" ‘X-Men’?!" The bureaucrat awoke with a jolt. “Who you gonna play?”
“Wolverine?”
“WOLVEREEEEEEEN!”
“He screamed and made me sign an autograph,” Jackman recounts three months later, on the set of “X-Men,” a live-action movie based on the best-selling comic book in history. “I said, ‘It’s only an audition.’ He says, ‘I don’t care, man! I got friends with tattoos of Wolverine!’ "
Tattoos will be the least of it. 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. Fans of the teenage superheroes–genetic mutants born with strange and extraordinary powers that develop with the onset of puberty–have been waiting for this movie for years, even decades. The Internet is awash in rumors–mostly false–about everything from plot points to costume details. (Except for a visit from NEWSWEEK, the “X-Men” set has been closed and under maximum security.) Twentieth Century Fox and Marvel Comics are betting that X-fanatics will consume a flood of toys and videogames, several sequels and a new Saturday-morning cartoon. All they need now is a good movie.
That’s where Bryan Singer comes in. The director of “The Usual Suspects,” Singer’s known for making intellectual, high-caliber films. Though he had no interest in a popcorn franchise, he began to see how the stories of these mutants–feared and loathed by the world for being different–were actually not-so-subtle allegories about race and bigotry. Once Singer signed on, the thespians followed. “Ian McKellen and I are colleagues from the Royal Shakespeare Company, so it was especially pleasant to have three significant scenes together,” says Patrick Stewart.
Singer’s boldest decision was to set “X-Men” in a realistic, uncartoony world, just a year or two in the future. The movie follows the self-healing mutant Wolverine as he encounters the X-Men for the first time. Prof. Charles Xavier (Stewart), the world’s most powerful telepath, teaches mutants like Storm (Halle Berry), Rogue (Anna Paquin), Cyclops (James Marsden) and Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) how to protect mankind–even as the U.S. Senate, led by a rabid right-winger, pushes discriminatory legislation against them.
The movie’s villain is a metal-manipulating mutant named Magneto (McKellen), who shuns the idea that mutants can ever peacefully coexist with humankind. “This movie is the first skirmish in the potential war between humans and mutants,” says Singer. “It’s not your average genre picture. I’m not saying it’s a character-based drama, but it’s not an action movie. It’s a movie with action in it.” Sounds like it could be a wonderful, if truly weird, mutation of the genre.
