| Adaptations of Magneto in other media | |
|---|---|
| Created by | Stan Lee Jack Kirby |
| Original source | Comics published by Marvel Comics |
| First appearance | X-Men #1 (September 1963) |
| Films and television | |
| Film(s) | X-Men (2000) X2 (2003) X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) X-Men: First Class (2011) |
| Television show(s) |
X-Men (1992) X-Men: Evolution (2000) Wolverine and the X-Men (2008) |
| Games | |
| Video game(s) | X-Men (1992) X-Men Legends (2004) |
Magneto is an enemy of the X-Men, and has been included in almost every media adaptation of the X-Men franchise, including film, television, computer and video games.
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Magneto appeared in several Marvel cartoons from 1967 to 1991. Strangely, it was some time before he actually appeared on a show with the X-Men.
In the 1967 Spider-Man cartoon, Spider-Man battled a scientist named Dr. Matto Magneto wielding a magnetic gun in "The Revenge of Dr. Magneto". The character was (very) loosely based on the Magneto character from the comics, and more closely resembled Albert Einstein instead of Erik Magnus Lehnsherr. His name is mispronounced "Mag-netto" instead of "Mag-neeto."
In the 1978 Fantastic Four cartoon, Magneto (voiced by John Stephenson) briefly took control of the team in "The Menace Of Magneto". Here, he is not depicted as a mutant. Instead he is simply an extremely powerful supervillain with typical aspirations such as robbing a bank. Instead of flying, he moves around in a bizarre, car-like device which he moves using his magnetic powers. He was defeated when Reed Richards tricked him with a wooden gun.
The solo Spider-Man cartoon from 1981 featured Magneto in the episode "When Magneto Speaks... People Listen".
Magneto returned in Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, attempting to free his fellow mutants from prison in "The Prison Plot". He was voiced by Michael Rye. In spite of his Spider-Man television appearances, he has appeared in only two issues of a Spider-Man title.
Magneto was the main villain in the animated X-Men pilot X-Men: Pryde of the X-Men - his first actual animated appearance battling the X-Men. He was voiced by Earl Boen.
Magneto's voice was provided by David Hemblen in the series X-Men, where he played a prominent role. Curiously, though he began on the show as a villain, his character spent more time as an ally to the X-Men, fighting alongside them against common enemies such as the Sentinels and Mr. Sinister as opposed to the cold-hearted villain he was previously portrayed as in earlier shows like Pryde of the X-Men.
In the series, he briefly appears in the first episode "Night of the Sentinels: Part I" on a television screen Jubilee accidentally turns on with her powers but Magneto makes his true first appearance in the third episode "Enter Magneto", where he attempts to incite a war between humans and mutants by attacking a military base and launching its nuclear armaments, though they are prevented from reaching their targets by the X-Men. He reappears in the next episode "Deadly Reunions", when he attacks a chemical plant in an effort to draw Xavier out to face him. After defeating Cyclops, Rogue and Storm, Xavier meets his challenge and they do battle. Though Magneto gains the upper hand, Xavier tortures him with repressed memories of his childhood during The Holocaust, causing Magneto to flee in agony. In the first season finale, he kidnaps Senator Kelly in order to once again attempt to begin a war, but is thwarted by a group of Sentinels. After Mastermold and the other Sentinels rebel against their creators and become a threat to the entire world, Magneto allies himself with the X-Men and they successfully eliminate the Sentinels, during which he saves Xavier's life.
He appears in nearly every episode in the second season, in which he and Professor Xavier have been depowered and travel throughout the Savage Land. At the end of that season, all of the X-Men save them from Mr. Sinister, and they regain their powers.
In season four, he creates Asteroid M as a safe haven for mutants who feel persecuted on Earth. Though his intentions are noble, a betrayal by his closest servant Fabian Cortez puts into motion a series of events after which he realizes that the world will never again trust him as the leader of the Asteroid, and he allows the base to be destroyed. In the fourth season finale, Magneto teams up with Apocalypse, believing that the immortal will use his powers to resurrect his wife. When he discovers that Apocalypse plans to destroy all reality, Magneto helps the X-Men to defeat him.
Disheartened by the loss of his sanctuary, he does not care about even the impending assimilation of mankind by the Phalanx, until he receives news from the Beast, Forge, Mr. Sinister and Amelia Voght that his son, Quicksilver, has been kidnapped by the Phalanx in the second part of the two-part fifth season premiere. He teams up with them to defeat the Phalanx and save everyone they had captured or assimilated.
