A 164-page voyage through the entire x-men universe!

the complete guide to

Behind the scenes ON

days of
preview!
Apocalypse
Next?
The Lowdown
On the next
X-MOvie
future past
pa ck ed wi th in te rv ie ws !
Jackman   Lawrence   Fassbender   McAvoy   and more

X clu siv es! X cit ing !

X tra spe cia l!
4 legendary x-men 15 Greatest 10 X-Men comics
writers interviewed X­-Men Ever You Must Read

PLUS! from x-men to first class: every movie x-posed!

Time for the X-Factor
X-Men: Days Of Future Past hits UK cinemas on Thursday 22 May.
Here’s everything you need to know about the X-Men movies and
comics so you’re ready for the biggest superhero movie ever…

3
 CONTENTS
20 Mutant Map Of The World
X-Men was the first superteam with a
truly international cast, but where did all
those mutants come from?
30 X-Men By Numbers
Digital mutant madness.
49 Apocalypse Next
A look forward to what we can
expect from the next X-Men film.
54 Top 15 X-men
The A-Team of X-Men.
60 GIANT-SIZED X-men REVIEW
A minute-by-minute guide to the
first X-movie.
68 X-MEN’s greatest Enemies
Fee–Fi-Foe-Fun!
70 Giant-sized X-Men 2 review
A blow-by-blow look back at the
first sequel.
78 Top 10 X-men Romances
Hugs and Xs.
80 Giant-sized X-Men: The Last
Stand review
A scene-by-scene breakdown of the film
that retold “The Dark Phoenix Saga”
using lots of wind machines.
4 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION
49
70
88 Top 10 Goofiest powers
The guy who can dissolve into ice
cream hasn’t made it into the films
yet (he’ll have to wait until Joel
Schumacher directs an X-movie).
90 Giant-Sized X-Men Origins:
Wolverine Review
A snikt-by-snikt analysis of the
early-years-of-Logan prequel.
98 TV Impersonators
TV shows that aren’t called X-Men, but
may as well be.
100 Giant-sized X-Men:
First Class review
A continuity-error-by-continuity-error
account of the best detail-averse
prequel ever made.
108 Greatest X-Movie Quotes
Nope. No toads here.
110 Giant-sized The
Wolverine review
We’ve run out of dash-by-dash options.
It’s lots of words about the most recent
X-film, okay?
118 Every X-Team Ever
A complete guide to all the superteams
in the comics’ X-verse, both good
and bad.
54
100
128 Children Of The Atom
So, why did X-Men become a
phenomenon? It’s all in the way they
were created differently, of course.
134 Chris Claremont on
redefining the X-Men
The writer who turned the X-Men from
fan faves into comic book legends
reveals the thinking behind the way
he reinvented them.
140 The Early years
After Stan Lee created the X-Men
a whole bunch of other writers
introduced new ideas and characters
who have stood the test of time.
150 Phoenix must Die
The fascinating real-life story that
shaped a classic X-Men issue.
154 Phoenix must Die Again…
And Again… And Again
But she didn’t stay dead long.
158 10 essential X-Men Stories
Our guide to the X-Men storylines you
must read before you die. Unless you’re
Phoenix, in which case there’s always
time later.
162 X-Men Family Tree
More a monkey puzzle than a willow.
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions

10
22
The Making of Days of Future Past
8 12 things you need to know
about Days Of Future Past
The essential facts about the latest
time-troubling X-Men movie.
10 Behind The Scenes
The cast and crew reveal what went
into the making of the new film.
16 Interview:
Director Bryan Singer
He’s calling the shots on an X-Men film
for the first time since X2, but he’s lost
none of his fervour for the franchise.
22 Interview:
Hugh JackmaN – Wolverine
On being the bridge between X-Men
past and future.
26 Interview:
jennifer Lawrence – mystique
She’s not blue about being blue.
www.sfx.co.uk
42
46
56
34 Interview:
James McAvoy – Professor X
The younger Xavier drops in. Literally.
38 interview:
michael Fassbender – Magneto
And it’s young Magneto he drops in on.
42 Interview:
Nicholas Hoult – beast
He’s not blue about being… hang on…
46 Interview:
Peter Dinklage – Bolivar Trask
The Game Of Thrones star has a
mutant moustache-growing power.
50 Interview:
Chris Claremont – Comic Writer
On writing the original.
56 Quicksilver Cloning
How come he can franchise-hop?
the complete guide to
From the makers of magazine
Future Publishing Ltd
30 Monmouth Street, Bath, BA1 2BW
Email: sfx@futurenet.co.uk Web: www.sfx.co.uk
Twitter: @SFXmagazine
Editorial
Editor: Dave Golder dave.golder@futurenet.com
Art Editor: Nicky Gotobed nicky.gotobed@gmail.com
Additional design: Kate McDonnell
Production Editor: Andrea Ball
SFX Editor-In-Chief: Dave Bradley
david.bradley@futurenet.com
SFX Art Editor: Jonathan Coates
jonathan.coates@futurenet.com
Cover Image
© Gavin Bond/August
editorial contributors
Matt Bielby, Jordan Farley, Joseph McCabe,
Jayne Nelson, Joe Stone, Alasdair Stuart
SFX would like to thank: Andrea Ball and Nicky
Gotobed (who are already credited elsewhere but
really went above and beyond for this special… Hang
on, we said that in the last Special Edition, little
knowing that would be peanuts compared to the
deadline on this one)
Advertising
Advertising Manager: Adrian Hill
01225 442244, ahill@futurenet.com
Sales Director: Nick Weatherall,
nick.weatherall@futurenet.com
Digital Ad Manager: Andrew Church,
andrew.church@futurenet.com
Marketing and SUBSCRIPTIONS
Group Marketing Manager: Sam Wight
020 7042 4061, sam.wight@futurenet.com
Senior Marketing Executive:
Tilly Michell tilly.michell@futurenet.com
Marketing Executive: Antonella Matia
antonella.matia@futurenet.com
Direct Marketing: Adam Jones,
adam.jones@futurenet.com
CIRCULATION and LICENSING
Trade Marketing Manager: Jonathan Beeson,
jonathan.beeson@futurenet.com
International Export Account Manager:
Michael Peacock
+44(0)1225 732316, michael.peacock@futurenet.com
Trade Marketing Director: Rachael Cock
+44(0)1225 822830, rachael.cock@futurenet.com
International Licensing Director: Tim Hudson
+44(0)1225 442244, tim.hudson@futurenet.com
Print and Production
Production Co-ordinator: Keely Miller
keely.miller@futurenet.com
Paper Controller: Lorraine Rees
lorraine.rees@futurenet.com
the senior partners
Creative Director: Bob Abbott
Editorial Director: Jim Douglas
Deputy MD, Film & Games: Clair Porteous
Subscriptions
Phone our UK hotline on: 0870 837 4722
Subscribe online at:
www.myfavouritemagazines.co.uk/film/sfx-special-
editions-magazine-subscription/
Magazine printed in the UK by
William Gibbons on behalf of Future
Distributed in the UK by
Seymour Distribution Ltd, 2 East Poultry Avenue,
London EC1A 9PT Tel: 020 7429 4000
Overseas distribution by Future Publishing Ltd, Bath
Tel: +44 (0)1225 442244
Chief executive Zillah Byng-Maddick
Non-executive chairman Peter Allen
Group financial controller Matthew Burton
Tel +44 (0)20 7042 4000 (London)
Tel +44 (0)1225 442 244 (Bath)
© Future Publishing Limited 2014. All rights reserved. No part of this magazine may be used or reproduced
without the written permission of the publisher. Future Publishing Limited (company number 2008885) is
registered in England and Wales. The registered office of Future Publishing Limited is at Beauford Court,
30 Monmouth Street, Bath, BA1 2BW. All information contained in this magazine is for information only and is,
as far as we are aware, correct at the time of going to press. Future cannot accept any responsibility for errors
or inaccuracies in such information. Readers are advised to contact manufacturers and retailers directly with
regard to the price of products/services referred to in this magazine. If you submit unsolicited material to us,
you automatically grant Future a licence to publish your submission in whole or in part in all editions of the
magazine, including licensed editions worldwide and in any physical or digital format throughout the world.
Any material you submit is sent at your risk and, although every care is taken, neither Future nor its
employees, agents or subcontractors shall be liable for loss or damage.
www.sfx.co.uk
We are committed to only using magazine paper which is derived from
well-managed, certified forestry and chlorine-free manufacture. Future
Publishing and its paper suppliers have been independently certified in
accordance with the rules of the FSC (Forest Stewardship Council).
 X- Me n:
Days Of
Fu tu re Pa st
is re le as ed
in th e UK on
Th ur sd ay
22 May
 days of future past

Top Secret Files

Accessing…
X-men: Days
Of Future Past
Essential Guide
Get ready for the most mutant-packed movie
experience ever with more than 30 pages of
Days of Future Past cast and crew interviews…
12
things you NEED
to know about
X-Men: Days
From ill-tempered new mutants to Dyson-styled giant robots, the new X-Men
of Future Past
film is overloaded with mutant thrills… By Matt Bielby

1
Bryan Singer is back
Though initially announced as a project for Matthew Vaughn, the director
who’d relaunched the X-franchise with 2011’s prequel/reboot X-Men: First
Class, the Brit soon stepped down, to be replaced by Bryan Singer, the guy
who’d established the big screen X-Men in the first place – and who is widely
credited with establishing the modern viability of movie superheroes.
4 …But now it’s
Wolverine’s tale
With the film version making use of both
established casts – the near future gang
from the first three movies, and the ’70s
crew a few years on from X-Men: First
Class – in their respective time periods,
the gap is more like 50 years, and there’s

2
only one character who looks similar in
It’s a small copmuictation both eras. Plus, of course, Hugh Jackman’s

witidheredaonbe ig rel-time great comic book storylines, Wolverine is the series’ biggest star – so
guess who now makes the time travel leap?

5
Cons of e al
th er, “Days Of
rt
canny X-Men two-pa
the original 1980 Un Out Of Time”, is a tiny thing – just
Future Past”/“Mind 43 pages of story all told – but its e
ly
It sounds
two issues long, on immense. It’s here, for instance, that th
influence has be ic Magneto first raised its head, not to el.
en confusing!
idea of a sympathetise’s ongoing obsession with time trav Potentially! For on e
mention the franch least X-movie producer Lauren Shuler stalwarts like Magnething,
and Professor X will to, Mystique

6
Powerful folk – not calling it their all-time fave for years.
Donner – have been twice, played at diffeall appear
by different actors.  rent ages

3 It used to be
Kitty Pryde’s story…
The original tale was built around Kitty Pryde, X-Men trainee
of only two issues standing, and out-of-nowhere darling
of 1980s comic fandom. It began with her adult persona
IT’s a total pile-up
of superheroes
Days Of Future Past makes even the
from a horrific future – 2013, where giant Nazi-esque robots Avengers flick look light on the spandex.
called Sentinels have killed or imprisoned every mutant – Joining more old favourites – like Rogue,
projected back into her innocent “13 going on 14” 1980 body, Iceman, Beast, Colossus and Toad – is
there to direct the X-Men in a last-ditch attempt to change a Blackbird-ful of new-to-the-movies
the course of history, and stop a Sentinel-dominated characters, including Quicksilver, Havok,
America from ever happening. Back then, the gap between Warpath, Bishop, Sunspot and Blink. 
the “present” and dystopia was only 33 years. 

8 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions

 12 things you need
DOFP:to12know…
things

8
This is Hugh Jackman’s Seventh movie
appearance as Logan/the Wolverine

7
Yep, the Aussie actor has appeared in all of Fox’s X-Men movies. He even
had a cameo in First Class. That’s the benefit of playing a character who
Plus, Lady Gaga doesn’t age. Patrick Stewart isn’t far behind. He’s played Charles Xavier in
as Dazzler! all but X-Men: First Class (though you may have missed him if you didn’t
stay for the end credits of The Wolverine).
Un fortunately not – this leaked bit

9
of casting was soon revealed to
be
Bryan Singer’s April Fool’s gag. 
Bishops…”istheaX-Mma turewith
n withbecoamefuobse
en comics have ssed
Since “Day theme – and
time travel, with visitors from the future a constant
appearing in
one of the most enduring has been Bishop. He’s gh he wasn’t
Days Of Future Past (played by Omar Sy), and thou ing the way
in the original comic, his inclusion seems to be pav op played a
for the eighth X-movie, X-Men: Apocalypse, as Bish k storyline.
major role in the “Age Of Apocalypse” comic boo

10 No scene will go un-stolen

Has any comic book movie ever heaved under the
of quite so many award-troubling actors: by our weight
Days OF Future Past has seven Oscar nominees, sixcount
Globe nominees, and assorted Bafta winners. Our Golden
so-dark-horse tip for the guy who might steal all not-
thunder, though? Peter Dinklage – Tyrion from Gam their
Of Thrones – who plays Sentinel creator Bolivar Tras e
nothing character from the comics already mad k, a
e
more interesting by Dinklage’s physicality alone… 50 times

11
Quicksilver’s speed could be
the standout special effect
Lots of superpowers mean lots of special effects, but the
one we’re most looking forward to is – in theory – one of
the simplest: Quicksilver’s super speed. Far from DC’s well-
adjusted police scientist super speeder Barry Allen, Pietro
Maximoff has always been a spiky, temper tantrum type – a
hare in a world of tortoises, constantly infuriated by everyone
else’s dawdling. If Singer can make us feel his pain, he’s onto

12
a winner.

The movie Sentinels look

like they were made by
an evil Apple Inc.
We’re talking circa 1998, and the original
candy-coloured, semi transparent egg-shaped
ones. Some have – unfairly! – compared them to
purple Dyson vacuum cleaners too…  

www.sfx.co.uk X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 9


The
making of
the biggest
X-Men film
Back To The
yet!
Future Past
Bryan Singer returns to the X-Men franchise, and blends the original cast with the First Class
crew for an audacious, time-travelling adventure. We went on set to talk to Singer and his team
T
he first thing you should know – but might
not immediately notice, as it’s a subtle
element deployed for fun by production
designer John Myhre, is that the sets for
Days Of Future Past, like its predecessors,
are littered with hidden X shapes. They’re especially
present all over the X-mansion, here decorated for its
’70s incarnation, a little unloved yet still recognisable.
It’s Myhre’s first time back on the franchise since 2000’s
X-Men, and while there’s a sense of reunion amongst
him and his colleagues, there’s also an appreciation of
the new challenges.
For not only does Days Of
“singer was really Future Past represent the first
time that the “classic” X-Men
focused on making actors, including Hugh Jackman,
Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen,
the time travel Halle Berry, Ellen Page and more,
have shared the marquee with the
element as logical First Class characters introduced
in 2011, but the return of Bryan
and scientifically Singer to the franchise he helped
launch. He’s back behind the
sound as possible” camera for the adaptation of one
of the best-loved X-Men stories,
which sees our heroes fighting
for survival in a dark future where they’re slowly being
wiped out by the hulking, robotic Sentinels. In a desperate
final gambit, the mutants look to time travel to prevent this
dire timeline coming to pass. And, thanks to his healing
abilities, Wolverine is chosen to make the journey.
It was scriptwriter Simon Kinberg’s idea to use Chris
Claremont, John Byrne and Terry Austin’s “Days Of Future
Past” storyline from Uncanny X-Men, which allows the
Back To The Future Past
filmmakers to draw on their shared love of time travel
films. Once Kinberg and Singer seized on the “Future Past”
plot as a jumping-off point, the possibilities were endless.
“Bryan and I spent months revising the script,” Kinberg
recalls. “He had mostly notes about character, and he was
really focused on making the time travel element as logical
and scientifically sound as possible.”
It’s a common science fiction idea, though, and Kinberg
knew what he’d look towards.
“The first Back To The Future and the first two
Terminator films were what I studied and studied. And
actually I had this crazy experience. I was on a panel
speaking with James Cameron and I’d a brought a book
called The Making Of Terminator 2 for Cameron to sign.
I’d never met him before and I was in awe of him and I
was, like, ‘Will you please sign this? Terminator 2 is one of
my top five movies of all time. We’re doing Days Of Future
Past and there are some people who think it influenced
Terminator and Terminator, at least for me, influenced this
movie…’ He just wrote, ‘Don’t fuck it up. Love, Jim.’”
It was also important, according to Kinberg, to continue
the First Class story without needing a direct connection.
“We didn’t want it to start a month, or even a year, after
the last movie. We wanted to give it a big breadth of time
so that you’re meeting these characters, in some ways, for
the first time, so we set the movie 10 years after First Class
ended. Part of my responsibility as a writer was creating
a timeline so that we could give the actors a sense of who
they’ve become, and how they’ve got there, over the 10
years that we haven’t seen.”
twice the fun
Singer’s biggest logistical issue was organising two big
casts, all with busy schedules. He and his team pulled it
X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 11
 Berry was pregnant
during filming.
off by scheduling two separate shooting sessions, initially
with the original cast and then with the First Class actors,
with Jackman as the connective tissue. The director
enjoyed the challenge.
“It takes me back to The Usual Suspects, more than
any other film ever has, in the sense that I shot an
interrogation scene in the first five days with Kevin
Spacey, Dan Hedaya, Chazz Palminteri and Giancarlo
Esposito, and then Kevin stayed on and we did the Stephen
Baldwin, Pete Postlethwaite, Gabriel Byrne movie. This
is very similar: in the beginning we shot the scenes in the
future with the original cast – it’s not a majority of the
picture but it does interweave through it, much like The
Usual Suspects – and then my familiar old friends left, and
my new friends, my X-Men: First Class friends, showed up,
with one overlap day. Then we all went to Comic-Con – it
was strange because it was, ‘Oh, my old friends and my
new friends!’”
Singer admits that he was more confident about
coming back to work with the original cast than he was
about directing the First Class gang. “There’s definitely a
shorthand. Hugh and I have it, and Nicholas Hoult and I
have it a lot because this is my
second movie with him. The
“charles is very other original actors, it was
much like they hadn’t left. The
different. Not just First Class cast, Hoult excepted,
that was another matter.
because he’s got long Michael Fassbender and James
McAvoy are actors I admire so
hair, but because of much and, even though I’ve
worked with a lot of big actors,
what he is and how I was very intimidated working
with them.
shaky his soul is” “And knowing they’d done
these characters – even though
I was on set a bit during First
Class, I wasn’t directing them, so they’d done them for
someone else – and here I am asking them to do more,
to take it to the next level with a new guy. But they’re
fantastically talented and they have a lot of ideas, which I
like. And they really care about the characters. Michael is
really trying to bring his Magneto closer to McKellen and
James enters the movie in a completely different place
from where he left the last one.”
Comparing Noses
Ah yes, Xavier. Though Wolverine is the mutant who
travels back in time to his old self and must seek out the
disheartened, damaged X-Men of the 1970s, it is Charles
Xavier who takes centre stage in Days Of Future Past. Far
12 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION
from the chipper, driven Charles we first met in First Class,
the Xavier in 1973 is a shell of his former self, haunted by
Erik Lehnsherr (Michael Fassbender) and Raven’s (Jennifer
Lawrence) betrayal, crippled and frustrated by his failed
attempts to launch a facility to help mutants. It gave actor
James McAvoy, the man behind the younger Charles, a
chance to really find a new take on the character after
helping to push Magneto’s narrative last time around.
“I can go further than Patrick did, and also from
what I did in the last movie,” says McAvoy. “So he’s very
different. Not just because he’s got long hair, but because
of what he is and how shaky his soul is. That’s really the
key to him in this one, that his power, which has always
been seen as his psychic ability or great intelligence or
whatever, is really empathy. That’s his greatest power.
But he’s lost the ability to empathise with other people
because it’s too painful for him. Why? Because he’s been
given all of his own pain to deal with by Erik and Raven.
It’s not just the loss of Erik. It has a lot to do with Erik,
a lot to do with his relationship with Erik and their love
for each other, but it’s also as much to do with his love for
Raven, and the fact that he was sort of abandoned at the
end of the last movie by both of them. Not just abandoned,
but horribly injured.”
One pivotal scene in the film has the two versions
of Xavier meeting thanks to some powerful psychic
shenanigans. Was McAvoy intimidated by squaring
off against Stewart, the man who first brought him to
the screen?
“Yeah. But we’re both doing very different interpretations
of that character, by nature of the fact that we’re at very
different times in that character’s life. And also, it’s weird,
because when I took over the role of Charles, I never
thought that I’d be working with him. I never thought I’d
give a similar performance to him. I certainly never thought
that I’d be giving a very different performance to him to his
face. Kind of going like, ‘Yo, what you got, man? Show me
your big nose! We’ve got big noses together!’ There’s like a
profile shot with both our noses together. Conk to conk. I
think he wins slightly, but they tell me that your nose grows
with age, so by the time I’m his age I think I’ll be knocking
the shit out of it in the nose wars…”
A Beast Of A Job
It’s not just nose prosthetics that Nicholas Hoult, who
plays Beast, has to deal with. It’s his entire face and
some of his body, which presented a different challenge.
“It can be tough,” he admits. “But it’s fun to be able to
transform that much and you can play around with it a lot
more and push the character in very different ways. But
it’s kind of trial and error. We’d be doing some scenes and
 Back To The Future Past

www.sfx.co.uk
Lawrence does
’70s so well.

No one’s reading
Singer’s mind.
then Bryan would be like, ‘Try and use the make-up more.
Try and express.’
“And you have to do things that feel silly as well. You
have to growl and jump around and do things which, if
you weren’t wearing the make-up, would be completely
ridiculous, but in the make-up, luckily, I think I’m slightly
more intimidating. And I’ve got a muscle suit on so it’s
maybe not as funny as me growling and roaring and stuff.
But there’s definitely a real playing element to it.”
Anchoring the whole movie is Jackman’s Logan, aka
Wolverine. The longest-serving member of the X-Men
acting crew, Jackman is back for his seventh appearance
in the hair and the claws, and reflects that
“You get the feeling Logan is a very different man from the
troubled loner we met back in 2000.
that logan’s come “You get the feeling that he’s come to
terms with who he is. I’m a warrior, I’m
to terms with who Wolverine and that’s who I am, for better
or worse. It’s not all going to be pretty, but
he is: ‘I’m a warrior, here we go.”
But his latest mission could prove even
I’m Wolverine and
tougher. “He’s sent back in time to try
and fix things and, as he says, ‘I’m the last
that’s who I am’”
person in the world for this. If you want
someone to go back to take someone’s
head off, fantastic!’ But he’s actually got
to go back and almost act as inspiration, mentor and guide.
He has to become, not necessarily a leader – because
I’d still call Xavier the leader here – but a facilitator for
everyone to come together.”
Getting into shape to play the lean, mean fighting
machine was easier for Jackman this time: he simply
stayed in training following 2013’s The Wolverine.
“I had a lot of time to prepare, so I built slowly. I hit
The Wolverine and this movie without any injuries, which
is the first time that’s happened. Every time I’ve played
Wolverine before I’ve been carrying some kind of injury
because I’ve had to race to get ready. This time I did it
slowly and I felt great throughout. I felt tired, obviously,
and it is harder, I’ll admit that, but I felt really good.
Physically, I feel better now than I did in the earlier films.”
He’ll need to be ready, as this time the X-Men are
facing their toughest challenge yet. Game Of Thrones fan
favourite Peter Dinklage was hired to play a very different
Back To The Future Past
version of Bolivar Trask, a genius who views mutants
as a mortal threat to mankind and decides to create the
menacing, technologically advanced Sentinel robots to
fight them. Singer chose Dinklage for several reasons.
“I was very familiar with him and I’m a fan of his. He,
first and foremost, carries the screen, and there’s not a
second that you take him for granted.”
Sentinel Tech
Kinberg admits that Trask’s creations were another big
driving force behind the choice of storyline. “Once we all
committed to Days Of Future Past, we knew the Sentinels
would be a part of it, and Trask would be central to the
story,” he says. “Bryan has done a lot of things to make
the Sentinels feel loyal to the books but also distinct from
all the things that are rip-offs of the Sentinels, like all the
other robot movies that have come in the past 15 years or
so, so they look and feel different. And Bryan spent a lot of
time working on them to make them feel period-specific
but also cool – what a kid might fantasise about.”
In the film, the ’70s Sentinels are the epitome of
technology at the time, though obviously they seem dated
now. The future robots, however, are complex fighting
machines, able to adapt to the mutants’ powers.
“I really wanted to embrace the ’70s,” says production
designer John Myhre about the first generation Sentinels,
one of which was actually built by Legacy Effects. “I
love that ’70s design style of moulded plastics and white
plastics and smoked plastics and I looked at a lot of car
design and high-end futuristic concepts from the ’70s.”
There’s no denying that Days Of Future Past is the
biggest X-Men film ever attempted, and indeed the
biggest movie Fox has made since Avatar. Singer, though,
points out that it should be enjoyable for those who have
read the comics and watched the movies and people who
don’t know their Mystique from their Sunspot.
“In the beginning we kind of do a recap,” he says.
“There are things – images we see – that help people.
It’s still tied into the universe so it’s nice if there’s some
familiarity but you don’t really need to know. The movie
should be really entertaining even if you haven’t seen
another X-Men film.”
X-Men: Days Of Future Past is released on 22 May.
X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 15
SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION

Director/producer
Bryan Singer
the man who made
superhero movies
cool again returns
to direct his first
X-Men film since X2
-PLOITS
Breakout Film
The Usual Suspects
Abilities Directing films, and
reinventing the superhero movie
to make it a viable genre for the
21st century
Main team affiliations
Hollywood
Typical quote “Action!”
what separates us from a lot of other comic
© Picture Perfect/REX
book films is that there’s a huge thematic
element in the x-men universe about outcasts,
and trying to belong, and what side you’re on
www.sfx.co.uk
He’s been involved both as a producer and a
writer since 2003’s hugely successful X2, but Days
Of Future Past gives Bryan Singer the chance to
combine both the original cast and their younger,
First Class equivalents, while also introducing some
new mutant faces…
What drew you to Days Of Future Past?
“It happened over dinner; Simon Kinberg [writer/
producer] said him and Matthew Vaughn, who was going
to direct, wanted to explore a way to incorporate the two
casts. ‘The only thing I can think of is time travel,’ I said,
‘and there’s a precedent for it in the comic book.’ I started
to talk about different ways we could do it and Simon took
those ideas back to Matthew and they began the early
development of the script.
“When Matthew left the project, I began trying to
figure out how to crack the time travel and once I figured
that out I felt, ‘Okay, I’m ready to tell this story.’ Time
travel stories are their own genre; they’re very specific.
You have to create a set of rules, like how the past affects
the future, and then you have to stick to them. Once I
figured out the mechanism by which to do it, I warmed to
the notion very quickly.
“Plus, I very much wanted a chance to work with this
new cast as a director, because they only knew me as a
producer and a writer. It also gave me a chance to work
with my friends who were in the earlier pictures. It was
a wonderful experience and everybody had a really great
time, which was nice.”
It’s your first X-Men film as a director since X2. What have
you drawn on since then to re-energise?
“There were certain visual effects I wasn’t able to do
early on that are now possible, so I could explore my
imagination a little more. And the thing I loved doing a lot
is parallel action – things happening simultaneously – so
there was a great opportunity to be able to show events
bryan singer
happening in the past and the future at the same time. As a
filmmaker, that’s something I enjoy and wasn’t able to do
enough of before. I think I did a lot of it in the climax of X2
and here I can really push that kind of cinema forward.”
The Sentinels are a big part of the story. What were the
challenges of creating them?
“There are movies such as Transformers, Iron Man and
Pacific Rim that have already explored robots of all
different sizes and shapes and scope and calibre. I knew
that I didn’t want to make just another film where a robot
attacks people, yet they’re an element in the picture. They
serve the story in an interesting way, and not necessarily in
an obvious rock-’em-sock-’em battle robots way – although
there is some of that too!”
Were there big challenges with the time travel element?
“It was a little challenging at the script development stage,
but again, once I cracked the conceit and felt it made sense
we were able to craft a story on a physical level, as well
as an emotional one. I think what separates us from a lot
of other comic book films is that there’s a huge thematic
element in the X-Men universe about outcasts and trying
to belong and what side you’re on, and also an emotional
aspect to it with the character relationships. So once I
started getting involved in that, it was great. I’ve always
been fond of these characters and their relationships with
each other, so a lot of things came easy.”
Your X-Men movies have always had these deeper levels and
layers, so is there something of that in Days Of Future Past?
“It’s the universal thing that people always think about – if
I knew then what I know now, what choices would I have
made? What kind of person would I be? Would I be the
same person now? Do I have regrets? And what sacrifices
would I be willing to make to go back and change history?”
And Trask is a new threat to our heroes, though his ideas
come from a place of fear. Was he something you were
excited to explore?
“Yeah, I find Trask kind of interesting – he’s all about the
future, about progress and development. His feeling is that
although he can create profound weapons of destruction,
he feels the cost of war is too great. And he understands
that in science, the introduction of any new species that
is more powerful or advanced than an existing one could
eventually pose the threat of extinction. He feels that this
X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 17

Raven is torn between xavier, who wants
an absolutely peaceful coexistence, and
magneto, who doesn’t trust that humanity
will ever allow that to happen
is a moment in history for humans, for the first time, to
unite against what he considers to be a common struggle
for survival.”
The focus is on Xavier this time. He has a journey…
“Hugh – Wolverine – goes on the physical journey, but
it’s Xavier who goes on the emotional one. He’s reached
a particular low; he’s lost a great deal and it’s basically a
journey of redemption for himself and for his relationship
with Raven.”
How did you decide which of the new mutants would be in
the film?
“It was a diversity of powers. I didn’t have a Nightcrawler
this time, so I decided Blink would be this movie’s
version of him. I like Warpath as a character, there’s a lot
of heart in him, and Sunspot is really cool and stunning
visually. And Bishop is a strong character, plus he has a
weapon plugged into his body, which is something we
haven’t seen before.”
How did you go about differentiating the two different
time periods?
“Mostly with colour. Obviously the ’70s is brighter and
more colourful, while the future is more monochromatic.”
Were you conscious of trying to present a realistic ’70s?
“My notion with the X-Men universe is always to make
it as realistic and believable as possible, so I tried to
Singer describes DOFP as a
“battle for Raven’s soul”.
create a very real 1970s. If you look at any of the footage
from that era, particularly from some of the events we
recreated, such as the Paris peace conference after the
Vietnam War, it’s very realistic. I didn’t want to go too
Austin Powers on the ’70s.”
Did you pick moments from the era you thought would be
thematically right?
“Absolutely. The X-Men story particularly is about war
and its aftermath. The movie opens with the tragic results
of a world war in the future, and so to go back to the end
of the Vietnam War was really powerful both visually and
thematically. It sets the tone of a world that is now sick
of war, has seen the unnecessary loss due to a very long
conflict, and this informs a lot of Raven’s character. When
she first sided with Magneto at the end of First Class,
she was becoming militant and on her way to becoming
Mystique, but she hadn’t quite gotten there yet.
“In Days Of Future Past, Magneto has been incarcerated
for 10 years. During that time, Raven has been
investigating the disappearances and deaths of certain
mutants and trying to find out who is responsible. She
ultimately seeks revenge against that person, so she travels
to Vietnam, experiences some of the war only to realise
that she doesn’t ever want to see that kind of war. She
wants her vengeance, but not war.
“Magneto, however, comes from a very different place.
So Raven is torn between Xavier, who wants an absolutely
peaceful coexistence, and Magneto, who doesn’t trust that
humanity will ever allow that to happen, and the question
is, which way will she go? It’s a battle for the future, and
also for her soul.”
Is there going to be any connection to Apocalypse at the end
of DOFP?
“There might be. I’m not sure. There’s an image that I’m
toying with now that I may or may not use at the end of
the credits.”
 Name Cyclops (Scott Summers)
From Anchorage, Alaska
Primary power(s) Optic blasts 
Main team affiliations X-Men, X-Factor

Name White Queen (Emma Frost) 

From Boston, Massachusetts
Name Shadowcat (Kitty Pryde)  Primary power(s) Telepathy, diamond shapeshifting 
From Deerfield, Illinois Main team affiliations X-Men, Generation X, Hellfire Club
Primary power(s) Intangibility 
Main team affiliations X-Men, Excalibur
Name of Mutant Banshee (Sean Cassidy) 
From Cassidy Keep, Ireland
Primary power(s) Sonic scream, flight 
Main team affiliations X-Men, Generation X
Name Beast (Hank McCoy) 
From Dundee, Illinois
Primary power(s) Strength, speed, agility, senses, intellect 
Main team affiliations X-Men, X-Factor, Avengers

Name Wolverine (James “Logan” Howlett)  Name Charles Xavier 

From Alberta, Canada  From New York City
Primary power(s) Healing, adamantium-laced skeleton and claws  Primary power(s) Telepathy 
Main team affiliations X-Men, Weapon X Main team affiliations X-Men

Name Jubilee (Jubilation Lee) 

From Beverly Hills, California Name Jean Grey
Primary power(s) Energy plasmoid projection  From Upstate New York 
Main team affiliations X-Men, Generation X Primary power(s) Telepathy, telekinesis 
Main team affiliations X-Men, X-Factor

Name Warpath (James Proudstar)

From Camp Verde, Arizona
Primary power(s) Strength, speed, agility 
Main team affiliations X-Men, X-Force Name Rogue (Anna Marie) 
From Caldecott County, Mississippi
Primary power(s) Absorption of memories and powers 
Main team affiliations X-Men

Marks
THE SPOT
The World Map of Mutants! 
Name Sunspot (Roberto da Costa)
From Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Primary power(s) Solar absorption and rechanneling 
Main team affiliations New Mutants, X-Force

by Joseph McCabe

20 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions

 Name Wolfsbane (Rahne Sinclair) 
From Cromarty, Scotland wORLD map OF MUTANTS
Primary power(s) Lycanthropy 
Main team affiliations New Mutants, X-Factor

Name Storm (Ororo Munroe) 

From Cairo, Egypt
Primary power(s) Weather control, flight 
Main team affiliations X-Men

Name Colossus (Piotr Rasputin) 

From Lake Baikal, Siberia
Primary power(s) steel flesh, strength 
Main team affiliations X-Men, Excalibur

Name Sunfire (Shiro Yoshida) 

From Agarashima, Japan
Primary power(s) Flight, plasma blasts 
Main team affiliations X-Men, Big Hero 6

Name Apocalypse (En Sabah Nur)

From Akkaba
Primary power(s) Shapeshifting
Main team affiliations Four Horsemen

Name of Mutant Nightcrawler (Kurt Wagner) 

From Witzeldorf, Bavaria
Primary power(s) Teleportation, agility, prehensile tail 
Main team affiliations X-Men, Excalibur

Name Magneto (Max “Magnus” Eisenhardt) 

From Germany
Primary power(s) Magnetism manipulation 
Main team affiliations X-Men, Brotherhood of Evil Mutants

www.sfx.co.uk X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 21

SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION

Wolverine/Logan
Hugh Jackman
Wolverine faces
his biggest
challenge yet
-PLOITS
First comic appearance
The Incredible Hulk #180, 1974
Abilities Healing, adamantium-
laced bones and claws
Main team affiliations
Alpha Flight, Avengers, New
Avengers, Team X, X-Force
Typical quote “I’m the best
there is at what I do, bub.”
Fleeing Yakuza gangsters
in The Wolverine.
www.sfx.co.uk
DAYS OF Future Past features more mutants than
have ever been seen on screen together before, but
spanning both time periods, and anchoring the
film as he has the franchise, is Wolverine, Hugh
Jackman’s troubled warrior. Here he’ll be tested to
the limit as his consciousness is sent back through
time to help his friends stop one of the most
dangerous threats they’ve ever encountered.
How did you react when you were presented with the
material, knowing it’s going to be “Days Of Future Past”?
“I didn’t really know X-Men at all before I started. So I’d
heard of this comic, but didn’t know it was as beloved or
iconic as it is. I just know fans are going to flip out at this,
because there’s no director better at handling multi-
character stories as he showed us throughout The Usual
Suspects. His characters are always smart, always engaging
and always surprising. He really wanted to create a very
realistic, human, emotionally rich dynamic and it’s just
gone to another level. It’s a very epic, big, big movie.”
And it forces Logan into a new situation where he has to be a
guide and a leader...
“As soon as he gets to a point where he’s ready to do battle
and be part of that, all of a sudden he’s given a job that is
Hugh Jackman
completely different for him, and he doesn’t think he’s
qualified. But physically, he’s the only one that can go back.
And, in a way, when he goes back in time it mirrors the
first X-Men, as he has to be a mentor for Charles and the
others in the way Charles was for him in that first film.”
And it can’t be the easiest situation to show up at somebody’s
house and announce you’re from the future!
“Exactly! And he’s not really a man of many words, nor
does he have a lot of patience to explain things like this. He
just figures he’ll be accepted immediately, which of course,
he isn’t, which brings up some very funny bits. He’s just a
man of action and he wants to get in there and get things
done, so it was really fun to play. There was definitely the
acting challenge of revealing the older mind in his younger
body. It’s not just a matter of explaining the deal and what
he’s got to do, but also encouraging those characters to
solve the situation.”
How was it working with the First Class cast?
“They were awesome! I remember the first day on set we
had with Nick Hoult and James McAvoy, and we were
walking down the old X-mansion hallways, which Bryan
had made to the exact blueprints that he used for the first
X-Men film. Nick came up to me and said, ‘I remember
watching you walking down these halls when I was eight
years old...’ I said, ‘Nick, I think I really like you, so why
don’t we stop this conversation right now? I know that’s
meant to be a compliment, but...’ And he goes, ‘Right.
Sorry, yeah mate. Got it!’ I’ve never really been on a set
before where you’re saying, ‘Guys, okay, enough with
the BB guns around the trailers. Somebody’s going to get
hurt...’ They were hilarious and they were great. What was
amazing was to watch them having the same bond that
we all had on the earlier films. And when we started, we
weren’t massive movie stars – Jennifer Lawrence, Michael
Fassbender, James McAvoy and Nick Hoult, the way they
interact, they’re so down to earth and having a blast, while
still taking it very seriously.”
How was it reuniting with the original cast? The phrase school
reunion has been thrown around...
“I have so many images of watching Ian and Patrick
walking arm-in-arm on the way to set. They were getting
ready to do their play together, so they were running lines.
Halle Berry was pregnant and as soon as they called ‘cut’,
she would unzip her costume to relax. It was an incredible
X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 23
 He was beginning to regret
that third onion bhaji.
bryan’s characters are always smart,
always engaging and always surprising. he
really wanted to create a very realistic,
human, emotionally rich dynamic
feeling. It was about a month with all of us all together and
it’s been 14 years since the first one; we’re all still so close
and to have Bryan there as well, it felt like it had come full
circle and we were very grateful for the opportunity.”
Has Bryan’s style changed in the time since X2?
“He’s 14 years older and he’s had 14 more years’ experience
in the business, so there’s a different confidence level
there. And there’s also an awareness of how lucky we are
to be doing this. At this point, particularly with superhero
films, Bryan is iconic because he’s credited with starting
the whole modern version of the genre. It was a bold
choice back in the day, and there were many non-believers
in the beginning.
“For this one, we had a very strong script, and in a way it
24 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION
felt similar to X2 where there was less of the anxiety about
the genre or the tone. It was a massive jigsaw puzzle in
terms of actors’ schedules and he had an entirely new cast
to work with… we both slightly felt like the outsiders when
the First Class cast began shooting.
“Bryan has more confidence in the drama, as well as the
comedy. He’s become such a master with the action and
the visual side. And the 3D aspect – he knows how to shoot
that and not have it feel like it’s a conversion job.”
Was the time travel stuff ever confusing, script-wise?
“The production was split because of Ian and Patrick’s
schedule – we shot the future first and then the past – so in
that respect it was relatively easy. The thing about Bryan
is – and I’ve never quite seen this before with him – he
gets a lot of ideas on the day of, or the day before, a scene
that he already loves, which actually improves it. He really
has this knack of elevating the material on the day, so there
are always changes on-set, and learning how to be quick
on your feet is important with him. It was really exciting.
He always made things better – and he had a great script
to start with. I think one of the great action sequences in
the movie was a relatively late idea that he had – it was
originally a scene between the younger actors and myself

Logan does D-Day in
X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
around a dining room table in the mansion that ultimately
became this great scene in the X-Jet. It was fantastic
because what Bryan understands is that powers come from
an emotional fragility, some sort of trauma in the past. So
you have action sequences that are emotionally dramatic
and when Magneto starts to lose it and he’s on a plane
30,000ft in the air, it’s going to be problematic! It was a
really fun scene to shoot and it felt so real.”
It’s pretty rare in film that you get to play opposite two actors
who are playing the same character. Can you talk about
the difference in energy, or the complementary energy, for
instance, between Ian McKellen and Michael Fassbender?
“Well, what’s amazing is that with this story, I’m not
talking about the actor, but rather the character of Xavier,
as he is very much at the centre of the story. Playing with
the younger characters, you really get a chance to see a
much broader range of him as a person than we ever got
with Patrick, because he was a much more set character in
a way. So his journey is huge and I get to follow it through,
as you said, with both actors and both are… honestly, all
four are incredible actors. I know that Ian and Patrick
are thrilled that Michael and James are playing those
characters. When I first saw X-Men: First Class, I thought
www.sfx.co.uk
Hugh Jackman
one of the most difficult things was, ‘Will they be able to
create that chemistry, the layered, complex relationship
that Ian and Patrick did in very little screen time?’ Because
for me, I’ve known them for years as theatre actors, right?
And I always thought, well, this is the English version of
De Niro and Pacino in Heat. These two actors up against
each other are amazing. And I think the younger actors
have created that and maybe even more, because there’s
more for them to explore, story-wise.”
The trailers make it look like you’re in even better shape than
you were before. You play a lot of your own stunts, right?
“Yeah. I do a lot of my own stunts, except the stupid stuff
like bashing your head against walls or crashing cars and
all that jazz.”
So where does Wolverine’s future lie?
“We are figuring out the next Wolverine. James Mangold
and I have been working on figuring it out – James more
so than me. I haven’t officially said yes to it yet. We
corrected the ship with The Wolverine and we have to
find a compelling reason to do another one. I’m now quite
protective of the character and what I do with it, so we
have to find something new for everyone.”
X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 25
SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION

