The Last Fox X-men Thread - no spoilers

[WarGalley]

Yeah I was thinking they could magic up something on how his magnetic powers extend his lifespan. But still, to reuse Magneto going forward in the MCU, they'll probably just change his history to a more recent genocidal event.

 

[Winterfell is Burning]

I doubt they'll use Magneto and the Phoenix any time soon. About Mags being a survivor, the question is what the hell has been doing all this time; it only works if they put him on ice, like Cap. America- perhaps locked away in Sinister's lab or something.

Mutants being introduced is easy enough if you start with the X-men as teenagers and have a big threat introduce mutants and the fear of them to the world- Sinister, Shadow King or Proteus could be fine (Apocalypse would be preferable, but they wasted him already).

[The Anti-Targ]

3 hours ago, Rhom said:

My biggest concern has and will continue to be how they will be able to do justice to Magneto.  The Holocaust is now too far in the past to have a survivor out terrorizing the world now.  It’s been mentioned on this forum before that he could be changed in ethnicity to another victim of ethnic cleansing, but I honestly feel that any real change to Magneto’s backstory is a bit of an insult.

In theory that's fine. But there really isn't anything since WWII that is quite so evil as the Nazi Holocaust. So even with recency everything since has less resonance. We should be thankful for that of course, in our real world, despite the large number of human rights abuses and ethnic cleanses in the intervening decades. At least none of them was as bad as that.

In any case, the re-emergence of neo-Nazi movements specifically and fascism in general kind of makes harking back to the Holocaust more relevant now than perhaps it was before certain recent elections.

Magneto can use his powers to eliminate free radicals from his system, thus significantly slowing down his aging process.

[The Anti-Targ]

1 hour ago, Winterfell is Burning said:

I doubt they'll use Magneto and the Phoenix any time soon. About Mags being a survivor, the question is what the hell has been doing all this time; it only works if they put him on ice, like Cap. America- perhaps locked away in Sinister's lab or something.

Mutants being introduced is easy enough if you start with the X-men as teenagers and have a big threat introduce mutants and the fear of them to the world- Sinister, Shadow King or Proteus could be fine (Apocalypse would be preferable, but they wasted him already).

If they use the contrivance of the infinity gauntlet use on Earth (TWICE!!!) doing some shenanigans to people's DNA then you can either have dormant X-genes being awakened for the first time in eons, or the power of the stones simply mutating some people instead of dusting them to have the X-gene appear in humans. Magneto could be a 100-year old Holocaust survivor who gets the X-gene blast and part of the magical effect of it is to de-age him by about 30 years. He could still be an old dude, just not decrepit.

It's likely that there will be about 4 or 5 years gap between Dark Phoenix and X-mean really appearing in the MCU. So that's a decent length of time for characters like Prof X and Magneto to gather like-minded associates.

[Darth Richard II]

There’s no X-men in phase 4. That’s been stated a dozen times at this point.

[Darth Richard II]

57 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

In theory that's fine. But there really isn't anything since WWII that is quite so evil as the Nazi Holocaust. So even with recency everything since has less resonance. We should be thankful for that of course, in our real world, despite the large number of human rights abuses and ethnic cleanses in the intervening decades. At least none of them was as bad as that.

In any case, the re-emergence of neo-Nazi movements specifically and fascism in general kind of makes harking back to the Holocaust more relevant now than perhaps it was before certain recent elections.

Magneto can use his powers to eliminate free radicals from his system, thus significantly slowing down his aging process.

Yeah not to bring the room down or poo poo the holocaust but there have been a lot of things since then that have been far worse. China comes to mind. 

[The Anti-Targ]

3 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

Yeah not to bring the room down or poo poo the holocaust but there have been a lot of things since then that have been far worse. China comes to mind. 

I thought specifically about China when writing that bit, but I decided the Holocaust was still worse.

[Darth Richard II]

22 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

I thought specifically about China when writing that bit, but I decided the Holocaust was still worse.

Yeah no I get what you meant it’s just late at night and my um, actually! Meyer is full. :p

[The Mother of The Others]

They could do a gradual souring of public opinion on the Avengers, like the honeymoon reeeely ends between superheroes and humanity, and then you get... (dark avengers?  Thunderbirds?  idk) , and the long term issues and worries of the X- men franchise start to surface in the MCU post avengers world,  and then you show people some X-Men once the stage is set.    I want to see their Apocalypse, Rogue, Sentinels, Mr. Sinister (is deadpool 3 doing him?) and stuff too.

 

[Darth Richard II]

Mr Sinister was supposed to be the tag scene for New Mutants, but, well, yeah.

[The Anti-Targ]

1 hour ago, The Mother of The Others said:

They could do a gradual souring of public opinion on the Avengers, like the honeymoon reeeely ends between superheroes and humanity, and then you get... (dark avengers?  Thunderbirds?  idk) , and the long term issues and worries of the X- men franchise start to surface in the MCU post avengers world,  and then you show people some X-Men once the stage is set.    I want to see their Apocalypse, Rogue, Sentinels, Mr. Sinister (is deadpool 3 doing him?) and stuff too.