His final appearance is in the last episode of the series "Graduation Day", he has gathered up an entire army of rebellious mutants, and is poised to conquer the world, but receives news from Wolverine, Cyclops and Jean Grey that Professor Xavier is dying. Relenting, Magneto uses his power in conjunction with Xavier's in order to contact Lilandra Neramani, who takes Xavier to her planet where there is a suggestion that he may be cured. He is last seen along with the X-Men standing outside the mansion as Professor X departs.
As with many television shows, X-Men: The Animated Series has suffered from continuity errors. For one, in the episode where Magneto makes his initial appearance, aptly titled "Enter Magneto", the X-Men do not know him, as he is an old acquaintance of Xavier's. However, as the series progresses Magneto is shown fighting Iceman during a flashback in "Cold Comfort". It may be possible that only Iceman knows him since he was not present in "Enter Magneto" and was the only one fighting Magneto in the flashback.
Magneto's voice was provided by Christopher Judge in the animated television series X-Men: Evolution. During the show's first season he is a shadowy, mysterious manipulator where the X-Men, except for Professor Xavier, do not know of his existence, until the first X-Man, Wolverine, figures it out, although Magneto becomes a more direct threat from the first season finale. In the first season he uses his agent Mystique to assemble a team of mutants, and even recruits his own son Quicksilver to spy on them. In the first season finale, he pits the Brotherhood against the X-Men and brings the winners to Asteroid M in an attempt to convince them to join his cause and to use a genetic enhancer to fully develop their powers as he had. His decision to leave Mystique behind leads her to betray him (although flashbacks indicate that they have been at odds since Magneto separated Mystique from her newborn son Nightcrawler), and their vendetta lasts throughout the second season.
In the second season, Magneto personally recruits a new team, the Acolytes, de-ages himself using the same technology that created Captain America as his genetic enhancements are no longer working, and finally reveals the existence of mutants to the public after the X-Men and Brotherhood fight off a Sentinel which was meant to destroy every mutant known. In this time his daughter Wanda is introduced, who hates Magneto for abandoning her as a child and leaving her in a mental asylum (when asked about what specific event led to Magneto institutionalizing Wanda, X-Men: Evolution's head writer Greg Johnson stated that "There was no specific event. It was just years of him trying to handle a hostile, out of control child whose powers were promising to be very destructive if he didn't get her put away."[1]). She hunts him down relentlessly until he uses the mutant Mastermind to change her memories, painting him in a new light.
In the third and fourth seasons of the show, Magneto dedicates himself to preventing the awakening of the mutant Apocalypse, although all his attempts fail and upon Apocalypse's awakening he is transformed into one of his Four Horsemen after he is thought to have been killed by Apocalypse. He is freed of this enslavement in the finale episode Ascension: Part Two, and is last seen being helped by his two children. In the final moments of the episode, Charles Xavier reveals that he witnessed the future in the mind of Apocalypse, and among the visions he saw was Magneto becoming an ally of the X-Men and training the New Mutants, like he did in the comics.
In this series, Magneto uses a device aboard Asteroid M to advance his evolution, and propelling his abilities to further heights. Evidently, this advancement pushes him onto another plateau of existing as a mutant. A claim that he references when he goes to fight Apocalypse, declaring that it is a battle between 'higher evolutionaries.' This is enforced by Caliban's claim that Magneto is too far advanced for him to locate, but that any other mutant was still within his capabilities.
Magneto appears in Wolverine and the X-Men voiced by Tom Kane in a rendition of Ian McKellen's portrayal of Magneto in the X-Men films. He is shown to rule the island of Genosha, where it appears most mutants are moving to, in light of recent anti-mutant feelings. Despite the government's treatment of mutants, they seem content to allow Magneto to promote Genosha in the United States with assorted poster and commercials. It is later revealed that Magneto found Professor X unconscious on Genosha after the destruction of the X-Mansion and took to caring for him. When the X-Men arrive to 'rescue him' Magneto turns over care to them, stating that they are his family. When Nightcrawler arrived in Genosha, he had his daughter Scarlet Witch give him a tour. During that time, he sends Mystique to the X-Mansion to "check up" on Professor X. Magneto, Scarlet Witch, and the Acolytes attacked Nightcrawler when he discovered Magneto's underground cells. When Nightcrawler did a lot of teleporting to warn the X-Men, Magneto had Mystique intercept him while he prepared a special cell for Nightcrawler. Magneto gave Quicksilver and his Brotherhood of Mutants a mission. During the transmission, Quicksilver tells his father that if they pull this off, he'd better receive a warm welcome back to Genosha. In "Battle Lines", Magneto had a talk with Senator Kelly about holding back the powerful mutants from being sent to Genosha. He later has his Acolytes raid the MRD prisons to free the mutants. In "Hunting Grounds", he finds out that Scarlet Witch and Nightcrawler had been abducted by Mojo. After the rescue, Scarlet Witch persuades Magneto to let Wolverine and Nightcrawler go. In "Backlash", Quicksilver was not pleased with Magneto when he cuts Quicksilver's Brotherhood of Mutants loose. After a chat with Quicksilver, he has Scarlet Witch notify the MRD of the Brotherhood's hideout. In "Aces and Eights", Senator Kelly sends Gambit to steal Magneto's helmet. When Gambit gets away without the helmet and Magneto learns of this, he was about to pummel Senator Kelly until intervention by the X-Men prevented this. In the three-part episode "Foresight", Magneto sends Mystique to pose as Senator Kelly to unleash the Sentinels and destroy the controls to them. When the Sentinels attack Genosha, Magneto uses his powers to reprogram them to attack humans. He was knocked off his Sentinel by the Phoenix Force yet was rescued by Quicksilver who takes him back to Genosha. After the Phoenix Force was stopped, Scarlet Witch and Polaris had Blink teleport Magneto and Quicksilver away from Genosha. Though Scarlet Witch tells Quicksilver that he's always welcome in Genosha, she also states that Genosha is no longer Magneto's country therefore banishing her own father.