Mystique/raven darkholme
Jennifer Lawrence
mystique is in a dark
place – alone and on
a dangerous mission
-PLOITS
First comic appearance
Ms Marvel #16, 1978
Abilities Shapeshifting,
superhuman agility
Main team affiliations
Brotherhood of Mutants, Dark
X-Men, Freedom Force, X-Corps,
X-Factor
Typical quote “Rogue, need
I remind you that we are evil
mutants?”
Mystique needs to work on
her “come to bed” eyes.
www.sfx.co.uk
Jennifer Lawrence, now with a slew of
awards – and high-profile tumbles – under her belt,
reprises her role as the conflicted chameleon with
a desire to embrace her mutant side.
How was it returning to Raven’s changeable skin?
“It was interesting, because we do these movies set many
years apart and you have a huge transformation for each
character, so it’s kind of exciting, every time we find Raven
– Mystique – she’s changed!”
Ten years have passed in the characters’ lives since First Class
and it seems like she’s in a dark place…
“Yeah, when we find Mystique, she hasn’t seen Charles
or Erik for about a decade. She’s her own agent who
doesn’t really agree with either of them. We know that she
becomes an assassin and this is kind of the first leg of that
journey. But Charles intervenes because he still believes
there is good in her.”
Have they done anything to change the make-up, to make it
easier on you?
“Yeah, it gets better every time. We’ve gotten it down to
three hours and the paint is a lot more skin-friendly. It’s
quicker, thank goodness!”
Jennifer Lawrence
Do you ever wish you could go the Avatar route and work
with dots on your face for them to put the character on later?
“I think about that all the time!”
It’s a huge film – did it feel that way to you and the rest of
the cast?
“This movie was huge. I met Hugh Jackman! And we had
all the original cast, it was kind of intimidating coming
back because it was a much bigger deal than how it felt
when we were making First Class. Then we were sort of
timid – we didn’t know how it would go – crossing our
fingers hoping it would turn out okay.”
Bryan Singer is back for this one. Is it fun working for the
godfather of the X-Men films?
“It’s amazing! There was a tiny fanboy inside of me
jumping up and down and screaming when he decided
to direct. He’s incredible to work with and he just knows
these characters inside out. His excitement and his
knowledge makes you more excited.
“He seemed to show that excitement through Twitter…
He took pictures of everything! He was like a 13-year-old
girl at a premiere because he always had his phone out.”
Was there something you wanted to achieve with the
character this time?
“I think I was struggling back and forth just as much as she
was with wanting to get darker, but Bryan has no problem
completely changing a scene when needed. There was one
scene where I just couldn’t get past thinking that Mystique
would shoot someone, although the script said she didn’t.
It didn’t feel right. And Bryan just said, ‘All right… Shoot
them!’ We shot it both ways, so I don’t know which one
they’ll use, but there’s so much freedom to question
decisions, just as much as he does. A lot of the time when
you’re filming, your ideas are developing. But for these
huge movies, they allow for that kind of freedom.”
There’s one scene in the trailers where we see Mystique being
pulled along the floor towards Michael Fassbender’s Magneto.
Was that something you did, or was it a stunt moment? Do
they let you do much stunt work?
“No, I did that! It was easy! I was laughing, because I had
to keep falling down and they asked me if I wanted a pad.
I wondered where these people were when I had to run
through the jungle on The Hunger Games and land on a
bunch of sticks! But I did that dragging stunt myself.”
X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 27

All acting is using your imagination, so
whether it’s imagining that someone is breaking
your heart or you’re being attacked by giant
robots, it’s all coming from the same place
Was there anything they wouldn’t let you do?
“No, if you say you can do it, they’ll let you. There’s a
shoulder roll, my stunt double was doing it – she’d fall, roll
and hit the mark. I said I could do it, because I’m pretty
good at falling! In real life too. I don’t want to push my
limits, though, because I don’t enjoy getting hurt.”
Apparently the First Class cast call Hugh Jackman “Hugo
Boss”. Who coined that?
“I don’t know! Who gets credit for that?”
How was it working with the Wolverine?
“He’s exactly what you want him to be! When people ask
me what he’s like, I don’t even know where to start. He’s
the jolliest, nicest person, funny and sweet all the time.”
Did you hang out much off set?
“Yeah, of course! That’s our favourite part of these movies;
just being able to hang out, it’s such a good group.”
Hugh has said that someone else in this film gets to use the
F-word, because he got the one use of it in First Class. Do
you know who does it?
“I didn’t know that was something we could fight over!
I’d have totally been in on that. I’m calling Bryan and I’m
going to record an F-Bomb for them to insert.”
28 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION
Will they or won’t they?
Raven and Beast in First Class.
You guys have to interact with the Sentinel robots – was
there a lot of imagining them, or could you draw from the
physical robot they built?
“I never saw the physical robot, and I still haven’t seen
the finished product. All acting is using your imagination,
so whether it’s imagining that someone is breaking your
heart or you’re being attacked by giant robots, it’s all
coming from the same place.”
Did you get to work much with Peter Dinklage?
“I love him! He’s a great actor and all that, but he is so
funny and I love Game Of Thrones. When he first came
on set, my friend and I were freaking out because we
watch the show together and I was in my blue make-up
at the time… I stuck my head out the trailer door and
ran up to him, and was having a total fan moment. I
forgot I looked like a blue lizard, and I never addressed
it! But he was so great to work with – so good at being
charming, yet evil.”
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
SEE GAMES DIFFERENTLY

ORIGINAL REPORTING GAME CULTURE HUMOUR

WWW.KOTAKU.CO.UK

@Kotaku_UK Facebook.com/KotakuUK
 X-Men By Numbers

28
Statistician: Jordan Farley (Unless otherwise stated numbers refer to the first six films)

54
104 min 05 sec
Length of the
SHORTEST film
(X-Men: The Last Stand)

featured Mutants*
*Mutants must be
named or clearly
demonstrate their 133 min 47 sec
power to count Length of the
longest film
1962
year the events
(X-Men 2)

OF
FIRST
Wolverine
Arrows to take down

ON HIS TRIP TO JAPAN

20
18
Logan spendS As
CLASS
Years

aBETWEEN
drifteR
Origins
Different
Mystique
took place and X-Men transformations
30 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION
 20
x-men by NUMBERS

45825243
Number on
Wolverine’s
dog tags Years since Xavier 100
15 1769
and Erik recruited Age difference
Jean Grey between
Logan
AND Charles Xavier

Hours’
FLIGHT TIME
from Yukon Number of
TO JAPAN Jean Grey’s
IN THE childhood Hugh
31
Jackman’s
age when he
WOLVERINE home
first played
Wolverine
www.sfx.co.uk X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 31
 214782
3
Number tattooed
on Erik’s arm in Number of metal
Auschwitz
balls
Magneto

100 FT uses to break

out of prison

Drop from Magneto’s

plastic prison 200
17
Nations
1832
Age Charles claims
to have been when
he first met Erik in

X-Men Year Wolverine

represented
at the UN summit in
they actually met in
their thirties according
to First Class is born X-Men
$825,000,000
Total budget for the first $492,937.50
six films Most money paid for X-Men issue #1

32
$2,304,925,865
Total BOX OFFICE for the first
six films
SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION
19 Nightcrawler
Bamfs!
DURING White House ATTACK
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
 x-men by NUMBERS

Weapon X (10) 5 300mph

Logan’s Speed of the
test subject bullet train in The
codename Wolverine
6 value of
Fights
between
the X-Men
4 min 18 SEC
Time Cyclops
Reichsmark
coin
used by Erik Words
10
and the Brotherhood ON SCREEN IN
of Mutants in THE LAST STAND
The Last Stand
to kill
Sebastian Shaw
before
Wolverine
throws
you through
a window

1407 Graymalkin Lane

6 Students
kidnapped by
Address of Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters Stryker in X-Men 2

76
Episodes
of the
X-Men TV
8,732
Mark 1 Sentinels produced
series between 1973 and 1996
www.sfx.co.uk X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 33
SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION

Charles Xavier/Professor X
James McAvoy
Bitter and isolated,
will Charles Xavier
be able to reclaim
his destiny?
-PLOITS
First comic appearance
X-Men #1, 1963
Abilities Telepathy
Main team affiliations
X-Men, Genoshan Excalibur,
Brotherhood of Mutants
Typical quote “Oppression is
no excuse for vengeance.”
www.sfx.co.uk
James McAvoy reprises his role as the young
Charles Xavier but in 1973, when we pick up his
story, all is not well with the X-Men. Hurt by
his best friend’s betrayal and frustrated in his
attempts to launch a school for mutants, Charles
has become a recluse and Wolverine will have to
rally both friends and enemies to bring the young
professor out of the darkness.
Days Of Future Past seems like an intense entry for the
franchise…
“Yeah, it’s quite an intense film, isn’t it? I think all the
X-Men movies have been like that, although I think First
Class was also a little more camp, and more lighthearted
at times, and that definitely happens in this too. We’ve
brought some of the levity and some of the frivolity from
First Class. You have to if you’re going to use the same cast.
You can’t just go, ‘That part of you guys, the part that got
you the job last time? We don’t want that.’ Bryan has taken
two very different casts and he’s managed to meld them
brilliantly. It’s a difficult job that he managed superbly.”
Did it feel like a huge movie even compared to First Class?
“It seemed bigger actually. It felt more epic in scope – at
least to me. We did a little bit of globetrotting, though not
So how come Charles
is walking here?
James McAvoy
as much as the first. But even in its own backyard, this one
feels grander and maybe slightly more profound. It’s less
about the relationship between Erik and Charles – which
was really the backbone of First Class – and more about
Erik’s real genesis as Magneto. It feels all-encompassing
about the fate of not just mutant-kind, but all humankind,
all Earth-bound kind. The stakes are much larger – so it
did feel like you were going into a different year at school!”
How was it working with Bryan?
“He’s arguably the man that rekindled the audience’s
interest in serious superhero movies. He was one of the
guys that started that wave of ‘You’re allowed to take
your superheroes seriously if you like.’ And it felt like we
were in very safe hands, not just because it was X-Men,
but because he gets it… he just gets it. And he’s a really
nice guy too. He’s got to be worth hundreds of millions of
dollars, he makes massive movies, and you wonder if he’s
going to be so far removed from what you do. But he isn’t;
he’s a lovely guy.”
And he changed scenes and lines around on the fly. Was that
something you enjoyed?
“Yeah. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s never wildly
off – it’s a line here and a line there. It’s like, ‘Hey, why
don’t we tweak this and put that in?’ To be honest, most
films I’ve been on do that because what’s on the page will
never truly be recreated perfectly off it. Also, a movie
becomes what it’s going to be in the first couple of weeks,
and even more in the next couple of weeks, and even
more in the next couple of weeks. Suddenly you’ve got
something that is, if not in dialogue or structure, but in its
feeling and its soul, a very different beast from what was
on the page. You must adjust accordingly.”
Michael Fassbender has told stories of BB gun fights between
scenes and how you and Nicholas Hoult cornered him. Was he
trying to score sympathy?
“No, that’s all true. He’d been pretty nasty, actually, and
he’d been doing a lot of shooting people from really close
range, so we all turned on him. He was backed up in his
trailer and I tried to enter through the skylight at one
point. At another, I played possum and hid underneath
another trailer waiting for him to finally come out. He’d
covered himself head-to-toe in wet weather gear, with
hood and collar up. He did look a bit like Ned Kelly, but
he was also sweating profusely in 35-degree heat wearing
X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 35

A fresh-faced McAvoy
in First Class.
all these waterproofs, trying to basically armour himself.
And yet Nick Hoult still managed to get him on the five per
cent of his body flesh that was on display, and raise a lump.
We had a lovely bunch of people from the last movie, and
the bond got stronger on this one.”
And you have a great character arc to play as Charles...
“It’s a little bit like the The Odd Couple with me as Charles
and Nick as Hank. It felt like there was real tension
between the two characters. But it’s really about that
thing that we seem to be fascinated with at the moment,
which is breaking a character down. It’s easier if we know
where they’re going. We always know where they’re
going if they’re a superhero… they’re going to save the day
eventually… so what seems to be the most interesting thing
to do is give them obstacles and if the obstacle becomes
the person themselves, if the conflict is within them, that’s
something that the audience is interested in.
“If you’re going backwards in time to show a character
at a younger stage, you’ve got to find something unique
about them. We looked at how Xavier is portrayed in the
comics and on celluloid and took cues from Patrick, who
did a brilliant job, but in First Class, I did the opposite of
all those things. You make him glib instead of serious, and
foolhardy instead of wise, and instead of selfless you make
him vain and selfish – all those things. But you can’t just
do that again – in the second film you’ve got to show some
progression, so with the trauma he suffered at the end of
the last film, you break him down and you take away his
hopefulness and his courage and his charm, and you strip
away even the good things he had in the first movie so by
this one, you end up with a naked, vulnerable, wounded
animal, and that was really exciting to play. You end up
The Cerebro scenes were really
difficult in the first movie and tough
in this one, probably because you’ve
got a pasta colander on your head
www.sfx.co.uk
James McAvoy
with somebody who is far more surprising, I think, and
that’s the aim – to surprise the audience.”
Did you get to work with Peter Dinklage?
“I didn’t get to work much with Peter, but I’ve done a
movie with him before and we got on like a house on fire.
I love the guy; he’s a funny, funny dude. So it was just
hanging around and having chats with ‘Dinko’, but my
enduring memory of Peter will be him with his head tilted
backwards and six-inch-high flames in the air because I’d
lit the Sambuca in his mouth. That was kind of awesome!”
How much interaction did you have with the original cast?
“They were pretty much wrapped up by the time we got
there, except for Hugh. I got to meet Sir Ian a few times
and talk to him and Patrick about what it was like playing
Magneto and Charles. I was having hair extensions put in
that went down to my arse – I looked like Neil from The
Young Ones! – and we didn’t trim it until it was all in, so I
looked like a reject from That ’70s Show or Almost Famous,
which was nice. Hugh was the only one who properly
crosses over and that was a joy because I spent most of the
film with him and Nick. I really got to know Nick properly.
What a magical guy. And with Hugh – all of the stuff you
see from him on the press tours, where he seems like the
nicest guy… it’s not an act. It’s just him!
What was the most challenging scene?
Anything in Cerebro was quite challenging. Usually I
don’t mind doing all that greenscreen stuff because your
imagination gets you out of trouble and, hopefully, you’re
working with a really good script. But I found the Cerebro
scenes really difficult in the first movie and really tough in
this one, probably because you’ve got a pasta colander on
your head and you don’t have the svelte little helmet that
Patrick gets to wear. I’m retro, so I’m wearing a colander
with wires coming out of it. I looked like Doc Emmett
Brown from Back To The Future, so yeah, anything in
Cerebro was a pain, but acting-wise, it always seemed like
it wasn’t happening in those scenes. Maybe it was because
I was confined to a wheelchair but also confined to my
body position by this super-heavy colander.
X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 37
SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION

Magneto/Erik Lehnsherr
Michael Fassbender
will erik and
charles be able to
work together to
save the x-men?
-PLOITS
First comic appearance
The X-Men #1, 1963
Abilities Magnetism
manipulation
Main team affiliations
Brotherhood of Evil Mutants,
Genoshan Excalibur, New
Mutants, Hellfire Club
Typical quote “There are no
heroes or villains. There’s just
what I want and how I’ll get it.”
“Who wants some?! WHO
WANTS SOME?!”
www.sfx.co.uk
Michael Fassbender reprises his role as
the young Erik Lehnsherr, who, in 1973, finds
himself incarcerated in a Pentagon prison, which
is probably where Charles Xavier would prefer
him to stay…
Was it easy to slip back into the character of Erik Lehnsherr?
“I’d say no because we’d departed from the Erik character
in First Class, so now we’re sort of dealing more with the
Magneto side of him. So when we pick up with him this
time, he’s made that transition, and the difference from the
first film is that now he’s without an army. When we meet
him, he’s been in prison for many years so he’s a bit of a
lone wolf in that regard.”
How much did Bryan brief you on what he’d been up to in the
10 years we don’t see?
“Well, essentially he’s been locked away! That’s where he’s
been, in solitary confinement under the Pentagon. They
accused him of assassinating JFK, and they’ve had him
locked up ever since.”
“Days Of Future Past” is an iconic storyline in the X-Men
universe. Did you study the comics?
“There were a few elements that were changed from the
Michael Fassbender
comic books [where Kitty Pryde does the time-travelling],
so I looked at them again. I still had some of the images
and notes that I’d taken from the last one, and I used those
as well. And this time, more than I did on First Class, I was
looking at Ian McKellen and his voice.”
The first film was more Erik’s journey to becoming Magneto.
This is more about Xavier. But how would you describe it?
“It’s essentially Charles’s journey to becoming Professor
X. We find a very broken Charles Xavier who, for lack of
a better way of putting it, has lost faith in himself. This
is about how he finds that strength again and, using the
bridge between the past and the future that is provided
by Wolverine, they set about preventing what’s going to
happen in the future.”
You have Bryan directing this time, the overseer of the X-Men
universe. How was it working with him?
“I think especially because the older cast had been
reunited, he was the best person to come back. There was
an excitement about that before I even arrived to shoot in
Montreal… an anticipation, if you will. But the great thing
about Bryan is that he’s very collaborative and flexible and
you have that freedom with him, which is fantastic. And
the same goes for [writer/producer] Simon Kinberg.”
Bryan has said that there were a lot of things that were
changed on set and on-the-fly. Was that something you
appreciated?
“Yes, absolutely – because you’re always trying to find
the best piece of the puzzle. In Days Of Future Past you
have these two worlds moving in parallel in one respect,
so to organise that and tell both stories very clearly, that’s
a challenge in itself. We all worked together on that, and
Simon is excellent with this type of structure. Having
worked with them both on First Class and knowing that
they’re open to input helps to make for a great process.”
Hugh and others have said the First Class cast had a lot of fun
between scenes. Were you trying to keep people in line?
“I was in the thick of it! I remember one particular time
where I felt like Ned Kelly. Josh Helman, James and Nick
Hoult had pinned me into my trailer in a BB gun shootout.
James was trying to come in through the skylight on the
roof and Nick shot me through a crack in the door – it was
an excellent shot, actually, he got me right in the neck and
it took the wind out of me briefly. So it was a lot of fun. We
X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 39
 we’re dealing more with the magneto side of
erik, so when we pick up with him this time, he’s
made that transition. the difference from the
first film is that now he’s without an army
did wear protective eye wear, it should be noted, so there
was safety involved, but there was scarring to the face also,
so eventually the BB guns were taken away. It was a purely
professional environment! Healthy exercise.”
One of the new elements is Peter Dinklage as Bolivar Trask.
Did you enjoy working with him?
“I gelled with Peter immediately. I remember the first
day on set – he’s incredible, a genius. He’s just so funny
and obviously an excellent actor, but we just felt like we
were on the same wavelength. I’m just bummed that I
didn’t have more scenes with him. But watching him
work was a pure joy.”
First Class was a big film, but in some ways Days Of Future
Past feels bigger. Did it feel that way on set?
“In terms of the scope and story, yes, absolutely – and with
a much more complex structure. But I didn’t really see it
like that, even though I knew the ship was a mothership!”
One particular scene found you on a plane gimbal with James,
Nick and Hugh. Was that particularly challenging?
“Not really, because I was bolted in there! In terms of
making it look like you’re naturally standing, yes, because
40 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION
you’re on a belt on a pole and you’re leaning forward. But
the truly hard part was trying to find the relationship
beat required because Charles and Erik haven’t seen
each other in so many years and their feelings towards
each other have been pent up for so long. So it was an
important scene, given how emotionally invested Erik
is in his friend and continues to be throughout the
other films. To have that emotional resonance, it was an
important one to get right.”
Do you and the First Class cast feel vindicated after that film’s
success? You’re the focus of this one, despite the presence of
Hugh and the other original actors.
“It’s such an ensemble piece and has so many layers and
strands to it. I feel each time I approach a job that there’s
a responsibility that comes with it, so I was so happy that
the fans really enjoyed First Class when it came out. You
always worry how the core fanbase will react, so that was
a relief. But you also want to always remember that you’re
only as good as your last film, and the next story is only as
good as the last one, so there’s always that pressure.”
How was it spending time with the whole cast and the
original actors at Comic-Con? Was it surreal?
“I loved that, mostly because I hadn’t met Ian yet. James
gets the opportunity to do a scene with Patrick, but I
finally met Ian at Comic-Con and it was fantastic to finally
get to be face-to-face. He left me a nice note in the trailer
on set, saying he was sorry we missed each other again,
so that was quite special. And then to have everybody
else there, with all of the excitement in that room… it was
pretty amazing. Comic-Con is a special festival, the one
place that truly belongs to the fans.”
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
 ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT
75 YEARS OF BATMAN!
FREE
COMIC
DOWNLOADS!
* TS&CS APPLY. SEE MAG FOR DETAILS

THE WORLD’S

# 1 M AG
COMIC

BRAND NEW ISSUE ON SALE NOW!

AVAILABLE AT
SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION

Beast/Hank McCoy
Nicholas Hoult
the now-blue-
mutant is learning
to get a handle on
his powers
-PLOITS
First comic appearance
X-Men #1, 1963
Abilities Animal-like
physiology, superhuman strength
Main team affiliations
Avengers, Defenders, X-Factor,
Secret Avengers
Typical quote “My name is Mr
McCoy, madam, not Blue Boy!”
www.sfx.co.uk
Nicholas Hoult returns as genius scientist
Henry “Beast” McCoy, who’s been attempting to
care for the reclusive Professor X while struggling
to come to terms with his own mutation.
As an actor, was it a little more daunting to come back for this
movie, knowing you made a really good film last time? Did
the cast feel the pressure to raise the bar?
“First Class had a great sense of humour, and an era and
a history, and every character had a great arc throughout,
so it was a really well-made film and Matthew Vaughn did
a great job bringing it all together. People weren’t really
sure what to expect with First Class, but now obviously
there’s more expectation. You really can’t worry about that
too much. It was at Comic-Con last year where I realised
the enormity of it all, but you can’t be on set panicking,
otherwise it would just completely mess with your head.”
The film is based on a very famous comic run. When you
found out it was going to be this story, did you get hold of
the issues?
“Yeah, I read the comics, but it’s also a situation where you
get the script, and they’ve obviously taken from the comics
but then changed them slightly. So you can learn things
by reading the comics, but it helps to read other issues
Beast shows off his
mutant feet in First Class.
Nicholas Hoult
as well, just to give backstory for the character and his
language and little things like that; it just gives you a sense
of him – it’s great to have so much reference material.”
With X-Men: First Class and this film, how much changed
along the way from when you first got the script to what you
were making on set?
“On First Class the script was really strong right from the
beginning and the action sequences changed a fair bit, but
overall it stayed pretty true to what was on the page. Bryan
has a much more malleable way of working, whereby if
we turn up and a scene’s not quite clicking, or working,
or not progressing the story then he’ll work on it then.
He believes in making a movie three times: you get the
script and that’s one film; there’s the film that you end up
shooting on the day; and the film that comes out in the
edit. Sometimes these vary a bit, but they keep the main
structure and only improve along the way.”
How easy was it for you to get back into Hank McCoy’s skin
and fur?
“It was fairly easy, with Bryan Singer directing this one
and having produced First Class. I also worked with him
on Jack The Giant Slayer, so it was simple to get into a
rhythm with him. And given that the cast had all worked
together before, it was like a school reunion.”
Was it good to get the gang back together? You’ve got to
work, but you can hang out as well?
“Everyone is brilliant in their roles, but because there are
so many people in the cast, there’s not a lot of pressure on
one person specifically… the cast is more relaxed. And
everyone understands their characters, since they’ve
played them before. It’s much more laid back and Bryan
had everything under control with the script in a good
place, so it was fun. There was lots of messing around and
trying not to laugh too much. Most of my stuff was with
James McAvoy, who is very funny and took to hurting me
quite a lot. He hit me in the testicles, he shot me in the face
with a BB gun and one day I went in with bite marks!”
James McAvoy has claimed that all of the abuse was to help
you focus…
“Abuse doesn’t help me! I don’t know what kind of
films he’s been working on and which actors need that
stuff, but being hit in the testes is not something that
helps me focus!”
X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 43
Hoult’s Beast looks quite
different from Grammar’s
version in The Last Stand.

He’s damaged a little, much like Charles.
There was the blossoming romance between him
and Mystique that all got squandered; plus he’s
had to deal with his mutation and not feeling
comfortable in his own skin
Has the design of Beast changed at all from the last movie
to this one?
“Yeah, it has changed a little bit. It’s become slightly less
make-up, and you can see more of my face underneath it.”  “Yeah! In some ways it is, but I also think of him like
Do you tune out while you’re in the make-up chair?
“Normally it’s very early in the morning, so it’s too early
for my brain to have kicked into action. The guys who
do the make-up are great and made it as comfortable as
possible, but it’s really just finding that happy place. It’s a
bit of a challenge during the day – you have to focus and
drink plenty of water because you sweat a lot. It makes
shooting certain things quite tricky really, and it’s tough
to talk through the teeth. It’s hot and you sweat through
places you didn’t know it was possible to sweat through,
and occasionally it’ll drip out of an eyehole or an earhole
or a nostril, so it’s not the best thing. But sometimes you
forget you’re wearing it and you catch a glimpse of yourself
in the mirror doing something human and normal and
then it’s very entertaining. Whether I was eating lunch
or roaming around in the trailer or making little dance
videos, I made sure to have a lot of fun with it.”
Are the dance videos going to be on the Blu-ray?
“Bryan might have one or two, but I’m not sure! I’m
certainly not allowed to release them.”
Let’s face it – Bryan did enough shooting on set with his
iPhone...
“Bryan was such a fan, and it’s so great to have someone
who is so excited about what they’re making. He wanted
to invite people in, to show off the Sentinels and to share
the exciting elements.”
Talking of the Sentinels, there was a physical one on set.
But did your work on First Class and Jack The Giant Slayer
prepare you for working with the CG effects? Are you used
to it now?
“Yeah, it’s one of those odd things. You have to be careful
to make sure everyone knows what’s going on and that
you’re looking in the right place and reacting at the
right time, or else everyone looks a bit foolish! But it’s
also interesting because sometimes it’s different in your
imagination, and it’s impressive when you see it on screen
and with the sound effects and everything… so much
grander in scale than my head imagines a lot of the time.”
So the final film has a bigger budget than your imagination?
“I’ve got to think bigger!”
Is there a particular scene that you were most excited
about shooting?
“When we did First Class, it was pretty much a
completely new cast and story and a whole new set-up.
I remember seeing the first X-Men movie when I was
11; I grew up with those guys, so the chance to be in one
with the old cast and have some scenes with Hugh playing
Wolverine was something I looked forward to.  The moustache was unbelievable. It’s a character in the
“I remember the first day of shooting with him,
walking along and looking across at him and thinking
www.sfx.co.uk
Nicholas Hoult
to myself, ‘That’s Wolverine’, who we nicknamed
‘Wolfie’, by the way. So that was a big thing for me just
because it suddenly felt very real, like a proper X-Men
movie in a way.”
When we last saw Hank, he’d built the early X-Jet and worked
on a lot of other fun gadgets. Do you get to do more of that?
“There is a form of early TiVo, where he’s created a
machine to pick up on the news so he can figure out what’s
going on around the world with mutants, and to keep
himself, Charles and Logan up to date. There are a couple
of other gadgets, like signal blockers and spy stuff and
things like that.”
So it’s you getting to act out some James Bond fantasies?
Alfred from Batman, how I’m looking after Charles in the
X-Mansion, while also taking care of some gadgety stuff.”
And 10 years have passed since First Class. What state do we
find Hank in?
“He’s damaged a little, much like Charles. There was the
blossoming romance between him and Mystique that all
got squandered; plus he’s had to deal with his mutation
and not feeling comfortable in his own skin.”
You used the Batman metaphor, but you could also go
with Grey Gardens, with the two of you rattling around an
old mansion…
“Yes, exactly! X-Men: Days Of Future Past is basically
Grey Gardens!”
Was there anything in particular you wanted to achieve with
Hank this time?
“There’s always that thing with Hank, the battle for him
to become comfortable with his Beast side. In a couple of
scenes, he does start to understand it and not be as scared
of it as he was in the first film. Before, he was very worried
about what he was capable of, whereas in this one, there
are occasions where he uses it for good to help out. But
that is the progression for Hank, accepting and owning the
skin he’s in.”
Does he ever confide in Wolverine about this stuff? Logan
has had his issues, too…
“There is a nice little relationship between the two of
them because they get into it a little bit with each other
and then towards the end, they begin to see eye-to-eye.
But obviously it’s strange for Hank when Wolverine comes
knocking, claiming he’s from the future. It would be very
strange! And it’s quite funny in the film.”
Bryan’s X-Men movies always have a lot to say. What is this
film’s message?
“There’s always the underlying current of the fear of the
unknown, and being an outcast and accepting yourself.
But it’s also about hope and people finding their way in the
world. With the future stuff as well, it’s also about people
having to work together.”
Jennifer has talked about her first meeting with Peter
Dinklage, while wearing her full Mystique make-up. Was
meeting Peter an experience for you?
“Meeting Peter is obviously an experience, but you know
what? Going on set for the first time – he’s obviously a very
cool guy, and funny – but the first time he walked out in
character and in the best shampooed and blow-dried hair
I’ve ever seen and a quality moustache as well, that really
made it for me. No seriously – it was the best hair ever.
film in and of itself! I’m supposed to be playing Beast and I
can’t grow facial hair at all. It’s not good for me.”
X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 45
SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION

Bolivar Trask
Peter Dinklage
What better man The X-Men have faced many threats but in
Days Of Future Past they’re dealing with one of
the worst. The films have a history of mankind
to portray a multi- misunderstanding mutants, but scientist Bolivar
Trask begins to rally the world against our heroes,
layered villain and creates the monstrous, massive Sentinel robots
to help tackle what he sees as the mutant problem.
than GOT’s Tyrion How did Bryan pitch you the role of Trask?
Lannister? “We had a great phone conversation about it. He just
sounded like a fascinating character, a man of science
who may be the villain of the piece, if you had to choose,
but who is definitely not your traditional villain – which
is what I’ve always loved about these X-Men films. If you
take somebody like Magneto, for example, who might be
considered a villain, there’s real history there: he was once
great friends with Professor X and he comes from a history
of pain, so it’s not black and white hero/villain storytelling,
which really appeals to me.
“I’m fortunate to be part of Game Of Thrones, which
is sort of similar in that there’s a lot of grey in the
definition of villainy. We talked a lot about that, and
about how Trask has a belief that what he’s doing is the
right thing. He didn’t have to convince me, really! The
films and the storyline speak for themselves and I was
won over pretty quickly.”
And you’re both New Jersey men...
“We have a couple of mutual friends in common! We’d
never met for some reason, but there’s always a Jersey
bond with anybody who is from there.”
What appealed to you about Trask?
“It’s fun to play someone who thinks he’s the smartest
person in the room, and that arrogance… that’s what
I wanted to play up a little bit and hopefully it comes
across. But at the same time, he’s also frustrated, he’s not
-PLOITS being taken seriously and this maybe makes him a bit
more aggressive and a bit more volatile. Underestimating
First comic appearance someone can be dangerous!”
X-Men #14, 1965
Abilities Genius-level intellect And he doesn’t see himself as the villain?
Main team affiliations “Of course not; he sees what he’s doing as heroic. He wants
Sentinels, Purifiers, Trask
Industries
to save humanity and doesn’t see the problem with that.”
Typical quote “My Sentinels Did you base him on anyone?
will keep the human race pure!”
“A lot of the people with genius IQs are humble, and
www.sfx.co.uk
Peter dinklage
you’d never know it. That’s not the case with Trask. I’ve
seen interviews in the past with men of science who are
quite proud of their IQ level. I just had fun playing with
that. Again, being a movie that’s not based in real facts or
history, it’s a little tricky, but you just have to have fun with
it and that’s what we did.”
Did you have any experience with the comics beforehand? Did
they give you “comics homework”?
“Chris Claremont was on set. He was great. I was always
a comic book fan, but in deference to true fans/collectors,
I certainly wouldn’t consider myself on their level. There
are some people out there who really know what they’re
talking about and I’m certainly not one of them. I was
always drawn to the X-Men storylines and, of course,
Bryan’s films, which are up there with Christopher
Nolan’s Batman movies as some of the best superhero
movies ever.”
How was it hanging with the cast?
“We were up there in Montreal last summer and we had a
really good time: nary an ego amongst them. Before I met
Jennifer, I saw her and her friend sneaking peeks at me out
of their trailer window. Here’s this woman in blue running
after me, screaming how much she loves Game Of Thrones.
She’s an angel, a truly lovely person. We’d geek out with
each other. Everybody on that movie – we were a bunch of
kids getting together and being fans of each other’s work.”
Was it enjoyable to work with the Sentinels and other special
effects? Does that come easy to you now?
“Oh yeah, there’s so much make-believe that anything
tangible on set that you can touch is just fantastic. When
you first start, it’s tough, but then faking things gets easier.
I remember the first movie I did where I had to act with
tennis balls; you really had to know what you’re looking
at because it’s completely unreal. But as time goes on, you
know the tricks and how to sort it all out in your head.
And there are people around who just know so much more
about it and that’s very helpful.”
How was it working with Bryan? He had a very fluid way with
the scripts and his thoughts in production. And did he and
Simon Kinberg welcome your input?
“Oh yeah, for sure. Very little input from me, at least,
because they know what they’re doing. But I love their
openness to change things at the last minute – I think
X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 47
 it’s fun to play someone who thinks he’s the
smartest person in the room, and that
arrogance… that’s what i wanted to play up a
little bit and hopefully it comes across
that’s how great things happen. Bryan and Simon are
bright enough to realise that. It’s interesting, dealing with
a movie with time travel and the different elements of
it. Going through the ‘rules’ was fun to explore. And the
continuity of that! It must’ve been the biggest headache for
them, the differences in past and future… I can’t imagine
how they were able to wrangle that.”
Were the ’70s fashions strange to wear?
“I loved every second of it. I looked like a guy who worked
with my father back in the day! The trick with these
period films, especially the ’70s and the ’80s, is not to go
too overboard. You sort of have to pull back just a little bit
because you don’t want to go crazy with it, but the hair
and wardrobe department knew what they were doing
and they certainly transformed me. I don’t know who
thought that the colour brown was good for a suit, but
48 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION
back in the ’70s they did. Rust colours! Deep browns... very
attractive in a suit.”
But the moustache was yours?
“I can grow a Burt Reynolds at the drop of a hat. It was
my Tom Selleck, that’s all me. Of course, I’m getting older,
so they did have to comb out some of the grey but that’s
about it.”
Have you had much reaction to Trask yet? He hasn’t been a
big presence in the trailers yet.
“They’re teasing the audience! I like it when they don’t
give too much away.”
But at Comic-Con, you’re a god...
“Well, when you’re sharing the stage with Hugh Jackman,
Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart, there’s not a lot of focus
on yourself, which is nice. The day before, I’d done a panel
for Game Of Thrones and… yeah! It was nice to take more
of a back seat, if you will. But it was a lot of fun – a large
audience – and it was the first time that we’d gotten to see
the trailer.”
And you got to meet some of the original cast?
“Yeah, a few of them, like Halle. It was really great to
meet them.”
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions

X-Men Apocalypse
WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT THE NEXT X-MEN FILM
nX-Men: Days Of Future past director Bryan
Singer announced the next X-Men film in the
most modern way imaginable – with a tweet on 5
December 2013: “#Xmen #Apocalypse 2016”.
nAccording to Singer the film will serve “more as
a First Class sequel” than a Days Of Future Past
spin-off but will take place in the new timeline
created by sending Wolverine back to the ’70s
to help sort out the Sentinel situation. “What
n
happens in [Days Of Future Past] brings about
what’ll happen in [Apocalypse].”
nX-Men 2 scribes Dan Harris and Michael
Dougherty, Days Of Future Past’s Simon Kinberg
and Bryan Singer are currently beavering away
on the script, which Singer, in January, claimed
n
was nearly complete.
nSinger is expected to return as director but
would only go as far as to say: “I’m co-writing the
story and I’m producing it and I’m negotiating
to direct. We’re in the process. We’re trying to
figure out schedules.”
n
nApocalypse was chosen as the antagonist for
the next X-movie to explore mutants’ origins
on Earth. In Singer’s words: “One thing that
www.sfx.co.uk
x-men: APOCALYPSE
interests me is the notion of ancient mutants. control his body’s molecules, which means he can
What would people thousands of years ago, regenerate, doesn’t need food or water and can
without the benefit of science, think mutants change his physical form at will.
were? And more importantly, what would
mutants thousands of years ago think they were? He’s fought the X-Men (and X-Factor) many
n
Gods? Titans? Angels? Demons? And if such times, but his defining arc is “Age Of Apocalypse”,
mutants did exist thousands of years ago, what an X-franchise crossover event which had Legion
became of them? Did one survive?” travel back in time only to inadvertently kill his
dad, Professor X, resulting in a dystopian future
It will take place in the ’80s and star the cast of
where Apocalypse rules the world.
First Class: Fassbender, McAvoy, Lawrence, Hoult
and co… presuming they survive Days Of Future Singer says Apocalypse will be at least “somewhat
n
Past that is. “I call these movies in-between- based” on “Age Of Apocalypse” but that it “won’t
quels. It’s a mind-fuck sometimes in terms of necessarily create an alternate universe…”
where things fall in the timeline,” says Singer.
According to The Wolverine director James
n
The film could also feature at least two other
Mangold X-Men: Apocalypse will shoot before the
familiar X-faces in their youth: “I’m considering next Wolverine film.
a Gambit and potentially a young Nightcrawler
for Apocalypse,” says Singer. “[We were] going to Singer has shot down rumours that Apocalypse
n
have Nightcrawler [in Days of Future Past] and will appear in any Days Of Future Past post
even wrote a scene, but I felt that we were forcing credits sting.
too many mutants in known history.”
The X-Men movies have so far dodged the
n
The Apocalypse of the comics is a 5,000-year-old,
destruction porn that dominates modern
Egyptian born mutant named En Sabah Nur (or blockbuster superhero movies, but the presence
The First One). His powers are near limitless. of Apocalypse will allow for major devastation on
He’s immortal, telepathic, telekinetic and can a scale unlike anything seen in the X-verse.
X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 49
 Yesterday’s
Me et th e
ma n wh o
cr eat ed th e
co mi c be hin d
th e mo vie

tomorrow
It’s the chrono-conundrum Singer’s movie is based on, so we
despatched Joseph McCabe to talk to Chris Claremont about the
writing of 1981’s time-travelling epic “Days Of Future Past”

N
o X-Men comic story showcases the fear and
uncertainty with which the ever-oppressed mutants
must live as bleakly as “Days Of Future Past”. Published
in #141 and #142 of Uncanny X-Men, it portrays a future
in which mutants have been hunted to the brink of
extinction, and it epitomises the non-stop anxiety and adrenaline
of writer Chris Claremont and artist John Byrne’s definitive run on
Marvel’s team of mutant heroes.
By showing precisely what the X-Men were fighting to prevent
all this time, “Days Of Future Past” began a tradition of alternative
realities that has since produced some of the franchise’s best-loved
stories and characters.
Like other memorable time-travelling tales, its premise is
deceptively simple. In the year 2013, mutants are hunted and
herded into concentration camps. With most of the X-Men dead or
imprisoned, Katherine Anne Pryde-Rasputin (once known as Kitty
Pryde), with the help of Wolverine, sends her consciousness back
in time into the body of her younger self – on a mission to prevent
Mystique and her Brotherhood of Evil Mutants from assassinating
Robert Kelly, an outspoken anti-mutant senator whose death will
lead to the mutants’ nightmarish future. Kitty prevents Kelly’s
murder, and returns to her time, but the question of whether her
victory is enough to ensure the survival of homo superiors haunts
the X-Men and introduces a new layer of dread to the book.
future shocks
As Claremont told us when we spoke with him in SFX 236, “Future
Past” began with him and artist/co-plotter John Byrne “spitballing
ideas”: “We wanted to do a worst-case scenario – what if you looked
down the road to the future? What if you looked down the road and
the future you saw was utterly bleak? Was in effect a catastrophe?
What could you do to correct it? Is there a limit? Can you undo
what has not yet happened? You can’t change the past, because
that would affect the present. Except these people in the future are
deliberately trying to do that. So for the X-Men, the conundrum
is, are these events immutable? Or can the right hero in the right
place at the right time make a difference? It seemed to make things
better, but do we really know for sure?”
When asked if he and Byrne began “Days Of Future Past” with
any ground rules in mind for Kitty’s time travel, Claremont pauses
for a moment in consideration. “You have to look at the story
from the perspective of the characters,” he replies. “Kitty had just
joined the team. She was an unknown quantity. She was 13 years
old. They’re working out in the Danger Room, she falls down, and
when she wakes up she says, ‘Hi’, gives Nightcrawler a great big
hug – which strikes everybody as weird, because she’s been scared
of him since she arrived – and announces that she’s old Kitty, Kitty
from the future. Well, from the team’s perspective at the time,
they haven’t a clue what the future is. All they have is what this
13-year-old is telling them. And for all they know she’s a rampaging
we wanted to do a
worst-case scenario –
what if you looked down
the road and the future you
saw was utterly bleak?
psychotic with a great imagination. Except that Professor X reaches
into her mind and – holy cow! – something weird’s going on here.
She knows stuff that she shouldn’t know, about all of them. So they
have to take it on faith.
“The reader knows the truth, because the reader has the
advantage of being able to read the pages where we started in the
future, with Kitty and Logan, sending her to the past. But for the
X-Men it becomes a tremendous leap of faith.”
Claremont, a fan of Hugh Jackman’s portrayal of the
adamantium-clawed X-Man, adds, “I think that’s why it’ll be
interesting to see how Bryan presents that reality in the film. Since
the viewpoint character, the time travel character, is now changing
from Kitty in the comic to Logan in the movie.”
structural issues
The mutant mastermind says he understands how the format of
film offers its own storytelling opportunities.

