If you ask comic readers who the X-Men's greatest villain is, chances are they'll say Magneto. The same would be said for those that have only seen the previous movies or animated series. While currently a part of the X-Men in the comics, he still retains that shadow hanging over him leaving readers wondering when he'll turn against the X-Men once again.

With the release of X-Men: First Class, we got to see a little more of who Erik Lehnsherr was before he became the man known as Magneto. Despite the title of the film, the movie was Magneto's story along with his relationship with Charles Xavier. Yes there were mutants involved and the formation of the X-Men, but they were secondary characters. Magneto was a victim throughout and was on a quest to achieve some sort of peace within himself.

Just as in the comics, Magneto did some things that would be construed as an act of evil. With this portrayal, should Magneto still be seen as a villain?

When one suffers a horrific experience, where should the line be drawn in righting any wrongs? How far should one go in order to achieve justice? As in the comics, Erik was born to a Jewish family in the late 1920s and taken to a camp in 1939. What he had to experience is enough to permanently scar any person. Rather than succumb to the cruel fates, Erik managed to survive this ordeal. With a thirst for revenge, he had one goal in mind.

X-Men: First Class continued to show that Erik wasn't a man determined to rule of homo sapiens. He wasn't even aware there were other mutants in existence. He just needed to get closure on what he suffered through as a child. Meeting Charles Xavier showed him there were others like him, with special abilities. Charles helped him cope with the pain he kept bottled up inside and Erik was becoming a better person.

Unfortunately it is part of human nature to fear that which is unknown. If you've seen the movie or the trailers, you know that Erik, Charles and the newly formed X-Men are trying to deal with the missile crisis and the potential outbreak of a nuclear war. Working with CIA Agent Moira MacTaggert, the X-Men even had approval by the U.S. Government. Yet, it's clear, even in the trailers, that they will be betrayed. A swarm of missiles is headed their way, regardless of any effort the X-Men made in saving the day.

This is where we see the difference in Charles and Erik's ideals. Charles believes that mankind and mutants can co-exist. He believes they should save even those that fear them. Magneto is not willing to take the same route. People consider Magneto an enemy but wasn't it more a matter of when push comes to shove? Magneto wanted to do the right thing. He may have had a personal agenda but he was willing to put his life on the line to save the United States and even the world. The extreme lack of gratitude showed this was a mistake.

He lived his life not being able to trust anyone. Meeting Charles allowed him to open himself up. But shortly after that, he was betrayed. He needs to ensure the survival of himself and mutantkind, which is a target for the government. Nothing can stop him and he won't even allow a friendship to get in the way.

So who is the true villain here? It's not Magneto. The government may think they are protecting the innocent but that can't be the case when they make up their own definition of who is and is not considered innocent. Magneto grew up being a victim. Once he was on his way to achieving closure and had a place next to Xavier, the government and society showed him where he stood among them. Standing up for himself and what he believes in doesn't make him a villain. When push comes to shove, Magneto will shove back.

He's a very sympathetic villain, but threatening the lives of thousands of sailors with armed missiles and nearly instigating a war between mutants and humans instantly marks you as a villain - no matter how misguided the actions of the human leaders were. 
 
Edit: 

"Magneto was a victim throughout and was on a quest to achieve some sort of peace within himself." 
 
I felt like Magneto was on a quest to vent his rage while Professor X was on a quest to instill him with peace. 
 
Further Edit: 
 

Also, Magneto is an ego-maniacal, power-hungry, radical terrorist who espouses a philosophy of mutant superiority that could potentially bring out about the destruction, or subjugation, of the 6-7 Billion non-Mutants living upon the planet. His desire to see Mutant-kind protected from a prejudiced and fearful human population is understandable, but his response to it makes him no better than Senator Kelly, William Striker, or the Nazis who harmed him and his family in the camps. Though he may not be a completely black and white villain, he's certainly not a hero. And these things shouldn't be overlooked before making him out to be what he is not, you know?

I've always found Magneto to be an extremely sympathetic villain, if you can call him a villain at all. Some would say that his methods are extreme, but can it really be said that he goes any farther than those who threaten him?

