Interview with Richard Donner
From Comics Craze Magazine, May 1998 Edition
Richard Donner is, of course, a legend in his own right with a long and distinguished career. But for Comics fans like us, he’s of course most loved for his forays into Comics-Based movies, most notably the 1978
Superman film and the subject of today’s interview, the 1996
X-Men film, which he produced and directed[1] (and which are, respectively, our #5 and #2 Best Comics Moments Outside of Comics). Its upcoming sequel,
X-Men 2: Rise of the Sentinels, is produced by Donner, but not directed by him.
CC: Mr. Donner, it is a blessing and an honor to speak with you today. Needless to say, we are all fans of your work with
Superman and the
X-Men alike.
RD: Thank you, and I’m happy to be here.
CC: And with
X2 coming to theaters now, we thought that we’d take the time to talk about 1996’s
X-Men with Liev Schreiber, Patrick Stewart, Christopher Lee, and Rachel Lee Cook. What is it that first brought you to the X-Men franchise?
RD: Well, honestly, it’s the central themes. There’s a real depth to the comics line which addresses some weighty subjects like bigotry, persecution, and prejudice all while resonating with the feeling of alienation that a lot of teenagers have even while also hoping that they’re somehow someone special, and magical. It’s a theme that any number of marginalized people from ethnic and religious minorities to the gay and lesbian community to even unpopular teens can relate to. And when I saw Frank Oz’s
Spiderman in ’91 I knew that the effects and costuming had finally reached the stage where X-Men movies could be done right. I immediately contacted MGM and proposed an
X-Men film, only to find that they were already considering one, with Joss Whedon, who’d won an Emmy for the “Dark Phoenix” saga on the animated series, being tapped to write a screenplay. Stan Lee and Chris Claremont at Marvel and VP Margie Loesch were happy to let me produce and direct and I worked with Joss to draft a treatment.
A Bit of This and That…
CC: The resulting treatment evolved into the film’s screenplay and largely followed a combination of the themes and story elements of “Days of Future Past”, but without the time travel aspect, and a heaping dose of “God Loves, Man Kills”. It notably also features the initial rift between the X-Men and Brotherhood of Mutants, who begin the film as allies. What led to these decisions?
RD: Well, we had a very long discussion about what we wanted to do, Chris, Joss, and I, along with my production associate Kevin Feige[2], who is a huge
X-Men fan with an encyclopedic knowledge of the comics that impressed even Chris and Joss. Naturally they poached him from me after the film debuted (laughs). We clearly wanted the whole Mutant Persecution aspect to be central to the narrative, so adding in Reverend Stryker and Senator Kelly was a natural, with cameos by other Hellfire Club folks. These became the principal antagonists rather than the Brotherhood, whom as you noted are shown to be allied to Xavier at the beginning.
CC: With the legendary Malcolm McDowell as Stryker and
Law & Order’s John Slattery as Senator Kelly, of course.
RD: Yes, and they were both brilliant. The plot would center around Stryker as a far-right-wing anti-mutant bigot enflaming tensions while Kelly would be the political arm, spinning up his plans for the Mutant Registration Act and similar anti-mutant legislation. Malcolm gave Stryker a sort of combination televangelist/political demagogue personality while Kelly was strongly based on Joseph McCarthy with hints of various Fascist politicians, even cribbing from some of their speeches.
CC: Yes, the whole McCarthy Red Scare vibe was clear, and we noticed that the exchanges between Kelly and Kelsey Grammer’s Dr. Hank “Beast” McCoy at the Capitol hearing were right out of McCarthy’s exchange with Joseph Welch.
(Image source Ice the Burn)
RD: Exactly, I’m glad that you noticed. Sometimes the greatest monsters are the real ones. And rather than have a central supervillain threatening massive death and destruction, we took a riskier approach where the threat was more abstract and visceral: the rise of Hate and Repression, with Xavier and Erik’s divergent reactions to the rise of Stryker’s anti-mutant crusade driving the plot rather than some MacGuffin search or Big Evil Plan to foil. Somehow the stakes feel bigger since they’re actually relatable. Nobody has experienced an attempt at world domination by a magical supervillain using a magical weapon, but we’ve all seen the rise of violence and prejudice. We introduce Professor Xavier and Erik “Magneto” Lensherr as friends and comrades in the fight for Mutant Rights, but already we can see the cracks forming, of course, as Erik in particular, as a Holocaust survivor, can’t help but be painfully reminded of the rhetoric of Hitler and the Nazis in Stryker and Kelly.