50 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions

days of future past

“The other thing you have to bear in mind,” explains Claremont,
“is that when I was writing this particular arc of stories in the
’80s, the formative structure of Marvel was fundamentally –
fundamentally – different to what it is today. With us the attitude
was ‘one issue or two issues?’ Maybe if you’re really, really lucky
and it was the best story ever – like with Galactus’s introduction
– you could do a three-issue story. But in reality that was a set-up
and a payoff, not an extended monologue. But that was how we
did stories then – you fit as much as human intuition allowed, and
then moved on. I mean Stan and Jack did the coming of Galactus
effectively in 30 pages, spread out over three issues of Fantastic
Four. That’s the benchmark that we were working under. If Stan
and Jack could do it, we could do it just as well – if not better. Today
it’s much more of a miniseries approach. You don’t slam it out in
two issues. You take five, enough to fill up a trade paperback or a
reprint. Which is perfectly valid, but not every story demands that
kind of treatment. So it’s much more challenging.”
“Back then, you never wanted to string a story. You could string
arcs out for six or eight months, as we did with ‘Dark Phoenix’,
but if you actually look at it they’re all one-part, two-part stories
there’s no way of
knowing if they’ve
succeeded in putting off
the apocalypse
52 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION
In 2013, North America is
controlled by Sentinels.
And they don’t play nice.
until you get to the death of Phoenix, and that’s a three-parter. The
whole essence of the editorial approach I guess you could say was,
‘Get on, say your piece, get off.’ Move on to the next one, so if you
have a great story, the reader’s left going, “What happens next?’ and
you give them something even better.”
Prior to “Days Of Future Past”, most mainstream superhero
stories dealing with time travel tended towards tidiness: Superman
went back in time to meet Abraham Lincoln or his own parents;
Kang the Conqueror sought to rule humanity before it advanced
too far. But with Claremont and Byrne, things got messy; and their
story’s resolution gave no easy answers to the questions it posed.
What it did offer, however, was, like most of their X-Men work, a
near unbearable sense of urgency.
“With “Days Of Future Past”, everybody’s still reeling from
the death of Jean Grey and – boom! – we give you the potential
destruction of mutant humanity. And the punchline for that is
there’s no way of knowing if they’ve succeeded in putting off the
apocalypse; and of course by then it’ll be too late.
“So we, the readers, never really know, or should have never
really known, what becomes of the future. We see X-Men die, but
we never see history change, and for all we know, history won’t
change for those characters. Their future is done, nobody’s gonna
come back to life. What the X-Men have perhaps done by their
actions is create a bifurcated timeline, where the original ‘Days Of
Future Past’ future is going off to the left, and the current future,
which presumably bypasses ‘Days Of Future Past’, is going off to the
right. But for the X-Men of the present day, for the guys and gals of
the comic, they won’t know until they get there.
“That was the fun of the story – there’s no ‘god’ character saying,
‘Everything’s better now.’ Unlike with the death of Jean, the
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
 days of future past

Watcher wasn’t around to give everybody a pat on the head and

send them home with comforting thoughts. You’re left wondering,
‘Holy shit, did we make things better? Or by saving Kelly have we
made things even worse?’ Of course the punchline for that comes
Past vs Future
How will Bryan Singer’s X-Men: Days Of Future Past differ
during [artist] John Romita Jr’s run, when Kelly comes up with the
Mutant Registration Act. For me that was the fun of playing with from Chris Claremont and John Byrne’s original story?
the X-Men, that we could keep the audience in an almost perpetual Here’s a breakdown…
state. That was the point of the baseball games the team played – to
take the edge off that state of anxiety and tension. ‘Holy cow, will Traveller Twist MOVIE Two Magnetos (Michael
COMIC Wolverine gives his life to Fassbender and Ian McKellen) and
things get better or will they just get worse? And if they do get
help Kitty Pryde go back in time. Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage) are
better, is it for real better or is it just a tease?’”
MOVIE Kitty (Ellen Page) sends on hand to complicate things.
We ask Claremont if any time travel stories influenced his work.
“Beyond HG Wells?” he laughs. “I think I could, and probably Wolvie (Hugh Jackman) back to
prevent a mutant holocaust. Subtext Switch?
should, say HG Wells. But I suppose you could consider Merlyn in COMIC The comic’s concern with
TH White’s The Once And Future King, the ultimate time traveller.” bigotry is taken to the extreme.
Like White himself (as well as his wizard protagonist), Claremont
New Mutants
COMIC Kitty goes back and meets MOVIE Sentinel creator Trask’s
is frequently given to bouts of philosophical rumination, especially
Nightcrawler, Angel, Storm, story is akin to that of Mary
when pondering the infinite number of potential realities time Colossus, Professor X (and a Shelley’s Frankenstein. (“Peter
travel can lead to in the X-Men universe. younger Wolverine). Dinklage is probably gonna steal
“If it’s an infinite universe, then imagine a second in the lifetime the whole thing,” predicts
MOVIE Wolvie meets the Professor
of every being, on every inhabited planet, in every solar system of Claremont.)
(James McAvoy) and a new class
every iteration and dimension in that existence, evolving yin-yang
of mutants, including Beast
alternatives on top of each other. Now some may fade away but Mystique Technique
(Nicholas Hoult).
that still leaves you with an incredibly vast cavalcade of potential COMIC The adult Mystique plans an
iterations and alternatives, and how do you determine which is the Bold New Baddies assassination attempt.
real one? Or do you just cross your fingers and hope for the best?” COMIC Mystique and the MOVIE Mystique is growing up, but
Brotherhood of Evil Mutants battle she’s still played by a young
x-men legacy our heroes. Jennifer Lawrence.
Those filmgoers who discovered the students of Xavier’s School for
Gifted Youngsters in Matthew Vaughn’s X-Men: First Class will – in
Singer’s X-Men: Days Of Future Past – be introduced not only to Time travelling
Claremont creations such as Rogue, Kitty Pryde and Mystique, but can be very painful.
to new mutants such as Warpath (Booboo Stewart) and Sunspot
(Adan Canto).
So does Claremont think it will be a hit?
“I have no idea,” he told us earlier this year. “I haven’t seen the
script. Singer’s put together a great cast but how in heaven’s name
can he fit it all into 120 minutes… You’ve got enough characters to
do two full films! He has a tremendous amount of resources and a
tremendous amount of talent at his disposal, so I’d have to think
he’ll knock the proverbial ball out of the proverbial park.”
But, no matter how the film ends up, Claremont believes it
can’t avoid the central question at the heart of his original tale.
“The end of the story is the key, which is when Ororo asks (or at
least does in subsequent issues), ‘Did we fix anything? Did we
save the world or not?’ The answer is ‘We won’t know until we
get there,’ and by then, let’s face it, we’ll either have won it or
it will be too late. What is seen far too often in the Terminator
films is that nothing is wilier than the future that’s determined
to come out the way it wants. No matter what is done in the past,
the Terminators find a way to adapt to it in the future. Whatever
the X-Men do in the past and in their present, who knows how it
will affect our present?”

www.sfx.co.uk X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 53

 There have been many X-Men
This art icle was – about 90 at last count – but
orig inal ly pub lish ed
in Com ic HEr oes
most of what really matters
issu e 19 revolves around this core 15…

Important X-Men 1

FIRST Fifteen
PROFESSOR CHARLES XAVIER
Unknowable, sometimes wheelchair-bound
mentor; he owns the school that’s the team’s
base, and funds and trains the young X-Men,
but he’s as much manipulator as visionary,
and falls out with ex-pupils because of it.
Physically based on Yul Brynner, his visual is
equal parts parental and suspiciously exotic.

2 3
CYCLOPS MARVEL GIRL
Hyper-focused, serious and repressed though Jean Grey became the ultimate good-girl-
he might be, Scott Summers is both a brilliant gone-bad when she was reborn as Phoenix
military tactician and a force to be reckoned and later Dark Phoenix. Her descent was
with himself, thanks to his powerful “optics central to one of the X-Men’s most
blasts”. One of those rare characters who can compelling storylines, while her constant
be either dull as ditchwater or utterly “dying but then being reborn” thing has
compelling, depending on a writer’s skill. become a running joke ever since.
4
WOLVERINE
Short, feisty, noble but aggressive – and
almost impossible to hurt for long, thanks to a
powerful healing factor – this most macho of
mutants became a cult figure thanks to a
mixture of cttool, mystery, violence and
charisma. That he was “gifted” with
unbreakable adamantium claws didn’t hurt.

5 6
BEAST ICEMAN
Simian strength and agility – including very Honest, unlucky-in-love, emotionally (and
large hands and feet – combined with real physically) transparent “little brother” of
intelligence and learning made the Beast the original X-Men team, Bobby Drake was
more than the “Thing, part two” that he was the Human Torch’s freezing opposite,
initially depicted as; his assorted blue-furred sliding around on roller-coasters of ice.
further mutations make him amongst the Amazingly, his personality remains largely
most intriguing of X-Men. undeveloped after 50 years.
7
ANGEL
Eventual loser to Scott Summers in Marvel’s
first major superhero love triangle, handsome
blue-blood Warren Worthington III kept his
magnificent wings hidden by means of a few
cunning straps and did equally well to
convince us that the power of flight alone
could be a big deal in the Marvel Universe.

54 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions


8 9
NIGHTCRAWLER
Kurt Wagner, light-hearted adventurer with
the looks of a devil and hidden heartbreak,
acted as foil to the X-Men’s more intense
characters during the Claremont era; a strong
visual, and with clear potential for intriguing
depth, he’s been one of the more inexplicably
sidelined X-Men of recent years.
10
COLOSSUS
This super-strong metallic giant – in reality
humble, highly moral Russian farmboy Piotr
Rasputin – was initially expected to be the big
star of the new X-Men, but nobody had quite
anticipated the Wolverine effect. Despite a
long period when he was missing, believed
dead, he remains a major X-Man.
13
PSYLOCKE
With a stupidly convoluted background – the
Japanese ninja-alike is actually a nice English
girl at heart. Captain Britain’s telepathic sister
Betsy Braddock gets by on a mix of
contrasting messages and extreme hotness.
Her semi-Asian rebirth was one of the most
effective character makeovers in comics.
www.sfx.co.uk
STORM
Serene on the surface but really as
unpredictable as the weather she controls,
Ororo Munroe is one of Marvel’s greatest
female heroes. Independent, occasionally
spiky and very capable, she was the first
major black female superhero – and remains
the most important, and the easiest to love.
11
KITTY PRYDE
Though her codename is Shadowcat, most
know the initially early-teenage “kid sister”
X-Man by her regular name: fitting, for one
of the most relatable, interesting and likeable
of mutants. Central to many of the great
X-Men stories, she’s the chatty, all-too-real
four-colour equivalent to Buffy Summers.
14
GAMBIT
Gambit is one of the most polarising
characters in comics: you either love him or
hate him. Edward Cullen fans adore his
troubled, bad-guy-trying-to-be-good shtick;
others find his long coats, stick, card-
throwing skills and Cajun accent the most
laughable thing in comics. You decide.
the main X-MEN
12
ROGUE
With a badger-like shock of white in her hair,
outrageous accent and intriguing can’t-dare-
touch-anyone absorption powers, the
X-Men’s highly sexualised Southern belle was
one of the most successful later additions to
the team – not least as she coincided with the
’90s trend for “Good Girl” art.
15
EMMA FROST
Just about the most brazen heroine in
comics – sporting wedding-night lingerie as
day wear, and still rocking the snarky,
cutting personality she exhibited as a
villain – E mma “The White Queen” Frost has
been the most intriguing, entertaining
addition to the X-Men line-up in years.
X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 55
 The silver-haired speed machine is set
to appear in Days Of Future Past and
next year’s Avengers: Age Of Ultron.
Alasdair Stuart finds out how he’s
managed to join two superteams…
(We open on a long blackboard filled with complex
equations, character names and one or two games
of Hangman. At one end is AVENGERS: AGE
OF ULTRON. At the other is X-MEN: DAYS
OF FUTURE PAST. In the middle is a very
large question mark. At one end, Fox Mulder is
writing 1947, THE TUNGUSKA EVENT and
CALIFORNICATION?)
From the ashes
(Film viewer enters)
FV “Oi! Mulder, scarper!”
(Comics reader enters)
CR: “You rang?”
FV: “I did. You know how you read comics
and know stuff about them?”
CR: “I do. And I also know how you don’t
read comics, but tremendously enjoy comic
related movies.”
(Both turn to camera, holding up a sign saying:
GEEKDOM HAS NO MINIMUM HEIGHT
REQUIREMENT, FOLKS. LOVE WHAT YOU
LOVE. And then turn back to each other.)
FV: “I need a hand with this Quicksilver thing.”
56 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION
CR: “Which Quicksilver thing?”
FV: “Both of them. All of it. Him. Why is
he in two sets of movies from two different
studios? How do they relate? Do they relate?
Silver hair? Is there going to be a crossover? Is
he going to run so fast he Yosemite Sams off one
screen and onto another?”
CR: “Where would you like me to start?”
FV: “The beginning?”
CR: “Good place to start. The reason why he can
appear in both X-Men and Avengers movies is
actually quite simple. Fox, the studio which is
making the X-Men movies owns the rights to the
X-Men characters. Disney/Marvel owns the rights
to the Avengers characters. Quicksilver, and his
sister Scarlet Witch, have been in both groups so
both studios can legally use them.”
FV: “So which one’s the real Quicksilver?”
CR: “Both. Let’s talk origin stories, maybe that’ll
help. Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch first appeared
in X-Men #4 back in 1964. When they first showed
up, created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, they were
members of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.
So, their first appearance was in the X-Men, as
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
 quicksilver: X-Man Or Avenger?

Aaron Taylor-Johnson as
Quicksilver in Age Of Ultron.

villains. That’s important, especially as later plots

focused on the revelation that they were in fact,
Magneto’s children!”
FV: “TWIST!”
CR: “I know, right?! The question of their
parentage has been the source of decades
of lovely juicy X-angst. They were raised by
Django and Marya Maximoff, a gypsy couple,
but Magneto claimed to be their biological father.
As did golden age hero the Whizzer.”
FV: “The Whizzer?”
CR: “It was a simpler time. The final pay-off was
that they were in fact Magneto’s children. His
wife, Magda, became increasingly terrified of her
husband and fled, leaving her children in the care
of a woman called Bova, who was evolved from a
cow by the High Evolutionary.”
FV: “Whoa there, Tex. Cow ladies? The High
Evolutionary?”
CR: “The High Evolutionary; a version of the
Master with a smidge more ethics and a lot more
purple in his wardrobe. Also, endearingly, from
Manchester so I always imagine him with John
Simm’s voice. Anyway, he’s a firm believer in
Quicksilver and his little
sister (allegedly) in DOFP.
evolution and genetic manipulation, hence Bova
who’s actually a really cool, sweet character. She
delivered Magda’s kids, and also Miss America’s
kid (Miss America being Mrs the Whizzer who was “later plots focused on the revelation
there at the same time). Miss America’s child was
stillborn, but Magda’s lived and ended up being that quicksilver and scarlet witch were,
given to the Maximoffs to raise as their own.”
FV: “So that’s the version we’re going to see in in fact, Magneto’s children”
www.sfx.co.uk X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 57

X-Men: Days Of Future Past?”
CR: “You have a dog, his name is Bingo. Now,
there’s some speculation that Quicksilver’s just a
guy Logan knows in the future but I suspect the
parentage thing will at least be addressed.”
FV: “So that’s their X-appearance sorted. How are
they Avengers?”
CR: “Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch appeared in
Avengers #16 in May 1965. By this stage they’d
reformed and were recruited by Iron Man to help
bolster the Avengers’ ranks.”
FV: “How’d that go?”
CR: “Not well. Quicksilver, in the comics, is written
as arrogant and impatient due to how he perceives
time. He was the team’s designated, ‘Haughty,
excellently-coiffed’ member for years. Nowadays,
he’s a member of X-Factor, a corporate-sponsored
superteam and, mostly, a good guy.”
FV: “They could do an X-Factor special! Have both
58 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION
Evan Peters sporting
Toad-style goggles.
Scarlet Witch is in
Age Of Ultron too.
actors audition, or race, to see who’s the definitive
Quicksilver!”
CR: “Somewhere Simon Cowell has just woken up,
laughing, smelling fresh money.”
FV: “So that’s how Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch
can both be Avengers too?”
CR: “Yep.”
FV: “But there’s no Magneto in the Avengers
movies.”
CR [Nodding]: “Exactly! No Magneto, and no
Whizzer (although that’d be a twist and a half )
so who are the parents? Now, while a nod to
Magneto would be a nice little Easter egg, I don’t
think we’re getting that. Here’s why. The origin of
the ‘twins’ that we see in that teaser scene seems
to imply that they’ve been given their powers by
Loki’s sceptre. That makes a ton of sense for the
movies as Scarlet Witch has hex and later chaos
magic abilities that just don’t fit in the current
Holy cow!
That’s Bova.
Marvel universe. So who’s Dad? I reckon it must be
Baron Strucker.”
FV: “Science monocle guy in the teaser?”
CR: “Yep. Now, Strucker, in the comics, has twins,
Andreas and Andrea von Strucker. He modifies
their genetic structure in the womb to give
them powers and they work together under the
codename Fenris.”
FV: “Textbook Nazi science assholery.”
CR: “Absolutely. There’s no evidence for this, yet,
but it would make a lot of sense for the version of
Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch we see in Age Of
Ultron to be Strucker’s kids. Instant origin story, no
need for any complicated crossover.”
FV: “That’s where I agree with Simon Kinberg,
the scriptwriter on Days Of Future Past. He’s said
he’s trusting the audience to either figure it out or
be more concerned with enjoying the movie than
working out where it fits with anything else. So, a
crossover? Yeah, one day I’m sure. But not today.”
CR: “Cool, thanks for that. Anything else on your
mind?”
FV: “The silver hair?”
CR: “Well, he is called Quicksilver.”
FV: “But by that token Silver Fox should have
grey hair.”
CR: “Just be quiet.”
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
 quicksilver: X-Man Or Avenger?

Quicksilver’s fast
with his fists too.

Our money’s
on Quicksilver.

www.sfx.co.uk X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 59

 X-MEN WORDS BY: JAYNE NELSON

KEY
A spe cia l
scene -by-sc ene
TRIVIA Interesting
X-Men factoids break dow n.
Wa rni ng!
int ens ely pac ked
wit h tri via
DID YOU SPOT?
Missed moments

WTF?! Did that

X-MEN
really happen?!

GOOFS Bloopers
and gaffes

IN-JOKES
Mutant gags Year 2000
Director Bryan Singer
Writers Tom DeSanto,
Bryan Singer, David Hayter
Wolverine RAGE Starring Patrick Stewart,
This happens a lot
Hugh Jackman, Ian McKellen, Halle Berry,
Famke Janssen, James Marsden,
Bruce Davison, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos,
SHIRTLESS
Ray Park, Anna Paquin
Phwoooaaar!

DRINKING
GAME

ONE DRINK
n
Wolverine’s claws
come out.
n
Professor X smiles a
small, knowing smile.
TWO DRINKS
n
Mystique
shapeshifts and fools
someone.
n
Magneto or Charles
call each other “old
friend” (or variations
thereof).
THREE DRINKS
n
Cyclops and Logan
bitch at each other or
about each other.
n
There’s something
that doesn’t quite
mesh continuity-wise
with the prequels/
sequels/rest of the
franchise.

60 SFX X-MEN special edition Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions


Patrick Stewart was the first actor
to be cast as a mutant – he’d been a
fan-favourite for the role since the ’90s.
0:00:30 The film opens as Charles Xavier
narrates: “Mutation. It is the key to our
evolution. It has enabled us to evolve from a
single-celled organism into the dominant
species on the planet.” X-Men, then. Popular
with Creationists? We assume not.
0:01:00 It’s odd to see a Marvel film open
without the now-iconic Marvel flickbook
logo. It’s difficult to believe that this was
one of the first superhero movies to really
break the market – well, after that little chap
from Krypton made us believe a man could fly
in the ’70s, anyway.
0:01:51 The story opens in Poland in 1944, at the
concentration camp where we’re introduced to
young Erik Lehnsherr – although for the
purposes of this film, he’s been renamed Eric
Lensherr. These scenes are recreated in the
opening moments of X-Men: First Class, but are
expanded upon further: with that in mind, as
you watch them here you can’t help but
wonder if Kevin Bacon’s Sebastian Shaw is
lurking off-camera, just waiting to get his mitts
on proto-Magneto…
0:03:10 Kudos to actress Rhona Shekter,
who – as Erik’s mother – screams with
impressive gusto as her little boy is taken away
from her. That’s assuming, of course, that the
screams weren’t dubbed on later in ADR by
www.sfx.co.uk
someone else. Never take anything for granted
in showbiz, actors!
0:03:20 Hang on, those screams seem to run in
the family, because young Erik, played by Brett
Morris, has got some serious lungs on him, too!
He throws out a hand and magically bends the
metal gates in the first example of mutant
abilities we get to see in the entire franchise.
It’s also a clever little scene, effectively
grounding the superhuman powers of mutants
against the ultra-serious concentration camps
of the Second World War: proving that you
can’t brush off this universe as “silly kids” stuff.
0:04:32 We now meet teen Marie (Anna Paquin),
living an ordinary life and dreaming of travelling
the world as she flirts with her boyfriend (just
check out that little bum-wiggle as she kneels
on the bed!). Poor Marie. We get the feeling
things are about to get difficult for her...
0:05:13 …although not quite as difficult as
they get for her poor beau, who locks
lips with her and then finds the life
sucked out of him (we find out later he spends
three weeks in a coma – that was some kiss!).
And this right here, folks, is what made the
X-Men such a huge hit in the ’60s when they
launched. DC’s Superman was an alien and
Batman was a millionaire; hard to identify with
if you’re an ordinary teenager, although they’re
X-MEN
Rogue’s first kiss:
literally breathtaking.
obviously great in their own ways. But the
X-Men were just like us. Is there a single person
who has ever picked up a Marvel comic – or, in
this case, watched a Marvel movie – who didn’t
wonder at some point if their first kiss would
go horribly wrong? Who didn’t worry that their
partner would think they were a freak? By
tapping into the minds of teenagers (and
adults), Marvel made superheroes we could all
believe in.
0:06:05 And now we’re at the US Capitol
building, watching Jean Grey (Famke Janssen)
make a speech about how “heightened
emotional stress” at puberty can trigger
changes that can create mutant abilities. Ah,
puberty. How we all wished for superpowers
when we hit ours. And how we all failed to get
them. (Well, presumably…)
0:06:20 Senator Kelly (Bruce Davison)
asks if mutants are dangerous. So thus
we discover that in this universe, people
already know that they exist; they aren’t a
secret race. After watching X-Men: First Class
and X-Men: Days Of Future Past, we now
understand why humanity knows that mutants
are real. In fact, there’s already talk of making
them register their abilities: a neat parallel to
the first scenes, with the Jews herded into
Auschwitz wearing their cloth stars. Who said
superhero movies can’t tackle Big Themes, eh?
X-MEN special edition SFX 61
 “Hold still, you’ve got
spinach in your teeth.”
Anyone for tennis?
0:07:00 “There’s a girl in Illinois who can
walk through walls. Now what’s to stop
her walking into a bank vault? Or into
the White House?” The girl Kelly is referring to
is, of course, Kitty Pryde, born in Deerfield,
Illinois. Also, if he’s worried about the White
House, wait till he gets a load of Nightcrawler in
X-Men 2…
0:08:40 Charles (Patrick Stewart) and Eric (Ian
McKellen) talk, and we realise that Charles can
read minds. When Stewart took the role of
Xavier it landed smack-bang in between Star
Trek: Insurrection and Star Trek: Nemesis –
clearly he made a good career move, because
as much as we all love Jean-Luc Picard, his time
was clearly past. Now is the time of the
mutants. Eric agrees: “We’re the future, Charles,
not them. They no longer matter!” Hear hear.
Although McKellen also had Gandalf up his
sleeve as he filmed this, so he’s clearly hedging
his bets.
0:09:47 The trucker who gives Marie a lift
is George Buza, who provided the voice
of Hank McCoy in the X-Men animated
series between 1992-97.
0:10:20 Our first real look at Hugh
Jackman’s Logan, aka Wolverine –
shirtless, of course, thus setting a
62 SFX X-MEN special edition
precedent that has lasted 14 years and shows
no sign of abating. He looks very young. And
kind of grumpy. Also, he’s smoking – you don’t
see that in many movies these days…
0:12:40 A news report on the TV over the
bar mentions that the largest meeting
of world leaders in history is about to
happen on New York’s Ellis Island. This may or
may not be important later in the film. Or it
could just be background chatter we can totally
forget about. Place your bets!
0:13:20 Our very first glimpse of Logan’s
claws, which shoot out from his
knuckles when he’s approached by a
guy looking for a fight. It’s fascinating to see
here that he seems to be able to adjust how
quickly they move, as the middle blade moves
more slowly than the others to press into the
guy’s neck.
0:13:40 Every time Wolverine’s claws
pop out in the comic books, the word
“snikt” is used to describe the noise
they make. “Snikt” became such a well-known
word that it even inspired a series named
Wolverine: Snikt! in 2003. If you fancy watching
a YouTube video of every time Wolverine’s
unsheathed his claws on film, search for “Every
Wolverine Claw Snikt Supercut” and you’ll find
Malcolm X to Prof X’s
Martin Luther King.
someone who’s edited them all together for
you. Isn’t the internet wonderful?
0:16:26 Marie introduces herself to Logan: “I’m
Rogue.” It’s a good name to choose, but let’s
hope she realises that when she goes to
Starbucks, the barista will always misspell it
as “Rouge”.
0:17:37 “When they come out... does it
hurt?” asks Rogue, staring at Logan’s
now-healed knuckles. “Every time,” he
replies. Now remember this, folks. Every time
Wolverine unsheathes his claws, it hurts. Every.
Time. In all the movies, right across the board,
he feels those blades grind against his bones
and rip through his flesh. Sure, he’s had a long
time to get used to it, but... ouch.
0:18:15 The van crashes and Logan
goes flying through the windscreen in a
way that’s frankly rather ridiculous
when you consider how fast the vehicle was
actually moving...
0:19:27 Logan sniffs the air, senses
danger and unleashes his claws. A
heightened sense of smell is one of his
powers, although – barring two uses in this
movie – he doesn’t seem to use it much. Maybe
all those cigars have dulled his nostrils a tad.
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions

0:19:30 Not so much a “goof” as a total
indifference to continuity, really. Here,
Sabretooth attacks Logan and it’s clear
they’ve never met. And yet if you watch X-Men
Origins: Wolverine later, you’ll discover that
Sabretooth and Logan are actually half-
brothers (and Sabretooth used to be Liev
Schreiber). It’s probably the biggest continuity
eff-up in the entire franchise, and what’s even
more annoying is that nobody’s thought to
explain it at any point.
0:20:30 Our first sighting of Storm (Halle Berry)
and Cyclops (James Marsden). First
impressions? Wow, that’s a hugely
unconvincing wig Halle Berry is wearing. Still,
rest assured the barnet improves as the films
go on, as does she.
0:20:58 Ray Park’s Toad turns up. We
don’t need to tell you that he was Darth
Maul, do we? Naw.
0:21:20 Sabretooth goes to report to
Magneto, who has a Newton’s Cradle on
his desk – you know, those metal balls
that hang on wires and swing. Only these ones
aren’t on wires or a frame: they’re just knocking
against each other in thin air, controlled by
Magneto’s mind. Does he keep that thing going
at all times? Does he have to concentrate on
www.sfx.co.uk
keeping it moving while he’s talking to people?
And they say men can’t multitask!
0:22:05 “Come! The UN summit is approaching,”
says Magneto. “Time for our little test!” Oh, so it
was important! We’d never have guessed from
that totally random-seeming news broadcast
earlier! And the second Magneto leaves the
room, the balls fall dead and roll around on the
floor. So that answers that question. (Also, the
cleaning lady might do a comedy pratfall on
one of the balls later. Who knows?)
0:22:12 Wolverine lies on Jean’s medical
table, still unconscious. Given what we
know about him now, it seems odd that
he was out for so long just from one punch...
0:22:40 Jean sticks him with a needle and Logan
leaps up, snapping it in his arm. A thousand
needle-phobes yell: “Ouch!” and hide their eyes.
0:23:02 Logan, still shirtless, runs around
corridors before eventually finding a hoodie.
And it is at this point that we notice that Hugh
Jackman has remarkably small nipples. Go on,
look. You’ll never un-see them.
0:25:20 There’s the aforementioned Kitty
Pryde, running through the door of
Professor X’s classroom! In later films
X-MEN
Look at Jackman
holding his belly in.
she’s played by Ellen Page, but here she’s
portrayed by Sumela Kay.
0:28:10 One student creates a fireball to
impress Rogue. This is Pyro, who’ll play
a bigger role in later films. Then he’ll be
played by Aaron Stanford; here Alexander
Burton fills the one-line role.
0:29:11 “When I was 17, I met a young
man named Erik Lensherr.” Shhhh,
pretend you didn’t hear Charles say
that. Or at least pretend that James McAvoy is
much, much younger than he looks in X-Men:
First Class.
0:30:09 Senator Kelly arrives at an airport
to be greeted by fans waving anti-
mutant placards. Our favourite reads:
“Send mutants to the moon for ever!” Tsk.
“Forever” is one word. Let’s send people who
can’t use grammar properly to the moon.
0:31:23 Mystique, brought to gorgeously blue life
by Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, kidnaps the
Senator. Her voice has some peculiar vibrato on
it – was she going through an experimental
phase? Romijn-Stamos says she didn’t have
much fun filming X-Men: determined to keep
her look a secret, the filmmakers kept her in her
trailer so she wasn’t able to socialise.
X-MEN special edition SFX 63

0:32:20 “So, couldn’t wait to get my shirt
off again, huh?” says Logan to Jean.
Well, at least they’ve acknowledged that
propensity for nudity now.
0:35:57 Comedy squawk alert! Toad
catches a bird with his tongue and it
really is very, very silly. As is Kelly’s
“Yuk!” Those concentration camp scenes from
the start suddenly seem rather far away.
0:38:40 Okay, so in the script the idea of
Rogue overhearing Logan having a
nightmare and then going in to help
him must have seemed like a good idea. But
on screen... well, first we have to assume that
their rooms are right beside each other and
that the walls are paper-thin. Then we have
to wonder why she doesn’t just assume
he’s doing something naughty (because
let’s face it, the noises he’s making sound a
little rude). And then we have to accept that
she’d go in and lean right over him instead
of calling his name loudly, or turning on the
light, or just kicking the bed. So frankly, it’s all
a bit ludicrous.
0:39:31 However, that said... the
images from Logan’s nightmare
do look terrifying (the
champagne glasses being handed around while
64 SFX X-MEN special edition
There’s a wig/eyebrow
mismatch going on here.
he’s suffering are probably the worst bit), and
the fact he wakes up and impales Rogue on his
claws is extremely dramatic. So this is a
shocking scene, all in all.
0:43:40 EXCELSIOR! Stan Lee cameos as a hot
dog vendor in his very first Marvel film spot!
(Also, can we just mention that when the
reporter on the TV says “gayla” instead of
“gala”, it’s very irritating?)
0:44:50 Mystique – disguised as Bobby – tells
Rogue to leave. Shawn Ashmore does a mean
job of perfecting her icy stare; you can tell
quite quickly that it’s not him, although poor
Rogue has no idea.
0:47:54 “She’s at the train station,”
observes Charles, after wasting
countless dollars of electricity using
Cerebro to find Rogue when, really, let’s face it,
the train station was an incredibly obvious
place for her to be.
0:50:00 Mystique shifts to become
Charles so that Cerebro’s retina-
detector lets her into the room.
Watching this originally, it was a bit of a
puzzle how she even knew Charles, let alone
well enough to replicate the blood vessels in
his eyes. After First Class, we now know that
Ray Park swaps horns
for green hair and
a 15ft tongue. Icky.
Snikt!
they grew up together. While some of the
issues thrown up by the prequels really do test
continuity between the films, some genuinely
help it.
0:52:15 Here’s a lovely moment: Scott
notices a little boy grinning at him, so
he grins back – and then the kid’s mum
sees that he’s a mutant and hurries him away.
It’s a bittersweet example of prejudice and no
doubt all too recognisable to anyone who’s
suffered it in real life. Additionally, it was an
ad-lib; the kid kept grinning at Marsden, so
Bryan Singer filmed the scene with his smile
and then made the mother take him off to add
some poignancy.
0:52:30 Sabretooth grabs Storm by the
throat and grunts at her. He’s played
here by former wrestler Tyler Mane,
most recently seen as Michael Myers in the
remake of Halloween II.
0:52:43 At last we get a real sense of
what Cyclops and Storm can do with
their powers: blast the roof off a
building and create a bolt of lightning. Quite
how nobody in the station dies from all the
flying rubble and coursing electricity is a
mystery, though. (Unless they just didn’t tell us
about them. Poor bystanders!)
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions

0:53:56 Tearing apart a train carriage like he’s
opening a can of sardines, Magneto proves that
he really knows how to make an entrance.
When he widens Wolverine’s blades it’s a truly
horrible moment, and Jackman sells it with
every grimace; grunting and pulling faces as
the metal moves. This is also the film’s biggest
twist, as we realise that Magneto is after Rogue,
not Logan. The plot thickens!
0:54:03 Wolverine gets his claws out as
Magneto approaches him. He also
nearly skewers the little boy sitting by
him. That would’ve been awkward.
0:58:44 Storm sounds African as she
talks in this scene: this was Berry trying
to reference some of the character’s
backstory. Unfortunately it simply sounds odd,
and was later dropped.
0:59:07 “Magneto’s right, there’s a war
coming,” says Logan to Storm. “Are you
sure you’re on the right side?” One of
the strengths of the X-Men films is that
Magneto – the traditional bad guy – actually
has a really good point when he claims that the
government is going to tattoo numbers on
mutants and treat them the way the Nazis
treated the Jews. As the films progress, that’s
more or less what happens, and you can’t
www.sfx.co.uk
Apparently the yellow
contacts were quite painful
and hard to see through.
Jean’s all burnt out.
blame him for wanting to fight against that,
having already lived through it once. The only
thing he’s doing wrong, really, is using violence,
whereas Charles urges a Martin Luther King-
style peace. In this scenario, Magneto is
Malcolm X.
1:03:03 Senator Kelly’s blob-water death
is really quite disturbing. It was also
quite advanced for the CGI of the year
2000: VFX director Sean Cunningham said it
took 39 hours to create each frame. The result
is hugely effective, though. Also? Ewwwwww.
1:04:09 Charles uses Cerebro and gets zapped
because Mystique has booby-trapped it. Note:
when he’s lying shirtless on Jean’s medical
table, they cover him with a sheet. Nobody
covers Logan with a sheet, do they?
1:05:15 Scott has a little talk with the
unconscious Charles, saying how much he
means to him. James Marsden doesn’t get
much to do in these films except exchange
wisecracks and look jealous, so it’s nice to see
him getting a few extra lines.
1:06:20 So far Mystique has flown a
helicopter, rewired Cerebro, slapped a
Senator unconscious with her feet, and
now she’s sailing a boat. What a gal!
X-MEN
In the films Cerebro
fills an entire room.
1:08:40 “I’ll raise it,” says Magneto of his
machine, and then presumably uses his
mind powers to ascend it to the top of
the Statue Of Liberty and attach it to her torch.
But why didn’t anybody notice that happening?
The entire area is crawling with security and
the Statue Of Liberty is well-lit. Maybe the cops
were all taking a doughnut break?
1:09:34 The dialogue gets fairly witty around this
point. “You actually go outside in these things?”
grumbles Logan of his new leather X-Man
outfit. “What would you prefer,” asks Scott,
“yellow Spandex?” It is odd to imagine this
self-aware, surly Wolverine squeezing himself
into his traditional comics costume...
1:10:18 Logan checks that he can still get
his claws out while wearing gloves. Yes
he can.
1:10:40 The X-Jet flies under one of New
York’s bridges. Storm whips up some
fog to keep them hidden, yet everybody
around the bridge has already seen them. Er…
1:12:11 Wolverine sets off a metal
detector at the bottom of the Statue Of
Liberty. He shuts it up by – what else? –
stabbing it with his claws. He’d be handy to
have around if you had a faulty smoke alarm.
X-MEN special edition SFX 65

No mention of
being Logan’s bro.
Storm has her way
with the weather.
1:12:56 A double-snikt here, as
Wolverine fights with Wolverine! Or to
be exact, Wolverine fights with
Mystique, who’s pretending to be Wolverine.
This scene also raises an interesting point that
isn’t handled at all in the film: when he slices
off her claws, she screams as though she’s in
pain, and so we have to presume that she lost
a body part. But later she seems fine. What
were those claws?
1:13:25 Some kudos to Ray Park here for
attacking Jean and Storm with a split-kick
while hanging in mid-air. He manages to make
it look so easy...
1:14:30 After Toad has thrown Storm
down an elevator shaft, he twirls a pole
(very Darth Maul...) and then strikes a
pose that seems to make absolutely no sense,
as nobody is looking at him. Toad, it seems, is a
right little show-off.
1:14:51 Wolverine leaps into the air to attack
and becomes Mystique halfway through his
flight. An FX shot so marvellous you almost
want to cheer when you watch. Come to think
of it: you’re not in the cinema any more. Go
ahead! Woohoo!
66 SFX X-MEN special edition
1:15:33 We’d like to take a moment to point out
that during this fight scene, the stunt double
for Rebecca Romijn-Stamos is basically naked
barring a layer of blue paint and some plastic
bits, and so she couldn’t wear padding to
protect herself. Boy, did she earn her money
during this fight…
1:16:00 And oh dear, now we come to a
sad misstep. Storm announces what
happens when a toad gets struck by
lightning: “The same thing that happens to
everything else.” Er, what? Is that supposed to
be a punchline? Famously, this line was written
by Joss Whedon, and he was very unhappy
with it as well. He told the AV Club in 2001:
“Everybody remembers that as the worst line
ever written, but the thing about that is, it was
supposed to be delivered as completely
offhand. [Adopts casual, bored tone.] ‘You
know what happens when a toad gets hit by
lightning?’ Then, after he gets electrocuted,
‘Ahhh, pretty much the same thing that
happens to anything else.’ But Halle Berry said
it like she was Desdemona. [Strident, ringing
voice.] ‘The same thing that happens to
everything eeelse!’ That’s the thing that makes
you go crazy. At least ‘You’re a dick,’ got
delivered right. The worst thing about these
Gritted teeth and
clenched fists.
things is that, when the actors say it wrong, it
makes the writer look stupid.”
1:17:40 You know, it’s a good thing that
when Wolverine stabs Mystique and she
falls to the floor, her leg falls just so,
ensuring that you can’t see her Mystique-
minge. What are the odds?
1:17:58 Thankfully, to reset the groans after that
awful Toad line, here’s the best exchange of the
film: “It’s me!” announces Wolverine. “Prove it,”
snaps Cyclops. Wolvie replies: “You’re a dick.”
Bravo, Mr Whedon.
1:21:12 Magneto, after imprisoning our
heroes, walks around the Statue Of
Liberty’s torch. Now, we can’t say we’re
experts on iconic metal statues and their
maintenance, but surely it would be covered in
bird poop? There’s none there. Not even a
splash. Perhaps American birds know better
than to empty their bird-bowels over the most
famous green lady in history?
1:21:24 Wolverine unleashes his claws to
stab through his own body to release
his metal bonds. By god, he’s a tough
one, isn’t he?
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
 X-MEN

Yep, it’s a long way up.

1:22:05 Sabretooth gets a bellyful. That’s
your half-brother you just stabbed,
Logan! Although, um, we’re supposed
to have forgotten that...
1:22:26 Wolverine unleashes the claws
atop Lady Liberty’s head with New York
in the background. Very pretty.
1:23:43 Perhaps we missed something
here, or perhaps Magneto is just more
powerful than we gave him credit for,
but does anyone understand how he manages
to pull away from Rogue before she kills him?
Nobody else seemed able to do it!
1:29:35 Logan lies on the bed swathed in
bandages but yes, he’s still shirtless. It
must be warm in that underground lab,
mustn’t it?
1:31:40 So apparently when Mystique
impersonates Senator Kelly, her eyes
glow like a cat when a camera flash
goes off. This is the mutant, remember, who
could change the blood vessels in her eyes
to fool a retina scan. Would she really be
that careless?
1:33:08 When Logan looks over at Scott’s bike
and decides to steal it, he raises his eyebrow.
And for the record, it’s the best eyebrow-raise
since the days of ’60s Spock. Jackman, we
salute your brows.
1:33:50 Charles and Erik play chess
together in Erik’s cell. We see them
do this in the prequels, too, with
James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender, and
it’s clear from their exchange here that they
really have known each other for a long time.
It’s rather nice to know the background to
their relationship. Of course, rumour has it that
neither Stewart nor McKellen had the faintest
clue how to play chess when they first shot
these scenes.

1:23:59 “Hey bub, I’m not finished with

you yet.” It’s about time Wolverine got
around to saying “bub”, seeing as it’s his
CITE-O-METER™ Wolverine Rogue lives!
comics catchphrase. While he only says it once THRILLED Vs Mystique
Old friends
in this film, it’ll come up more and more as his play chess
movies continue. ENTERTAINED Wolverine Nightmares
and claws X-Jet and
END

cage-fight leather suits “You’re

1:27:33 Michael Kamen’s score hasn’t made too
much of an impact during this film, but here it
NODDING OFF a dick.”
The school for Magneto
comes into its own as Logan struggles to keep
Rogue alive – those violins really give it some
ZZ Z Z Z Z Z Z Z …
Z
gifted mutants boards the train Toads and
lightning
welly. If there’s one thing this film does need, RUNNING TIME (MINS) 0 20 40 60 80 100 120
though, it’s a hummable theme.

www.sfx.co.uk X-MEN special edition SFX 67

 ENEMIES MINE
Over the years the X-Men have fought every
big hitter in the Marvel universe but none keep
coming back quite like these guys… This art icle was
orig inal ly pub lish ed
in Com ic HEr oes
issu e 19

MAGNETO
One of the greatest of all comic book
villains, he fights for mutant rights and
survival in the most bullish of fashions, his
clear charisma sometimes proving as much
of a threat as his extreme magnetic powers.
Every time a rogue nation rattles a saber on
the nightly news we think of him.

CASSANDRA NOVA
From the controversial Grant Morrison
SENTINELS
run comes the most potent (if potentially Perhaps the greatest creation of the X-Men books
confusing) new X-villain in decades: are their most powerful, implacable, enduring
Charles Xavier’s genocidal dark shadow,
his sort-of twin sister strangled in the
enemy – giant, mutant-hunting robots. Though
womb but clinging to life anyway, and without individual personality, these cold, unfeeling
now desperate to destroy everything he agents of an agenda of extermination or control are
holds dear.
amongst the best of villains.
68 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION
 the mutant menace

JUGGERNAUT
An unstoppable physical
force, and mystically
gifted too, Cain Marko
was introduced as
a replacement for
Magneto, but never BROTHERHOOD OF MUTANTS
quite had the stones for First appearing as Magneto’s followers, the Brotherhood has since been depicted as more
of a mutant terrorist group. Always shown as at odds with the X-Men, their importance has
it. A strong visual, his faded – though splinter cells are always making a comeback.
personality – and the
degree of sympathy he
earns – seems to change
with the wind.

