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Last week I began my critique of the movie X-Men: The Last Stand, which is large part an adaptation of Chris Claremont and John Byrne’s “Dark Phoenix Saga.”  I’ve also been comparing and contrasting the movie with Claremont’s own novelization of the film for Del Rey.  And now I come to Jean Grey’s first appearance as Phoenix in the film.

In the film Scott encounters Jean alive at Alkali Lake, the site of her seeming demise in the previous movie, X2. The filmmakers have Jean remove Scott’s protective glasses, holding back the optic beams, as Claremont and Byrne did in the mesa scene in the comics.  Scott and Jean kiss.  In the novel Claremont presents this as a love scene, a “perfect moment” albeit with an undercurrent of danger.  In the movie the sequence seems ominous rather than ecstatic.

Then, in the movie, something happens to Scott offscreen.  Wolverine later finds Scott’s glasses at Alkali Lake, but Scott is nowhere to be seen.  When Jean thinks back to what happened, she is deeply disturbed, but the flashes of memory that we are shown still do not reveal Scott’s fate.  But Claremont’s narrator explicitly states in the novel that Scott is dead.

The implication in the movie, made somewhat clearer in the book, is that Jean/Phoenix’s sexual passion for Scott literally consumed him.  Consider how the filmmakers have transformed Claremont and Byrne’s mesa scene.  In the comics, it was a touching love scene; in the comics it becomes a scene from a horror film.  How many horror films have there been in which the young lovers get killed as soon as they have sex, as if they were being punished?  In the comics version, sex is good; in the movie version, sex is bad. 

Why kill off Cyclops? An article by Kate Aurthur in the March 14, 2006 New York Times, “As the Plot Thickens, No One Is Safe,” about the deaths  in television series such as 24 demonstrates that the current trend of killing off regular characters isn’t limited to comics with “Crisis” in their title.  Surely the filmmakers would justify Cyclops’ death to show just how dangerous Phoenix is.

On the other hand, for months it has been rumored that Fox decreed Cyclops’s demise in order to punish actor James Marsden, who played him, for going to work on Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns movie.  Corporate vengeance isn’t a satisfactory explanation for artistic decisions.

To my mind, the death of Cyclops comes off as a confession of the filmmakers’ creative failures with the character in all three of the X-Men movies. The directors, screenwriters and actor are surely all to blame.

However popular Wolverine may be with filmgoers and comics readers, Scott and Jean should be the lead characters in any X-Men movies in which they appear. 

The movies have not presented Cyclops as a strong leader, nor have they captured the tragic aspect of his inability to control his power.  Not only does Cyclops’s problem resemble Rogue’s inability to touch other people, but it even parallels Wolverine’s struggle against his berserker tendencies.  All of them are trying to cope with the monster within them: their own counterparts to Dark Phoenix.

Certainly the movies have failed to dramatize the love between Scott and Jean.  Anyone who knows these characters only from the movies must wonder why Jean stayed with Scott and resisted the overtures from Wolverine.

So here the filmmakers have an opportunity to present a real love scene between Scott and Jean, evoking the celebrated mesa scene from the comics, and they failed again.  Whereas in the book Claremont turns the Alkali Lake reunion into a last hurrah for their romance, in the movie it is only a creepy set-up for an offscreen killing.

And just why is it offscreen?  Is it because if they show Jean destroying Scott onscreen it will be less shocking when she destroys Xavier onscreen later?  Or did the filmmakers want to save on their special effects budget?  I have begun to wonder whether many of Last Stand‘s failings in dramatizing the “Dark Phoenix Saga”  result from simple unwillingness to spend the money.  When Scott arrived at Alkali Lake, I was excited to see the waters churning.  But then we did not get to see Jean rise out of the waters, as she so memorably did in her debut as Phoenix in X-Men #100.  And how come we never get to see the movie Jean surrounded by Phoenix’s symbol, the bird composed of cosmic flame, not even once?  One might have thought the filmmakers would have done it for marketing reasons, if nothing else: think of what that fiery bird would have looked like in a poster or the trailer.

Actress Halle Berry openly complained about how little she had to do in the first two X-Men movies.  Removing Cyclops, and later Professor X, from the Last Stand plot early on enables Storm and Wolverine to move into the roles of team leaders.  In comics or film, “The Dark Phoenix Saga” runs the risk of being interpreted as arguing that women can’t control their own passions or powers.  Hence, it’s fortunate that Storm, a powerful woman, does successfully assert herself as a leader in Last Stand.  Claremont’s X-Men in the 1970s and 1980s were pioneering feminist works in mainstream comics;  he’s certainly no misogynist.

As for Wolverine, I’ve seen some comments from viewers who think that he isn’t aggressive enough in Last Stand.  I don’t have a problem with that.  In the comics, especially in the original 1982 Wolverine limited series, Claremont developed the character into someone who could with effort master his inner demons.   Watching the movie, I thought the side of Wolverine’s personality that can be wise, and even fatherly towards younger X-Men like Kitty, came across, and that this was appropriate for the third film in the trilogy.

I appreciate Claremont’s invocation of the classic science fiction film Forbidden Planet (exactly a half century old this year) with its “monster from the id” as a parallel to his own “Dark Phoenix Saga” later in  Chapter Four (p. 97).

In both the movie and book Xavier explains to Wolverine and Storm that when Jean was a child he created “psychic barriers”: to prevent her from utilizing her full powers until she could cope with them.  (In the comics Xavier did the same thing to prevent Jean from using the telepathy that had traumatized her as a child.  Eventually he removed those barriers.  The movie Jean is apparently around thirty, and Xavier had not released the barriers, though they were already beginning to collapse in X2.  Would she ever have been ready to master her full powers?) 

As a result of the psychic barriers, Xavier explains, Jean developed a repressed alternate personality, the Phoenix, which he describes as “A purely instinctual creature, all desire, and joy. . .and rage” (p. 98).

 

In the movie and novel there is no “Phoenix force” either as an external source of cosmic energy or as a sentient entity.  That’s fine with me.  Even in the comics, Phoenix really is a metaphor for Jean’s ultimate potential, and Dark Phoenix is a metaphor for the dark side of her psyche. 

Dark Phoenix is Jean’s alternate personality, as Mr. Hyde was Dr. Jekyll’s, and the Hulk is Bruce Banner’s.

I was pleased that in the movie Xavier did not simply define Phoenix as evil, but adopted Claremont’s more complex description.  But why then does the movie never show us the “joy” in Phoenix?  Over at John Byrne’s online forum (www.byrnerobotrics.com), former Marvel editor Glenn Greenberg observed that “We get no sense of how she feels about her newfound strength and power, the joy she must be feeling. She never REVELS in it, as she did in the comic stories.” 

Back in 1987 several Marvel staffers, freelancers and I went to see the dreadful movie Superman IV: The Quest for Peace.  We were all aghast,  pointing out mistake after mistake. (Superman just carried Mariel Hemingway’s character into outer space!  Shouldn’t she asphyxiate?  Or freeze to death? Or explode in the vacuum?  Why is she still alive?)  I realized back then that any of us were capable of finding the flaws in the script more effectively than the filmmakers, who made a lot more money than we did.  This is still true about superhero movies.  What if Glenn had been able to comment on the screenplay before it was filmed? (Or John? Or Chris?)

Wolverine is outraged at Xavier’s revelation of having manipulated Jean’s mind. (It’s as if Xavier played Mastermind’s role in this version of “The Dark Phoenix Saga.”) Knowing from personal experience whereof he speaks, Wolverine thunders that “sometimes when you ‘cage the beast,’ the beast gets angry” (p. 99).  Here’s a question that the movie never resolves.  Did Xavier’s well-intentioned effort to suppress Jean’s full powers actually turn her into Dark Phoenix?  Considering the havoc that Jean wreaks as Phoenix in the movie, Wolverine eventually decides Xavier was right, and so did I.

It’s clever that the screenwriters have Dr. Rao derive the “cure” for mutation from Leech, a mutant boy from the comics whose power is that he negates the powers of other mutants in his proximity.  Some fan comments I’ve read about Last Stand disparage such references to the comics continuity, but I like bits like Leech’s role in the film.  Even though most moviegoers will have never heard of Leech before, the movie uses him well and imaginatively.  Elements taken from the comics aren’t “trivia” if they are given purpose in the film. The scene in which the Beast’s hand reverts to furless human form as he reaches towards Leech is a nice touch, as is the Beast’s reaction, considering the possibility of becoming “normal” himself.

