Professor X - Evil Genius?

Cafe Society
1

I was watching X-Men 2 the other day, and something occured to me: Doesn’t Professor Xavier behave much more like your stereotypical comic book supervillain than Magneto does? I’m not talking about trying to conquer/destroy the world, I’m talking details.

For starters, there are his powers. Magneto is a tough customer, but his powers are basically a limited form of telekinesis that only effects metal. (Properly, it should only effect ferrous metals, but nobody ever seems to pay attention to that). Sure, he could drop a car on your head, or impale you with rebar, or wrap a girder around you so tightly you pop like a grape, but then, so could Superman, or any number of other superstrong superheros, mutant or otherwise. Plus, whatever he does to you, it’s still just physical trauma. He can kill you, but so could any thug with a Saturday night special. Professor X, on the other hand, could manipulate you to think whatever he wants. He could implant false memories, make you like him even if you’ve got legitimate reasons to hate his guts. He could reprogram you into an entirely different person, or he could just erase your brain and leave you in a vegetative coma. That’s a hell of a lot more frightening than Magneto’s powers, and is traditionally the sort of power that a villain would have.

Even worse, Professor X seems to be a gigantic megalomaniac. Every door in his secret underground lair has a gigantic X on it. He even calls his team of mutants the “X-Men.” What does Magneto call his mutants? He doesn’t call them “The M-Men,” or “Magneto’s Marauders,” he calls them “The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.” Now, sure, they’re evil, and that’s troubling, but they’re also a brotherhood. It’s not all about Magneto, it’s about like-minded mutants working together to achieve their goals. Sure, the goals usually tend to be something along the lines of eliminating all non-mutant life on the planet, but you’ve still got to respect the team ethic they’ve got going for them. And Magneto doesn’t make them act like walking billboards for his ego. He doesn’t insist they all wear a big M on their shirts or anything, unlike “Professor X,” who is so stuck on himself he’s the one mutant in the Marvel universe who doesn’t have some sort of fancy codename: just his initial, and his professional title, because God forbid anyone forgets that he’s a professor. Hank McCoy’s probably got a boatload more degrees than Professor X, but he doesn’t insist people call him Doctor McC. He just goes by “Beast.”

Which leads to my conclusion: can we really trust anything Professor X or his X-Men tell us? Sure, he seems like a hero, but maybe that’s just what he wants us to think. And considering what he can do, if he wants someone to think something, there’s not much anyone can do about it, is there? All the X-Men trust him, but can they help it? Is he manipulting their minds so that they think he’s trustworthy? Is Magneto even really evil? He and Xavier knew each other before either of them assumed their super-identities. What if Xavier programmed him from the beginning to act as an over-the-top villain, so that Professor X could foils his plans and look like a hero, and allow him to put his fiendish schemes into practice without anyone else being the wiser?

2

Damn! I think you’re on to something. Let’s also not forget he has an impregnable fortress disguised as a legitimate operation, with lots of means for quick escape - a staple for any Bond villain. And he’s got a wheelchair, just like Blofeld. And he basically threatened the President at the end of the movie - “We’ll be watching!”

I think I have to watch my DVD again with this new perspective.

3

Good catch, Dooku! Not only is he in a wheelchair, he’s bald. This guy couldn’t be any more transparently evil if he had a long-haired Persian cat.

4

Wait!
Do you mean that if an original idea is molded by dozens of writers over the course of 4 decades, the characters might end up so convoluted that one person might get the wrong idea?

5

And he’s BRITISH!!! :smiley:

6

One small correction. “X-Men” doesn’t refer to Xavier; it refers to humans with the X-Factor, or x-gene, or whatever. Anyhoo…

7

If he offers you a delicatessan in stainless steel, don’t accept it.

8

Yeah, sure, that’s what he says.

And who decided it was going to be called the X gene, anyway? Hmm?

9

There have been at least two major storylines in the comic where he was possessed by malevolent villains (The Brood back in the 80s and his evil twin sister, Cassandra Nova, more recently), and nobody could tell the difference.

10

I believe Master Mind’s taken his body over too, although I might be misremembering.

11

Well, I think one of the things that’s always been so appealing about the X-Men and mutants in general is that they aren’t stereotypical superbeings.

In dividing the mutants between good and evil, you have to look more at ideology than at superficial characteristics. If you really look at the comics universe of mutants, you’ll notice that almost every mutant’s power is destructive in one way or another. So it’s all in the character’s mindset and intentions.

Ultimately, both Professor X and Magneto have the same goal: the good of mutantkind. Their different ideologies are what separates good from evil. While Professor X works from the position that normal humans (homo sapiens) and mutants (homo superior) should be equal, and so chooses the path of education and activism within the system. Magneto, OTOH, believes that homo superior should be, well, superior. With that viewpoint, he has no problem with using violence to achieve his goals.

