La Ron S. Readus
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Can Magneto Be Black? (VIDEO SCRIPT)
🕑 Added 2019-10-09 20:01:00 +0000 UTC
Readers, in September of 2019, a rumor article from Full Circle regarding the status of the X-Men in the MCU was released,
/Stating that now that the rights have been acquired by Marvel Studios upon Disney’s acquisition of Fox, Kevin Feige and co. are considering casting Professor X and Magneto as people of color for the X-Men reboot in the MCU/
Now I don’t know if there’s any merit to this rumor, or the source of this article, real talk.
After all, Full Circle is a fairly new entertainment news source, launching both their YouTube Channel and website in February and March of 2019 respectively
But ever since this article went live online, a lot of people had a lot of things to say about it
Now personally, I have my own feelings regarding changing the race and gender of comic book characters for film and television
My personal rule: As long as there isn’t anything practically associated with the character regarding their identity that REQUIRES them to be the race that they were originally assigned upon their creation, then go ham
Sometimes it works, like in Zack Snyder’s casting of Jason Momoa as Arthur Curry/Aquaman
/Not only does his IRL lineage of Hawaiian, German, Irish and Native American help give more significance to Arthur’s “being from two worlds” struggle that’s been part of his development in the comics in being half human half Atlantean, but the things we regularly associated with Aquaman -- blond hair and blue eyes -- were appropriately transitioned to his pure-blooded Atlantean half-brother Orm the Ocean Master to better visualise his racist and Atlantis supremacist ideology. It’s a topic I’ve been wanting to cover in a video essay for quite some time now./
It’s also why I wasn’t really mad about the casting of Jeffrey Wright as Commissioner Gordon in Matt Reeve’s “The Batman.” Because there really isn’t anything about his character or his lineage since his Detective Comics debut that says he MUST be played by a white guy.
And apparently I’m not alone in that way of thinking. Because once the article hit the web and spread around, lots of people took that mentality that I had with Jeffrey Wright playing James Gordon with the idea of Charles Xavier being portrayed by a person of color
Y’know, outside of being born a member of the high upper class in New York City
But when it comes to Magneto, things tend to be a bit trickier. And that’s mostly due to his origin story depicting him as a Jewish Holocaust survivor.
And while there are definitely Black Jews out there, the argument regarding keeping him white is the fact that being a Holocaust survivor is a key part of his background, and you can’t really hold true to that by making him black or any other race
So in order for us to figure out if making Magneto a person of color in the MCU is possible given what’s already established about him in the comics, we have to take MULTIPLE things into consideration.
The first one being that non-American black people did exist in Nazi Germany during the Holocaust
And while they weren’t PART of it, they were still unwillingly sterilized, given vasectomy’s and basically made them promise the nation that they’d never have sex with their people in order to keep their “master race” absolutely pure.
And don’t even get me started on the People Zoos
Then there’s the fact that for the first 18 years of Magneto’s existence in Marvel Comics, he wasn’t established as Jewish.
It wasn’t until Chris Claremount wrote issue 150 of Uncanny X-Men that we have the origin story for him that we regularly associate with him. But even from his first appearance in issue 1 of X-Men in 1963, while the association between his character and Malcolm X -- just like Xavier to Martin Luther King Jr. -- has always been there since his introduction
Then there’s the current state of the MCU, which -- thanks to the events of Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame -- is currently set in the year 2024 as of Spider-Man: Far From Home
So unless Marvel Studios is planning on doing the popularly rumored “Wanda Wills the X-Men Into Existence” theory during the events of WandaVision and/or Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
This would put Magneto over 100 years old if they stuck to that origin story for him, especially if Marvel Studios wants us to believe that Mutants always existed during the events that have currently played out in the MCU. Whether they use a House of X/Powers of X-inspired storyline or not
They would either have to do something along the lines of how Marvel treated Captain America in order for him to keep his World War II origin in place.
Or constantly shift things around until they can find a something timeless and universal in order to not seem impractical. Like how Iron Man’s origin in the comics shifted from taking place during the Vietnam War, to the Gulf War, to just a terrorist attack like in the movies.
And while I agree that using the genocidal actions of Nazi Germany against Jews definitely helps establish Magneto’s actions and methods coupled with his Malcolm X inspired mentality -- especially since the character is constantly in his mid to late 50’s -- doing the Iron Man method of finding another real life instance to associate his MCU backstory in order to keep from accidentally aging him past 100 might be the best bet
Instances like, the Rwandan genocide of 1994
I mean, yeah, you’d definitely ask the question of why Wakanda didn’t intervene since they’re 3 countries north of Rwanda. But you asked that same question when y’all found out they didn’t stop slavery, so I mean...
Honestly, the only thing keeping changing Magneto’s race a possibility in the MCU is the fact that his twins Wanda and Pietro are PART of it
And their origins have been open ended enough since their introduction in Avengers: Age of Ultron that Marvel Studios can still establish the twins as Magneto’s children when they introduce the X-Men into the MCU
After all, they only really started disassociating the twins from Magneto BECAUSE of the film rights to X-Men; it’s the same reason why they’re mutants in the Fox films and currently just non In-Humans with powers in the MCU, and they did that on purpose
But at the same time, if they don’t go the “mutants always existed” or a variant of the House/Powers of X storyline explanation and have Wanda will them into existence, unless she specifically creates him to be her dad, Magneto’s relationship with her -- and in response, his race -- won’t even play a factor
So with all of these considerations on the table both for and against it, is it possible for the MCU version of Magneto to be black, or at least a person of color? Considering all the possibilities available to both hold true to what’s been established about him since 1981 and update the character in order to FIT the MCU properly, I’d say yes.
And if they were smart, they’d find a way to still keep him Jewish so that they don’t lose that representation on screen.
Should they DO it tho... That’s a topic for ANOTHER video.