The government “weaponizes” the “cure” in order to use it against criminal mutants.  Dr. Rao’s presence in the movie makes it clear that the screenwriters derived the “cure” concept from Joss Whedon and John Cassaday’s Astonishing X-Men comics series.  But the “weaponized” cure reminds me of Forge’s neutralizer device from Claremont’s X-Men comics, which the federal government used as a weapon.  Government agent Henry peter Gyrich tried to use it on Rogue but fired it at Storm instead, depriving her of her mutant powers, seemingly permanently. (See Uncanny X-Men #185, from 1984.  Eventually, with Forge’s aid, she regained them.)  Were Last Stand‘s screenwriters aware of this storyline?  

The imprisoned Mystique’s use of her shapeshifting powers to impersonate the President and an innocent child makes for a visually striking and inventive scene, but it makes no sense.  She’s behind bars in a prison truck.  Of course the guard knows the “resident” and the “little girl” are really her!

I was impressed by Magneto’s turning his powers against the convoy of prison vehicles.  In the comics Magneto is capable of conjuring an electromagnetic pulse that affects the entire Earth.  The movie Magneto isn’t that powerful, but it’s about time that the films showed him performing such major feats.  Later on he effortlessly shunts automobiles out of his way, and what he does to the Golden Gate Bridge is truly spectacular.

It doesn’t bother me that the movie uses Jamie Madrox, the Multiple Man, as a villain:  the special effects used to multiply him into numerous figures create just the sense of wonder that special effects should.  It’s a clever stunt to have him multiply himself to impersonate Magneto’s entire mutant army, later on.

As for the Juggernaut, the movie proves that a real life strongman can’t possibly match one’s expectations for the massive, tank-like figure designed by Jack Kirby in the comics.  Despite occasional blunders by comics writers, the comic book Juggernaut is not a mutant: he derived his powers from magic.  In the comics he’s also Charles Xavier’s stepbrother.  The movie doesn’t mention Juggernaut’s mystical origin, and implies he’s another mutant.  That’s all right with me.  The movie gets something more important right:  the dialogue asserts that once he gets some momentum going, the Juggernaut is unstoppable.  That’s exactly right, despite the fact that comics writers lately seem to think of him as no more than a strongman.

The movie also doesn’t establish that its Juggernaut is related to Xavier.  And I was taken aback on hearing the movie Juggernaut’s British accent.  But in retrospect, I like it.  Xavier is played by a Brit, Patrick Stewart, and so is the Juggernaut.  Could this be the filmmakers’ way of hinting at a connection between them, even if it’s unstated?  (On the other hand, if the moviemakers cared about such things, why didn’t they have Colossus speak with his Russian accent from the comics?)

In her recent appearance on Late Show with David Letterman, actress Rebecca Romijn vehemently denied the conventional wisdom that she wears only blue body paint as Mystique; she contended that she also wears a lot of prosthetics, and compared her Mystique “costume” to a bikini.  (I still do mental double takes at the fact that Letterman now talks about X-Men characters on network TV.)  Well, in the Last Stand, Mystique is the first mutant to be injected with the “cure,” and the blue body paint and prosthetics disappear.

I have tried to maintain a dignified approach to sexual matters in “Comics in Context,” but I have noticed of late that certain women who write prominent comics blogs (namely you, Heidi and Colleen), have no qualms about openly lusting over certain male movie actors.  So I am adjusting my policy somewhat. I am happy to declare that Ms. Romijn’s appearance sans blue paint or anything else in Last Stand is one of the movie’s high points.

Jean/Phoenix regains consciousness at Xavier’s mansion and starts coming on to Wolverine, a. k. a. Logan.  In the book Claremont tells us that “Before this moment, Logan had never known the true meaning and nature of love. . .what he found here. . .was intimacy” (pgs. 128-129).  How about that? Logan must have discovered sex long ago, but here’s a scene in which he psychologically and emotionally loses his virginity.

It was established long ago in the comics that Wolverine was attracted to Jean, but his crush on her soon gave way to his deep love for Mariko Yashida (in Claremont and Byrne’s Uncanny X-Men #118-119 in 1979).  The idea that Jean reciprocated Wolverine’s feelings is a relatively recent development.  Strangely, in later years Claremont has lately been contributing to this notion, as he does in this novel.  In doing so, he undercuts the love between Scott and Jean, which he wrote so well, especially in the original “Dark Phoenix Saga.”

For example, in the novel he tells us that “she’d made her commitment to Scott, much as either of them” – Jean and Logan – “might wish differently” (p. 128).  That doesn’t read like a heartfelt commitment, does it?  It suggests that Jean really wants Wolverine, and the only thing that stops her is that she doesn’t want to break her word to Scott.

Later on, the novel states that “Scott was love, Logan was passion” (p. 228).  And just what do you think that Scott’s powerful, unstoppable, uncontrollable optic beams symbolize, if not his inner passion?

Still later, Jean fantasizes about wearing a minidress or leather. “Scott, she knew, would have loved the mini. And been tempted by the leather. Logan, she knew, cared nothing for the trappings.  He loved her” (p. 233). Now this is too much.  This is saying that Scott’s love for Jean is merely superficial, maybe just a matter of physical attraction, and that it is Logan who truly loves her. 

The Scott-Jean-Logan triangle has a precedent in Marvel history.  Remember the Reed Richards-Sue Storm-Namor the Sub-Mariner triangle in the early years of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s Fantastic Four? Namor too represented “passion” more openly than did Reed.  But Sue chose “love” and married Reed, and now it is inconceivable that she could have chosen Namor instead.  And if you think that Reed, the seemingly stuffy scientist, lacks passion, reread Lee and Kirby’s Fantastic Four Annual #6, in which his teammates are astonished by his intense emotions in trying to save the lives of Sue and his unborn son.

There may be a generational shift occurring here, whereby many of today’s comics fans and writers no longer understand or appreciate the classic Stan Lee hero, who in his private life is introverted, brooding, but dedicated to a heroic moral code.  At his online forum, “Dark Phoenix Saga” co-creator John Byrne asserts that “Straight-shooter, decent, even noble Scott Summers has long been out of favor” with both current comics fans and pros because “He’s not ‘cool’ like Wolverine.”  I’m on Byrne’s side here.

Claremont writes an interesting line when Xavier next encounters Magneto:  Xavier “had considered” his former friend Magneto “his other half, the passion to his intellect” (p. 141).  It’s as if Magneto were Xavier’s own “Dark Phoenix.”

Claremont insightfully notes that though Jean is “a grown woman, a kind and generous soul, yet on the levels she was reaching” – now that the Phoenix power overwhelms her rationality -  “she was still mainly the child he’d” – Xavier had – “met so many years before” (p. 147).  Claremont is attempting to explain Jean’s mental condition; the movie just makes her seem to be a one-dimensional menace. 

In both the comics and the movie, Xavier and Phoenix engage in a psychic duel, in which Xavier attempts to restore the dominance of Jean’s “normal” personality.  In the comics he succeeded, and Claremont makes clear it is because part of Jean wanted him to.  In the movie Jean obliterates Xavier’s body.  Online film critic James Berardinelli considers Xavier’s demise to be “one of the film’s most poignant elements” (http://www.movie-reviews.colossus.net/movies/x/x-men3.html).  I think it comes off as a crass shock effect.  The filmmakers don’t seem to care much about Xavier’s demise: Storm’s eulogy for Xavier is followed by a fun-and-games scene of Iceman and Kitty skating on ice he has created.  To his credit, Claremont gives the skating scene a more melancholy tone, showing the two kids’ succeeding only “just a little” in overcoming their “sorrow” (p. 167).

Just why Jean leaves with Magneto after killing Xavier is a mystery to moviegoers.  Claremont finds an explanation:  “She was trembling, unable to speak, likely not even fully aware of who he was” (p. 156).  Presumably the buried, “good” side of Jean is so appalled at what Dark Phoenix has done that she has retreated into a state of shock.

But just how long does this walking catatonia last?  From this point on, till the climax of the movie, Dark Phoenix, the most dangerous being in the universe, basically just stands around staring into space.  (I suddenly find myself thinking of the Monty Python episode in which the world tries to find and battle the omnipowerful Mr. Neutron, who is harmlessly having tea at a suburban household.)

Here’s the moviemakers’ dilemma.  Jean knows full well from past experience that Magneto is a bad guy and should realize that he is just trying to exploit her.  So once she goes into action, if she already annihilated Xavier, she’d probably do the same thing to Magneto.  Dark Phoenix is no man’s pawn; she’s out to satisfy only her own urges.