There is some interesting social commentary going on in the X-Men as well. The X-Men and mutants were created in the late 1960s, and I think the creators were influenced somewhat by the civil rights movement. The mutants are a racial minority that is oppressed by the majority (in the form of the “Mutant Registration Act” and general discrimination). And unfortunately, Magneto takes the same path taken by some factions within various civil rights movements - achieve equality by taking away from the majority. In other words, by bringing the majority down to the level of the minority. In that aspect, Magneto was just as much the racist as his non-mutant oppressors.

Conversely, Professor X and his faction work toward equality by trying to bring the minority up to the level of the majority. He worked to increase understanding between sapiens and superior. Where Magneto encourages his followers to embrace their hatred of humanity and take revenge for wrongs suffered, Professor X preaches forgiveness and reconciliation, along with education and self-worth.

It’s a good allegory for real life. In the long run, didn’t Martin Luther King do more good for African Americans than all of the militant black leaders of his era?

Incidentally, Magneto’s fancy helmet isn’t simply a tool of intimidation. It’s specifically designed to block Professor X’s psychic abilities so that Professor X cannot manipulate Magneto that way. Of course, the helmet is useless if he’s not wearing it… However, it goes against Professor X’s ethics to manipulate somebody against their will.

12

I’ve actually noticed this myself. Professor X is basically the mutant version of Martin Luther King, and Magneto is analogous to guys like Malcolm X and Louis Farrakan.

13

The X-Men and Magneto both debuted in 1963. Early enough to make the plight of mutants an analog for the civil rights movement, but too early to make the Prof. X/Magneto dynamic a parallel between MLK and black militants. (Marvel had the Black Panther running around for several years before the Black Panther Party became part of the national conciousness.)

Back on topic, for a guy who claims to hold to a high ethical standards when entering th minds of others, he sure seems to do it a lot.

14

Now, if only he had a goatee…

15

Marvel in general has always been the more socially conscious comic book organization and the X-Men is a good indicator of this. The parrallels between mutants and the Baby Boomer’s generation’s fight for civil rights is glaringly obvious, as is X2’s (to me) thinly veiled message of equality for homosexuals.

16

X2 spoiler…

[spoiler]It’s interesting, when you think about it, that there was some justification for the government raid on the mansion in X2…Xavier might not actually have been behind the attack on the President, but he actually is running a secret paramilitary group! It just happens that it’s not an evil paramilitary group.

Well, aside from that, they really weren’t doing anything illegal, I guess. There’s no evidence that any weapons were kept at the mansion. None of the students or faculty are fugitives. The Blackbird jet probably isn’t certified by the FAA, though. And there’s likely OSHA and building code violations for the underground facilities. And there’s the X-Ray/CAT scan machine and probably controlled medications (Morphine, etc.) in the medical bay, which might be illegal to privately own.[/spoiler]

In the animated X-Men: Evolution, the case for a borderline-supervillain Xavier is a bit clearer. Xavier trains his (somewhat small) number of students in “control and use of their powers,” much like he does in the comics, complete with the “Danger Room.” In fact, most of the training seems combat-oriented. The mutants aren’t just trained how not to accidently kill someone with their powers, they’re usually not trained to use their powers for “constructive” purposes, like civil engineering or rescue work. They’re mostly trained how to fight.

What’s the problem with that? Well, in the X-Men Evo. universe, not only aren’t Mutants known about by the general public for most of the series, but almost no other supervillains seem to exist in the world, aside from Magneto and his Brotherhood, which is about half a dozen people. Most of whom didn’t even join the Brotherhood until the series had already started. And Xavier didn’t seem to be training his students specifically to become superheroes…he didn’t even want them using their powers openly, lest the existence of mutants become public knowledge. Was he giving intensive martial training to his X-Men just to fight Magneto? :dubious:

Sure, informed viewers know, with our insight into the character, that Xavier’s probably not intending to do anything evil. But to an unbiased observer—or one of the hapless civilians of the X-Evo universe—Xavier’s whole setup looks sure awfully suspicious. What exactly was he planning to do with his X-Men?

17

Isn’t Jean Grey a physician? As such, she should be able to establish a private practice (even if it’s on the estate of a bald eccentric millionaire) with as much equipment and medication as she can purchase and safely use.

18

Well, I like the theory anyway Miller. :slight_smile:

Nicely put. I think thats why I find the X-Men films much more interesting than most comic book films, it give them quite a rich background to work from.

19

In their debut in 1963, before the civil rights movement got really going, the original X-men were billed the ultimate misunderstood Teenagers but there were also elements of Mcarthyism from the previous decade and the Enemy Within, whether real or imagined. Perhaps there also might have been hints from Jewish persection by the Nazis and beyond as the creators Stan Lee (Stanley Lieber) and Jack Kirby (Jacob Kutzman) would have been aware of. Apparently they were orignally going to be called The Mutants but Marvel Publisher Martin Goodman felt the readers wouldn’t understand the term.

20

That should be Jacob Kurtzberg. I wish this board had an edit function working!