Let me first say that I don't read the comics and I don't know if this has been discussed here or in any other discussio
-
Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Marvel/DC
Lakemystery3 — 10 years ago(May 20, 2015 01:25 PM)
Let me first say that I don't read the comics and I don't know if this has been discussed here or in any other discussion board-
What's the harm in having the mutants' powers be registered? A lot of these powers have the ability to kill people. These mutants and/or their powers can be used as weapons. This country requires people to register their guns, even when there is no evidence that these people will use their guns to commit crimes or kill people. Cars can be used as weapons and we require all cars be registered to their owners, even when there is no reason to believe that we would use our cars to commit crimes. As I understand it, and again I don't read the comics, but the mutants want to be accepted into society like everybody else, right? Well, everybody else is required to register their weapons according to the laws. If the mutants want to live in our society like everybody else, why shouldn't they be required to register their powers? Do they want to be part of society? Or do they want special treatment?
Any thoughts?
"Guess who's got a date with a prostitute!" - Richard Castle
-
samhmd-7489 — 10 years ago(May 24, 2015 08:44 AM)
This is one of the bigger issues with X-Men. A lot of the human "villains" aren't really wrong in this stuff, because a lot of them aren't motivated by hatred but rather a desire to protect normal defenseless humans.
Kelly came off as a bit of a slimeball, but his intentions and overall point weren't incorrect. Stryker's genocidal actions were totally wrong, but creating a proper defense against Mutants and acting against illegal vigilante mutant activities is what his job is.
However these points are never pointed out in the movies, they all act like the mutants are totally innocent and humans always wrong. -
Xaeden — 10 years ago(May 24, 2015 07:38 PM)
People like Jean have two main problems with it.
The first is that in trying to safeguard regular humans it is not fairly balancing the safety of the mutant population. If you have a gun and you register it, you're generally not opening yourself up to scorn nor are you compromising your safety. Following Sandy Hook there was controversy over a newspaper that published a map showing where permit gun owners lived. However, that is an extreme outcome of the gun control debates. Although heated at times, gun owners in general have not faced actual persecution or targeted violence from a wide swath of the population.
In contrast, someone registering their powers is the same as announcing that they're a mutant to a mutant hating public. Even if the government were to claim that the information would be private and not available through the Freedom of Information Act, you know some anti-mutant person would leak or hack the information (which would be insanely easy since the only way it would work is if law enforcement had access to the data). So the opposition isn't saying; "You know what? I don't want to be part of society; I'm special, I'm not going to do this. Nananana." What they're saying is; "I DO want to be part of society. What I don't want is to be ostracized or killed because of this thing I was born with. I am part of a hated minority group and therefore need special
protection
."
The majority of mutants are not born with cool, destructive powers. Say your mutation is that you can breathe underwater, which basically gives you capabilities in line with someone who bought scuba gear. It's not useless, but it's not particularly dangerous either. Maybe you're a psycho who wants to use it to covertly drown beach goers, but more likely you just want to live your life in peace. Would you think it was reasonable that you had to out yourself or face legal consequences?
Keep in mind what exactly outing one's self entails. Do you think your neighbors care that your power is generally harmless? Fear of the "Other" is not based on rational thought. Real world minority groups have, throughout history, been accused of monstrous acts. It could be something simple; a child goes missing the mutant did it (see Blood Libel). A natural disaster happens; the mutant is responsible. How? "Secondary mutation or in league with mutants who we do know have the power to do that. Let's torture him until he admits who he's working with or let's kill him to send a message to the others." The idea of minorities as subversives occurs time and time again in the lead up to real world persecutions.
On the other end of the spectrum, you have the real world fear that the mutant would reproduce and who knows what power his/her offspring will have. Cue the aforementioned violence and various forms of discrimination. Social pressure could lead to you having difficulty finding a job, your family kicking you out/breaking off contact with you, and former friends not wanting to be around you. Ironically, the isolation created by this type of environment would make you more likely to seek out other mutants for companionship, which would bolster the idea of mutants as subversives. When a mistrusted minority group meets in "secret," they're accused of planning and performing inhuman acts (e.g. the Romans believed Christians engaged in cannibalism and other things during Mass).
So you have a lot to lose and if you are attacked, you don't have the powers necessary to defend yourself like some others. However, having such powers doesn't automatically make your life much better. Such a person would still have to face discrimination, they're probably not trained so who knows how well they'd do if they were actually attacked on the street, and they have to sleep sometime. Even if you had Kitty's power, you'd still be in fear that someone could set your house on fire in your sleep or creep into your bedroom with a gun/knife or go after your loved ones for being "mutant lovers." Meanwhile, imagine if an unregistered mutant robbed a bank using phasing powers in your area. Who do you think they'd look to? Do you trust that you'd receive a fair trial and wouldn't just be convicted because you didn't have an alibi that was considered credible? To be fair, it would be hard to lock you up with that particular power, (although not impossible - Kitty does have problems phasing through certain things) but the point is that someone who has a power matching that of a bad guy could have their life turned upside down based on nothing other than that one connection.