Moreover, Dark Phoenix is way more unstoppable even than the Juggernaut.  If she wanted to eliminate the mutant “cure,” no one could stop her from disintegrating Leech, Dr. Rao, a battalion of soldiers, or all of San Francisco.  To do the “Dark Phoenix Saga” right, even if it never leaves Earth, would require a lot more special effects sequences than the moviemakers seemingly wanted to do. 

So, in effect, halfway through the movie, the filmmakers put “The Dark Phoenix Saga” on hold while they attend to other business. 

How could they have better justified Dark Phoenix doing nothing for so long?  How many of you know Steve Englehart and Frank Brunner’s classic Dr. Strange storyline involving Sise-Neg, a sorcerer who takes on godlike power (in Marvel Premiere #13 and 14 in 1974)?  Doctor Strange and his sinister rival, Baron Mordo, play Sise-Neg’s good and bad angels, in effect:  Strange attempts to persuade Sise-Neg to use his great powers for good, while Mordo tempts him towards evil.  In the comics Mastermind served as the tempter figure in “The Dark Phoenix Saga.”

What if Dark Phoenix, in possession of her godlike powers, was uncertain what to do next, and the screenwriters gave Magneto scenes in which he concocted arguments to tempt her to follow his lead?  Ian McKellen is renowned for his portrayal of Shakespeare’s Richard III, who, in one of the play’s most famous scenes, seduces Lady Anne, the widow of a man he murdered.  Imagine scenes in which Magneto played upon Dark Phoenix’s emotions, turning her away from Xavier’s dream, and seducing her to his vision of war on humanity.  Why hire Ian McKellen to play Magneto without giving him a dramatic opportunity like this? But rather than a full-fledged “persuasion scene,” there is merely the brief exchange on pages 172 and 173.  (Think of another film in which the master villain tempts a heroic figure to the “dark side”:  George Lucas’s Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith.  Its temptation scenes aren’t fully convincing, but demonstrate what Last Stand could have done.  See “Comics in Context” #86.)

On the other hand, McKellen has a wonderful moment when Pyro badmouths “the professor,” and Magneto regally, sternly replies, “The professor was my friend!” (p. 174).

Sequences that follow demonstrate the various ways in which the mutant metaphor can be interpreted.  Pyro’s attack on a clinic that administers the “cure” for mutation makes me think of the bombings of abortion clinics.  In the novel Claremont establishes that the clinic is in Lower Manhattan, the area of the World Trade Center attacks.  In the post-9/11 world, Magneto’s televised threats to the world evoke Osama bin Laden’s videotaped messages of defiance to the West.

From my childhood I recall Frank Fontaine’s Crazy Guggenheim telling Jackie Gleason’s Joe the Bartender week after week on Gleason’s TV program, “I was just hangin’ around.  I wasn’t doin’ nothin.'”  This has become the cinematic Dark Phoenix’s goal in life.  When Wolverine, spying on Magneto, is captured by him, Jean continues to stand around, staring into space, not acting like someone who allegedly loves Logan.  In the novel Claremont tries to make sense of this behavior and to generate reader empathy for Jean: after Magneto magnetically hurls Wolverine miles away, “knowing how he” – Logan – “felt. . .about her,” Jean “wept” (p. 211).

I’m confused.  Has Jean reverted to her normal personality?  Then why didn’t she intervene to help Wolverine?  Why wouldn’t she return to her friends, the X-Men, to seek help?  Is she ashamed to face them, after what she did to Scott and Xavier?

Claremont seems to be striving to find a reason why Jean would stay with Magneto in the movie.  Earlier Claremont indicated that Dark Phoenix sympathizes with his effort to destroy the “cure” (p. 203). 

Twenty-five pages later, though, as Jean’s conscience seems to have reawakened, she again appears to know that Magneto is the enemy.   Claremont has Jean fearing that she’d lose control and harm other X-Men if she returned to them.  Hence, “Better, she decided, to be a potential threat to Magneto.  Serve him right if things went wrong” (p. 228).

I’m not convinced by either argument.  Infatuated with her own powers, the Dark Phoenix of the comics would not care about the causes of what she would consider “lesser” beings.  If Jean’s normal personality is reemerging, then why wouldn’t she just head off to some mountaintop, where she wouldn’t harm anyone, instead of remaining allied with Magneto?  (Do we all remember that Magneto attempted to wipe out the entire human race at the end of the previous movie, X2?)

Last Stand presents a conundrum.  The movie rarely lets us into Jean/Phoenix’s thoughts, so, apart from a few moments, she comes across as one-dimensionally mad and evil. and fails to arouse much sympathy.

In the novel, on the other hand,  Claremont delves into Jean’s “normal” personality and succeeds in engaging the reader’s empathy for her, but then it becomes harder to understand why she commits such atrocities as the killing of Xavier and Cyclops.

This is an important point.  In the comics Claremont and Byrne originally intended that their “Dark Phoenix Saga” would end with Jean being stripped of her mutant powers. Not only would she then be like an ordinary human, but, as Claremont has argued, it would figuratively be like she was blind, having been deprived of her extra sense: her ability to read other people’s thoughts.  But editor in chief Jim Shooter decreed that she had to pay more severely for Dark Phoenix’s crimes, even though Claremont contended that she was innocent by reason of insanity. That’s why in the comics Phoenix ended up taking her own life.

The movie fails in humanizing Jean, to show how Xavier could regard her as embodying hope (as Claremont puts it on page 228).  But does the novel succeed in making clear how that admirable, heroic Jean could be overwhelmed by the forces of her own subconscious, as the comics had made evident (to me, if not to Shooter)?

Claremont’s Chapter Nine isn’t an adaptation of the movie:  it consists of scenes that should have been in the movie, but aren’t.

Jean recalls how Xavier watched over her as a child following their initial meeting.  Claremont reveals who the original X-Men were in the movies’ alternate continuity – Jean, Scott, Storm and Beast – and has Jean fondly remember her friendship with the latter two.  Claremont shows us what went through Jean’s mind as she willingly sacrificed her life to save the other X-Men at the end of X2, and simultaneously felt her Phoenix powers emerging.  He also suggests briefly what it might feel like for Jean’s normal personality to be temporarily surfacing above the flood of Dark Phoenix’s passions:  “Within, though, she trembled like a child quailing in the face of parental rage, so terrorized by the force of the wave of emotions breaking over them that the only outlet is barely coherent tears” (p. 229).

All of this should make readers, even those who do not know her from the comics, empathize with Jean, and understand the value of the woman who is being submerged beneath Dark Phoenix’s insanity.

 

Jean remembers her vision of “the far greater All that awaited her,”  the godlike potential that her full powers give her, and the narrator tells us “that she had reached that point in fate where she must prove herself able to act on her own” yet she is like a “child” who wants to “run when barely able to stand” (p. 232-233).  Can Jean control her raging subconscious? “I could just be mad,” she gloomily thinks. (p, 233). 

Then, in one of the high points of the novel, Claremont does what all three X-Men films failed to do:  to dramatize the love between Scott and Jean.  Claremont creates a scene from Scott and Jean’s past, a billiards game that they played, using their powers, on a night in San Francisco, which becomes one of the most intense moments in their romance.  “He was strong and confident, tempered by the wounds and losses he’d suffered in his life, made whole by the love he felt for her.  And she in return had felt an aching need that drove her around the table and into his arms for a kiss she wanted to last forever” (p. 241).

I told you that Claremont wrote the Scott-Jean romance well!  After this chapter it is even harder for me to take seriously the revisionist idea that Jean loves Wolverine as much as she does Scott.

Then, Claremont has Jean’s memory of Scott turn into an interaction with him in the present, as if she had been watching a play, and the actor abruptly broke the fourth wall and addressed her directly.  Claremont carefully keeps the explanation ambiguous:  is Jean imagining Scott talking to her, or is he somehow actually there, as a ghost, or perhaps even briefly resurrected by her powers?  Not only does Scott remain steadfast in his love for Jean, but Claremont has the insight to have Scott explicitly compare his uncontrollable eye beams to Jean’s Phoenix powers.  He tells her she has a “choice” and challenges her to control them.  (And though the novel does not mention this, readers may recall that Jean could indeed control Scott’s supposedly uncontrollable optic blasts.  So can she master her own powers?) 