Oh I think there is no question that this movie made Magneto the very essence of 'bad @$$'.  When it comes to the point that one believes vengeance to be the utmost priority and all other concerns becoming secondary, then its clear that righteousness no longer enters the equation.  Clearly he is a villain then when he no longer cares about order and mayhem and greatness and instead wants to re-aim missiles at patrolling ships or to send a coin straight through someone's head while they are defenseless.  In other words, he may have started out the victim but if he had wanted to be the 'better man' as he so boldly claims he is, then he would have let that vengeance against Shaw go way before he ever met Charles Xavier. No, he did not have aspirations of mutant superiority to begin with, but the vengeance against Shaw might as well have been the catalyst to make him go in that direction, for his hate would not have died even with Shaw's death.  Yes, he may have been pushed first, but then he pushed plenty back and as time would show would keep pushing and pushing.  Clearly then I see him as the villain.

 
Well yeah, he's a very relatable villain in the sense he just wants freedom for mutants and mutant rights like Professor X, but does so in a very different way. 
 
I don't think Magneto should ever be portrayed as a full, 100% villain, but more like how First Class portrayed him, very sympathetic, it makes for a more interesting villain that way.

Not evil enough.
 
He should have killed lotsa people, make a terrorist attack (BECAUSE it is what he is in the comics) or something... Too much anti-hero made him look lie the good guy.
 
But I suspect it was because of 20th Century Fox, who didn't had the b@lls to show any violence or people acting "evil" at all..

I don't understand why everyone's so hung up on the "villain" and "evil" labels.  Every well-written character in a conflict has goals and aspirations.  They see their goals, and usually the means through which they hope to achieve them, as ultimately good.  As readers, we are free to judge their goals as good or bad, but we shouldn't try to divide them along the over-simplistic lines of the Silver-Age.

I still haven't seen it darn it!

@Eyz said:

Not evil enough. He should have killed lotsa people, make a terrorist attack (BECAUSE it is what he is in the comics) or something... Too much anti-hero made him look lie the good guy. But I suspect it was because of 20th Century Fox, who didn't had the b@lls to show any violence or people acting "evil" at all..

Or, y'know... Matthew Vaughn wanted to make an interesting character and not just another comic-book villain with a slightly more interesting backstory

@Eyz said:

Not evil enough. He should have killed lotsa people, make a terrorist attack (BECAUSE it is what he is in the comics) or something... Too much anti-hero made him look lie the good guy. But I suspect it was because of 20th Century Fox, who didn't had the b@lls to show any violence or people acting "evil" at all..

Or, y'know... Matthew Vaughn wanted to make an interesting character and not just another comic-book villain with a slightly more interesting backstory

@Eyz said:

@shaanyboi said:

@Eyz said:

Not evil enough. He should have killed lotsa people, make a terrorist attack (BECAUSE it is what he is in the comics) or something... Too much anti-hero made him look lie the good guy. But I suspect it was because of 20th Century Fox, who didn't had the b@lls to show any violence or people acting "evil" at all..

Or, y'know... Matthew Vaughn wanted to make an interesting character and not just another comic-book villain with a slightly more interesting backstory

Stop defending Vaughn! He didn't write the flick and the movie would have been mostly the same if Fox put him out and had gotten another director. It's a studio flick! (and a 20th Century Fox lackbuster at that!) The producers made the choices and decisions.

Uh huh... despite the fact that he and Jane Goldman (someone he's worked with twice before) both have writing credits, and that Vaughn has a solid-as-f*** track-record for this being only his fourth directorial role... I'd say he had something to do with it being as well-received as it is.

As much as I'm all bitter towards studio-influence in summer-blockbuster stuff like this, a good movie is a good movie, and a good director is a good director. Stop whining.

Considering Fassbender is one of the most universally loved parts of that movie (unless you're someone like... well, you who has completely shallow teenage mentality that a guy just killing a bunch of people somehow makes him interesting as a character), they probably went in a good direction with him. This is how he BECOMES the extremist he is, and that's the whole point of his relationship with Charles. They agree on everything except for how to deal with this one issue. That's the whole point. If you're saying that he needed to just mercilessly kill a bunch of people out of pure evil (which y'know... is super deep), then you clearly don't understand the whole point of that character.

"Standing up for himself and what he believes in doesn't make him a villain. When push comes to shove, Magneto will shove back." 
Lets make a movie or video game about a slave (American Chattel Slavery) that escapes and hunts down and kills slave owners and see if this logic still applies. 
  
BTW: who betrayed Magneto? It is the other way around. 

 But Magneto is suppose to be flawed character, like the best X-Men characters are. Xavier could have done more for Mystique. Magneto's rage could have been put in check preventing tragedy. After seeing this movie, I still see the potential for good in Erik. All that means is this movie is a job well done.

