When Rooting for the Badguys Was Fun

We can all see the ramifications when people don't take badguys seriously enough.

And I'm not here to talk about anti-heroes like Travis Bickle, Stringer Bell, or Tony Soprano.

Upon a viewing of Marvel's "Black Panther" film, I realized that for the first time in a while, the badguy, Michael B. Jordan's (AKA Wallace from the Pit) Killmonger not only had the morally righteous position, but also convinced the hero, Chadwick Boseman's King T'Challa, of the position. (Let's move past the fact that the love interest had been saying the same thing for the entire movie...that seems a fitting statement on gender relations.)

I always felt that Killmonger had been right: that Wakanda had been doing a disservice to the rest of the world by its isolationism. Maybe I agreed with his position that Wakanda should have been arming militant minorities in urban areas, but that's the demarcation between "winning the moral argument" and "going too far" in today's society. 

Well, in a pre-pandemic, pre-George Floyd society. 

And then I remember a long conversation I had with an old friend about the X-Men. I was, and still am, firmly on Team Magneto. The attempted genocide and all I was unaware of when I professed myself Team Magneto, but the point remains: Magneto's position that mutants will not be able to coexist with normals without some kind of conflict is the position that history would bare.

Charles Xavier's stance that peaceful coexistence between the two species, Homo sapiens and Homo superior, seems like it would be possible in a world that is an idealized version of our own, and NOT the one we actually live in.

To paraphrase Tupac's mom, Assata Shakur, an actual Black Panther: oppressed people do not gain rights by appealing to the good nature of their oppressors. Conflict in that system is bot necessary and inevitable.

I always felt that given the circumstances---if I had been a young mutant---I would have gravitated towards Magneto.

So...Team Magneto, Team Killmonger...

THEN I realized that both "Black Panther" and the first "X-Men" movie started with essentially scenes of their antagonist origins, their badguy origins. Black Panther opens with Killmonger's dad getting killed by his brother the King, in Oakland in the '90s (with Too $hort playing in the background). X-Men opens with child Erik Lensherr in Auschwitz, learning about his magnetic powers.

**

Talking about the Marvel movies for a second: It turns out that Captain America may be my favorite of the heroes. Corrie joked that both she and my brother Dan are Captain America, because of his moral rigidity, and that may be why I'm drawn to him.

Also, just to connect the topics: having just seen Age of Ultron for the first time and being introduced to the Twins: Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, I was proud of myself for knowing that they were from X-Men comics before Avengers comics (back when nobody gave a shit about the Avengers).

But I was shocked to learn that Magneto is their father.

Crossover maybe?

Also, just because, the Top Five Marvel Superhero Movies:

1. Thor: Ragnarok
2. Black Panther
3. Ant-Man and the Wasp
4. Iron Man
5. Avengers: Infinity War