big of an IP to keep imprisoned for years or executed without some BS happening? Yes.
Is he more willing to try and atone than villains like Selene, Fenris or apocalypse? Usually.
We shift our opinions because we add our experiences to the issue at hand. When I was a child watching the cartoons, it told me Magneto was the villain and because I didn't have any experience in the real world, I believed it at face value. But now as an adult that has gone through life, I understand him better. Magneto has always been consistent. He wants MORE than just tolerance for his kind. He's seen his people persecuted TWICE now. As you navigate our world and see even more groups of people be persecuted over and over again, it's not hard to side with Magneto and demand better for our people.
The problem is that you miss that Magneto wants the same status quo. He wants mutants on top of humans in the social order. And, lets be fair here, he wants HIMSELF to lead them. He considers himself to be better than most other mutants, and his way of dealing with Mutans with lesser powers goes from pity to condescention to outright contempt. At the core, Magneto is a supremacist who tends to see anybody with less power than he as 'lesser'.
Make no mistake: Magneto wants his 'people' to rule over humans 'as is their right as the superior species'. I don't see why I'd side with someone who thinks like that.
@@Ares99999They writers chose to make him like that though, they decided to make a holocaust survivor act like a Nazi. They tried to make him sympathetic while making him a villain, which doesn't work.
@@lizzy1876Here’s the crazy thing; the holocaust survivor stuff came about when they were stopping his role as a villain and making him the head of the institute.
But, because they wanted him to be a villain again, the backslide happened in the 90’s.
@@Ares99999 Magneto is pretty transparently opposed to the status quo. That's what defines comic book villains as opposed to heroes. Villains try to remake the world to match their vision of what the world should be. Heroes thwart attempts to change the status quo.
At his core, Magneto is a man who doesn't trust humanity. He sees no hope for an end to the conflict between mutants and non-mutants that doesn't end in bloodshed. And as a result, he is determined to win the war he sees as inevitable. He fundamentally WANTS to be proven wrong about people, and for Xavier to be proven right. But humanity keeps living down to Magneto's worst expectations.
Over the years, Magneto has tried many things in pursuit of safety for his people, sometimes genocide of the non-mutant population, sometimes separatism with multiple "mutant Israel" attempts, sometimes attempting conquest and enslavement of the non-mutant population, sometimes even working with the X-Men on the off chance that maybe just this once humanity won't fuck things up. He doesn't care too much about the details. He cares about preventing the genocide of his people.
He fails to prevent that genocide again and again, mostly thanks to his efforts being thwarted by the embodiment of respectability politics, Xavier and his X-Men.
@@YouthRightsRadical You're making it too one-sided. You ignore that Magneto has himself played a part in the vicious mutant-human cycle. Magneto also has a very selective memory, and refuses to think that good-hearted, reasonable humans are anything but an exception.
He's also a man who can throw whole buildings around with his power, and has made sure to show off that power many times, as graphically as he can... and yet when humans react badly to his very scary outbursts, he sees it as proof that humans are unreasonable.
I don't see in what way humans being scared of a racist, elitist and supremely arrogant man who can flatten a city in a fit of temper is somehow supposed to be seen as 'humans are horrible people'.
What I mean is that Magneto is monumental hypocrite in many ways.
The way I see Magneto is he is misguied in some actions he takes, but in general have the intrests in protecting mutants from persicution which reflects Malcom X's intrest in helping all black people to be enpowered and treated as equal to white people with equal rights and privliges! At least Magneto, unlike Gambit doesn't cross certain lines that intentially put humans and fellow mutants in danger! Magneto would weigh the possibilities of saving a mutants life while temporarily neutriaulize any human attack trying not to kill any human unless he's stuck in a situation that his or a fellow mutant's life is in direct danger of death! Deep inside Magneto, just like Professor Xavier seek peace and co-existence with humanity, but remember, he experienced his family being executed by German Nazi's, so he's seen just how much hate humanity can display, hardening him to be militant, defensive and vigilant in protecting himself as well as other Mutants, you can't really blame the man because in a way, at some point we all ned to defend ourselves when our lives and safety is being threatend and we want to survive!
I wish he was always written with those nuances, but some have a tendency to get left behind.
A character like Magneto is one of the many examples of one of the best kinds of villains in my opinion, certainly one of my favourite kinds of villains at least. Characters like him have understandable and relatable, even good and noble ends that on the surface seem like they’d make them heroes but it’s the means that they use to achieve his ends that ends up making them villains. For example, take a female villain. She wants to end male violence against women, a good end, but the means she uses to go about that end is killing every single men whether they’ve ever laid a hand on a woman or not, something objectively bad. She wants to achieve something good but she’s doing bad things to get it so she’s a villain. Magneto’s a similar case, he wants to liberate his own kind from discrimination, objectively that’s a good thing. But he goes about it by attacking even innocent humans, ironically he’s trying to fight discrimination with more discrimination so he’s a villain. As the age old saying goes, actions speak louder than words.
0:49 i had the original movie on in 2001. an uncle of mine came over and saw this scene and said "whoever controls magnets controls the world" and my dad who was a x-men fan explaining that magneto is insanely powerful. also this was 2 days before the 9/11 attacks.
I'd specially say Magneto is right when their universe is constantly genociding mutants, the Xmen expose this, save humanity constantly and t hey still fall for the next genocider scheme.
At that point Magneto is doing self defense because humanity has shown to be to easily convinced that mutants need to die.
