Wherever Professor X and the X-Men are, it’s sure that Magneto and his Brotherhood will never be far behind. Professor X and Magneto are two sides of the same coin, and they are always in conflict— as well as best friends. There’s a reason, though, that they constantly fight with one another. Magneto makes decisions that Professor X doesn’t agree with— and vice-versa— nearly constantly.
It’s not often that Magneto actually succeeds, but this is because he repeats the same mistakes over and over again. When they work together, the two of them make it a lot further. Unfortunately, they both are stubborn— and Magneto even more than Professor X. Following the movie canon, viewers think he’ll never learn from his mistakes.
10 Crosses Professor X Constantly
Right out of the gate in the first X-Men movie, Magneto proves that he is incapable of staying on Professor X’s side for very long. Despite the fact that they’re both elderly men, and it’s assumed by the audience that the two of them have been at odds for a very long time, Magneto attempts to cross Professor X once again.
He steals members of the X-Men team from Professor X, he disrupts the school, and he hurts Professor X himself. The X-Men, of course, ultimately avenge Professor X while he’s in a coma, and Magneto is stopped— as he always is by the team.
9 Always Steals From The X-Men
Magneto tries to just pilfer teammates as often as he can. As if it wasn’t enough for him to steal X-Men in the first movie, he does it all over again in the second movie, X2: X-Men United. Even when he’s supposedly teaming up with the X-Men in this movie, he has to keep reminding them of his ideals and how they differ from Professor X’s ideals.
He ends up turning against the team yet again and abandoning them using Stryker’s helicopter, and he takes one of the teammates with him: Pyro, lured by Magneto’s honeyed words. This puts Professor X on him yet again, with the inevitable outcome.
8 Recreates His Brotherhood
Like Professor X has his X-Men, Magneto has his Brotherhood. They are his own team of mutants that are determined to ensure mutant supremacy, no matter the cost or the road to get there. In X-Men: The Last Stand, Magneto feels that he’s forced to establish his Brotherhood once again.
He has dismantled it, as he didn’t feel it was successful and he himself often ends up in plastic prisons after his interactions with the X-Men, but the introduction of a supposed (and suspicious) “cure” pushes Magneto to do something. He revives the Brotherhood, recruiting his whole team including members like Mystique. Are they beaten? Yes, yes they are.
7 Crosses Mystique
Mystique is often on Magneto’s side, and the movie X-Men: First Class proves that that has been true from the very beginning. In The Last Stand, she defends him, and loses her powers in the process. After he turns his back on her, she gets captured by the FBI and ends up giving up Magneto’s location.
Audiences see in X-Men: Days of Future Past that this is not the first or the last time Magneto has betrayed Mystique. Back in the 1970s, Magneto tries to kill Mystique, but she ends up instead exposing them as mutants. Later in the movie, she fights against Magneto as he tries to kill the president, Richard Nixon. She’s the reason that Magneto ultimately fails, getting seriously injured in the process.
6 Tries To Help The Dark Phoenix
It’s hard for Professor X and Magneto to stop helping Jean Grey, even if they don’t realize that they are no longer actually helping her, or anyone else. She is a powerful mutant, but nobody is capable of containing her power, least of all Magneto.
In X-Men: The Last Stand, it’s shown that Magneto and Professor X have tried to help Jean Grey time and again, and it hasn’t always worked in their favor. Despite this, Magneto tries to help Professor X confront her once again— and this results in Professor X eventually dying. Because he was unwilling to stop trying to help the Dark Phoenix along, he must again experience their devastation.
5 Fights The X-Men
Magneto is always going to fight against the X-Men, because he always fundamentally disagrees with them. The X-Men fight for mutant integration, and Magneto fights for mutant supremacy. Even when the humans turn on the mutants in The Last Stand and start hitting mutants with cure darts, Magneto isn’t willing to side with the X-Men all the way.
The X-Men not only have to fight against humans, but their own fellow mutants in this movie, because Magneto and the Dark Phoenix are also fighting in this battle. Because Magneto got involved, he ends up losing his own powers, the one thing he fears most of all.
4 Allows His Anger To Control Him
When the X-Men movie franchise flashes back to Magneto’s past, it becomes clear that he has always been dictated by his emotions. His primary emotion, over all the years, is anger. He is enraged by the life experiences he has had, and the way he has been treated by the world. Professor X tries to teach Magneto about the balance between rage and serenity, as he calls it, but Magneto struggles to do this.
Even in X-Men: First Class, Magneto proves he has always allowed his anger to control him. Despite Professor X’s advice, he kills Sebastian Shaw; he almost kills a lot of humans, too, but he ends up accidentally shooting Professor X in the spine. Time and again, his anger ruins his plans.
3 Doesn’t Work With Professor X
Even though Magento apparently learns the lesson to work with Professor X and the X-Men frequently, he still returns to working on his own or with the Brotherhood just as often. In Days of Future Past, Magneto abandons all of his teammates in an attempt to assassinate Nixon. He loses this battle when Raven turns on him to stop him, but still— later in this timeline— he chooses not to work with Professor X, even though it would be much easier to do so.
X-Men: Apocalypse shows the character En Sabah Nur enticing Magneto to his side, and Magneto ends up being one of the Four Horsemen that destroys the X-Mansion. Ultimately, Professor X has to stop him and turn him back to his side, as will always be their way— because Magneto never learns.
2 Not Being There For His Children
In both the Fox X-Men franchise and the MCU, Magneto isn’t really there for his children. For the MCU, this is an unfortunate result of a mess of copyrights and jumping ahead in the story. The Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver are supposed to be Magneto’s children, but he isn’t present in the MCU, so they just...aren’t.
In the Fox movies, he’s Quicksilver’s father, but he isn’t there to parent him. The two of them have a somewhat dysfunctional dynamic— which is more than anyone gets in the MCU, tragically for them.
1 Refuses To Stop Fighting
No matter what, Magneto refuses to stop fighting. This is a mistake that he and Professor X make in every single X-Men movie. Every time there’s an incident involving mutants, he has to get involved. Even when he tries to get out, he gets dragged back in, and so he can’t even really be faulted for this mistake.
He is Magneto, and so he will always make this mistake, because to him, it isn’t a mistake: It is the only choice he can see to make.