Release Date:

July 14, 2000

Directed by:

Bryan Singer

Written by:

Tom DeSanto Christopher McQuarrie

Starring:

Patrick Stewart Ian McKellen Hugh Jackman James Marsden Famke Janssen Halle Berry Anna Paquin Ray Park Tyler Mane Rebecca Romijn-Stamos Bruce Davison Matthew Sharp

Studio:

20th Century Fox

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X-Men

Plot:
Outcasts from society, the X-Men area a small band of mutants, so called because each was born with a unique genetic mutation that gives them superhuman powers. As the X-Men have learned to harness their special abilities for the greater good, they have also realised that the human race they fight to protect both rejects and fears their presence. Battling against prejudice and agents of intolerance, the X-Men will either establish a peaceful co-existence between mutants and mankind, or perish.

News:

16 August, 2000

It has been confirmed that the DVD will be released on November 26. Fox will be throwing a launch party in Los Angeles for the event with the cast in attendance.

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19 July, 2000

The movie hasn't been out a week yet and already talk of the DVD release is coming up. In an interview with DVDFile director Bryan Singer says that a videographer was hired to document everything that happened during the shooting of the movie.

A healthy reel of outtakes could be a possibility. Famke Janssen told Comics Continuum that they had some initial difficulties with their costumes. "I remember the first day we were in our suits, the leather suits that were so restrictive and uncomfortable. And we had to hop over a ledge and we thought we could just hop right over it. We just wracked ourselves and tripped over the wall. Our suits were too tight. The entire crew was laughing. We were idiots. There's going to be a lovely outtake reel on this. We were the spaz X-Men. They cut out all that footage. They could make a whole other movie from that stuff."

For instance, James Marsden relates his problems with the scene where Toad rips off his visor forcing Cyclops to shut his eyes. "So I can't see anything and I keep walking the wrong way off camera," Marsden said, laughing. "And Bryan (Singer, X-Men's director) is yelling, 'No! Left! Left!' When you want to make a good first impression, it helps to know your right from your left."

According to DVD Sewer, there are plans to have the DVD released at the ridiculously early date of November 2000.

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17 July, 2000

X-Men absolutely dominated the box office in its opening weekend, raking in an estimated $57.5 million. That ranks as the fourth largest total of all time for a three day openining weekend. It was the largest opening ever for a non-sequel. The huge opening should prove a shot in the arm for sequels. Fox is hungry for a franchise and it looks like they've got one now. Two sequels are already in the planning stages and the major actors are already under contract for them.

As a result we're going to immediately add pages to this site to cover the planned sequels.

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14 July, 2000

This is it. The movie is released today. So check out my review.

12 July, 2000

If you're itching to see the premiere party for X-Men, all you need is your computer. Fox will be broadcasting the party live from Ellis Island in New York. This is also the setting of the movie's climactic battle. The broadcast will start at 8:00PM EST today. Head to POPcast to watch.

10 July, 2000

TV Guide has decided to celebrate the arrival of the movie with no less than six different covers for their newest issue. You can see them all here. Check out the Rogue cover if you've ever doubted that Anna Paquin was right for the role. Yow!

Meanwhile the 'Uncanny Antman' popped into our Forums with his comments on the movie after catching a screening in Australia. You can find that here.

Also catching a screening was Eric from the website X-Fan. You can find his review here.

7 July, 2000

Halle Berry talked to Comics Continuum about her reasons for taking the role of Storm. "I really appreciated X-Men's ideas about acceptance and tolerance," Berry said. "Storm is the only black character in the movie, and I was pleased that she possesses such wonderful strength and soul. She is the Earth mother and conscience of the team. I felt really positive about Storm and I loved the idea that many people will see her as a powerful yet sensitive role model. Of course, I also had fun with the character - and kicked a little butt."

A couple of interesting pictures accompanied the interview. In the first picture you can see exactly how Storm's eyes are being handled. In the second picture, the question of her flying in the movie is answered definitively.

Maxim magazine did a feature on the women of this movie recently and on July 10th they will be hosting a live video chat with Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, Halle Berry and Famke Janssen. It is tentatively scheduled for noon EST and can be found here.

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30 June, 2000

Bruce Davison is finally done with the character of Senator Kelly. Filming for the movie has been done for awhile but Davison had to put in some extra hours reprising his role for the television special on Fox, to be aired July 11 at 8PM EST. "It's the Mutant Registration Act hearings, and it brackets the making of the film," Davison told Comics Continuum in an interview. "Senator Kelly addresses the issues. What is a mutant? Why are they dangerous? Why are we dealing with them now? It's used as a bracket on the making of the movie."

