(even if he looks older than the much older Logan)
Magneto prefers the silver fox look so he let himself age up just enough
But then we have Captain America and the Invaders and Red Skull and Hydra, so I dunno. I feel like they occupy a different part, like a different space of that whole World War II thing, though.
I actually have an issue with how the MCU treats WWII as a whole.
Obviously Captain American: The First Avenger couldn't ignore the Nazis, but the Red Skull at one point openly dispenses with the Nazi functionaries meant to keep him in line, and he declares that the Nazi government is holding him back. This does focus the villainy of the film on Hydra, but it leads to problems down the line.
Jump to Captain America: The Winter Soldier. We see Cap taking a tour of the museum made to honour him and the Howling Commandos and the glimpses we get of the virtual exhibits show them talking about fighting Hydra, not Nazi Germany. Peggy Carter even says, in a pre-recorded video, that Cap fought through a "Hydra barricade," rather than a "German" or "Nazi" barricade.
That same movie sees the virtual consciousness of Arnim Zola tell Cap that WWII taught Hydra that people will resist overt attempts to limit their freedom and that they'd need to be more insidious. That not only paints Hydra as the main "enemy" of WWII in this universe, but it's reinforced with a montage that depicts Red Skull propaganda.
Hydra goes from a rogue secret Nazi science division to the main enemy of the MCU's WWII, with the Red Skull on fricken state propaganda poster, referred to as the "Führer." Hitler, the Nazis... totally replaced with Hydra, the Red Skull, etc...
I get why this happened. The Nazis aren't comic book villains. They're one of the deadliest regimes to ever exist, committed some of the most horrific crimes against humanity in history. They're heavy material. And in a series where Disney won't even touch Tony Stark's alcoholism aside from making it a "piss his pants" joke... yeah. Nazis and the Holocaust might be too much for them.
The end result though, is that one of the most destructive and devastating periods in human history is painted as an urban fantasy romp. WWII goes from a tragic chapter of human history to just like... I donno... Star Wars. Where your badguys aren't real so you don't have to talk about real issues related to them. Only at least the Empire of Star Wars isn't standing in for a real event and real people.
So actually taking time to depict Magneto's origins as a Jewish child who survived the Holocaust might be good for the MCU, to show that they're actually going to take WWII and the Nazi regime seriously, and not paper it over with inoffensive "Hydra" stand-ins because real tragedy makes the whole franchise uncomfortable.
I don't know. I guess what I'm saying is that Magneto's Holocaust origins feel a bit more grounded to me, more real. More "street level," per se.
I get that, but it's all one big soup. Spider-Man was meant to be a street level addition to the MCU and his most grounded outing- his first dedicated MCU movie- has him fighting villains using alien technology. The previous two Spider-Man film series weren't grounding themselves in realistic science, but Homecoming manages to lap them with alien tech and Iron Man suit technology.
I'm not saying this as a bad thing, really. I think that you can interpret Spider-Man a lot of ways, and there's no reason he can't get up to the more fantastical hijinks of the rest of the Marvel cast.... but it does show how you can't segregate this stuff.
Like it or not, I suspect any MCU take on Magneto's Holocaust origins will likely involve him being part of some Hydra experiment. I don't like that myself- the first Fox X-Men movie managed to avoid that- but I'm just being realistic based on how the MCU operates.
Regardless, I was more coming at it from an issue of identity, where people seem willing to sacrifice Jewish characters' innate Jewishness when they wouldn't do that with other minority characters. So I felt the need to point out that getting hung up on Magento's age in a franchise where the Infinity Saga was adapted without irony is a bit silly and beg the question of WHY people seem hung up on Magento's Jewishness?
If it wasn't for that, though, I do wonder if something like having him be descended from people who died in the Holocaust would work. I know that event can affect people who weren't actually in it too well, but I wonder if something like that would at all be sufficient?
It absolutely can. I think I was ten or so when I first really heard what the Holocaust was, and maybe only a year older when I first heard stories from survivors? Being a Jewish kid and hearing that is rough.
I also like MrBlud's idea of maybe making him someone tied to the Munich massacre, to keep his Jewish roots but update things a bit? You could even make one or both of his parents Holocaust survivors who fled to Israel after the War to keep that connection. The issue there is that if you touch the Munich massacre you have to talk about Israel and Palestine, I can't see Disney touching THAT with a ten foot pole.
Granted, I really like the idea. Magneto and his family suffering hardship due to being Jewish, and him turning that into his willingness to do villainous things in defence of Mutant kind because he knows the depths of human bigotry has proven to work really well, and you can make it a critique of how Israel sees its own defence re: the Palestinians, baring the scars of the Holocaust and feeling it so deeply that it over-corrects and starts hurting innocent people in what it feels are defensive actions. Basically using Magneto as a metaphor for how the desire to protect one's self from trauma, even when wholly legitimate, can lead down dark paths.
I think there's a lot to work with there, and I'm sure there's a Jewish writer or two in Hollywood who could knock that narrative for MCU Magneto out of the park... but yeah I don't see Disney going there. Again, they won't even touch Tony Stark being an alcoholic unless it's played for comedy.
Still, I think it's a viable and potentially rich direction to go if Magneto's origins "need" updating (I don't think they do).
How many generations do you suppose until WWII is just as vague and Magneto's back story elicits little more than a shrug of confusion?
We're already there.
I teach high school world history. Every year I mess with my grade nines by telling them "the Soviet Union was still a thing when I was born." It blows their minds every year.
The Soviet Union lasted nearly seventy-five years, but it's mostly known in US history classes via WWII, and teenagers tend to think of history as "flat." Therefore anything they associate with WWII must be as old as WWII and only that old. That the Soviet Union was a thing less then fifty years ago (less then forty really) is a huge revelation to them. And those are fifteen year olds in 2024. It's gonna get more pronounced as we go on.
That symbolizes the need for these stories, though. Real history is very important, but being able to teach lessons about important topics through pop culture- ie media teens and young adults are more likely to eagerly consume- helps keep the importance of these tragedies intact.
