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 for March 2000:

27 March, 2000

The official site has updated again. Since it's been slow on the X-Men front for the last several days I'll point out a new picture. It looks like Storm piloting the Blackbird with Wolverine in the background.

22 March, 2000

Here's yet another new picture for you to sink your teeth into. It could be a potential spoiler so don't click on the thumbnail if you're squeamish about such things. I made a point of blurring the thumbnail so you couldn't tell much about it too. For the rest of you dive right in and see a cool shot of Sabretooth.

21 March, 2000

Here's a little tidbit for those of you complaining about the costume designs. Marvel is planning some one issue prequels dealing with major characters in the movie. As such they've reinterpreted the movie costumes back into comic form. You know what? It works. Check out the covers below for Rogue and Wolverine and see if you don't agree.

18 March, 2000

The official website udpated recently and started adding images from the movie. Several of them have been seen before but a couple of them are new. One is a simple shot of Cyclops with the ruby lensed glasses. The other and far more interesting one shows Wolverine popping out his claws. You might notice that his claws are coming from between his knuckles. This is a break from tradition as in the comic Wolverine's claws have always emerged from openings on the back of his hand. It's a minor point but will probably serve to rile the traditionalist fans.

16 March, 2000

Newsweek ran this picture with a short article in their latest issue. Apparently confidence is high on this project. "The $75 million X-Men could become not only the biggest movie of the summer when it opens July 14, but the beginning of a superhero franchise so enormous Batman will be running for cover."

Meanwhile, on Marvel's website, director Bryan Singer and producer Ralph Winter talked about progress. "The movie's going fine. I'm a little fatigued," Singer said. "It's been a long shoot. For the most part, things always change and you discover things along the way, but most of them have been blessings. Overall, I'm pretty excited. There's a lot of pressure. It's been very difficult. The movie was intended to come out December of 2000. Fox moved it to July and that put pressure on from the moment that decision was made."

Winter talked about the teaser trailer and its follow ups. "That's only a little teaser, that's only a taste," he said. "I know people want more, and that's good. That's the desired result of showing a teaser. We'll have a fuller, more fleshed-out, more story-telling trailer in late-April or mid-May, somewhere around in there when we feel we've got something really exciting. And then the final trailer will play a couple of weeks from the movie. We're not done putting stuff out there; there's more stuff coming."

13 March, 2000

We've got a couple photos to show you today. The first one is a simple shot of Anna Paquin as Rogue. This was taken directly from the film so it is an accurate indicator of how she will look. As you can see there is no white stripe in her hair. Rumors still persist that it will appear by the end of the movie but no indication as to how.

The second picture is a little confusing. It appears rather blurred. Its unknown whether or not this has to do with the action in that scene of if it was done afterwords. What the picture seems to show is Toad (Ray Park) carrying Rogue. I'm a little skeptical of this shot honestly. If you look at Toad's head it looks suspiciously like the shot from American Mule (see here). It really looks to me like it's been patched together out of other pictures with perhaps the Photoshop watercolor filter run on it. Be suspicious of this one for the time being.

10 March, 2000

Several members of the cast and director Bryan Singer took part in a chat yesterday. Tyler Mane talked about being Sabretooth and even gave a sample of how he sounds in the movie. He enjoyed playing a villain, "The bad guy is the fun part. That is the fun part of the movie. You get to tear people up. You know, you've got to let somebody beat you up towards the end. But other than that. It's just great. You just get to terrorize the place."

Singer talked about having to edit the movie. He said he would be working on it until just hours before it was released. "Prints will be wet" When asked about critics on the net he said, "Well they should see it. Everybody who is a big fan of something gets excited about what they think it should be." Regarding Rogue he said that "Rogue's character becomes kind of central to the story in terms of the journey of the story itself. We played Rogue a bit younger and more naive and not necessarily an X-Man yet. And I think that initially they just want to role out with the X-Men principal characters and set the stage and then see more of that later I guess."

Famke Janssen hopes that there is a sequel that involves the Dark Phoenix story line. That dark aspect of the character struck her as interesting to play. Since she had no physical super powers to her character she had some difficulties. "The challenging part for my character was to make a cerebral character interesting. Everything comes out of my mind. There's nothing physically going on with me at any given moment." For the record her hair was dyed red for the movie but nowhere near as bright a shade of red as in the comic. Also for the record she does not kiss Cyclops during the movie. She does confirm that the love triangle between Jean Grey and Cyclops and Wolverine is there.

Bruce Davison enjoyed himself. "The cast was top notch. It was really quite a fun experience. With all of the X-men and the other characters you have to care about them in the midst of whatever super powers they have. For actors to bring that to a summer movie, it's really important to create a reality." He says that the Sentinels are not used in this movie.