APOCALYPSE
The great villain of the ’80s was this
extremely long-lived bruiser, obsessed
by Darwinian survival of the fittest;
his powers are vague, his motivations
murky, his origin unlikely, but his
strange visual, constant manipulations,
and semi-rational credo make him
formidable nonetheless.
MR SINISTER
Mr Sinister was originally
designed to be the
frontman for the real
bad guy: an apparently
11-year-old boy, who
was ageing incredibly
slowly. But with a
new creative team HELLFIRE CLUB
The inner circle of this decadent private
this was dropped, and members club sought to subvert and
the eventual version control the Jean Grey Phoenix to their own
became a strangely camp ends. Turns out that was a bad idea. Still,
Sebastian Shaw and Emma Frost had their
19th century scientist starts here, and the big “Mastermind” reveal
obsessed with evolution. is one of the great X-Men moments.

www.sfx.co.uk X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 69

 X-MEN WORDS BY: JAYNE NELSON

KEY
TRIVIA Interesting
X-Men factoids

DID YOU SPOT?

Missed moments

WTF?! Did that

really happen?!

GOOFS Bloopers
and gaffes

IN-JOKES
Mutant gags

Wolverine RAGE
This happens a lot

A sp ec ia l
sc ene -b y- sc ene
SHIRTLESS
Phwoooaaar!
br eak do w n.
Wa rn in g!
in ten se ly pa cke d
DRINKING w it h tr iv ia
GAME

ONE DRINK
n Jean uses her
powers.

TWO DRINKS

x-men 2
n Mystique is

generally fabulous.
n Teenage angst.

Year 2003
THREE DRINKS Director Bryan Singer
n Nightcrawler bamfs.
n Charles wears a
Writers Zak Penn, David Hayter,
Davros hat.
Bryan Singer, Michael Dougherty, Dan Harris
Starring Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman,
Ian McKellen, Halle Berry, Famke Janssen,
James Marsden, Anna Paquin

70 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions


Now you see him.
Bamf! Now you don’t.
0:00:27 Why, hello, Marvel flicker-logo! It’s
comforting to see it there after it failed to
appear on X-Men.
0:00:45 Having Patrick Stewart do a voiceover,
just as he did for the first movie, is a good
introduction for any film. One problem,
however: doing it over a starscape? It’s a little
bit Star Trek, isn’t it?
0:03:50 Well, this is embarrassing. We sat down
with our notebook intending to make lots of
informative, instructive and interesting
comments about Nightcrawler’s explosive
entrance into the Oval Office, but instead we
just ended up unable to take our eyes off the
screen long enough to write anything. This
sequence is astonishing: possibly even the
finest moment in the X-Men franchise.
0:04:25 And then Nightcrawler enters the Oval
Office itself, and the slow-motion fight that
follows is truly sublime. On first glance, Alan
Cummings’ Nightcrawler is terrifying – it’s only
later that we discover he’s a softy. So, yes, to
sum up: this is one hell of a way to open a film.
0:06:40 Wolverine is visiting the snow-
covered Alkali Lake. In case you think
that’s a strange name, it’s a real place in
the just as strangely-named Cariboo, British
Columbia. There’s also an Alkali Lake in
www.sfx.co.uk
Oregon and another one in Montana. It’s
worth bearing in mind, however, that for
X-Men 2 the lake used as a location was
Barrier Lake in Alberta.
0:07:23 We see Storm teaching during a study
trip. Her wig is much, much better now and
Halle Berry gets a much better slice of the cake
in this film, making Storm a far more interesting
character. Also? No lines about Toads.
0:07:30 The kid who sticks a forked
tongue out at a rude little girl (serves
her right) is Artie Maddicks (Bryce
Hodgson), a character who debuted in the
comics in 1986 in X-Factor #2.
0:08:35 Jean has a weird psychic moment and
Scott comes over to see if she’s okay. If you
didn’t know that Scott wore those glasses
because he’s a mutant, you’d simply assume
he’s one of those annoying people who wear
their sunglasses inside because they think it
makes them look cool.
0:09:38 We meet Pyro again, only now
he’s played by Aaron Stanford. You
might know him if you watched TV
series Nikita, where he played computer whiz
Seymour, and his latest big role is as James
Cole (the character Bruce Willis once played) in
the TV version of 12 Monkeys.
X-MEN 2
He’s just showing off
in front of Rogue.
Musical statues
at the museum.
0:10:57 Professor X wheels into the food court
and reveals that he’s frozen everybody in place.
He has some serious powers, doesn’t he?
0:11:42 Back at Xavier’s School For Gifted
Youngsters, and the location has
changed from the last film. Many of the
interiors and exteriors for this film were shot at
Hatley Castle on Vancouver Island, which you
may also know as Lex Luthor’s mansion in
Smallville and Oliver Queen’s residence in
Arrow. “This was already Xavier’s School For
Gifted Youngsters in a 1996 TV movie called
Generation X,” the estate’s senior heritage
interpreter, James Douglas, told SFX a few
years back when we went there for a nose
around. “There was a fairly lukewarm reaction
to that movie, but in the same year, Patrick
Stewart had been here filming a movie called
Masterminds. So presumably, when the
production was moved to Vancouver, the
combination of those two meant that some
production assistant realised this had already
been Xavier’s school and there already was a
good relationship formed with Patrick Stewart,
so they came and approached us.”
0:12:00 For this scene, Storm appears to
be wearing a suit you’d normally see
one of London’s Pearly Queens donning
for a parade. At least she left out the hat and
the Cockney rhyming slang.
X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 71

Blink and you lose.
0:15:24 “I was piloting black ops missions in the
jungles of North Vietnam while you were
sucking on your momma’s tit at Woodstock,
Kelly. Don’t lecture me about war.” Cox there,
delivering a hilarious line with so much gravitas
it almost becomes frightening.
0:16:25 Rogue introduces Bobby to Logan.
Guess Logan didn’t notice him last time around
then, eh? Incidentally, did Rogue ever find out
that Mystique was the one who told her leave,
and not Bobby? That must have been an
awkward conversation when she returned from
Liberty Island. (“You told me to go!” “No I
didn’t, you maniac! And what’s with the grey
streaks?”) Also, you have to love how Logan
hears that Bobby is Rogue’s boyfriend and
instantly, without a moment’s hesitation or a
thought for how inappropriate it is, asks how
they have sex. Yup, that’s our Logan.
0:17:30 “I could probably think of a few
reasons to stick around,” Logan tells
Jean, and boy, does he sound
Australian. (Jackman is, of course, from
Down Under.)
0:20:23 Charles uses Cerebro to locate
Nightcrawler and the FX have sharpened up
considerably since the first film: it’s a beautiful
hologram chamber now, with a pretty
72 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION
Lady Deathstrike’s a cyborg
in the comics, not a mutant.
orchestral score to accompany the images. All
well and good, but there’s still something about
the headwear that makes him look like Davros.
0:23:30 In the last film Mystique copied
Charles’s eyes to gain access to a secure
room; now she copies Lady
Deathstrike’s hand, fingerprints and all. If you
think really hard about her abilities, it makes
your brain hurt: how does she do that? How
does she rearrange such tiny parts of
someone’s anatomy and make them identical?
Does it go right down to the DNA level? The
scientific truths behind mutants are bonkers
beyond belief at times. While we’re on the
subject, there is a book out there called The
Science Of The X-Men which does try to explain
at least some of the reality behind these guys
(although sadly Mystique isn’t included).
0:24:04 Mystique accesses Stryker’s
computer files and finds a list of
mutants: Guthrie x2 (probably Husk and
Cannonball), Keniucho Harada (Silver Samurai),
Remy LeBeau (Gambit), Eric M Lensherr, Artie
Maddicks, Jamie Madrox (Multiple Man), Xi’an
Coy Mahn (Karma, and her name should be
spelt “Manh”), Maximoff x2 (Scarlet Witch and
Quicksilver, probably), Kevin McTaggart
(Proteus, and it should say “MacTaggart”), and
Danielle Moonstar (Psyche/Mirage). Equally, the
list of security guards she finds contain names
of the film’s crew.
0:24:30 Folders on Stryker’s computer
include nods to Marvel creations Omega
Red, Project Wideawake, Muir Island
and Franklin Richards.
0:29:00 “Did you do these to yourself?” asks
Storm, running her hand along Nightcrawler’s
tattoos. What an intimate thing to do to
someone you’ve only just met! And then Jean
prods at a mark on his neck, too. Women can’t
seem to keep their hands off Kurt. Then again,
it’s good the film made the most of them, as it
took poor Alan Cumming the best part of a day
to get them applied for this scene.
0:29:18 Logan goes to bed. Miraculously, he’s
wearing a vest. So X-Men 2 has been on for half
an hour and he still hasn’t removed his shirt. Is
he broken?
0:30:34 Jones, the kid Wolverine finds
changing TV channels by blinking,
doesn’t exist in the Marvel universe
(unless you know where he’s been hiding?).
0:34:27 “The war has begun,” Magneto says. Or
is it Gandalf? It’s hard to tell the difference
sometimes…
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions

0:35:00 Kelly Hu gets to show off some
moves as Lady Deathstrike, whose real
name in the comics is Yuriko Oyama.
There, she has a life mission to kill Wolverine to
prove herself, whereas in this film she’s merely
being mind-controlled by Stryker.
0:35:10 Jones is watching a wildlife show
about rats. “Now and then, every
mother needs to get away,” says the
narrator. “Without her, the babies are helpless.
Sensing danger [she goes off to investigate]…”
Given that all the older X-Men, barring Logan,
are away from the school at the moment, this is
an almost comical foreshadowing of what’s
about to happen. Sure enough, Jones hears a
noise and goes to investigate…
0:35:40 The soldier who shoots Jones
with a dart is Peter Wingfield, who
achieved “legend” status among genre
fans as Methos in Highlander.
0:36.10 The soldiers storm the dorm
rooms and Kitty Pryde escapes. Nope,
she’s still not Ellen Page – Katie Stuart
does the wall-running here.
0:37:06 Out come the claws as Wolverine
stabs one of the soldiers. You don’t
attack children while he’s on watch!
www.sfx.co.uk
0:37:30 Wolvie’s on the rampage now.
You really wouldn’t want to be one of
Stryker’s strike team right now.
0:37:47 Colossus (Daniel Cudmore) shows us
how he got his name by being very big, very
intimidating and very… well, big again. You
want soldiers thrown through a wall? He’s your
man! Although Wolverine does a pretty good
job of destroying the place while defending the
kids himself. Incidentally, how come Colossus is
shirtless but Logan isn’t yet?
0:39:17 Claws pin a soldier’s foot to the
floor. Ow ow ow ow ow.
0:40:12 A screaming Wolverine launches
himself off a balcony and takes down
four soldiers at once. Jackman was
determined to do this stunt, and do it he did.
0:40:36 Wolverine faces off with Stryker.
When he retracts his claws, you can see
them slide upwards under his skin: a
gruesome effect, but a lovely touch.
0:42:51 The car the guys climb into to
escape was adapted for the film.
Mazda’s press release says: “In true
superhero fashion, the aggressively styled
X-MEN 2
“Aaaaggghhhhhhh.” And
all Jackman’s own work.
Mazda RX-8 X-Men Car, based on the
production model 2004 Mazda RX-8, possesses
its own unique superpower – in this case, the
new generation rotary engine RENESIS. In
addition, its dominant presence is accentuated
by an impenetrable Mutant Blue exterior which
includes an X-shaped grille, a fierce rear spoiler
and an enlarged trademark ’X’ on the vehicle’s
nameplate.” In other words, they totally pimped
that ride.
0:42:57 Wolverine hotwires the car using
one blade. Is this even possible?
Wouldn’t he just short-circuit it?
0:45:48 Dr Hank McCoy appears on a TV
screen in a bar; he’ll be played by other
actors as the films progress, but here he
takes the form of Steve Bacic.
0:45:55 Rebecca Romijn-Stamos appears
sans Mystique make-up to seduce
Magneto’s security guard. There is an
absolutely shameless Basic Instinct-style shot
of her crossing her legs. Fans of Supernatural
might notice that the guard is Ty Olssen, who
played Benny on the show.
0:46:53 “Velcro? Nice!” says Mystique as she
goes for the security guard’s trousers.
Classy indeed!
X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 73
 Losing at chess makes
Magneto very angry.
0:52:06 Rogue and Bobby share a quick kiss and
she exhales frosty air when they part. Awwww.
Of course, then it all starts going wrong as she
starts to suck the life out of him... Incidentally,
in the last film we see Bobby expelling frosty
breath when he’s actually being played by
Mystique, which made a lot of people’s heads
hurt as they tried to figure it out.
0:52:40 Why does the cat lick the blade
when Wolverine threatens it? Does the
metal smell of Whiskas? And any self-
respecting feline would surely have run away
after a stranger suddenly waves claws at it like
that. This cat is chilled out, man! (In the original
script, mind you, Logan accidentally skewers it.
So we’re happy it lives to lick another day.)
0:54:38 “Too much iron in your blood.” What an
absolutely evil idea, to have Magneto rip metal
out of this poor schmo’s bloodstream right
through his skin! There were five writers on this
film; we’d like to shake the hand of the guy that
thought of it. And the escape that follows is
just majestic, too.
0:56:49 Now the cat is licking the coffee
Bobby just froze. That cat is weird. What
cat drinks coffee and licks razor-sharp
blades? Is it deranged? Utterly starving? Some
kind of kitty mutant?
74 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION
0:59:42 “Bobby... have you tried not being a
mutant?” A wonderful line from Bobby’s
mother, there. After all, how many mothers in
history have said to their children, “Have you
tried not being gay?” The way the X-Men’s
issues line up so neatly with the troubles
experienced by real people is always so
masterfully handled, both in the comics and on
screen. And, of course, the answer to both
questions is a resounding, “But it’s who I am,
mum. Deal with it.”
1:00:15 The police arrive and Logan isn’t
happy... “Put the knives down!” one
yells. “I can’t,” replies Logan, and there’s
a whole, glorious world of “pissed off” in those
two words.
1:03:34 The first exchange between Wolverine
and Nightcrawler is a heartbreaker: poor Kurt is
excited to meet new people and tries to
introduce himself, but Logan simply replies,
“Ah, save it.” Kurt’s little hurt face will make
grown men go, “Awwww.”
1:06:09 It’s ironic that in the first film,
Rogue tells off Logan for not wearing a
seatbelt. In the jet, she ends up falling
through the air because she doesn’t have her
belt on, either. Bet Logan was smug about that
one afterwards.
1:08:20 Rogue is sucked from the plane and
Nightcrawler bamfs out of there to save her in
a real fist-pump moment (bet Logan won’t be
rude to him again after that!). Although that
raises the thought: why doesn’t he just bamf
them all off the plane? Incidentally, “bamf” is
the word used to describe the sound that
Nightcrawler makes when he vanishes. (In
internet slang it’s also used these days to
denote a “bad-ass mother f**ker”.)
1:09:55 Nightcrawler sits and watches
Magneto and Mystique chatting with
Logan, Storm and Jean. Here’s a fact
that isn’t mentioned in the films (to date,
anyway): Nightcrawler is actually Mystique’s
son. His father is Azazel, who you’ll see in
X-Men: First Class. She doesn’t seem to
recognise him here, nor he her, and so clearly
they each have no idea that they’re related.
1:11:31 There are three scars on
Mystique’s torso from where she was
stabbed by Logan in the last film.
1:13:53 Jean and Logan have a bloody good
snog. Will she take his top off for the first time
in this particular film? ...And the answer is no.
1:15:07 Jean and Logan have another bloody
good snog. This time, however, it’s actually
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions

Mystique in disguise, as Logan discovers when
he finds those scars. For the record, nothing
can dampen a hot-blooded male’s enthusiasm
for some nookie more than your partner
suddenly morphing into William Stryker.
1:19:53 Occasionally when you watch a
film or a TV show there’s a sound effect
that makes you wince because it’s so
unrealistic. When Wolverine walks along the
slipway and yells “Stryker!” the word echoes so
ridiculously you can almost picture some little
chap at a computer giggling as he fiddles with
the “reverb” settings.
1:21:00 Mystique pretends to be Wolverine to
gain access to the base, and when her cover is
rumbled she starts leaping about and being
generally fabulous while the guards around her
flounder and die. As amazing as Wolverine is,
it’s becoming increasingly apparent that
Mystique could well be the true star of this
franchise: you can’t take your eyes off her when
she’s on screen, and we’re not even including
the fact she’s naked in this fact. You just never
know what she’s going to do next...
1:21:08 ...And what she does next in this case, by
the way, is slide melodramatically through two
closing doors while giving Stryker’s men the
finger. Applause, please!
www.sfx.co.uk
1:21:52 “She’s good,” says Wolverine
approvingly, after seeing what Mystique has
achieved. “You have no idea...” replies Magneto.
Every person who has ever watched this film
automatically goes, “Ewww!” at this point,
assuming that Mystique and Magneto are more
than just friends. This doesn’t matter at all
when you think of Michael Fassbender and
Jennifer Lawrence, but when it’s dear old Ian...
Well, really.
1:26:04 Charles’s nose gets its own spotlight
in this shot. Is is a very good nose, mind you.
A nose that Mel Gibson once tried to bite off
in Conspiracy. And it’s going to feature
prominently once again in Days Of Future
Past according to Patrick Stewart. “James
McAvoy and I come not just face-to-face, but
nose-to-nose, almost,” he reveals of the
already infamous double profile shot. “There
was certainly a happy charm about it, in that
when we shot that scene, it was James’s first
day of work on the movie and it was my last.
So I was saying goodbye to X-Men, and he was
saying hello.”
1:28:50 Mind-controlled Cyclops and Jean have a
little encounter, with the resultant release of
energy contributing to wiping out the dam.
(No, we did not mean that to sound dirty, get
your mind out of the gutter.) The way the red
X-MEN 2
Logan often got his left
and right muddled up.
light blurs when it climaxes (steady...) is really
effective: you get the sense that they have both
unleashed absolutely massive forces. Which
they have.
1:31:31 Wolverine discovers the room in which he
was given his metal skeleton. From the grotty,
green-watered tank to the chilling x-rays, it’s a
gruesome nightmare – and hardly what you’d
call sterile! This was Guy Hendrix Dyas’s first
film as production designer; he’s since worked
on Inception and Superman Returns.
1:31:43 Logan has a tiny flashback to how
it felt to be floating in that tank. He’s not
wearing a shirt. The only shirtless shot
of the movie so far and it took 90 minutes!
1:31:54 Anybody got any idea why
there’s a pool of molten adamantium
bubbling away in that room? Was
Stryker planning on doing a little body-
welding? Surely he’s finished with all his mutant
experiments? Still, it’ll come in handy in a bit…
1:32:20 And here’s another brief
flashback of Wolverine minus his top.
And then another of him covered in
blood and screaming in agony, so it’s kind of
hard to find it titillating, if that’s what you were
hoping for in a shirtless Hugh shot..
X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 75

Brian Cox excels at pacing down
a corridor looking furious.
1:32:49 “The tricky thing about adamantium is
that if you ever manage to process its raw,
liquid form, you’ve got to keep it that way,”
explains Stryker, walking into the room and
politely answering our question from a few
minutes ago. Of course, he still doesn’t explain
why he needs it now, given that he’s about to
wipe out every mutant in the world. Maybe he’s
going to make himself a nice, shiny trophy cup?
1:33:28 Wolverine unleashes his claws to
deal with Lady Deathstrike. Don’t mess
with him!
1:22:29 ...But then she unleashes her own
claws, which come from the ends of her
fingers and thumbs rather than her
knuckles! “Holy shit,” gasps Wolverine, along
with the rest of the audience.
1:33:48 While you have to admire the intense
choreography, the fight that follows moves so
quickly that it’s hard to see who’s doing what
to who, but there’s an awful lot of metallic
sounds, grunts and thuds, and it’s clear that
Wolverine may well have met his match with
this woman.
1:34:24 Wolverine skewers his foe on his claws,
then watches in amazement as she heals before
his eyes. Yup, you’re in big trouble, bub.
76 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION
“Now if I can just
find reverse.”
Go, Jean, go!
1:34:47 Squish squish squish! Deathstrike stabs
Wolverine over and over like she’s pronging a
potato before baking it. If you’ve ever played
with a kitten who forgets to sheathe its claws,
you might know how this feels.
1:36:04 And now for one of the grossest – yet,
ironically, coolest – deaths in the franchise, as
Wolverine sticks a pump full of liquid
adamantium into Deathstrike’s gut and watches
as the metal fills her up. There’s one final,
despairing glance from the poor woman as her
eyes clear from Stryker’s mind control before
she sinks to the bottom of the tank with a
thunk, dead.
1:37:10 You know how ice-skating judges give
points for artistic impression? If they were
watching as Magneto telekinetically removed
the pins from the hand grenades in the
pockets of a bunch of soldiers, thus blowing
them up one by one, they’d probably award
him a 10 in a heartbeat.
1:40:11 Magneto now reveals his gameplan: he
rewires Cerebro to kill humans, rather than
mutants. The dastardly dog! Of course, we say
“rewire”, but all he does is swap a few metal
bits of cladding around and there doesn’t seem
to be any wire-work at all. But hey, he seems to
know what he’s doing.
1:41:33 Wolverine impales Stryker against
his helicopter. “How does it feel, bub?”
he asks. He’s got anger issues, this one.
1:44:35 Cerebro now makes life very
painful for humans around the globe, as
they clutch their heads and fall to the
ground in pain. Imagine if you were driving
down the M6 and this happened! Or landing a
plane! Or in the middle of eye surgery! Or
about to step off a moving escalator! Really,
Magneto, you should be ashamed of yourself
for inflicting us with this nonsense.
1:46:27 A moment of empathy, now, for
poor Romijn-Stamos, who had to act
out this scene with Stryker and Magneto
in the middle of a snowfield in Canada with no
clothes on. We hope she got paid a lot for this.
1:49:40 Wolverine uses his claws to
destroy the mechanism holding some
doors open, thus shielding everyone
from a giant wave of water.
1:51:39 While waiting to board the X-Jet,
Wolverine stands with a kid held in his arms,
every inch a hero. It’s a magnificent contrast to
the moment just a few minutes beforehand
when Stryker told him he’s an animal, and
always will be. Suck on that, Stryker.
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
 X-MEN 2

1:54:32 The scene where Jean makes the
decision to sacrifice herself to save the others
is an emotional one – kudos to Janssen for so
clearly showing all her emotions on her face for
us to read. You know this isn’t going to end well
for her as she limps out of the jet…
1:56:30 And oooh, it’s all very dramatic now, as
Jean single-handedly holds back the deluge
from the dam and raises the X-Jet out of
danger. As if that wasn’t enough, she also stops
Nightcrawler from bamfing out to save her and
delivers a goodbye message through Charles:
okay, she has officially taken over from him in
the “most powerful mutant” stakes now.
1:57:20 Cyclops is so upset that he cries in
Logan’s arms. United by their love of the same
woman for once, rather than fighting. It’s all
very touching, isn’t it? Pass a hankie...
1:59:00 The President of the United States
delivers an address about the mutants. This is
an American film, of course, with most of the
action happening on American soil (well, other
than that whole bit at the end in Canada), so a
focus on how the events affect American
around the world, or other world leaders
delivering their own responses (can you even
imagine what North Korea would make of all
this?). To only show the US’s reaction is
possibly a little myopic. Or perhaps we’re just
writing this as slightly disgruntled Brits.
1:59:22 Wouldn’t it have been wiser for
the mutants to talk to the President
before he started the broadcast, rather
than just after it had started? And how does
that work, anyway: were there several minutes
of dead air, or did Charles control the signal?
1:59:40 Iceman and Rogue are now
wearing X-Men uniforms.
CITE-O-METER™
THRILLED
ENTERTAINED Bamfing into
the Oval Office
NODDING OFF
2:01:07 When Charles mentions that there have
been casualties, Scott’s chin wobbles. It must
be tough showing emotion wearing those
glasses, so the wobbly chin was a neat touch.
2:04:40 “Mutation. It is the key to our
evolution.” Jean delivers the final
narration, repeating the words from the
first X-Men movie’s introduction… and also
foreshadowing her own evolutionary next step.
Well, that and the mysterious shadow that then
appears on Alkali Lake.
2:05:15 The end credits begin. “We could feel
when we were making it,” says Jackman of X2,
“we knew that we had a good movie.” And you
know what? They were right.
Bumpy jet ride
Storming the
Cyclops
END
A word in the
President’s ear
school Dam it,
Vs Jean Jean!

Meet Kurt Meet the parents

citizens is understandable. But still... given that
everybody collapsing in pain was a global issue,
ZZ Z Z Z Z Z Z Z …
Z
Infiltrating
the base
Wolverine Vs
Lady Deathstrike
it seems a little short-sighted to not show some RUNNING TIME (MINS) 0 25 50 75 100 125 150
kind of montage of people recovering from

www.sfx.co.uk X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 77

 T H E TO P 10
Hottest Mutant Romances
The X-Men are fighters, but they’re also lovers...

Colossus & Nereel Wolfsbane & Cypher

Apologies to Shadowcat-Colossus fans

1
Whether or not fans responded to Brett Blevins’ early work on
but Kitty and Peter were never right New Mutants, the way in which the artist depicted werewolf
for each other. Aside from the age Rahne Sinclair swooning over the hopeless Doug Ramsey was
difference, theirs was a romance of adorable. And made Cypher’s untimely death even more tragic.
convenience (or inconvenience, given
the frequency fate kept them apart). The
Savage Land’s Nereel was a far better
match for the soft-spoken Russian.

Storm & Forge

She’d marry the Black Panther,
but Ororo Munroe’s love-hate
relationship with the mutant
inventor who unintentionally
4
took her powers from her and
then gave them back was
2 Rogue & Gambit
Before Bill and
overflowing with sexual tension. Sookie brought
Southern American
sexy back, Anna
Marie and Remy
LeBeau showed

3 us just how hot

things get in
Louisiana. As he tells
Nightcrawler & Cerise her in X-Men Vol. 2
#8, “If I made a list
The swashbuckling teleporter Kurt Wagner always had an eye of things to do ‘with

5
for the ladies, and he had a healthy string of relationships from your own two hands’
Amanda Sefton to Jinjav Sabree. But he met his match in the – stirring gumbo
hot-blooded Shi’ar warrior. wouldn’t be on it.”

78 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions

 top 10 x-men romances

Wolverine Wolverine & Yukio

& Jean Grey While Logan harboured a burning unrequited love for Jean, matched
only by his ill-fated longing for Mariko Yashida, the girl made for
Scott Summers and him was the slightly unhinged, fun-loving ninja/ronin Yukio.
Jean Grey? Pfft.
Boring. Now Logan
and Jean Grey – that’s
hot. As the pair have
6 shown in the comics
and the movies.

Dazzler & 9
Longshot
Neither one of them is
the brightest of bulbs, but
hey, at least they have
great hair. And in a world
overflowing with mutant

7
angst, it’s a breath of fresh
air to watch two happy-
go-lucky souls connect.

Emma Frost & Cyclops

Granted the White Queen packs
enough eroticism to turn anyone into
a hot-blooded love slave. But she’s
especially well-suited for the straight-
laced, squeaky clean Scott Summers.
While he, in turn, brings a bit of
conscience to this bad girl.
10
Scarlet Witch & Vision
The most memorable star-crossed love affair in comics is that
between mutant Wanda Maximoff and android Vision. The
Avengers have endured their share of heartache, but they
continue to inspire mismatched couples everywhere.

www.sfx.co.uk X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 79

 X-MEN WORDS By: JAYNE NELSON

KEY A spe cia l

scene -by-sc ene
break dow n.
Wa rni ng!
TRIVIA Interesting
X-Men factoids int ens ely pac ked
wit h tri via

DID YOU SPOT?

Missed moments

WTF?! Did that

really happen!?

GOOFS Bloopers
and gaffes

IN-JOKES
Mutant gags

Wolverine RAGE
This happens a lot

SHIRTLESS

X-MEN
Phwoooaaar!

DRINKING
GAME

n
ONE DRINK
Wolverine’s claws
come out.
n Magneto says

something scathing
THe LAST
STAND
about humans.
Year 2006
TWO DRINKS
n Juggernaut says
Director Brett Ratner
something that makes
you wince.
Writers Simon Kinberg, Zak Penn
n Pyro is an absolute
Starring Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry,
bastard.
Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart,
THREE DRINKS
n Jean’s hair blows
Famke Janssen, Anna Paquin,
magnificently in
the wind.
Kelsey Grammer, James Marsden
n A mutant loses their

powers after being

injected.

80 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions


0:00:00 And now to X-Men: The Last Stand,
confusingly not titled X-Men 3 despite its
predecessor being called X-Men 2 (in the UK
– it was X2: X-Men United in the US which
would have sounded like a football team here).
This one’s not helmed by Bryan Singer, who
defected to the Distinguished Competition (DC)
to direct Superman Returns. Matthew Vaughn
was hired to direct but bailed at the eleventh
hour. Brett Retner was a very late replacement
and had to deal with a whole host of actors’
scheduling problems which affected the story.
So don’t blame all the film’s problems on him.
0:00:28 You need eagle eyes to spot
these two things: when the Twentieth
Century Fox logo fades from the screen,
you see the X glow for a few seconds when all
the other letters have disappeared. And during
the Marvel flicker-logo you see scenes from the
X-Men comics play out, including Cyclops
yelling, “Jean, no, don’t!” and the words “…I am
PHOENIX!” Tsk, spoilers…
0:01:07 And we’re barely into our first
minute before there’s a massive
continuity error, assuming that you
consider the prequels with McAvoy part of this
particular timeline or not. We see Charles
climbing out of a car and standing up – gasp!
– while a caption reads, “Twenty years ago.” At
this point he should already be in a wheelchair.
www.sfx.co.uk
0:01:30 Ian McKellen and Patrick
Stewart’s faces were “smoothed” by
CGI during these scenes to make them
look younger. It’s reasonably effective,
although McKellen’s teeth seem too white and
Stewart’s face has that one-facelift-too-many
look. In order to achieve younger-looking skin,
VFX supervisor Edson Williams consulted a
plastic surgeon: “That was extremely helpful
because they are very specific about what
needs to be fixed and come at it from a very
scientific point-of-view,” he told Studio Daily.
“Our work probably got 30 per cent better
after consulting with them... We added one of
them to our staff as a consultant.”
0:01:49 The actress playing Jean Grey’s
mum, Desiree Zurowski, looks so much
like Famke Janssen you suspect her
IMDb page is made up just to hide the fact that
Janssen sneakily played the role herself.
0:02:58 Stan Lee is the guy who stares at
his garden hose while the water runs
upwards. Chris Claremont is the
neighbour with the lawnmower.
0:04:30 Cayden Boyd, as young Warren
Worthington III, is remarkably
convincing as the little boy who would
rather cut off his own wings than allow his
father to see them. He grows up to be Angel –
x-men: THE LAST STAND
Happiness is… A cigar lit
from burning ruins?
one of the founding members of the comic-
book X-Men – and later renamed Archangel.
0:05:21 A caption appears: “The not too
distant future.” Personally we’d have
written “The not-too-distant future” but
there you go, you can’t please a grammar
pedant. Anyway, this sequence is our very first
glimpse of the Sentinels.
0:05:37 Storm has a new wig, and it’s the best
yet! She’s also had some fancy dark streaks put
in. Shame she still has that silly cloak, though.
0:06:28 Gotta love how Logan is taking this
Danger Room training exercise so seriously
that he stops to light a cigar on some flaming
wreckage. Ah, Logan...
0:06:54 The first claws-out moment of
X-Men: The Last Stand, as Logan
unsheathes them to fight a Sentinel.
Colossus throws him through the air and he
beheads one off-camera.
0:08:15 Scott broods over Jean. Here’s film/TV
shorthand for you: you can always tell if a
character is grieving/having a breakdown
because they stop shaving, and Scott is
suitably beardy here. (Naturally this doesn’t
apply to female characters, unless you get a
shot of their unshaven legs.)
X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 81

Beast makes like a bat.
A hop, a skip and
a jump and she’s off.
0:09:26 Hello, Beast! Kelsey Grammer dons the
blue fur for this film, and a darn fine job he
does, too.
0:11:27 Mystique does what Mystique does best
in this little sequence, shapeshifting a few times
to freak out the Agent who has her confined,
before going on the attack. There’s something
about the way she spits “Homo sapien!” that’s
very unsettling… She’s come a long way since
the conflicted younger version of herself, later
played by Jennifer Lawrence.
0:12:00 Our first glimpse of Leech, the
little boy who will come to threaten the
mutants. He’s played by Cameron
Bright, who grew up to play Alec in the Twilight
movies. The Leech in the comics actually has
green skin and looks anything but human.
0:12:54 After a brief glimpse of her in the
training sequence, we finally get to hear Kitty
Pryde in conversation as she has a discussion
with Charles. And Ellen Page, always wonderful,
inhabits the role so perfectly it’s hard to believe
she hasn’t been here all along.
0:13:07 Charles mentions Dr Moira
MacTaggart, who was, of course, played
by Rose Byrne in X-Men: First Class.
Here she’s played by Olivia Williams, who’s way
82 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION
too young to be the same woman from the film
set in the ’60s. Oh, and the kid who blinks and
turns on the television is Jones, who did the
same thing in X2.
0:15:24 “I love what you’ve done with your hair!”
Storm tells Beast, who replies, “You too!” That’s
a sweet way of acknowledging her makeover,
but it also shows how comfortable Storm (and
by extension, the other mutants) are around
Beast. Which is important, of course, because
barring one quick glimpse on a TV screen in
the last film, we haven’t seen him before, but he
plays a major role in this film.
0:16:10 Beast reveals that a cure for the mutated
X-gene has been developed. And bang! So
arrives the theme of this third film: if X-Men was
about discovering that you’re a mutant, and X2
was about accepting that you’re a mutant, this
movie is about deciding whether you want to
be a mutant or not. And really, if you had a
choice, and you could take away whatever
weird and wacky power you had just by getting
an injection, would you? Or would you do what
many of the mutants in this film do, and be
proud of what you are? You could take this
dilemma and by extension apply it to many
issues in the real world, such as homosexuality.
“Since when have we become a disease?”
Storm huffs, echoing the thoughts of some
That boy needs
a shave.
We’re looking forward to
seeing more of Kitty in DOFP.
unenlightened folk in the real world who see
being gay in the same way.
0:16:29 And to hammer it home, in the very next
scene Warren Worthington II announces that
mutant powers are a disease. Gah!
0:17:58 You may recognise the speaker at
this mutant rally: it’s Julian Richings,
who played Death on Supernatural and,
further back, Otto in Kingdom Hospital.
0:18:37 The guy who challenges
Magneto – and nearly gets a face full of
Pyro’s fire – is named Kid Omega,
played by Lost star Ken Leung. In the comics
Kid Omega sports the spectacular name
Quintavius “Quentin” Quirinius Quire and has
totally different abilities to the film version, who
actually seems to have stolen his spiky quills
from a chap named Quill.
0:20:01 Callisto is played by Dania
Ramirez, who played Maya in Heroes.
Her character in the TV show excreted
some kind of poison that could kill people; as
Callisto, she can sense other mutants.
0:23:40 In his second – and final – scene
in this film, Scott visits Alkali Lake and
hears Jean whispering his name. James
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions

Marsden had other filming commitments and
couldn’t find time for a bigger character arc on
Last Stand, thus providing the film with one of
its biggest issues: the fact that Cyclops is on
screen for such a tiny amount of time and is
killed off without anyone seeming to care.
0:25:12 The reborn Jean Grey turns up – we’re
not supposed to know that she’s Phoenix
yet – and the first thought that goes through
your mind is, “Wow, her hair sure grew a lot
while she was in that lake.” Rather like Rogue,
however, her wig is all over the place and more
of a mane than a hairstyle.
0:28:55 “The sheer mass of water that collapsed
on top of Jean should have obliterated her
completely,” says Charles. “The only
explanation of Jean’s survival is that her powers
wrapped her in a cocoon of telekinetic energy.”
Only Patrick Stewart – or possibly Ian McKellen
– could deliver such a tongue-twisting lump of
mouldy exposition and make it sound realistic.
0:29:56 Charles reveals that Jean had two
personalities, with the darker one being known
as Phoenix. Wow, these comic-book characters
have immensely complicated lives, don’t they?
0:32:10 Adult Angel makes an appearance, now
played by Ben Foster. Note how he’s wearing
www.sfx.co.uk
leather straps on his back. Having to walk
around with two enormous wings strapped
down flat must be a right nuisance, not to
mention uncomfortable. Imagine having to
wear a device to keep two parts of your body
in check every day without… oh wait, hang on,
it’s essentially a bra, isn’t it? Never mind.
0:33:07 It’s not supposed to be, but the way
Angel breaks free of his restraints and then
strikes a pose with his wings is kind of funny.
You almost expect him to say, “Ta-daaaaa!”
Luckily he resets the comedy balance by
dramatically jumping out of the window and
soaring prettily over San Francisco. Framestore,
the FX company who worked on his wings,
were able to use feather technology they
perfected on the Hippogriff from Harry Potter
And The Prisoner Of Azkaban.
0:34:10 Magneto vs police cars: the cars end up
crushed like eggshells. Imagine all those poor
cop-widows weeping that night! All the kids
without cop-parents! He really is a git, is our
Magneto. He’s also effortlessly cool, however:
note the way he doesn’t even flinch when the
truck does a backflip over his head.
0:35:23 James Madrox, aka Multiple Man,
is rescued by Magneto. SFX readers
probably remember Eric Dane as Jason
x-men: THE LAST STAND
Ta-daaaaa!
Dean on Charmed, whereas fans of soppy
American hospital dramas have spent years
watching him as Dr Mark Sloan on Grey’s
Anatomy. At some point soon he’ll also be on
our screens in sci-fi series The Last Ship.
0:35:38 “Let me out of here, I need a pee!”
complains Juggernaut, aka Cain Marko. Vinnie
Jones makes a rather inauspicious entrance to
the franchise, although anyone with a juvenile
sense of humour probably loves him already.
And come on, there’s always room for a
juvenile sense of humour in this world.
0:36:20 Pyro incinerates the prison guard who
just shot Mystique. Incinerates. And there isn’t a
twitch of remorse afterwards, either. Is this the
young lad from the last film we were supposed
to empathise with? He’s changed...
0:36:51 Mystique becomes human. More
importantly, she becomes human with
absolutely perfect eye make-up. Was it
in her DNA? Also, the way that Erik turns his
back on her and walks away, while callous and
perfectly in keeping with the scene (“You’re
not one of us”), seems a little too callous now
that we’ve seen how far back their relationship
goes. Still, they needed an excuse to get rid of
her, as Rebecca Romijn wasn’t free for any
more filming.
X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 83
 Logan thinks he might
like this new Jean.
0:38:25 In the first X-Men, Logan is lying
on a medical table and grabs Jean when
he wakes up; in this film, it’s her doing
the grabbing. Nice role reversal there.
0:39:45 Snogging ensues. Jean is all over him;
scratching him, ripping off his belt using her
powers – this Phoenix is a go-er!
0:42:00 “Kill me... kill me before I kill someone
else,” begs Jean, rather ruining the moment.
Janssen is selling her confusion perfectly; she
may have a terrible wig but she’s giving this
role her all.
0:45:05 Jean waits for Charles and Erik at her
house, rattling the walls and making furniture
float around in the process. There’s something
strangely Harry Potter-ish about watching the
house behave like that; it’s like being in the
Weasleys’ kitchen.
0:46:10 Charles and Erik are essentially fighting
for Jean’s soul as they try to talk her
down – one’s the good angel on her shoulder
(Charles) and one is the little devil (Erik). Erik
seems to know all the right things to say,
whereas Charles simply winds her up more
(“Look what happened to Scott! You killed the
man you love because you couldn’t control
your power!”). Yes, Charles, poke that
84 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION
Hair: better;
cloak: still bad.
incredibly powerful tiger and see where it gets
you! Sheesh.
0:46:20 Logan prepares to attack
Juggernaut, and in a moment of
unreality British audiences ponder the
weirdness of Wolverine attacking a former
Wimbledon FA Cup Final player. Judging from
the fight that ensues, his superpowered alter
ego plays just as dirty as Jones did at football.
0:46:00 Storm’s really getting stuck into this
film, facing off with Callisto, while there’s an
amusing moment when Juggernaut throws
Logan through the ceiling and then kicks him
out of the house. The choreography for this
fight is hugely entertaining.
0:47:12 There’s that wind machine, blowing so
hard on Patrick Stewart’s face that he looks as
though he’s going through several degrees of
G-force in a fighter jet.
0:47:50 Wolverine unveils his claws again
to fight Juggernaut.
0:48:05 Jean – in fact we should probably call
her Phoenix here – lifts Charles off the ground
with her mind and there’s one hell of a creepy
shot of her, hair blowing in the wind, skin a
“Don’t make me angry!”
weird copper colour, eyes black and scary.
Suddenly she truly is terrifying.
0:49:20 There’s a beautiful FX shot of glass
slowly flying through the air – but you barely
have time to admire it before Phoenix has
ripped Charles to shreds. So long, Professor X!
0:50:30 Logan and Storm weep for their lost
mentor amidst the ruins of the house. In other
news, Jean’s parents are going to be so pissed
when they get back and see the mess.
0:53:18 When Iceman turns the pond into
ice, wouldn’t it have killed all those
pretty water lilies? And what if there
were fish in there – what would the change in
temperature have done to them? Tsk. “That’s
the croquet lawn, where Kitty and Iceman
skated,” recalls James Douglas from Hatley
Castle. “It was a little concrete swimming pool
that they put together and froze, although it
was July… You never see their feet when their
skating around because it’s basically slush that
they’re skating on!”
0:55:00 Logan and Rogue were quite close in the
first film, so it’s good to see the writers slipping
in a little scene here in which they have a heart
to heart – particularly given that Rogue doesn’t
have much to do for the rest of the movie.
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions

0:59:30 Colossus walks down a corridor carrying
a huge TV under one arm; you know, the kind
of TV that still had a tube, before flatscreens
became the norm. And anyone who has tried
to move one of those monsters will know from
this scene that he is very, very strong. Colour us
impressed! (Impressed by the character, that is.
The actor was no doubt lugging around an
empty case or he’d have got himself a hernia.)
1:00:50 Storm has a little chat with Logan,
pointing out that Jean killed Charles. She
doesn’t mention Scott. In fact, nobody’s
mentioned Scott, really. Shouldn’t they be
mourning him too? Poor Scott.
1:01:21 It’s a sad indictment of our times that the
crowds of anti-cure protestors outside the
clinic are hugely reminiscent of the people who
protest outside abortion clinics in the States.
Yet again X-Men touches on real issues. And
when Pyro blows up the clinic – well, he’s
really gone off the rails, hasn’t he?
1:03:10 Trask in this film is played by Bill
Duke: huge, black and about as far
away from Days Of Future Past’s Peter
Dinklage as it’s possible to get (without
making Trask a woman, we suppose). If you
want continuity in this franchise, you really will
be disappointed…
www.sfx.co.uk
The festival in the forest
was in full swing.
“Ag-a-doo-doo-doo…”
1:04:20 Wolverine searches the woods
for Jean and lets his claws out when he
smells something dodgy. “Dodgy” turns
out to be Spike, a mutant who can fire nasty-
looking spikes from his body. There’s a mutant
out there for everything, isn’t there?
1:05:06 Here we should point out that while
Logan has yet to be shirtless in this film (and
after the amount of times he was shirtless in
X-Men, this is still amazing us), he is wearing
the vest that is fast becoming his signature
outfit. Better than yellow Spandex, anyway.
1:05:20 Logan launches himself from a
tree, does a backflip and skewers some
mutants. Impressive.
1:07:10 Magneto addresses a large crowd of
mutants, inciting them to violence like a
dictator (Hitler, maybe? That would be ironic).
There doesn’t seem to be much of a mix of
mutant types before him, however: they look
like a big bunch of teens and twentysomethings
who’ve turned up for a forest rave. You can
almost hear them saying to their mates, “Yeah,
alright, granpa.”
1:13:30 The FX required to fly the Golden
Gate Bridge through the air were
extensive, says Framestore’s Matt
x-men: THE LAST STAND
Logan forgets
he’s not Angel.
Twyford. “The main challenges were getting
the initial look and time of day for the whole
sequence. The elements consisted of cold,
rainy night live-action footage from
Vancouver, sunny day miniature elements,
traditional misty day background plates of San
Francisco, and of course the CG bridge and FX
elements.” Foggy weather during the San
Francisco filming didn’t help much, either. Still,
the end result is pretty darn good.
1:14:10 Forget Royal coronations, beautiful
swans flying across a setting sun or lions
roaring with their manes blowing in the
wind – is there a more majestic sight in this
world than that of Magneto calmly moving
cars out of the way while walking along the
Golden Gate Bridge?
1:15:20 The mutants clearly subscribe to
the “shock and awe” approach to
starting a war: moving an entire bridge
across San Francisco Bay certainly has more
impact than, say, hijacking a boat (which would
have been considerably easier). Magneto is
making quite a major point here... And is
possibly also showing off a little. However, it is
a bit weird that he decided to attack Alcatraz
by parking the bridge and sending his mutants
into battle when he could have just dropped it
on the base and squashed everybody flat.
X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 85
 “You picked the
wrong mutant, bub.”
1:16:11 “Charles always wanted to build bridges,”
observes Magneto, plonking the bridge down.
Ouch. That’s a terrible pun.
1:16:40 And to make up for it, there’s a lovely
moment in which an innocent bystander, who’s
just seen a man rip the Golden Gate Bridge off
its legs and fly it across the water, locks her car
door to protect herself from him. Bless.
1:16:58 Side note: when did it get dark?
That was the quickest sunset ever!
1:18:20 The guns the humans are firing are
plastic, much to Magneto’s surprise. Funny to
think that 3D printing wasn’t around when this
film was made, but now it looks as though
plastic guns are going to be everywhere…
1:18:32 Arclight (played by the
marvellously named Omahyra) finally
gets to do something that isn’t
“standing in the background scowling”. She
claps her hands and all the plastic weapons
explode. Now that’s a handy skill to have when
too many people are talking on their phones…
1:18:54 “Oh my stars and garters,”
breathes Beast. For the newbies among
you, this is his catchphrase. Coming
86 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION
from the mouth of the former psychiatrist Dr
Frasier Crane, it actually works a treat.
1:19:10 The President realises that there’s
nothing they can do to save the lab from the
mutants. “Then God help us,” he says
dramatically. US Presidents are fond of saying
things like this in disaster movies, whereas in
real life they probably say things such as, “Oh
no, we’re f**ked!” or “Bugger.”
1:19:19 “They’re coming for him,” says
Worthington, watching the fight through his
window before legging it. He’s only just figured
that out? Really?
1:20:00 Wolverine leaps out of the
X-Jet and uses his claws to break his fall.
By George, those things are handy.
1:20:58 The good mutants fight the bad mutants.
Usually Wolverine is the one going into a
berserker rage and having the time of his life,
whereas here it’s quite clearly Beast who’s
letting rip: who knew Frasier had it in him?
Actually we should stop typecasting Kelsey
Grammer and point out that he’s bloody
brilliant as a giant blue furball.
1:21:59 Wolverine hacks two arms off a bloke
who instantly grows them back. “Come on!” the
Magneto shows
Juggernaut how it’s done.
mutant taunts him, so Logan kicks him in the
crotch. “Grow those back,” he spits. This, ladies
and gentlemen, is what’s known as a “crowd-
pleasing moment”.
1:22:26 Vinnie Jones now delivers the
signature line of his career: “Don’t you
know who I am? I’m the Juggernaut,
bitch!” This, ladies and gentlemen, is what’s
known as a “crowd-hurting moment”.
1:23:20 This one’s a puzzler. Kid Omega kills Dr
Kavita Rao (who debuted in Astonishing X-Men
in 2004, and is played here by the utterly
superb Shohreh Aghdashloo) by holding her
close to him and unleashing his quills. But they
don’t look long enough to kill her outright!
Unless there’s one really big one somewhere
that we don’t see? …And nope, that wasn’t
supposed to sound rude.
1:25:02 Worthington is thrown off the building
by the mutants, only to be saved in mid-air by
his winged son. You know, it’s a shame we don’t
see more of Angel in this film – there’s a
perfectly decent subplot just waiting to be
expanded, and Foster is great in such a slender
role. Then again, if we’re talking about mutant
stories waiting to be told, it’s a shame that
Nightcrawler isn’t back for this film. He was
supposed to be, but there wasn’t much for him
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
 x-men: THE LAST STAND

Flames. Wind machine.

