QUOTE(SubRosa @ Dec 20 2013, 12:01 AM)

QUOTE(Callidus Thorn @ Dec 19 2013, 04:12 PM)

I always saw Magneto as fighting more for mutant supremacy than anything else. For instance in the first X-Men film, when at the start he says to Xavier "We are the future Charles, not them. They no longer matter." I have a hard time seeing Magneto as anything but the villain, albeit a highly principled one.
Mutant Supremacy and Mutant Survival are one in the same to Magneto. He cannot imagine a world in which humans will allow mutants to exist. Hence mutants must destroy humans. It's the old "you are either one of us or one of them" mind set. One which was created by watching how it was impossible for anyone to just get along with the Nazis. You either destroyed them or they destroyed you. What I find really ironic (and brilliant writing) is that in his quest to save his people from a new form of Nazis -
homo sapiens - he has become a Nazi himself.
It would be very easy to paint Maggie as a simple bad guy. He started out that way in the comic books. He was as one-dimensional a villain as you could get in X-Men #1. Though back then nobody really had much depth. Like the rest of the Mutant-verse in Marvel, he got more depth as they explored anti-mutant prejudice. Then we began to see that unlike the Nazis - who had no real reason to fear that the Jews were going to wipe them from existence - mutants do have good reason to fear humans. If you ever read the Days of Future Past storyline in the X-men comics you saw what is coming - mutants being hunted down by Sentinels and put in concentration camps. Whether that future was actually averted in the comics, or simply delayed, has never been confirmed. Then the comics gave us Genosha, an island nation where it
did happen. In that light Magneto can be seen as a soldier fighting a war. And just like soldiers fighting in wars that are considered justified, such as that against the Nazis or Japanese, Maggie is willing to do some nasty things. Like firebombing cities and slaughtering hundreds of thousands of people in one night, just as the Allies did time and time again to win.
What I think that makes him most interesting, is what if Magneto is right? Is he still a villain when he was the one who tried to stop that future? Wouldn't that make Xavier the bad guy, because with all of his ideals he helped humanity survive, so that they could go on to repress and destroy mutants? Just as Neville Chamberlin promised peace for our time? Or is the final irony that Magneto's anti-human crusade is what ultimately creates the future he so desperately is trying to prevent? We will just never know, and that ambiguity is what makes him so interesting.
So I don't think Magneto is a simple anything. He's powerful and he's got an ideology he's willing to kill for. Just like a lot of people who can be called heroes and villains in the real world. I am not saying he isn't a villain. But I am not saying he is either. Like a lot of real people just like him, those labels all depend upon one's point of view.
I've never read the comics, but I did watch the old cartoons from the early nineties, back before they started screwing with them to make more and more series of them. They covered Genosha and The Sentinels, so I'm not just going on the films. So I could be a little off on this:
Personally I don't think the whole Nazi side works too well with Magneto. In the old cartoons it was just a war, albeit a particularly bad one where the losing side didn't quit. Which was what set him off on the "war is inevitable" side. Without the whole genetics angle the Nazi's add Magneto makes more sense, in my opinion. Without the Nazi's he's not repeating mistakes of the past. I just think it works better.
I get his mindset, and I think that's what makes him a villain for me. There's no tolerance, no room for anything save his vision. If changes were made and mutants were accepted, so in other words if Xavier was right, I think Magneto would still keep going with his crusade. For him it can only end in war, and only victory will accomplish anything. It does make him a somewhat tragic figure though, if he's right he'll prove to be the salvation of all mutants. If he's wrong he'll lead them to their destruction.
And if the future does unfold as Magneto predicts, I wouldn't really say that makes Xavier the bad guy for championing peaceful co-existence. It just means he failed, and considering the number of times Magneto and Xavier clash, it seems likely that Magneto would be responsible for that failure, in part at least.
I definitely wouldn't call him a simple villain though. And there's nothing better than a villain who could easily be right.
Roll on Days of Future Past. hopefully we'll get some proper Magneto, not the overgrown moody teen from First Class.