CC: Xavier played by Patrick Stewart and Erik played by Christopher Lee, of course. And you actually begin the film at Auschwitz with a young Erik, played by child actor Thomas Dekker, first manifesting his powers.
RD: Yes, we wanted to establish the stakes right up front and make it clear why Magneto has the beliefs that he does. Going straight from the Holocaust to a McCarthyite hearing made that all very clear.
CC: And once those themes and stakes are set up, you introduce our two point of view characters: Wolverine played by the imposing Liev Schreiber, who let’s face it is Logan in real life, and Kitty Pride, played by Rachael Leigh Cook.
Rachel Leigh Cook in 1996 (You want the Image source? Go Fug Yourself. Seriously, that’s the website)
RD: Yes, we determined very early on that with so much information and exposition to dump on audiences, most of whom probably did not read the comics or watch the cartoon, that having a “new” character as an audience surrogate would be needed. Joss was really pushing for either Jubilee or Kitty, and we ended up picking Kitty since her powers would be integral to the plot as it unfolded. And with the almost ludicrous level of popularity that Wolverine had at the time, he seemed like a natural. We considered beginning with Wolvie on the run from the Weapon X program, but Joss urged making Kitty the focus since her innocence would make her a good source of audience sympathy. Joss came up with the visual of her literally falling through her high school locker, nervous as she spoke with a boy that she liked. It was so wholesome and relatable that when her sudden unexpected “outing” as a mutant turns her into an immediate pariah with her crush, her teachers, and her parents alike, we get to see up front the cruelty and unfairness of the prejudice and fear. Kitty is a threat to nobody, but suddenly she is treated as one. Something that any gay teenager can tell you is all too real. Naturally, when she runs away, she meets up with Wolvie, who is an aimless drifter[3].
Liev Schreiber in 1996 from our timeline’s
The Daytrippers (Image source Eye For Film)
CC: So, Schreiber was a relatively unknown actor at the time[4]. How did you come by him? Why not a bigger name?
RD: (laughs) Well, that’s certainly what the studio wanted! Mel Gibson’s name was thrown around, but I knew that he’d take over the production. We interviewed Bruce Willis and Viggo Mortensen and Dougray Scott, but when we saw Liev we knew we were looking at Logan. He was a bit young, 28 at the time, but once the makeup was applied and his trainers bulked him up, he worked great for the effectively ageless Logan and worked to give him, as he put it, a “feral masculinity” that he based in part on Jack Nicholson’s performance in
The Wolfman.
CC: Naturally. So Kitty and Wolvie continue their road trip, trying to keep a low profile. And we enjoyed the two of them together. The scared, lonely runaway and the jaded old curmudgeon. But eventually they are outed and attacked by an anti-mutant lynch mob, who were riled up by Stryker’s TV rants. You told USA Today that Stryker’s rants were based in part on anti-Tutsi broadcasts in Rwanda leading up to the genocide. And soon even Logan is getting overwhelmed by sheer numbers, even if they can’t really seem to hurt him, and Kitty is fleeing in terror from the mob using her phasing powers to escape, even phasing out so that a shotgun blast passes harmlessly through her. Thankfully some of the X-Men arrive, namely Pam Grier’s Storm[5], German actor Christoph Waltz’s Nightcrawler, and of course Grammer’s Beast, who have been alerted to the incident by Xavier using Cerebro, and they are together able to break up the mob and rescue Wolvie and Kitty. What can you tell us about that scene?
RD: Well, we deliberately made it brutal, messy, and ugly. No showy martial arts. Almost no harness work. Logan restraining himself even as he is forced to kill in self-defense, but preferring to slice away a rifle barrel and headbutt. Kitty in a panic the whole time, phasing her way out of trouble through animal instinct. Logan bleeding profusely from superficial wounds from the bottles, bats, rocks, knives, and gunshots. We actually had to tone it down to avoid an R rating. We also get to meet Storm and Kurt and comics fans finally get to hear what “bamf” actually sounds like! (laughs) You’d be amazed at how much sound editing went into making it sound “right”.
CC: The X-Men take Logan and Kitty to Xavier’s School for the Gifted, where Wolvie is introduced to Jean Grey and Cyclops, setting up the love triangle going forward. And we gotta say, Jim Caviezel and Julianne Moore were two more great casting choices, with Jim’s Cyclops so noble and heroic and yet kind of an arrogant prick and Julianne gave Jean a lot of depth and sympathy, with so much clear internal power there.