Excellent video! I have never seen a more thorough and eloquent exploration of not only the character of Magneto, but also civil disobedience in such a concise way. It is quite clear you not merely a fan of these comics, but truly understand the media in a way that I feel unfortunately most readers do not. I will definitely recommend this video to all of my friends, BOTH OF THEM! Thank you for this wonderful video essay.
You really need to watch more essays. And listen more critically.
Magneto's MOTIVATIONS are sympathetic and agreeable. Really, who in their right mind wouldn't want to end discrimination? But his METHODS make him evil. Ends only justify the means up to a point. Magneto attempting to commit massive genocide multiple times puts him squarely in the villain spot.
The only people who praise Magneto dont understand this way never works. He could win and then what? He becomes what made him evil in the first place. A lot of people in here clearly never read Age of Apocalypse.
Right right. He is very much along the same vien of Homelander in that he believes in the superiority of mutants, and while he has the connection to the Holocaust, he is also a man driven to violence and destruction, Hell is paved with good intentions.
It is why the most important thing about any revolution is the plan for what is to happen after it succeeds.
Magneto and many others have points. Those points can be good or bad but their actions are judged by the groups who see them and the survivors of the aftermath.
@@RFDN0 Even then, after revolution ends, many of the people who made it successful are no longer needed. The creation of a new system and it's maintainance is completely different to what the revolution needs to succeed, so many of the fighters are not going to be relevant afterwards.
Capaldi had a chilling line in an episode between two warring sides
"Sure, you win. This war. But what of the next? What are you going to do with the troublemakers once you've established your perfect utopia? What are you going to do with the people like you?"
No. Xavier's way doesn't, and can't, work. An analogy is of course "MLK Jr. and Malcolm X", but there is something most don't seem to understand. Both of them failed. The Civil Rights Movement was an almost abject failure. Neither leader got anything close to what they actually wanted.
Hint: MLK JR. was a socialist who advocated for a new bill of economic and human rights that never happened.
Magneto abandoned Mystique when she lost her powers, Magneto is a villain in many stories. Him taking on Uranos, that was bad assery
So a biased writer makes a biased magneto
Magneto is a hero when he either operates in tandem with the X-Men's views, competes with a far, far worse alternative, or his worldview is literally the last logical bastion of hope in the name of mutant survival. If he gives up his competing views and embraces Xavier's ideology of peace, he becomes genuinely heroic. If all of mutantkind is at extinction's door and the only means of preventing it is to fight back against their oppressors in one desperate struggle, it's righteous.
Magneto is an antagonist at worst when his ideology of winning mutant supremacy or mutant rights through forceful methods competes with Xavier's ideology of equality and coexistence through peaceful means, akin to Malcolm X's views vs. Martin Luther King Jr's. His cause is more than sympathetic, even justifiable. But using violence against violence is just not the solution; it's just needless war and bloodshed instead of sharing words and finding understanding with one another.
Magneto is a complete villain when his take on mutant supremacy transforms, or is otherwise corrupted into outright extremism and tyranny. He becomes the very thing he fought to depose. He has become just another perpetuator in the eternal conflict; a full-on supremacist too blinded by his (understandable) hatred to even presume that coexistence is a possibility. He terrorizes, he kills, and he enslaves those different to him and his people. And he will be so overtaken by this view that he might willingly do things he would never have done before, like kill his fellow mutants to see his goals through, or become an outright hypocrite.
It's all about how extreme the methods are versus the end goal, and whether or not acting so radically will cause preventable atrocities on both sides down the line, or lend credence to the cause that opposes yours. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions, and all that. The means are one thing, but how justifiable is quite another topic to be analyzed when a character like Magneto acts out his defining worldview -- Magneto sincerely wants to unselfishly aid mutantkind against their oppressors, but certain methods he takes are not without their limits or consequences. You just need to remember that the motives of many villains aren't black and white (cough, Red Skull, cough, inhuman levels of irrational hatred for literally all living things for no reason whatsoever, cough), but so much more complicated than just that, complete with philosophical arguments that really makes one think before they judge after all is said and done. It all ultimately depends on how the writer chooses to, well, write the people and stories.
I also find it interesting that you choose to describe Poison Ivy as being heroic these days. While there are definitely iterations of her that either provide a more nuanced take on her actions or give her an unambiguously heroic/anti-heroic resolve, throughout her most popular incarnations, she is still very much a villain. Even today. It's because, while Ivy is written as pro-environment and pro-feminist, she takes these two terrifically positive concepts (especially the former) to their utmost radical, violent, and worst conclusions. She wants to save the world, but resorts to destructive eco-terrorism to do it, heedless of the cost. She wants women to be freed of the yoke of man-made cultural inventions, but will instill it against the opposing sex through brute force and murder instead of taking the time to change minds for the better.
Yes, Ivy wants to save the world from the ravages of human greed and man-made inventions that harm the environment -- but she does this at the express expense of human life as her go-to method. She sacrifices other's freedoms and rights in the name of her own self-righteous worldview. She trades one evil concept for another -- and therein lies the madness that consigns her to Arkham whenever Batman defeats her. Poison Ivy is, at the core of her character, a deeply, deeply misanthropic individual, who would eradicate anyone who stands in her way if it meant preserving even a single scrap of the nature she holds so dear as to seem irrational. She holds positive connections with a select few individuals who do not subscribe to her extremism and eco-terrorism, but they are the exception in her mind's eye, not the norm.
All that can stand against violence... in the end, is violence.
Ending tyranny and oppression through violence is neither immoral nor evil.