 

There's certainly scope for that kind of thing to develop. You can certainly see the potential for calls for the Sokovia accords to morph into a mutant registration act once those freaks start turning up in every neighborhood and cause property prices to go down. And good, decent humans flee to safe places, with alleged mutant enclaves and whole cities as no go zones where even the police are afraid to enter. How fortunate we are that we still have contemporary examples of hatred and intolerance to lean on for allegorical purposes. Imagine if we had a peaceful, tolerant world, our adventure movies would be so boring. Captain America earns key to the city for overcoming the tragedy of a cat stuck up in a tree.

[red snow]

1 hour ago, The Anti-Targ said:

There's certainly scope for that kind of thing to develop. You can certainly see the potential for calls for the Sokovia accords to morph into a mutant registration act once those freaks start turning up in every neighborhood and cause property prices to go down. And good, decent humans flee to safe places, with alleged mutant enclaves and whole cities as no go zones where even the police are afraid to enter. How fortunate we are that we still have contemporary examples of hatred and intolerance to lean on for allegorical purposes. Imagine if we had a peaceful, tolerant world, our adventure movies would be so boring. Captain America earns key to the city for overcoming the tragedy of a cat stuck up in a tree.

It would be star trek the next generation.

Hatred and intolerance - keeping entertainment alive.

[Martini Sigil]

I doubt we'll see any Disney made X-men films for several years.... eventually their movie universe will age-out or run its course, and we'll see a young, recast iron Man restart the whole thing... and I'm sure the X-men will be a part of the MCU then.... but not before. 

[HexMachina]

7 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

I thought specifically about China when writing that bit, but I decided the Holocaust was still worse.

Why does it matter that genocidal event X was “worse” than genocidal event Y?

And tbh a bit more general exposure to other genocidal cleanses would probably be a good thing. Plenty of people know what the Holocaust is. I’m not saying that portraying these events in film is a substitute for learning about them but it can often lead people to look into them more in depth so...

Anyway, i’m not a comic reader so take my opinion for what you will but i dont see why Magneto couldnt be a survivor of say the Rwandan genocide (or insert other event here)

[The Anti-Targ]

24 minutes ago, HelenaExMachina said:

Why does it matter that genocidal event X was “worse” than genocidal event Y?

And tbh a bit more general exposure to other genocidal cleanses would probably be a good thing. Plenty of people know what the Holocaust is. I’m not saying that portraying these events in film is a substitute for learning about them but it can often lead people to look into them more in depth so...

Anyway, i’m not a comic reader so take my opinion for what you will but i dont see why Magneto couldnt be a survivor of say the Rwandan genocide (or insert other event here)

Why not make Storm a survivor of the Rwandan genocide, and leave Magneto's OG history as is? No reason being a refugee from oppressive genocide should be limited to one character.

[HexMachina]

2 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Why not make Storm a survivor of the Rwandan genocide, and leave Magneto's OG history as is? No reason being a refugee from oppressive genocide should be limited to one character.

I wouldnt object to that, but the original point made was regarding the Holocaust being too far in the past to continue being used, which was the premise my response was based on

[Heartofice]

The Holocaust works because of its obvious parallels to the way mutants are treated, you don't need to know too much about history to get the message and so its an easy storytelling tool to make that connection. 

If you start using any other genocide then you'd probably end up spending too long trying to explain the history to the audience and you'd lose a lot of that narrative power.

But this is going to become more of a problem as time goes on. So hopefully we won't need to keep rehashing the same old characters.

[Myrddin]

Magneto ionizes his blood with magnetic mind power.

Or he snuck aboard this fancy plane after escaping a Hydra testing facility and got frozen when it crashed in the artic.

Or Cap saved him from a concentration camp while he was gallivanting with the Time stone and brought him to the future/present.

Or Cap transported him to Sokovia 1990's where he later fathered a set of twins.

Or some other comic hand wave way of having his past and relative youth too.

[DMC]

2 hours ago, HelenaExMachina said:

Why does it matter that genocidal event X was “worse” than genocidal event Y?

And tbh a bit more general exposure to other genocidal cleanses would probably be a good thing. Plenty of people know what the Holocaust is. I’m not saying that portraying these events in film is a substitute for learning about them but it can often lead people to look into them more in depth so...

Anyway, i’m not a comic reader so take my opinion for what you will but i dont see why Magneto couldnt be a survivor of say the Rwandan genocide (or insert other event here)

Totally agree, especially with the bolded.  Rwanda, Cambodia, there's unfortunately ample examples that could easily be used.  I also disagree with the notion that the Holocaust is ideal because otherwise you have to spend too much time explaining what happened (in Rwanda, etc.)  In fact I think just the opposite - trusting the audience to understand the background without going into too much exposition is the type of movie I like.  That's how Nolan makes his films (well, I suppose Inception is just one long exposition scene, but otherwise).  And it'd be refreshing to not just rehash the Holocaust (of which there's been countless movies), but rather present another atrocity.

