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Not very interesting...Wolverine is better

Not interested? Wow...how can you not be interested? Magneto is and has always been a psychologically interesting character. He survived the holocaust only to to try to be the 'Hitler' against humans? Yeah. That doesn't seem interesting at all. Magneto will be a good movie if they actual try to explore his psychological progression.

I`m interested cause everyone`s heard Wolverine`s story. Every movie in the trilogy was a Wolverine story.

I actually really like this story, maybe even more than Wolverine, but that may be because I think that stories about jews in concentration camps who survive and get revenge are neat. Wolverine will be amazing though, hands down.

And by the way, just how many films do we need about killing Nazi's? All the components of Magneto's story, all the complexity of his character, all the analogies to and implications of terrorism in the real world, and Goyer is choosing to focus on something that has been done in films literally hundreds of times before. (And given what I have read about the script, especially in the "mad scientist" films in the 1950's.) And if Magneto had his powers in Auschwitz, how did he *not* escape (and if he escapes, he ceases to be a victim)? And you know in all the script rumors and reviews, meeting Charles is something clumsily tacked onto the end of the film. If Goyer is removed from the project and someone comes in with a new approach that actually takes the character seriously, then I will renew my hopes for this film. Until then my best hope for the film is that it ends up in development hell forever.

youd think theyd go w/ someone OTHER thsn Magneto... :/ if anything, Id say make a movie on THE MUTHAF*CKING JUGGERNAUT, BITCH!!

Not intrested really. I don't think Magneto can hold his own flick. While his name is known, it is not as popular as the other X-Men characters. Also, they would need a new actor for Magneto which could be a misfire. I would say do one on a different X-Men or just X-Men 4! Doesn't sound like a great idea and who needs another flick about killing Nazi's. We are already getting INGLORIOUS BASTARDS. Also set in Auchwitz doesn't really sound like summer blockbuster material to me.

i disagree w/ most of the people on this thread. Magneto's history spans several decades, and could fill in all sorts of holes for the Marvel universe - and is a logical place to take the X-franchises. It would be great, for example, if in addition to the mutant persecution during WWII, they found a way to hint at his involvement w/ the Inhumans, through his children Quicksilver & the Scarlet Witch. It sounds bold, but a quick mention would be interesting to throw in, to flesh out the character, and perhaps even introduce his vision for the mutant-state, Genosha. If the sales of X-books are any proof, Marvel is VERY smart to continue making X-related films, even after the Xmen trilogy finished on a dead-note. (read the villain thread for more proof as to why Magneto would make an interesting focus for a film)

