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(Kevin Feige, who now runs Marvel Studios, was just establishing himself in the producer ranks on this movie.) While X-Men comics fan David Hayter eventually went from being a production assistant answering phones on the movie to having sole credit for writing it, 10 other writers (including the film’s director and one of its producers, Tom DeSanto) participated in script revisions throughout the project’s lifecycle.

When the powers that be weren’t giving notes or second-guessing the ones they already gave, they were finding corners to cut and pennies to pinch. Big enough to ensure that a lot of cooks would be in X-Men’s kitchen. It was their first Marvel comic property, and while its reported budget of roughly $75 million feels small compared to those of recent Marvel Studios/MCU fare, it was a big deal then. “And that’s where the idea for that opening scene came from.”Īs you can imagine, this was not the easiest of sells for the studio execs over at 20th Century Fox. “The movies I’ve worked on, like X-Men or The Wolverine, you have to tether them to - no matter how fantastic they are - you have to make sure they exist in a very real world,” McQuarrie told me in a 2015 interview that was never published. I can see why they hurt." You know what’s motivating these horrendous acts.Īccording to McQuarrie, that was the plan. The best villains, even in comic book movies, are ones whose actions you definitely deplore - but you can’t help but think "I can see where they are coming from. Visually, the bleak opening scene introduces us and the uninitiated not only to the movie’s villain and his unique power set in a very economic, easy-to-grasp way, it also does so through a very empathetic lens. It's a world that the X-Men will, time and time again, be forced to save from threats stemming from both mutant and non-mutantkind.
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Thematically, the scene perfectly underscores the movie’s big ideas, as Professor Xavier’s mutants struggle in the modern day (of 2000) to carve out their space in a world full of humans that fear and hate them. The boy gets a rifle butt to his head for his troubles - a permanent emotional scar inflicted upon him by humans who will one day see him as both too inferior to matter but too dangerous to ignore. In protest, in a scared rage, the helpless boy reaches out and, to the shock of the guards prying him away, twists the barbed wire fence into uselessness.

Erik displays his abilities, seemingly for the first time, when Nazis separate him from his parents. At least not one worth 20 years of fandom’s attention.Īudiences are first introduced to the big-screen world of the X-Men through the eyes of a young Erik Lehnsherr (Brett Morris), aka Magneto, a mutant with the power to manipulate metal to his will forced to see the world and humanity during one of its darkest and inhumane times. Without it, it’s likely there would be no franchise.

In fact, the scene would once again open another future X-Men film, further solidifying that McQuarrie’s “small” contribution to the franchise would serve as its foundation’s most essential cornerstone. The bold, can’t-look-away opening scene made it to the final cut, and in doing so set the tone for nearly two decades worth of X-Men movies. That opening sequence - written by one of the screenplay’s uncredited writers, Christopher McQuarrie ( Mission: Impossible - Fallout) - kicked off the Marvel mutants franchise with a scene set during the Holocaust at the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944 Poland, which certainly added to the risk. Those were among the first words in the script for the first live-action X-Men movie, which was one of Hollywood’s riskiest bets at the time and turns 20 years old today. “Rows and rows of fences topped with barbed wire all designed to create a separator for the thousands of Jews who pour through each day.”
