MCU X-Men - Part 3

[Marvel united]

An adaptation of any of the stories that feature Storm in a prominent role won't work unless she's African? Yeah, sure... Claremont established that she was born in 1950 and became an orphan with lifelong claustrophobia during the Suez Crisis of 1956, so let's change her race. She can be an Asian street thief in a country where her origin makes a lot more sense in the present day than Egypt, then be worshiped by a primitive tribe in the wilds of Southeast Asia.

...And here we go with the classic "so why can't you change the black/whatver poc characters then, hm?" Factually non-existent double standard that so many argue exists

You know Erik's situation is completely different to Ororo's. What's important to her is that her parents were killed in a plane crash, she grew up a street orphan in Africa/Egypt and she was worshipped as a weather goddess princesses in Kenya, Africa by a tribe. All of these elements can still work in a modern day setting whereas the Holocaust is a specific event that happened more 70 years ago. And not to mention Storm is a completely different kind of character than Magneto. She is not suppose to represent the anger and vengeance of oppressed minorities and Magneto getting updated to reflect what the U.S. is currently doing to minorities makes perfect sense.

 

[MasterCat]

She is not suppose to represent the anger and vengeance of oppressed minorities and Magneto getting updated to reflect what the U.S. is currently doing to minorities makes perfect sense.

... and Erik isn't supposed to represent what leftists hate about the United States, either. He. Is. A. Jew. A non-practicing Jew who held Israeli citizenship, which is a specific real-world demographic that leftists have no right to erase and replace with something they like better.
I say converting an Israeli to Islam is more offensive than changing the race of a black character whose race isn't central to their identity. I know that's subjectively wrong to leftists, but how am I objectively wrong?

 

[Herofan]

Any choices for Magneto?

Maybe an obvious choice but I think Jason Isaacs could be good, including looking a right age. He looks, for better or worse, quite a bit like an older Fassbender.

 

[MilkmanDan]

You don't update a man who was an Israeli spy with a license to kill until he learned enough about mutants to organize a mutant supremacist movement by taking his heritage away from him.

Magneto was an Israeli spy? I didn't know that and I've been an X-Men fan since childhood. I think you might be overestimating the importance of some of the specific details of Magneto's backstory.

Personally, I wouldn't mind if they updated Magneto's origin to another genocide. I'm just not sure which one that could be. Rwanda and Yugoslavia were in the 90's which would make him fairly young if you want him to be a helpless child rather than a powerful mutant when it happened. Cambodia is pretty good timewise but was there an ethnic aspect to that? I'm under the impression that it more about an entire country falling into Stalin-style paranoid bloodlust.

 

[MasterCat]

Magneto was an Israeli spy? I didn't know that and I've been an X-Men fan since childhood. I think you might be overestimating the importance of some of the specific details of Magneto's backstory.

Chris Claremont wrote several stories about Magneto being a Mossad Nazi hunter who was recruited by American or British intelligence. The Erik/Charles/Gabrielle Heller story where the guys form their bromance hunting Baron Strucker is one of them, and that's also where David "Legion" Heller comes from.
I don't see how such details can be completely unimportant when they've been adapted for the FOX-Men universe. We'e not talking about obscure comics that have never had a mass media adaptation.

 

[MilkmanDan]

I remember Magnus and Charles meeting in Israel but I didn't remember him being a spy.

I really don't think Magneto's past as as a spy is any more necessary than, say, Reed Richards' past as a war veteran. The latter has been ignored and retconned out pretty much since time moved past the point where every American man of a certain age was expected to have served his country.

 

[Marvel united]

... and Erik isn't supposed to represent what leftists hate about the United States, either. He. Is. A. Jew. A non-practicing Jew who held Israeli citizenship, which is a specific real-world demographic that leftists have no right to erase and replace with something they like better.
I say converting an Israeli to Islam is more offensive than changing the race of a black character whose race isn't central to their identity. I know that's subjectively wrong to leftists, but how am I objectively wrong?

Ororo Munroe, a mahattan born Kenyan and African princess who was worshipped as an african weather goddess... Her race isn't central to her identity? Yeah, no.

This isn't about "erasing Jewish identity and replacing it with another minority" or whatever conspiracy that has been concocted In the minds of some Right-wing conservatives- this is about taking a character that is a living, breathing example of what happens when humanity's intolerance and hatred for those that are different goes too far, how humanity can create it's own worst enemy & bring that concept into the 21st Century so Magneto is not an 85 year old man. Magneto being survivor of a more recent genocide that hits closer to what's happening with 45; Immigrants and Muslims being persecuted could be very powerful message and it goes back to the original intention of what Magneto was suppose to be and that isn't specific to the Holocaust imo

 

[JeetKuneDo]

So some want to get rid of maybe the only Jewish super hero and turn him into Killmonger....a character we already have?