What do you do when it becomes clear the boot pressing your face into the dirt, isn't going to lift itself? It's an uncomfortable truth, that pacificsm only ends in bodies.
I feel like, on the subject of ultimate Magneto, it’s worth bringing up that most of the ultimate universe characters are vastly worse people than their mainline counterparts:
Ultimate Wolverine tried to sleep with a teenage Mary Jane when he got stuck in Peter Parker’s body.
Ultimate Carol Danvers kills aliens for fun.
Ultimate Captain America, the France panel, need I say more?
Ultimate Nightcrawler kidnapped Rogue because he was sexually attracted to her.
And I’m not even gonna talk about how Mark Millar butchered my man, Bruce Banner.
So ultimate Magneto being just a worse version of 616 Magneto is kinda par for the course for the ultimate universe.
You forgot a couple of points
Ultimate Wolverine was an assassin sent by Magneto and the Brotherhood to assassinate Xavier, who immediately banged Jean Grey (who was like 16), because Cyclops was too much of a boyscout to rawdog her like she wanted, then pushed Cyclops off a cliff and left him for dead with a broken neck and limbs. He was also mind swapped with Ultimate Spidey SPECIFICALLY because Ultimate Jean Grey was tired of him eye-fucking all the girls in the school in his head
And Ultimate Magneto also thought he was God's chosen, and that the Mutants were Gods people and he was on a holy war... which now that I think about it is really leaning into the terrorist vibes and the wankery of the US military industrial complex that the Ultimate had...
the france line is the most tame of all these, the ultimate universe had a somewhat good start but eventually devolved into "how much edgier can we make the 616 universe" and just massacred most of its characters before and after ultimatum
I’ve been collecting comics for almost 40 years, and I just can’t see Magneto as a villain. He is the result of mankind’s hatred of the other, and just because Magneto is better with violence…well, he’s the “monster” mankind made him.
A tragic monster is still a monster
I never read the comics, so I can't speak for them. I watched the cartoon, but I probably forgot most of it. Hence why I will stick to the movies that I still remember. To me the scene in 2nd movie, where he turns around the machine is on some level understandable, but also flawed at its core. Because if Magneto is a Holocaust survivor he should not wish a genocide upon another, even if that group is the group of his oppressor. Because as Holocaust already showed, trying to erase an entire group of people to fix the problem is not the answer. From another hand though I see in it an opportunity to explore how traumatic event in your life can radicalize you and make you think in the same way as the people who oppressed you, and then proceed to deconstruct that as the ideology of the oppressor that Magneto inevitably was taught when being subjected to it. It further's the goal of the oppressor to make you act in accordance with the scale of violence they see as "ends justify the means". Making Magneto realize that is something I'd sincerely want to see. How he'd deal with such realization that his own actions are no different than the actions of his oppressor, no matter the reason he has. If Charles truly killed all of humanity, this would be a truly traumatic event to him, because it goes against everything he stands for. And I believe making it happen should also be a traumatic event to Magneto, because it proves that he never actually managed to get out of his oppressor's clutches. That by trying to save mutants he commited attrocities, orphaned children etc. just like his oppressors did to his people and his own family. That to people who will survive he will be the monster that he saw in them when he was their age and that cycle will continue and will never break if someone doesn't put a stop to it. People can't heal through repetition of cycle of abuse. Killing Striker is just. Killing all of humanity for the crimes that Striker and people of similar views as him commited against mutants is not.
Wasn’t it kind of cold to just leave Charles in Cerebro like that ? Wouldn’t that have either killed or depleted Charles ? And weren’t they friends?
@@matthewschwartz6607 Exactly my thoughts. And with addition of the X-Men First Class it's even weirder because this movie make it look as if they were also lowkey gay for each other, so imagine that. But even if they weren't in some kind of toxic gay love, Magneto seems to go back and forth between saving Charles, hurting Charles, saving Charles so on and so forth.
Magneto has been a hero or an anti-hero for a much longer time period than he ever was a bad guy.
To me magneto was never a villian, he fought his own battles while xaiver used others. Yes magneto would use the brotherhood, but he wasn't above getting his hands dirty. How i look at is if i'm a mutant and was killed for being one. Xaiver would cry and look for the dialogue option, where magneto would make sure i get justice.
He didn't fight to get his hands dirty, he had a superiority complex and was also homicidal. Plus symbolically, he moves metal, Xavier moves minds. But if you died, Magneto would kill a bunch of innocents "in your name", leading to even more deaths. Xavier would, idk, try to change a law or something.
In war no one is innocent.@@Dare5358
@@marciawilliams2499Magento is a nationalist with superior race complex just like the humans who damaged his childhood.
Magneto is both, he used others to fight his battles and was abusive towards his own people. Let’s not forget that he just exposed gambit and his connection to the Morlock massacre really for no reason when he really could’ve gone after sinister. Magneto is a drama queen.
Murder of innocent people isn't justice
wow Ultimate Magneto sounds awful, I hope they do him better if he ever appears in the new Ultimate universe
The new Ultimate Universe is completely different from the old one. The old Ultimate Universe was Earth-1610, and the new one is Earth-6160. The X-Men seem to have mystical powers in 6160, so if Magneto even exists, he'll be very different from 1610 Magneto.
@@davidburton4836 I know, I've been reading the new one. I just meant that if he does exist here he's more interesting
@@TheMaster4863 Oh, gotcha. I misunderstood your comment. Yeah, I gotta imagine Magneto exists or will exist soon, it'd feel weird to have a major new version of the X-Men without a Magneto to match.