Could be a Celine
Dion video.

to do, so he was finally dumped. If you play the
computer game that is set between X2 and The
Last Stand, you’ll see that Nightcrawler tells the
rest of the X-Men that he wants to live a quiet
life from now on and thus leaves them.
1:25:50 “It’s time to end this war,” Magneto
announces, and starts lobbing cars at the
facility (with Pyro helping out by setting them
on fire in mid-air). Earlier he made a big deal
about sending the pawns in first but really, if
he’d done this from the start, the battle would
have been over twice as fast and he wouldn’t
have lost so many mutants. Or, y’know, he
could have just dropped the bridge on them as
mentioned earlier...
1:27:40 Pyro now has a device in his
palm to ignite flames – no more lighters
for him.
1:29:33 Magneto is stabbed in the chest
by a row of needles (go Beast!). From
one shot to the next they go from
mostly horizontal to completely vertical.
1:32:14 Jean tries to atomise Wolverine.
She successfully disintegrates most of
his clothes and some of his skin but,
mysteriously, keeps his trousers on. Is he
wearing those special Hulk pants that don’t get
destroyed when everything else does?
1:33:22 Bye, bye Jean. She looks rather
peaceful when she collapses in Logan’s
arms, just in case you were horrified that
he’d done the wrong thing by killing her.
1:36:21 This shot of Logan standing
outside of the school was shot in winter,
and so the leaves of the trees had long
since fallen. But the scene was set in summer,
so every single leaf was replaced digitally.
CITE-O-METER™
THRILLED Bye bye, Cyclops
ENTERTAINED
1:37:44 And that’s it for The Last Stand, a film
troubled by the fact that Bryan Singer wasn’t
involved. While it does have its issues, though,
– most notably the way Cyclops’s death is
handled – The Last Stand really isn’t quite as
bad as some make out. And hey, it could be
worse… See the next film for proof!
1:44:00 An unexpected end-credit sting! We see
Moira MacTaggart checking on an unconscious
patient, who wakes up and says her name.
“Charles?” she says, amazed. This is a little call
back to a scene earlier in the film where we see
her discussing the morality of placing someone
else’s consciousness into a comatose body. Is
this what she’s done to Charles? Or did he do it
himself? Ooh…
Flying bridge
Bye bye, Professor X
Bye bye, Phoenix
END End-credit sting

1:30:19 Jean totally atomises an entire battalion

NODDING OFF Danger Room
Sentinels Jailbreak Wolverine Vs
Forest Mutants
on the road
of soldiers, the heartless wench. She seems to
have brought her own wind machine with her
ZZ Z Z Z Z Z Z Z …
Z X-Men on Alcatraz “I’m the Juggernaut, bitch!”

to make her hair flow magnificently, too. RUNNING TIME (MINS) 0 20 40 60 80 100 120

www.sfx.co.uk X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 87

 T H E TO P 10
Goofiest Mutant X-Powers
Not all superheroes are created equal...

Cypher
Poor Doug Ramsey. He was a nice
enough guy, and his teammates
on the New Mutants seemed to
miss him after he died. But there’s
a reason C-3PO was never useful in

1
a battle and Doug had the same
problem: the ability to understand
any language is just lame.

4
Bling!
Bling! can produce diamonds in
her bone marrow and shoot them
Skin
Generation X team member Angelo Espinosa had lots and lots
out of her body. Meh. And you of extra, well, skin. Which made him a kind of second-rate
know what happens when a white Mr Fantastic, but without the genius IQ. Needless to say, his
guy creates a black character epidermal-based adventures were kind of gross.
who’s the daughter of hip-hop
artists? You get a character with a
name like “Bling!” 2 Marrow
And speaking of
Ugly John gross, there’s a
reason our skeletons
Lest you think we’re picking are on the inside! This
on Ugly John because he’s
ugly, rest assured we’re not. Morlock-turned-X-
We’re doing so because he Man-turned-terrorist-
had an utterly ridiculous turned-X-Force team
power – three faces. Sorry, member is capable of
John, but having the world’s removing her bones
best peripheral vision will and using them as

3 5
only get you so far. Which weapons. Say it with
is why you were killed by
the Sentinels. us now – Ewww...

88 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions

 top 10 goofiest powers

Phat Jazz
Would-be rapper
The late William John Arthur Zander’s
Robert Reilly was mutant power is that
his skin is blue. And
the poor man’s
6
that’s about it. Proving
Blob. He basically there is no God, he
had the ability to was one of the few
mutants who kept their
get fatter and fatter. As a means of reminding powers after M-Day

9
youngsters about the importance of good in the Decimation
nutritional habits he may have had some “storyline”. But he
died soon after.
value. But as an action hero? Not so much.

Eye-Scream
Little is known about this
wannabe supervillain who
appeared only once, in the
admittedly satirical Obnoxio
The Clown Vs The X-Men #1.
But what is known is that
he can turn his body into
ice cream, making him the
most delicious mutant ever. 7
Lifeguard
8 Aussie Heather
Cameron has the
ability to manifest
whatever abilities
are necessary in
a given situation.
She’s super
helpful! It’s a
useful skill, but 10
one of the least
imaginative
Pixie
Pixie (aka Welsh teen Megan Gwynn) has pixie-like eyes and
mutant powers to wings, and the ability to produce hallucination-inducing pixie
emerge from the dust. All of which would be just terrific – if she was a guest
House of Ideas. star on The Powerpuff Girls.

www.sfx.co.uk X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 89

 X-MEN WORDS BY: JAYNE NELSON

KEY
TRIVIA Interesting
X-Men Origins
Wolverine
X-Men factoids

DID YOU SPOT?

Missed moments

WTF?! Did that

really happen!?

A spe cia l
GOOFS Bloopers
and gaffes
sce ne- by- sce ne
bre akd ow n.
Wa rni ng!
int ens ely pac ked
IN-JOKES
Mutant gags
wit h tri via

Wolverine RAGE
This happens a lot

SHIRTLESS
Phwoooaaar!

DRINKING
GAME

ONE DRINK
n Wolverine’s claws
come out.
n Wolverine inserts

said claws into

someone who
doesn’t die.

TWO DRINKS
Gambit uses his
Year 2009
n

powers.
n Victor shows his
claws or teeth.
Director Gavin Hood
Writers David Benioff, Skip Woods
THREE DRINKS
n Wolverine gets all Starring Hugh Jackman, Liev Schreiber,
revenge-y.
n Wade/Deadpool is Danny Huston, Will.i.am, Lynn Collins,
fabulous.
Kevin Durand, Dominic Monaghan,
Taylor Kitsch, Daniel Henney

90 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions


War is cell.
0:00:00 Hugh Jackman, who is a
producer on this film, wanted to call this
movie The Wolverine but was overruled.
It’s called Origins because it was the first of a
planned series of films spun-off the franchise
showing how characters became who they are
today. A Magneto film was also mooted.
0:00:43 “Northwest Territories, Canada,
1845” says the caption. We see a kid’s
bedroom with two pictures on the walls:
a fox and a wolverine. Given that he ends up
dating Silver Fox later... this must be Logan’s
room, then!
0:01:49 The guy playing their dad – or
who little Logan thinks is his dad,
anyway – is Peter O’Brien, best-known
for playing Shane Ramsey in Neighbours,
although he’s also popped up in everything
from The Bill to Casualty and Doctor Who over
the years.
0:02:32 Little James (Troye Sivan)
suddenly starts to grow claws, much to
his surprise. This is less of a “Snikt!”
moment and more of a “squish” moment,
though, as the claws ease their way out of his
skin slowly and creepily. Little James then gives
a bloody good Wolvie-roar as he runs forward
and stabs the man who shot and killed his dad,
although he then discovers that the guy really
www.sfx.co.uk
wasn’t his dad and he just killed his true pa.
Weirdly, none of this is explained: James and
his brother Victor then run away and that’s it.
So what was all that about? Why was his dad
shot? What about the people who haven’t read
the comics, eh? If you have, you’ll know that
young James was brought up by John Howlett,
shot by the groundskeeper, Thomas Logan,
who is his real father. The shock of the deaths
resulted in his mother committing suicide,
hence young Logan running away.
0:04:33 This is a fantastic opening sequence,
morphing from the two kids running through
the forest to Logan and Victor in the Civil War…
and then it morphs into the trenches of the
First World War… and then the D-Day landings
(Logan kept quite busy during the Second
World War: in The Wolverine we’ll see he also
spent time in a Japanese prison camp), and
then on to Vietnam. You also get to see that
Victor is bullet-happy and Logan is worried by
this. Incidentally, Logan has the same long hair
in all of these sequences: don’t these armies
have rules about that?
0:05:00 So who is Victor Creed, anyway?
Does Wolverine really have a brother?
“In the original script he wasn’t
Wolverine’s half-brother,” director Gavin Hood
told SFX, “and as a geek you’ll know that there
are some fans who say he isn’t his half-brother…
x-men origins: wolverine
Logan does his bit on the
beaches of Normandy.
Dad said, “Grow some
balls!” Not claws.
But if Sabretooth and Wolverine are half-
brothers, that adds emotional fuel to this story.”
0:07:12 The bone claws come out as
Logan protects his brother from a
bunch of American soldiers.
0:07:47 Logan is killed by a firing squad. You
know, there aren’t many movies in which the
lead character is dead by the opening credits.
Or many when he comes back again as though
nothing has happened…
0:07:59 William Stryker introduces himself, here
played by Danny Huston.
0:09:15 And now our two long-living
mutants are working as part of a special
mutant team – and we get our first
glimpse of Wade Wilson, later to become
Deadpool, played by Ryan Reynolds.
0:10:00 It’s a hello as well to Chris “Bolt”
Bradley, played by Dominic Monaghan.
A mutant who can control electricity,
he’s also known as Maverick in the comics.
0:10:15 Logan isn’t too impressed with
flying, acting like he’s going to be sick.
This is echoed in The Wolverine as well,
although funnily enough he seems perfectly
okay when he’s in the X-Jet.
X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 91

Wolverine is a guest
contestant on The Voice.
0:10:49 The gang line up so we get a good look
at them, but really all we’re looking at are
Reynolds’ arms, which look more impressive
than Jackman’s despite him being a smaller
chap. And that’s quite some feat, so bravo!
0:11:11 Daniel Henney steps forward as Agent
Zero, who proceeds to out-cool anyone else in
the film so far by surviving a shoot-out by
running around in slow-motion and getting all
his foes to shoot each other instead of him.
Best of all, he throws two guns in the air, pulls
out new ammunition and loads them while
they’re flying – holy cow! Whataguy!
0:12:07 Now we meet Fred Dukes, later
known as The Blob (because he’s huge
and, er, blobby), who’s played here by
Kevin Durand. Dark Angel fans probably know
him best as dog-faced Joshua, although he’s
also had roles in Lost and some pretty big films
– including Smokin’ Aces, also with Reynolds.
0:12:22 Fred sticks his fist inside the
barrel of a huge gun and it explodes
around him, but he’s totally unhurt. You
have to wonder what his glove is made out of.
0:13:30 The elevator doors open and Wade
charges out, deflecting bullets with his whirling
swords and making it look ridiculously easy.
92 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION
This sequence is, rather bizarrely, one of the
best in the entire film, and Wolverine isn’t even
in it. That’s awkward.
0:14:02 “Okay, people are dead,” Wade
deadpans as two bodies fall to the floor
beside him. But we do have to wonder
why there’s no blood on his blades.
0:14:18 Will.i.am seems to be enjoying himself as
John Wraith, a teleporting team-member, and
it’s good to see that he’s kept his cowboy hat
despite being in the army.
0:16:16 There’s a near-slaughter in an African
village as Stryker tries to find the source of a
meteor rock. Victor is suitably animalistic as he
attacks an innocent bystander and Logan has
to stop him. Schreiber appears to be really
getting into the role, baring his teeth and
generally being a bully, but it’s hard to see any
connection between him and Logan: how have
they managed to work together all these years?
Incidentally, when you type “Liev” your
autocorrect changes it to “Live”. Every. Damn.
Time. That poor guy must go through hell when
he’s on his computer.
0:17:07 It’s weird hearing Victor call Logan
“Jimmy”, isn’t it? By the way, Logan is wearing
his now-standard white vest.
Wolverine frees the
captured children.
0:18:00 And now he’s not. Six years later,
Logan takes in the sun outside his
house, high on a mountain in the
Canadian Rockies. He conveniently left his
shirt inside so that his girlfriend, Kayla (Lynn
Collins), can follow him outside while wrapped
up in it. That’s true love, see, when you share
each other’s clothes. He’s probably wearing
her knickers.
0:19:02 Wolverine turns up for work and we
discover that he’s a lumberjack! Suddenly we
know why he’s wearing her knickers (and
possibly suspendies and a bra) – he’s a Monty
Python fan!
0:20:18 Bolt is working at a circus. And it’s
official: he’s wearing the worst shirt and
jacket combo in the entire history of the
X-Men franchise.
0:22:57 We hear Bolt’s dying
scream and then we cut to
Logan sitting bolt upright (pun
intended) from a dream, screaming his own
lungs out. It’s a terrible cliché, alas, but it’s
given extra oomph by the fact that he woke up
with his claws out: it’s a good thing his missus
wasn’t in bed next to him. Blimey, you’d be a
bag of nerves if you had to bunk with
Wolverine, wouldn’t you?
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions

0:25:46 “Your country needs you,” Stryker tells
Logan, who replies bluntly, “I’m Canadian.”
Canadians everywhere fistpump.
0:26:40 “I’m the best there is at what I
do, and what I do best isn’t very nice,”
says Logan. According to director Hood:
“What I love about that line is that on the one
hand, it’s a cool line, but if you look at it in
another way, it’s a person who doesn’t
necessarily like their own nature. ‘What I do
best isn’t very nice.’ And that’s what I think is so
great about this character – he’s so like so
many of us. Sometimes we like ourselves;
sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we wanna
lash out; he does so with claws. So he is
profoundly human.”
0:28:19 Logan’s house is perched on a
mountaintop so high you do have to
wonder why anyone would live there. It
would be horrendously windy, freezing cold in
the winter (if not all year round) and tough to
get to if the roads were icy or too wet. Sure, it
looks cool, but really, in terms of practicality it
would be a nightmare! Bet it doesn’t even
have broadband.
0:29:30 A little scene showing Wolverine
bonding with Kayla (Lynn Collins). At this point
most of the women in the audience start
www.sfx.co.uk
sighing, because they know that Kayla is so
unbelievably perfect that she is bound to be
murdered and set Logan off on a rampage of
revenge. It’s such an old, hoary trope that the
minute any main character gets a girlfriend on
any film or TV show, you know she’s doomed.
And it’s so very, very rarely the men who get
killed, isn’t it? Bah.
0:30:35 Logan smells out a wolverine head lying
in the grass. It’s good to see him using his nose
again – it’s one of his powers that gets
underused in these films.
0:31:40 And oh look, Kayla’s dead.
Couldn’t see that lumbering over the
horizon like an elephant on stilts.
Incidentally, in the comics Silver Fox had
anti-ageing abilities as opposed to being able
to control minds.
0:33:26 Out come the bone claws as
Logan faces off with his lady-killing
brother. And boy, is that one way to
empty a bar…
0:34:20 The fight that ensues proves that
Victor has the upper hand (or upper claws?)
when it comes to beating seven shades of shit
out of someone. There’s some excellent
stuntwork here.
x-men origins: wolverine
Luckily, when they told Hugh Jackman
his love interest was going to be Silver Fox,
they didn’t mean George Clooney.
0:35:26 The CGI when Logan hits the moving
truck isn’t very impressive, though. Physical
action always trumps computer action…
0:35:57 Victor stamps on Logan’s claws,
snapping them in half. Logan screams,
which implies that there are nerves
running up them and he can feel them snap.
Right or wrong (he might have just screamed
from the vibration, who knows?) it does make
you grateful that it doesn’t hurt every time we
snap a fingernail.
0:36:10 Doctors work on Logan and
cut off his shirt. (Let’s hope they
didn’t notice he was wearing his
girlfriend’s knickers.)
0:37:30 “I’ll promise you two things,” says
Stryker. “You’ll suffer more pain than any other
man can endure, but you’ll have your revenge.”
He’s not one to miss the opportunity for a
melodramatic statement.
0:38:24 Logan lies above the tank we
first saw in X2, waiting to have
adamantium inserted into his body.
However, where are the generals so casually
drinking champagne while their patient suffers?
This doesn’t quite match with what we saw in
the flashbacks...
X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 93

0:43:50 For the first time ever, we see
inside Wolverine’s arm as the claws
come out, thanks to a handy x-ray
screen. Note how the bones in his wrist and
hand are jostled out of the way by the blades;
now that’s the kind of gory detail that you
won’t be able to get out of your head every
time you watch him snikt his claws into place
from now onwards! (And this is assuming
you’re still remembering him telling Rogue in
the first film that his claws hurt “every time”
they come out…)
0:44:12 Okay, say what you like about this film:
not everybody thinks it works, or that it
contributes anything to the franchise, or even
that it’s worth watching. But the sight of
Wolverine erupting naked from his tank with an
animalistic howl of rage – muscles bulging,
claws outstretched, wires snapping free of the
syringes in his back – is one hell of a shot and
fully deserves its place in the history of this
character. We wonder how many times
Jackman had to do it before he nailed that
ferocity? Because nail it he did.
0:45:41 The old couple who find
Wolverine in their barn – shades of Ma
and Pa Kent, perhaps? – have a sticker
on their truck which reads, “Not all who wander
are lost.” This is from Tolkien’s The Fellowship
94 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION
Of The Ring. Incidentally, this was a red-letter
day of filming, according to director Hood:
“When the word goes out that Hugh Jackman
may be running naked across a field, it’s
surprising how many of the women in the office
felt they needed to be on the set that day. All
these production issues came up and they had
to pop out to make sure all the logistics were
being handled properly…”
0:46:13 Logan tests his blades in front of
a mirror; then he has a few mishaps and
destroys the bathroom. It’s hard getting
used to using razors, as most teenage boys
discover when they hit puberty.
0:49:15 And now he’s sitting in the dark
in the barn, top missing, despite the fact
he’s already stated that it’s cold. Anyone
would think he’s just doing this for the ladies!
0:50:52 Logan tries on the clothes
belonging to the old couple’s son (who
we assume has long-since kicked the
bucket). Here’s where he gets the leather jacket
he wears in X-Men, as well as the jeans and belt
buckle. It’s a good thing this son was built like a
brick shithouse as well as Logan, isn’t it?
0:51:27 Nooooooooo! Agent Zero shoots the old
couple dead! That utter bastard!
Stryker had some interesting
specimens in his aquarium.
0:53:20 The bike chase that follows is pretty
stirring stuff, although Logan really would
have to be a rider of Grand Prix level to stay
on his bike during the entire thing. And there’s
the odd rather jarring use of greenscreen here
and there.
0:53:16 The claws come out and slice
through the barrel of a gun.
0:53:31 Now he’s using the claws as
brakes to slow the bike’s progress and
do a 180-degree turn! He’s got the hang
of them in a remarkably short space of time,
hasn’t he? Surely if he’d tried that with his bone
claws, they would have snapped...
0:53:50 And again: now he uses them to
demolish the side of one of the trucks
following him.
0:54:19 As a final – frankly rather
ludicrous – flourish, he’s propelled
through the air by an explosion and,
while flying, cuts through the blades of the
chopper pursuing him.
0:54:40 CRASH! That’ll teach Agent Zero to
shoot two old dears who only wanted to give
Logan clothes and a nice breakfast!
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions

0:56:13 The claws come out to set off a
spark which blows up the fallen
helicopter and Agent Zero.
0:56:22 The copter blows up. Wolverine doesn’t
look behind him. Because, as we all know, real
men don’t look at explosions.
0:57:33 Scott Summers makes his first
appearance, played by young Tim Pocock. Not
only does he have James Marsden’s hairstyle
down to a “T”, he also has his facial structure.
Good call, casting directors.
0:59:08 Wolverine gets the claws out to
show Wraith what he can do now.
0:59:46 Fred Dukes got biiiiiiiiiiiig. Durand’s
make-up is a little disconcerting but the point is
made. And Jackman delivers the line, “Hey
Fat... er, Fred,” brilliantly.
1:00:29 “Come on, bub. For old time’s sake,
huh?” This is the first use of “bub” in this film,
and it’s delivered in the perfect place – because
Fred mis-hears it as “blob”. And he’s not happy!
1:02:17 In the process of getting his claws
out, Logan ruins a perfectly good
boxing glove.
www.sfx.co.uk
Victor Creed, the man with
the mutant sideburns.
1:03:05 Scott, chased by Victor, loses his
sunglasses and cuts a swath through the entire
school building. That’s one way to ensure the
kids all get a day off...
1:04:12 Logan now realises that Victor and
Stryker are working together. Shock! Horror!
Except not really. If there’s one thing this film is
missing, it’s the slow development of their
relationship falling apart – Logan and Victor are
enemies from the start, more or less, and so
why should we care about their sibling issues?
Victor’s just another bad guy, isn’t he?
1:06:44 We strive hard to bring you important
trivia, information and insight while we write
these annotated X-Men features. However, at
this point all we have to say is that the woman
in orange, who walks in front of Logan and
Wraith as they enter the bar, has the tiniest
bottom in history.
1:07:27 Enter Remy LeBeau, aka Gambit,
played by Taylor Kitsch in possibly his
best role to date (Remy has at least 60
per cent more charm and personality than
Kitsch showed in John Carter. In which,
incidentally, he co-starred with Lynn “Kayla”
Collins). Gambit can manipulate kinetic energy
and perform all sorts of amazing feats – he’s
also good with the cards and the ladies.
x-men origins: wolverine
The bath water was
just a little too hot.
1:08:23 As Wraith disappears while
fighting with Victor, you get a
millisecond-fast glimpse of his skull.
1:09:45 Gambit almost completely obliterating
Wolverine using nothing more than playing
cards: how cool is he?
1:10:14 Wolverine faces off with Victor.
1:11:30 Gambit yet again proves how cool he is
by interrupting the brothers as they fight and
basically making the entire alleyway explode.
1:11:36 And now Wolverine is angry
enough to want to skewer him…
Although first he gives him the
metal finger.
1:11:50 During this fight, Jackman
accidentally stabbed one of his claws
into Kitsch’s hand, where it broke off. He
says Kitsch simply held up his palm with the
nine-inch claw sticking out of it and asked, “Do
you want this back?”
1:12:58 The odd-eyed kid is Stryker’s son,
who caused so much havoc in X2.
X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 95
 Windows, forgotten
victims of mutant brawls.
1:13:47 “We need to take the fight to the enemy
before they take the fight to us,” says Stryker,
of his plans to create super-mutants to wipe
out other mutants. And boy, doesn’t that sound
just like Magneto? These guys are just going
around in circles.
1:15:26 We discover that the island
everyone’s been talking about is Three
Mile Island, a former nuclear station in
Pennsylvania famous for going into partial
meltdown in 1979 and scaring the bejeesus out
of Americans everywhere. By the way, their
security is crap: nobody sees or hears the
seaplane approach.
1:16:23 It’s off camera, mind you, but
Wolverine gets his claws out to break
a lock.
1:19:02 And so it’s revealed that Kayla – the too-
good-to-be-true girlfriend – was indeed too
good to be true, and was working for Stryker
all along. She faked her death by taking a drug
that suppresses the heart-rate. It’s at this point
that we wonder why Wolverine just walked
away and left her on the grass: didn’t he bury
her? Good thing he didn’t, in retrospect! Also,
Stryker reveals that Kayla’s sister, who he is
holding prisoner, has “diamond-hard skin”. So
that’ll be Emma Frost, then.
96 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION
1:22:25 Kayla tries to leave and Victor
grabs her by the throat. She screams
the longest scream in X-Men franchise
history, long enough and loud enough to stop
Wolverine in his tracks outside the building.
And it’s all the more impressive because, er,
did we mention that Victor grabs her by the
throat? How did she do that?
1:22:38 Wolverine attacks Victor and you
can tell he means business because he’s
removed his jacket and is down to that
vest again.
1:23:00 Victor and Wolverine go flying through a
window and land on the ground many feet
below – not only a cool stunt, but the sound
effects are so visceral you can almost feel how
much it hurts. Nice.
1:25:00 Of the kids in the cages, one is
wee little Toad, one is Wind Dancer, one
is Quicksilver and one is Banshee.
1:25:16 Wolverine opens all the cages
using his claws in dramatic, spark-filled
slow-motion.
1:25:40 Our first glimpse of Emma Frost
(Tahyna Tozzi), who’s wearing far more
clothes than she does in both the
comics and X-Men: First Class. Try not to think
about how old she is, here, by the way – way
too young to be January Jones, and thus
messing up continuity all over again.
1:26:22 Deadpool makes his entrance.
Wolverine gets his claws out. Then
Deadpool does the same, but they’re
swords. It’s at this point that we, good reader,
would have run for the hills.
1:28:00 Decent acrobatics here from Jackman.
Both he and Reynolds aren’t wearing much in
the way of padding for these scenes, so those
flying blades (fake or not) and stunt rolls must
have caused a few bruises and scrapes.
1:29:11 Wolverine climbs to the top of a cooling
tower and beckons for Deadpool to follow –
which he does, using Wraith’s teleportation
skill. The “Oh, for crying out loud!” look on
Wolverine’s face is priceless.
1:29:17 Hmm. We’re not too impressed by this
fight on the tower (choreography aside). The
effects aren’t quite convincing enough to make
us believe they’re really up there: it looks far
too computer-generated. And it’s one of those
things that you can see a scriptwriter adding
gleefully to the script (“Let’s make ’em fight on
a cooling tower hundreds of feet above the
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
 x-men origins: wolverine

Silver Fox, aka,

The Trickster.

ground!”) that looks rather over-dramatic and 1:33:10 “You miss me?” asks Gambit, turning his idea who he is. Although it’s a bit of a pity he
unnecessary on screen. head and staring at Wolverine coquettishly. didn’t just say to Gambit, “Hey, bub, how did I
get here?”
1:29:52 Victor arrives in the nick of time to save 1:34:45 Wolverine walks off into the
his brother, then Deadpool performs a fantastic sunrise with Kayla in his arms (not 1:40:27 The end credits begin, and thus ends one
acrobatic kick. Reynolds must have trained for pretentious at all, oh no!). Then the of the least-loved films in the franchise, even
months for this… claws come out as he sees Stryker, and he’s though it did well at the box office. “I know we
shot through the skull by two adamantium couldn’t have worked harder,” says Jackman in
1:30:33 Deadpool unleashes Scott’s optic blast bullets. Ouch. That one smarts. retrospect. “We thought it’d be fun to introduce
and Wolverine blocks it with his claws. We new characters. We thought fans would love
know adamantium is hard… but really, would 1:36:42 Patrick Stewart, as Professor X, that. But I think we tried to do too much.”
this be possible? Also, why didn’t Deadpool makes a surprise cameo to rescue all
unleash that from the start? This is like that bit the children from the island. He’s had 1:40:52 There’s a mid-credits sting featuring
in Pacific Rim where the giant robots save their that face-smoothing thing done again. Stryker being arrested.
enormous sword for the very end just because
it’s more dramatic, isn’t it? 1:37:59 Logan wakes up with amnesia, thus 1:46:46 And there’s an end-credits sting
setting off on his years of wandering with no featuring Deadpool waking up in the rubble.
1:32:44 “We could never be done,
Jimmy,” says Victor. “We’re brothers.
And brothers look out for each other.”
Which totally explains why he spends all of
CITE-O-METER™
Dead girlfriend Wolverine Vs
X-Men trying to kill him, then. (We’ve already THRILLED Gambit Fight on the tower
had a whinge in our X-Men piece about how he
looks totally different and doesn’t know his
brother any more, but it’s still bugging us!)
ENTERTAINED
1:32:55 The cooling tower collapse is a misstep,
NODDING OFF War-like
Bike Vs
END
opening Meet Wade
really. Gambit comes flying in to save
Wolverine, but it’s all gone far too CGI.
ZZ Z Z Z Z Z Z Z …
Z
credits Wilson Waking up in
the pool
Helicopter “Kayla isn’t dead”
exposition
Bullet time/
who am I?
Jackman’s selling it all as hard as he can, but RUNNING TIME (MINS) 0 20 40 60 80 100 120
things are so computer-gamey it’s ludicrous.

www.sfx.co.uk X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 97

 T H E T O P TV
X-Wannabes
The X-Men have starred in a couple of acclaimed TV toons,
but we’ve yet to see a live-action telly version of their
exploits. Though they have come close at times…

Mutant X Three Inches (2011)

(2001-4)
When is an X-Men show not
an X-Men show? When Fox
gets wind of it and says, “Oi!
Marvel! NO!” Marvel had sold
the rights for a Mutant X TV
show but Fox sued saying
it had exclusive rights to
the X-brand. Result? The TV
show’s production company
was not allowed to make
any reference or link to the
X-Men, either in-show or in
publicity and it, in turned,
A pilot for a series that was never
made. Syfy opted for Alphas
instead. Syfy was wrong. Because
Three Inches, despite the terrible
title (it alluded to the fact that one
of the main characters had a very
feeble telekinetic ability and could
move objects no more than three
inches) was a lot of fun. This was
more of a comedy drama, with as
much of a love of crap superpowers
as Misfits (another character

1
Generation X (1996)
A pilot for a series that was never made (not
the last time you’ll hear that phrase on these
pages) this was based on the distinctly odd
X-Men-related book of the same name. In
this one Banshee and the White Queen are
exuded obnoxious smells).
sued Marvel for selling it a
dud. The show managed Professor X-alike: Troy
to last three years anyway, Hamilton (played by Buffy The
based on all-new mutants
and all-old plots. It was kinda
Vampire Slayer’s James Marsters),
an ex-Army intelligence officer
dumb fun though.
Professor X-alike: Adam
Kane (played by John Shea,
Lex Luthor in Lois & Clark)

2
headmaster and headmistress of an Academy
for Gifted Youngsters which on TV meant all
the ones with easy-to-achieve powers (plus
one addition – a girl called Buff; no, she didn’t
have a mutant ability that made all her clothes
fall off, but rather she was super strong). It was
distinctly less odd than the comic book (aside
from Banshee’s bizarre Oirish accent) though
Finola Hughes was rather splendid as the

3
White Queen.
Professor X-alike: There were two,
Banshee and the White Queen

98 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions

 top tv x-wannabes

Alphas
4 (2011-2012)
Not in any way connected to the
X-Men, while in every way being
exactly like the X-Men, Alphas was a
two-season Syfy show that featured
good mutants fighting bad mutants.
Mutant powers among the goodies
included super strength, super senses,
being able to read radio signals and
super charm. The addition of an
autistic superhero was the show’s one
original idea (and Gary was great,
thanks to a brilliant performance from
Ryan Cartwright) but mostly it was all
wearyingly overfamiliar.
Professor X-alike: Dr Lee Rosen, the
occasionally-beardy and constantly
harried-looking non-superpowered
head of the Alphas program

The Tomorrow People

(1973-1979, 1992-5, 2013-)
6
Not as similar to the X-Men as the American shows in this feature, the original
UK version of The Tomorrow People nevertheless featured teens who manifested
superpowers as they hit puberty (they all had the same powers – telepathy, telekinesis,
teleporting) and were known as Homo Superior, the “next phase in human evolution”.
Sound familiar? Creator Roger Price claims he borrowed the phrase from David Bowie’s Heroes
lyrics for “Oh You Pretty Things” and Bowie definitely read Marvel comics, but whether
Price was more directly influenced by Marvel’s mutants has never been clarified. There
(2006-2010)
Four series of X-Men-style action, right down
have been two remakes of the series, one British one American. to its own take on “Days Of Future Past”
Professor X-alike: Nope, unless you count the computer, TIM (made possible by the canny inclusion of
a character whose superpowers included

5
time travel). For one season it was the best
thing on telly; for the next three it kept on
repeating the same plots. It also had too
many characters who were too powerful.
Aside from the time-travelling Hiro, there
was a mutant sponge who could nick
everybody else’s power and there was
the evil Sylar who went around… nicking
everybody else’s power (though he killed
them in the process). It ended up a bit of
a self-defeating mess, struggling to create
plots from its all-too-convoluted continuity.
Professor X-alike: Not quite. Mohinder
Suresh researched the Heroes and tracked
them down, but he was never their leader

www.sfx.co.uk X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 99

 X-MEN WORDS By: JAYNE NELSON

KEY A spe cia l

sce ne- by- sce ne
bre akd ow n.
Wa rni ng!
TRIVIA Interesting int ens ely pac ked
X-Men factoids
wit h tri via

DID YOU SPOT?

Missed moments

WTF?! Did that

really happen!?

GOOFS Bloopers
and gaffes

IN-JOKES
Mutant gags

Wolverine RAGE
This happens a lot

SHIRTLESS

X-MEN
Phwoooaaar!

DRINKING
GAME

n
ONE DRINK
Mystique is unhappy
about being a mutant.
n Magneto gets all

revengey.
FIRST
CLASS
TWO DRINKS
Charles puts his
n Year 2011
hand on his temple as
he uses his powers. Director Matthew Vaughn
n A woman wears

skimpy clothing.
Writers Ashley Miller, Zack Stentz,
Jane Goldman, Matthew Vaughn
THREE DRINKS
n Russian dialogue. Starring James McAvoy,
As many drinks Laurence Belcher, Michael Fassbender,
as you can Bill Milner, Kevin Bacon, Rose Byrne,
manage
n Wolverine says Jennifer Lawrence, January Jones
“fuck”.