Magneto appears in The Super Hero Squad Show episode "Hexed, Vexed, and Perplexed" voiced by Maurice LaMarche.[2] Besides being depicted as an ally of Doctor Doom, this version is shown trying to train his children Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch to follow his legacy. He arrived in Super Hero City with Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch in a plot to steal the Infinity Fractals from the Vault for Doctor Doom. He ends up fighting Captain America, Hawkeye, and the Super Hero Squad. When Falcon makes an attack on Magneto, Quicksilver uses his super speed to deflect the attack back at Falcon. Magneto sends his children to infiltrate the Helicarrier to steal the security codes in order to infiltrate the Vault. When the Super Hero Squad attacks, Magneto grabs an Infinity Fractal which gives him the ability to control matter which he uses to stop Falcon in mid-air. Scarlet Witch objects to Magneto hurting him more. Magneto releases them from his control only to take Falcon and Redwing captive as Quicksilver grabs the Infinity Fractals. Magneto then traps the Super Hero Squad in metal. Quicksilver discovers that Magneto had stole the Infinity Fractals all along. Doctor Doom later attacks Magneto blaming him for stealing the Infinity Fractals until Falcon makes off with them. Doctor Doom holds Magneto responsible for his children helping Falcon and knocks him out. In "Lo, How the Mighty Hath Abdicated!", Magneto and Quicksilver attack the Helicarrier thinking that Scarlet Witch was kidnapped and brainwashed by the Super Hero Squad. Their fight ends up crashing the Helicarrier into Asgard. When Odin is freed from Enchantress' love lutefisk, he convinces Magneto to let Scarlet Witch stay with the Super Hero Squad. When Scarlet Witch states that she will come to Magneto when he needs her, Magneto states that if they meet as hero and villain, it will be different. Due to his transportation being wrecked, Magneto and Quicksilver ask the Super Hero Squad for a ride back to Super Hero City. A vastly older version appears in the alternate universe episode "Days, Nights, and Weekends of Futures Past", where he helps Falcon, HERBIE, and Reptil (known as "The Man") reform Scarlet Witch. Here, he is seen using a zimmer frame, complete with a bicycle horn, but later uses a scooter composed of Sentinel pieces.
Magneto was played by two-time Academy Award-nominee Sir Ian McKellen in the movie X-Men and its sequels, X2 and X-Men: The Last Stand. His alter ego is Erik Lensherr, which at the time was his name in the comics. He is the main antagonist of the first and third films and the supporting protagonist of the second film. In all of these films, he wishes for mutant prosperity (or as Cyclops put it, superiority) but only so long as he remains in control of it. In addition to battling the X-Men, Magneto has no qualms about endangering or killing innocents and displays highly megalomaniacal behavior; such as taunting Rogue about nearly killing her in the second film, and later sacrificing dozens of his mutant followers in the third film by knowingly sending them against anti-mutant weapons while he remained safely out of range stating that "in chess, the pawns go first." Throughout the films, Magneto is at odds with Charles Xavier, his old friend, but displays great care towards Xavier, acknowledging Xavier's contributions to mutant kind.