Magneto isn't a villain anymore no. He's an antihero. At times a hero fighting for the lives and rights of mutants
Great video essay. Malcolm X was not a mass-murdering terrorist.
Magento is a killer though and has no problem killing people (humans and mutants) to see his goals through. So he's not perfect.
Magneto becoming more nuanced is a good thing, doesn't mean he can't still be a bad guy or a threat. Just makes him more interesting.
A few thoughts on this:
First, the more I think about it the more I think the Deadly Genesis retcon was an unnecessary assassination of Professor Xavier's character. He had already done enough shady things to be understood as someone who started out with good intentions but became somewhat corrupted by the power he had as leader of the X-Men, and the whole ethics of training children is questionable in itself, but showing that he did something as morally compromised as erasing Scotts memories very early in the Xmens history destroys his character to me.
Second, I don't think people see Magneto as a villain because he tore apart Wolverine that one time , that was arguably a tactical measure to remove a combatant from the fight permanently. And if he wanted to kill him he could have literally thrown him into the sun.
They see Magneto as a villain because he constantly breaks into government facilities and kills random guards that are just doing their jobs and probably have nothing to do with whatever top secret sentinel tech is buried under the building. He kills these people without offering any opportunity to surrender. And even in normal fights the X-Men are shown as trying to limit bystander casualties while Magneto often does not.
Your final point reeks of apologia. Do you know who were just doing their jobs? The train conductors and railway operators who were transporting jews to concentration camps.
There were innocent janitors and cooks on the Death Star. Should Luke have not blown it up, then?
"I was just doing my job" is a coward's excuse.
@@DreamersOfRealityThe difference between a security guard guarding a tech lab ten floors below ground level and train drivers to concentration camp is knowledge. Do you really think a guard knows what's happening 10 floors below. No he doesn't. The train drivers or people working on death star knew what they were doing. Magneto does not kills because he has to, he kills because he wants to.
@@DreamersOfReality dim the main literally found at the Brotherhood of evil almost dropped a meteor on a planet and don't even get me started on letting a psychopath do whatever they want Sabertooth pyro, in X-Men evolved into what they hated looks at X-Men green chick kills innocent person Magneto the X-Men just don't do it again without getting caught.
I completely disagree regarding the flag smashers part, the show tries to portray the Flag Smashers as sympathetic while taking every chance to spit on US Agent, yet somehow misses its intention so badly that the opposite happened for the audiences. US Agent, despite being portrayed as the bad guy, spends most of the series doing his best, yet being spat on by both the show and the main characters despite offering help in good faith. He then gets completely villainized for killing a Flag Smasher, a superhuman terrorist, after they killed his best friend and bombed a bunch of innocents. He in no way showcases anything resembling jingoistic attitude except maybe during the time where he goes of the deep end, just coming off as a guy doing his job and trying to live up to the legacy he is given. The Flag Smashers, despite being portrayed as the sympathetic side (See Falcon's don't call her a terrorist line) are straight up just bad guys who barely blink about murdering innocent civilians.
Here's a question that I think we need to ask ourselves. If Magento was right, would you let him kill you?
@@Dimitris_Balf No
That you're even asking this shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the character.
@@Dimitris_Balf That doesn't matter to Magneto though, he'll kill you regardless.
@@Dimitris_Balf he'd gladly kill you regardless.
@@blackanimelover18Why? Why would he kill an inconsequential human for no reason?
Making Magneto a survivor of the Holocaust and keeping that at his core of his character making him more misguided in his actions makes him a more complex and interesting character.
I think antivillains really tap into the frustration that people feel with trying to make change peacefully. Especailly with our very polarized political environment, peacefully trying to change the other side is more and more frustrating and ofcourse everyone knows that their opinion is the right one. I hope that most of us don't want to physically hurt another person, but man there are sometimes where I wish I could just punch someone. We sometimes wish we could be like magneto. We sometimes wish we could be violent, and get away with the consequences. Sometimes we do think that might does make right.
The thing with anti-villains is that they’re not heroes but they don’t do villainous things like take over the world they more so use their powers as a way to keep them from having a regular 9 to 5.
@@Mcelly58no that's just a crook
@@decidueyezealot8611 depends on what they do
The latest episode basically confirms this. Yes. He was right
My middle name is xavier. I'm about twenty minutes into the video. I'm so glad that you're explain magneto In such a nuance way. You do the things that I hate most people don't try to even do when they're looking at villains. Care about why they did it instead of just what they did.
29:31 - so there are lots of good points in this video, but citing Professor X as not being a front-line fighter as an argument against him has always been incredibly empty. He literally does not have use of his legs (dependent on continuity, of course). And a floating hover chair sure is neat, but that only exists in some iterations, and it is never depicted as swift or militarily capable. Plus, Xavier's particular talents are not really frontline abilities. Guys with telekinesis, ice powers, explody vision (or explody cards) all have to be forward for the sake of using those - telepathy doesn't need that. And on that, to speak to an earlier point, coincidentally, they *do* need training. Explody vision is neat, but not if it breaks all your stuff. Likewise, telekinesis is nice, but if you accidentally murder a girl because she said something mean to you, that does you no good and her no good. Specifically mutants learn about themselves being mutants (for the most part) around puberty: they have not had their entire life to learn mastery of their powers and abilities. They need to know how to not harm themselves and others.