100 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions


0:00:00 So begins the controversial X-Men
prequel, which is a bloody good movie in its
own right but an absolute nightmare if you’re
even remotely interested in Marvel continuity.
The best way to watch it, therefore, is to
pretend it’s a standalone film. Or simply take a
Valium before viewing.
0:01:03 It’s a brave decision to open
another X-Men film with scenes set at
Auschwitz – not only because it risks
repetition, but because, well, it’s bleak. One
thing you do notice when you watch this so
soon after the scenes in X-Men, mind you, is
that this new Erik (Bill Milner) and his mother
fail to scream half as impressively as the first
two actors did. (Sidenote: for the first three
X-Men films the comics’ Erik Lehnsherr is
known as Eric Lensherr. For First Class, his
name reverts back to Erik. We have no idea
why, except to confuse us.)
0:02:23 Beside the bed of young Charles
Xavier are three famed pictures: Charles
Darwin, Albert Einstein and Rita
Hayworth. So he’s a little science nerd, then,
but he also likes his ladies. Later we shall see
this borne out...
0:03:41 There’s something rather lovely about
Charles and Raven’s first meeting, if you excuse
the fact that she’s naked for some of it (which
www.sfx.co.uk
doesn’t seem wrong at all until, later on,
Charles sees her naked again and gets
embarrassed about it). Little squeaky-voiced
Mystique is so cute! Morgan Lily gets to reprise
her role as the younger Mystique in X-Men:
Days Of Future Past.
0:04:40 When we first meet Kevin
Bacon’s Sebastian Shaw, he’s working
with the Germans under the alias Dr
Klaus Schmidt. A long-established comics
character, Shaw here has similar abilities, but
he’s nowhere near as huge on screen. “My look
is very different from the guy in the comic
books,” explains Bacon. “We decided pretty
early on that that was not going to translate to
film. But there’s a certain kind of style to the
suits that I wear – although I don’t have
anything extreme in the make-up department.”
0:04:49 “Blue eyes? Blond Hair?
Pathetic,” Shaw says of the Nazis. Why
does “Hair” have a capital “H”?
0:06:48 The camera switches angles so you can
see that while Shaw sits behind a desk in a
smart, wooden-panelled office, he’s also next to
a lab which has saws and blades hanging on
the walls. Clearly this is one creepy mofo.
0:07:36 Shaw shoots Erik’s mother. Oh, so he’s
also a murderer! Good to know. Also, we
X-men: first Class
McAvoy and Fassbender were last on
screen together in Band Of Brothers.
suddenly understand why older Magneto is so
messed up...
0:08:02 And now young Erik screams, and it’s
more than worthy of the kid who played him in
the original X-Men. In fact, it’s pretty
stupendous, as is the sequence of metallic
objects being crushed by his grief – including
the soldiers’ helmets, which destroy their skulls.
You almost want to cheer and egg him on, only,
uh, that’s a bit sick.
0:09:38 The credit comes up for the film,
written on the back of a coin: “X First
Class”. No “men”, then? Still, it’s not like
we need reminding.
0:09:45 The music segues into a brooding
electric guitar sound, signalling that we’ve
moved from the ’40s to the ’60s. We see
Michael Fassbender as Erik plotting revenge:
he’s a man on a mission.
0:10:23 The girl that Charles chats up in
the bar has odd-coloured eyes. They
seem to glow unnaturally, although
when he tells her that she’s a mutant, we’re
supposed to assume that she isn’t, really: it’s
just a chat-up line. But why were they glowing?
Was some extra shine added to them in post-
production to make them stand out more, but
they got carried away?
X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 101

Johnny Depp’s squeeze
Amber Heard was
rumoured to be up for
the role of Mystique.
0:11:08 “Mutation took us from single-
celled organisms to being the dominant
form of reproductive life on this planet,”
says Charles. This echoes what he says in the
opening narration of X-Men. He’s obviously
quite fond of this fact, having honed it after
years of picking up women in bars.
0:14:53 The ways that Erik can use his powers
seem to be endless. In this scene, he tugs the
metal watch on a guy’s wrist and it throws his
whole arm back, making him smack himself in
the forehead. It’s hilarious but also disturbing:
watching Magneto turn a human into a puppet
should never be enjoyable. What is enjoyable,
however, is the way certain shots are framed
here – the banker behind the desk is the focus,
but you can see Erik reflected in the gold bar
on the table in the foreground. Nifty.
0:15:48 A shout-out to Henry Jackman’s score
here, which is filled with deep, pounding bass
guitar-lines and comes off as surprisingly
James Bond-like despite the lack of brass.
Jackman also composed the score for Kick-Ass,
which was another Matthew Vaughn-directed
movie, so they were used to working together.
And that Bond thing? Not an accident. “While
Matthew saw Magneto as an early James Bond,
we wanted to update that [John] Barry-esque
feeling for our 21st century,” Jackman says.
102 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION
0:16:40 Our first mention of the Hellfire
Club. In real life, such clubs have been
around hundreds of years and consist
of wild parties attended by gentlemen
looking for fun times with the opposite sex
(and they still continue today: a cursory
internet search brings up The Hellfire Club –
“Maintaining the traditions of the oldest
Swingers Club in England.”). In Marvel comics,
however, the Hellfire Club is a secret society
filled with naughty mutants who often tangle
with the X-Men.
0:18:52 For the record: this film is set in
the ’60s and thus the women we meet
on screen aren’t quite as empowered as
they are today. Fair enough. But that said, why
go to the trouble of introducing us to a female
CIA Agent, Rose Byrne’s Moira MacTaggart – a
woman with some power, in other words – if
the first thing she does is remove her clothing
and pretend to be a prostitute? Ugh.
0:17:00 And speaking of semi-naked women,
January Jones makes her debut as Emma
Frost, whose outfit... no, wait, never mind. We
could complain all day about what she’s (not)
wearing, but it’s a moot point: it’s always been
ridiculous and sexist in the comics. However,
Emma’s personality has always made up for
this fact – she’s a fantastic character – and so
“I WARNED you not
to nick my nuts.”
you can just about let it slide. But on film, with
Jones playing her? So bland. She barely utters
a single interesting line in the entire film, seems
to have two facial expressions (“brooding” and
“happy”) and she lets her bra act her off the
screen. Where’s the Emma Frost we’ve all been
waiting for?
0:17:19 The Hellfire Club scenes were
shot at the Café Du Paris in Piccadilly
Circus, London, which has also served
as a filming location for such epic
productions as, er, Strictly Come Dancing and
Made In Chelsea.
0:18:17 The record turntable is see-
through plastic these days, but Shaw
plays the same record he played back in
Auschwitz. Bet he thinks all modern music is
crap. (“It’s just noise!” he moans when Elvis
Presley comes on the radio.)
0:19:40 Riptide has been around in the
comics since the ’80s and is known for
being able to spin like a tornado and
grow weapons from his bones. In the film he’s
played by Spanish actor Álex González and he
can create whirlwinds with his hands. He
doesn’t get a single line to say, leading some to
assume that he’s mute, but he sure can wear a
sharp suit.
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions

0:19:50 Colonel Hendry watches
Riptide’s powers and asks, “What the
hell did you put in my drink?” He’s
played by Glenn Morshower, who’s one of those
actors you’ve seen in absolutely everything
(usually playing a government agent). He’s
probably best-known for his roles in 24 and the
Transformers movies, where he plays a
character named after himself!
0:20:45 Azazel, played here by Jason
Flemyng, is a teleporting mutant who
has excellent combat skills. In the
comics he can do everything from controlling
minds to paralysing people, but here he’s
mainly used to pop in and out during fights and
stab people with his tail. As noted elsewhere,
he’s also Nightcrawler’s daddy.
0:21:00 William Stryker – here played by
Don Creech – cameos. He’s way too old
to be the guy who later turns Wolverine
into his adamantium-skeletoned self, however.
0:22:18 The next time you watch the Argentina
sequence, try to forget that it’s an X-Men scene.
Instead, think of this as Michael Fassbender’s
audition for the role of James Bond. Once
you’ve looked at it that way, you’ll never see
him as anything else. Picture him saying
“shaken, not stirred”. Go on. He’s a natural 007,
www.sfx.co.uk
He’s just being lazy now.
isn’t he? Then again, given that Matthew
Vaughn has stated that he was influenced by
the ’60s Bond films for this movie, this
shouldn’t come as much of a surprise.
0:25:05 “Let’s just say I’m Frankenstein’s
monster,” growls Erik, and OH MY GOD, HE IS
SO BOND IT ALMOST HURTS TO WATCH.
0:26:05 In non-James Bond news, the sight of
James McAvoy acting slightly sozzled and
trying his darnedest to chat up Moira is
rather lovely.
0:31:40 James Bond... er, Erik... surfaces beside
Shaw’s boat on a mission of deadly revenge.
Underneath his wetsuit he’s wearing a tux. He’ll
strip in a minute and show up on deck with a
martini in his hand.
0:34:06 Erik uses giant chains to destroy Shaw’s
boat, slicing the entire thing in half using
nothing more than the power of his mind.
Imagine if 007 did this! Best Bond film ever!
0:34:14 Put an actress (or her stunt double) in a
tiny miniskirt, ask her to run though an
exploding corridor and position the camera so
you can see right up her jacksy as she hurtles
forward. This is not a flattering shot, despite
sounding like one.
X-men: first Class
She’s not “happy” so she
must be “brooding”.
0:34:25 Shaw is such a diabolical bad guy that
his boat comes with its own submarine. You
know who else would do something like this? A
Bond villain! And you know what other Shaw
played a Bond villain? Robert Shaw! This is all
linking up rather nicely, isn’t it? It’s like Six
Degrees Of Kevin Bacon, only with iconic
British spies!
0:34:44 Erik is pulled along by the submarine as
he tries to stop it – this is epic, epic stuff.
Charles diving into the sea to stop him, thus
saving his life, is a beautiful way for these guys
to meet. Ooh, we’ve got tingles.
0:37:08 Nicholas Hoult based his
performance as Hank McCoy on Kelsey
Grammer’s work in The Last Stand, and
you can actually see it here and there,
particularly in later scenes when he has all the
fur. He’s instantly likeable as the human Hank,
mind you, his geeky science nerd bouncing
rather pleasingly off the rest of the team.
0:37:30 “You didn’t ask, so I didn’t tell,”
says Hank, after Charles accidentally
outs him as a mutant. Going back to
the themes from the first few films –
particularly X2 – this is a little nod to the “don’t
ask, don’t tell” policy of the US military
concerning homosexuality.
X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 103

Twilight’s Taylor Lautner
was originally down to
play Beast. We think
Hoult nails it, though.
Nightcrawler’s dad. You
can see the resemblance.
0:39:04 “I was thinking that you’re the most
exquisite thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” Shaw
tells Emma, who looks “happy” (as opposed to
her other expression, “brooding”). Then he
orders her to get some ice for his drink. And
bang! There goes any power she might have
had as a female character, and she’s nothing
more than a pretty face rather than the kick-ass
Emma she is in the comics. Sure, this is
supposed to show us that Shaw is a dick, but
we already knew that (remember how he shot
a woman at the start?).
0:43:38 When Erik speaks in this scene,
you can hear a trace of Fassbender’s
Irish accent. And this won’t be the last
time we hear it, either…
0:45:28 As Charles uses Cerebro we get
a glimpse of a young black girl with
silver hair – Storm, perhaps? And
there’s a kid with sunglasses and a baseball
glove – Scott?
0:45:54 Oh look, now we’re introduced to
another female character wearing a
skimpy outfit, this time Angel (Zoe
Kravitz). She’s a lapdancer in a men’s club,
because of course she is: how else would she
be half-naked for the plot? Anyway, Angel
104 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION
Kids, don’t play
with matches.
Salvadore is a fairly recent Marvel character,
arriving in the comics in 2001, and is part-
human, part-fly, with wings and the ability to
spit an acid-type substance (used to digest her
food – think Jeff Goldblum in The Fly).
0:46:34 We may have issues with the
overwhelming degree of female nudity in this
film (although that’s a debate you can apply
to the comic books as well, and people have
been doing so for years), but one thing that
can’t be faulted is the sight of Angel’s
dragonfly wings peeling away from her back.
They are absolutely beautiful. Although why
nobody in the club seems to notice the
woman suddenly buzzing around in the air is
a bit of a mystery.
0:46:56 Edi Gathegi joins the mutants as
Darwin, who can take on any ability
required to survive a new environment.
0:46:59 This montage of Charles and Erik
rounding up mutants is immensely enjoyable.
What a fantastic double-act these guys make!
In recent times Ian McKellen and Patrick
Stewart have had a lot of fun hanging out
together and posting pictures of themselves
being daft on Twitter; you can see these guys
doing it, too.
Banshee is editor
Dave G’s favourite X-Man.
0:47:17 Here’s a mutant whose existence
in this film makes the brains of Marvel
fans hurt. Alex Summers (Lucas Till) is
the younger brother of Scott Summers, aka
Cyclops, and so his existence as a teenager in
this film makes no sense whatsoever (the Scott
we see through Cerebro is definitely younger
than Alex, too). There have been rumblings
from the filmmakers that actually this Alex isn’t
Scott’s brother at all: he’s another member of
the Summers family, but it’s still galling. Either
way, he’s got seriously cool powers: under the
name Havok, he can fire rings of energy.
0:47:48 Banshee tries to impress a girl by
using his psionic powers to send a
shockwave through a tank of fish. As
any fishkeeper will tell you, fish are sensitive
souls, and he quite likely killed them all. Instant
dislike! Anyway, fish-murdering aside, Sean
Cassidy was introduced in X-Men #28 as a
villain, but eventually joined the good guys in
Giant-Size X-Men #1. Here he’s played by Caleb
Landry Jones.
0:48:14 “Go fuck yourself,” says Wolverine, and
thus the film’s finest moment comes and goes
in a scene that lasts a mere 24 seconds.
0:50:15 Raven comes up with her own secret
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions

agent codename, Mystique, and then goes on
to name several other mutants – including
Professor X and Magneto. History is made!
0:59:17 Emma’s diamond body is
fantastic. Building on the one we saw
briefly in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, this
newer, adult version is truly stunning. “We had
to rotoscope her so that the motions of the
diamond version of the character looked like
January’s expressions and body language when
she performed the scene,” says FX designer
John Dykstra. They also used a block of cubic
zirconia (fake diamond) to chart the lighting
effects during filming.
1:02:29 We’ve come to like Oliver Platt’s
character (credited only as “Man In Black Suit”,
weirdly, even though he’s in it more than
enough to be given a name). And so when
Azazel bamfs into his office, flies him high into
the air and then drops him to his death, it really
is surprisingly horrifying. You have to give
Azazel points for style though.
1:06:35 We know Angel isn’t happy
around humans, but she decides to join
Shaw with barely a moment’s
hesitation, despite having only just met him.
Oh fickle fly!
www.sfx.co.uk
At least she’s ditched
the glittery bra (which,
btw, was definitely
not period attire).
1:12:40 There’s yet another new location
for Charles’s mansion: this time
Englefield House in Reading, dating
back to before 1558. It’s also popped up in The
King’s Speech and Hex.
1:13:53 Using real newsreel footage of
Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis
is a wise move, placing this firmly into
historical context. Although saying that, there’s
a New York Tribune newspaper headline
“Nuclear War Imminent?” which is completely
fake, so let’s hope no kids use this sequence to
write an essay.
1:14:12 The mutant training montage starts, and
boy, is it wonderful! The way each sequence is
edited is quirky and fun, with plenty of silly split
screens and time jumps. Charles is the focal
character throughout and it’s a marvellous
showcase of McAvoy’s charm in the role. You
really see him as a mentor here.
1:16:45 If Banshee really did jump out of
that window and fail to fly, he would
have broken a few bones, surely?
1:17:24 Havok calls Hank “bozo”. Whether he’s
Scott’s brother or not, he certainly has Logan’s
sense of humour...
X-men: first Class
You can take the girl
out of the strip club…
1:22:30 Magneto moves the radar dish. That
Yes, we know Radio Caroline didn’t start airing until 1964 and this film
is set in 1962, but we’re trying to set a ’60s mood here, okay? Humour us.
night some poor astronomer probably arrived
at work and, much to his consternation,
discovered that all his instruments were picking
up Radio Caroline instead of signals from deep
space.
*
1:26:15 Charles and Erik play chess. The
lamps in this room are perfectly
symmetrical. Does Charles have some
kind of lamp-related OCD?
1:29:03 Mystique waits for Erik in his
bed; when he says he’d prefer her older,
she turns into Rebecca Romijn. Nice
cameo, Becks!
1:30:00 “Have you ever looked at a tiger and
*
thought you want to cover it up?” says Erik of
Mystique’s real appearance. He’s a smooth-
talking bastard, this one. A snog commences
and the camera cuts away, so we’re left
wondering – did they have sex? Earlier in the
scene he’d said he didn’t want to, but in later
films there are hints that their relationship was
definitely consummated. Perhaps it’s up to us.
In which case: nookie most definitely ensued.
1:30:43 Charles’s flustered reaction when he sees
Mystique naked is so adorable!
X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 105

No, Moira!
NOOOOOOOO!
He’s made a right
mess of that sub.
1:32:15 The team wear their costumes for the
first time – and unlike the later X-Men films,
these ones are the correct X-Men yellow! Not
quite yellow Spandex, mind you.
1:32:40 Given that he spent most of the
night freaking out about turning into a
big blue Beast, when did Hank find time
to get his own costume made?
1:33:56 American warships gather by Cuba. You
might recognise the Captain of the 7th fleet as
the legend that is Michael Ironside. If you’re
seeing this film for the first time, we’ll tell you
now that he bucks tradition and doesn’t lose an
arm at any point.
1:34:10 A Russian captain stares at the
American ships through his binoculars. He
looks stunned. You know why he looks
stunned? Because the Yanks have Michael
Ironside and he doesn’t. Hell yeah, baby!
1:35:59 “That ship crosses the line, our boys are
gonna blow it up, and the war begins,” Moira
explains, getting right down to the heart of the
Cuban Missile Crisis. She sounds extraordinarily
calm at the prospect of World War III, mind
you. They must train CIA agents well. We’d be
losing our shit.
106 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION
1:37:06 Charles using his mind powers to make
the Russians fire on their own, out-of-control
ship? Genius. Little twists and turns like this
make this entire sequence a joy to watch.
1:40:41 Rather disappointingly, now that Erik has
squeezed into that yellow suit, he no longer
reeks of James Bond. But he lifts an entire
submarine out of the water here using nothing
more than his mind, so frankly 007 can kiss his
ass. Mutants beat secret agents any day.
1:42:17 Riptide climbs on top of the submarine
to whip up a tornado. For a moment, he’s the
spitting image of Noel Fielding from The
Mighty Boosh.
1:43:00 Okay, so the shot of the submarine
crashing onto the beach is a little computer-
gamey to look real, but short of tossing a real
sub onto the sand, there’s not much any
filmmaker could do about that. Your heart does
bleed a little for those poor flattened palm
trees, mind you: squished flat by the very last
thing any tree should be squished by. What a
way to go.
1:43:59 Despite the fact his submarine
just got lifted out of the water and
rolled across a beach, Shaw is still
Magneto was regretting
not packing a parachute.
standing at his nuclear reactor as though
nothing has happened, with all the mirrored
walls around him perfectly intact. Really?
1:46:01 Banshee and Angel fight as they fly
through the air – and it’s gratifyingly
convincing. Every now and then during these
scenes there are shots of real people dangling
in mid-air, so this isn’t horrendously
computerised and greenscreened. It’s a
welcome break from all the CGI trickery.
Additionally, the sound design for Angel’s
wingbeats is perfect.
1:48:30 When Angel falls to the ground after
Havok has zapped her, it’s pretty spectacular.
1:50:45 The tension builds as Magneto prepares
to kill his nemesis. “No – don’t do this, Erik!”
Charles yells, slamming his hand on the wall of
the jet. This is a gentle reminder to the
audience that Killing People Is Wrong, Even If
They Are Murderers Themselves. McAvoy
delivers the line so passionately that he could
probably convince the biggest advocate of the
death penalty to change their mind about it.
1:51:04 As Erik talks to the frozen Shaw,
he goes suspiciously Irish again...
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
 X-men: first Class

Is this some Crystal

Maze-style challenge?

1:51:32 Killing Shaw with a coin while Charles
watches psychically – yep, that’s a line, alright.
And Erik crosses it with a hop and a skip. The
camera matches the movement of the coin and
oh my word, this scene is fantastic.
1:53:15 Magneto flies over the beach and tells
everyone: “The real enemy is out there,”
referring to the ships. At no point does
anybody say, “Why are you Irish now?”
1:54:38 The Americans and Russians unite to fire
on the beach, intending to kill off the mutants.
They just saw a freakin’ submarine fly through
the air thanks to the powers wielded by these
guys, and they think this is a good idea? You
almost feel they deserve to have all the missiles
thrown back at them...
1:58:56 Yep, it’s fair to say that
Fassbender was definitely not in control
of his accent during this particular day
of filming. Although it does feel churlish to
point this out as it doesn’t matter one jot; he’s
selling Magneto’s passion just as well as if he
was talking Swahili instead of Irish-accented
English. And the moment where he realises
that he and Charles will never see eye-to-eye is
played beautifully by both him and McAvoy:
they are both, quite simply, glorious here.
2:00:51 “Actually... I can’t feel my legs. I can’t feel
my legs. I can’t feel my legs...” A seminal
moment in X-Men history, and McAvoy delivers
the line with a stutter and a sense of disbelief
that’s so perfect we’ve got those tingles again...
2:01:37 Echoing the design in later films,
Charles’s wheelchair has the “X” symbol
on the wheels.
2:04:22 Erik frees Emma from her cell,
but all we want to know is why little
horns have appeared on his helmet all
of a sudden?
2:04:30 The end credits start. They gleefully
play on the DNA designs of other X-Men films,
but give them a ’60s feel. At the same time,
they’re almost a little James Bond-y. Very
fitting indeed.

1:56:44 Holy crap, THIS IS SO TENSE.

CITE-O-METER™ Bond, James Bond Cool cameo
THRILLED Young
Charles
“I can’t feel
1:56:51 Pow! Moira shoots at Magneto, who Bye bye, Shaw my legs...”
screams
deflects one of the bullets right into
Charles’s back. And that one stray bullet
ENTERTAINED Submarine
tug of war END
Training montage
distracts Erik enough to make him drop the
missiles, thus preventing all those ships from
NODDING OFF What the
hell did Mutant
blowing up and the start of a human/mutant
war. So in a way, it’s a good thing that Charles
ZZ Z Z Z Z Z Z Z …
Z
you put in
my drink?
round-up
Submarine Vs beach
was paralysed, isn’t it? Which is a weird thing RUNNING TIME (MINS) 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140
to think...

www.sfx.co.uk X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 107

 Communication
Some great lines from the X-Men movies
KEY X-Men X-Men 2 X-Men: The Last Stand X-Men Origins: Wolverine X-Men: First Class The Wolverine

You want society to accept you but You know all

you can’t even mutants those dangerous
accept yourself Magneto
you hear about on
I’m the best Logan, my tolerance of your the News? I’m the
there is at
smoking in the mansion
notwithstanding, continue
smoking that in here and
worst onE Pyro
what I do, you’ll spend the rest of your
days under the belief I wouldn’t call it a
war exactly. That
but what I that you’re a 6-year-old girl.
You’d do that? suggests both
do best isn’t
sides stand
I’D have Jean braid your hair
very
Wolverine
nice Professor X and Wolverine
Wolverine. I hear you are an equal chance
You were an animal then,
you’re an animal
quite an animal.
Look who’s talkin’ of winning
Emma Frost
now. I just gave Beast and Wolverine

you claws Eternity can be a curse... a man can

William Stryker run out of things to live for Yukio
108 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
 Who said what?

When are you going Are you a God-fearing man, What do they call you?
That is such Wheels?
to stop lecturing me? Senator?
a strange phrase. Wolverine
When you I’ve always thought of
God as a teacher, Listen to me very
start listening a bringer of light, carefully, my
Magneto and Professor X

You were sentenced for

wisdom, friend: killing
Shaw will not
bring you peace.
decapitating a senior officer.
ANd understanding. You see,
I think what you really fear Peace was
The warden tells me that your is me. Me and my kind.
sentence was carried out The Brotherhood of never
by a firing squad at
10.00 hours. How’d that go? Mutants. an option
Charles Xavier

It tickled Mankind Great. Stuck in

William Stryker and Wolverine
Oh, it’s not so surprising really. and Erik Lehnsherr

an elevator with
has always feared
Hey! it’s me. what it doesn’t understand. five guys
Well, don’t fear God, on a high-protein

Prove it! Senator, and certainly don’t

fear me. Not
diet Wade Wilson
I was wrong.
You’re a dick anymore
Told
Okay
Magneto

Wolverne and Cyclops

Are you Remy LeBeau?
Do I owe you money?
No. Then Remy LeBeau
I am Wolverine and Gambit
you
Yukio and Logan
www.sfx.co.uk X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 109
 X-MEN WORDS BY: JAYNE NELSON Year 2013

KEY Director James Mangold

Writers Mark Bomback, Scott Frank
Starring Hugh Jackman, Tao Okamoto,
A spe cia l Rila Fukushima, Hiroyuki Sanada,
scene -by-sc ene Svetlana Khodchenkova, Brian Tee
TRIVIA Interesting
X-Men factoids
break dow n.
Wa rni ng!
int ens ely pac ked
wit h tri via
DID YOU SPOT?
Missed moments

WTF?! Did that

really happen!?

GOOFS Bloopers
and gaffes

IN-JOKES
Mutant gags

Wolverine RAGE
This happens a lot

SHIRTLESS
Phwoooaaar!

DRINKING
GAME

n
ONE DRINK
Wolverine’s claws
come out.
n Wolverine is shot/

stabbed and doesn’t

recover instantly.

The
Wolverine
TWO DRINKS
n Someone says the
word “samurai”.
n Mariko should look

surprised/scared but
stays expressionless..

THREE DRINKS
n Yukio leaps about
and/or hits people.
n Jean asks Logan to
die and join her.

110 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions


0:00:00 And so to our fifth X-Men film,
which takes the acclaimed Chris
Claremont/Frank Miller Wolverine ’80s
comics run and, er, runs with it. “I always
wanted to make that Japanese saga,” says
Hugh Jackman. “I first read it when I was in the
trailer making X-Men.”
0:01:47 Okay, so we don’t actually see
them “snikt” into action, but our first
glimpse of Logan with his claws out is
quite a clever one. A prisoner of the Japanese,
he’s been thrown into a well, and has used his
claws to climb up the walls so that he can
check out the view from the top. Seeing as this
is 1945, he’s got bone claws here and there isn’t
a whiff of adamantium to be seen.
0:02:10 We can tell Yashida (Ken
Yamamura) is a good guy – for now, at
least – because he frees the POWs when
he hears the US bombers arrive in Nagasaki. He
doesn’t seem particularly intelligent, mind you,
because he takes the lid off the well and
screams at Logan to run... but how is the
prisoner supposed to climb out of there,
bearing in mind that Yashida doesn’t know he
has claws?
0:02:34 Wolverine tells Yashida: “That was a
B-29, bub. There’s no outrunning what’s
coming.” Nothing like using the word “bub” to
www.sfx.co.uk
confuse someone who doesn’t speak English as
a first language…
0:03:21 A line of Japanese soldiers
commit hara-kiri. Also known as
“seppuku”, this is a ritual performed by
samurai in days of old to prevent them falling
into the hands of the enemy, or as a
punishment for their crimes. There are different
kinds of seppuku, some of which are a lot more
involved than simply stabbing yourself in the
stomach: you have to move the blade a certain
way once it’s already inside you, and you’re not
allowed to make a noise as you do it. Wolverine
would totally win at this.
0:03:51 The bomb drops on Nagasaki,
and thus this scene is dated to 9 August
1945. In the same way as the first X-Men
film originally picked up in Auschwitz, The
Wolverine also puts a mutant-powered spin on
a deathly serious historical event.
0:04:14 WTF? Logan pulls Yashida down
the well and protects him from the
fireball by covering him with a metal lid.
However, the heat from the flames in such a
confined space would probably have eaten up
all the oxygen and badly burned Yashida’s
lungs. Also, Yashida was within only a few miles
of the atomic bomb’s impact, and thus what’s
known as “prompt radiation” – from the white-
the wolverine
Do bone claws
still go “snikt”?
out blast – should have made him very ill. But
hey, this is a film about mutants with
superpowers, and we’re not doctors. So we’ll
let this slide, eh?
0:04:43 Logan, on the other hand, gets the full
monty from the blast and is burned to a crisp.
0:05:14 Logan awakes in bed next to Jean. Every
time Jean pops up in this film she lays a mega-
guilt-trip on the poor guy.
0:06:01 Exhibit A: he dreams that he’s
skewered Dream-Jeanie on his claws.
0:06:16 Logan wakes up with a scraggly beard
and tatty clothing on a freezing mountainside.
Holy cow, he’s making a cameo as Jean Valjean
from Les Miserables!
0:07:13 Logan is startled by a HUGE CGI
BEAR. As are we.
0:10:06 Oh noes! The HUGE (now
animatronic) BEAR is dying! To put it
out of its misery, Logan stabs it through
the neck. There’s all sorts of symbolism here, as
the bear has similar claws to Logan and also
seems to want to die. We’re not sure if it ever
killed its superpowered true love, mind you.
X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 111

We love Yukio’s red
hair – it’s short and dark
in the comics, though.
0:12:47 Logan has a little disagreement
with the hunter who shot the HUGE CGI
BEAR with a poisoned arrow, thus
spurring it to kill five people. When the hunter
hits him with a bottle, the glass pushes itself
out of Logan’s cheek as it heals. It’s not the first
time this has happened – we’ve seen bullets
pushed out of Logan’s body before, too – but
suddenly it seems really creepy. How does his
body do that?
0:12:52 Logan gets out the claws to
battle the hunters.
0:12:59 Yukio arrives and tells Logan not
to bother fighting the hunters, as
they’re all going to die in car wreck in a
week or so anyway. And you know what? We
never get to see it happen. Which is a horrible
thing to leave out of a script: why set
something up and not see it click into place?
Even a tiny scene on the end of the credits
would have been better than nothing…
0:13:24 Yukio is played by Rila Fukushima
in her very first big-screen role. In the
comics, Yukio has no superpowers but is
a capable martial artist. She joins with
Wolverine for his Japanese adventures and
consequently inspires Storm to change her look
112 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION
to something funkier – something we’d like to
see happen in the movies as well, come to think
of it. Halle Berry with neon-red hair? Yes please!
0:14:00 “I’m parked in back,” says Yukio, which is
a peculiarly American phrase for a Japanese
woman. Wonder if she also says “pants” instead
of “trousers”?
0:17.02 Yukio tells Logan that their flight
to Japan will take 15 hours, and yet the
plane seems too small to hold enough
fuel for that immense journey…
0:19:59 We see our first glimpse of
Shingen, played by Hiroyuki Sanada,
getting down to some very intense
combat while Logan watches. Sanada is a
character actor who has been around for years,
popping up in everything from Lost to Sunshine
and, most recently, Helix. Shingen, meanwhile,
appeared in the original comics arc as a Yakuza
boss and, as he is here, the father of Logan’s
girlfriend Mariko. What isn’t in the film, mind
you, is the small fact that he’s also the father of
Harada – a guy Mariko mentions wanting to
marry when they were kids. Wow, awkward.
0:21:53 Logan gets scrubbed in the tub.
It doesn’t look like much fun, though
– those brushes look hard...
Hiroyuki Sanada was
the first Japanese actor to
play with the RSC.
0:26:59 After a long conversation about
immortality with Yashida, now played by
Haruhiko Yamanouchi, Logan leaves just in time
to see Shingen slap his daughter Mariko (Tao
Okamoto), thus cementing our suspicion that
he’s Bad News. Naturally, her first response is
to, er, go and jump off a cliff, and Logan gets
there just in time to stop her landing on the
rocks below. Let’s face it: this scene is daft.
Mariko is so stoic that it’s hard to believe that
she’s even upset; she approaches the cliff so
slowly that it’s as though she’s waiting for
someone to grab her, and thus there’s all the
dramatic tension of someone picking up a
packet of cornflakes in Sainsbury’s and reading
the label. If this is supposed to be the big,
dramatic first meeting between Logan and his
new one-true-love... well, it’s awful.
0:27:56 Oh look, Logan’s wearing his
iconic vest now. You know how in The
Incredible Hulk TV show, Dr Banner
wandered from place to place with a teeny-tiny
little bag, yet always had a spare pair of
trousers to wear once he’d Hulked out and
ruined the ones he was wearing? Do you think
Logan does the same? After every film he sighs
and grumbles, “Dammit, this one’s covered in
blood and has holes in it from all the bullets
and stab wounds. Looks like I need another
white vest from my trusty little bag!” Hopefully
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions

he gets them from Primark or somewhere
suitably cheap.
0:28:47 “It was always difficult for Mariko to
make friends,” explains Yukio. We can
understand why: one rejection and she’d go
running for the nearest cliff. Her grandfather
must have to employ dozens of men to follow
her around to catch her when she jumps.
0:28:55 Logan lies in bed with Jean again.
She wants Logan to join her in death:
now there’s a healthy relationship, eh?
0:29:53 After a snog from Yashida’s
doctor – later revealed to be Viper –
Logan sits up and unleashes the claws.
0:30:39 Yukio has awesome hair. We just wanted
to mention that.
0:31:05 The doctor, aka Viper, climbs out
of a car at Yashida’s funeral wearing
insane heels and a sexy outfit. Look,
love, this is a funeral. Show some respect! Of
course, her lack of remorse makes sense later
on. In this film, Viper says that she’s a master of
chemistry and is immune to poisons; she also
has a snake-like appearance. In the comics,
however, Viper – also known as Madame Hydra,
so there’s a little clue about where her loyalties
www.sfx.co.uk
lie – has no mutant powers at all. She’s just a
very good fighter and very clever.
0:32:08 Logan is towering above most of
the guests at this funeral. Given that in
the comics he’s only 5ft 3in, but
Jackman is over 6ft, there’s only so much the
filmmakers can do about this.
0:35:25 Logan gets his claws out to fight
the Yakuza. And what a wonderful
sentence that is to type.
0:36:20 Mariko is being dragged away by the
Yakuza. It’s a good thing there isn’t a cliff
nearby or she’d have leapt off it by now, eh?
0:37:00 Logan despatches several Yakuza,
survives lots of bullets and saves Mariko’s life.
She stares at him with all the surprise and
amazement of someone taking a packet of
cornflakes to the till at Sainsbury’s. What an
absolute dish-rag of a character she is so far.
0:38:02 Harada saves Logan with a well-
placed arrow. As mentioned above, in
the comics Kenuichio Harada is the
illegitimate son of Shingen Yashida, and his
abilities to control tachyon fields make him an
extraordinarily good swordfighter. This earns
him the name “Silver Samurai”. In the film,
the wolverine
Lovely wood panelling.
We’d very much like
to go to Japan.
however, he’s a bit of a throwaway character:
a random love interest from Mariko’s past who’s
really good at martial arts and firing arrows.
0:38:44 A car hits one of the Yakuza, who
goes flying through the air. Please take
a moment to applaud this stunt,
because when you rewind and watch it again, it
looks as though the guy missed snapping his
ankle in two by a mere hair’s breadth.
0:40:00 Trapped in a room at the back of
an arcade, Logan despatches a bad guy
by stabbing him through a door. Dang,
those claws are awesome.
0:42:22 “Your gaijin friend, where is he?”
asks Shingen. “Gaijin” is Japanese for
“foreigner” or “outsider”.
0:43:59 Logan strips in the train’s
bathroom to patch up his wounds.
0:44:30 Four men come marching towards him.
You know how we know they’re bad guys?
They’re all wearing sunglasses indoors. Jerks.
0:44:37 Logan does not like men who
wear sunglasses inside. (See also:
Cyclops.)
X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 113

0:45:07 Wolverine skewers someone and
screams in rage at the same time. You know, it’s
a pity that we didn’t make a note of every time
he does this right from the start, because it’s
becoming a trademark. It’s also a glorious way
of reminding us that, at heart, he’s really an
animal – hear him roar!
0:45:26 Sigh… So now we come to what is,
without a doubt, one of the worst sequences in
this film – if not the entire franchise. Once upon
a time, in the golden age of Hollywood action
films, a fight set on top of a moving train would
have been filmed on top of a moving train.
There would have been a real sense of danger:
the feeling that at any minute, these guys could
fall to their deaths. A stuntman such as Indiana
Jones’s Vic Armstrong might have been
involved. It would have been breathtaking,
thrilling, a real talking point. But here? We see
two guys rolling around on a mock train-top in
front of greenscreens. It doesn’t matter how
hard they’re selling it – because they do, and
you can never accuse Jackman of not giving it
his all – it still looks fake. And it’s such a pity.
0:46:41 The fight rages on the train roof
as Mariko sits in her seat, calmly
listening to The Carpenters.
114 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION
0:46:48 Wolverine’s claws are already
out when we hear the “snikt” noise as
he flies through the air. How did he
double-snikt?
0:47:18 “I don’t understand, how do you know
they’re Yakuza?” whines Mariko as they leave
the train. “How do you know they’re after me?”
This, after Logan just spent 10 minutes fighting
them off for her? The writers really aren’t doing
much to make us like this woman. No wonder
he tells her to shut up...
0:47:54 “This is a love hotel!” Mariko
exclaims as they walk into the
reception. And sure enough, the
woman behind the counter is... uh... stroking a
pussy. (A cat, that is.) But the inference isn’t
lost on the dirty-minded members of the
audience, like us.
0:51:00 After passing out, Logan wakes
up minus his top on a vet’s table.
Incidentally, the Wolverine: Unleashed
extended cut features him getting into a fight
on the hotel balcony just before this happens;
Mariko saves him by throwing knives. It’s a
shame it was cut, as she needed to claw back
some power for her character.
It’s a Wolvie tug-of-war.
Stay strong, Logan.
0:52:14 Mariko is suddenly wearing new
clothes. And somehow there’s no blood
on Logan’s vest when he puts it back
on: where did he get it from, seeing as he had
no bag?
0:58:15 Logan and Mariko eat a meal. They have
a little chat. Nothing interesting happens. This
film has suddenly slowed down so much it’s
almost going in reverse.
0:59:00 “To disobey my father would be to
dishonour him,” explains Mariko, when Logan
asks why she’s marrying “asshole” Noburo.
Whereas jumping off a cliff wouldn’t dishonour
him at all, would it?
0:59:30 “Our island is long and thin.
Trains only run in two directions!”
explains Shingen, for all the US viewers
out there who’ve never looked at a map.
1:00:10 Logan has a shave. He cuts
himself and watches as (gasp!) it
doesn’t heal.
1:02:41 A flashback to Logan and Yashida
in the well. Logan has surprisingly
contemporary hair for a WWII soldier.
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions

1:04:14 Logan uses his bone claws to
climb out of the well.
1:07:20 Good heavens, this is all frightfully dull.
Mariko is now helping Logan to tie up his gown.
She’s making moon eyes at him. They kiss. Bet
she tastes of limp dish-rag.
1:08:24 Logan lies beside her in bed,
looking worried. This film could easily
rival X-Men for having the most shirtless
scenes, although at least here we have a reason
to see him shirtless, as he’s covered in bruises
and bullet-holes – and that’s a sight we’re not
used to seeing.
1:09:06 Logan wakes up with his claws
out. Sadly he doesn’t skewer Mariko
beside him, who doesn’t even look
surprised when he wakes up blades akimbo.
She then tells him a story and all the air and
energy is sucked out of the room as she
speaks… Really, no disrespect to Tao Okamoto,
who we’re sure is a competent actress, but
there’s something about this role that is so
incredibly uninteresting to watch. If Wolverine
is going to have a love interest to rival
Janssen’s Jean Grey, the least the filmmakers
www.sfx.co.uk
could do is create one who isn’t so flipping dull!
He has more chemistry with his vest than he
does with Mariko!
1:13:40 Claws are a wonderful way of
getting evil henchmen to speak, aren’t
they?
1:14:30 Yukio turns up to give Logan a
lift. “I need to tell you something,” she
says, but he insists she starts driving.
When they arrive at their destination – no
doubt hours later – she waits until he’s just
about to get out of the car and says, “I saw
you die.” So she held that in for the entire
journey? Really?
1:17:20 Mariko’s nasty fiancé Noburo is
entertaining two ladies when Logan
and Yukio arrive. The women scarper
sharpish when they see the visitors, and,
weirdly, the music playing suddenly makes a
scratching sound, as though someone has hit
the needle on a record player to turn it off.
And yet there’s no record player in sight – and
let’s face it, this is set in technology-loving
Japan, so it was bound to be playing digitally.
So that scratch was pure comic effect.
Shameless!
the wolverine
Bad girls. Infinitely more
interesting every time.
1:20:30 Shingen talks to his daughter. Yawn.
Every time she gets a scene, the action crawls
to a halt.
1:22:04 Viper has started wearing green
outfits that get skimpier with every
scene. There’s something very Poison
Ivy about her here, actually. Svetlana
Khodchenkova is Russian but you’d never know
it from her fantastic American accent.
1:23:27 Okay, we’re slowly losing the will to live
now. Mariko has been taken; Logan has to go
after her; there is much angst and the film
doesn’t finish for another 40 minutes. What
happened to cheerful, wisecracking Logan? We
understand he’s supposed to be tortured and
sad post-Jean’s death, but that doesn’t make
The Wolverine fun to watch. He’s just a grumpy,
muscly bloke being led around by his pecker!
1:24:52 Thankfully, things start picking up
as Logan X-rays himself and sees there’s
a spidery-thing clutching his heart. That
could be the oomph we’re looking for!
1:25:09 He extends a claw to cut out his
own heart! Oooh!
X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 115
 There’s far more chemistry
between these two.
1:27:32 Shingen turns up and a fight breaks out.
Yukio can really tumble; the acrobatic
choreography in this scene is very impressive.
1:27:45 Logan saves Yukio’s life by
catching Shingen’s blade with his claws.
1:27:55 Back to full strength, Logan stalks
across the room with his pecs bulging.
Jackman says that this is the look he
always wanted for Wolverine from the very
start, and to achieve it for this film he got
advice from his buddy The Rock: “I do the
Dwayne Johnson diet. I called him, and he said
6,000 calories a day. You start at 6.30am
eating chicken and broccoli, then you eat every
two hours. I needed to put on 30-40lb. I didn’t
know if I could get there. But once I got the
first 15lb on, I felt I could keep going. Basically,
it’s steak or chicken, broccoli and cauliflower.
Sometimes rice, but only till lunch. That’s it.
Eight times per day. It’s like a job in itself.”
1:29:10 It’s really rather odd that when
Logan heals, you can hear lots of
squishing noises coming from the
wounds. What is that, exactly? Other than a
sound FX artist getting a little carried away?
116 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION
1:29:45 “What kind of monster are you?”
gasps Shingen. “The Wolverine,” comes
the reply, along with the sound of claws
being let out to play inside Shingen’s torso.
And that’s the end of him.
1:30:21 “It’s a trap, Logan,” Yukio points out as
he sets off to rescue Mariko. Clearly, she works
for the Department Of Stating The Bleedin’
Obvious.
1:32:10 Viper poisons Mariko. She passes
out. We see a shot of Logan on his bike,
heading into the area to rescue her.
Mariko wakes up in bed and has a conversation
with Viper. Er… so why did Viper put her to
sleep? Any particular reason? Was it to kill
some time before Logan arrived?
1:32:44 Our first look at the giant Silver Samurai,
which really is nothing like it is in the comics.
Here it’s more of a Transformer or a Terminator
than a human being.
1:34:06 “Go fuck yourself, pretty boy,”
Wolverine tells Harada. While it’s not a bad
usage of the word “fuck”, it’s nowhere near as
good as the next time he says it. (See X-Men:
First Class.)
1:34:06 Claws out for ninja carnage!
1:35:07 Harada dips arrows into Viper’s poison to
bring Logan down – which means that the bit
at the start was even more symbolic than we
suspected. Logan is now the HUGE CGI BEAR!
1:36:08 Everybody fires arrows into Logan
turning him into a giant mutant porcupine.
1:38:50 Wolverine isn’t happy with Viper
and lets her know it. Unfortunately, with
his hands restrained there’s not much he
can do with those blades.
1:41:00 Don’t faint, but Mariko actually makes
herself useful and manages to distract the
Samurai before it can slice off Wolverine’s
claws. At last, a use for her!
1:41:57 Wolverine gets out the claws as
he flies through the air with the Samurai.
1:42:38 The Samurai cuts off the blades
on Wolverine’s right hand, which makes
him scream in agony. Remember when
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
 the wolverine

Victor did that in X-Men Origins: Wolverine?
And we were wondering if his claws had nerves
in them? It seems to hurt just as much when
they’re metal, weirdly enough.
1:44:40 The Samurai is about to finish off
Wolverine when Harada fires an arrow
at it. The arrow does no damage at all,
of course, but for some inexplicable reason the
Samurai goes after him and leaves Logan alone.
What a div.
1:45:06 Harada’s death is rather ruined
when we see a close-up of his boots
and notice that they’re sculpted around
his toes so he can wiggle his big toe
independently to the others.
Yashida. His exposition while he’s draining
Wolverine of his abilities is also rather tedious.
1:49:22 Mariko walks over to her grandfather
carrying Wolverine’s blades. Does she have to…
move… quite… so… slowly?
1:50:35 Wolverine hasn’t been completely
declawed after all: he stabs Yashida with
his long-forgotten bone claws.
1:54:19 “Stay...” Mariko asks Logan, as they say
goodbye. “I can’t, princess,” he replies. “I’m a
soldier, and I’ve been hiding too long.” What he
doesn’t say is: “Even despite all the
kidnappings, giant metal men and the odd
round of sex, you’re stupefyingly dull.”
1:55:40 Yukio tells Logan that she’s going to stay
with him. And you know what? We like this
idea. In an otherwise rather disappointing film,
she’s been one of the few highlights.
1:55:55 The end credits begin.
1:57:22 An extra scene commences…
1:58:02 The bone claws come out as
Logan realises Magneto is standing
behind him.