The second problem is that it is rife for abuse. You might think that the politicians promoting this type of thing are just hapless bumpkins that are engaging in what they consider to be "common sense" responses and are as ignorant to the history of persecution as the voters they are trying to appeal to. That would be true in a lot of cases, but there are also likely to be those who would be aware that it is a -
Emiabambinacara — 10 years ago(May 26, 2015 01:04 AM)
It simply a slippery slope to repeat atrocities of human history, such as the Jewish Holocaust. It started with registration as well, which is why Magneto's past is so significant. They even take care to show the audience his registration tatoo.
-
tngrecuts — 10 years ago(August 04, 2015 10:33 AM)
the UN should have simply allocated a territory for a mutant state and allowed any mutant who feels oppressed to move there.
this way they can give the mutants a choice of either registering or leaving the country and go live in the mutant state -
Xaeden — 10 years ago(August 05, 2015 04:01 AM)
We've been down that road in real life. It's not a good thing and anyone suggesting otherwise is either ill informed or is trying to present their vile actions as "compassionate" by saying that they're giving the "Other" a choice.
- What kind of territory do you think they're going to get? Much of the world's nicest land is already lived on. Are they going to kick people off of good land to make room for mutants? No, they're going to give them wastelands.
- I'm sure the mutants would love that. They can either leave their families, uproot their lives, and live in exile with people they do not know, or let the government know they are mutants so they can be scapegoated and abused at a later date.
- What is the point of resisting registration? It's fear of opening one's self up to persecution. Do you think that fear goes away under the relocation option? No, it gets worse. "Hey, here's an idea. Let's let the governments of the world move us into a central location. What could go wrong? It's not like we'd be easy targets that could bombed if a small number of us launches terrorist attacks from within this territory. And even if that does happen, I'm sure it will be limited bombings that only semi-frequently kill children and other innocent civilians. It's not like anyone would ever try to commit mass genocide by trying to kill us all."
-
tngrecuts — 10 years ago(August 05, 2015 05:51 AM)
mutants can be very dangerous and some of them would surely use their powers for crime.
what is your suggestion to deal with such a situation?
regular cops can't deal with mutant criminals.
do you think a mutant police force should be formed to deal with mutant criminals? -
Xaeden — 10 years ago(August 05, 2015 10:15 AM)
do you think a mutant police force should be formed to deal with mutant criminals?
Yes, they absolutely need mutants to police their own. That's one half of the purpose of the X-men and the government needs to get behind that in a big way because a privately funded team can only sufficiently handle a fraction of mutant problems. It wouldn't necessarily be an easy thing to accomplish. There would be a lot of push back from hard liners, but it would greatly improve relations on both sides if they put their discrimination aside in order to publicly embrace and positively promote mutants who work for them to serve the greater good.
It would not put an end to every problem ever. There would continue to be those who would not want peace because they see one side as superior to the other and thus, upon seeing this start to happen, will engage in attacks against the other group in order to stir up outrage against their own group so they can, in turn, stir up outrage against those outraged at them. It's why peace is so difficult to obtain between groups like these in the real world. Nevertheless, if they can stay the course those sorts of attacks will die down over time, particularly if the mutants working for the government deal with them in a timely fashion and are treated as heroes for doing so.
Meanwhile, situations like a Magneto coming along and galvanizing a discriminated population of powerful people against the mutant hating public would largely go away over time. So there would be a dying down of conflict and for regular mutant crimes, that will never go away, but because there would mutants to find and stop the individuals responsible, damage resulting from their actions would be diminished. If they can show that mutant crime is manageable and being dealt with in a real way it will become normalized and less fear inducing, leading to less anti-mutant sentiment because of it.
The worst thing that can be done in cases like these is to separate one group from the other. It just leads to more suspicion and conflict. The problem is that one group sees another group living in society as an "Other." Complete separation exacerbates that perception and it makes one group feel marginalized. A marginalized group is more prone to lash out and when that happens the discriminatory group will retaliate with extreme prejudice. Cue more violence from the marginalized group and an even more violent response from the discriminatory group. It's a really nasty cycle that people get into time and time again throughout history. Full integration and cooperation is really the only solution but, again, it's hard to accomplish when you have a lot of hate mongers in influential positions.
