X-men: A Solid Trilogy

Today's post will be a spoiler-filled detailed exploration of three films. You have been warned.

X-men
Wayward Children of the Atom
In the year 2000, Bryan Singer transformed one of my favorite comic book series into a reality. From the opening scene of Magneto's childhood in a concentration camp, I knew this would be a serious treatment of persecuted characters struggling to exist in a world that hates and fears them. Rather than jump to a school for mutants or depict teams of super-powered characters battling, the film proceeded to focus on the journey of Rogue, played by Anna Paquin, a mutant unable to touch another living being without draining its lifeforce. After putting her boyfriend in a coma with a kiss, she runs away from home and meets up with another wayward mutant, Hugh Jackman's Wolverine. After witnessing him pop his claws to defend himself in a bar fight, she opts to tag along with him on the road. He discovers her stowing away in the back of his trailer and after kicking her out, reluctantly concedes and takes her with him.

Meanwhile, we're introduced to Charles Xavier, played by Patrick Stewart to the delight of many fans, and the adult Magneto, played masterfully by Sir Ian McKellan. Both powerful mutants and friends, they share the same complex relationship in the film as they have in the comics. Once working together, they quickly adopted opposing views on how to handle society's treatment of mutants. Magneto sees normal humans as an enemy to be fought, an inferior race that would persecute them, ironically the same rationale by which Nazis once killed his parents. Xavier on the other hand seeks to teach and train mutants, and seek a way for humans and mutants to live in harmony. When Magneto's henchman Sabretooth attacks Wolverine and Rogue, they are saved by Xavier's allies and former students Cyclops(James Marsden) and Storm(Halle Berry) and taken back to Xavier's mansion. Wolverine awakens in the medical bay being tended to by Famke Janssen's Jean Grey, and escapes, only to be summoned psychically by Xavier who introduces him to everyone and explains their purpose.

As Rogue begins to take some classes and meets future love interest Iceman, portrayed by Shawn Ashmore, Xavier tries to figure out why Magneto was after Wolverine. Eventually, when Rogue tries to run away again, she is captured by Magneto's brotherhood and it is revealed that she was the target all along. Magneto plans to transfer his powers to her temporarily and use her to charge a device capable of transforming normal humans into mutants. Wolverine dons an X-men uniform, and joins Cyclops, Storm and Jean in the rescue effort, nearly dying to save his young friend. In the aftermath, Rogue opts to remain at Xavier's school while Wolverine steals Cyclops' motorcycle, for the second time in the film, and pursues a possible lead into his mysterious past discovered by Xavier.

The first X-men movie did an excellent job introducing these characters and making them real and sympathetic. It set up the various relationships, from the complex friendship between Xavier and Magneto to the love triangle between Cyclops, Jean and Wolverine. The film offered many cameos of other characters from the vast comic book cast, and plenty of in-jokes for fans. Other than Halle Berry's wooden portrayal of Storm and a corny line about what happens when Toad gets struck by lightning, the film had few flaws.

5 out of 6 claws


X-men 2: X-men United
The Dam Breaks
In the 2003 sequel, we catch up with Wolverine at Alkali Lake, where he finds the abandoned facility in which the unbreakable metal Adamantium was first bonded to his bones. Finding little else, he returns to the mansion. Rogue and Iceman are now dating, though unable to make physical contact because of her powers. Scott and Jean are still together, and Jean is struggling with her powers which have been increasing ever since the climactic battle in the first film. The entire world is on edge after a failed attack on the president by the mutant Nightcrawler(Alan Cumming), and Brian Cox's Colonel Stryker has discovered the existence of Xavier's school and gotten permission to send in an attack force.