1:46:27 Uh-oh – the Samurai just chopped off

CITE-O-METER™ Bullet-train Heart surgery Porcupine
Nagasaki
the blades on Wolverine’s other hand! He’s THRILLED nightmare
bullets Funeral carnage Wolverine
been declawed!

1:48:18 The big reveal that Yashida is inside the

ENTERTAINED HUGE CGI BEAR
END
Mealtime with
Samurai suit isn’t quite as big as it could have
been, mainly because since the thing first
NODDING OFF Unconvincing
cliff jump
Mariko
Throwing a
Surprise bone
claws
fiancé out of
moved, we’ve all been wondering who’s inside
it and why. Clearly they needed Wolverine to
ZZ Z Z Z Z Z Z Z …
Z a window Broken blades

come to this place for a reason, and that reason RUNNING TIME (MINS) 0 25 50 75 100 125 150
would be to take his healing powers, and thus:

www.sfx.co.uk X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 117

 The Complete* Guide to

(*If anything can ever be described as complete in the X-multiverse)

In the beginning there were X-Men. Then X-Men teams begat X-Men teams
begat X-Men teams until Marvel became a maelstrom of X-books. Behold
the myriad teams that Marvel’s merry mutants have formed, reformed,
disbanded and resurrected! Compiled by Joseph McCabe

118 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions

 Every X-Team Ever

The X-Men Mark I

Creators Stan Lee, Jack Kirby
When they formed September 10, 1963 (X-Men #1)
Main members Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Beast, Angel, Iceman
Support characters Banshee, Sunfire, Havok, Polaris
USP The Original X-Men
Greatest triumph Defeating Larry Trask’s mutant-hunting Mark II Sentinels
in X-Men #59
Greatest tragedy The death of Professor X in X-Men #42 (don’t worry – 23
issues later he came back and revealed he’d gone into hiding to prepare for
an alien invasion)

The Brotherhood of
Evil Mutants Mark I
Creators Stan Lee, Jack Kirby
When they formed March 1964
(X-Men #4)
Main members Magneto, Quicksilver,
Scarlet Witch, Toad, Mastermind
Support characters Blob, Unus the
Untouchable
USP The Original Evil X-Men
Greatest triumph Seizing control of an
entire nation in X-Men #4
Greatest tragedy Losing Quicksilver and
the Scarlet Witch when they joined the
Avengers in Avengers #16

Weapon X
(incorporating Team X)
Creators Len Wein, John Romita
When they formed 1960s
Main members (Team X) Wolverine, Victor Creed, Mastodon,
Maverick, Silver Fox, Wildcat, Vole, Kestrel, Major Arthur Barrington
Support characters (Weapon X staff) Professor Andre Thorton,
Dr Abraham Cornelius, Dr Carol Hines, Dr Dale Rice, John Sublime
USP The Canadian Super Soldier Program
Greatest triumph The creation of Wolverine, who first appeared
in The Incredible Hulk #181
Greatest tragedy Not keeping Wolverine on a leash

www.sfx.co.uk X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 119

 The X-Men II
Creators Len Wein, Dave Cockrum
When they formed May 1975 (in Giant-Size X-Men #1)
Main members Cyclops, Wolverine, Storm, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Banshee,
Phoenix, Angel, Shadowcat, Rogue, Phoenix II, Psylocke, Dazzler, Longshot, Jubilee,
Gambit, Emma Frost
Support characters Sunfire, Thunderbird, Beast, Havok, Polaris, Forge, Strong Guy
USP The Uncanny X-Men
Greatest triumph Preventing Mystique and her Brotherhood of Evil Mutants from
assassinating Senator Robert Kelly and thus starting a mutant holocaust in X-Men #142
Greatest tragedy The death of Jean Grey in X-Men #137

Brotherhood of Evil Mutants II/

Mutant Force/Resistants
Creators Jack Kirby
When they formed Captain America Annual #4 (1977)
Main members Burner/Crucible, Lifter/Meteorite, Mist Mistress, Quill,
Peeper/Occult, Rust, Shocker/Paralyzer, Slither, Think Tank
Support characters Magneto, Mandrill, The Secret Empire, Red Skull
USP The Ones Who Didn’t Fight Any X-Men
Greatest triumph Managing to shout “Peeper” and “Lifter” in the
middle of a fight without collapsing in fits of giggles
Greatest tragedy Defeat (as the Resistants) at the hands of Captain
America in Captain America #346

The Hellfire Club

Creators Chris Claremont, John Byrne
When they formed January 1980 (in Uncanny X-Men #129)
Main members Emma Frost, Sebastian Shaw, Donald Pierce,
Harry Leland
Support characters Jean Grey, Selene, Tessa, Magneto, Shinobi
Shaw, Jason Wyngarde (Mastermind)
USP The X-Gentlemen’s Club
Greatest triumph The transformation of Jean Grey into the Black
Queen in X-Men #132
Greatest tragedy Losing Jean Grey to the X-Men, who maimed
several of their members in X-Men #134

120 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions

 Every X-Team Ever

The Brotherhood of
Evil Mutants III
Creators Chris Claremont, John Byrne
When they formed January 1981 (Uncanny X-Men #141)
Main members Mystique, Blob, Pyro, Avalanche, Destiny
Support characters Rogue
USP The Evil X-Men – Mark II
Greatest triumph Nearly assassinating Senator Robert Kelly
Greatest tragedy Failing to assassinate Senator Robert Kelly
in X-Men #142

The New Mutants

Creators Chris Claremont, Bob McLeod
When they formed September 7, 1982
(Marvel Graphic Novel #4)
Main members Cannonball, Karma, Mirage,
Sunspot, Wolfsbane
Support characters Cypher, Magma,
Magik, Warlock
USP The Junior X-Men (the Second Class
at Charles Xavier’s School for Gifted
Youngsters, you might say)
Greatest triumph Defeating the “Demon
Bear” that threatens to destroy the world
with its shadow in New Mutants #19
Greatest tragedy The death of Cypher in
New Mutants #60

The Morlocks
Creators Chris Claremont, Paul Smith
When they formed May 1983 (Uncanny X-Men #169)
Main members Callisto, Caliban, Darque Beast, Masque, Sunder
Support characters Annalee, Beautiful Dreamer, Healer, Leech,
Skids, Storm
USP The Subterrannean, Scuzzy X-Men
Greatest triumph Discovering deodorant
Greatest tragedy The Mutant Massacre, in which many Morlocks
were slain by the Marauders operating under Mister Sinister,
which occurred in various issues of Uncanny X-Men, X-Factor,
New Mutants, Thor and Power Pack throughout the fall of 1986

www.sfx.co.uk X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 121

 The Hellions
Creators Chris Claremont, Sal Buscema
When they formed June 1984 (New Mutants #16)
Main members Catseye, Empath, Jetstream, Roulette, Tarot, Thunderbird II
Support characters Emma Frost, Firestar, Beef, Bevatron
USP The Evil New Mutants
Greatest triumph Installing Magneto as White King opposite White Queen
Emma Frost in New Mutants #51.
Greatest tragedy The deaths of Beef and Bevatron from a Sentinel attack
orchestrated by Trevor Fitzroy in Uncanny X-Men #281

Freedom Force
Creators Chris Claremont, John Romita Jr
When they formed November 1985
(Uncanny X-Men #199)
Main members Mystique, Avalanche,
Blob, Spiral, Destiny, Pyro
Support characters Valerie Cooper,
Spider-Woman II, Crimson Commando,
Stonewall, Super Sabre
USP The Government-Sanctioned
Brotherhood of Evil Mutants
Greatest triumph Helping Captain
America defeat the Resistants in
Captain America #346
Greatest tragedy The deaths of
Stonewall and Destiny in Uncanny
X-Men #255

X-Factor
Creators Bob Layton, Jackson Guice
When they formed February 1986 (X-Factor #1)
Main members Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Angel, Beast, Iceman (yep, it
was a case of, “Let’s get the old team back together”)
Support characters Artie Maddicks, Tabitha Smith, Rusty Collins,
Leech, Rictor, Skids
USP The Ghostbusters X-Men
Greatest triumph Saving New York City from Apocalypse and his
Horsemen in “The Fall Of The Mutants” in X-Factor #25-26
Greatest tragedy The reveal of Apocalypse’s Horseman Death as
former X-Factor team member Angel in X-Factor #24

122 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions

 Every X-Team Ever

The Marauders
Creators Chris Claremont, John Romita Jr, Dan Green
When they formed October 1986 (Uncanny X-Men #210)
Main members Arclight, Blockbuster, Hans, Harpoon, Malice, Mister Sinister, Prism,
Riptide, Sabretooth, Scalphunter, Scrambler, Vertigo
Support characters Gambit, Lady Mastermind, Mystique, Sunfire
USP The X-Assassins
Greatest triumph The Mutant Massacre, in which many Morlocks were slain by the
Marauders operating under Mister Sinister, which occurred in various issues of Uncanny
X-Men, X-Factor, New Mutants, Thor and Power Pack throughout the fall of 1986
Greatest tragedy Scrambler and Vertigo dying. Probably. Maybe. Perhaps.

X-Men Assemble Excalibur

Earth’s mightiest heroes have been Creators Chris Claremont, Alan Davis
mutant-friendly since they let the Scarlet
Witch and her brother Quicksilver join When they formed April 1988 (Excalibur
their ranks back in Avengers #16 in May
1965 (an addition all the more
Special Edition)
impressive considering the Maximoff Main members Captain Britain, Meggan,
siblings were first members of
Magneto’s Brotherhood of Evil Mutants). Nightcrawler, Phoenix II, Shadowcat, Lockheed
Here’s a few of the X-Men who’ve heard
the call to assemble...
Support characters Widget, Feron, Kylun,
Cerise, Micromax
Beast Dr Hank McCoy was given
probationary membership in Avengers USP The British X-Men
#137 (July 1975). He became a full
member in Avengers #151 (September Greatest triumph Saving the Multiverse from
1976). Necrom in Excalibur #50
Wolverine The most popular X-Man
joined in New Avengers #6 (June 2005).
Greatest tragedy Phoenix trades places with
He’s maintained simultaneous Captain Britain in the timestream and leaves
membership in the Avengers, the
Avengers Unity Squad and the X-Men.
Excalibur (eventually to become Mother Askani)
in Excalibur #75
Storm Ororo was recruited by Captain
America during the “Shattered Heroes”
saga for a brief stint beginning in
Avengers Vol. 4 #19 (November 2011).

Havok Alex Summers, who joined in

X-Terminators
Uncanny Avengers #1 (October 2012),
became leader of the Avengers Unity
Creators Louise Simonson, Jon Bogdanove
Squad, of which Sunfire is also a When they formed October 1988
member.
(X-Terminators #1)
Rogue Like Wolverine she’s maintained
simultaneous membership in the X-Men Main members Boom-Boom, Rusty Collins,
and the Avengers, after joining in Leech, Artie Maddicks, Rictor, Skids, Wiz Kid
Uncanny Avengers #4 (January 2013).
Support characters Taki
USP The Junior X-Factor
Greatest triumph Rescuing the kidnapped
Artie, Leech and Taki from the demon
leader N’astirh during the “Inferno” in
X-Terminators #4
Greatest tragedy Most of them grew up
to become New Mutants and infinitely
less interesting
www.sfx.co.uk X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 123
 Great Lakes X-Men
Creator John Byrne
When they formed July 1989 (as the Great Lakes
Avengers in West Coast Avengers Vol. 2 #46)
Main members Mister Immortal, Big Bertha, Flatman,
Doorman
Support characters Squirrel Girl, Grasshopper,
Tippy-Toe
USP The Funny X-Men
Greatest triumph A four-issue miniseries
Greatest tragedy Doorman becomes an angel of
death in GLX-Mas Special (2005)

Mutant Liberation Front

Creators Louise Simonson, Rob Liefeld
When they formed March 1990 (New Mutants #87)
Main members Rusty Collins, Dragoness, Forearm, Kamikaze, Reaper,
Skids, Strobe, Stryfe, Sumo, Tempo, Thumbelina, Wildside, Zero
Support characters Reignfire, Moonstar, Feral, Locus, Cannonball,
Jon Spectre, Selby
USP The Terrorist X-Men
Greatest triumph The rescue and indoctrination of Rusty Collins and
Skids in New Mutants #88
Greatest tragedy Most members captured by “Operation Zero
Tolerance” which ran throughout various titles in 1997

X-Force
Creators Rob Liefeld, Fabian Nicieza
When they formed April 1991 (New Mutants #100)
Main members Cable, Cannonball, Boom Boom,
Domino, Feral, Shatterstar, Warpath
Support characters Siryn, Rictor, Sunspot
USP The Angry X-Men
Greatest triumph The defeat of Sunspot’s evil clone
Reignfire in X-Force #97
Greatest tragedy The (temporary) death of Cable
in X-Force #18

124 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions

 Every X-Team Ever

X-Factor II
Creators Peter David, Larry Stroman
When they formed October 1991 (X-Factor #71)
Main members Havok, Polaris, Multiple Man, Quicksilver, Strong Guy,
Wolfsbane
Support characters Valerie Cooper, Forge, Mystique, Sabretooth, Shard,
Wild Child
USP The Government X-Men
Greatest triumph The team proves they’re not just a bunch of second-rate
X-Men when they stop Mister Sinister and his Nasty Boys in X-Factor #75
Greatest tragedy Strong Guy suffers a heart attack after absorbing the
force of an exploding bomb in X-Factor #107

Generation X
Creators Scott Lobdell, Chris Bachalo
When they formed November 1994
(Uncanny X-Men #318)
Main members Jubilee, Chamber, Gaia, Husk,
M, Mondo, Penance, Skin, Synch
Support characters Banshee, Emma Frost
USP The Emo X-Men
Greatest triumph The team meets and
triumphs against their archenemy – the
vampiric, bone-marrow-sucking Emplate, for
the first time in Generation X #1
Greatest tragedy The group disbands and
Emma Frost’s Massachusetts Academy is
closed in Generation X #75

The Elite Mutant Force

Creators John Francis Moore, Steve Epting
When they formed March 1995 (in Factor X #1)
Main members Cyclops, Havok, Northstar, Aurora, Emplate, The
Twins, Cannonball, Amazon, Bedlam Brothers
Support characters Dark Beast, Angel, Jean Grey, Polaris,
Scarlett McKenzie
USP The X-Factor of Earth-295
Greatest triumph The liberation of Apocalypse’s prisoners and
the defeat of Havok in Factor X #4
Greatest tragedy The product of a cynical marketing event

www.sfx.co.uk X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 125

 Generation Next
Creators Scott Lobdell, Chris Bachalo
When they formed March 1995 (in Generation Next #1)
Main members Colossus, Shadowcast, Chamber, Mondo, Husk,
Skin, Vincinte, Know-It-All
Support characters Magneto and his X-Men
USP The Generation X of Earth-295
Greatest triumph The rescue of Colossus’s sister Illyana
Rasputin in Generation Next #4
Greatest tragedy The death of Colossus in X-Men Omega #1

The X-Ternals
Creators Fabian Nicieza, Tony
Daniel
When they formed March 1995
(Gambit and the X-Ternals #1)
Main members Gambit, Jubilee,
Sunspot, Lila Cheney, Guido
Carosella
Support characters Magneto,
Starjammers
USP Robin Hood Gambit and His
Merry Mutants of Earth-295
Greatest triumph The defeat of
Apocalypse and the repair of the
Universe in X-Men Omega #1
Greatest tragedy The
abandonment of Sunspot in
Gambit And The X-Ternals #3

X-Calibre
Creators Warren Ellis, Ken Lashley
When they formed May 1995 (in X-Calibre #3)
Main members Nightcrawler, Mystique, Destiny,
Damask, Switchback
Support characters Doug Ramsey, Cain Marko
USP The Excalibur of Earth-295
Greatest triumph Defeating the Shadow King in
X-Calibre #4
Greatest tragedy Most of the characters
vanished with the cancellation of the book

126 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions

 Every X-Team Ever

X-Statix
Creators Peter Milligan, Mike Allred
When they formed July 2001 (X-Force #116)
Main members Anarchist, Orphan, Doop, Dead Girl, Vivisector, Phat, Venus Dee
Milo, U-Go Girl, Spike
Support characters Battering Ram, Gin Genie, La Nuit, Plazm, Sluk, Zeitgeist,
Lacuna, Coach, Spike Freeman
USP The Real World X-Men
Greatest triumph As befitting a title about media fame, X-Statix’s greatest
enemy was the Mysterious Fanboy (aka their greatest fan – prefiguring The
Incredibles’ Syndrome), whom they defeated in X-Statix #5
Greatest tragedy The entire team is killed in the final issue, X-Statix #26

The New X-Men X-Corps

Creators Creators Joe Casey, Ron Garney
Nunzio When they formed January 2002 (Uncanny X-Men #401)
DeFilippis, Main members Banshee, Multiple Man, Husk, Jubilee, M,
Christina Weir, Radius, Sunpyre
Michael Ryan
When they Support characters Avalanche, Blob, Fever Pitch,
formED July Mastermind, Abyss, Mystique
2004 (New USP The Interpol X-Men
X-Men Academy Greatest triumph Remaining so shady – even other X-Men couldn’t agree
X #1) if they were good or bad
Main members Greatest tragedy The death of Sunpyre in Uncanny X-Men #404 and the
New Mutants (including Elixir, Icarus, death of Radius and the loss of Banshee’s voice in Uncanny X-Men #405
Prodigy, Surge, Wallflower, Wind
Dancer, Wither), Hellions ( including
Dust, Hellion, Mercury, Rockslide,
Specter, Tag, Wither)
The Biggest Mutant Team Ever
Shortly after writer Grant Morrison’s acclaimed run on New X-Men, New X-Men Academy X
Support characters Emma Frost, appeared (soon shortened once more to New X-Men) created by Nunzio DeFilippis, Christina
Scott Summers Weir and Michael Ryan. Its first issue, in July 2004, saw Cyclops and Emma Frost sharing
headmaster responsibilities at Xavier’s School, the student population of which had swelled
USP The Harry Potter X-Men to 182 mutants, organised into 11 squads (reminiscent of the various houses of JK Rowling’s
Hogwarts School), each led by a different X-Man. In the wake of the shocking “M-Day”
(see boxout right) however, which robbed most mutants of their powers and many of their lives, the student
body was sadly reduced to a mere 27.
Greatest triumph Rising from the
ashes after all those shenanigans
with the Scarlet Witch going evil
and killing lots of mutants, reducing
the number of students at Xavier’s
Academy from 182 to 27
Greatest tragedy “M-Day”, the
mutant Decimation, depicted in
various titles in 2005 and 2006

www.sfx.co.uk
 This art icle was
orig inal ly pub lish ed
in Com ic HEr oes
issu e 19
Children of

128 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions

 generation x

the Atom
A haven for troubled teens
coming to grips with their
new powers – Matt Bielby
believes it’s far and away
the most potent idea the
medium has thrown up

www.sfx.co.uk X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 129

 S
uperman is a myth of power, Batman
of forcing the world to be the way you
want it to be, and both have clout – oh
yes. But the richest meat in comics is
here: the Children of the Atom.
The X-Men are mutants. Specifically,
they’re not regular superheroes, who
tend to be normal people gifted with
strange abilities by magic or science. Instead they’re
a new sub-species, born different to us (and to
each other), with strange physicality and abilities
that usually become obvious at puberty. One will
have wings, another can walk through walls – but
these guys, the ones we follow, are the glorious
ones, handsome demigods despite their oddity and
outsider status.
Many, many more will have less enviable powers
(secreting adhesive, say, or possessing a body
composed of organic paraffin wax), and will inherit
the consequent revolting appearances. Sometimes
we’ll meet those guys too.
The X-Men is a superhero team built of students
and teachers from a special, secluded school
where young mutants are taught how to use their
powers; they come in all shapes and sizes, from
every country and background, yet to the outside
world they remain the shock-troops of a larger, yet
more secretive, only semi-visible mass of mutant- Potent mutant-hunting robots the Sentinels. An early appearance of the Hellfire Club.
kind. Regular folk know these guys are out there,
somewhere, but they can’t properly see them. As
a consequence mutants are regarded, at worst, as Gotham City by now; Superman would have turned But perhaps, more likely, X-Men was simply
the enemy within – and, even at their very best, as Earth into a paradise, as Marvelman once did. But a victim of Marvel’s growing pains: artist and
figures of suspicion, never quite to be trusted. the X-Men have problems that will never go away, co-creator Jack Kirby was badly overstretched at
As outsiders living in our midst, Marvel’s because they’re part of what we are. The world – this point – he was already doing Fantastic Four,
mutants reflect every problem suffered by any and the threats it contains – mutates around them, Avengers, Thor and most Marvel covers every
minority in society, and strong storylines have come and the X-Men had better get their skates on, just month – and X-Men was a book too far. Whatever
from each of these parallels – with racism (anti- to keep up. the reason, he soon handed the title over to the way
Semitism particularly); with homophobia; with fear less dynamic Werner Roth.
of communism (back in the day) or of radical Islam The Fear Factor Not all of the early X-Men tales are
(now); with confusion over new youth subcultures. It’s easy to understand why regular people are memorable, it’s true, but it’s to Marvel’s credit that
Heady stuff, the soil from which some rich tales rather scared of the X-Men – the general belief is this third team of superheroes – after the FF and
have grown – but, despite this, one feels that much that they’re the next stage of humanity, a homo then the Avengers, who debuted at virtually the
remains untapped. The X-Men’s predicament has superior destined to eventually replace regular same time – should be so distinctly different to
so much to give in terms of storylines and built-in base-line humans. what went before.
conflict that we’ve so far only scratched the surface. The early Marvel of the first years of the ’60s One point of difference was immediately
In the real world, Batman – with all his was built on unhappy, alienated heroes, of course – obvious; we had to learn about these heroes as their
resources and ingenuity – would have cleaned up monsters like the Thing and the Hulk, creepy teens adventures went along, with nothing handed us
like Spider-Man, men out of time like that revived
relic, Captain America. But X-Men, when it was
launched in 1963 – towards the end of Stan Lee and
Jack Kirby’s first Big Bang of inspiration – took this
two or three stages further. Perhaps it went too far,
for this wasn’t a hit, not initially.
Why, though has never been quite clear. Maybe
America wasn’t quite ready for it, with powerful,
frightening teens a more potent image then than
they could ever appear to be now? Perhaps it had
too many characters, and it was unclear quite
who we were meant to cheer for? Was it the cold,
mechanical field leader Cyclops, whose eyes we
never saw? The kindly but clearly manipulative
Professor X, turning children into an army? The
charismatic (but obviously barking) main villain,
Magneto? This was a complicated title, and even
early on the morality was painted in confusing
shades of grey.

Wolverine was soon the

spiciest ingredient in
September 1963. A strange
new comics star is born.
the new team’s rich mix
130 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
 generation x

Wolverine’s first disastrous

encounter with Proteus.

www.sfx.co.uk X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 131

 The Danger Room in “Days Of Future Past”.
A new lease of life from
Adams and Thomas.

on a plate. Instead, we were thrown right into the

middle of things, with the first action of X-Men #1
being the arrival of Marvel Girl to join an already
existing team – a very different introduction to the
one we’d enjoyed to both the FF and the Avengers,
which had each kicked off with classic origin
stories, either showing how our heroes got their
powers, or why they banded together.
There was more mystery to these new guys, it
was clear, and it wouldn’t be for years – in a series
of back-up stories that began in issue #38, in fact –
that the entire background to the original X-Men
would become clear.
But, though these were heroes we’d never seen
before, we understood them to a degree because
they all had a unifying theme – they were the
children of normal human parents, but born with
strange (often latent) powers or abilities. In many
cases they’d managed to keep these mutations
secret, and now a small group was enrolled at a
special, highly exclusive private school – one with
a strong academic rep, sure, but also where the
headmaster was secretly a powerful mutant, a guy
dedicated to training these kids in their powers.
Beneath Professor Charles Xavier’s mansion-
cum-school – at 1407 Graymalkin Lane in
Westchester County, New York – lies the Danger
Room, a huge, endlessly inventive mechanised
training facility, and Cerebro, a giant computer that
boosts Xavier’s already considerable telepathic
powers, allowing him to track new mutants as they
manifest all over the world. There are all the usual
dorms and academic facilities, sure, but a hangar for
the X-Men’s aircraft – an oversized, considerably
souped-up take on the real-world, Darth Vader-like
SR-71 Blackbird – too.
Time and again the X-Men must break from
classes and rush into battle – to rescue some newly
discovered or manifesting mutant, or to thwart
Magneto’s schemes, as he plans a new, mutant-
dominated world order from his bases on hidden
asteroids or buried in Antarctica.

Danger Unlimited
The first X-Men comics were full of surprises
and fun – those inventive Danger Room death
traps; Magneto’s megalomaniacal scheming; the
introverted Cyclops burning with secret love for
Marvel Girl as Angel and the others flirted happily
Bill Sienkiewicz cover to the “Phoenix” trade.

132 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions


Bad X-girls (and X-boys) gone good.
with her – but though lasting characters cropped
up (Blob, Mastermind, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch)
only a handful of early issues are real classics.
Giant mutant-hunting robots the Sentinels –
making explicit those parallels with Nazi Germany
– are responsible for many of these; with Professor
X and Magneto established in their much-discussed
Martin Luther King/Malcolm X roles vis-à-vis the
mutant response to mainstream oppression, the
Sentinels now stood in as potent avatars for the
oppressive state.
But too often all those non-Magneto, non-
Sentinel issues were weak and wobbly, and – as
a comic – X-Men survived in a lurching, only
Marvel’s mutants reflect
every problem suffered by
any minority in society
www.sfx.co.uk
A Barry Windsor-Smith X-Men love story.
sporadically entertaining fashion until the end of
the ’60s, when it peaked briefly with a spectacular-
looking semi-reinvention by artist Neal Adams
and writer Roy Thomas, before, at last, the book
spluttered and died.
X-Men disappeared from the newsstands for nine
months in all, then returned as an all-reprint title
from the end of 1970 until 1975 when – following
a concerted campaign to “bring back the X-Men”
that bounced through the letter pages of every
Marvel comic – the book was reinstated, first with
Giant-Size X-Men #1 and then with “the all-new,
all-different” X-Men from issue #94 onwards. The
numbering hadn’t changed – how different from
Multi-lined mutants
from the Jim Lee era.
generation x
today, when new issue #1s appear every few years –
but nearly everything else had…
Man of Steel
So 1975 was when it all changed, and X-Men’s swift
march to its current position at – or nearly at – the
very peak of comic book popularity began. The
revival was as an international team, with only
Cyclops, Professor X and the school background
staying on, at least initially.
And though the old hands provided the
continuity, and the structure, the new guys were the
stars: Storm, the Kenyan “weather witch” with the
shocking white hair; Colossus, the simple Russian
farmboy who could turn into a powerhouse of
“living metal”, Starlin’s unbreakable Soviet “man of
steel” with the personality of Animal Farm’s tragic
Boxer; the swashbuckling German, Nightcrawler,
who turned out to be basically Errol Flynn with the
body of a demon; and a violent mystery-man who’d
eventually prove to be X-Men’s star, and the most
potent new superhero creation since Spider-Man.
Wolverine had originally been created as a
Canadian enemy for the Hulk, but had appeared
little since. Everyone could see his potential,
however, and – under the little-known assistant
editor Chris Claremont, who’d been asked to write
the new X-title – he soon became the spiciest
ingredient in the new team’s rich mix.
Claremont’s X-Men had its early missteps – few
have any love for the Leprechauns who appear
around #102 – but it was clearly going someplace,
thrillingly mixing SF thriller, action movie and soap
opera romance like few books before it.
This new X-Men had, with its international cast,
been designed to appeal to new world markets,
but instead it was making an impact with non-
traditional readers much closer to home: women,
alienated teens, tough guys, gay fans, old school
Marvelites dragged back into comics by an exciting
new take on old favourites.
Claremont was joined by the inventive artist
Dave Cockrum – so good with new character
designs – and then by the slicker, sexier John
Byrne/Terry Austin duo; along the way he
introduced new heroes – notably 13-year-old Kitty
Pryde – and epic storylines with huge pay-offs, each
jostling for space with a million ongoing sub-plots.
With the likes of “The Dark Phoenix Saga” and
“Days Of Future Past” – basis for the next X-movie,
of course – X-Men became the biggest noise Marvel
had, and, even in these Avengers-centric times,
continues to rule the roost.
Bad guys become good – and good guys bad – all
the time in comics, but nowhere does this happen
quite so often as in X-Men, where Jean “Marvel
Girl” Grey once became the universe-threatening
Phoenix, Beast has had his “Dark” moments, Angel
became leader of the Horsemen of Apocalypse, and
Cyclops was painted as one of the most complex,
conflicted semi-villains in all Marvel. Meanwhile,
major villains have gone in the other direction:
Wolverine, Rogue and Emma Frost started out as
bad guys of one sort or another, while everyone
from Sabretooth to Juggernaut and Mystique
has hung out with the team for a while. And then
there’s Magneto, the most layered and attractive
villain in comics, who definitely swings both ways.
The X-Men’s colours are blue and gold, but – as
complex as the real-world issues they reflect –
most of their stories and characters are painted
in thrillingly uncertain shades of grey. This has
never been a story about good guys and bad guys
only – though both exist here, oh yes – and it’s that,
perhaps above all, that makes X-Men matter so
much more than other comic books.
X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 133

© Luigi Novi / Wikimedia Commons.
Mutant
Mastermind Chris Claremont, the writer
who reimagined the X-Men, talks
to Joseph McCabe about tragic
heroes, strong women and
his favourite X-movie
ew post-Silver Age comic creators are so closely
identified with a team of superheroes as Chris
Claremont, but then few creators have created so
rich a universe as Claremont has within the graphic
storytelling medium.
Starting with Uncanny X-Men #94, the writer
brought an unprecedented level of characterisation
to mainstream comic books, developing the “new” X-Men team
introduced by Len Wein in Giant-Sized X-Men #1 and introducing
a host of other characters throughout his succeeding 15 years – yes,
15 years – on the book. Yet unlike many of his American peers,
Claremont’s chief influence wasn’t found in the Marvel and DC comics
of the ’60s, but rather in his native homeland, the UK.
“I actually grew up as a fan and a reader of an English graphic
weekly called Eagle,” says Claremont, who spent his first three
years in London before his family emigrated to New York City. “My
grandmother sent me them every week as a way of staying in touch.
Eagle was a comic newspaper that had been founded by a minister of
all things, who was a writer. His signature character was Dan Dare,
134 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION
This art icle was
orig inal ly pub lish ed
in Com ic HEr oes
issu e 23
Sky Pilot of the Space Waves, or Colonel Dan Dare of Space Command
as he was properly known. It had some of the most brilliant and
creative visual art of its day. Two pages, a front and back cover, of full
photogravure colour and really cool stories. And some of the best alien
villains of the time. It was great.
“They had stories about heroic British soldiers during World War II.
They had stories about student athletes. They had the life of Winston
Churchill, the life of Jesus. And a brilliant Ralph Bellamy series called
Heroes Of Sparta, about a young Spartan who was adopted into a
Roman family and became a hero of the empire. It was extremely
eclectic and just plain beautiful. I loved it. That was my introduction
to the concept of graphic storytelling and what you could do with
comics in print.
“Marvel was something I came to when I was in high school,”
Claremont continues. “I got hooked by Stan and Jack’s introduction of
Galactus in Fantastic Four #48-50, which I think I still have. That was
Jack at his best, Stan at his best, the series at its best. That drew me in,
so I began to look for more like it, and found Thor. That led me to Roy
and John Buscema’s work on The Avengers.”
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
 Chris Claremont

Marvel was
something I came to
when I was in high
school, I got hooked
by Stan and Jack’s
introduction of
Galactus in
Fantastic Four
#48-50

The New Mutants channel Dave Cockrum teaser

Bohemian Rhapsody. for Uncanny X-Men.

x-women
Like the Avengers, Claremont’s X-Men would offer a motley
collection of champions embroiled in adventures both intimate
in their emotional pull and cosmic in scope. But unlike most team
books, its roster of women members grew steadily, eventually
boasting some of the most iconic female characters in comics.
In addition to developing personalities for Jean Grey and Storm,
Claremont created Phoenix, Emma Frost, Mystique, Rogue, Kitty
Pryde, Psylocke and Jubilee.
“I guess part of it is the women I know in my life,” says Claremont.
“My mother was in the RAF during the war. She was part of the crew
of a radar station on the south coast during the Battle of Britain, which
was, to put it mildly, a prime target. So every morning the locals from
across the water would come over to visit, leave souvenirs, and then
every afternoon they’d patch everything up and turn the radar back on
and let command know how to properly greet the guests.
“I have close female friends who have spent their time in the heart
of Africa researching disease or helping report the news from some of
Barry Windsor-Smith art
for Uncanny #198.
the most dangerous places in the world. When you know people like

www.sfx.co.uk X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 135


Magneto takes on mutant-hating
Stryker in 1982’s God Loves.
that, as a writer you can’t help swiping the
best aspects of who they are and how they
do things and apply them to characters.
That said, I actually like to think I don’t
treat the women as heroic icons any
more or less honestly, honorably or
My basic instinct
truthfully than I do the men. My basic was, Why is it
instinct when I took over the book
was, ‘Why is it a boys’ club? Why a boys’ club?
shouldn’t there be an equal number
of women who are attractive as Why shouldn’t
characters and as physical entities and,
from a purely mercenary standpoint, there be an
open the potential to a whole broader
sweep of audience?’” equal number
Second coming of women?
Though Claremont’s best known for his
comics – writing not only X-Men but creating
spin-off titles New Mutants, Excalibur, Extreme X-Men
and Wolverine – his first professional sales were short stories. “And,
surprise!” he laughs, “I discovered that I was really, really good at
writing comics, and I was really popular at it, and suddenly I was doing
a lot of it. Sometimes steady paychecks can trump ambition… Then
once X-Men took flight, once we got over the initial hump and the book
really began reaching out to the audience, there was no looking back.”
After proving his ability on titles such as Daredevil and Iron Fist,
Claremont began his X-Men run paired with the late Dave Cockrum,
the artist who’d co-created the team introduced in Giant-Size #1.
“One of the things that X-Men had going for it that made it unique
at the time was that it was the relaunch of a failed series, but it
was a relaunch that involved a substantial rethink of the concept.
The idea being that it was going from the traditional all-American
agglomeration of characters – four guys and a gal – all of whom were
white, all of whom were middle class, most of whom were from the
north east, coming together and forming a team of heroes. Cool. They
were great characters, but it was limited by the time and the society.
136 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION
For pity’s sake,
indeed Jean Grey.
An X-Men and Captain
Britain team-up.
With the new X-Men, you suddenly had
Scott from the Midwest, you had Ororo,
who’s from Kenya, you had Kurt, who’s a
German, you had Peter Rasputin, who’s
Russian, you had John Proudstar, who’s a
Native American, you have Logan, who’s
Canadian, as well as Banshee, who’s
Irish, and Sunfire, who’s Japanese
(he was there for the first two issues
and then moved on). You had seven
characters from different places and
different cultures and different socio-
economic realities.”
Claremont took each mutant apart
with one eye on truth and the other on
what would most appeal to readers. No better
example can be found than in X-Men’s most
popular character, Wolverine.
“Len’s original conception of Wolverine, that he had
started with in The Hulk and carried over to X-Men, was that
of a late teen, and that the claws were part of the uniform, not part of
him. Yet when I looked at the pages that they gave me for the Giant-
Size, when I was proofreading Len’s script and the inks (because Len
was editor-in-chief of Marvel and I was associate editor, which meant
I was number two), I thought, ‘Okay, we’ve got a guy who’s an officer
in the Canadian Armed Forces. That’s means he’s got to be a grown-
up.’ As Dave Cockrum and I kicked around the who, what and why of
Wolverine, Dave came up with the idea of, ‘What if the claws weren’t
from the costume? Because if you took off the costume he’s got no
weapon left. That’s pretty stupid. What makes him scary? He’s a kid
with an attitude? Big deal.’
“Then Dave came up with the visual that the claws actually came
out of his body. They punched out of his hand. Each time he used them
he sliced his hand open, and his healing factor put him back together
again. Then you have that wonderful moment – I say wonderful, but
when you think about it it’s really horrific – in X-Men #99 when he
cuts himself loose on the spacestation, and Banshee and Jean look at
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
 Chris Claremont

Heroes:
TV’s X-Men?
When Heroes first hit our TV screens in 2006, comic book fans
couldn’t help but notice the similarities with X-Men. The “heroes” in
question were mutants by another name; Sylar was Magneto (right
down to the Jewish ancestry); Claire Bennet (the cheerleader) was a
substitute Kitty Pryde; the list goes on. But, okay, there was that
whole conspiracy angle which was more X-Files than X-Men, so we
were going to give it the benefit of the doubt.
Then late in season one they gave us the time travel episode
“Five Years Gone”, with its bleak future of persecuted mutants
and a villain who’d become the president. Hang on? How
come the lawyers at Marvel weren’t knocking at the
door? This was as near to “Days Of Future Past” as
the show could get without giving Claire
adamantium claws. That said, it was a
cracking episode. Heroes went
rubbish after that.

www.sfx.co.uk X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 137

 Teenage X-Men
spin-off New Mutants.

That Wolverine,
he’s such a gent.

138 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions

 Chris Claremont

You cannot undo

what has been done.
Which is a shame,
Because part of me
would love to redo
the whole thing
and start over

him and say, ‘The claws – they come out of your hand. They’re part
of you. You never told us.’ Logan looks back at them and says, ‘You
never asked.’
“To Dave and I, that defined him and set him apart from everyone
else. Because it added an element of horror and tragedy to him,
because ‘Holy cow! He’s got a mutant power that required him to
mutilate himself every time he uses it.’ As Anna Paquin’s Rogue says to
Wolverine in the first X-Men movie, ‘Does it hurt?’ And he looks back
at her and says, ‘Every time.’ That’s the moment that that inspiration
created, and that became the defining element of his character.”
Among such classic stories as the original Wolverine miniseries
(pencilled by Frank Miller), the epochal “Dark Phoenix Saga” (drawn
by John Byrne), and the two-issue time-travel saga “Days Of Future
Past” (Byrne again), perhaps Claremont’s mutant masterpiece is the
graphic novel God Loves, Man Kills (illustrated by Astro City’s Brent
Anderson). The book served as the basis for the film X2, Claremont’s
favourite of the mutant movies thus far.
“I thought X2 was a wonderful film. I selfishly would have
preferred the opportunity to see God Loves in and of itself. I’d have
preferred to see the Dark Phoenix story told more completely and
richly than it regrettably turned out to be. With the end of X3 what
you have is a great set of revision notes. It was good, but it could
and should have been a whole lot better.
“But that’s the movies,” he adds. “Darren Aronofsky and Chris
McQuarrie’s draft of the screenplay of The Wolverine was far, far
more faithful to the original miniseries than the film turned out
to be. But unfortunately he left the project fairly early, and the
director that Fox found to replace him had different instincts and
different interests. So the finished product, while it contained a
number of foundation elements from Frank’s and my story – and the
Paul Smith sequel in Uncanny, plus some aspects of Larry Hama’s
work among others – was a divergent vision of the story. But it’s not
my $150m.”

Curse of the mutants

As for Claremont’s opinion of Marvel’s mutant comics in the years
since he left them, the writer remarks, “I guess I look at it from
within my time bubble as the way they were, and the way I, as a
creator, think they simply should be; whereas editors, writers today
view them as ‘This is the way I’m writing the character. Take it or
leave it.’ Because unfortunately, much as I tried to do when I came
back a couple of times on X-Men, you cannot turn back time. You
cannot undo what has been done. Which is a shame. Because part of
me would love to redo the whole thing and start over.”
Something wicked
this way comes! “But that,” he says, “is why I’m not anywhere near responsible for
writing or editing any of this stuff. I’m just too darn radical.”

www.sfx.co.uk X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 139

 The
Mutant
Masterminds
Stan Lee created them and Chris Claremont made them a
phenomenon. But they weren’t the only creators who helped
to mould the X-Men. Joseph McCabe talks to three more
writers who played key roles in the early days

s diverse as the assortment of heroes and villains who’ve populated

Marvel’s multitude of mutant titles over the years are the creators who
have guided their adventures. And though original X-Men co-creators
Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and longtime X-scribe Chris Claremont are
the most celebrated X-creators, there exist other men and women
without whose contributions the Children of the Atom would not
exist today. Here are three who played key roles…

The 1960s GROWING PAINS

After decades of record-breaking
sales and the big-budget blockbuster film
franchise it’s spawned, it’s hard to imagine
X-Men was once a comic book that didn’t
sell all that well. For while Lee and Kirby’s
brainchild held at its core a strong sci-fi
concept – that of a superhuman race born
to but shunned by man – the original X-Men
team and title didn’t prove very popular
with most ’60s readers.
Comic industry neophyte Roy Thomas
was the first writer to succeed Stan Lee on
the book.
“I entered the field sometime in 1966,”
says Thomas of when he began chronicling
the adventures of Professor Charles
Xavier’s students. “It was with the 20th
issue. Stan Lee had written the first 19
issues. Jack Kirby had left a couple of issues
before, and Werner Roth had come on as
artist. Stan was trying to lighten his writing
load because he had plenty to do as editor,
and wanted me to take some of it. So the
first regular superhero book ever that I
was on, on a regular basis, became X-Men.
I started off with a story that had already
been plotted and pencilled, and I just
dialogued it and went on from there.”
Thomas attributes X-Men’s initially low
sales in part to “those lacklustre half-
superhero costumes/half-student uniforms
that Jack came up with and Stan approved.
“They looked pretty bad,” he explains.
“As soon as I got in there I started
gravitating to a little colour. I gave them
red belts for a while, and within a few
issues I managed to get Stan to let me give
them individual uniforms so they didn’t Roy Thomas
all look alike. That was always a drawback Greatest
on Fantastic Four too. But with Fantastic Contributions
Four, two of the members really looked Havok (aka Alex
quite different most of the time – because Summers), Sauron,
and the initial ideas for
the Human Torch was always bursting into Wolverine and Giant-
flame and the Thing didn’t really wear a Sized X-Men #1.
uniform. The two most popular characters Best story “The
didn’t have that uniform look. But in Sentinels Live!” (in
X-Men, except for Iceman, everybody did. X-Men #57 and
continued in #58 and
“And the stories didn’t quite gel. Stan and #59), illustrated by
Jack were doing a lot of different things. Neal Adams, in which
Although they came up with Magneto and the Sentinels Mark II
first appear.
the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, they

140 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions

 “It seemed to me
that the Banshee
should be Irish…
Werner drew him
very interestingly,
as a kind of giant
leprechaun”

Kirby and Lee created them, but the

X-Men didn’t become a success until after
the legendary creators left the title.