Jim Caviezel and Julianne Moore c1995 (Image sources FanPop on Pinterest and NNDB)
RD: Well, Julianne makes everything better, and I’m glad that we got her when we did before she decided to focus on quirkier indie projects. Thankfully, the clever script and the empowering themes spoke to her and her screen charisma with Liev was a great mix of flirty and frustrated. Jim and Liev put so much masculine tension into a scene. And that was where the real story was, how these very different people reacted to their shared experiences. Logan’s story and Kitty’s story thus became not just the exposition magnets, but the real driver of the film as they go through character development, Logan from a jaded drifter out for himself to someone willing to fight for a greater cause, and Kitty going from a scared teenager rejected by her friends and family desperately in need of a new family ultimately learning the difference between healthy and toxic relationships. Of course, there was a third story in there too as Jean learns more about her true potential, with Storm eventually letting her know that Xavier has actually put a block on her powers to protect her from herself.
CC: Yes, we count her line “Woman, you have no understanding about how powerful you truly are” as one of our top Comics Quotes. It’s of course become an iconic line, particularly in female and even homosexual comics fandom, who have adopted it as a motto.
RD: You can thank Joss for that line, and also thank him and Kevin on insisting that we take some time to set up Jean’s future arc, which every comics geek knows, but should be a surprise to general audiences, we hope.
Heath Ledger and Karl Urban c1996 (Image sources newidea.com and Amazon.com)
CC: And while Logan steals the show and we can’t get enough of his belligerent love triangle with Jean and Scott, Kitty is really the center of the action that drives the plot. You introduce most of the X-Men themselves through her, in particular Heath Ledger’s Angel and Karl Urban’s Pyro, plus lots of good background cameos like Jubilee and Bobby Drake. Angel and Pyro in particular become important in her life as the near-literal Angel and Devil on her shoulder.
RD: Yes, we originally considered having Iceman as her “angel”, but the effects would have been costly to do right and the natural symbolism of Angel was so good that we went with it, even if it was a bit on the nose. Logan had a similar angel/devil relationship in Cyclops and Jean, the former symbolic of his jaded feelings of rejection that pushes him back and away from growth and Jean as the woman who can sense his inner heroism and pulls him forward.
CC: So, not just love triangles for their own sake.
RD: Perish the thought! Of course, making Angel into Kitty’s positive influence meant that we needed to age down Angel and gave him a slight tweak in backstory as another kid whose parents, this time very wealthy, rejected him when his wings started to grow. I rather liked the flashback scene where he keeps trying to cut off his own wings, but they keep growing back, if I do say so myself. He’s a literally angelic embodiment of the beauty of the human soul and he’s despised for it, and despises himself for it. Pyro has a similar story, but in his case, he is a very angry kid from an abusive home with a massive persecution complex, but he is also a charismatic bad boy that Kitty is becoming attracted to, even as Angel seems to have a crush on her in turn, of course. The three actors were just so fantastic together.
CC: What’s the X-Men without a little soap opera, right? But we of course get a bit of action tossed into the mix of introductions and exposition and expository montages when Logan is introduced to the Danger Room.
(Image source Cinema Blend)
RD: Yes, that was a fun little set piece and helped add some action into an otherwise rather inactive part of the early second act. And from a plot and story standpoint it gave the viewers a chance to experience not only how the X-Men interacted, but what their powers were and how they functioned as a team to overcome the many obstacles. We even get some mild slapstick as Logan, refusing to listen to Storm and Cyclops, charges in and gets thoroughly, and of course harmlessly, thrashed and burnt.
CC: But this burgeoning new safe space is thrown upside down at the midpoint when the school is visited by Magneto and Mystique. Kitty, urged by Pyro, uses her powers to spy on “the teachers” since all the students can tell that something is up. This results in her witnessing Mystique, played by the incredibly seductive Natasha Henstridge, and making blue look beautiful[6], trying to convince Nightcrawler to help her and Mags remove Stryker as a threat, but Kurt flat out refuses her plan. Kitty also witnesses Mags and Xavier arguing about what to do about Stryker, with Mags increasingly urging for “stronger action” and openly warning that they must “silence that dangerous fool, whatever it takes!” And that’s, of course, when Mags notices Kitty hiding in the walls.