The problem with trying to show everything in Magneto's story, from Auschwitz (and before, Magneto Testament coming out this fall is going to cover his childhood prior to the Holocaust) to Genosha, is that you end up with a five hour film. Now that maybe fine for some fans (like me), but you aren't going to get a normal movie watching audience to sit through that. They have to focus on one area of Magneto's life and tell his story around that...and I think the area to focus on that ties Magneto back into the franchise the most is his friendship with Xavier. This is the scenario I came up with: Terrorism is a topic that we read about daily, so we need to connect Magneto, M.U.’s most famous terrorist, to that topic in a way that will make people think about terrorism, its evil and its the causes, and be an entertaining action movie. In my extreme layman’s opinion, the most common cause of terrorism is exploitation and the abuses that accompany it. That’s what human beings do: exploit the living hell out of everything. From the Nat Turner rebellion to the Iraq war, in every case, the terrorists were trying to strike at a system that exploited people and natural resources. A government who realized that people with superpowers running are around is not going to keep them all stuck in a lab somewhere for mad scientists to experiment on, they are going to exploit the living hell out of them. So we are talking either Genosha, a technological “utopia” built on the back of mutant slavery, or better yet The Hellfire Club, A group of corporations with government contracts and sanction to kidnap and enslave mutants for their own profit. In fact, in both cases governments could be quietly sending either Genosha or the HFC their “mutant problem” in exchange for favorable trade agreements. This become a world wide conspiracy, perhaps even involving the U.N. turning a blind eye to it due to the power of the nations profiting from this trade, including the U.S. The plot of the film itself would go something like this: We see Magnus at Auschwitz (January 18-26 1945) throwing bodies into the ovens, while the SS guards look panicked and keep hurrying them up. As Magnus takes the ashes to the burial ground, he hears women screaming. He rushes over to see S.S. guards killing the women they had held behind to help dismantle the camp before the Russian advance reaches them. Magneto rushes over, kills a guard with his own rifle, grabs Magda and runs for it. *Bam*, Auschwitz covered. Done. (Magneto can explain to Xavier later that the privations and abuses of Auschwitz submerged his powers, until after he had recovered from the Holocaust, or maybe in a voice over if we are framing this in a flashback.) Years later, we see Magnus in Israel, obviously deeply emotionally wounded, meeting Charles Xavier in the mental hospital. They discover a mutant there (take your pick), and dancing around revealing that they themselves are mutants, they start to care for him/her. The mutant is kidnapped, and the two men give chase (revealing their powers in some actions sequences), stumbling across this trading network of mutants. They rescue a few and return to the U.S. to set up the school. They continue to make waves about what they discovered, only to find no one in the government overly concerned, the press stories they help create suppressed, even the U.N. seems deaf to their warnings. Finally, the school is attacked by U.S. agents, who try to kill the two men. Turns out the U.S. has a hand in this trade after all. Charles is crippled in this attack. Magneto repulses them savagely, killing them to the last man, leaving the bodies on the White House lawn (or something similarly savage and gruesome). Charles is appalled, not only by what the government has done, but by what Magneto has done, and perhaps Magneto's plans to do to retaliate against the U.S. government. The two argue. Charles sees that they have no allies in human governments and decides they must help mutants themselves by making the school a more serious institution, that the X-Men need to be created. Magneto sees that they have no allies in human governments and, given his own experiences with exploitation and abuse, becomes militant. But what about Anya and Magda, you ask? Ah, in order to focus on the real “meat” of the story, I think one could get away with having Magnus tell Charles about them (and the comic book version in which Anya's dies and Magda abandons him because he used his powers). I’m not entirely sure when to place this scene. Perhaps while they are tracking down the mutant captured in Israel. Perhaps at the very end, when Charles is trying to convince Magnus that human kind is not the government and that people need to come to know them. Magnus says something along the lines of “Know them!?! Charles let me tell you a story of a man and his wife…and their child.” And Magneto reveals what happened to the woman he rescued so long ago, and how he had saved her life, been her husband, been the father of her child...and she still rejected him because he was a mutant. “It doesn’t matter if they “know us”, Charles. They hate us, fear us. Even those you love will turn from you in horror when they discover what you really are. Mutants will not go meekly into the Gas chambers, we will fight, and we will win.” It’d be a scene most actors would eat up with a ladle. (And unlike current script rumors, it leaves Magda alive to have the twins, though honestly trying to fit them into this film would be shortchanging them as they could only be shown as children or briefly shown with the Brotherhood. The twins would get much better play in an Avengers movie than here.) The attack by U.S. agents also brings the character full circle, hearkening back to the conversation he had with Rogue beneath the Statue of Liberty in X1. “There is no tolerance, there is no peace…” Now doesn’t that sound like a much more interesting story than mad scientists and hunting Nazis?

Who said anything about justifying. I'm talking about examining to causes of terrorism by using comic books most famous terrorist. Are terrorists criminals? Absolutely. Is Magneto a criminal? God, yes. Does terrorism solve anything? No. It only exacerbates the situation. But those sort of criminals do not spring out of a vacuum. That is simply a sad fact of life. I think it is appropriate that we examine that with this character: The fact that he is reacting in the wrong fashion to a crappy situation. And I think, given the number of movies and TV shows out there, that we get plenty of opportunity for pure escapism. And Magneto running killing Nazis is going to paint him as a hero when in fact he is far more morally ambiguous (actually the Movie Magneto is a much more flat-out villain). So that line of thinking is actually going to justify his acts even more than looking at terrorism more realistically would. Not to mention creating a chasm between "Magneto the Nazi-killing hero" and what came later.) The fact is "Magneto" is not name that is going to draw a large audience. Yet there was another comic book film recently about another terrorist that no one outside the comic book community had even heard of when it came out: V for Vendetta. But because the Wachowskis and McTeigue took the character seriously, because they updated it's Cold War setting to a "War on Terror" setting, they created a an artistic offering that generated critical acclaim and word of mouth buzz that drew people into the theatre. Whether they loved or hated it, people knew about it and had seen it. That the approach they need to take with Magneto. Not some fanciful special effects film with little meaning, but a serious approach that peeks people's interest and gets them thinking and talking about the film. Magneto is the kind of character that is more commonly found in dystopian SciFi novels and more artist graphic novel offerings like the Watchmen. Trying to treat him as the typical superhero trope is just going to bore the audience and really be a disservice to the complexity of the character. Yeah, you can make a film out of it and you'll probably make your budget back...but it isn't going to stand out in anyway and this is a character that stands out in his milieu. It would be a waste not to treat him that way.

Have they cast the young Magneto yet?