Which Magneto do you prefer?

Sir Ian McKellen played a perfect mix of debonair maniac and tortured flawed anti-hero. His dark cape and sinister passion as Magneto was perfection. The Brotherhood had no better leader than the super mutant who owned his powers and loved with a cold black heart. Magneto was the rage against the machine of humanity whose ideology was forged in Nazi concentration camps. Sir Ian McKellen is a thespian giant whose embodiment of Magneto had no rival. When Michael Fassbender took on the younger version of the pre-Magneto known as Erik Lenscherr, he was told not to study McKellen. Fassbender delivered a 007 style of a young Magneto who was both lethally sexy and lacked the invulnerability of McKellen’s villain.

The McKellen Magneto and the Fassbender Magneto are incomparable. McKellen’s version was a character that was fully formed in his politics and persona. The older Magneto was in his full mutant metal bending power. He was pure psychopath and had a heart of steel that no longer felt his humanity. Fassbender’s Lenscherr was an angry young man whose rage got the best of his abilities. Lenscherr still had his sense of being human rather than the master species bent on destruction. Fans saw a glimpse of the emerging Magneto at the end of X-Men: First Class but it begged for more.

McKellen fans see Magneto only as the older and established mutant leader raging against everything and everyone. The Magneto who caused the Golden Gate Bridge to perish is a mutant whose powers are in his prime. Magneto is fully who he was meant to be as a tragic villain. Fassbender fans see the Erik Lenscherr that is at the mercy of his tormented emotions. Erik is a man whose mission is simply to exact revenge on Shaw and not humanity. Erik has unharnessed abilities that he cannot yet summon at will. It’s easier to feel tender empathy for Lenscherr in his youth instead of a respectful terror at Magneto the elder mutant Statesman.