What a great scene this could have been in the movie!  It would have illuminated the audience’s understanding of Jean’s psychological crisis, it would have dramatically set up her ultimate decision at the film’s climax, and it would have given the actors playing Scott and Jean bravura acting opportunities.  So why isn’t such a scene there? 

Warren Worthington, Jr., the Angel’s father, has established his labs to produce the “cure” in the old prison on Alcatraz Island off San Francisco.  Magneto employs his powers to wrench the Golden Gate Bridge out of position, so that his mutant army can march right off the bridge onto the island. 

Now there are certainly easier ways for Magneto to transport his troops.  He could have just had them get aboard the cars on the bridge, and levitated them over.   What we have here, though, is, intentionally or not, an allusion to the September 11, 2001 attacks:  Magneto is another terrorist leader attacking an iconic American structure. Claremont seems to get it:  he dubs the day of Magneto’s attack “M-day,” a nickname like “9/11,” and although he does not mention 9/11, he describes the effect of “M-day” on public consciousness in similar terms (see p. 256).

Now, keep in mind that whereas in the book Claremont has been letting us see into Jean’s mind, in the movie, she has just been standing around staring into space.  During Magneto’s assault on the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz, I wondered if he was getting fed up with her.  Why recruit her to the cause when she does nothing?  She could have moved the Bridge and taken over the island all by herself, but no. 

In the book Claremont states that Phoenix aided Magneto in moving the bridge, without even his awareness.  I know that the Magneto of the movies is in his senior years, but as the main villain, he should be allowed full credit for his most spectacular feat!

I also wish at this point the novel would allow Dark Phoenix to be Dark Phoenix.  The book has Phoenix watch a family of innocent bystanders escape:  “Only when she was positive they were safely on shore did she turn to follow Magneto” (p. 263). Okay, once again:  If Jean’s conscience is in good working order, why in the name of the Phoenix Force is she accompanying Magneto on his mission of murder?  By page 270, Jean “still wasn’t sure” if she was loyal to Magneto or the X-Men.  If she is still as rational as she was in Chapter Nine, if she is willing to let those bystanders get away, why is she so undecided? 

In the movie, matters are clearer: Phoenix seems to be evil, just rather lazy about it, passively allowing Magneto and his troops to do all the work while she practices her Uatu the Watcher impression.

I very much like actress Ellen Page’s perky portrayal of Kitty Pryde, though she gets little screen time.  The way that Kitty beats the Juggernaut, by having Leech neutralize his powers, is very clever, even though it depends on either (1) the movie Juggernaut being a mutant, or (2) the movie Leech being able to neutralize powers of any origin. 

Likewise, I was happy to see that Iceman finally gets to wear an ice sheath all over his body, though it wish he had looked more like the blockier ice covering in the comics:  perhaps it is too hard for CGI to make that look realistic.

At the showing of Last Stand I attended, the audience applauded when Magneto was injected with the “cure”:  they obviously appreciated the poetic justice that Magneto, who regards mutants as racially superior to humans, was thus “reduced” to being a human himself.  But in retrospect I wonder how appropriate that response was.  I thought of the fate of Shakespeare’s Shylock, who is forced to convert from Judaism to Christianity, allegedly for his own good, a judgment that modern audiences correctly find disturbing.  I wonder if McKellen thought of the same analogy.

Now, finally, Dark Phoenix goes into action.  In the book, the “cured” Magneto induces her to combat by appealing to her logically:  “Look at me.  Look into their hearts.  This is what they want. For all of us” (p. 311).  Well, then, why should she lash out at the X-Men, who don’t feel that way?  In the movie, if I recall it correctly, Dark Phoenix lashes out when the soldiers defending Alcatraz start firing at her. That makes more sense to me:  that upon being attacked, Jean, without thinking, reacts in anger, thereby going into full Dark Phoenix mode. 

And now, at last, we have special effects that convincingly depict the overwhelming chaos Phoenix can unleash (but, alas, still no fiery bird effect).

Stunned by the spectacle, Magneto plaintively asks, “What have I done?”, reminding me of Mastermind in the comics’ “Dark Phoenix Saga,” who also unleashed forces far beyond his control or comprehension. 

The novel raises the stakes higher than the movie.  Magneto asserts that Dark Phoenix is “Discorporating the planet” (p. 314), thus apparently attempting to do to Earth what she did to Xavier.  But since the novel has shown us Jean willing even to let those bystanders escape, it is hard to understand why she would be suddenly willing to destroy the Earth. 

Keep in mind that in the comics’ “Dark Phoenix Saga,” even when she was at the height of insanity, Dark Phoenix did not intentionally destroy that inhabited planet:  replenishing her powers by triggering a supernova, she was oblivious to its destruction of the D’Bari’s world.

Claremont has skillfully probed the mind of the rational Jean in the novel.  what’s missing is a look at how she thinks when her insanity swallows up her conscious mind.  Perhaps then we could understand why she would kill Xavier or try to destroy the Earth. 

Fans have wondered why the X-Men didn’t try to stop Jean by using the “cure,” or by having Leech neutralize her powers.  Well, since she’s a telepath, she would know those attacks were coming, and defend herself against them.  It might have been a neat bit of business to use the “cure” or Leech on Jean, and then show that Dark Phoenix is so powerful they have no effect on her.

It would have been even better if Scott were still around, so there could be a dramatic confrontation in which he reminded her of their love for each other and tried to talk her into calming down.  But, no.

In any case, the traditional climax of tragedy is the protagonist’s death.

So, instead, Jean’s true personality breaks through her insanity long enough to beg Wolverine to kill her, and he impales her with his claws. And yet again the movie Jean takes a more passive role than her comics counterpart.

The movie’s divergences cast the brilliance of Claremont and Byrne’s original comics “Dark Phoenix Saga” into sharp relief.  In their version, Xavier manages to exorcise Dark Phoenix from Jean, with her help, in Uncanny X-Men #136.  Hence, for most of the finale of the Saga, in Uncanny X-Men #137, Jean is her normal self.  The readers could reacquaint themselves with her, and empathize with this good woman as doom closed in upon her.   In the final pages, at the height of the battle between the X-Men and the alien Shi’ar to decide her fate, Jean abruptly reverts to Dark Phoenix.  Jean’s normal personality struggles back to the fore, long enough for her to bid farewell to her beloved Scott, and to activate an ancient alien weapon:  she commits suicide rather than revert permanently to the monster that is Dark Phoenix.

In the comics Jean does not ask someone else to kill her:  she kills herself.  The movie Jean is a pathetic victim, not strong enough to put an end to her own rampage.  The comics Jean is a self-sacrificing heroine.

Notice that in the book, Claremont confronts Jean with the necessity of making a choice.  But it is in the comics that she more actively, heroically made that choice.

Following Phoenix’s demise, both the movie and the book come to their conclusion.  But the movie is less successful in wrapping up the “cure” storyline than the book is.  Was the “cure” a good or bad thing?  Claremont’s novel states that Warren Worthington, Jr. shut down the clinics:  that would seem to indicate that Worthington and Claremont agree that the “cure” was bad.

But what about Rogue?  My impression (and those of others I’ve read) is that in the movie Rogue undergoes the “cure”:  it’s “my choice,” she tells her boyfriend Iceman, as if discussing the abortion issue.  This provides a happy ending for Rogue, since she can now touch Iceman without activating her mutant power to absorb his memories and abilities.  If Rogue’s mutation is regarded as a handicap, this is a good thing.  But if Rogue’s mutation is regarded as her racial identity, matters become more ambiguous.  If a black person wanted to become white (or vice versa), and could do so, should we approve?

The novelization’s denouement for Rogue seems to me more ambiguous.   Rogue again tells iceman she made her “choice,” but Claremont specifies that while Rogue has bared her arms, she keeps her gloves on, and she takes iceman’s hand in hers.  My reading of this is that Rogue did not undergo the “cure” after all.

In the movie the Beast becomes the United States Ambassador to the United Nations.  This is an admirable concept:  the United States makes a mutant its representative and spokesman to the world.  Similarly, in real life, the appointment of African-Americans such as Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell to major Cabinet positions has been the United States’ declaration to the world of its commitment to being a multiracial society.

In the novel, however, the Beast becomes a teacher at Xavier’s school, and this suits his personality and interests better.  Indeed, he should be headmaster, not Storm!  Still, there’s no reason why the beast couldn’t be U. N. ambassador and teach part-time.

