Broken Frontier

Hi, I'm Beth Davies-Stofka and I'm the new Library of Babble columnist.  Comics have long been considered the Rodney Dangerfields of literature and art.  Each week, we'll explore some aspect of comics, and we'll say, "Damn!  That's deep!"  In this column, comics will get the intellectual respect they deserve.

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I really like movie adaptations of superhero comics.  Consider 1978's Superman, an imaginative, wondrous, and poignant movie that brought the thrill of superpowers to life on the big screen.  In the case of superheroes with a 40, 50, or 70-year publishing history, it's not possible for movie adaptations to be faithful to the Byzantine complexity of the story lines.  This makes a good movie adaptation of a superhero story particularly special.  The movie can secure our suspension of disbelief and transport us into a marvelous world of superpowers and struggles, tragedy and victory, and remind us of what we love about superheroes on an elemental level, even while disregarding the details of the original stories.

The first two X-Men movies were fine film adaptations of the 40-year old characters.  Personalities, relationships, the details of each hero's origin, and the unveiling of their powers were changed from the comics when convenient, but the intensity of the story didn't change.  Unlike the villains in the Superman and Spider-Man movies, the villains of X-Men (2000) and X2: X-Men United (2003) are ordinary humans.  It is the collective ignorance, fears, and prejudices of ordinary people that give them the extraordinary power to cause the willful extermination of whole species.

The stakes are much higher in X-Men movies than they are in Superman or Spider-Man films.  The extermination of species at the hands of humans happens at a rapid pace on this planet.  Moreover, there is the historical problem of genocide. Nazis tried to eliminate Jews, Serbs committed atrocities against Albanians, and Hutus slaughtered Tutsis, to name a few.  The first two X-Men movies were so thrilling, and so frightening, because they built their story lines around the moral problem of extermination.  And we respond to the suspense and root for the heroes because we know in our very souls that the final solution is the worst kind of horror.

The movies were also very adult in nature, unlike the Superman and Spider-Man ones. The X-Men movies questioned whether a genocidal program should be confronted by any means necessary.  But they also confronted a second problem, which is how a self-righteous individual, dogmatically dedicated to his sense of truth, can subvert the openness and liberality of Western democracies to achieve his own goals.  In the first movie, both Magneto and Senator Kelly were the villains.  Magneto did it by deciding to attack a gathering of world leaders and turn them into mutants, quite obviously without their knowledge and consent, in a weird act of medical experimentation. Senator Kelly did it by using his position in the United States Congress to squash debate with dogmatic speeches that played on fear instead of reason.  In the second movie, William Stryker was the villain.  He planted an assassin in the White House and then used the ensuing panic to win extraordinary, and secret, powers from the President.  He used these powers to implement a plan to exterminate all mutants in one terrifying moment of obliteration.

In both films, the evil was clear, as was the necessity of confronting it.  Moreover, in both movies, the means of confrontation was clear.  In the first one, Magneto not only intended to turn all the world's leaders into mutants without their consent, but the X-Men knew that Magneto's device didn't work, and that the end result would be mass murder.  Moreover, Magneto intended to sacrifice the life of another mutant—Rogue—in order to complete his plan.  On the basis of several moral principles, including prohibitions against coercion, kidnapping, and murder, Magneto was a bad guy and had to be stopped.  And the way to stop him was for the X-Men to work together to rescue Rogue and stop Magneto's machine before it killed several hundred people.

In the second movie, Stryker subverted democratic processes in order to implement a final solution against mutants.  Again on the basis of several moral principles, including prohibitions against covert and illegal military operations, kidnapping, coercion, murder, and genocide, Stryker was a bad guy and had to be stopped.  And the way to stop him was for the X-Men and the Brotherhood to work together to rescue Charles Xavier and stop Stryker before he exterminated every living mutant.

In the aftermath of September 11th, we have become more aware of the vengeful ideologies portrayed in the first two X-Men movies.  Despite the fierce secrecy of the White House, Department of Defense and intelligence agencies, we have learned of illegal activities, including widescale domestic wiretapping, torture of foreign nationals in custody, and naming a CIA operative to the press in an act of revenge against a prominent critic.  Congress indulges in pandering and fearmongering by introducing bills that scapegoat gay Americans and illegal immigrants.  We can see the fictional Senator Kelly and William Stryker made real and that much more dangerous in post-9/11 America.

In that regard, it is interesting that X-Men: The Last Stand fails to take the strong moral stance of its two predecessors.  The movie begins on a promising note, with Professor Charles Xavier hosting a seminar on Mutant Morality 101.  He asks the students to ponder this question: what, if anything, should morally restrict a mutant's use of his or her powers?  Based on the intelligence of the first two movies, I was prepared for a probing interrogation of this question built into the plot of the movie. 

But it didn't happen.  If anything, the movie reflects the moral confusion of post-9/11 America.  The evil was not clear, nor was the necessity of confronting it.  Was it wrong to offer a cure?  The mutants are bitterly divided on this point.  The only certainty is that the cure could only be moral if it was taken voluntarily.  Once it was discovered that the cure had been weaponized, the final solution once again reared its horrifying head.  But it wasn't clear if anyone actually intended to force mutants to take the cure.  There were no Kellys or Strykers in this movie with obvious agendas.  So the X-Men didn't have anyone to unite against and confront.

Only Magneto played the role of the bad guy who had to be stopped.  X3: The Last Stand portrayed Magneto as a selfish and single-minded mutant, a disloyal man who betrayed his best friends and viewed his army with contempt.  His army of mutants was comprised of a criminal element, irrationally destructive and antisocial.  But the moral character of the X-Men was also somewhat questionable.  Charles Xavier had been manipulating Jean Grey's mind since childhood, and took over another man's body just to save his own life.  Logan gave no thought to the absent Scott as he engaged in heavy petting with Phoenix.  And Wolverine and Beast committed one of the more morally reprehensible acts of all three movies by "curing" Magneto.

The only character who had a clear moral agenda was Magneto, who raised an army to defend mutants against a possible act of genocide.  Was Magneto justified?  The movie barely asked the question, arguing instead that, since Magneto was behaving immorally towards his closest friends, he was the bad guy.  In other words, Magneto's character was the whole of the question, the justifications of his actions left unexplored.

But we can't put off a consideration of the profound moral challenges of the post-9/11 world forever.  In X3: The Last Stand, the moral fruit was ripe for the picking, but the movie left it on the vine.  As a result, it was weak-kneed and unsatisfying.  The Last Stand didn't take a stand.