The ‘X-Men’ come out

Origin of ‘X-Men’
Although Stan Lee’s first “X-Men” comic book appeared in 1963, the theme has been explored in plenty of other science-fiction stories and movies during the past century. Kurt Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron” (published in 1961) deals with a bright boy who stands out too much and is threatened with brain surgery. “Village of the Damned,” the 1960 movie based on John Wyndham’s “The Midwich Cuckoos,” turned a group of super-intelligent kids into threats to mankind.

Most of these stories owe a debt to Olaf Stapledon, the British writer who specialized in epic tales of martyred geniuses, especially the 1935 novel, “Odd John.” Such mid-1990s movies as “Powder” (another coming-out fable) and “Phenomenon” are among the most recent descendants.

“The Last Stand” sometimes suggests a mixture of “Village of the Damned,” in which the smart kids turn destructive, and “Odd John,” in which the telepathic title character and his fellow “wide-awakes” and “supernormals” are persecuted, forced to establish an island colony and hunted down by mercenaries.

“If your species discovers us, it will certainly try to smash us,” Odd John tells the merely human narrator. Rather like Magneto, Odd John is convinced that scapegoats are inevitable, and that “a nation, after all, is just a society for hating foreigners, a sort of super-hate-club.”

While the heterosexual Iceman’s confession merely suggests a gay rite-of-passage, Odd John considers same-sex intimacy part of his education.

When subtext becomes text
“The Last Stand” makes the gay subtext of “X2” more explicit. While the mutants fear the development of a “cure” for their “disease,” Storm says “there’s nothing to cure.” Indeed, the series sees the mutants as a link to a higher form of humankind.

“Mutation, it is the key to our evolution,” says the narrator at the beginning of the first “X-Men,” which was filmed in 1999 and 2000 and is set in the “not-too distant future.” The World Trade Center is still standing in a couple of shots, and the word “evolution” may be used without apology.

Magneto, the concentration-camp survivor, turns out to have little use for evolution or intelligent design. He’s convinced that “God works too slowly,” and that “we are the cure,” so he declares pre-emptive war. Skeptical that America will ever be the land of peace and tolerance he expected at the end of World War II, he becomes the thing he hates.

For all the confrontations between hostile characters, the “X-Men” franchise is at its best when it’s dealing with unique and seemingly impossible attractions. Perhaps the most poignant scene involves the teenaged Rogue, who can’t help delivering the kiss of near-death to those she touches, and the paternal Wolverine, whose considerable strengths cannot quite prevent her from overpowering him.

Their tentative embrace at the end of the first film is a uniquely enthralling moment. Spin-offs, sequels and prequels should treat it as a model.

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