In the novel Claremont details how Magneto has gotten himself a job working aboard a ship captained by one of his characters from the comics, Aleytis Forrester.  But I prefer the pathos of Magneto’s final scene in the film, which suggests that, without his mutant powers, the elderly Magneto has become a sad, lonely old man playing chess by himself in the park.  (I wonder if Magneto’s fate in the movie explains why Marvel de-powered him at the end of the recent House of M comics storyline.)   Watching the movie, I thought that perhaps Magneto imagined Xavier to be his opponent in the chess game, so I was pleased to see that Claremont came to the same conclusion in the novel.

Just before the credits begin, we see one of Magneto’s metal chess pieces wobble as he reaches for it.  So, despite Marvel’s claims, this is a clear set-up for a possible fourth movie.  It also suggests that, if Rogue was “cured,” that cure won’t last.

Now, I usually stay through a movie’s closing credits.  (In the case of a Marvel movie, I’m searching for a Kirby credit, for one thing.)   Roughly ninety-five percent of the audience at the showing I attended left during the credits, and the cleaning personnel were already hard at work. But my patience was rewarded when the credits were abruptly followed by a final, unexpected scene.  This scene was apparently so secret that it didn’t even make it into the novelization.

Dr. Moira MacTaggart is tending to a patient who was born without higher brain functions.  She hears a familiar voice speak to her: “Moira.”  And she says, in surprise, “Charles?”

Now some people, including movie critic James Berardinelli, were disappointed by Xavier’s resurrection:  he charged that “It doesn’t play fair with the audience, and cheapens one of the film’s most poignant elements,” and warned that “I think most who miss it will have a better overall opinion of the film than those who stick it out.”

First, I didn’t find Xavier’s earlier demise “poignant” but thought it was a cheap shock effect, so I felt better about the movie once I saw this scene.

Second, I admired the cleverness with which the movie had set up the possibility of a telepath taking over that patient’s mind in one of its early scenes, right under our noses, and still surprised me.  That is indeed playing fair with the audience.

In another interview, former Marvel movie mogul Avi Arad said, “I tell you what really pisses me off about this stuff -  is the ignorance to the comics, because. . . Xavier died in the comic. One of the most famous panels in the comic was his funeral.”  Actually, it’s hardly famous, but Xavier did seemingly die (in X-Men #42 in 1968) and come back (in issue 65 in 1970).  “They all die and come back.”

So Xavier could come back in a fourth X-Men movie, and since he has a new body, he would presumably be played by a different (and presumably less expensive) actor than Patrick Stewart.

Of course, anyone who knows comic books, or soap operas, for that matter, knows that unless you see the body (and sometimes not even if you do), the character isn’t really dead.  Despite the novel’s assertions that Cyclops is dead, we never see him die in the movie.  So he could come back, possibly in a new body, in a fourth film, as well.

And as for Phoenix, her very name makes clear that she may not stay dead, any more than she has in the comics.

So I have hope:  if there are more X-Men movies, maybe future directors and screenwriters will have the chance to do Scott and Jean right,

ADVERTISEMENTS FOR MYSELF

My suspicions about the alleged boom in academic interest in the comics medium continue unabated:  only one person signed up for my course, “The Graphic Novel as Literature,” at New York University this summer, so it was canceled – yet again.

However, my monthly lecture course, “1986: The Year That Changed Comics,” continues at Manhattan’s Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (www.moccany.org).  At 6:30 PM on Monday, June 26, I will be lecturing on Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli’s Daredevil: Born Again.  (It’s a follow-up to my June 6 talk about Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, which went quite well.)  And it’s free!  Feel free to come!

This Sunday, July 2, Newsweek‘s radio show will have a segment about superhero movies, including an interview with me.  Consider it a preview of my forthcoming review of Superman Returns for this column.  
 
Copyright 2006 Peter Sanderson
 

 

 

Welcome, readers new and old, to “Comics in Context” at its new home here at Kevin Smith’s Quick Stop Entertainment. This week’s topic is X-Men: The Last Stand, both the new movie and its novelization. 

But first, for the benefit of newcomers, allow me to explain what “Comics in Context” is about, who I am, and how this column came to be. 

“Comics in Context” is a weekly series of critical essays on comics, cartoon art, and related subjects. When the column moved to Quick Stop Entertainment, so did its vast archive, now comprising one hundred and thirty-three past installments. You’ll find extended critiques of comic book series both recent, such as Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Strikes Again (in “Comics in Context” #30, 31, and 34) and classic, like Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta (#126-131). I’ve also written extensively about comic strips (as in #66 and 71). 

From the column’s beginnings, I’ve written about film and television adaptations of comics, from Ang Lee’s Hulk (#2) through this week’s X-Men: The Last Stand. 

I’ll also write about works in other media that have been adapted into comics, or have been influenced by comics, such as Star Wars (#86). 

I also cover animation, ranging from early Disney hand-animated shorts to Pixar feature films, as you’ll see in upcoming weeks. The recent advances in blending computer animation and live action bring films such as Peter Jackson’s King Kong (#121) into this column’s territory. 

I do extensive reports on major comics conventions (San Diego in #5-10 and #94-99, New York in #123-125) and on comics industry memorial services for major figures of the artform (Julius Schwartz in #32 and Will Eisner in #80-81). 

Following the increasing mainstream interest in the artform, I also review gallery and museum shows about comics and cartoon art (such as the Museum of Modern Art’s Pixar exhibit in #120). I’ll even review theater works with connections to cartoon art (such as Disney’s Tarzan on Broadway in #133) and novels (without pictures) by authors who made their name in comics (such as Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys in #105-108). 

In every case my goal is to write serious criticism while making it accessible and, I hope, entertaining, to more casual readers. 

I believe my background makes me uniquely qualified to do just that. I’ve earned three Ivy League degrees in English literature, but I’ve also been writing about comics ever since becoming a regular contributor to the letter columns of editor Julius Schwartz’s Silver Age DC comics. Since then I’ve worked for fanzines (such as Amazing Heroes and Mark Gruenwald’s legendary Omniverse), become one of the main writers for DC’s Who’s Who and the original versions of The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, and even became Marvel’s first and only archivist. I’ve collaborated on documentaries about comics, including Constantine Valhouli’s Sex, Lies and Superheroes, and taught “Comics as Literature” as New York University. I’m now a reviewer and reporter on comics for Publishers Weekly‘s online newsletter Comics Week and an advisor to New York City’s Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art. I’m also an author and contributing writer to several books about comics, most notably Marvel Universe for the leading art book publisher Harry N. Abrams. 

Yet three years ago my career was at a low point: like many other comics professionals from the Baby Boom generation, I was no longer getting work from Marvel or DC. In publicizing his documentary about comics, Constantine Valhouli had made contact with Ken Plume, who was then an editor at IGN FilmForce. Constantine persuaded me that what I needed was a “forum,” from which I could make my views on the comics medium known, and Ken offered me just that, in the form of a weekly online column. So “Comics in Context” started in July 2003, three years ago next month. 

Comics criticism is my artform, and every creative artist needs patrons who believe in the worth of what they are doing. Ken has been my loyal, constantly supportive patron. When he decided to take his new position here at Quick Stop, he asked me if I would come along. My immediate response was yes. 

It was time for a change, anyway. Last year IGN shifted “Comics in Context” from IGN FilmForce to its new site, IGN Comics, and eventually the Powers That Be (above Ken’s head) started tampering with my column’s titles and complaining about some of my topics. I had long wondered what IGN stood for. Now I know: I’m Gone Now. I’m hopeful that the old installments in the archive will now regain their correct titles. 

I recommend that you also check out the work of several of my colleagues from IGN who have also resettled on this new website. 

There’s Ken, of course, who is an excellent interviewer with an enviable ability to put his subjects at ease and draw out revelations they’d be less likely to give mainstream media interviewers. 

Then there’s “The Fred Hembeck Show,” starring the court jester of American comic books, who provides a unique blend of nostalgic affection for classic comics, critical insight, and wit. His weekly “show” never fails to entertain, and, as he would urge, you should also visit his website, www.hembeck.com. From time to time I find myself attempting to fathom the mysteries of Fred’s obsessions, such as his undying crush on 1960s Disney diva Hayley Mills (Would The Parent Trap be Two-Face’s favorite movie?) and his near-worship of a certain absorbent animated icon. Join Fearless Fred as he makes his journey from the world of SpongeBob to his new home in the kingdom of Silent Bob! 