Being Jewish has a longer history of persecution than any race I can think of (going back to ancient Egypt). If you can't write a vengeful character from that you aren't a very good writer.

 

[MasterCat]

That's total BS. You see being Kenyan as central to a character's identity when it could trivially be changed to being worshiped in rural SE Asia. You also want to convert a secular Jew to Islam when he has a large number of stories, not just in obscure comic books but in the mass media, about his Jewish heritage. That is the most overtly political BS I've seen in a CBM discussion.

Look, I can accept that MCU Quicksilver was one-dimensional trash.
I can accept Mary Jane Watson never being born in the MCU.
I can accept that the FOX version will always be the only good live-action Magneto.
What I will never accept is that replacing Erik Lehnsherr with a magnet-power original character is anything but stupid.

 

[Marvel united]

CNN is what this country needs right now and they're the only ones with the balls to stand up to 45, so if you're using that as an analogy to an updated Erik.....

 

[2kt09]

Key word was "secular" in reference to being Jewish

 

[MilkmanDan]

So some want to get rid of maybe the only Jewish super hero and turn him into Killmonger....a character we already have?

Villain, you mean. With the inclusion of F4 and X-Men MCU does have Jewish heroes like Ben Grimm, Kitty Pryde or Bobby Drake it can use. You're the one insisting that one of the next big Marvel bad guys has to be Jewish.

Being Jewish has a longer history of persecution than any race I can think of (going back to ancient Egypt). If you can't write a vengeful character from that you aren't a very good writer.

Taking Magneto's backstory from growing up in a death camp to simply being discriminated against feels like a bigger change than updating the attrocity he survived. Magneto needs to have seen humanity at its absolute worst to get the characterization Claremont was going foe. Even if you write him as someone whose family was killed by anti-Semites, it's still not the same. It can't be just a singular hate crime by indivitual scumbags. You need that full on organized ethnic cleansing.

 

[MasterCat]

If the actor's age is the issue, just cast Oded Fehr and don't address Erik Lehnsherr the Israeli's origin any more than they've addressed Uncle Ben or the spider's origin. That may lack the artistic merit of FOX's Erik, but it would be wholly inoffensive.

 

[JeetKuneDo]

Villain, you mean. With the inclusion of F4 and X-Men MCU does have Jewish heroes like Ben Grimm, Kitty Pryde or Bobby Drake it can use. You're the one insisting that one of the next big Marvel bad guys has to be Jewish.

Yeah...I am saying they should keep the one Jewish villain just the way he is instead of turning him into Killmonger....a character we already have.

Taking Magneto's backstory from growing up in a death camp to simply being discriminated against feels like a bigger change than updating the attrocity he survived. Magneto needs to have seen humanity at its absolute worst to get the characterization Claremont was going foe. Even if you write him as someone whose family was killed by anti-Semites, it's still not the same. It can't be just a singular hate crime by indivitual scumbags. You need that full on organized ethnic cleansing.

Like I said, it needs a good writer instead of someone with a small vision like you just put forth. Apparently you believe a Jewish person cannot be radicalized by anything other than the Holocaust. We'll need a more creative writer than that.

 

[Marvel united]

You can't go the Uncle Ben route with Magneto because his history and past is too connected to who he is in the present. I.e his relationship with Charles. Unless you try to have a Jewish Erik show up and never explain what drives this man to hate human beings and commit these atrocities which would be the worst way to do it because you're turning Magneto into a generic bad guy with no known connection to Human beings at their worst.

And It has to be a REAL event- that actually affected REAL people

 

[Havok83]

You can't go the Uncle Ben route with Magneto because his history and past is too connected to who he is in the present. I.e his relationship with Charles. Unless you try to have a Jewish Erik show up and never explain what drives this man to hate human beings and commit these atrocities which would be the worst way to do it because you're turning Magneto into a generic bad guy with no known connection to Human beings at their worst.

And It has to be a REAL event- that actually affected REAL people

Yes you can. You can allude to it without outright explicitly tying him to the Holocaust or whatever

 

[Marvel united]

Yes you can. You can allude to it without outright explicitly tying him to the Holocaust or whatever

Either do the Holocaust origin or update Erik. There should be no in between. By going this route- you are weakening Erik as a character by downplaying the thing that drives him to fight for mutant supremacy. This turns him into any other villain of the week that wants to reign supreme over the world.

This is by far the worse option imo.

 

[MilkmanDan]

Like I said, it needs a good writer instead of someone with a small vision like you just put forth. Apparently you believe a Jewish person cannot be radicalized by anything other than the Holocaust. We'll need a more creative writer than that.