In the X-Men films Magneto's resistance to mental attack does not stem from his own natural powers but is technological in nature; his helmet contains some kind of a psychic shielding component, able to completely negate both the telepathic abilities of Charles Xavier (as shown in X-Men), and also the illusion-casting abilities of Jason in X2. In these films Magneto is credited with helping Xavier to build Cerebro; it would seem that in the process of building a machine designed to amplify telepathy, Magneto learned enough to develop a means of shielding himself from it.
At the start of the film, a preteen Magneto was separated from his parents by Nazi soldiers, and it was during this moment that his powers begin to manifest (twisting open a metal fence separating him and his parents). In the present time, Magneto attempts to mutate the world leaders with a high-tech machine powered by his own magnetic energy. As the machine is potentially lethal, he kidnaps Rogue to use her as the power source instead. Unknown to Magneto, the machine would cause humans to be killed by losing their molecular structure (as seen in Senator Robert Kelly). Even when warned of the dangers of the machine by Jean Grey and Storm, Magneto does not believe them. In the end, he is incapacitated by Cyclops and locked up in a plastic prison.
In the second film, he escapes from prison with some help from Mystique (who had injected a suspension of iron particles into a security guard) and makes a temporary alliance with the X-Men to defeat William Stryker's plan to kill all the mutants. It is also implied that he was also involved in Stryker's capture of Xavier, due to Stryker brainwashing him. Stryker has captured Xavier and builds his own version of Cerebro at Alkali Lake. He uses his son Jason to make Xavier focus to kill all the mutants. Magneto foils this plan and instead has Xavier try to kill all the humans before leaving the location in a helicopter. The X-Men intervene in time and prevent Xavier from killing the humans.
In the third film, he has expanded the Brotherhood of Mutants and recruited many mutants to join. After learning that a major company has produced a cure for the mutant gene, he and his Brotherhood attack the facility with the intention of killing the cure's source; a young mutant named Leech. Wolverine and Beast work together and inject Magneto with the "cure," which strips him of his powers. In the final scene, he extends his hand toward a chess piece and is able to slightly move it, suggesting that the cure may not be permanent and/or may not have rendered him completely powerless. At several points in the film, after Xavier's apparent demise, Magneto shows genuine grief over his friend-cum-foe's death, even speaking severely to Pyro when the latter states that he would have killed Xavier himself had Magneto asked it of him ("Charles Xavier did more for mutants than you'll ever know. My single greatest regret is that he had to die for our dream to live.").
A spin-off to the X-Men franchise entitled X-Men Origins: Magneto was announced after X-Men: The Last Stand and planned for 2009–2010. In December 2004, 20th Century Fox hired screenwriter Sheldon Turner to draft a script for Magneto that focuses on the mutant supervillain and how he became Magneto. The script includes Professor X, a soldier in the Allied Forces who helps liberate Nazi concentration camps. He meets Magneto after the war, finding a bond with their mutant powers, but their moral differences drive them apart.[3] Instead of McKellen and Stewart, though, actors in their 20s were to be cast to portray the characters.[4] The movie has been shelved,[5] though most of the film's plot has been integrated into X-Men: First Class.[6]
Michael Fassbender played the role of the young Erik Lensherr/Magneto in X-Men: First Class.[7] He serves as one of the protagonists of the film. It portrayed his falling out with Charles Xavier and evolution into Magneto, showing his powers manifesting similar to the beginning to X-Men. Nazi concentration camp physician Dr. Klaus Schmidt (later known as Sebastian Shaw) murders Lensherr's mother in an attempt to have the boy display his power, leading Lensherr to start tracking him down after the war ends. Lensherr first meets Xavier during an attempt on Shaw's life. Realizing that Lensherr's use of his powers is by his anger, Xavier begins training Magneto to be able to use his powers at will, greatly increasing his abilities. He develops a strong friendship with Xavier, as well as a romantic relationship with Xavier's foster sister, Raven, but eventually leaves the team to find Shaw.
When Lensherr and Shaw face off aboard Shaw's nuclear submarine, Magneto destroys part of its telepathy-blocking shielding and removes Shaw's helmet, which further protects his mind against intruders. Xavier is able to paralyze Shaw, but Magneto dons the helmet to isolate himself from Xavier and kills Shaw by forcing a Nazi coin from the concentration camp through his head. Later, after the US and Soviet forces fire on them, Magneto takes control of the missiles, and attempts to use them against the armies. Charles begs him to stop, but Magneto's experience with the Nazis has caused him to feel no sympathy for men who are "just following orders". When CIA agent Moira MacTaggert tries to shoot Magneto to stop him, he deflects the bullets, inadvertently sending one into Xavier's spine and paralyzing him. He and Xavier go their separate ways at this point; in the final scene of the film, he breaks Emma Frost free from confinement, wearing a costume similar to his first comic appearance.
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