RD: Yes, we wanted Kitty’s original sin as it were to be something very innocent like a young teen would do. And this little bit of misbehavior leads directly to Kitty and Pyro being approached by Magneto, who quickly recognizes Pyro’s attitude as useful, and more importantly he sees Kitty’s powers as (in a Lee impression) “exactly the skills that we need for our mission, since Wagner fails to appreciate the gravity of our cause.” Sorry, that was a terrible impression. Pyro is an easy sell, of course, because he’s got a lot of anger and resentment within him for Mags to exploit, but Kitty is a harder sell. Discovering her heritage as the grandchild of holocaust survivors, he uses his own experiences, specifically showing her his camp tattoo, to seduce her over the Brotherhood of Mutants, as he is naming his new splinter organization. She, of course, is swayed by his story and agrees to help in their mission, which she
believes is to break in to Stryker’s mansion and “plant a thought” in his head to make him stop his dangerous demagoguery. She in turn drags along a reluctant Angel.
CC: And we must say that Lee was just chilling there. You both sympathize with him yet are also terrified by him, and by how easily he manipulates these young people over to his radical cause, which strangely makes you understand why people are so terrified of mutants to begin with.
RD: Yes, we wanted to keep some grey in the narrative here, and Christopher is just such a talented actor in ways that a lot of people don’t fully appreciate. We’d fallen in love with his nuanced portrayal of Timothy Harmon in
Jurassic Park, the balance between the obsessive Dr. Frankenstein and the enthusiastic little boy who believed in flea circuses and wanted to create real magic. The truth is that even Xavier admits that Mags is right about Stryker and Senator Kelly, that they are an existential threat to mutant kind. He’s not a fool. Xavier is shown to be at a loss about how to deal meaningfully with the threat and he strategizes with Storm and Jean and Beast, hoping to find a peaceful way to show the world that the two are dangerous without inviting further risk, knowing that Mags’ violent strategy will only invite a violent counterstrike.
CC: Yes, Xavier’s “We must at all costs avoid a civil war!” contrasted with Mags’ “We are already
at war, whether you choose to see it or not, my friend.” Xavier, of course, has no idea what Mags’ plans are for the three young students, but he’s sure that it will be bad. But Magneto also realizes that Xavier will eventually learn of the plan, or at least use Cerebro to discern the students’ location, and try and stop him, so Mystique disguises herself as Storm and sabotages Cerebro, which leaves Xavier incapacitated when he tries to use it to find where the missing students went.
RD: Yes, we knew that we needed to take the X-Men out of the picture somehow while our teenagers are pulled into this plot.
CC: And said plot was also a chance to introduce the rest of the Brotherhood, in this case Timothy Spall’s Toad and Ron Pearlman’s Sabretooth. And while we all totally loved Pearlman as the tough-talking Sabes, Timothy Spall was just perfect, we must say, as Toad. Just revolting, sniveling, and both literally and figuratively slimy!
RD: Yes, and he had a blast and we had a blast with him.
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The Angel and Devil on Kitty’s shoulders (Image sources Pinterest and Marvel Database)
CC: Toad, of course, stays back with Angel and Pyro while Mystique and Kitty infiltrate Stryker’s mansion using their respective skills to bypass the security and Sabretooth stands guard. Naturally, Magneto was interested in Kitty for exactly this reason: her ability to be the perfect B&E specialist, even better than Kurt, who was his original plan with his teleportation power. And Toad lets slip to the teen boys that, in reality, the plan is not to “plant a thought” in Stryker, but to
assassinate Stryker and replace him with Mystique in disguise!
RD: Yes, this mission is really about power, not just self-defense. The Brotherhood is hoping to subvert and coopt the anti-Mutant fear and rage to their own aims, to “be the enemy’s general officer”. Mags hopes to sew chaos in order to set up the conditions that allow for the Brotherhood to secretly rule the world, “Homo Superior” in his natural place above the “less evolved”, and ironic echo to the very eugenicist evil that so harmed young Erik.
CC: “He who fights monsters…” and all. Angel, of course, isn’t having this and palms Toad’s slimy communicator and leaves, feigning nervous nausea. He flies up to the roof of the mansion and alerts Kitty over the comm just as she and Mystique, who is already disguised as Stryker and drawing a knife, confront Stryker, forcing Kitty to choose her side.