OTOH, I do agree with the point that depicting the Holocaust and Nazis is particularly good to emphasize given the context of the United States right now.

[The Mother of The Others]

"It's starting to sound a lot like Nazi Germany up in this toasted sub sandwich shop!   The way Shelly schedules the shifts, the person she reminds me of most would have to be, uh, Hitler."    That's why the nazi analogy doesn't work for Magneto anymore- - because the Magneto story is nothing special now that nazis are the allegory we use for everything else.  No matter how mundane, or offbase, or inappropriate the comparison, all things get compared to Hitler.  Nazis around every corner, Jim.  It really helps to justify fascist behavior on the left to have this imagined rise of nazi fascism all around y'all.  Convenient.  Crazy seems more acceptable that way, when you can share it with all the other people pointing at the shadows and saying bigfoot nazis are there.

I know this isn't the politics thread and lengthy derailings of a topic aren't desirable, but it popped up here so the response is posted here, and if someone wants to move this to the politics area that's fine.  But basically, here's what the people need to hear who are making all these sneaky off topic rumblings (all over the internet) about the rise of racism and connecting it vaguely to "recent political events":  you've misdiagnosed the border issues.  Probably on purpose.

When a bunch of people climb up onto your boat and don't stop adding weight to the vessel, it eventually capsizes.   That's not racism it's physics.    When a living organism has an open wound in its outer membrane that isn't allowed to heal, it ails and is in danger of dying, be it an antilope or a single cell or a nation.  And it tries to repair itself, to patch the hole, in every such case in Nature.  Because that's the nature of things.  Not racism.  Healing isn't usually thought of as being racist, nor is the mending animal said to be displaying "hate" against the other animals waiting to eat the wounded one when it keels over.  That's not racism, it's healing, it's self defense, it's refusing to be dragged to to the river bottom by the drowning man.  Because we can't save everyone.  

 In every other case, this is accepted as the way the universe works.  We don't blame and recriminate the suturing of wounds.  We grant that creature or complex system the right to staunch its wound and try to get healthy again.  Every other nation considers its borders an important part of the health of their system, so they enforce that barrier.  Mexico doesn't just let us go there and stay, por exemplo.   They kick us out unless we can show a vacation passport.  And we hear that and say, "oh.  Well, yeah, that makes sense."    But when it comes to our nation's southern wound that's when people's responses go totally haywire. 

Try to apply the known physics of nations and economies and cultures to our bleeding border with Mexico and you're branded a racist by people who are as wrong as the gangrenous cells surrounding a wound, with the DNC whispering its mental gangrene into their minds.  This infected voting block says the border with Mexico must be allowed to continue gaping wide open and festering and causing hospitals to declare bankruptcy and resources to be drained ad infinitum, because we have the ability and the duty to absorb Mexico entirely and carry it on our shoulders ongoing, despite our own citizens languishing and needing attention let's keep prioritizing the invaders, giving them free stuff that props up the invasion and accelerates it by making the next wave of invaders larger while the center collapses.   

This creates real collapsing pressures on the system.  You know, those infrastructure issues dems never care to think about because it involves math and not the heart.  The people you're falsely calling racist are responding to those real pressures on the job pool, on prices, on the viability of their children's futures.   These things are real concerns you're once again painting over by calling them racist.   Because people responding negatively to the Mexican invasion surely must be unaware that.... we're a nation of immigrants. 

No, we used to be.  Back when we had immigration.   Now, ever increasingly, we're a nation of Mexicans because we have an invasion underway.  They're fleeing a culture of total corruption, btw, but are ultimately bringing it with them now that assimilation has largely ceased.  That's another thing you'll wish you could have kept out of yur sanctuary cities, along with the illegals themselves.  But ya can't.  So there's a subtle difference between this invasion and immigration.   You may have missed that teeny tiny distinction because nobody's told the national media about it, so you probably haven't heard this before.  Which is why it's important that we do hear this.  Because we're all involved in the massive failure of this border. 

And when someone finally tries to address the wound, to do the job the legislature has failed at (bribed as usual), when someone finally tries to uphold the law, that person is the demon?   You've got your heroism and villainy inverted.  Which is surprising for a superhero loving crowd.   Just saying.   It's not to nag in the way you like to call trolling.   It's an attempt to lower your fever by injecting some reason in the hopes we can wake up to reality enough to tell both political parties to stop slacking off and do their damn jobs, like protecting the land they're sworn to serve.   After that, when we have actual Mexican immigration again, you'll all see a massive decline in this "racism" you're so worried about.

Again, there's no hate here, not for you, not for them.  Maybe not the most MCU thing you've heard all day, but it is the most important.