The MCU X-Men's Magneto 'Issue' Isn't One at All
Marvel Studios has waited generations to get its hands on the cinematic rights to the X-Men. That means it can, and should, be willing to do a lot to make sure it gets certain characters right.
Ever since Marvel Studios revealed the initial cast for its first X-Men movie over the past weekend at D23, one notable absentee has been causing a stir: the master of magnetism himself, Magneto.
Jake Schreier's movie seems to, for now at least, be holding off on introducing Magneto, focusing on a team of young X-Men facing off against Adam Driver's Mr. Sinister, with the help of Charles Xavier and maybe Emma Frost, if we're not getting a condensed version of her villain-to-antihero arc. On the one hand, this makes sense: the world of Marvel's mutants simply has too many great characters to all start shoving into the first movie you can, hero or villain or otherwise, so focusing on a few key stalwarts before future entries add more makes sense. Magneto was a huge part of both eras of Fox's X-Men movie saga, so if Marvel Studios wants to do something different, keeping the focus away from him for now lets its goals stand apart.
On the other hand, Magneto is one of the greatest Marvel Comics characters of all time. He's goddamn Magneto. Even for as much as the character has evolved and flipped back and forth over the years, is it really the X-Men if Erik (or Magnus, or Max, if you're nasty) isn't involved?
This push and pull over Magneto's potential presence in the MCU has also brought with it another debate in the process: to many people, it is a fundamental aspect of Magneto that he grows up as a survivor of the Holocaust. Even though it would take almost 20 years after his introduction for the comics to really begin to engage with Magneto's Jewish faith and his history in Nazi concentration camps, it is an element of the character that has defined so much of his story in the decades that have followed, no matter how much further we get from World War II, and no matter how much Marvel time tries to condense over half a century of comics storytelling into maybe a decade's worth of the passage of time.
But the MCU is currently set in 2028. Marvel Studios is not likely to cast an actor pushing 100 for a role they'd want them to stick around in for probably at least another decade. So the question has arisen: Is it logical or realistic to make Magneto a Holocaust victim in the MCU?
Of course it is. The MCU just has to embrace that it's an adaptation of superhero comics to do so.