Not all is as it seems. After surviving Wolverine's claws in the first chapter of the trilogy, the shapeshifting Mystique, portrayed by the lovely Rebecca Romijn, has disguised herself in the White House as a deceased senator. Stryker, his son a mutant, has a personal agenda to eliminate them, and has derived a method of controlling them. Using this technique, he was behind Nightcrawler's attack, to gain official permission to pursue the mutants. He has also been visiting the captive Magneto, and using him to discover all of Xavier's secrets. When Xavier and Cyclops visit Magneto in his plastic cell, they are both taken by Stryker.

With their leaders captured, and Storm and Jean on a mission to track down Nightcrawler, the remaining students are vulnerable to Stryker's invading soldiers. Wolverine does what he can to protect them, and while Colossus helps many of his fellow students escape, several are captured. Stryker knows Wolverine, and was part of the Weapon X project that gave him his metal bones and claws. Iceman separates the two, so that Wolverine can escape with him, Rogue, and Pyro. Mystique helps Magneto escape as Wolverine and the other young mutants are confronted by the police outside Iceman's parents house. Pyro unleashes his fiery fury, claiming that among mutants he's the “worst one”, and Rogue uses her powers to drain him and put out the flames. Storm, Jean and Nightcrawler arrive to pick them up in the X-men's jet, and when they are shot down by the military, they are saved by Magneto. Friends and foes unite to face Stryker at Alkali Lake, where he has a hidden underground base that Wolverine was unaware of on his earlier visit. There, Stryker has built a version of Xavier's Cerebro computer, and used his son to brainwash Xavier into sending waves of mental energy through it capable of killing every mutant on Earth at once. Magneto arrives and manipulates Stryker's son so that Xavier will target humans instead. Jean faces a brainwashed Cyclops, and her growing telekinesis is more than a match for his optic blasts. With Nightcrawler's help, Storm saves Xavier. Meanwhile, Pyro abandons his former allies to leave with Magneto and Mystique and join their brotherhood. As the X-men flee the base, the dam breaks and Jean sacrifices herself to hold back the raging water and allow her friends in the jet to escape safely. At the White House, Xavier and the rest of the X-men confront the president, and the beginnings of tenuous mutant-human peaceful relations are established.

The second film exceeded the original. With the characters already introduced, the story could focus more on their personalities and relationships, even as they continued to struggle to find a place in the world. Iceman's family rejects him when they learn his secret and his mom asks him if he's “tried not being a mutant”. His own brother calls the police. Stryker is willing to use his own son to kill every mutant on the planet. Never has Magneto seemed more justified in his view of the humans, but Xavier remains true to his dream that they can be better than those who would destroy them, and eventually live in peace. The film ends on a note of hope for the future, even as comic fans speculate how the next installment will deal with Jean's inevitable resurrection.

6 out of 6 claws


X-men 3: The Last Stand
A Game of Chess
Every good trilogy must of course have a beginning, a middle, and an end. When Singer decided to direct Superman Returns, the studio opted to find a new director for this saga's denouement, and fans feared Brett Ratner would not be up to the task. While the third film would have been better with Singer at the helm, I'm happy to report that this installment is a fine conclusion to the saga.(For bad sequels to comic book movies with different directors, please see ”Schumacher”.)

The film opens with a much younger Xavier and Magneto visiting the Grey home to recruit a young Jean. As they speak with her she displays her telekinetic powers by lifting all the cars on the block, the water from Stan Lee's garden hose, and Chris Claremont's lawnmower. We also see a young Angel furiously trying to cut the wings from his back and hide the fact that he's a mutant from his father. When we catch up to our heroes in the present, we find that Wolverine is now training the younger X-men alongside Storm in the Danger Room and Cyclops is still mourning Jean's death. Xavier continues to lecture his younger students, at one point asking them whether or not it would be ethical to place a mind inside a brain-dead living body under the care of Dr. Moira MacTaggert, a question that goes unanswered. Meanwhile, by studying the mutant Leech, Angel's father has gone on to develop a drug that can permanently suppress mutant abilities. The government has captured Mystique, and we learn Beast holds a prominent position in the White House. Kelsey Grammer does an excellent job in the role and sounds exactly the way I always imagined the character sounding, even incorporating his trademark catchphrase, “Oh my stars and garters!”