Speaking to 30:30 - Striker is the villain... but so is Magneto. The films are pretty clear about that: both are wrong and both are willing to kill others from fear, which is the bad thing. Just like it's wrong (earlier in this video) for "humanity" to blame all mutants for the actions of a few (even if those few are incredibly deadly and evil), it's wrong for Magneto to blame all of humanity for the actions of a few (even if those few are incredibly deadly and evil). And in the first film, he experimented on terrible people, but he had no idea if his device would turn someone into a mutant or outright kill them - and he didn't care: he was ready to afflict it on everyone, regardless. He's so blinded by race, he just... presumes that by murdering a large number of people and forcibly race-switching the rest will just make conflict vanish. It's not only stupid, it's willfully blind.
The entire plot to turn humans into mutants while killing the rest is exactly the same as the Nazi goal of creating a "pure" genetic group who mesh with a certain set of acceptable forms, and killing those (or forcibly changing those) who don't conform to it.
What makes Xavier "better" is that he knows they have power and teaches his kids to control their powers not just for comfort of the normies, but for the well-being of the kids themselves. The comics even address this on more than one occasion. Rogue is a mutant who *can't* control her powers, and it has destroyed her life - and there are examples of those who go through far worse. His students are there so that they don't become the (very dark humor) joke about Superman: man of steel in a world of glass. And they're specifically trained as paramilitary... *because* Magneto exists and does his thing. Xavier explicitly doesn't want to train combatants, but does so because they're already in a war. Xavier isn't perfect, but he is absolutely reasonable.
Magneto's solution was, "Hey, kid, you might kill all those around you, traumatizing yourself and costing the lives of all you care about and also innocents, but I'mma either leave you with no training and tell you to get over it, 'cause you're 'superior' - hey, also, try murder, it's the only valid solution - or, if I do train you, it's also to be child soldiers." This is self-demonstrably bad. "Hey, there's a group of people with specific genes that do bad things. Time to do bad things to all people with those specific genes." is literally what we call the most evil man in history. It's toxic, and it reflects how Eric learned the wrong lesson from Adolf's institutionalized brutality. It's understandable, to be sure. But at its heart, it's a man who was hurt wanting to hurt others and doing nothing but perpetuating a cycle.
Anyway, interesting video, for sure.
I wouldn't call him a villain more like an antagonist or even a antihero
What I believe Magneto should be like, is a villain who has a point but goes too far and too violent. I think having Magneto and Prof X both be not 100% correct or incorrect would make it interesting.
The problem when it comes to the writing of characters like Poison Ivy or Magneto is of course the different takes writers and artists have on the characters can sometimes conflict with what the previous creative team did with the characters. It can also apply to the hero characters as well as the villains and anti-heroes. It’s one of the greatest weaknesses of superhero comics and usually leads to a whole of heat of retcons later on and people having a different opinions on the characters depending on what run they've read. Because of this a lot of people can be simultaneously be right and wrong in hating or liking character just based on the run they’ve read. Like you said in the video I can sympathise with Magneto in the movies, but I can’t defend trying to commit genocide against all the non-mutants in X2 even if I understand why the character wants to do that. Honestly the X-Men movies are probably why so many people have such a negative view of Magneto as a lot of people have only seen the X-Men movies. Sorry for rambling on. Another great video as always.
It's the same for any long-running folklore. Look at the Greek myths and Arthurian legends. The writers are always trying to prove a point with the character they're writing, and often the same character will get writers with completely different agendas.
This video essay is incredible, your pacing, editing, and overall mastery of the content you’re presenting comes together to make something you really don’t find commonly in other youtube videos, it’s calming and feels analytically honest.
These villains SHOULD be seen as evil, and it's a lack of humanity and the respect for it that's led to the shift in attitude. Magneto and poison ivy are still evil because they place no value on human life, they are murderers in an unjust sense. They represent the violent backlash impulse of any hurt party, but it is always a mistake to give in to that urge. Responding to violence with violence only continues the cycle, it resolves nothing. That is the essential flaw in these villains' morality. Also, Magneto killed a bunch of people in his attack on earth in fatal attractions, and his acolytes open the event by attacking a hospital and slaughtering sick and innocent helpless humans just for being human, and Magneto gives his approval for these methods, while crashing illyanas funeral and ripping apart Charles's wheelchair. So I wouldn't say taking wolvies adamantium was the worst thing he did then, by a long shot.
@@Dimitris_Balf Maybe under some writers. I would not call that part of their essential longstanding characters, though. Quite the opposite, in my experience, and something they must have started doing after I had stopped reading in 2011, and not something that is carried over into most of the adapted versions I'm aware of. As far as I know them, both characters may have individual humans they care for, but as a whole they view humanity as the source of their troubles, and their greatest enemy in their chosen fights, Magneto because he identifies mutants as separate from humans, and Poison Ivy because she aligns more with plant life than with animal, and neither often hesitates at killing humans to achieve their goals.
@@fusionspace175 That's the entire point, under good writers he does care about humanity and is at worst an anti-hero.
@@Dimitris_BalfIvy doesn’t give a crap about humans, most of the time she’s tried to genocide humans and turn them into plant monsters, otherwise she seducts humans to use them as mindless henchmen until they die, they are mere objects to her. I wouldn’t go near her within 10 miles. She’d murder me, and I don’t think outside of a few people, she cares about humans. Magneto is at least somewhat smart, I can talk to him for 5 minutes without him trying to kill or SA me like poison Ivy and even then anyonne who tries to destroy my entire species or is hateful to, I doubt they care much about that species, in this case humans.
