MovieChat Forums > X: First Class (2011) Discussion > Why didn't Charles let go?

Why didn't Charles let go?


So in the last part of the movie, on the submarine..when Erik makes his way toward Shaw and decides to kill him instead with the coin while he is frozen/ held in place by Erik...obviously Charles didn't want Erik to kill, so why didn't Charles just let go of his control of Shaw?

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Probably because, as much as he didn't want Erik to kill Shaw, he knew that if he let go Shaw would probably escape and kill more people again. I think Charles knew they had to take their shot at eliminating Shaw when they has the chance.

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it makes Charles look retarded. He is smart enough to know Shaw was too evil and dangerous to be simply captured

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What good would it have done to let go of him?

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He could have just made Shaw grab the coin and force him to swallow it.

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He really believed he could convince Erik not to kill him and by the time he realized he couldn't stop him it was too late. He made the same mistakes with Erik & Raven thinking he could get them to change. Luckily with Raven he learned before it was too late

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He could have just made Shaw grab the coin and force him to swallow it.


You seriously made me laugh! That was hilarious! 

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He could have just made Shaw grab the coin and force him to swallow it.


Someone didn't see X2...

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Because the writers/plot-deciderers were idiots.

Charles gets made a fool of throughout this sad movie.

He could have allowed Shaw enough freedom of action to defend himself and perhaps stop Magneto, but the creatives wanted a tragedy that rippled throughout the franchise, no matter how flaccid the plot needed to bring it off.

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It is very silly isn't it.

It seems to be implied as Xavier's naivety/hopefulness, or fear on Xavier's part that Lehnsherr will turn to the 'dark side' once he gets a taste of murder... but he's already killed a few people. And Xavier says he can't hold Shaw for long, so what does he think is going to happen? Lehnsherr wraps him up in some metal and they put him in prison? The only possible way to end it is to kill him!

Very silly. And then Shaw's henchmen (Azazel etc) join up with Magneto, and Raven decides they are probably cool after all, why not join too? And Xavier says "Yeah, join the psychopaths, it's what you want after all" and they teleport away together without discussing a single thing, like where they're going...

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because he said he cant control him long ,and man is nuclear bomb that planed to explode.so if he let him go he will blow up all of them and part of world also .

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Because Magneto needed to be formed and turn to the bad side.

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I wondered about that for a while and always felt it a great mistake by the script writers. But one thing comes to mind to justify Charles' maintaining his freeze effect (within the constraints of what is depicted in the scene).

Shaw could have used his powers to kill Magneto and quite possibly everyone on the shore as well as those at sea. Since he stated being able to hold Shaw for only so long, he was faced with a very hard choice of which moral to go with, either to save Shaw or to save everyone.

But I'll admit that Magneto didn't require any help from Charles and could have isolated Shaw's hands much like he did to Emma Frost while in the Russian chateau. If I had control of the script, I'd have Magneto do just that. That way, Charles would have been relieved of the moral dilemma, allowing Shaw the opportunity to defend himself (even if he was too dangerous and evil to deserve such a chance).

But it was still a great symbolic way to kill the evildoer who shot and killed Erik's mother.

"They say the ----ing smog is the ----ing reason why you have such beautiful ----ing sunsets"

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Because if Charles let go of Shaw, Shaw would have killed Erik. Charles didn't want Erik to die so he thought his only option was to try and convince his friend that he didn't need to kill Shaw as it wouldn't change anything. Unfortunately, he was wrong. Seems pretty easy to understand to me...

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There are several "Why didn't they..." spots in this movie. Like, why didn't Erik stop the X-men's plane from crashing on the beach? He just showed he could lift a friggin' sub out of the water and hold it, so he has the control ability. I was watching them crash thinking, Now, if only there were a character who could, you know, control metal, he could cushion their crash...

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Maybe he cushioned it from crashing harder. Also, wasn't he in the plane during all of that - getting bounced around? If so, that would be an easy way to explain why he couldn't be in control.

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Also, wasn't he in the plane during all of that - getting bounced around? If so, that would be an easy way to explain why he couldn't be in control.


Good point. I guess you could also chalk it up to him being younger and not as in control as Ian McKellan's Magneto

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I thought it was simply he was caught off guard. He reacted fast and locked himself and Charles to the plane to protect them during the fall.

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