Haunted by memories, or something more, Cyclops is drawn back to Alkali Lake where Jean emerges, apparently having saved herself by remaining dormant in a telekinetic cocoon. In a classic scene taken directly from the comics, she holds back Cyclops' uncontrollable optic blast, allowing him to take off his protective ruby quartz lenses for the first time. As they kiss, something goes horribly wrong. Xavier senses this, and sends Storm and Wolverine to investigate. They find a thick fog, and various objects floating, including rocks and Cyclops' glasses. They also discover Jean and take her back to the mansion where Xavier reveals how powerful she always was, and how in her childhood he helped erect psychic barriers to help her control her powers. Unfortunately, closing off these abilities to her subconscious created a fracture, a second personality known as the Phoenix. While the explanation in the comics for the Phoenix was far more cosmic, this one works within the confines of the trilogy. When Jean finally awakens with Wolverine by her side, it nicely parallels their meeting in the first film, although some awkward dialogue is inserted for slow viewers with short memories. I hate when things are unnecessarily over-explained. Jean kisses Wolverine who is caught up in the moment, but eventually gets control to ask her what happened to Cyclops. Tearful, the real Jean briefly emerges to beg him to kill her before she kills someone else. The Phoenix reasserts itself and knocks Wolverine out, and Jean departs, tearing the door off its hinges with her mind.

Magneto meanwhile is recruiting an army to oppose the mutant cure. He recruits Callisto and several Morlocks, and attempts to free Mystique. He succeeds, and in the same transport finds Juggernaut and Multiple Man. One of the guards awakens and fires at Magneto, but Mystique takes the shot, a dart loaded with the cure, and regresses to human. Magneto acknowledges that she saved him before abandoning her. The existence of the cure in a gun confirms Magneto's fear that humanity would weaponize the drug, and serves to motivate other mutants to his cause.

Jean has returned to her childhood home, and Xavier tracks her down. Unfortunately, Callisto can also sense powerful mutants(an ability of her fellow Morlock Caliban in the comics), and has led Magneto there as well. Charles and Magneto go in together while Wolverine and Storm wait outside and Magneto's brotherhood guard the front entrance. Xavier tries to reason with Jean while Magneto encourages her to not let him hold her back any longer. She shoves Magneto aside and lifts Xavier from his wheelchair, even as Wolverine and Storm break through the mutants outside to get to them. As Jean lifts the entire house, a desperate Wolverine claws his way along the ceiling, in time to see Jean completely disintegrate the professor. The house drops and she leaves with Magneto, and in the aftermath Storm comforts Wolverine as he collapses sobbing before Xavier's empty chair.

Rogue, jealous of a growing friendship between Iceman and Kitty Pryde, decides to seek out the cure at a clinic. When stopped by Wolverine on her way out, he tells her that she should do it if and only if she's doing it for herself, and not some boy. Iceman finds out she's left, but fails to find her. Instead he runs into Pyro, and refuses to be goaded into a fight in the crowded street. As he walks away, Pyro destroys the clinic and vanishes in the confusion.

