Just realized something: Bastion’s plan went tits up because he didn’t account for Valerie Cooper showing empathy (an emotion he sees as a defect) to magneto and releasing him. He had been playing humanities worse impulses well so far (fear, hatred, intolerance, apathy) to achieve his goals, but assumed Valerie was as bigoted as he was, and because he couldn’t imagine what another person was experiencing, he was caught completely off guard when she freed magneto and his sentinels were shut down. Bastion then lost his cool and made the biggest mistake possible by turning the prime sentinels not just on mutants but on humans as well. And if there’s one thing you don’t want to do to make humans love thy neighbour, it’s give them and their neighbour a common enemy.

“Did you just try to appeal to my humanity?”
That line sums up Bastion in a nutshell.

Whoever wrote Bastion’s dialogue deserves a raise.

I adore how Bastion isn’t himself a mutant, but the turmoil he endured in childhood because of his cybernetic nature was so similar to the average mutant’s experience
that even Xavier mistook him for one.

During the time of the American Slave Trade, some Irish immigrants, despite having left Ireland in part to escape English Penal Laws, became vocal opponents of the Abolishment movement Railroad in an attempt to curry favour and establish themselves as “true” Americans.

The way Bastion demonises mutants as “inhuman” while implied to be very insecure about his own distance from humanity as a machine really feels like a metaphor for such behaviour. How loathsome it is to have lived through exploitation and come out the other side dreaming not of an end to oppression itself, but to become one of the exploiters.

"Tolerance is extinction..... But even worse, is empathy" that line is fucking cold 🥶

"A dream as crippled as its dreamer"...yoooo Bastion chill bro 😂😂😂😂

Strange was using Magic during surgery bc all power was out…don’t think people caught that

Did you just try to appeal to my humanity? ... Look at me.

Theo James is so creepy in this. He plays a good villan.

So. Many. Cameos...

Storm almost broke his conviction.

LMAO.. black panther wanted to throw hands.. 🤣

This is top-tier writing!  Theo James' vocals are unbelievable and transformative!

If empathy and pity are so weak, then why wasn't it bred out of us? Why do we have eyebrows, the main function of which is to broadcast our precious thoughts and feelings to other humans? It's a product of simple math. Because it doesn't matter if you're a human in the top 99th percentile in terms of strength, speed, and stamina. You're still going to loose a fight to three or more humans that desperately care for each other. Movies and media often make us forget that. That in the real world, people don't attack you one at a time. Tick off a whole village and now you're really in for it. Humans have always been social creatures. We kill in packs. This is how we purged the mammoth, the cave bear, smilodon, and smallpox from the face of the earth. Our brains are wired to feel guilt, loneness, pity, and pain for other people. Our brain registers social rejection the same way it registers physical pain. Convicts go crazy in solitary confinement. We anthropomorphize innominate objects and create imaginary friends when we are alone. The weapon of empathy is irrevocably woven into our DNA. And it is the greatest weapon mankind has ever possessed.

NGL...why haven't the comics ever had X-Men Villains like Bastion and the Sentinels, encounter Avengers villains like Ultron, there'd be so much to do with them if written well.

…and here you see the insanity loop in Bastion’s tragic state of being.

He’s had a voice whispering in his head since he was a boy to murder all mutants; and forced to reconcile his own mutation with the “urges”.

It’s actually a bit sad that he convinced himself that enslavement & subjugation of mutants would satisfy this subconscious hatred…almost like he compromised & talked himself down from mass murder.

The way he seemed so confident & smiling when he presented his wicked plans to all those villains…he actually believed he was doing the right thing.

Then Storm & Beast provoke him…and Bastion tells the truth: deep down, he knows that HE isn’t even human; and he resents the humans that disagree with the choices he made.

He is simply a raging boy unable to cope with his inability to fit in with anyone; held together by desperate delusions of grandeur.

Some never wanted to be mutants. Some never wanted the powers/gifts. All they wanted was to belong/be human. Magneto wanted mutants to belong with humans. Charles wanted mutants to accept their gifts. Charles was in the middle. Some mutants just wanted to be “normal.” Magneto, I personally believe, didn’t realize there were mutants that hated their own kind.

Thats a warhammer 40k line.

To be fair, bastion had a point with that humanity thing, and so did storm

I loved how they simplified Bastion origin and characterization.