How Marvel can get proposed X-Men character revamps right and keep fans happy
Ultimately it doesn’t matter what colour or indeed sex superhero characters are. The story just needs to be good.
Opinion
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Superhero movies are generating tonnes of money but, it seems, even more controversy among fans. If it’s not DC comics versus Marvel, it’s which character should get their own show or movie next, or which franchise needs a reboot/reload/reimagining.
Latest cab off the controversy rank is the X-Men franchise. After a whole bunch of X-Men movies, only some of which were successful, Marvel has snaffled back the rights to one of its biggest names.
Now comes word that two of the franchise’s major protagonists, Professor X and Magneto, might ride again. Or in the case of the wheelchair-bound Professor, roll again.
So far we have had Patrick Stewart and James McAvoy play the Professor and Ian McKellen and Michael Fassbender take on the legendary villain Magneto. Those are big shoes to fill.
The latest rumour is the roles will be recast with black actors or Persons Of Colour. Naturally many fans are blowing up and claiming this is political correctness gone mad etc etc. Still, this is all on Twitter, where outrage is easier to find than spilt popcorn after a Marvel movie.
There is a point about Magneto in that the character was created out of the Holocaust. It’s the thing that gives this legendary villain some humanity.
Eric Lehnsherr survived what the Nazis threw at him and now he’s doing these terrible things because he feels it’s the only way to protect his “people”, the mutants, from those who would round them up and exterminate them. But any Holocaust survivor is now too old to be wearing Lycra and punching on with some muscled hero. Maybe it is time to update the character and find similar, yet different motivation for him attacking humans to save mutants.
I cannot think of a recent event more terrible than the Holocaust. But there are horrific ones that would provide plenty of character motivation.
A black Magneto who saw his friends and family hunted and killed by the Ku Klux Klan would certainly want to protect his people. That would bring Magneto forward nearly 30 years.
If you wanted to go even further, make him even younger, then the hideous 1994 Rwandan genocide would also serve as motivation for Magneto to resort to violence to protect his people.
Buy why have him exclusively black?
The killing fields of Cambodia in the 1970s would create the perfect background for an Asian Magneto, as would the massacres of Mao’s Cultural Revolution in that same decade.
But while they might be touting a dramatic change for these characters as a sign the studio is brave and willing to take risks in the modern world, they won’t have the guts to make them Chinese. China’s money outweighs anything, even political correctness.
Ultimately it doesn’t matter what colour or, indeed, sex these characters are. The story just needs to be good and not another rehash of what has been done before.
We can happily forgive films for playing fast and loose with a character’s origin. We just don’t want to see a lame effort with all the punch of a 90-year-old in saggy Lycra.