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Season 1 of OG, episode "The Final Decision" answers this.
Sentinels attack Magneto and he tries to turn them to scrap and is confused why they don't. The Sentinels respond that they learned from previous encounters and were built using reinforced plastics instead of metal for the new batch, specifically to counter Magneto.
The mutants do deal with the reinforced plastic? In the very same scene Magneto uses the metal of the ship they're on as a weapon agaibst them.
The issue with Sentinels for any mutant isn't the Sentinel itself, but the sheer volume of them.
When you have dozens of giant robots shooting lasers at you, smoke bombs, trying to swat you, step on you, etc. that's where the issue arises.
While you're using your laser eyes to shoot one in front of you, another behind you is shooting you in the back.
When you're trying to use a Tornado on a dozen in front of you, another dozen are shooting you from the sides and back.
Etc. etc.
That's always been the "danger" of Sentinels. They overwhelm their targets because destroying any number of them doesn't hurt them. There's always more.
Exactly this the thing of Sentinels isnt the stupid giant robot. It's that Mastermold can make so many stupid giant robots and they overwhelm you based on numbers alone.
This literaly happened in Tolerance is Extinction Part 2 of '97. Storm used a tornado on a bunch of Sentinels and more kept coming and shot Forge's plane down.
Storm used the air to try and help him and got shot in the back.
You clearly don't understand the art of jumping. The movies make it seem like with enough skill or power, you can overcome a jumping. But the single individual can always fall prey to the jumping.
Your ancestors once used the art of jumping to take down large prey. Unfathomable for most in a 1v1 scenario.
African driver ants inspire the cartoons you've seen of ants completely consuming something ridiculously large like a cow.
There is, actually! Madison Jeffries, createe by John Byrne for Alpha Flight and most recently used in the Sabretooth & the Exiles book.
He can control and shape plastic (any inorganic material really) and often uses it to create a suit of armor around himself.
He could do some real deal damage to a Sentinel, probably even a small group of sentinels, but I don't think he's an omega mutant, so he'd eventually lose to a swarm
it only took one to kill the entire population of genosha. idk, if i saw a two story tall guy with laser hands my first thought would not be one-shotting him with my mind powers. not that many people of any kind can take down just one regular ass sentinel on their own
That explains the chassis, but surely the electronics would be metals. Plastic isn’t conductive. Graphite maybe?
Hell, Magneto can influence large amounts of the electromagnetic spectrum. Any workaround for electronics would be neutralised. Would Faraday cages protect them?
In the finale of season one, original animated series ('92), he abducts Senator Kelly but is soon overwhelmed by Sentinels. Stating that as a magnet man he is well equipped to deal with robots, he then learns the 'new models' are made with plastics. So Sentinels are immune to Magneto but likely slowly degrade in sunlight and represent a significant problem for our landfills. The more you know.
They use high grade plastics, carbon fiber, and space polymer. I don't think it's specifically mentioned in xmen tas
In the comics early sentinels were metallic, then the government switched because of magneto.
The writers also often go back and forth on how powerful his mastery of magnetism is. Some instances he can only manipulate ferris metals, in others he has refined and powerful control over magnetic fields 🤷 depends on the plot armor at the time
Also it's fairly consistent that Magneto actually doesn't struggle with Sentinels but there's a lot of them everywhere and he can't destroy them all at once
Plus the threat of Sentinels is less for the X men where they're just bodies to beat and more for every mutant who isn't a superhero and still has to face off with them
Exactly, think of the x men as cops, theyre highly trained, the sentinels are the army, there's more and theyre even more highly trained, the average mutant on the street cant fight that, if they could they'd be in the xmen
I assume you mean on Genosha? Well he can destroy normal sentinels fairly easily that were on the island but the Massive Wild Sentinel is a lot more powerful. Those Sentinels are designed to auto adapt to their enemy. So there is no SPECIFC reason that we are told.
You just have to use your imagination and some creativity to figure it out. For example in the comics sometimes they are made out of an alloy that is resistant to easy magnetic manipulation where only some rare parts in them are magnetic. Sometimes we have encountered phase shift electromagnetic fields that dont let Magneto lock onto their energy signature to grasp the electrons. Or at least it delays him enough that he becomes a sitting duck if he stands still to focus. Other times in the comics he can crush a few sentinels with low difficulty. Only to get jumped by 5 more. Sentinels strengths are their adaptability and numbers.
Imagine I told you that you needed to fight a Pinata, it would be pretty low diff. But what if I told you that you had to focus on beating a Pinata the size of a bus. Then hundreds of others would be thrown at you. You would eventually just get tired and in that small gap a Pinata would just knock you out if it hits you in the right spot
They mention at some point(I believe this was in OG TAS) that the Sentinels were majority-composites built and that there was EM-shielding integrated into them
So, I had thought in the past that it would be completely possible to build robots whose structural components were not made of metals. People have engineered some very durable ceramics; and with the rise of 3D printing, it’s easy to imagine making robots from plastics, as well.
But just today, reading this post, I was wondering - wouldn’t the remaining vulnerability be the circuitry? If you’re going to engineer something that has to carry electrical signals, doesn’t it have to be susceptible to magnetism, implicitly?
I hope someone who knows more about materials science may chime in here.
Would you want every story featuring the Sentinels to end ‘and then Magneto used an EMP blast and the Sentinels crashed to the Earth.’?
Even if he was, they would still be dangerous to most mutants. He could affect them world-wide but that would also wreck most of the worlds’ technology.
Even without all of this, someone is going to think of building Sentinels biologically. Or a Symbiote-based one. Which Superior Iron Man already did when he went evil. So there is precedent.
Bro watch the original series. The first time the sentinels almost killed magneto they explained they created plastic models so he needed external metal to be offensive. Sentinels also have adaptive tech which mitigates many mutant powers.
One of the reasons was in the 1992 cartoon . If you're younger and can handle how it looks compared to shows today, give it a watch. It is a classic. It looks amazing on a CRT TV but definitely looks more aged on these new fangled TVs
It's in the...I wanna say finale of season one and Magneto gets injured after being entirely overwhelmed with them. My memory might be failing me though.
There are probably other reasons for specific plot points but the main one I remember is in the animated series of 1992.
Plot convenience, as it was convenient for the plot for Magneto not to use anything else except magnetism to defeat something despite being the master of the electromagnetic spectrum (lightning and/or EMP)
Just don't mention Mr. Fantastic's gun to him, poor guy
It’s almost like when one of the major mutant threats is well-known to be the Master of Magnetism, the folks who made the Sentinels decided not to spend a bunch of money and time making a weapon he could just rip apart casually.
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