Why is Marvel obsessed with turning their villains good?
By Jacob Craig
Magneto and Mystique
The original X-Men trilogy are three films that any true fan would love to watch over and over again, and in all three films, Magneto is ultimately the lead villain. Even in X2: X-Men United when Magneto teams up with the X-Men for a time, he takes off from the final battle against Stryker, stealing away Pyro from Charles Xavier’s team. Magneto helped Charles for his own needs, and left him high and dry in the end.
In the new X-Men trilogy, Erik Lehnsherr is never the villain. He’s a remorseful best friend who made one too many mistakes in X-Men: First Class, he’s a confused anti-hero who is trying to do the right thing in X-Men: Days of Future Past, and the X-Men could have never defeated Apocalypse without him in X-Men: Apocalypse.
Counting in X-Men: Dark Phoenix, there are four movies in which Magneto is simply not a villain. He is just another one of the X-Men, and the writers are pretending that he is not one of the most powerful villains in Marvel Comics history.
Everything that was just said about Magneto can be applied to Mystique tenfold. This just is not the same character that has been featured in any X-Men comic book ever. Mystique sacrificed herself to try to get Jean Grey to detach from the Phoenix Force, and that plot point was so unimportant that it was featured in the trailer.
Jennifer Lawrence’s Mystique has never been a villain, Michael Fassbender’s Magneto has never been a villain, so why are they even in the movies? As if there are not a wealth of unique X-Men characters who have never been featured on the big screen to pull from, Mystique and Magneto have to be added to the line-up of heroes for extra firepower? This is obviously a pander to keep fans happy with well-known characters, instead of appeasing hardcore fans with two more characters that would make more sense on an X-Men team.