The conflict between heroes and villains, whether in films or comic books, is always a treat for the spectator. Throughout comic books, there are a vast array of heroes and villains, with heroes typically being system optimists that inspire hope in the right to triumph over wrong. On the other hand, villains are significantly more complicated and frequently more interesting to comprehend than heroes.
Their fury and desire to destroy everything around them fuels their motivations. But why is that? It is just to make a point. Sometimes it is pure evil, and other times it is the consequence of a long-buried resentment of traumas or situations that these individuals have experienced in the past.
Their experiences affect their mental processes, leading them to believe that dominance is the only way to survive. Batman most likely realized this, which is why he never killed any of his foes. Batman was likewise a result of the tragedy, and he realized that he could have ended up in their shoes if not for his upbringing.
Trauma or suffering, as the mental upheaval clears all other ideas and forces one to select his or her path, can be said to bring forth a person’s actual essence. But it is always unjust because the test is not given to everyone, making their origin tale tragic. In today’s video, we will be discussing one of our favorite characters from the Marvel Universe, Magneto, about whom our viewpoints are constantly shifting.
MAGNETO – THE DARK ORIGIN
Omega-level mutant, Magneto is one of the main adversaries of Marvel Comics. He is the archfoe of the X-Men and has also acted as an anti-villain on several occasions. Magneto is known by name throughout different periods of his life: Max Eisenhardt. Erik Magnus Lehnsherr and of course Magneto owing to his ability to manipulate magnetic objects. Magneto was a Holocaust survivor who went by the name Max Eisenhardt growing up in a Jewish family in Nazi Germany.
He and his family were continuously bullied and treated harshly, and to feed his family, Max had to adapt to scrounge, rob, and avoid the Gestapo which is the secret state police service in Germany. Finally, the Nazis apprehended and shot his entire family with Max being the lone survivor, probably a result of his mutant powers manifesting, and was buried alive with his family’s corpses.
He excavated his way out only to be caught and sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where he was pushed to become a Sonderkommando, one of the Jews charged with the task of conducting the gas chambers, in order to stay alive. On several occasions, it has been suggested that he was sexually molested by Nazi guards and commanders.
Max learned how to survive in the camp and remained there until the Allied Forces liberated the camp. He fled with Magda, a fellow prisoner along with others. Max fell in love with Magda and they married, giving birth to a daughter, Anya. Max regained hopes in life and attempted to start a new life with his family in Vinnitsa, a Soviet city but tragedy struck him once more.
Max’s talents unintentionally materialized during an altercation with an employer who was attempting to defraud him of his wages leaving Max exposed. When he returned to the inn where he and his family were staying, he discovered it on fire, with Anya still inside. Before even he could save her, his employer appeared with the cops to arrest him, and despite his pleadings, he was handcuffed and assaulted, forced to witness miserably as his daughter burnt to death and plummeted from the building.
In that horrible moment, his powers revealed themselves once more in an outburst of force that demolished a big chunk of the city and massacred everyone nearby but him and Magda, who retreated in shock and despair seeing the “monster” her husband had become. Magda was impregnated with the twins who would eventually become Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch, unbeknownst to both of them at the time.
Max subsequently made his way to Haifa, Israel, under the falsified identity “Erik Magnus Lehnsherr,” where he found a job as a medical orderly in a psychiatric hospital for other Holocaust survivors and managed to strike up a relationship with a young American doctor, Charles Xavier, a potent mutant telepath.
The two guys discussed their beliefs on the origins of mutant humans. Xavier felt that mutants and regular humans might live harmoniously, but Magnus had seen and witnessed too many of the horrors that humans could impose on each other over the tiniest of differences and maintained that mutants would need to gain power in order to escape extinction.
Soon the duo realized that they cannot be allies after their encounter with the terrorist organization group, HYDRA led by the Nazi war criminal Baron Wolfgang von Strucker. They split their path.
Charles continued serving as a guide and mentor for stranded mutants while Magnus subsequently began working for the first time with a clandestine American organization to apprehend fugitive Nazi war criminals under the pseudonym “Magneto,” and established a relationship with a surgeon called Isabelle.
On a mission, he encountered and apprehended Hans Richter, a former Nazi commander who was covertly working with the US against the Soviets during the Cold War, and his handlers assassinated Isabelle to put him in his place.
Magneto concluded that humans would go to any length to exploit, and eventually eliminate mutants and exacted his vengeance on his handlers, and pledged to lead mutant-kind to dominance over humanity.
His beliefs about mutants being the superior species and subjugating homosapies took their foundation and after that, he became one of the biggest threats for the humans with the X-Men to counter.
IS MAGNETO REALLY A BAD GUY?
It might be difficult to describe what makes someone a hero or a villain. Is Magneto really the evil character we all assume he is? Magneto and Charles Xavier have both been through comparable ordeals, but their reactions have been quite different. This is what drives Magneto to walk the fine line between being a good person and a horrible guy.
When considering a villain’s psychology, one of the most important variables is the superhero who opposes him. If the Joker was pitted against Superman, he would be viewed differently. If the Joker challenges a nearly indestructible extraterrestrial, it might be claimed that the Joker is demonstrating how invincible Superman is and that the Joker is not always the agent of havoc he is in the Batman universe.
Magneto’s adversary is also his buddy, Professor X, Charles Xavier. Professor X grew up in a mansion in England, the polar opposite of Magneto’s youth. This is the motivating factor underlying their disparities. Magneto is concerned that people would hunt down mutants out of fear, whilst Professor X believes that mutants and humans can coexist. This divergence in thought can be attributed to their disparate upbringing. Magneto has witnessed the worst period in human history.