Davison had the pleasure of putting on some serious makeup for one of his scenes in which he becomes mutated. "Isn't that a great effect?" Davison said. "I'm talking about a special effect that serves the characters. It's not so much a boom-boom-boom effect, but it's my first discovery that I'm mutated." The downside of the great effect is that he has to get out of the makeup. "I was in the shower scrubbing it off of me, and somebody came up and said, 'We had a light out and we need to do it again,'" Davison said. "So we have to do the makeup all over again. It was one of those 17-hour days. It was not fun, especially in the cold when you're all greasy."

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26 June, 2000

If you've seen the pictures of Mystique you would probably guess that Rebecca Romijn-Stamos was pretty much naked in the movie. You would be surprisingly wrong. She's not wearing any normal clothes, that's true. However, two-thirs of her body was covered in new prosthetics designed for the movie. The rest of her was covered in blue paint.

Makeup supervisor Gordon Smith talked to Comics Continuum about the process. "The prosthetics go on first, and then we painted between the prosthetics. The prosthetics in this particular movie are new to the industry in that, first of all, they are silicone, and secondly, they are self-sticking, reusable and permanently colored. We virtually had to do no makeup after the fact except for a little bit of color shifting if an actor's face had gone red, to shift the topical color. But there's essentially there's no makeup involved. All the colors are built intrinsically into the prosthetic, so when they come out of the mold, they match."

"All of her prosthetics were reusable. You'd take them off, go wash them off in the sink and they were ready to use again the next day. We didn't do that a lot initially, because we didn't believe it ourselves. But after three or four days, we'd say, 'Let's try using the old prosthetics.' You wouldn't know, you could only guess. And the second applications were generally better than the first applications. And all of the materials were medical-grade materials, so they're all perfectly clean. So they're virtually the same kind of thing you would put inside a body."

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22 June, 2000

Set your VCRs for Fox on the night of July 11. The network will be showing a special to promote the movie. The special will be following Senator Kelly's campaign against mutants. Included will be a mock hearing by the Senate Subcommittee on Mutant Activities.

The difference between good and bad mutants will be explained. All of the major characters will be featured. There will be an interview with director Bryan Singer. Behind the scenes footage will show Rebecca Romijn-Stamos and Tyler Mane being transformed into their respective characters Mystique and Sabretooth by the the makeup artists. The stunts and special effects will also be examined.

Bryan Singer talked to Comics Continuum about his take on the characters before ever reading a comic. "Before I even read the comic book and before I knew anything about the stories from any of the off-shoots, the comics or the cartoon, I read the bios on all the characters. In fact, I read the bios before I even met Stan Lee or the Marvel people. I didn't read a comic book. And just from reading the bios, I san down and started to elaborate on story ideas and conflicts and relationships. And they had already existed in the comic books. Stan would be like, 'We've had that.'"

Singer did a pretty good job of figuring out the characters on his own. For instance, check out his take on Rogue. "She's everything that's frightening and tragic about being a mutant. She's a beautiful, sexual woman who can do anything she wants - except to touch somebody."

16 June, 2000

Just a mild update today. Sir Ian McKellen updated his website today with and answered some more questions from fans. He spoke about how the effect of Magneto levitating police cars was managed. "Tucked away in the middle of the teaser trailer for "X-Men" is a splendid example of Magneto's mutant capabilities. With Toad and Sabretooth on either side, he stands, helmetted, ready for action. A warning challenge rings out and the master of magnetism responds with violence. As he raises his arms in front of him, the police vehicles which threaten him are lifted clear of the ground. As he lowers them, so they fall."

This sort of effect is not at all in the actor's control. Shooting in Hamilton, Ontario last October, it involved slender cables suspending the cars from two gigantic offscreen cranes. Ray Park, Tyler Mane and I were happy to be well out of range on the steps of the railroad station. For many an hour the effect was organised. It was in two parts: the raising and the dropping. All I had to do was arm movements in accord with the cranes."

Two more pictures today. The first is a shot of Magneto at thought, from the official site. The other, by way of Cinescape, shows Storm lecturing younger mutants at Xavier's school.

15 June, 2000

Stop panicking. Yesterday's news about problems was shot down by Fox today. 20th Century Fox contacted Coming Soon! and stated the following on the situation.

We always wanted to hold our junket on the first weekend in July as that was a sure date for having a final print. But! as you also know that is the big 4th of July weekend and you just can't junket then. So, we tried for the earlier date and the film simply won't be final by then. We needed the week so the press junket is now scheduled for the 8th and 9th of July....since the 1st and 2nd can't happen.

As for critics seeing the film "just a day or so before the film opens," we have scheduled all -medias in NY and LA on the 10th of July and our premiere on the 12th....and those dates have been solid for some time. As for the "test screening...." there have been none to date. That's just the fact.

The film will be in theatres on the 14th......with drink cups emblazoned with X-Men images....rest assured. We are on course.