Those of you with broadband (unlike myself) should also sample Quick Stop’s video show “Monkey Talk,” masterminded by award-winning animation writer Paul Dini (an old friend I’ve known for decades) and his wife, sultry sorceress Misty Lee (whom I’ve never met but whose legend precedes her). 

In future weeks I’ll be writing about Pixar’s Cars and Walt Disney’s 1930s Silly Symphonies; Doctor Who and The Wild Wild West; the new movie Superman Returns; The Eternals, both the original Jack Kirby series and the new Neil Gaiman version; and the landmark museum exhibition “Masters of American Comics.” 

As for this week’s topic, those of you who have not yet seen X-Men: The Last Stand are hereby given a spoiler warning. In order to critique any work properly, I usually need to talk about major plot elements, including the ending. 

 

 

Marvel and Twentieth Century Fox, which produced X-Men: The Last Stand, were unusually secretive about its story. I had to write about the film in the third edition of DK’s X-Men: The Ultimate Guide, yet Marvel would not tell me or DK anything about the film, and would not even release publicity stills that we needed for illustrations until close to our deadline. As it turned out, certain major plot elements, notably the deaths of Cyclops and Professor X, were reported on the Internet long ago. 

The previous X-Men movie, X2: X-Men United, strongly hinted that its director, Bryan Singer intended to tackle perhaps the greatest of all X-Men stories, Chris Claremont and John Byrne’s “Dark Phoenix Saga” (from Uncanny X-Men #129-137, from 1980), in the third film. 

X2 ended with Jean Grey heroically sacrificing her life (or so it appeared) in an oncoming deluge in order to save the other X-Men, and a strange, birdlike form – presumably the sign of the Phoenix – appeared on the water’s surface afterwards. 

But when Singer agreed to direct Superman Returns for Warners, Fox fired him, and replace him first with director Matthew Vaughn, who dropped out and was replaced by Brett Ratner. With Singer gone, what about his set-up for “The Dark Phoenix Saga”? 

Avi Arad, who until recently was CEO of Marvel Studios, told Empire Online that “It should never be this one story. The main characters are more important than Jean Grey. . .This is a bigger story. Everybody’s expecting Dark Phoenix, but Dark Phoenix would never be the main show. She’ll be one of the characters, that’s it. There are a lot of stories to tell.” 

Since when is Jean Grey not one of “the main characters” of the X-Men? She is one of the original members of this team of superhuman mutants, as it first appeared in X-Men #1 back in 1963. Chris Claremont, the writer of “The Dark Phoenix Saga,” was the appropriate choice to write Del Rey’s novelization of the film. In that novel, Claremont rightly calls Jean the “heart” of the X-Men. That is what made “The Dark Phoenix Saga” that rarity of the superhuman genre: a genuine tragedy. 

In case there are any readers who do not know, in the comics Jean Grey (Marvel Girl) and her teammate Scott Summers (Cyclops) were the romantic leads of Marvel’s X-Men comics series. Like so many heroes co-created by Stan Lee in the early 1960s, Scott and Jean’s love for one another was initially unspoken: unable to control the powerful energy beams from his eyes, Scott felt cut off from the possibility of romance. (This is not very different from Rogue’s dilemma in both the X-Men comics and movies: she cannot touch anyone she loves without rendering them comatose.) Although they finally admitted their feelings for one another, circumstances separated Scott and Jean from time to time, including the arrival of the “new” X-Men when the series was revived in the mid-1970s. 

In X-Men #100 (in 1976), during a mission in space, Jean heroically volunteered to pilot the escape craft taking the X-Men back to Earth, even though she was thereby exposed to intense radiation from a solar storm. The escape craft crash-landed in a bay, but Jean had not died: instead she rose from the waters, declaring herself to be the Phoenix. 

She had apparently activated her unsuspected full potential, and, as we would soon learn. could now wield enough power to save the universe from destruction, as she did in issue 109. 

Jean was linked with the “Phoenix Force,” cosmic energies that could manifested themselves around her in the form of a fiery bird. This was a force with great potential for creation or for destruction. 

(Later retconning by Kurt Busiek and John Byrne established that Phoenix was not the real Jean, but was the sentient Phoenix Force, which had duplicated Jean’s body and consciousness. Still later, Claremont established that Phoenix bore a portion of the real Jean’s consciousness, which returned to Jean after Dark Phoenix’s demise: hence Dark Phoenix was partly Jean. The original intent of the “Dark Phoenix Saga” was that Jean was Phoenix, and for simplicity’s sake, that is how I am interpreting the story here.) 

During another twist of fate, during which Jean thought Scott was dead, she underwent temptation by the devilish mutant Mastermind, who projected illusions into her mind that she had led a decadent life in an earlier incarnation in the 18th century. Claremont and Byrne were doing something revolutionary here, showing that even as pure and loving a heroine as Jean Grey had a dark side within her subconscious. 

Reunited, Scott and Jean finally consummated their love in a memorable scene that Claremont and Byrne set on a desert mesa, in which Jean used the power of Phoenix to block Scott’s optic beams, thereby performing a miracle that made their sexual union possible at last. Though Claremont and Byrne got the point across through implication, and showed nothing explicit, this too was a revolutionary move for the mainstream comics of that period. 

As a result of Mastermind’s psychic brainwashing, Jean soon became the malevolent Black Queen of the Inner Circle of the Hellfire Club, the X-Men’s enemies. But Mastermind, like Dr. Frankenstein, had unleashed a monster that he could not control: Jean broke free of his mental control, but his meddling with her mind turned her into the insane Dark Phoenix, a threat both to the X-Men and to the universe. The duality of human nature, of course, is one of the principal themes of the superhero genre. 

Through psychic combat, the X-Men’s mentor, Professor Charles Xavier, succeeded in inducing Jean to revert to her normal personality. But the X-Men’s alien allies, the Shi’ar, demanded her destruction lest she threaten the universe once more. The X-Men engaged in a trial by combat to save Jean’s life. Reunited, Jean and Scott battled alongside each other. But Jean’s Dark Phoenix persona resurfaced, and in a brief moment of sanity, Jean committed suicide, before the horrified Scott’s eyes, to prevent herself from reverting permanently to Dark Phoenix. 

Here lies the tragedy: that this young woman, who normally exemplified love, courage and heroism, who had proved capable of becoming a goddess in human form, was doomed by a fatal flaw in her psyche and by the evil within the world around her. The Phoenix Saga ended in issue 137 as it had really begun in #100: Jean’s ultimate act of love for Scott and her friends was to destroy herself. 

There is no “bigger story” in the X-Men comics canon than this. Indeed, it rivals Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s Galactus trilogy (Fantastic Four #48-50, from 1966) as one of the greatest of all Marvel storylines. 

Since Jean is called Phoenix, it should be no surprise that Marvel later resurrected her. The longrunning story of Scott and Jean’s troubled romance even found a happy ending with their joyous wedding in X-Men (second series) #30 (1994). 

 

 

21st century Marvel has since destroyed this love story by having Scott act totally out of character and embark on an affair with Emma Frost, the Hellfire Club’s White Queen, of all people. Eventually, I hope, this too will pass, and wiser heads will reinstate the Scott-Jean romance, which, like Jean herself, is the heart of the series. 

We can now see that X-Men: The Last Stand basically consists of two major, interlocking plotlines: Magneto’s attack on the human race, provoked by the creation of a “cure” for mutation, and the Dark Phoenix Saga. “Dark Phoenix” is considerably more important to the film than Avi Arad had suggested. Yet perhaps his insistence on minimizing its importance suggests why the treatment of Dark Phoenix goes awry in the film. 

I did not have high expectations for the Last Stand movie, so I was surprised that I enjoyed it as much as I did. In large measure that’s because the writers, Simon Kinburg and Zak Penn, draw more fully on the imaginative richness of the X-Men comics canon than the previous films did. That doesn’t mean that Last Stand doesn’t have serious problems. 

There are X-Men comics readers who dislike the movies because of the changes they make to the comics continuity. I expect movies and television shows to create their own variant continuity. This can be done well, as in the case of the 1990s Batman animated series. It doesn’t bother me that in the movies Angel is not one of the original X-Men, or that the movie Magneto is not still in his physical prime like the comics Magneto. 

I did not expect Last Stand to send Dark Phoenix into outer space to destroy the planet of the D’Bari (the “asparagus people”) or to bring in the Shi’ar, or to stage the climax on the moon, as the comics did. John Byrne has an unlimited special effects budget; movies do not, so I expected that Last Stand would have to rework the Dark Phoenix Saga to keep it earthbound. 