RD: Yes, and we (laughs) had to reshoot the scene where Angel uses the comm about twenty times since it kept slipping out of Heath’s hands from the Toad-slime, which was, amusingly enough, based on Astroglide! We kept a couple of the drops in for comedy and to add some tension. But anyway, yes, Kitty makes her choice.
CC: Which is naturally on the side of good. It was a beautifully executed scene as she charges Stryker, yelling for Angel to come get them and she grabs Stryker and phases them both out the wall. Stryker is screaming as they fall, but this is of course where Angel can swoop down to grab them as they fall and they fly into the night. Beautifully shot.
RD: Thank you. And thank our editor, Steve Rosenblum, for making that all flow so well!
CC: But, of course, the X-Men aren’t just sitting around idle here. While all of this is going on with the Brotherhood, back at the X School, Logan is arguing with Cyclops about what they can do to find the missing students, with Logan insisting that they’re with Magneto and instinctually certain that they will go after Stryker or Kelly, but Cyclops remains reluctant to take action against fellow mutants, particularly without Xavier there to give his wisdom.
RD: Yes, more drama as Storm interdicts between the two as they seem on the verge of a fight. We really wanted to show just how much the X-Men rely on Xavier’s leadership by taking him out of the picture, and it all falls back into arguments while an exasperated Beast gives up and goes to check on Xavier.
(Image source SensaCine)
CC: And while they all argue, Jean gets her big moment and goes to Cerebro and uses it herself, despite, of course, having not yet felt ready to earlier. It’s a big strain on her, but she finds the location of Kitty and Angel. Which, of course, leads them to an abandoned warehouse where the two teens have Stryker tied up, since despite literally saving his life, he’s threatening to have them arrested and is ignoring Kitty’s apologies, referring to her as a “monster.”
RD: Yeah, the irony is that if they let him go or he escapes he will probably get found and murdered by the Brotherhood, so they’re restraining him to save his life. This gives us a clear view of Stryker, that he’s truly in terror of Mutants, sure that they’ll drive “proper humans” to extinction. We played this directly off of Magneto’s lessons to Pyro, even using similar lines and camera angles, showing the similarities between the mutual fear and anger driving them.
CC: And Malcolm McDowell is, as always, mesmerizing. But of course, Angel convinces Kitty that they need to go back to Xavier, but the X-Men soon arrive anyway in the jet, setting us up for the big showdown.
RD: Yes, Storm takes charge and puts everyone, including Stryker, on the plane. She tells Stryker that he is not their prisoner and that they will release him once they get him safely away from the “angry fanatics”, assuring him, over his skepticism, that they mean him no harm. She’s really trying to use this as an opportunity to show Stryker that mutants are not his enemy.
(Image source What Culture)
CC: But, of course, Magneto arrives, having tracked the jet, and as they try to escape, he physically pulls the plane into a death spiral, forcing Storm to use her wind powers combined with Jean’s telekinesis to land them relatively safely on the outskirts of the city center. The X-Men emerge from the crashed jet and thus begins the big showdown between the X-Men and the Brotherhood that every comics fan had been waiting for! So many great fight phrases for the fans here: Wolvie charging Magneto and nearly getting physically ripped apart since his adamantium skeleton is, well, magnetic. Jean Grey saving him with her mental powers and Wolvie in turn saving her from a charging Sabretooth, who seems to recognize Logan, but not vice versa. Magneto holding off both Storm and Jean, tossing around cars or using them as lightning shields. Toad dodging Cyclops’s eye beams and using his tongue to steal his visor, leading to his unchecked eye beams carving holes into the sides of buildings and taking him and Angel effectively out of the fight as Angel flies the effectively blinded Scott to safety. Nightcrawler bamfing in and out dodging Pyro’s blasts. And all of this while panicked citizens run for cover…which of course does the cause of mutant kind no good. I mean, lots of exciting fan service here[7].
The disadvantages of Adamantium (Image source YouTube)
RD: Yes, we really worked closely with Brian [Henson] and the effects team and stunt coordinators to storyboard out and execute some exciting battles here that really showed the full range and potential of the powers. We also wanted to take the fight to many levels, with Toad chasing Kitty and Stryker across the rooftops and up and down through floors and walls, his agility and persistence against her abilities.
CC: And naturally Logan has to be the one to save the day here.
RD: Of course! He’s able to outwit Sabertooth even as he can’t overpower him, leading him into a powerplant and tricking him into slashing a fourteen-kilovolt transformer, zapping him unconscious. He then manages to sniff out Kitty and slice off Toad’s tongue just as he has Stryker in a choke hold with it.
