Villain Profile: The Sentinels

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” I have to imagine that Bolivar Trask couldn’t agree more. That’ll happen when the machines you envisioned as being the safeguard of humanity goes completely bonkers and instead tries to take over. But more on that in a second. Just to be clear, I’m going to talk about the Sentinels in general. There are more specific characters that are tied to the Sentinels, like the Master Mold, Nimrod, and Bastion, that I’ll talk about in their own posts. Let’s get to it.

MUTANT PRESENCE DETECTED. And that justifies
smashing someones roof in.

The Sentinels were originally created by Dr. Bolivar Trask. Trask, despite being an otherwise brilliant individual, had a deep seeded fear/hatred of “Mutant Threat” that was growing. Believing that Mutants would one day rise up and take over the world, he designed and built the Sentinels. The main sentinel was the Master Mold, whom was tasked with building and commanding the Sentinel force. Trask unveiled his creations during a television debate he was having with Charles Xavier. When activated, they promptly decided that the best way to protect humanity was to rule over them. They started blowing stuff up, and then kidnapped Trask and Xavier and brought them to the Master Mold. It apparently wanted an audience for its monologuing about why it was still following its programing. Basically, it had the same reasoning as VIKI from that awful I, Robot movie, “We must protect you from yourselves,” and all that nonsense. The X-Men were able to track them down, and did battle with the machines. Trask was moved by the selflessness of these Mutants, and finally realized that not all Mutants were bad. To make up for his mistakes, he helped them sabotage the Machinery in the Sentinel base, destroying the original Master Mold, the Sentinels, and himself.

But, while the original machines were destroyed, the bigoted legacy of Trask continued with his son, Larry. Larry Trask was a Mutant, but didn’t realize it. His father did and, wanting to protect his son (hypocrite), gave his son a special medallion that blocked the Sentinel’s Mutant-Sensing equipment. Larry, like his father before him, hated Mutants, and built the second generation of Sentinels. The Machines followed Trasks orders, until he took off the medallion and was blown away by his creations. The Mark II Sentinels were destroyed because they were really, really stupid. Cyclops convinced the machines that the only real way to complete their primary directive was to destroy the sun. Why? Because the radiation from the sun is what causes DNA to mutate in the firsts place. So the Mark II’s all flew into the sun to try and destroy it. Dumb robots.

They'd look silly if they weren't two stories tall.

The next version of Sentinels was created by Steven Lang, no relation to Scott Lang. He also built an orbital base for them. Steven worked largely in secret, his job was actually to research Mutants and Mutations to weaponized them, and tried to destroy Mutant kind. Steven was also working with incomplete research notes, and was not an expert on Robotics, so his machines were very much inferior to the Mark I and II versions. His plans and his Sentinels were largely destroyed in a battle with the X-Men. But, a few of his models wound up on the black market.

The Sentinel Project was eventually turned into Project Wideawake. This agency was led by Mutant hater Henry Gyrich. They purchased Sentinels from the villainous Hellfire Club, and started developing their own Mark IV Sentinels. Because they actually had some top minds working on them this time, these Sentinels were superior to the previous models. These are perhaps the most common form of Sentinel, as they’ve fought several generations of X-Men, X-Men spin-off teams, and other heroes. Interestingly, the Sentinels have often been used by Magneto as his own private attack force. The Master of Magnetism has used his powers to reprogram the machines and make them do the exact polar opposite of what they were originally designed to do. Which is, protect Mutants and attack humans. That’s got to be a little trippy for everyone involved.

The Sentinels come in a variety of shapes, sizes and with a variety of weapons. For the most part, they come in the form of giant purple and blue humanoid robots. They are outfitted with various guns, rockets, flamethrowers, sonic weapons, flashbangs, robotic tentacles, and laser beam eyes, to name a few. They can fly thanks to the rockets built into their legs. They have built in tracking devices designed to detect Mutants. Sometimes they have a database of Mutants to search through, other times they just can scan people from a distance and detect their X-Genes. Not sure how that works, to be perfectly honest.

The Sentinels have appeared in several Marvel series. They range from simple but effective mutant hunters, to the bringers of a “Terminator” style post-apocalyptic future.

 The appeared in several episodes of X-Men: The Animated Series. In the opening episode, they have begun hunting Mutants. Specifically, Mutant’s that have registered themselves with the government. Way to make people feel safe, fictional US Government. They’re stopped by the X-Men, whom are able to destroy the Mutant Register Database. The Sentinel Program in the US is cancelled after this particular debacle, but Trask refuses to give up. He and partner Henry Gyrich move the project to the small island nation of Genosha. There they build the Master Mold, and keep Mutants as a slave labor force. The Sentinels and Master Mold are defeated after a captured Storm floods their complex. In the Season One finale, the Sentinels are sent in to “save” Senator Robert Kelly from Magneto. The Master Mold then reveals that it had made plans of his own. Master Mold decided that they need to protect humans from themselves, and are going to kidnap world leaders, replace their brains with machinery, and control the world through their puppets. The Master Mold and his minions are destroyed by the X-Men.

I just don't get the giant turbine in their torso. Would rocket
boots be have been so hard to include?

X-Men: Evolution introduced the Sentinels in the season 2 finale. Bolivar Trask is a disgruntled former SHIELD operative that designed the robots to destroy the Mutant menace. He and his group of follower’s kidnap Wolverine to test out his Sentinel prototype. The machine ends up going on a rampage, and the fight with the X-Men, the Brotherhood, and Magneto and his Acolytes ends up on TV. The prototype is destroyed, and Trask is arrested. They return in the series finale. SHIELD Director Nick Fury releases Trask and has him whip up a batch of new Sentinels to help in the fight against Apocalypse. The Machines are ripped apart like they’re made of tissue paper. But at least they tried.

The Sentinels have a cameo in a Danger Room simulation with the X-Men in X-Men: The Last Stand. They are one of the antagonists of X-Men: Days of Future Past. In the far future, Sentinels have taken over the world. Wolverine is mentally sent back in time to stop the creation of the highly destructive and adaptable Sentinels of the future. I’m just going to say it, didn’t care for either design of the Sentinels. The Past Sentinels look nothing like the source material, other than being purple, and the Future Sentinels look like a rip off of the Destroyer from Thor. See my Mystique profile as to why I didn’t care for the adaptive Future Sentinels. Short version, they don’t make sense.

The Sentinels are your pretty standard evil robots. They’re big, loud, destructive, and above all, simple. They have a simple goal, capture or kill all Mutants. It doesn’t get much simpler than that. They’ve been the minions of more than one would be tyrant, and I hope to see a better version of them in a movie at some point. They’re the mechanized bringers of destruction, the Sentinels. Next time, the one Mutant Charles Xavier wished he could save, David Heller aka Legion.

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