What is more important is that film and TV adaptations should be faithful to the characterizations and themes of the comics. This is where Last Stand goes astray in the case of Dark Phoenix. What the filmmakers should realize is that by failing to fully comprehend what makes the “Dark Phoenix Saga” work in the comics, they ruined dramatic opportunities that would have made Last Stand a stronger, deeper, better movie. 

Here’s the first problem: do people who only know the X-Men from the movies even care about Jean? In the comics “The Dark Phoenix Saga” drew upon the readers’ warm feelings towards the character, not only from Claremont’s previous stories but, for longtime readers, from Stan Lee’s and Roy Thomas’s X-Men tales from the 1960s. In his review of Last Stand in New York Magazine (May 29, 2006), film critic David Edelstein refers to “Xavier’s dull assistant Jean (Famke Janssen), who sacrificed herself for her colleagues at the end of X2. . . .” He’s right. Despite that act of heroism, the previous two X-Men movies did not inspire fondness for Jean. 

I was quite pleased with the opening scene of Last Stand, set twenty years ago. Here were Xavier and Magneto, when they were friends and colleagues, visiting John and Elaine Grey to recruit their prepubescent daughter Jean, into Xavier’s school for mutants. However the filmmakers managed to make actors Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen, who portray Xavier and Magneto, look twenty years younger, it was remarkable. I was happy to see that the screenwriters had here drawn upon Chris Claremont’s X-Men stories. It was Claremont who established in Uncanny X-Men #161 (1982) that Xavier and Magneto had been friends decades ago, and that Xavier had first met Jean when she was a child, to help her cope with her newly emerged psionic abilities, in Bizarre Adventures #27 (1981). 

During this sequence, not only does X-Men co-creator Stan Lee make his expected Hitchcockian cameo (as “Waterhose Man,” according to the credits), but so does Chris Claremont, as “Lawnmower Man” (without apologies to Stephen King). Considering that Claremont is the most important author in X-Men history next to Lee, having written and molded the characters since 1975, this is a gesture that is both welcome and long overdue. 

Of course, it would be even better if he got some onscreen acknowledgment of having written the stories that inspired much of the movie, and even a cut of the profits, but since he wrote them as work for hire, such is not to be. According to the Los Angeles Business Journal Frank Miller is “conservatively estimated to have made more than $10 million” so far from the Sin City movies, based on comics he wrote, drew, and owns. (See here) It makes you think, doesn’t it? 

Moreover, whereas the Hulk and Fantastic Four movies rightly bear a credit that they are based on comics by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, I saw X-Men co-creator Kirby’s name nowhere on Last Stand. And so it goes. 

But what is Jean like in this opening sequence? She’s angry and dangerous, glowering at the guests, and levitating all the cars in the neighborhood (and Claremont’s lawnmower) in a display of power. (Has she done this sort of thing before? If so, why haven’t all the neighbors headed for the hills?) Remember Superbaby? Meet Li’l Dark Phoenix: Red Skelton’s Mean Widdle Kid with a sex change and cosmic powers. She reminds me of those sinister, super-powered children in movies like The Omen and Village of the Damned. So why should we like her? 

Claremont’s novelization provides a different perspective. I like a great deal about the novelization. Claremont delves further into the emotions and psychology of the characters and fills out their backgrounds, aligning the movie’s story more closely with the established comics continuity. Claremont even supplies many little grace notes that should please faithful readers of X-Men comics. In the novel he supplies Rogue and Moira MacTaggart with the accents – deep Southern United States and Scots, respectively – they lack in the movie. Claremont works in references and sometimes even appearances by X-Men characters unseen in the film, such as Forge and Bishop. The movie doesn’t give its President a name, so Claremont christens him President David Cockrum, in a commendable salute to the artist who co-created the X-Men Colossus, Nightcrawler, and Storm. Claremont and Cockrum also jointly devised Jean’s Phoenix persona. It’s fun to see Claremont dub an unnamed mutant in the film “Weezie,” the nickname of former X-Men editor Louise Simonson. 

I also enjoy Claremont’s clever shout outs to some of the actors in the film. Though the comics have never given the Beast a sibling, Claremont tells us, “He enjoyed fine wines with his brother, the Jungian psychiatrist” (p. 55) a sly reference to Kelsey Grammer’s most famous role as Dr. Frasier Crane and his brother Niles, played by David Hyde Pierce. Towards the book’s end Claremont even engages in a touch of metafiction, informing us that a movie has been made about the mutant battle in San Francisco, “with one of Britain’s finest Shakespearean actors, a knight no less, tapped to play the role of Magneto,” a nod to McKellen (p. 334). 

Much more importantly, though he faithfully recounts Xavier and Magneto’s visit to the Greys, Claremont begins the novelization with a different scene, closely based on his description of how Jean’s powers first emerged in that Bizarre Adventures tale. In the comics, Jean’s telepathic powers awakened in her childhood when her best friend, Annie, was mortally injured in an automobile accident. (Oddly, in the comics Annie’s last name is Richardson, but in the novel it is Malcolm. The novel also manages to misspell Magneto’s last name consistently: it should be “Lehnsherr.”) Jean telepathically experienced Annie’s emotions as she died in her arms; as the novel states, Jean “collapsed into what was later described as a fugue state brought on by extreme trauma” (p. 8). 

Now this Jean is a little girl who deserves our sympathy, having been psychologically shattered by a dreadful experience. How many other origins in the superhero genre involve a child confronted with mortality through the sudden loss of a loved one? The death of Annie is metaphorically the death of the innocence of Jean’s childhood. Significantly, Claremont refers to their “shared lives,” as if recognizing that symbolically they are one (p. 6). 

Returning to this scene he first chronicled a quarter century ago, Claremont adds intriguing new touches. Jean angrily refuses to accept that Annie is dying: “The passion surprised them both, a fierce rage that outlined Jean, just for a moment, in a corona of fire, like a star casting forth a solar flare.” This is the birth of Phoenix, linked to the surge of passion. 

There is also the suggestion that the Phoenix represents the potential of the human spirit. Jean psychically perceives herself and Annie as “a pair of galaxies, islands of breathtaking light and color, all by themselves against the backdrop of infinity” (p.5). Then the Phoenix power, released within Jean, becomes “an absolute of light. Against such a display, Annie was too small to even quantify” (p. 6). Unable to cope, the child Jean feels “cast into a maelstrom” (p. 6). 

That image, of being cast into a maelstrom, perfectly suits even the adult Jean, her sanity overwhelmed by dark passions surging from her subconscious in the comics’ version of “The Dark Phoenix Saga.” If only the movie had conveyed that this is what its Jean was also experiencing, her behavior might have awakened stronger audience empathy. 

Following the Jean flashback, the movie segues to a sequence of the X-Men in combat at a time identified by onscreen titles as “in the not too distant future.” I find that I am not the only person who was put in mind of Claremont and Byrne’s other greatest X-Men story, the “Days of Future Past,” set in a dystopian future (Uncanny X-Men #141-142, from 1981), and indeed, the head of one of the giant mutant-hunting Sentinel robots, severed by Wolverine, drops into view. By this time I had guessed that this was the “Danger Room,” the X-Men’s hologram-generating practice room, at long last making it into one of the X-Men movies. Am I the only one who, upon seeing that “not too distant future” caption, thought of the theme song for Mystery Science Theater 3000? 

It was also fun to see Colossus throwing Wolverine in their “fastball special” maneuver, familiar from the comics. I suppose that now moviegoers will think that Last Stand is copying the way Aragorn tosses the dwarf Gimli into battle in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002). Was Jackson intentionally copying Colossus and Wolverine? If so, Jackson got the point of the maneuver: that Colossus is so much bigger than the short but powerful Wolverine. On seeing the first X-Men movie I was astonished at how much Hugh Jackman, in wig and makeup, facially resembled the comics Wolverine, one of the relatively few heroes in superhero comics with a distinctive face, and I like his performance in the role. I suppose it was too much to hope for that the filmmakers would cast someone who was 5’3″ in a leading role like Wolverine. (When I see Jackman doing musical comedy on television, he is utterly unrecognizable as Wolverine!) 

It’s not clear how much time has elapsed in the world of the X-Men films since the second and third movies, though a new President has taken office. It doesn’t bother me that Scott is still unable to recover from the death of Jean: remember, in the comics, he left the team afterwards. In the novel Claremont makes clear that Scott is suffering from clinical depression. 