CC: “What’s the matter, Toady? Wolv got your tongue?”
RD: (laughs) Yea, Joss strikes again!
CC: And they get away with Stryker, saving the life of the most ungrateful d-bag ever, who is still cursing the mutants. “These mutants saved your life!” as Kitty says. “Yes, from other mutants,” he replies.
RD: Yes, to him if mutants didn’t exist then he’d never have been in danger to begin with, right? For all of their hard work, Stryker “thanks” the X-Men by teaming with Senator Kelly to create an all-volunteer paramilitary “Sentinels” organization for citizens to “do their part” to track and contain the “mutant threat”, with lots of Blackshirt/Brownshirt vibes. And a newly-recovered Xavier exposits that they’ve teamed with Bolivar Trask of Trask Industries, so the comics fans will know that “proper” Sentinels will be right around the corner.
CC: Which as the title and trailers indicate will appear in X2.
RD: Naturally.
CC: Not to mention that while Logan sees Kitty safely enrolled in Xavier’s school, he himself is off to follow some directions that Xavier gives him about his past, leading him to what we can only assume is to the Weapon X facility.
RD: Well, no secrets for the upcoming film will be revealed by me!
CC: Of course. But let’s talk subtext and metatext here. Many have accused you of basing Stryker on Rush Limbaugh or Jerry Falwell, both of whom have been highly critical of Disney and both of whom threatened to sue Disney over the portrayal as slanderous. And much of
X-Men’s production occurred in 1995, the year of the DC terror bombing and the rise of domestic terror groups like the Sword of Liberty. How much did you consciously quote these real-life groups?
RD: None at all, actually. I can’t say whether we were subconsciously influenced here, or what Malcolm added consciously or otherwise, but none of those people ever came up in story discussions and the characters and their actions, including Stryker’s Old Testament fire & brimstone sermons and hateful appeals to violence over the TV, all date from comics produced in the ‘70s and early ‘80s. Chris Claremont based his characters off of the past actions of various violent bigoted fanatical political and religious leaders in history from Savonarola to Torquemada to Hitler to McCarthy and we added in a bit of Hassan Ngeze in Rwanda. I’m more curious to see [Limbaugh and Falwell] looking at a character based on real world war criminals and dangerous demagogues and seeing themselves in him.
CC: Yes, very interesting indeed. Now,
X1 broke $262 million worldwide[8] driven by the action, the effects, and more importantly the story. You got rave reviews from comics fans and mundanes alike. Ebert raved about its themes and drama.
RD: Yea, and the Box Office led to a lot of relief at the studio since by that point costs on
The Road to Ruin, which was filming in the next sound stage over, had spiraled out of control with the trade mags predicting disaster. They’d already pushed it to August and there was a lot of worry that we’d need to make up for the losses to keep the studio in the black that year.
CC: And we all know what happened there! Do you expect a similar response to and box office from
X2?
RD: (laughs) well, I’d like to hope!
CC: Richard Donner, thank you for speaking with Comics Craze.
RD: My pleasure, thank you!
CC:
X-Men 2: Rise of the Sentinels will be out in theaters next month.
[1] Cyclops visor tip to
@kirbopher15. (Oops! Sorry about the charred hole in the wall.)
[2] He started his career in our timeline as an assistant to Lauren Shuler Donner, Richard Donner’s wife. It seemed natural to bring him in here.
[3] Yes, a lot of the same story beats as our timeline’s Bryan Singer film since a lot of the same producers and writers are involved. Things will diverge from here. Note that it was Singer that changed the young POV character to Rogue since he felt that her inability to touch or be touched would heighten the themes of isolation, which they did even if the changes to her age and background annoyed some fans.
[4] Yes, sadly no Hugh Jackman Wolvie here, since he only got the job after Russel Crowe recommended him, and even then, he was a last-minute replacement for Dougray Scott. Here Crowe isn’t yet breaking out enough to be a major contender for the role, none the less recommend Jackman.
[5] Hat tip to Mrs. Khan for this casting.
[6] She will wear actual clothing, no rubber body suit pseudo-nudity, sorry pervos!
[7] Beast is still back at Xavier’s school, managing things and attending to the recovering Xavier.
[8] Roughly on par, adjusted for inflation, with the Bryan Singer film from our timeline.
