X Marks the Spot

by Justin Winslett (8/31/07)

I recently watched Marvel's X-Men Trilogy in one sitting. It had been a long time since I had seen the first film, and I was quite surprised at how well the three of them integrated together. I think what hit me the most is just how spot on their message remains despite all the changes and idiosyncrasies of each particular film. They remain true to the vision of creating a realistic world where there actually are some people who have mutant powers and the issues and choices faced by everyone in such an environment. The X-Men films do things that no other comic book based film series does by involving people in a complicated, grey world where good and evil are not necessarily cut and dry.

The first X-Men film had to handle these problems head on while simultaneously having to deal with released to a hostile fanboy environment. In fact, the first thing I realised while watching the first one again was just how tricky it is to take such a long and complex comic franchise and transform it into a film. On the one hand, you would like to allow certain fans of the franchise to continue to identify with what they are seeing and not feel that they are seeing some sort of perversion, but the film would need to be able to reach out to a much wider audience and can’t feel as if it is just something that could be only understood from reading the comic books. At the time, superhero films had been completely denigrated by the debacle that was Batman and Robin. Further, “indie” films were what was selling and a return of the action blockbuster seemed like a remote possibility. All this contributed to make X-Men very experimental. While watching it again, I noticed how although the overall emphasis was to envision a world like ours where mutants really did exist and were feared and hated did come through, it also maintained many quirky and camp elements stemming from many normal comic book and action film tropes - Magneto has an evil base on an island in the middle of nowhere, his plot involves a giant machine and will have global effects and they battle at the Statue of Liberty. I also noticed a strong contention between the heavy character development and the desire to focus solely on the most marketable character-Wolverine. After seeing it, I noticed just how trepidatious they must have been while developing this film, and how they just didn’t know what the audience wanted to see and would make of it.

Now the obvious tour de force of the trilogy is the second one. It had much surer footing, a larger budget and a clear direction of what it wanted to do. It also involved more character development and a better group dynamic. X-Men 2 also saw the adaptation of a story from the comics - God Loves, Man Kills - rather than the original story of the first. By choosing this story to adapt, X-2 does something that no other comic book films have done so far: blur the lines of good and evil. Rather than having a slug-fest between the light-side superheroes and the dark-side super villains, X-2 turns the villain away from being Magneto and introduces Stryker as a threat to mutants in the name of protecting humans. By putting these characters into a grey-world wherein Magneto and Xavier are not necessarily at odds, alliances change due to circumstances and the ramifications of actions are more complicated than simply beating the baddy and getting the girl- a conventional trope that the audience is teased with through the film (Wolvie, Stryker and Jean), X-2 creates a very realistic, complicated world filled with weird beings that can defy the laws of physics.

X-Men: The Last Stand had perhaps the easiest go of the films as it had the least to prove. It also saw the departure of Bryan Singer as director and the coming in of Brett Ratner; this saw on screen a downplay of the very character driven emotive scenes found in the first two films and the development of large scale action scenes. Despite this, the third film still fits well in with the previous films and what it lost in dialogue and character it made up for with very hard-hitting action. Indeed, it is the dialogue made up of numerous cheesy one-liners trying to inform the audience how to feel and random inspirational speeches that are the biggest distraction. Oddly though, the film is slightly cleverer than even it gets credit for, many of those one-liners are unnecessary to give meaning to scenes already emotional. Furthermore, X-Men 3 saw a well driven integration of more nods to the comic franchise than either of the first two which favoured name dropping of the countless characters in the comics.

So, what to make of all of these together- Well they gel quite nicely, to be glib. Despite the change in director, many of the lines in the first films are still alluded to in the third: Magneto comments on humans never learning and always relying on their guns and Storm repeats the issue of taking sides. The development of characters actually makes a lot of sense. The handling of Cyclops and Storm was criticised, but Cyclops break down in seeing his fiancé killed after being manipulated is to be expected. Further, this parallels the rise of Storm as a strong character and leader after being relatively background in the first two, which also parallels the comics quite nicely. And the overall messages of the films, choice, acceptance and unity, are all consistent throughout. And I think that was what I wanted to mention most was that I was just overall impressed with how they managed to maintain this consistency, and I actually found myself more…drawn into the world and feeling more influenced by certain scenes as I could actually feel these characters grow and change. Jean’s sacrifice, Xavier’s death, Magneto’s liberation. Whereas certainly with the last film changes could have been made to hold it up to the same level as the second, it was still on target with the message and one still was moved and impressed by the direction they decided to take it. The X-Men films managed to create a more in-depth world than other superhero films, one where simply being mutant or human or superhero or super villain didn’t necessarily slot you into an easily understood box and where making a decision is not a simple use of your powers to eliminate the baddy.