piggybunny12 asked: Can you say more about why you consider Erik to be broken/a monster?
Yes I can. Now, first and foremost: I really like the character of Erik Lensherr/Magneto/Max Eisenhardt/Magnus/other stuff (I’m going to go with Erik since that’s the name he usually uses), I’ve really liked his character in a writerly ‘look how interesting this shit is’ since I was a tiny wee critter who had mostly only read the weird 60′s comics with the ridiculous costumes and over-the-top dialog and batshit plotlines. I was raised Jewish until I converted and part of my family is Romani, so the Holocaust-survivor-decides-he’s-done-with-humanity thing rang pretty true because I was raised to have immense respect and grief for the event in question. So…like…none of this reflects on that, and in fact I’d say most of this is why I like his character so much. Also I’m a comics nerd at heart, so this may be pretty hit/miss on movie canon.
All right, so, here’s the thing about Erik as a truly broken person. Ever since I was little, Magneto struck me as a deeply, thoroughly traumatized individual, which, obviously, is true. He survived the Holocaust as a child, which…like, that is enough to really fuck someone up, on a permanent and severe level. In addition to the prejudice and prosecution related to his Jewish faith/heritage (have I covered my aggravation with the movies not dealing with that? it’s real), he’s been dealt a pretty awful hand on the subject of being a mutant, and been persecuted for that up to and including the murder of his wife and daughter. So…like…he is a seriously traumatized person, it’s just totally beyond debate. He has been treated as inhuman, as less than human, for almost his entire life–is it any wonder that he started making the declaration himself that he’s not human? (Let’s be real, the division between ‘homo sapiens’ and ‘homo superior’ is almost certainly a lot blurrier than Erik makes it out to be.) I’d say no, it’s actually pretty textbook psychology, it’s real, that’s part of the reason he’s such a compelling character.
And the other thing about Erik is that he’s scared. He is clearly terrified of humanity, no matter how much he might grandstand about how superior he is and how tiny they are to him. He is an animal in a trap, that’s how he sees himself, and he reacts like one. He lashes out, he tries to hurt humanity before they can hurt him. I’m of the opinion that quite a few supervillains exist out of terror, but Magneto is probably the best example I’ve ever encountered.
Like, is his trauma and terror at all an excuse for the shit he pulls? No. It’s a cool motive, but he still makes regular and alarmingly effective attempts at mass murder. People break, it’s what we do, and what dictates who we are is where we go from there, how we deal with the experience of being broken. And that’s where Erik gets really interesting.
Because listen, just. Listen. Hear me out here.
Erik Lensherr is not good at being a villain and I will tell you why. I don’t mean that as “poor misunderstood baby just doesn’t know how to deal” or anything, like, look, Magneto has tried to commit genocide more than once, I have no illusions. I like his character, but…um, he knows what he’s doing. When I say he’s not good at being a villain, I mean exactly that. Monstrous, yes, Magneto is excellent at being monstrous, anyone who has a reputation for indiscriminate murder is a monster. Cruel, dangerous, antagonistic–yeah.
But when Magneto believes he’s killed a mutant child, Kitty Pyde, with his own hands, he unravels spectacularly. She’s an X-Man who was trying to stop him, who has shown readiness to die or kill him if it’s necessary to save lives and protect her teammates, and let me tell you something: someone who was good at being a villain would have dropped her body and carried on with his rampage. There are plenty of excellent villains who face the X-Men, whether because they’re too far gone to have a conscience (Dark Phoenix arc) or because they never had one to begin with (Apocalypse arc) or because they’re aliens (like…this is a theme), and they move right the fuck on from killing people. But Erik sends a massive jolt of electricity through Kitty and believes he’s killed her–a thirteen-year-old girl, not much older than his daughter, who was trying to save her friends–and he comes fucking unglued. Like. Storm finds him holding Kitty and crying. That…that’s not the act of a villain.
Another good example would be the fact that, more than once, Erik has been presented with a golden opportunity to just…do nothing and let Charles Xavier die. Like, he would be completely able to say “Sorry, I have to go grocery shopping” (presumably he has to go grocery shopping) and not have to lift a finger to have Charles, the primary hindrance to his plans, out of his hair. And yet he doesn’t. Erik is a deeply, deeply fucked up man, and sincerely monstrous (see previous re: attempted genocide), but he needs a Villainy for Dummies book. I’m sure the Marvel multiverse has a few going cheap.
Aaaaand yeah. Those are my feelings about Erik Lensherr/Magneto as a villain, as a monster, and as a man.
