As the arrival of mutants in the MCU draws closer, rumors about them are gaining momentum. One of them has been floating around the internet for several years, according to which Marvel is about to choose Black actors to play Professor X and Magneto. Giancarlo Esposito, the actor from Breaking Bad, was notably expected to play the telepath, before playing Sidewinder in Captain America 4. This decision by the studios would, however, pose certain consistency problems: we explain them below.
A little background: the meeting between Erik and Charles in the comics
It's impossible to think of Marvel mutants without the famous leaders of the two factions that compose them, the X-Men and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Initially friends, they will become enemies over the years. While they both seek to protect their "race," the means they employ to achieve this, reflect their opposing visions. But first, let's take a step back in time to put them in the context of their meeting. Erik Magnus Lehnsherr and Charles Xavier met in a psychiatric hospital in Israel where Holocaust survivors were treated, and they quickly bonded. Charles, having trouble reading Erik's mind, suspected his mutation, although the two men had not yet confided in each other about it.
The future Professor X had begun a romantic relationship with a patient, Gabrielle, and the couple, accompanied by Erik, had set out to find lost gold. But Baron Von Strucker and Hydra kidnapped the young woman, and it was at this moment that the two mutants revealed their respective powers to save Gabrielle. At the end of the fight, Erik left Charles, taking all the gold, determined to finance his war against humanity and build his space station Asteroid M.
The importance of Charles and Erik's skin color for their characters explained
The opposition between Charles and Erik is closely linked to their life and experiences. So we come to what interests us in this article, namely why the choice of black actors to embody them would not be in line with their portrayal and their past in Marvel comics. According to a rumor shared by our colleagues at MCU Direct, and which echoes several rumors from recent years, the studios would like non-white actors to play the two mutants. However, their skin color is important to their story.
Take Magneto: famed screenwriter Chris Claremont portrays him as a survivor of the Holocaust, in which millions of Jews were murdered by the Nazi state during World War II. Appearing in Uncanny X-Men #1 in September 1963, he is defined from the beginning as a villain, convinced of the genetic supremacy of mutants over humans, and eager to violently eliminate anyone he deems genetically inferior. It is this paradox that makes Erik Lehnsherr so fascinating: he is both victim and executioner, Jew and Nazi, tortured and torturer. While non-white Jews certainly exist, Hitler's Jewish extermination effort took place in a very white Eastern Europe of the 1940s, and explaining a Black actor in this context would be very complicated.
Take Professor X: it's a little more subtle regarding Charles Xavier, but his skin color is just as important as it is for Magneto. Indeed, the telepath is one of the richest characters in the Marvel Universe, with an estimated fortune of $3.5 billion. His privileges as a white man and his high position in society have contributed to forging his views on the mutant cause and the way the rest of the world views him. Given that, in addition to these advantages, his power is undetectable, he has never suffered persecution from humans for being "different." If his opinions are so respected throughout the world, it's because he is a white, heterosexual, wealthy man who has studied at the most prestigious universities. Although society has evolved since the X-Men's inception in the comics, racism remains a current issue, and casting a Black actor as Charles Xavier would distort this privileged aspect of the character.
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