How Will Marvel’s X-Men Reboot Handle Magneto?
No matter how you slice it, the MCU might have a big Magneto problem.
In the 26 years since the X-Men starred in their first big-screen adventure, plenty of ink has been spilled (by yours truly, especially) on their iconic introduction. X-Men began with the origins of its villain, Magneto, who tapped into his inimitable powers on the darkest day of his life. In 1940s Poland, the character — then known just as Erik Lensherr — bent the gates of a concentration camp into the shape of an X. It was the perfect overture not just for mutantkind, whose plight has always run parallel to real-world tragedies, but for Magneto’s relationship to power and pain.
The X-Men saga knew what it had where this character was concerned: it’s why, when Fox rebooted the timeline with a prequel, it once again built its story around Magneto’s tragic origins. More than anything else, Magneto is a survivor of the Holocaust. That primal wound informs his animosity towards humans and their cruelty; he’s far less willing to give them the benefit of the doubt than, say, Charles Xavier, and it’s very easy to understand why. As a foundation for the conflict between humans and mutants, it couldn’t be more perfect. But as Marvel gears up to reboot the X-Men, potentially in the present day, there’s almost no way to retain that piece of his origins. Not without the help of time travel, anyway.
Can the new X-Men just won’t pack the same punch as the original team?
Thunderbolts director Jack Schreier has turned his attention to rebooting the X-Men for Marvel’s Cinematic Universe, and he’s undoubtedly had to consider how Magneto will fit into this retelling. There’s a lot we don’t know about the new X-Men — like its timeline, storyline, or potential cast — but it’s safe to assume that Schreier will do everything in his power to keep Magneto and Professor X at the center of this conflict. You can’t really tell an X-Men story without those friends-turned-enemies involved in some capacity; the question is how involved they’ll be.
It’d make a lot of sense to let Magneto and Xavier take a back seat to the ongoing battles between humans and mutants, passing the baton to successors who share their beliefs. The X-Men reboot could take a page from Marvel’s Avengers vs. X-Men event, in which a radicalized Cyclops founded a new X-Men team that aligned more with Magneto’s take-no-prisoners MO. Wolverine would become the Xavier to his Magneto — but this option does rule out the possibility of rebooting these characters as young as possible, hamstringing their longevity in the MCU.
There’s a way to reboot X-Men with younger characters, but not without a sci-fi twist.
There’s just as strong a chance that the new X-Men will take a First Class approach to the team’s origins, but that will still involve plenty of temporal finagling. Magneto’s ties to the Holocaust should never be removed — but X-Men could reinforce the character’s slow-aging powers, or introduce a time-displaced Magneto to have its cake and eat it, too. Marvel also has the multiverse on its side, which could bring the X-Men in from a parallel universe, just as it’s doing with the new Fantastic Four. Still, it’s hard to shake the feeling that any choice won’t be as good as the straightforward story Magneto has already gotten twice over. It’d be a loss to cut the character entirely, but the MCU has a big Magneto problem no matter how you slice it, and it may be some time before we see the studio’s answer in action.