The movie reaches its climax as Magneto rallies his troops, steals the Golden Gate Bridge, and uses it to move his forces to Alcatraz island where Leech is imprisoned and the cure is being manufactured. For the first time, we see how powerful a mutant Magneto really is. At the end of the first film, when he was imprisoned, he played a game of chess with Xavier. Here, he uses the same strategy, sending in his lesser troops as pawns first, to take the brunt of the human's mutant suppressing darts. Juggernaut, unstoppable when moving in a straight line, could be considered his rook while Pyro is his knight and Callisto a bishop. Jean, the most powerful, would of course be the queen. A team of X-men comprised of Wolverine, Storm, Beast, Kitty, Iceman, and Colossus arrive to make the titular last stand and hold the line in the trilogy's largest mutant battle. A confrontation between Kitty and Juggernaut leads to him uttering a line made famous in an internet video parody, proving the writers surf too. Iceman confronts Pyro who engulfs him in flames, until he finally emerges in his ice form from the comics for the first time. Wolverine works out a strategy whereby he distracts Magneto by attacking him head-on, as the Beast bounds in from behind to jab him with four cure-darts. Human and defeated, Magneto collapses in despair even as Jean rises. Any hope of reasoning with her dissolves once the humans fire on her. She telekinetically repels their assault with ease, even as she begins raising the water and dissolving Morlocks left and right. Wolverine sends his friends to safety as he confronts her. With every step toward her, she flays away his skin revealing his metal skeleton underneath, but he constantly heals until they're face to face and he can kill her for her own sake.

In the aftermath, Storm and Wolverine keep the school open, continuing the professor's dream and honoring their lost comrades. Beast is now a liaison for the United Nations. Rogue returns to the mansion without her powers, and takes Iceman's hand into hers for the first time. As for Magneto, he's a sad old man sitting alone in the park at a chess table, with no one to play with. Ian McKellan does a masterful job making this villain sympathetic, even showing remorse earlier when Jean kills Xavier. At one point when Pyro regrets not getting the chance to kill the professor himself, Magneto snaps at him about how much Xavier has done for mutants. They may have had opposing views, but he truly considered him a friend. In that final scene, without saying a word, he captures the complexity of the character. As he reaches for a chess piece it moves, ever so slightly, hinting that the loss of his powers may not be permanent, or that they've been greatly diminished.

I think I enjoyed the movie more as a former reader of the comics, and it may be less accessible to non-comic book fans than the previous two installments. The appearances of characters like Beast, Angel, Callisto, Juggernaut, Multiple Man, Arclight, and Psylocketake on more significance for those familiar with their history in the original medium. The trailers for the film also spoiled quite a bit for me going in. I had seen Cyclops' glasses floating, Xavier rising from his chair, everyone at a funeral except for Cyclops, Jean and the Xavier, Mystique lying on the ground in human form, and Storm hugging Wolverine before the empty wheelchair. With those nuggets of information, it was easy to speculate what would happen, and I went in cautiously optimistic, and hoping I was wrong. Cyclops barely had any screen time in the second movie, yet the love between he and Jean has been a central theme in the comics since the ‘60s. i didn't want his character to die, especially so soon, but in the context of the movie saw how that was a point of no return for Jean, a catalyst after which her dark path was assured. His death did occur off screen though, and while the revelation that she can take people apart with her mind could explain the lack of a body, one unconfirmed internet rumor of a deleted scene has a comatose Cyclops waking up and unleashing his optic blast. Likely, this rumor was spawned by the real last scene of the movie, which occurs at the very end of the credits. Moira walks in to check on her comatose patient, who says hello to her in Patrick Stewart's familiar voice. “...Charles?” she asks, stunned, as the screen finally fades to black. I felt his death was necessary for the other characters to step up and take charge, as with his coma in the first movie, but it was a nice kernel of hope nonetheless.

I'd be quite satisfied if there wasn't a fourth one. The story's come full circle. Rogue, desperate to touch people, finally can. Magneto, in his zeal to destroy humanity has become a human himself. Wolverine, a loner constantly on the run, always “passing through”, seems to finally consider the mansion his home. Cyclops and Jean, sadly, did not get a happy ending, but they got an ending. Annoying as Halle Berry was in the role, especially in this movie, Storm is finally the leader she is in the comics. Though never in a scene together all at the same time, Cyclops, Jean, Iceman, Beast and Angel, the original X-men from the comics, finally appear in the same movie. This film was good, but not quite as good as the second one, and future installments could only go downhill. The three films seen together as a whole make for a solid trilogy, and a great cinematic adaptation of 43 years of comic book history.

5.5 out of 6 claws