14 June, 2000

Today's X-Men update is sponsored by the letter X. Sorry, couldn't resist. Anyway, you might have noticed that there is a new commercial for the movie appearing on TV. For once, it isn't a Senator Kelly ad. If you haven't seen it and want to check it out, click here for the 6.5 MB MPEG file. It features Mystique morphing in the middle of a spin kick, Toad using his tongue and a new shot of the Blackbird. The best part however is where Logan says, referring to the uniforms "You actually go outside in these things?" To which Cyclops replis, "Well what would you prefer, yellow spandex?"

On a more alarming note, some possible problems have cropped up. First off, the Toronto Sun ran an article that talked about Bryan Singer's difficulties in getting everything done with time rapidly running out. A source on the production said, "Bryan thought the shooting schedule in Toronto was tight, the post production is unbelievably tight. It's going to be close, too close for comfort."

This was followed up by a report on the Mr. Showbiz site that Fox has cancelled all press junkets for the film. Finally, Coming Soon! received a report from a source they describe as very reliable that says that Fox held a test screening for the movie at an undisclosed location. Apparently the audience hated the movie. Now, according to this source, Fox is panicking as a the movie might need a drastic re-editing to fix it. This could possibly lead to a delay in the movie's release.

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12 June, 2000

The Movie Page snagged the latest version of the movie's poster. The light at the center of the X has opened a bit showing us some of the cast behind. The tagline "Trust a few. Fear the rest." has also been added.

Makeup supervisor Gordon Smith talked to Comics Continuum about how they transformed Ray Park into Toad. "His makeup was very straight forward, five to 10 minutes," Smith said. "His makeup was done with food coloring. The reason was that he had such an intense color change, yellowy­green, and to do that with spray paint, with the particle size, you could see that he was wearing makeup. It'd look much like it did in Star Wars (as Darth Maul). Because it was him and he had already been seen that way, I'd wanted to make sure he just didn't look like a guy made up again."

Not all of the design for Toad was used though. "I had originally given him glasses with a plus-20 magnification on them," Gordon said. "So when you looked into the glasses, the entire glass was an eye. It was really quite spectacular and it turned him into Toad. But Bryan (Singer, X-Men's director) thought it make him look like Elton John, so we scrapped them."

Nick Nunziata over at CHUD sent word that he had gotten a hold of the novelization for the movie already. Being the hardworking webmaster that he is he tore into it quickly to share his impressions of the story. It won't be exactly like the movie but provides another good idea of what we can expect from this movie. Check it out here.

Just so you don't go into withdrawal from a lack of new photos to look at, check out this pair from the official site.

7 June, 2000

Hugh Jackman talked with Comics Continuum about the much debated costumes. "When I first put it on, I could barely breathe because it was so tight," Jackman said. "But once I wore it in generally, I really liked them. I thought they felt very strong. I thought they were really sleek and relatively simple too."

The costumes weren't exactly easy to deal with though. "You don't know how many times I'd ripped the ass out of them when I was dropping down to do stunts," he said. "Rips here and there, and then you would get so hot during the fights. I got heat exhaustion one night and because we kept going and going and going, before I knew it I was throwing up. I took the thing off and I had ice packs over my whole body and I was still sweating. It was so hot."

Producer Tom DeSanto explained why they looked the way they do. "It's the process of translating two-dimensional comic book images into real life," DeSanto said. "And when you take the yellow-and-blue Wolverine costume and try to create that and put it on a man, it looks ridiculous. What we've done is taken elements from the costume and made it real.

6 June, 2000

Director Bryan Singer spoke to Premiere magazine about his upcoming movie. He says that the movie will feature over 370 special effects shots. Apparently a lot of them were so intense that the MPAA would not allow them to be used in the trailers. This explains why the first trailer shows Cyclops acting as if he had fired a blast but we only see a flash of red light.

"The [MPAA] wouldn't let me keep a shot of a laser light coming out of Cyclops's eyes; they thought it was too intense," Singer says. "I was like, 'It's just a beam!'"

5 June, 2000

Two interesting pictures for you today. The first, from the message boards at Counting Down, would appear to be the young Erik Lensherr in the concentration camp. The other shot, from the official site, is a good shot of Rogue.

2 June, 2000

Here it is in all it's glory. The third and likely final X-Men trailer.

• 5.8MB MOV (240x180)
• 10.8MB MOV (320x240)
• 20.7MB MOV (480x256)
• 37.1MB MOV (640x480)

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1 June, 2000

I finally got my hands on the script! Check out my review.

The third trailer will be available this evening at 8 PM PST on the official website. I'll have links up here as soon after that as possible.

It's been nearly a week since anything of interest has popped up. Unbelievable. Anyway, the latest issue of Wizard magazine has a few new pictures from the movie.

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