142 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions


didn’t seem to really develop the book that
much in terms of enemies or stories. It was
just the X-Men looking for other mutants,
and when they’d find them they somehow
never ended up joining the X-Men.”
Among Thomas’s early contributions to
X-Men were the first mutant superheroes
from outside the US – Banshee and Sunfire.
“It was only in the second or third story
I did that I made up the Banshee. I wanted
to create a character called the Banshee
and it seemed to me that he should be Irish.
Or that she should be Irish. But Stan said
you can’t have one woman, no matter how
powerful she might be, fighting five X-Men,
even if one of them was a girl. It’s the old
thing about, ‘Never fight anybody smaller
than yourself, because if you win you’re a
bully and if you lose you’re a bum.’ That
was true with a female character, so Stan
insisted the Banshee be a male. Werner
drew him very interestingly – he had a
nice kind of giant leprechaun look to him.
I just suggested the costume have green in
www.sfx.co.uk
it. Then later I told [artist] Don Heck that
the Japanese hero Sunfire should look like
the old Japanese flag from the World War 2
years come to life.”
After a two-year run, Thomas left the
book to writers Gary Friedrich and Arnold
Drake. But sales again slipped under his
successors, and Thomas was reinstated as
writer by Lee. Fortunately, he was joined by
the most acclaimed superhero comic artist
since Jack Kirby.
“Neal Adams showed up and evidently
told Stan he’d like to do one of Marvel’s
low-selling titles. Stan told him, ‘Well,
X-Men’s about as low as it gets.’ So he had
Neal do it. We became the team on most
of the remaining issues of the series. The
stories I did with Neal were better than the
ones I’d been doing before, partly because
he and I would work them out together.
Things gelled and as a result the book did
get better.”
Thomas and Adams introduced such
X-foes as the Living Monolith and Sauron,
the Mr Hyde-like alter ego of scientist
Karl Lykos.
“We really wanted to do an energy
vampire at a time when you couldn’t do
anything that used the word ‘vampire’. We
got the word from the Comics Code that
anything that smacked of vampirism –
because we wanted to make him look like
a bat – we couldn’t do. We decided if we
couldn’t have a were-vampire we’d have a
were-pterodactyl, a pterodactyl man. I do
regret I gave him the name Sauron, named
the eARLY YEARS
Larry Trask’s Sentinels
make an early appearance.
in homage to Lord Of The Rings, because
that was already the name of a villain and I
don’t think I should have tossed it in there.
But I did and we got a nasty letter from
the Tolkien people about it! I guess there
wasn’t much they could do. He was a good
character, Lykos, I just didn’t think the
name was right.”
“The best villains we did were ones we
didn’t make up. The best storyline was the
second Sentinel story. We created Havok.
Alex had already been introduced as the
brother of Scott Summers, but the idea
of making him a costumed guy, and that
costume that Neal designed, and the name
Havok (which I gave him), made him a
great character. Then we developed Polaris.
And we brought back Professor X, who’d
been killed off.”
Thanks to Thomas and Adams,
X-Men’s sales improved, though not
enough to prevent its eventual cancellation.
Their work, however, made possible the era
that followed.
“It sold well enough that as the sales
figures from the last few issues were
coming in [publisher] Martin Goodman put
X-Men back on the schedule a few months
later as a reprint book, something he didn’t
ordinarily do with cancelled titles. Because
he realised X-Men was selling better by the
end than it had been before. Of course, by
that time Neal and I were busy with other
things, but the reprint book did keep the
X-Men in the minds of the reading public
for the next few years.”
X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 143

The 1970s REBIRTH
The years between 1970 and 1975 were
dark ones for mutant lovers, with the only
X-Men stories available on newsstands
being reprints from the book’s earlier
issues. Even those were cancelled with
issue #93 in June 1975. But seeds were
planted in those years that would give
the title new life, and a steadily growing
audience. It began with Roy Thomas’s
promotion by Stan Lee to the position of
editor-in-chief, in which he oversaw and
could contribute to all of Marvel’s comics.
One such contribution was an effort to
appease Canadian readers.
“For The Hulk,” says Thomas, “I came up
with this notion of Wolverine, as this short,
feisty guy from Canada, and I gave that idea
to [writer] Len Wein and he ran with it. I
made up the name and a few traits and the
rest of it was him, and artists Herb Trimpe
and John Romita designing the costume.
“Roy Thomas wanted to see me write
a Canadian character,” Len Wein tells
SFX from his Southern California home.
“It was my decision, however, to make
him a mutant, because there was all this
talk about a new X-Men book potentially
coming down the pike. I figured, ‘If I make
him a mutant, that allows whoever winds
144 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION
up writing this book to have the possibility
of using this character.’ Little did I know I’d
be that person.”
Giant-Size X-Men #1 appeared in May of
1975. It saw Professor X recruit a new team
of X-Men when his original students were
captured by the mutated island of Krakoa,
with Cyclops the only escapee. Swamp
Thing co-creator Wein wrote the story, and
former Legion Of Superheroes artist Dave
Cockrum handled the illustration chores.
“It was funny,” recalls Wein. “The
whole idea of reviving the book stems
from an idea from somebody upstairs. A
lot of Marvel books were selling very well
overseas and he felt we could boost sales on
at least a single book if we did something
with an international gang of characters
who came from all these countries where
the books were selling. That was the big
starting premise.
“The interesting problem with the whole
situation,” he laughs, “was that nobody from
upstairs ever told us what those countries
were. So Dave and I chose the countries we
liked, that we thought were appropriate
for the characters. But to this day I still
have no idea if we nailed a single one of the
countries the book was selling well in.”
Lots of scrapping.
In a really small room.
In the end, the two men created Storm,
Colossus, Nightcrawler and Thunderbird,
who were aided in their first mission by the
returning Banshee and Sunfire.
“I try not to write token characters,”
explains Wein. “So I just picked the
nationalities and wrote characters as if they
were human beings, not German or Russian.
If they happened to have the appropriate
accents, as some did, it’s just because they
would... I hate ethnicised superheroes. I
hate when a character is African-American
and they’re called Black Lightning or Black
“I’ve put together a
lot of team books
over the years and
there’s a chemistry
to how you do it”
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions

Wolvie was a striking visual
right from his first appearance.
Goliath... I never thought of Storm as Black
Storm. She was simply who she was.”
Wein is quick to credit the late Cockrum
for the unique look of each new X-Man.
“Dave had a great sense of costume. All
the visuals, except for Wolverine – and even
there he changed the mask – came from a
book of Dave’s. He had a notebook full of
character sketches. So we went through it
together one day to figure out what worked.
He’d come up with all those characters,
or at least their initial visuals (some of his
visuals would change slightly, some would
change more than slightly), to figure out
who we wanted to put together on the team.
The powers sometimes came with them.
We'd add whatever seemed necessary.”
Chemistry, adds Wein, played as integral
a role on the page as it did off. “I’ve put
together a lot of team books over the years,
and there’s a chemistry to how you do that.
You try to find a variety of powers, a variety
of personalities. So we’d go through the list,
and once we put together all the physicality,
all the various powers, we went back and
sort of figured out, ‘Okay, how would this
character interact with the others? What’s
their basic driving force?’ We put together a
collection of personalities that matched.”
Only a few weeks after assigning Giant-
Size X-Men #1 to Wein and Cockrum, Roy
Thomas stepped down from his position
as editor-in-chief, and was immediately
succeeded by Wein. Wein’s responsibilities
prevented him from remaining as sole
writer on the book, so he sought a
replacement. One was sitting right outside
www.sfx.co.uk
the eARLY YEARS
his door. “Chris Claremont was one of my
assistants. He had a desk outside my office
– the editor-in-chief’s office – and when
I said, ‘Yeah, I wonder who to actually
give it to?’ Chris started raising his hand,
pinwheeling it – ‘I’ll do it! I’ll do it! Give
it to me! I’ll take it!’ I said, ‘Anybody that
enthusiastic deserves it.’ So I gave it to him.”
Wein plotted Claremont’s first two
issues, X-Men #94 and #95 (in which
Thunderbird was shockingly killed), and
Claremont remained as the book’s sole
writer until issue #107 with Cockrum as
artist. Together they transformed Jean
Grey into the Phoenix and introduced
the Starjammers. John Byrne replaced
Cockrum with issue #108, and his
collaboration, which saw him co-plotting
with Claremont, transformed X-Men from
a bimonthly title to one of the bestselling
monthly titles in comics.
Claremont and Byrne, along with
acclaimed inker Terry Austin, brought
a heretofore unseen psychological
complexity to X-Men, creating characters
such as Kitty Pryde, Proteus, Alpha Flight,
the Shadow King and the Hellfire Club. Len Wein
They scattered the team across the globe
Greatest
for a year after pitting them against their Contributions :
arch-rival Magneto. They returned the Wolverine, Storm,
X-Men to the Savage Land, before reuniting Colossus, Nightcrawler.
them with Professor X and corrupting one Best story “Deadly
of their original members in what remains Genesis!” in Giant-
Sized X-Men #1 (May
arguably the most popular superhero 1975), illustrated by
storyline of all time – “The Dark Phoenix Dave Cockrum, in
Saga”. You can read all about that era which the New X-Men
first appear.
elsewhere in this issue.
X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 145
TIMELINE
n The
X-Men and Magneto first appear in
X-Men #1 (September 1963) by Stan Lee
and Jack Kirby

n Quicksilver
and the Scarlet Witch first
appear in X-Men #4 (March 1964)

n The
Sentinels first appear in X-Men #14
(November 1965)

n Jack
Kirby leaves X-Men with issue #17
(February 1966)

n Stan
Lee leaves X-Men with issue #19
(April 1966)

n RoyThomas begins writing X-Men with

issue #20 (May 1966)

n Neal
Adams first pencils X-Men with #56
(May 1969)

n Wolverine
first appears in The Incredible
Hulk #180 (October 1974)

n X-Men cancelled after #93 (April 1975)

n New
X-Men first appear in Giant-Sized
X-Men #1 (May 1975) by Len Wein and
Dave Cockrum

n Chris
Claremont takes over as X-Men
writer with #96 (December 1975)

n JeanGrey becomes Phoenix in X-Men

#101 (October 1976)

n John
Byrne first pencils X-Men with
#108 (December 1977)

n JeanGrey/Phoenix sacrifices herself in

the final issue of “Dark Phoenix Saga” in
X-Men #137 (September 1980)

n “Days
of Future Past” published in
X-Men #141 and 142 (January-February
1981)
n NewMutants first appear in Marvel
Graphic Novel #4 (September 1982) by
Chris Claremont and Bob McLeod
n X-Factor
first appears in X-Factor #1
(February 1986) by Bob Layton and
Jackson Guice
n Excalibur
first appears in Excalibur
Special Edition (April 1988) by Chris
Claremont and Alan Davis
The 1980s THE X-FACTORY
“I came on the same issue as Jean
died, the death of Phoenix,” says Louise
Simonson of assuming her role as The
X-Men’s editor with issue #137 (October
1980). “At that point the Marvel fans, whose
numbers were legion, and X-Men fans,
whose number were legion, realised you
couldn’t trust the X-Men to do what was
expected. You had to read every single issue
or somebody might die or there might be a
huge, major change and you would miss it
and you wouldn’t know what was going on.
That decision was part of what catapulted
X-Men. Also, honest to God, the fact that
the book was just so well done. Chris and
John together were magic.”
Simonson edited X-Men for four years,
until issue #182 (June 1984), working
closely with Claremont, Byrne (who
departed with issue #143 in March 1981,
soon after the epochal “Days Of Future
Past”), and Byrne’s successors – the
returning Dave Cockrum, Paul Smith, and
John Romita Jr. Along the way she also
edited and then wrote X-Men’s first spin-off
title, New Mutants.
“Jim Shooter had been after Chris for
several years to create an X-Men spin-

n Chris
Claremont concludes his run with
X-Men Volume 2 #3 (December 1991)
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
 the eARLY YEARS

Amazed he can
walk anywhere with
pants that tight.

someone else will do it.’ We said, ‘Alright,

off. Chris was reluctant – and I kind
of agreed with him – to create another
X-Men. Because the concern was that
rather than leading to two books with
the same audience it would lead some
of the audience off of one book and onto
another, and would dilute the effectiveness
of X-Men itself. We were just concerned
that it would water it down. But finally
we were given no other choice – ‘Do it or
we’ll do it.’
“We discussed the idea of doing the
X-Men when they were kids, as they were
in the original Stan Lee creation back in
the dawn of time. We thought we’d get
back to the idea of a school. New Mutants
wasn’t as overwhelmingly successful as
X-Men, but I think it was number two at
some point, which was pretty good – to
have the number one and two books.
Then somewhere around issue 50, Chris
was persuaded to create a third book –
Excalibur.
“At that point he didn’t feel he could
write everything he was writing and keep
up with his deadlines. I’d quit editing at
that point, gone freelance and written
Power Pack. So Anne Nocenti, who was
the X-Men editor, asked me to write a
fill-in issue of New Mutants. Several issues
after that she said, ‘How about taking on
the title for six months so Chris can get
up on his other projects?’ I said, ‘Sure.’
I ended up writing it for several years. It
remained in the top ten the whole time I
wrote the book.”
Simonson’s run on New Mutants lasted
from #55 (September 1987) through to
#97 (January 1991), working with artists
Bret Blevins and Rob Liefeld. Inspired
by Claremont and Byrne’s “Future Past”
storyline, she and Liefeld co-created Cable,
the time-travelling cybernetic team leader
introduced in issue #87 (March 1990).
“X-Men had
everything – it had
fabulous continuity,
but it also had
characters with heart”
“At one point Professor Xavier was
gone, and Magneto had taken over as
the headmaster of the New Mutants and
Xavier’s School. I didn’t like the idea all that
much. I was ready to have the New Mutants
go off on their own, and editor-in-chief Bob
Harras said they needed an adult mentor.
I said, ‘Alright, but I want a guy who will Louise
treat the kids as if they are an army.’ Xavier Simonson
was always worried they were gonna get Greatest
Contributions
hurt and I wanted somebody who knew Apocalypse,
what horror was coming from the future Archangel, Cable
and had come back in time and knew that Best story “Fall of
he had to assemble a group to fight against the Mutants” in
this possible future. I didn’t know he was X-Factor #24–26,
illustrated by Walt
Nathan Summers [the son of Scott and Simonson, in which
Jean]. That happened after I was off the Angel becomes
book. It’s one of the few ideas that people Archangel and battles
his former teammates.
thought of after I got off of the book about

www.sfx.co.uk X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 147


which I thought, ‘That’s so brilliant. I wish
I’d thought of that.’”
In addition to New Mutants, Simonson
also scripted the X-Men spin-off title
X-Factor (which reunited the mutant team’s
original line-up) from issue #6 (July 1986)
through to #64 (March 1991).
“There were some issues with the
direction that X-Factor was going in. The
initial concept – which was these mutants
were pretending not to be mutants so
that they could find mutants and pretend
to get rid of them but really they were
recruiting them to keep them safe and
train them – was kind of problematic. So I
spent some time redirecting their focus and
turned one of the main guys who had been
instrumental in creating this vision into one
of the initial bad guys for X-Factor.”
Her most famous villain, Apocalypse –
introduced in her debut issue – was created
to give the new team an archenemy worthy
of them. Of the ages-old, shapeshifter,
hellbent on hurling humanity toward
148 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION
Archangel looks pleased
with his new metal wings.
mutanthood, Simonson says, “With the
best villains, you kind of have to have
some sympathy for what they’re trying
to accomplish, even though they’re
going about it in totally the wrong way.
Apocalypse is doing the best he can to make
things better for humanity. Unfortunately
he doesn’t go about it in a great way. He’s
not actually judging them, he’s just running
them through the maze and making bad
things happen so that the strong people will
make it out ahead and the weak ones will
get squashed.”
During her X-Factor run, Simonson also
suggested to Claremont that the latter’s
“Mutant Massacre” storyline be a multi-title
crossover, the first of its kind within the
X-Men universe. It saw the original X-Man
Angel wounded, and then transformed into
Archangel in X-Factor #25.
“We had many agendas in X-Factor, and
one was to bring the X-Men with 1960s
powers up to 1980s powers. We decided
to up everybody’s power, to give them
an ’80s edge. The one we were the most
successful with was Archangel. Angel was
such a sunny character, but his wings were
destroyed in the Mutant Massacre when
he was pinned to a wall with harpoons.
Apocalypse kidnapped him as part of a
plot that he had and transformed him
into an angry fellow with demon wings.
He functioned as a villain for a very short
period of time, but he finally realised he
was one of the good guys.”
Simonson eventually left Marvel to write
Superman: Man Of Steel for DC, but of
her time in the X-Men universe, she says,
“I loved every minute of it.” She credits
Claremont with its lasting success.
“Chris’s X-Men had everything that
you wanted in a comic. It had fabulous
continuity, but it also had characters with
heart. It was great to see them fighting
villains and all of that, but really what you
cared about was the development of the
characters themselves. The characters
seemed real to the readers.”
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
Save 25% and never miss an issue again!
Subscribe to

dissatisfied in any way you can write to us or call us to cancel your subscription at any time and we will refund you for all unmailed issues. Prices correct at time of print and subject to change. For full terms and conditions please visit: myfavm.ag/magterms. Offer ends: 31 July 2014.
Terms and Conditions Savings compared to buying six full-priced issues from UK newsstand. This offer is for new UK print subscribers (paying by direct debit) only. You will receive six issues in a year. Full details of the direct debit guarantee are available upon request. If you are
Save
SFX Special Editions £££!
❱Save 25% compared to
buying in the shops
❱Never miss an issue again
❱Six issues per year
delivered to your door
(p&p included)
❱Subscribe from just
£22.49 every six months
Live outside the UK?
For fantastic savings please visit
www.myfavouritemagazines.co.uk/film/
sfx-special-editions-magazine-subscription

Subscribe today!
Visit myfavouritemagazines.co.uk/sfsp1p
Or call us on 0844 848 2852 (quote sfsp1p)
Lines open Monday-Friday 8am-9.30pm, Saturday 8am-4pm

Go digital
Search for SFX on your favourite device
and start your free subscription trial!*
*Free trial not available via Zinio.
ESSENTIALS
1980
Writer/co-plotter: Chris Claremont
Co-plotter/artist: John Byrne
Inker: Terry Austin
Letterer: Tom Orzechowski
Colourist: Glynis Wein
Editors: Jim Salicrup & Louise Jones
Editor-in-chief: Jim Shooter
Excelsior: Stan “The Man” Lee
 goodbye, jean grey

X-Men #137

Ph o eni x
must die !
Once voted the third greatest Marvel comic of
all time, X-Men #137 may not have become the
classic it did if it had been published in its original
version, as Dave Golder discovers…

D I didn't like Phoenix,

irector’s cuts are all the rage on DVD, but
few comics have ever enjoyed a similar
luxury. Comics – by their very month-in,
month-out production-line nature – rarely
present opportunities for the men-in-
she made the rest of
suits to step in and demand major alterations, so
there’s not exactly a great deal of “excised material” the x-men fifth wheels
to be reinstated.
Which, you might think, would be “a good
John Byrne, Artist
thing”. After all, studio bosses are notorious for
buggering up movies: Blade Runner, The Butterfly
Effect and Brazil all suffered ill-conceived, studio-
enforced, upbeat endings in place of their original,
more dramatically satisfying darker final acts. But
back in 1980, when then Marvel editor-in-chief Jim
Shooter demanded that the last six pages of X-Men
#137 be totally rewritten and redrawn at the 11th
hour, he succeeded in turning a great comic into a
classic one. Indeed, it was voted third best Marvel
comic of all time by fans in 2001, beaten only by
Fantastic Four #1 and Amazing Fantasy #15 (which
introduced Spider-Man).
Ironically, the new ending he introduced was
far from a cop-out happy conclusion. Writer Chris
Claremont, with just hours to come up with an
alternative finale, decided that there was no other
way to rewrite the comic than to kill off one of his
favourite characters – Phoenix.

From the ashes

Shooter’s ultimate vindication (if the huge sales
weren’t enough) came four years later when Marvel
reissued the story, retitled Phoenix: The Untold
Story, with the “original, uncensored, never-
X-Men #138 – Jean
Grey’s best bits.
before-published conclusion to the saga of the

www.sfx.co.uk X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 151


An original spread
from X-Men #137 – the
pages were replaced
at the last moment.
Phoenix.” It was an interesting curio, thanks to six
pages of story and artwork that fans had never seen
before, but the happy ending simply didn’t pack
the emotional wallop of seeing Phoenix blasted to
atoms in the arms of her lover, Cyclops.
So, there’s no doubt that if X-Men #137 had been
issued in its original form, it wouldn’t have been
the classic it became. And yet, to Shooter’s credit,
his decision had not been a marketing-centric
one, but a moral one. “I felt that the way the story
was originally designed to end didn’t have enough
consequences for what happened,” said Shooter.
“It wimped out.”
The Phoenix saga had begun in X-Men #100
when Jean Grey, hitherto known as the telekinetic
Marvel Girl, died saving her teammates and
was resurrected next issue as the inconceivably
powerful Phoenix. As writer Chris Claremont
explained, “My intention was to create an X-Men
analogue to Thor; someone who was essentially the
first female cosmic hero. We thought at the time we
152 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION
Phoenix in her death
throes. Scott! SCOTT!!
could integrate her into the book as well as Thor
had been integrated into The Avengers.”
It was the dawn of a new age of popularity for
Marvel’s merry mutants – particularly when, in
issue #108, legendary artist John Byrne began
working on the title. Both he and Claremont took
the X-Men to dizzy new creative heights. But
there was a problem with the line-up. “I didn’t like
Phoenix from the word go,” Byrne admitted. “She
instantly made the rest of the X-Men fifth wheels,
you know?” Then came the decision to turn her
into Dark Phoenix. As X-Men editor Jim Salicrup
remembers, “Jim Shooter wanted a story where
a long-established ‘good guy’ Marvel character
becomes a real villain. I just wasn’t sure about
doing it in X-Men.”
Over lunch one day, Chris Claremont described
to Shooter and Salicrup a crazy idea he had where
Phoenix would be corrupted by her power and
become Dark Phoenix. “This being Marvel,” said
Shooter, “it wasn’t going to be just a sham, resolved
X-MEN TRIVIA
John Byrne later went on to write and draw The
Fantastic Four. In one issue, he boldly relocated
the Great Refuge, the home of The Inhumans,
on top of Jean Grey’s lunar grave site.
Chris Claremont wrote X-Men from issue #94 to
#279, (1975-91). He rejoined the title with #444
in 2004 for another two-year run. At that point
he had mixed feelings about being back on
board. “It’s a lot of fun, but it’s also a big
challenge. I’m reading all these internet reviews
telling me how absolutely loathsome and rotten
my work is. But, on the other hand, it gives me
something to strive for.”
Byrne, although born in the UK, has lived in
Canada for most of his life and loves the land of
the maple leaf. Within the pages of X-Men, he
helped create the first ever Canadian
superteam, Alpha Flight, then went off to write
and draw them in their own comic. Ever the
experimentalist, he produced one issue which
had a white-clad superheroine (Snowbird)
battling a white-furred beast in the snowy
wastes of the Arctic. This enabled Byrne to get
away with a number of pages of completely
white panels with nothing but speech bubbles!
Chris Claremont was co-creator of Marvel UK’s
first ever original superhero, Captain Britain.
The X-Men only became “Uncanny” with #114.
by some gimmick like Red Kryptonite or something.
She was indeed going to become evil.”
Letting Jean go
Shooter gave the green light and the saga of Dark
Phoenix began. Trouble was, Claremont loved his
character too much, and the story began developing
in ways that Shooter hadn’t envisioned. While the
editor-in-chief was all for making Dark Phoenix
a permanent villain, Claremont had in mind an
ultimate goal of retribution.
Shooter, however, was a hands-off editor and
wasn’t aware of the direction the saga was taking
until very late in the day – almost too late. “I don’t
read every book before it goes to the printers,” said
Shooter back in 1984. “I feel it’s better to let all
the creative people do what they’re doing without
having the feeling that Big Brother’s looking over
their shoulders. I read the books after they’re
printed, generally speaking, and if I have
any comments or complaints, I try to give them in
the spirit of, ‘Here’s what I think went wrong, try to
make it better next time.’ But anyway, I was reading
an X-Men make-ready in which Phoenix destroyed
an entire inhabited planet. It struck me that this
was a major event, and maybe, just once, I ought to
look into what was planned. Jim [Salicrup] showed
me an issue that was just about ready to go out to
the engraver…”
That was X-Men #137. Shooter wasn’t happy.
The story concerned Phoenix put on trial by an
alien race for the destruction of a planet a few
issues previously. In the intervening issues, the
X-Men had managed to subdue Dark Phoenix, and
Professor X had put in place a mental inhibitor
which stopped Jean Grey from using her Phoenix
powers. In issue #137, the X-Men fight for the right
to let Jean Grey live. In the original version of the
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions

issue, ultimately she does, although stripped of her
Phoenix powers.
“I didn’t feel it worked,” remembered Shooter.
“I felt it was a cop-out. I mean, this lady had wiped
out an inhabited planet.” Shooter asked Claremont
to make changes. He did not, however, demand
that “Phoenix Must Die” (as the cover of the comic
screamed), but Claremont could see no other way
out of the situation. “We had, basically, 36 hours to
think up the idea, because John only had three days
in his schedule to pencil it,” recalled Claremont.
“There was no time to do anything else.”
What happened next was full-scale
pandemonium, as incoming editor Louise Simonson
(the Jones) vividly remembers: “My biggest
problem was trying to coordinate things and keep
everyone from killing each other,” she said. It
didn’t help that Claremont and Byrne worked in
two different countries – the States and Canada
– communicating by phone, or that everybody
had ideas about how to find a solution. “Tom
[Orzechowski, the letterer] just told me to write
less,” said Claremont. “He always thought that I
wrote too much.” The revised ending saw Jean
Grey’s inhibitor fail and the Phoenix remanifesting
itself. When Jean briefly regains control of her
body, she telekinetically uses an alien weapon to
kill herself in front of her lover, Cyclops. It’s an
incredibly moving and suitably noble sacrifice.
Notably, the death also happens in a fairly small
panel at the bottom of a page. You can’t help
wondering whether Jean’s suicide would have been
splashed across a double-page spread if the comic
had always been intended to climax with her death.
www.sfx.co.uk
Yet somehow having it cramped into a corner of
a page makes the demise of Jean Grey even more
poignant; it’s almost so incidental, you have to
stare at it for ages just to make sure you’re actually
we came up with a
fantastic ending for
a fantastic story
Jim Shooter, editoR-in-Chief
reading what you think you’re reading, letting
it sink in. Understatement wins out over grand
melodrama. “You know, I kinda look at everything
up to the redone six pages as a first draft,” said
Claremont. “I think the advantage of the printed
version is that it was a second draft; that I had a
moment to go back and look at the script and do
what we rarely have a chance to do in comics –
actually think about what you’ve written.”
Dealing with the aftermath
There was, of course, a knock-on effect. Initial
artwork had already begun on the following issue,
and plans had been made for the saga to continue
up to X-Men #150 at least. Claremont revealed some
of what may have happened in an interview in the
reissued “Phoenix: The Untold Story”. “I saw it as
coming to terms with the fact that she killed five
billion people – that she committed a crime for
which she can never atone. The easy way out would
goodbye, jean grey
Charles rocks up on
his ex-missus’s ship.
be just to jump off a cliff, but she can’t. She has to
somehow put things right. The ultimate end of it –
leading up to issue #150 – would be that Magneto,
having found out about this, would come in, kidnap
her, and offer her the power again on the false
assumption that he could control her.”
Claremont admitted, though, that he never
intended to kill off Jean in the long term: “I was still
thinking in terms of happy endings.” He wanted
to give her a chance to prove her heroism before
depowering her, marrying her off to Scott Summers
(Cyclops) and making her a subsidiary character,
“as important to the story as the left front tyre of
[the X-Men’s jet plane] the Blackbird,” according to
John Byrne.
X-Men #138 was hastily rewritten as an elegy
to Jean Grey, the comic equivalent of a flashback
episode of Marvel Girl’s greatest moments, which
nevertheless remains incredibly moving and boasts
a stunningly effective – almost expressionistic –
opening splash page of black-garbed X-Men beside
the grave of their late team-mate.
“I look back at X-Men #137,” Jim Shooter said,
“and feel that, one way or another, we came up with
a fantastic ending for a fantastic story. It’s just a
milestone in comics and it really put the world on
notice that Marvel does treat these characters as if
they were alive.”
Claremont continued to write X-Men, but Byrne
left shortly after the Phoenix saga ended. Many
great artists have tackled the X-Men since, but
the Claremont/Byrne partnership created a truly
extraordinary and audacious run, the popularity of
which has rarely been matched since.
X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 153
 PHOENIX rises

D
The clue’s in the name eath is such a frequent visitor to
the X-Men that he has his own
of course… Alasdair parking space and lunch hall
privileges. Mutants, sworn to defend
Stuart explores the a world that hates and fears them, tend to die
in the line of duty with alarming regularity.
many deaths (and And when they do, it invariably leads to huge
servings of the sort of epic X-angst that’s
subsequent rebirths) been central to the characters’ success.
Of course it doesn’t always take. A lot
of the lovely Jean Grey of X-Men have come back from the dead
over the years but only one has made it a
hobby. Jean Grey, Scott Summers’s first true
love, is the Captain Scarlet of the X-Men
universe, just without the rocking theme
tune. So, before you start trying to fit new
lyrics to said tune (“She’s the Phoenix…
OoooEEEooooEEEEooooo… Cosmic force
of power! She’s the Phoenix! Dan dan da dan
dan!” See, kind of works), let’s take a closer
look at the death and the rebirth and the
death and the rebirth of Jean Grey…

Death Count: 1
Issue: X-Men #101
Year: 1976
Cause of Death: Fatal Radiation Poisoning
Jean sacrifices herself to save her teammates by piloting a badly
damaged shuttle down from Earth’s orbit. She’s exposed to fatal
amounts of radiation but, spurred on by her love for Cyclops, her
powers grow and she holds the shuttle together, landing it in Jamaica
Bay. Then she dies.
Resurrection Method: Jean’s power and love for Scott attracts the
attention of the Phoenix. An immensely powerful cosmic force, the
Phoenix clones Jean, gives the clone Jean’s memories and abilities,
absorbs some of her consciousness into itself and parks her real body
in a cocoon in Jamaica Bay*. She even gets a spiffy costume upgrade.

*Not that we knew any of this at the time.

www.sfx.co.uk X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 155

 Death Count: 2
Issue: X-Men #137
Year: 1980
Cause of Death: Suicide by laser
This gets a little complex, so buckle up. In between death 1
and death 2, Jean takes the name Phoenix and it becomes
apparent she’s the embodiment of the Phoenix Force. For
supervillain Mastermind she’s an irresistible target. He
hypnotises her to persuade her to join the Hellfire Club. Jean’s
already being corrupted by the power of the Phoenix and it’s
easy for Mastermind to turn her against the X-Men.
Phoenix manifests as Dark Phoenix, takes down the X-Men
and eats a sun, resulting in the death of the entire N’bari
civilisation. This doesn’t go unnoticed. Lilandra, Shi’ar Em-
press, and Charles Xavier’s other half, kidnaps the X-Men and
demands that Jean be killed. Xavier refuses to let his student
die and instead challenges Lilandra to a Shi’ar honour duel.
The fight, of course, goes badly and soon comes down
to just Jean and Scott. When Scott is hit, the psychic circuit
breakers that Jean had been using to keep the Phoenix
in check shatter and the Dark Phoenix begins to stir. Jean
triggers a nearby weapon and kills herself rather than let it
loose. The fight ends. The X-Men mourn. the second clone! Twist! One created by the best-named
Resurrection Method: Cloning. Twice. The Jean that died supervillain ever, Mister Sinister. So, a few years later, when
on the moon was actually the clone made by the Phoenix the original Jean heals and her cocoon surfaces, she finds
Force. The portion of Jean’s consciousness in the clone should Scott has moved on with Madelyne Pryor, a woman who looks
have returned to her when it died but instead, it went to exactly like her…

Death Count: 3
Issue: X-Factor #38
Year: 1989
Cause of Death: Suicide and
attempted murder by psychic
powers
Mister Sinister needs to mix Jean and
Scott’s DNA to create a hugely powerful
mutant. He orchestrates a love affair
between Scott and Jean-clone Maddy
Pryor but, as Cyclops is still guilt-ridden
over Jean’s death, they drift apart.
When Jean returns, Scott leaves
Madelyne, who becomes corrupted by
a demon, turns into the Goblin Queen,
sleeps with Scott’s brother, Alex, and does
the sort of things evil characters did in
the late-’80s. This leads to her creating a
psychic link with Jean and killing herself in
the hope of taking Jean with her. Instead,
that restores Jean’s Phoenix abilities and the
fragment of her consciousness that had been
held in Madelyne.
Resurrection Method: Nate Grey, an
alternate version of her son, uses his
incredible powers to locate her spirit on
the astral plane and resurrect her, instantly
making every other Mother’s Day gift in
history look a bit rubbish.

156 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions

 Death Count: 4 & 5
Issue: New X-Men #150
Year: 2004
Cause of Death: Stabbing
followed by massive EMP pulse
When Jean Grey goes into space, bad
stuff happens. Trapped on Magneto’s
asteroid base, Jean and Wolverine are
sent hurtling towards the sun. To save
Jean from a hideous death, Wolverine
kills her, which not only proves that
he thinks every problem can be solved
with his claws, but also triggers Jean’s
Phoenix abilities and finally gives her
the strength to control them. She heals
herself and teleports to Earth, just in
time to stop Magneto’s drug-addled
and after all that…
She’s actually still in the comics. Sort of. All New X-Men
features a team of time-displaced younger X-Men, including
Jean. None of them are especially happy about what their
www.sfx.co.uk
rampage across New York. The defeated
Magneto isn’t done yet, though: he
tricks Jean into approaching him and
fires a huge electromagnetic pulse at
her, causing a fatal stroke. Her last
words to Scott: “All I ever do is die on
you.” Awwww.
Resurrection Method: The Phoenix
Force, twice. The Shi’ar, proving they’re
as reckless as Charles “I’ll do it on the
night” Xavier, reactivate the dormant
Phoenix Force in the hope they can
destroy it. That doesn’t work, and the Force was already preparing Jean for a
Phoenix returns to Earth and resurrects return to Earth 150 years after her death,
Jean even though, according to her, “it’s in “Here Comes Tomorrow”, the last story
too early”. That’s because the Phoenix of Grant Morrison’s New X-Men run.
Death Count: 6+
Issue: Phoenix: Endsong #5
Year: 2005
Cause of Death: Multiple stabbings by Wolverine (again),
suicide (again)
Following the Shi’ar’s brilliant plan to destroy the Phoenix Force by
poking it until it kills them, Jean is resurrected on Earth. Thrown off
balance by the Phoenix’s sudden return, her enforced resurrection,
the tragic manipulations of young X-Man Quentin Quire and Scott’s
relationship with Emma Frost, the Phoenix briefly possesses Emma and
when Jean rips it loose, it taunts her about how she’s been forgotten.
Seeing his old love about to lose control, Scott gets the team telepaths
to focus every X-Man’s love for Jean onto her. She regains control, asks
Scott to take his glasses off so she can see his eyes and says goodbye,
bathed in his optic blast but unaffected by it. She returns to the future
to become a White Phoenix of the Crown, one of the most powerful
embodiments of the Force in history.
Oh and she saved the team from the black holes created by the Shi’ar
to try and kill her. The Shi’ar are idiots.
future selves will end up doing and neither is anyone else. the Marvel Universe’s past that she had yet to commit. Events
The book recently featured a crossover with the Guardians of like this show just how tough life’s been for Jean, but she can
the Galaxy, which saw young Jean put on trial for crimes in comfort herself with one thought: the Phoenix always rises…
X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 157
 TEN ESSENTIAL
X-MeN STORIES
Since 1963, the X-Men’s world has grown to encompass over
14 ongoing series – four for Wolverine alone! James Hunt
explores 10 of the best tales from the history of mutantkind

Giant Size X-men #1

Marvel Masterworks: The uncanny X-Men Vol. 1 TPB (collects Giant Size X-Men #1,
Uncanny X-Men #94-#100) Though the first X-Men series was cancelled in
1970, it continued to publish reprints until 1975, when writer Len Wein
and artist Dave Cockrum relaunched the series. The pair introduced a
new team made up of mutant characters pulled from every corner of
the globe: Storm from Africa, Colossus from Russia, Nightcrawler from
Germany and – of course – Wolverine from Canada. Their first mission:
to rescue the original team from Krakoa, the living island! It’s rare to
see a title so completely transformed, but clearly, the reinvention paid
off. Some of the most enduring X-Men were introduced here.

 od
G
Loves,
Man
Kills
X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills HC Chris
Claremont used mutants as stand-
ins for any persecuted minority,
and, during his legendary
17-year run, this represents his
definitive statement against racial
intolerance. The X-Men find
themselves fighting Reverend
Stryker, a bigoted televangelist
with a plan to eradicate all
mutants. As well as being one
of the most acclaimed X-Men
stories of all time, “God Loves,
Man Kills” also formed the basis
for X2.

158 SFX X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions


Messiah
Complex
X-Men: Messiah Complex TPB Mutantkind stands
on the brink of extinction. When a new
mutant is unexpectedly born, various
factions – including the X-Men – race
to acquire the child for themselves.
“Messiah Complex” brought together
almost every living X-Man and helped
to reposition the series’ main theme
as one of a people fighting not just for
acceptance, but for their very survival.
www.sfx.co.uk
essential x-men
The Dark
Phoenix
Saga
X-Men: Dark Phoenix Saga TPB (collects Uncanny X-Men
#129-#137) Corrupted by the Hellfire club,
Phoenix destroys an inhabited world, setting
in motion the events that ultimately led to
Jean Grey’s death. It’s another Claremont/
Byrne classic, delivering a sweeping cosmic
adventure without ever forgetting that
there’s a love story at the centre. The fallout
continues to influence even today, and it’s one
of the most popular comic-book stories ever
– the collection has received more printings
than any graphic novel except Watchmen.
The Trial
of Magneto
X-Men: We Are the X-Men TPB (includes Uncanny
X-Men #200) In Uncanny X-Men #200, the UN puts
a repentant Magneto on trial for his crimes.
When the verdict is delivered, Professor
Xavier strikes a bargain, inviting Magneto to
join the X-Men and installing him as the new
headmaster of the academy. Not the first time
one of the X-Men foes has joined the team – but
easily the most memorable!
The Origin
of the X-Men
Marvel Masterworks: The X-Men Vol. 1 TPB (collects Uncanny
X-Men #1-#10) The early issues were typically
fertile Lee/Kirby fare, introducing not just the
X-Men and their mentor, but the very concept of
mutanthood itself. Where there are heroes, there
are also villains, and these early issues featured
the first appearances of Magneto, Quicksilver and
the Scarlet Witch, as well as the Blob, Ka-Zar and,
er, Unus the Untouchable.
X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 159
 essential x-men
Days of
Future
Past
X-Men: Days of Future Past TPB (collects Uncanny X-Men
#141-#142) Beginning in a dystopian future
where mutants are outlawed, Kate “Kitty”
Pryde travels back in time to thwart the
assassination of Senator Robert Kelly and
prevent her world from coming to pass.
It’s probably the best-loved story from
the Claremont/Byrne era – let’s hope the
upcoming film does it justice.

E is for
Extinction
New X-Men Vol. 1: E is for Extinction TPB (collects New
X-Men #114-#116) Grant Morrison’s New X-Men
run is an epic in itself, but this opening
arc helped redefine the series for the 21st
century. Morrison’s run drew closer parallels
than ever between mutants and minorities,
treating them not just as persecuted victims,
but as a social movement in their own right.

 atal
F Gifted
Attractions
X-Men: Fatal Attractions TPB Writers Scott Lobdell and Fabian
Nicieza join a host of artists (including Marvel’s future
CCO, Joe Quesada) for this 30th anniversary crossover,
arguably the definitive X-Men versus Magneto story.
When the master of magnetism unleashes a powerful
EMP on Earth, Professor Xavier leads a carefully
selected strike force to take him down for good.
Unsurprisingly, Magneto doesn’t go quietly. Packed with
memorable scenes this story was the first to definitively
prove that there was life after Claremont for the X-Men.
Astonishing X-Men: Gifted TPB Joss Whedon often cited
Claremont’s X-Men as a major influence on Buffy,
so it’s no surprise that Marvel eventually asked
him to put his own stamp on the team. When
a company develops a cure for the X-gene, the
X-Men can’t help but investigate – especially
because they don’t think “cure” is the right word.
Combining Whedon’s wit and affection for the
characters with Cassaday’s cinematic artwork,
“Gifted” follows X-Men tradition by placing a
difficult philosophical question at its heart, but
never forgets to tell an entertaining story first.

www.sfx.co.uk X-MEN SPECIAL EDITION SFX 161

 PROFESSOR X

MAGNETO

CASSANDRA NOVA

THE JUGGERNAUT

DEATH BIRD
XORN

SCARLET WITCH QUICKSILVER POLARIS GABRIELLE MOIRA LILANDRA D’KEN

HALLER MACTAGGART

CORSAIR

ROGUE

GAMBIT ICEMAN LEGION

DEATHCRY BISHOP
CALLISTO

MAGICK/ILLYANA
RASPUTIN

FORGE STORM HAVOK VULCAN

CYCLOPS

© Joe Stone/ joe-stone.tumblr.com

COLOSSUS JEAN GREY
MADELYNE
PRIOR

EMMA FROST/
KITTY PRYDE MR SINISTER WHITE QUEEN

STRYFE

NATE GREY

MISS SINISTER CABLE

ANGEL/ARCHANGEL APOCALYPSE DOMINO RACHEL SUMMERS

MARVEL GIRL

DARK BEAST WOLVERINE DEADPOOL

AZAZEL MYSTIQUE SABRETOOTH

NB Yeah, we know it’s more complicated than this but

NIGHTCRAWLER GRAYDON CREED BEAST a complete family tree would fill the whole mag!
X-23 DAKEN
9000
9015