James Marsden describes Cyclops, "He was flying in a plane with his father and had to bail out because the plane was crashing and his parachute didn't open completely. He lost the ability to control what he had originally which was the power to fire optic blasts. These giant red beams from his eyes. So he had to go months and months and months with his eyes shut otherwise he'd punch a hole through a mountain." Speaking of Cyclops as a person he says, "The professor is traing me to be a teacher for the rests of his school for gifted youngsters. He's a bit insecure because he's a bit uncomfortable with the amount of responsibility that has to be taken on to lead such a group. As powerful as he is and as intelligent as he is he doesn't know for sure if he's quite fit for that responsibility." For the record his optic blasts were cut from the trailer because the MPAA deemed them to violent for a G rated trailer.

Rebecca Romijn-Stamos talked about, what else, her costume. She spent 25 days where she had to be painted blue for 7-8 hours a day. It was actually a combination of prosthetics that covered two thirds of her body and blue paint airbrushed on. She still hasn't managed to get her feet back to the normal color. She describes Mystique as "evil to the core." Why was Mystique basically nude? "Because I know that the original Mystique wears a flowing white gown. I think that they thought for realistic reasons a shape shifter... It would be hard to morph into another character if she was wearing clothes." Then she decided to go with a simpler answer, "Sex sells. Blue boobs sell."

9 March, 2000

To the left is another storyboard for the movie. Coming Soon managed to snag a large batch of them. One set shows Storm using her powers to lift Wolverine to the top of the Statue of Liberty. The other set shows Storm battling Toad. I've posted the one hear from the second set. You can get the rest at their website. Be warned though, these are spoilers as they detail the action. So don't go clicking on them if you don't want to see too much.

8 March, 2000

The last of the X-Men is finally revealed. This picture is of Anna Paquin as Rogue. As you can see she is almost entirely covered to prevent her touching others. Pretty much only her face and hair are visible. Yes the hair is missing the distinctive white stripe. Rumors persist that she will acquire it at some point in the movie.

On a slightly different subject, how would you like to chat with some of the cast? The official site will be hosting a chat with Anna Paquin, Tyler Mane, Famke Janssen, James Marsden, Bruce Davison and Rebecca Romijm-Stamos. This will take place from 3:00 to 4:30PM PST on March 9th. There will also be a video portion available for Windows Media Player. You will need to be a registered member with Yahoo! to take part.

7 March, 2000

There will be another trailer. According to Comics Continuum, a second longer trailer should appear sometime in the next month. It will provide more detail on the movie's plot. Chances are good that it will also include the first shots of Rogue, who won't be sporting her trademark "skunk" hairdo. A third trailer should appear shortly before the movie's release.

6 March, 2000

The latest edition of Entertainment Weekly has an interesting little tidbit in it. It has this photo of some of the toys for the movie. On top is Wolverine in costume riding his motorcycle. Below that is Professor Xavier and at the bottom is the group's Blackbird jet. If this is any indication of the Blackbird's design in the movie it looks like fans won't have any need to complain for once. As for Wolverine, at least in toy form I think the costume looks pretty cool.

Now on to some detail on the movie. Coming Attractions got this report from someone close to the production. It describes a battle between Mystique and Wolverine.

"I have a bit of news that you may or may not find interesting regarding a Mystique and Wolverine 'action sequence' (interpret = 'fight scene'). At one point in the film, Mystique morphs into Wolverine and (without giving too much away), ends up 'sparring' with Wolverine. Other characters observing (Xavier & Jean Grey NOT amongst them) have initial difficulty telling 'who is who'...but the classic unique fighting style that Wolverine uses in the film (well-documented by the time this particular scene is shown) is conspicuously absent in one of the 'Wolverines', who then suffers a (non-lethal) blow courtesy of Cyclops.

"Having an eye for detail, I must say that I am especially pleased about the manner in which Mystique returns to her 'natural form' after incurring the concussive blow from Cyclops. Mystique 'Wolverine' is struck and subsequently is knocked in the air and away from where she stood. Here's the good part...it is in MID-AIR that she morphs back into her 'natural form'. In brief, she leaves the ground as the rogue Wolverine, changes in mid-air, and lands as Mystique. As a fan and supporter of the realistic tone that is being taken with the film, I like the attention to detail that suggests (rightly so, I believe) that Mystique's morphing is a conscious effort that is lost upon her losing consciousness upon being struck by Cyclop's optic blast. Nice touch, eh?"

1 March, 2000

Director Bryan Singer talked about making the movie at the Script to Screen conference last weekend. He mentions what kind of movie he thinks he is making.

"There are battles for me. It's not Woody Allen or David Cronenberg's X-Men on one hand, but it's not Michael Bay's X-Men either. If I do press on the picture, they're like, 'What's it like making a big action movie?' And I'm like,' I'm not making a big action movie.' There's action in it - the characters fight - but it might not be what people are expecting. On the other hand, I'm very proud of it. It's the kind of movie I would go see as a kid. It's not the kind of movie that the more interesting filmmakers usually try to tackle."

I know a lot of you are already talking about sequels. It won't surprise you then to learn that Fox fully intends to make this into a franchise.

"In doing X-Men, what's appealing to me, is not just that's its more complex and odd than most of these comic books tend to be, but it's also the first. So you can kind of explore, you can say this is mine, for better or worse, there'll be something original in this at least for you."

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