When your goal is to murder the people who oppose you or have done you wrong, you're a villain. You can put whatever rationalization you like behind your actions. You're still a killer.  Magneto makes a point of stating that he's already the "better man", but the better man doesn't resort to murder. He could just as easily have fended off that missile attack by hurling them all into the sea. He didn't. He wanted to strike back at the humans. He could have brought those war criminals to justice. He chose to exact revenge, instead. Shaw was rendered completely defenseless when Magneto killed him. His death was not a quick, in the moment, during a heated conflict type of thing. It was cold. Deliberate. Clearly premeditated. Magneto kept that coin all those years specifically to do what he did with it. Magneto is so blinded by his rage & hatred that he doesn't see that you can't stand up for the oppressed by being an oppressor yourself.

I haven't seen the movie yet, don't know if I can be bothered, but it annoys me when people say Magneto isn't a villain. He is. He can be sympathetic, sure, but he's still more than willing to execute you if it means saving a mutant, any mutant, from harm. I'm not saying he is or isn't in the film (as I said, I haven't seen it), but in the comics, he is a villain (well, he was before the Utopia garbage came in).

When your goal is to murder the people who oppose you or have done you wrong, you're a villain. You can put whatever rationalization you like behind your actions. You're still a killer.  Magneto makes a point of stating that he's already the "better man", but the better man doesn't resort to murder. He could just as easily have fended off that missile attack by hurling them all into the sea. He didn't. He wanted to strike back at the humans. He could have brought those war criminals to justice. He chose to exact revenge, instead. Shaw was rendered completely defenseless when Magneto killed him. His death was not a quick, in the moment, during a heated conflict type of thing. It was cold. Deliberate. Clearly premeditated. Magneto kept that coin all those years specifically to do what he did with it. Magneto is so blinded by his rage & hatred that he doesn't see that you can't stand up for the oppressed by being an oppressor yourself.

I haven't seen the movie yet, don't know if I can be bothered, but it annoys me when people say Magneto isn't a villain. He is. He can be sympathetic, sure, but he's still more than willing to execute you if it means saving a mutant, any mutant, from harm. I'm not saying he is or isn't in the film (as I said, I haven't seen it), but in the comics, he is a villain (well, he was before the Utopia garbage came in).

Magneto has always been the good guy.. If your a mutant.

Magneto has been good/an anti-hero for almost as long as he's been evil. He had an excellent run as one in the 80s, for example. Hell, I still buy him as a hero over Emma Frost any day.

@FadeToBlackBolt said:

I haven't seen the movie yet, don't know if I can be bothered, but it annoys me when people say Magneto isn't a villain. He is. He can be sympathetic, sure, but he's still more than willing to execute you if it means saving a mutant, any mutant, from harm. I'm not saying he is or isn't in the film (as I said, I haven't seen it), but in the comics, he is a villain (well, he was before the Utopia garbage came in).

This is where we disagree. 

No, anyone who knows the character Magneto knows he's been heroic many times and depending on your point of view he's heroic most of the time. Hell, he even lead the X-Men proper for a time.

@chalkshark said:

When your goal is to murder the people who oppose you or have done you wrong, you're a villain. You can put whatever rationalization you like behind your actions. You're still a killer.  Magneto makes a point of stating that he's already the "better man", but the better man doesn't resort to murder. He could just as easily have fended off that missile attack by hurling them all into the sea. He didn't. He wanted to strike back at the humans. He could have brought those war criminals to justice. He chose to exact revenge, instead. Shaw was rendered completely defenseless when Magneto killed him. His death was not a quick, in the moment, during a heated conflict type of thing. It was cold. Deliberate. Clearly premeditated. Magneto kept that coin all those years specifically to do what he did with it. Magneto is so blinded by his rage & hatred that he doesn't see that you can't stand up for the oppressed by being an oppressor yourself.

Yes, murder is such a morally absolute topic and in no way ever a reasonable action.Better man in terms of power, clearly.  Which war criminals? You mean those working for the US and Russain government? Unlikely. Or do you mean Shaw? Poor Shaw. The man was a monster, potentiating a global threat.  He was pretty much invincible; if Magneto hadn't seized that opportunity to kill him, he would have started a third WW and killed millions, if not billions of people. It was a necessity, even if Magneto did it  out of revenge. And, to be frank, that scene with the coin just added an awesomely brutal circularity to the movie. I can't see how you can show any form of compassion for Shaw…. Shaw himself played along with the Nazi agenda, whilst not necessarily believing it (but still, imagine the innocents he killed). He shot and killed Erik's mother in front of him and evidently showed a vast disregard for human life.  His views were like Magneto's but amplified onto human eradication.  