@@Dimitris_BalfIvy does not care about humanity much and tries to actively genocide humanity, tries to turn humans into plant monsters, and if not all that she will commonly seduce people into forcefully doing her bitting until dying for her like pawns, humans are like mere evil inferior objects to her. Same with Magneto, but I can at least talk to him for maybe 5 minutes without him trying to kill or mind control me via using creepy advances like Ivy, but even then I wouldn’t say he cares about humanity consedering he also is genocidal to humans and sees us as inferior.
A person or character that is trying to mass kill off your race or species, or sees your identify as inferior, does not care largely much about said race or species, in this case humanity.
@@Dimitris_Balf
No they don't, lol
Today’s ep of 97 proved us that Magneto was right
I disagree. Humans have every right to fear mutants. Charles was always right: It's up to his allies to prove that these super-powered beings that could take over the world with the snap of a finger can be trusted. Magneto just punished the entire planet literally for the acts of a handful of people. He's a total authoritarian extremist. An EMP over the entire planet can lead to the deaths of untold numbers. He's not a hero. He's misguided and dangerous.
@@batboy9997 So he should let the prime sentinels kill mutants? He doasn't have this kinda speed or long-range control to do it otherwise, Summers were just running away and killing machines like wolverine got overwhelmed. I don't get the argument about EMP killing civilians, cus it's really a troley problem. Either you let your race die off as a bystander, or get some civilians killed trying to stop it. Don't tell me you wouldn't do it for your country/comunity/family/minority/whatever. I can asure you that genocide is usually more deadly then EMP teoreticly is. You don't need to be a heroic to be right, more soo if you talk about survival of your race.
@@PiotrJSikora I'm saying that "Magneto was right" is wrong. Humans have a right to fear mutants He set off an EMP. Sure, he did what he had to, but there are ramifications. They have to at least address the countless deaths this caused. Holy moly, Avengers saved the world in the Battle of NY but the rest of the movies shows the fallout from their actions. Have ya seen Civil War??
@@batboy9997 We are now comparing defence againsed govermentaly funded genocide, of wich he already has proof, to act of vigilantism. They are not the same. We are talking about abducted leader of a nation (or almost leader of a nation) abducted by means of unlawfull attack of sovereign nation, with intention of genocide, learning about UN (with wich attacked nation were politicly involved, soon to be a part of) involvment and funding of the project and launch of another attack this time at global scale. We are talking about eradication of a race, with unlawfull means, do you think it was possible to resolve by talking, or it would be better for mutants to die cus humans are scared? What's your point?
@@PiotrJSikora there will be ramifications. Magneto's actions have lead to death of many, and now, potentially millions. If the show lets him off the hook, like the movies did, all the "Magneto was right" people will jump for joy. People are pissed that Superman fought Zod in the middle of Metropolis in MoS but think it's awesome that Magneto just took out every airplane in the sky all at once. It's fascinating to me. See, part of Magneto's thing has always been mutant superiority. He's never been "right." But time will tell, if the show shows the ugly side of what just happened, then kudos to them. That would be mature writing that I'd love to see.
It's interesting to see that American comics as a medium are antithetical to embracing Magneto's revolutionary ideology. If a revolution succeeds, if the X-Men or Brotherhood make meaningful change, if they are treated equally, the story is over. Comics are inherently tied to retaining the status quo, which is always at odds with the stories themselves.
Holy shit dude bringing up mlk, Malcom x, Fidel Castro, this is so sick I love your analysis!!!
The representation of Magneto we see most often now is the one that sees the wider humanity as directly contentious not just to the existence of mutants, but to thier very nature as beings with free will. As arguments in modern day go on, it gets harder and harder to say he's just a tyrant.
Wolverine almost killed Magneto just before he pulled the adamantium out of Wolverine. How else would you disarm him?
Lots of ways for someone of Magneto's power and intelligence. And he wasn't doing this out of self-defence. His speech was clearly ''I'm showing offf how powerful I am''.
@@Ares99999 If it was me, I would have took the adamantium out of wolverine then made a sphere around his body and crushed it around him till wolverine was a basketball.
by ripping off his arms
I mean I agree with the Poison Ivy being less of a villian. Buuuut she still kills people, sure they destroy and pollute the planet but killing them is still wrong. Same with Magneto, his motivation is empathetic but his actions are still opressive and destructive
Yeah we gotta remember with villians, being a vicirm or having a “good cause” and good intentions doesn’t wreaktify them being villians because these things should never excuses these types of actions of attempted genocide or murder of innocent people just because you view their species as inferior. Yes it can be for a good cause, but verbal morals and philosophy means little to nothing if your just a bad person and the end result is that you just murder anyone and everyone that’s not exactly you.
The people poison ivy ought to kill are responsible for more death and destruction than she could ever cause and have rigged the system so as to never face formal punishment for their crimes. What else would you have her do?
@@anotherrandomguy8871That's some nice morals and philosophy you got there. What did you say about them again?
I think you have to look at in regards to where the bulk of the writing lands and what stories are most popular, especially over the course of time. Are the stories focusing on Magneto's villainy more popular or are the stories focusing on him being a revolutionary/anti-hero more popular? And btw, I would argue that the Worst thing Magneto did in the 616 continuity wasn't ripping Wolverine's adamantium from his skeleton. It was murdering over 200 Soviet sailors by sinking their submarine after they fired nuclear missiles at his island base after he threatened to end life on Earth if the governments of the world didn't give him total political control in 7 days in Uncanny X-Men #150.
No, X-ecutioner's song is nowhere close to the worst thing that Magneto has done. There was that time in the 80s where he slaughtered the crew of a Soviet Sub before using the nukes on-board to threaten the UN.
