Mon. May 26, 2014
Chicago, IL -
The newly released summer blockbuster film "X-Men Days of Future Past" projected over $111 million dollars just this weekend.
The film, a sequel to 2011's "X-Men First Class," is based off writer Chris Claremont's "Uncanny X-Men" comic book story "Days of Future Past."
For decades, the X-Men franchise has always mutually correlated with the LGBT community with its various aspects such as its storylines, media representations, and theories.
The crew of the film alone shows some strong representation for the gay community. The film's director Bryan Singer is openly bi-sexual, while the cast includes recently out-of-closet actress Ellen Page, longtime openly gay actor and activist Sir Ian McKellen, and bi-sexual "True Blood" star Anna Paquin.
Since the comics debut in 1963, the premise of the X-Men focuses on mutants who are born with a genetic trait that gives them super powers or a deformed appearance that they are either proud or ashamed of.
The stories stand as a metaphor for the racial tensions that went on in that era, which separated the X-men from the regular human race. The struggles that the mutants go through is reminiscent of the prejudices and acceptances that the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community deals with every day.
"X-Men Days of Future Past" takes place in a dystopian futuristic setting of 2023, where mutants are being exterminated by government programmed robots solely due to race. However, despite being hunted, the mutants stay strong and confident with their mutant abilities, using them as a mean to the end of the current carnage.
This film imbues the moral lesson that despite the predicaments and prejudice that come your way, you should always be proud of how you were born, since it was intended for you from the very start. This draws parallel to individuals who struggle or embrace their homosexuality.
The relationship between the film's two main characters Erik Lehnsherr/Magneto (Michael Fassbender) and Charles Xavier (James McAvoy), seem to underline as a gay romance. In "X-Men First Class," the friendship they held was so deep - and you just couldn't deny the romantic chemistry they had, despite them being heterosexual.
The two men become very close friends as they recruit other mutants who need assistance with their powers or face internal struggles. However, at the end of the film they have a fallout, after very conflicting views. Just like how it was originally set up in the comic book, Charles wants mutants to find acceptance among humanity, as opposed to Erik, who wants mutants to overrule humanity.
In "Days of Future Past," they reunite, but as enemies who are forced by Wolverine to work together to help prevent the apocalyptic future show in the beginning of the film.
It can be inferred that Charles and Erik held very strong feelings for each other, but their decisions and views got in the way of it, which created the lifelong resentment between them. In one particular scene, the two characters reconnect on a plane and go out of their way to blame one another for the loss of their previous students, who are mentioned to die off screen in the film's beginning.
"You took the things that meant the most with me, you abandoned me!" Charles yells at Erik.
"We were supposed to protect them," Erik retorts back, listing off various deceased mutants they had previously mentored. "Where were you Charles when they needed you? You abandoned us all!"
The tension in this scene represents an estranged couple blaming each other for the fate of their deceased children due to a previous custody battle. Everything that was built up with their relationship in "First Class" is shattered and lost with "Days of Future Past."
Despite the films successful financial and critical reception, one of the main faults of "Days of Future Past," is its strong lack of female representation in the character roster.
In the comics, the X-Men (despite its metaphoric title) are primarily known for its powerful female heroines. The female cast of this film is underwhelming, containing only five female characters as opposed to 15 male characters.
The X-Men film series has featured iconic characters, heroines lauded by diehard gay fans, like Storm, Rogue, Kitty Pryde, Emma Frost, Jean Grey, and Mystique. While Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) had a strong presence in the film, the rest of the female characters were reduced to having wallpaper roles or not appearing at all.
In Claremont's original story, the character of Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page) was the lead character to be sent from the future to the past to stop the apocalyptic future we see in the opening scene of the movie.
The film's adaptation has Pryde's role replaced by Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), who can be said to be the cash cow of this film due to the character's widespread popularity. When Wolverine isn't being the prime focus of the film, it is centered on the relationship between Xavier and Magneto.
Overall, there are many different concepts and theories that can very well address the LGBT community. Between the similarities of the x-gene mutants are born with, with the gay population being born with the gay-gene, and the strong representation of LGBT members in the film's cast, it can be said that "Days of Future Past," is a very gay friendly summer blockbuster.
Although the film has its vices of favoring the male characters over the female characters, it is still a film that holds a valuable story that no matter if you are a mutant or human: you should always be proud of who you are... .
Just like gay PRIDE.
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