I think he's a villain. He started as an instrument of vengeance, had a chance at redemption, but rejected it and embraced villainy. That's my interpretation of his arc. If he had just killed Shaw that wouldn't have made him a villain, but he basically became Shaw, except minus the ridiculous "nuclear war is good" insanity.

The only villain here was Sebastian Shaw. Erik is a man with godly powers looking for revenge, and once he meets Charles tries to do the right thing, but once again is betrayed and used as a tool because of this power. And that's when he says "alright, screw you human race, take THIS".

I never saw him as evil or a villain. Magneto has always been more in my eyes. Emotionally scarring as a boy in Hitler's Germany caused the man we see today. Another genocide is what he fears and what he's out to stop. Terrorism may not be the best answer but war grown boy it's the only answer. In away he's both the hero and villain. He's the true villain of anyone that will tear a mutant apart limb from limb and hero to the mutants that can stand a fight. The bigger issue is he uses random targets. If marvel went and singled mutant haters that harmed out more Magneto would be seen as the greater good.
 
I hate it when fan writers,  roleplayers, comic writers, display Magneto with no heart. The character is so much deeper than black and white.

I've always seen Magneto as Malcolm X, and Charles Xavier as Martian Luthor King Jr. 

One Mutants villain is another Mutants hero

I love that Magneto was right poster, Because he is most of the time.

I don't know if it's been mentioned, but the fact that
 
*SPOILERS*
 
Magneto says he agrees with every word of Shaw's superiority spiel (just before Magneto murders Shaw) indicates that he's felt that way all along and it's just been playing second fiddle to his  revenge.  If it weren't for their history, Shaw and Erik would have been bffs.
 
So, no, Magneto isn't solely reactionary and he's not just a man (mutant) responding to a government attack.  Another day, at another time, he would have gotten around to initiating his supremacy agenda.  All the government attack really did was undermine Charles's beliefs.  It didn't change anything about Erik.

Anyone who wants to point fingers at Magneto killing Shaw as making him a villain is a fool. As much as Charles hoped Erik would be the better man, he allowed him not to be. Erik could not have done his little coin trick without Prof X holding Shaw back. So who's the villain again? Also, You could say Erik should have detained Shaw, and brought him to the proper authorities, but I think it's pretty evident the government never would have given them that option, when they had hundreds of missiles flying their way. No mutant was getting off that island alive if Human Kind had anything to say about it. You could call the sailors innocent, and just following orders, but they were aware of what they were doing. They were just as willing to make that call. Obviously if you look at Magneto and all you see is a villain, and evil, you have a very idealistic view of the world, much like Prof X. But the world, it isn't so black and white.

Just look at the latest events in the comic books and say that Magneto was wrong about humanity. One man willing to help mutants equals thousands willing to destroy the "muties". Cyclops understood in, that's why he abandoned Xavier's teachings and started using Magneto's methods (moving to Utopia, creating mutant black ops killing squad to destroy the enemies before they could strike).

Magneto was probably the most interesting character in this movie, he was a "hero" he kinda saved this movie lol

fuck professor x, magneto was completely jusitfied for killing shaw

I love the spoilers on this site, lol.  Not even the editors give a shit.

im with Magneto 100%

@norusdog: What spoilers? Everything here was seen in the numerous trailers and TV spots.

Yes i think Magneto is still a villain, and it took Xavier for that to happen. I think that if Magneto had never met Professor X, he would never have gotten a handle on his powers, and he would have died facing Shaw. His rage would have blinded him. But because Xavier got him to move past the rage and find his center, thus he created Magneto. And one hell of a villain.

Things are not always black and white.  I don't see Magneto as a villain, more like a man who believes he is doing what he can for his race.  Just because his views cause him to oppose heroes every now and then does not make him a villain exactly.  These things make Magneto such a great character.

Magneto was a total jerk.

fuck professor x, magneto was completely jusitfied for killing shaw

@sladewilson30 said:

fuck professor x, magneto was completely jusitfied for killing shaw

He was provoked, sure.  Justified?  That's a bit harder to sell.

Magneto is fighting for a cause. Not a terrorist, more like an extremist.