Then there was the time he decided to try and forcibly mutate Humanity using leftover Genetics tech from the High Evolutionary's Savage Land Base and then slaughter anyone who wasn't mutated.
Magneto has done a bunch of bad shit in 616 Continuity.
Magneto is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands if not millions. Yes, Magneto is quite obviously a villain to anyone who has paid attention to the comics theyve read
"Magneto did Nothing Wrong"
Now that phrase is inseparable from Magnus the Red in my mind
The Road to Hell is made of good intentions
Whenever someone tells you Magnus the Red did nothing wrong, remind them that he should have shot Leman Russ out of the sky before his wolves ever set foot on Prospero.
Magnus' folly was believing the best of people even in the face of consistent evidence to the contrary. In many ways the exact opposite of Magneto, who consistently assumes the worst of humanity, and humanity keeps living down to his worst expectations.
@@YouthRightsRadical Magnus' folly was being unflichingly arrogant and never practicing saftey. People forget that the Council of Nikea wasn't just about the use of psykers but if Magnus had been reckless in his use of them and more importantly sorcery which is why it was called the "Trial of Magnus the Red". Notably the librarians of the legions put forth a compromise banning sorcery but allowing librarians to use their ablities, this got shut down because the Emperor was shown Magnus and his legion practiced sorcery despite being told not to do so and in his anger came down hard on the use of psykers at all and so as typical for him screwed himself over harder than Leman or Mortarian ever could, if a more reasonable psyker supporter like Jaghatai Khan was there it might have went different
Then he continued doing sorcery on a legion-wide scale despite it being illegal and made a deal with the space squid to give Terra an earth shattering phone call which kept the Emperor on the golden throne for the heresy and ruining everything forever instead of just using an astropath. This lead to Leman being sent to arrest him and Horus changing the order to execution, thing is that the Custodes with Leman were againt this but were forced to allow Leman to do what he wanted after getting to Prospero and seeing that the Thousand Sons were still using sorcery giving enough evidence for him to declare them traitors, which wouldn't have happened if Magnus stopped using sorcery, which forced him to where he is now, Tzeentch's slave.
Magnus to the end kept doing things assuming he was smarter and knew better than everybody else talking to warp entities despite being told not to, ignoring the law allowing his enemies to go in at him and being shocked when playing around with raw unreality blew up in his face, he's sympathetic and was taken advantage of, but it was his own actions that made all of it possible, Magnus had good intentions but he did everything wrong
@@thevgshow2723 Magnus was absolutely arrogant in thinking he could reason with a rabid dog during every recorded conversation with Russ. He was certainly arrogant in believing he had the emotional fortitude to let Leman and his wolves slaughter his sons without lifting a finger to stop them, and as a result only intervened after far too many lives were lost to the mongrels. He was arrogant in assuming that the gold plated psychopath in charge of the biggest tyranny the galaxy had ever seen would ever behave in a sane, reasonable fashion. He was unbelievably arrogant in his belief that there was ever anything he could have said or done at Nikea that would have changed anything, short of bombarding the place from orbit before the narcisist intending to sit in judgement over him got the chance to let this farce of a trial proceed. He was arrogant in believing that compromise would ever win the day.
Had he had the humility to accept the possibility that his sons might disobey him and actually not lie down and die, it is possible that the evidence that the Thousand Sons were using sorcery would never have been revealed, since that evidence was in the form of the sorcerous barrier that protected Tizka from the orbital bombardment that Russ' fleet used to flatten every other structure on the face of the planet. They all would have died in an instant without Russ and his dogs ever getting the confirmation that convinced the Custodes.
And after, he was so incredibly arrogant that he thought he could actually trust Malcador and his father to be making him genuine offers instead of just fucking with him for shits and giggles during the Siege of Terra.
Oh yes, Magnus did plenty wrong.
@@YouthRightsRadical First I never defended Russ I just said Magnus gave him every possible excuse Russ could need to get away with killing him
Second don't throw stones from a glass house calling the Emperor the biggest tyrant doesn't work when every single primarch has committed genocide to build that empire including Magnus and ignores that he didn't even plan to stay the functional ruler after the crusade, this is 40k even the nicest guys are bad. Also he could have succeeded at Nikea if he actually stayed on topic and defended use of Psykers and didn't try and bring up long outlawed sorcery that he was already told not to do, like the basic librarians did. Also Magnus was one of the Emperors favorite sons and taught him psyker stuff and allowed the librarians for decades, if he could actually prove that he wasn't being reckless he would have won
As for Prospero if he just stopped using sorcery like he was supposed to, none of it would have happened since he wouldn't have dropped a shit load of daemons on Terra convincing the Emperor he was corrupted, then hiding in his room instead of trying to spare some of his legion or send an astropath message to try and explain himself because he finally realised he was wrong and that he wasn't so smart he cound never get fucked by the warp. For the Custodes they might have been able to rein Russ in if not for the shield and Prospero was burnt anyway so a lot of good that it did them, which it bares repeating if he just did the one thing he was told not to do this never would have happened, nevermind that his initial plan was to just let everyone get slaughtered instead of even trying to surrender and couldn't even go through with this suicide
For the Siege of Terra most of his soul was owned by the god of lies and the good parts of him had already become Janus, why would they trust Magnus.
