Magneto fights Nazis in South America - Claremont and Bolton style

[lilacsigil]

Long before X-Men: First Class came out (and before some of the actors were born, just to make me feel old), Classic X-Men was reprinting old X-Men comics with an extra story at the back. There were two about Magneto - "Fire in the Night" which has been posted here before, and this one, "I, Magneto".

Warnings for Nazis, Claremontian foreign language use, fridging and massage. Seven pages from a 35-page comic.



I couldn't help thinking it's an inspiration for early scenes of the movie, but as I re-read it, I realised that there's a scene at the end of this comic where Magneto declares himself an "Ubermensch" which rather closely matches the scene near the end of the movie where Magneto agrees with Shaw's ideology.

This is set after Magneto has met Charles in Israel, but before the X-Men are formed.

At a dusty fortress in South America, a group of Nazis are confused but not scared when a man with magnificent fashion sense walks up to their gate. They shoot at him.



This does not go very well, and Magneto goes after their boss by throwing a tank into their building.





Later, in Rio de Janeiro...



They meet up in a hotel room and kiss, but Magneto can only think of his wife, Magda. Isabelle is a bit cranky about this, as he did say that Magda abandoned him. He explains that he killed people in front of her, gets a bit worked up and his nasty headache comes back. She decides to give him a massage.





Turns out they have a vest with a device that throws Magneto's powers back at him, and now they're going to kill him.



So, just like the movies, the CIA messes it up. Magneto doesn't care about the Cold War - only about mutants. I found it really interesting that he identifies as Jewish (and as an agent of Israel) at the start, but by the end, he's not looking to the past crimes of the Nazis but the future he will make for mutants.

Comments

Re: Bloody hell, I had that comic

[jazzypom]

Fassbender was amazing. The thing is, it helps that he's classically trained, so he could commit to the part without looking like a tit. LOL. In addition, he has that sort of 'throw back' features for Magneto. In Inglorious Basterds he rocked that 1940s look like woah. You get the feeling that Fassbender knew that he had to bring it hard, because this is a good tent pole movie to put your mark on. Most people know of McAvoy, but until this movie, only a few people knew about Fassbender.

Props to McAvoy (the guy who played Charles Xavier) knowing his role and doing it as good as he did.

Jennifer Lawrence has been getting much love. She was an Oscar nominee last year and is playing the part of Katniss in The Hunger Games. But yeah, without her hitting her mark, a crucial part of the movie would have been lost.

Re: Bloody hell, I had that comic

[brooms]

I seem to be alone in my dislike of Lawrence's portrayal. It just didn't work for me, I thought it fell completely flat bar some scenes with McAvoy. Everything Hoult/Hank was a disaster.

I enjoyed her acting in Winter's Bones, though.

Re: Bloody hell, I had that comic

[jazzypom]

I liked her dynamic with Charles and Erik and thought that she was representative of the young race of mutants and Charles and Erik represented what she had to choose. That was fine. I thought the Beast/ Mystique bit was an overkill (MUTANT and PROUD), and Vaughn didn't need that romantic subplot in X:FC, but he's a guy that would rather put in too much than too little. I can dig that.

Lawrence was at least trying, which is more than I can say for January Jones, I think.

Re: Bloody hell, I had that comic

[brooms]

Oh, I have no problem with Mystique's role, her role was interesting. I have a problem with the acting. The acting was what didn't work for me (bar some scenes with McAvoy, the initial ones in particular).

To be fair to JLaw, she was given some very cringe-worthy lines.

Re: Bloody hell, I had that comic

[mcity.livejournal.com]

>MUTANT and PROUD

Every time it was used, it was in a self-aware fashion. I'm willing to give it a pass.

Re: Bloody hell, I had that comic

[liliaeth]

Really? I loved her Raven more than I did Fassbender's Erik. She brought the heart of the movie home for me.

Re: Bloody hell, I had that comic

[brooms]

I was cringing over some of her lines too much to connect.

I watched this movies thrice, the second and third times around I kind of zoned out during some of her speaking parts and imagined Christina Aguilera's Beautiful was playing instead.