By the way, there is some indication that the writers may be going in that direction in the movie universe. It's from a deleted scene, but after the attack in Washington the president justifies canceling the sentinel program by saying he thinks that what they need is "some of these people on our side." Here the clip:
Again, it's a deleted scene so it's not canon and thus they're under no obligation to follow up on it. However, it shows that the idea was there and so we'll have to wait and see if they try to go in that direction. If they do, it probably won't be to the degree that I suggested, but I could see them secretly working with the X-men and/or creating X-force. -
TalnReich — 10 years ago(August 25, 2015 10:17 AM)
I agree on the part that registrating x-men-style mutants would actually be reasonable. I even thought a bit about it, how this registration would look in practice, and wrote it down (for the, then still existing thread "what would be your stance towards mutants, but forgot to post this reply. I will post this reply now here (so there are going to be some carryovers from the old thread):
First, I have to say, that the Metaphor presented in this movie is, in my eyes, extremely faulty. They want to compare the mutants here to real-life minorities, but this ignores one really important point: real-life minorities don't have superpowers. Sure, there are these mutants that doesn't have any impressive/dangerous powers, I call them random green-scaled kid (short: RGSK), and if these more or less powerless mutants would have been the focus, these mutants as minorities-analogy would have been fitting, and the mutant registration act clearly would have been wrong. But they aren't the focus. Instead, the X-Men movies focus on mutants, that have powers equal or superior to weapons no one should have access to without being registrated. And registration of mutants that have powers with great destructive potential would be not just not-wrong, but actually common sense. Superior power requires superior control.
Therefore, if I would live in the Universe of the X-Men-Movies, I would probably support the general Idea of a mutant registration act, but I would have my own Ideas. For once, there should be a division between mutants with rather harmless powers from these with potentially dangerous ones. For this reason, let me first explain my mutant destructive potential class (Short: MDPC):
0: there is no conceivable scenario, in which the mutation gives the mutant a greater destructive potential than a unmutated, untrained, unequipped standard human, but at least one realistic scenario, in which the mutation actually lowers the destructive potential. (like, say, a mutant whose only 'power' is, that he/she has super-sensitive pain receptors)
1: there is no conceivable scenario, in which the mutation gives the mutant a greater destructive potential than a unmutated, untrained, unequipped standard human. (the 'normal' RGSK, meaning a mutant, whose mutations are useless in any attempt to break the law and/or harm people, like say someone whose only mutation is blue hair)
2: the mutation has destructive potential, but not any greater than what can be achieved by a reasonable trained (e.g. < 7 hours/week), unmutated, unequipped standard human.(for example very limited forms of super-strength, where 'super-strength' means, that the mutant can lift, without any training, about as much as some normal human, who hits the gym for an hour every day)
3: the mutation has destructive potential, but not any greater than what can be achieved by a highly trained (e.g. < 40 hours/week), unmutated, unequipped standard human. (for example limited forms of super-strength, where 'super-strength' means, that the mutant can lift, without any training, about as much as a professional strongman, who isn't a mutant)
4: the mutation has destructive potential, but not any greater than what can be achieved by a unmutated standard human utilizing equipment, that can be, without any need for a license, legally obtained. (For example a mutant, whose most destructive power are claws, that are about as long and sharp as ordinary kitchen knives)
5: the mutation has a destructive potential, that is roughly in line with low-level equipment, that can't be legally obtained without a license. (for example a mutant, whose mutant-ability gives him/her roughly as much destructive potential as an ordinary human with a handgun)
6: the mutation has a destructive potential, that is roughly in line with medium-level single-person weaponry. (for example a mutant, whose mutant-ability gives him/her roughly as much destructive potential as an ordinary human with an assault-rifle)
7: the mutation has a destructive potential, that is roughly in line with high-level single-person weaponry. (for example a mutant, whose mutant-ability gives him/her roughly as much destructive potential as an ordinary human with a grenade-launcher)
8: the mutation gives the mutant the ability, to destroy a single building within short time (e.g. about 15 minutes). (for example a mutant with Cyclops-level eye-beams)
9: the mutation gives the mutant the ability, to destroy a city quarter within short time (e.g. about 15 minutes). (for example a mutant with movie-Phoenix-level telekinesis)
10: the mutation gives the mutant the ability, to destroy a city within short time (e.g. about 15 minutes).
11: the mutation gives the mutant the ability, to destroy a county/a small-sized country within short time (e.g. about 15 minutes).
12: the mutation gives the mutant the ability, to destroy a state/medium-sized country within short time (e.g. about 15 minutes).
13: the mutation gives the mutant the ability, to