Fair enough, I'm not a writer. But I do think that without the full horror of genuine ethnic cleansing, you have an uphill battle if you want to write Magneto as a sympathetic or at least understandable villain. Yes, people can be radicalized by a lot of things; up to and including a lack of sex life, apparently. I just feel Magneto as a character deserves more than that. He deserves a backstory that makes his lack of faith in humanity seem reasonable. When he talks about humans coming after mutants, he should sound like someone who's been there and knows what he's talking about. To me, that is the core of Magneto as a character.

 

[Shinobi Shaw]

So with Betsy becoming a white woman again in the comics, should Psylocke still be played by someone of Asian descent or just a regular degular Rachel Weisz esque looking actress?

 

[MasterCat]

You can't go the Uncle Ben route with Magneto because his history and past is too connected to who he is in the present. I.e his relationship with Charles. Unless you try to have a Jewish Erik show up and never explain what drives this man to hate human beings and commit these atrocities

Hold up. Erik doesn't hate all human beings:

 

[Mad Ones]

I'll be extremely disappointed if Marvel doesn't modernize Eric's origin to something that is important now.

One of the reasons Eric is the most important X-Men villain it's because he's a walking example of what hate and prejudice does. Eric is a character with a message. He makes (and should make) people feel unconfortable now.

The holocaust was awful, yes. People still feel awful when it's brought up, yes. But it happened decades and decades ago and there are many other important issue that should be brought up.

Damon Lindelof said about adapting Watchmen to HBO that there is no point in adapting that storyline making allegories to Reagan or Gorbachev, or the Cold War. It would be a disservice. And I think adapting Eric, ignoring social and political issues now would be a huge disservice for the character.

And if that wasn't enough, Marvel has another reason to modernize him. If Homecoming is any indication, Marvel will want to stay away from what's been adapted before. And boy, we've seen Eric's origin ad nauseam.

I agree that the X-men need updating in a lot ways. They should always be immediately relevant.

But I think they should make Magneto a second generation holocaust survivor. Transgenerational trauma is an important and relevant concept that many people don't understand. He does not have to be in a camp firsthand for it to weigh heavily on his life and shape his worldview.

 

[Havok83]

Either do the Holocaust origin or update Erik. There should be no in between. By going this route- you are weakening Erik as a character by downplaying the thing that drives him to fight for mutant supremacy. This turns him into any other villain of the week that wants to reign supreme over the world.

This is by far the worse option imo.

IDA and Mad Ones brings up an excellent point

I agree that the X-men need updating in a lot ways. They should always be immediately relevant.

But I think they should make Magneto a second generation holocaust survivor. Transgenerational trauma is an important and relevant concept that many people don't understand. He does not have to be in a camp firsthand for it to weigh heavily on his life and shape his worldview.

Excellent point. You dont need to have lived through something to be affected by it.

 

[Endeavor]

Chris Claremont wrote several stories about Magneto being a Mossad Nazi hunter who was recruited by American or British intelligence...

I am not advocating one option over another.
I would be fine with Magneto being a Jew, or anything else that they deem is a better fit should they decide his origin needs to be revamped...

But I am curious why you consider Claremont's retcon to be more important? It is after all, a retcon. The character wasn't jewish before.

He can still be a member of another oppressed minority that has to suffer through a mass murder/genocide scenario, and that would meet the requirements put in place to form his ideology.

 

[CaptainWagner]

That's total BS. You see being Kenyan as central to a character's identity when it could trivially be changed to being worshiped in rural SE Asia. You also want to convert a secular Jew to Islam when he has a large number of stories, not just in obscure comic books but in the mass media, about his Jewish heritage. That is the most overtly political BS I've seen in a CBM discussion.

Look, I can accept that MCU Quicksilver was one-dimensional trash.
I can accept Mary Jane Watson never being born in the MCU.
I can accept that the FOX version will always be the only good live-action Magneto.
What I will never accept is that replacing Erik Lehnsherr with a magnet-power original character is anything but stupid.

And there we go. This was never about the character, this has always been about politics and you not wanting a Muslim character that criticizes US involvement in the Middle East, instead wanting to keep him safely stuck in the past where he doesn't present a challenge for anyone's present day beliefs.

Please, go ahead and explain to me how is ENTIRE CHARACTER hinges on being Jewish. Magneto is a man who lost his family to the hate of humanity. He looks at history and believes that humans and mutants can never coexist peacefully and establishes a singular mission: To ensure the survival of the mutant race by any means necessary. He is a charismatic leader who can inspire fierce loyalty and show great love, but unleash brutal fury on those he sees as a threat. How does making him Muslim change ANY of that.

 

[Phoenix_Flare]

So what does everyone want to happen in Marvel’s X-Men series? In terms of plot, cast of characters, action, themes, and overall a series of films? Should the first trilogy deal with the mutant vs human conflict and then move on to space adventures or deal with Apocalypse storylines? I’m only asking because Fox has had almost a decade of stories some better than others so how do we keep these stories fresh and exciting for another ten plus years.