You ignored almost all I said and countred nothing and responded by just saying, "Emp, Malcador and Russ are bad for no reason" ignoring any depth to the situation or their characters which I can get with Russ bigot that he is, but while dicks Big E and Malcador don't do bad shit for no reason and only treated him the way they did after doing things he was specifically told not to do. You ignore all of Magnus' faults and actions in favour of woobifing him down to a perfect victim instead of a tragic well-intentioned man destroyed by his need to prove his way correct reducing him as a character, ignoring the fact everything that happened to him he did the same but worse to Ahriman. You basicly just imagine him as a mary sue with no faults except instead of being powerful like mary sues usually are he just gets his ass beat. What a fucking boring view of one of the best characters in 40k
@@thevgshow2723 When has he not gotten his ass beat? Was there ever a single thing of significance Magnus the Red ever accomplished? On purpose I mean.
Obviously, fucking over the Imperium and forcing the Emperor to stay trapped forever on the Golden Throne was obviously the biggest win Chaos ever had. but Magnus wasn't working for the good guys yet when he did that.
My favorite form of Magneto will always be the revolutionary. The way he stands for his fellow mutants is head and shoulders above Charles. He created a safe space in the world for mutants to exist, a place where they won't be ridiculed or persecuted by society. He stands for a cause that he is willing to see to the end. It's never about not co-existing but constantly challenging humanity and having them show their worst side to the world. Magneto knows humanities worst, having survived it, making a lot of his motivations tangible and grounded. Why should mutants change for society, when society should change for the mutants.
I do like when magneto is complex but still is very much the villain.
A character that is similar to magneto and his complexity but remains a villain is the beast from infamous 2.
Essentially in the infamous series there are a rare group of people who have the conduit gene. This gene once activated grants people with superhuman abilities.
a plague is spreading infecting and killing all, except people that have their conduit gene activated. The beast realises this and uses his powers to activate the dormant gene in those people. But at a devastating cost of regular people. As activating the gene needs a large amount of energy with creates a devastating blast killing all except the people that are now conduits.
The beast is committing worldwide genocide, killing millions and creating conduits as the new dominant race. But hes not pure evil and doing it for sadistic pleasure. But to save whats remains of humanity and he will kill whoever gets in his way because if he die’s humanity could well and truly be lost.
To me thats a good set up for a complex villain. They are willing to commit something as extreme as genocide for their goals which is morally bad. But humanity could be doomed if they dont.
Not saying magneto needs to copy this 1-1. but i would love a new story with magneto to have that level of complexity but remain a villain because of his actions even if hes right.
Finally a video that actually does a deep analysis of the themes instead of ignoring them. I'm sick of right wingers pretending the X-Men have gone woke because of their lack of media literacy
I'm sick of left wingers pretending x-men was always woke because of their lack of media literacy
Stan Lee is on record that Prof X and Magneto were in fact representations of MLK and Malcolm. However I agree they are hamfisted versions of these two and unfair to both historical figures
28:53 God damn Storm's got a bakery worthy of a godess back there
This video was made just a little too early cuz X-Men ‘97 literally does the “Magneto was right” meme and it’s done flawlessly.
Nah, Poison Ivy is evil after all. True, that she loves Harley (one of the very few women and humans she likes) but it's still oftenly shown that she would choose plants over her in the end and would pursue a global genocide of humans in order to save The Green.
I always point out the Batman: TAS episode House and Garden. Where she "reforms" by moving in with a man, using his DNA to create monsters and maybe killed his daughters. Then gets away with it. In the comics she makes monster plants and murders people while also enslaving men, in particular.
@@vernonhampton5863 Unfortunately I think most people could watch Ivy kill people’s daughters and enslave men, and still somehow think “nah she’s not a villain!” soley because she still has “good” intentions. They already do so with her commiting attempted genocide. People manage to find a way I guess. I’ve seen people say Harley was never a villain even in TAS, at worst was only ever a victim, despite the fact that she literally tortured Tim Drake, a child, for fun and to make him her and joker’s “child”.
Now people act like Ivy is merly a introvert who loves Harley and ignore all the awful things those two characters did, likely without any actual redemption past “ok now I’m not with Joker so I’m reddemed” or “im still bigoted to humans but I at least like this one human girl who has likely caused lots of environmental destruction, the very thing I kill folks for”
@@anotherrandomguy8871 Ivy was an extroverted, mad scientist that ended up basically the #2 plant mage on the planet. She can do so much good if she just eff'ed off away from the city. Like how in Batman Beyond she just became one with the Amazon rainforest. Shippers are keeping both her and Harley stagnated because they only want one shallow thing over and over while calling it "deep" Deep would be Ivy reinforcing all the world's jungles while also making it so food can grow well without poisons. Since SHE CAN DO THAT. She can legit save the world once she realizes the Green is in balance with the Red and Black.
@@anotherrandomguy8871
I wonder what does that say about the person in question?
As much as I love Magneto and I feel bad for his tragedy the dude is ultimately a mutant terrorist. But he’s not wrong mutants will always be in danger and mutants must protect themselves but not his way.
What way then? How else to you defend yourself if not by striking back at those who strike you?
13:50 : I remember this i both the comics and, just recently, in the X-Men '97 series.
You are right, it wasn't this scene where he crossed the line for me, it was the scene where he did an EMP to the entire world, killing who knows how many people (in hospitals on life support, in planes that crashed, etc.).
In the show, Prof. X even said that 'thousands have been killed'. Thing is, again on the show, he was close to these 'enhanced human sentinels' for a long time, probably long enough that he could have tuned his EMP to just take out them and only them, but he choose to send humanity back to the 1800s instead.