I like Claremont’s extended description of Xavier’s mansion and its history at the start of Chapter Three. (I wish he had worked all of this out back when I was co-writing the Marvel Universe Handbooks!) I’ve also grown to like the building used as Xavier’s school in the movies. It may not have the familiar cupola from the comics, but I like the ivy-covered walls, as if the Xavier school represented the Ivy League for mutants. 

 

 

There follows a scene about Rogue and her inability to touch people without triggering her absorption power. The movie Rogue may have the same power and problem as her comics counterpart, and even the same white streak in her hair, but she’s not the same person. Imagine if the movies had given us the sassy, feisty Southern woman that Rogue is in the comics. What a great part that would be for an actress! (Watching The Incredibles again recently, I realized that Holly Hunter’s vocal characterization for Elastigirl could work for Rogue.) But, as we shall see, the X-Men movies are a study in missed opportunities. 

That even applies a little to Kelsey Grammer’s performance as Dr., Henry McCoy, the Beast. I think this was brilliant casting: Grammer’s sonorous voice, and refined, dignified manner perfectly make clear the contrast between McCoy’s high intellect and his bestial physical appearance. 

The Beast makeup works perfectly, in sharp contrast to the Thing suit in last summer’s Fantastic Four movie. I was happy to see the Beast make his entrance characteristically hanging upside down, and, doubtless thanks to special effects, he moved convincingly in the battle scenes. I even liked hearing Grammer utter the Beast’s trademark (and nonsensical) exclamation “Oh my stars and garters!” from the comics. 

So what’s the missed opportunity? In the comics the Beast can be funny! Why cast Kelsey Grammer, a superb comedy actor, in the role if the filmmakers don’t give him the Beast’s characteristic witticisms to speak? 

Then the film introduces us to Bolivar Trask, but this Trask isn’t the fanatical anti-mutant scientist who created the Sentinels, but a military man, who barely makes an impression as a character in the movie. Why use the name of Bolivar Trask but not the real character? 

Marvel has been claiming that this is the final X-Men movie, yet Last Stand ends with scenes that clearly set up the next one, and considering how much money Last Stand is making (the second largest opening day box office in history, and the biggest Friday opening ever), it’s hard to imagine that Marvel and Fox will resist the temptation to do X4. So what if they decide to use the Sentinels (such a natural in the age of CGI) for that movie? 

Shouldn’t they have saved the name “Bolivar Trask” for their inventor? 

This reminds me of one of the strange coincidences of 1960s pop culture. In X-Men there were Bolivar Trask, who debuted in 1965, and his son Larry, who conducted “witch hunts” against the mutants in society. And the 1960s television series Dark Shadows had its own Trask family, literal witchhunters, the first of whom debuted in 1967. Was this mere accident, or was someone on the Shadows staff a Marvel fan? 

In the movie and novel, McCoy refers to the “mutant community.” In the X-Men comics of the 1960s (except for the original Mesmero storyline) there appeared to be very few superhuman mutants on Earth. It was Grant Morrison, during his stint writing the New X-Men comic a few years ago, who made it clear that mutants constituted a sizable minority of Earth’s population. Claremont embraces this idea, and, indeed, later on in the novel he even establishes that a sequence in the film takes place in “Mutie Town,” the mutant “ghetto” in Manhattan from the District X comics. 

Ironically, Marvel has recently reversed course in the comics, whittling down the number of superhuman mutants to roughly two hundred as a result of the House of M limited series. I see the point that the number of mutants in the Marvel Universe had gotten out of hand: having too many superpowered beings in the population would make Marvel-Earth overly different from the real world of its readers. 

Still, one of the basic premises of X-Men is that a new race is evolving that may supplant “normal” humans, a prospect some (like Bolivar Trask) fear and others (like Magneto) welcome. If there are no more than a few hundred mutants within Earth’s population of several billion, what’s the problem? 

It is revealed in the film that Dr. Kavita Rao, sponsored by Warren Worthington Jr. (the father of the winged mutant Angel), has developed a “cure” for mutation, which suppresses the functioning of the “x”-gene. The elder Worthington regards mutation as a disease. Joss Whedon and John Cassaday introduced both Dr. Rao and the cure in the initial storyline of their Astonishing X-Men comics series (see “Comics in Context” #42 and 43). Mr. Whedon has just gotten a lesson in how work for hire functions in comics. 

Look at how movie critics have reacted to the cure. Manohla Dargis of The New York Times declares that “The story this time partly turns on a new cure for the mutant gene, which pushes the series’ gay metaphor without developing it in any interesting way,” and likens the winged Angel to “seraphic visions of Angels in America,” Tony Kushner’s epic theater work about the gay experience in the United States. Other reviewers made similar comments. But limiting the metaphor of mutation in X-Men to a single meaning is shallow thinking. 

Doubtless Bryan Singer, who is openly gay, recognized that mutation can serve as a “gay metaphor.” But much of the brilliance of the X-Men concept is that mutants can be a metaphor for any minority group. After all, the series was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, both straight, in the early 1960s. If they were aware of the metaphorical aspect of X-Men, they were more likely thinking of the black civil rights movement of the time, or of their own Jewish-American heritage. 

 

 

Roger Ebert realizes that the mutant metaphor can’t be restricted to any one minority: in his Last Stand review he wrote that “There are so many parallels here with current political and social issues that to list them is to define the next presidential campaign. . . . I thought of abortion, gun control, stem cell research, the ‘gay gene’ and the Minutemen. ‘Curing’ mutants is obviously a form of genetic engineering and stirs thoughts of ‘cures’ for many other conditions humans are born with, which could be loosely defined as anything that prevents you from being just like George or Georgette Clooney.” 

In Tom DeFalco’s new interview book, Comics Creators on X-Men, Claremont reveals that he identifies with the X-Men’s outsider status because he remembers what it was like being a British-born child growing up in a strange country – the United States. Hence mutants can even represent the sense of alienation felt by a minority of one. 

When the first X-Men movie came out, the comparison of Xavier and Magneto to Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, respectively, was much commented upon: in that film Magneto even repeats Malcolm X’s famous line, “By any means necessary.” Notice that in Last Stand, the President, taking extreme action to suppress mutant rebels, uses that same phrase. 

In the film and novel Magneto displays the number tattooed on his wrist, making evident that anti-mutant bigotry can also symbolize anti-Semitism. In the novelization Claremont has the Beast delve more fully into that comparison. 

Claremont also has Storm make a speech to Rogue that reminds me of Pixar’s The Incredibles, in which the “supers” represent people who are forced to suppress their talents and individuality in the name of fitting into a dull, conformist society (see “Comics in Context” #62). Storm says, “there’s nothing to cure. You might as well cure Mozart of writing music, or da Vinci of the ability to make machines, or Edison, or Archimedes, or Shakespeare” (p. 78). 

I’m far from finished on the subject of X-Men: The Last Stand, and my critique will continue next week. 

ADVERTISEMENTS FOR MYSELF  

I’ve lifted the name of this section from the title of a book by Norman Mailer. It seems appropriate for my plugs for my other current projects. I have two new books out: DK’s X-Men: The Ultimate Guide – The Third Edition, which I wrote and have updated for 2006, and The Art of X-Men: The Last Stand: From Concept to Feature Film, to which I contributed an essay on the X-Men’s history in the comics. 

Moreover, Marvel has just published Volume Two of its Essentials reprinting of The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, Deluxe Edition, from the mid-1980s. I wrote, expanded and updated more entries than anyone else for the Deluxe edition, under the editorship of the late Mark Gruenwald. I am amazed that this is the fifth book this year which I either wrote entirely or contributed to writing. And there are still more to come! 

I’ve also been interviewed once again by the BBC, as you can see on their website. 

You can also find recent articles I’ve written for Publishers Weekly‘s Comics Week here and here. And they’re free! 

This weekend (June 24 and 25) I will be interviewing comics artists Frank Brunner and Jerry Ordway at the Big Apple Con at the Penn Plaza Pavilion in Manhattan. 

My suspicions about the alleged boom in academic interest in the comics medium continue unabated: only one person signed up for my course, “The Graphic Novel as Literature,” at New York University this summer, so it was canceled – yet again. 

However, my monthly lecture course, “1986: The Year That Changed Comics,” continues at Manhattan’s Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art. 

At 6:30 PM on Monday, June 26, I will be lecturing on Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli’s Daredevil: Born Again. (It’s a follow-up to my June 6 talk about Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, which went quite well.) And it too is free! Feel free to come! 

Copyright 2006 Peter Sanderson