He has witnessed humans turn on each other and massacre a bunch of individuals. Magneto will go to any length to prevent this from occurring again. Professor X takes a more informed, if not naive, attitude. The case for Magneto being a villain is straightforward. Magneto wants to murder people, and anyone who wants to kill others is deemed a villain. Magneto even attempted to use Professor X to exterminate all people on the planet.
Attempting to exterminate all humanity on Earth is a horrible thing to do. However, in order to comprehend why Magneto is doing this, one needs to look at it from Magneto’s point of view. Magneto lived in a world where he was utterly at the mercy of the Nazis, who murdered his whole family.
After experiencing this, he made it his purpose to prohibit it from occurring again. Magneto was aware that humans disliked mutants, and he was concerned that he might have to see another Holocaust, but this time for mutants. When he was attempting to assassinate his mother, both the United States and Cuba launched missiles toward the beach housing the mutants, preventing a conflict.
This confirmed Magneto’s opinion that the world despises mutants and that if he didn’t act, he’d be back in the same situation. Magneto believes that he is not killing innocent people, but rather those, who will turn against him. Magneto feels that by murdering future Nazis, he is ultimately eliminating future Nazis.
Magneto is repeatedly proved to be correct about mankind. The storyline of X-Men Days of Future Past is that humanity has created robots to exterminate all mutants which again shows that Magneto’s fears for another holocaust are not completely theoretical, there is a possibility. Magneto has every reason to be distrustful of mankind after witnessing how low it can sink. Despite the fact that Magneto was correct in his forecast that he would be sought again, we still consider him a villain.
We consider him a villain because labeling him a hero or even an anti-hero would imply that he is correct and that we, as a species, are the true villains due to the terrible potential we possess and inevitably realize.
Because it is difficult for mankind to face its weaknesses, labeling Magneto a villain is a better method of avoiding the truth behind what he represents. Despite all his villainous acts Magneto in several cases has fought alongside the X-Men or even led them. This reveals that Magneto’s violence is fuelled by trauma and not malice.
WHAT MAKES MAGNETO SO DANGEROUS?
Widely known as the “Master Of Magnetism,” Magneto has complete mastery over the electromagnetic spectrum. This emerges most notably as mastery over any magnetic metal, allowing him to manipulate it to his liking. However, his control is so strong that he can make force fields, electrical energy, increase his power to extraordinary levels, and influence other types of energy.
Magneto wears a helmet particularly intended to block out telepathic assaults in several appearances, and even without the helmet, he has shown some resistance to psychic attacks, albeit he is no match for Xavier’s psychic talents. He is also incredibly educated and has demonstrated some resilience to aging.
Magneto was pushed to his crisis point in one of his most high-profile attacks on the X-Men when Wolverine struck him with his adamantium claws. Magneto used his metal mastery to destabilize the adamantium that was coating Wolverine’s bones and drive it out of his body through open wounds and pores.
Wolverine’s regenerative factor would preserve his life while also transforming him into a more grotesque form. This would be one of Magneto’s greatest moments of weakness, allowing the Onslaught monster to be born. Magneto was functioning at low power levels and collaborating with his daughter Polaris in Magneto: Dark Seduction.
Even with his diminished power, he was able to destroy the whole city of Carrion Cove, which possessed a technology capable of restoring him to full vigour. Magneto’s power over Earth’s electromagnetic forces may be employed offensively in a variety of ways, but it also has defensive utility.
Magneto is nearly always shielded by an electromagnetic barrier capable of repelling practically any force or energy aimed at it. When necessary, he might also concentrate on strengthening his shield. He has utilized his EM shields to withstand the impact of a nuclear bomb on many occasions, and he has even used his shields to defend a squad of X-Men and Avengers from the same sort of atomic detonation.
While the conventional Magneto has done some fantastic feats that have gained him Omega-Level rank on many occasions, there is one more overpowering act we’ve seen from another form of him, during an event known as Ultimatum. Following the horrible murders of his children, the Ultimate Universe’s Magneto attempted to destroy the planet rather than take it over.
To do this, Magneto used Thor’s hammer Mjolnir to invert the Earth’s polarity, resulting in flooding, catastrophic worldwide disasters, and the deaths of nearly the entire Ultimate line of heroes. Such a feat may not have such severe consequences in the real world, but comic books like being theatrical!
OUR FINAL WORDS
Our final words on Magneto would end up placing him more towards being an anti-villain. His heroic virtues set him aside from the section of pure villains. He is a victim of trauma and bad luck and every such victim is left with two choices: holding on to blinded optimism or bearing a grudge against life.
Every trauma-induced person develops paranoia about facing the same incidents again and Magneto is one such victim who believes that humans, who would do anything to eradicate his kind, might bring back another holocaust this time being against mutants. He believes that the rise and dominance of mutants over humans is the only way for the mutants to survive.
To make it easier to understand, Magneto can be compared to Malcolm X, a prominent figure during the civil rights movement, who was a vocal advocate for black empowerment and the promotion of Islam within the black community.
In that case, the question might arise if Joker is also not a villain but also an outcome of trauma induced by a failed society. Well to that question the answer is straight. The reason why the Joker cannot be compared to Magneto is that Joker’s actions are revenge-seeking to crumble society whereas magnetos is a culmination of his insecurities for survival.
Over the years Magneto had lost all his loved ones owing to the actions of the humans and learned that what humans don’t understand they fear and what they fear ultimately they hunt and kill. Magneto is ruthless when it comes to the survival of his mutant brothers and sisters and would never give a second thought to his violent actions.