X-Men (2000)

On this episode of Movie Smash!, we discuss 2000's X-Men directed by Bryan Singer and starring Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman, Ian McKellen. The film takes place in a world where mutants and are discriminated against, two groups form for an inevitable clash: the supremacist Brotherhood, and the pacifist X-Men.

Hosts: Christopher Roberts, Jeremy Parmentier and Fergel Amayo

Edited By: Christopher Roberts

Produced By: Off Panel Creations, LLC

Follow the show! Website | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter

Christopher Roberts and Off Panel Creations: Website | Instagram | Facebook

Fergel Amayo and Gotham Night Comics: Website | Instagram | Facebook

Jeremy Parmentier and Retrovania: Website | Instagram | Facebook

To advertise on our podcast, please reach out to [e-mail]

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Okay everybody, it's Michael E. Cullen II.

(00:02):
And I'm Sesame and Carter from the All Too Real 2 podcast.
We're passionate about movies, TV, and pretty much all things pop culture.
Dive into the chaos of failed sitcoms,
direct-to-video sequels, and the quirky realms of cinema and TV.
Join us every Thursday for your dose of All Too Real 2 entertainment.
We'll guide you through debates like whether Howard the Duck qualifies as a superhero.

(00:26):
Ponder if Larry the Cable Guy could be the new Rock or Schwarzenegger.
Discover if some shows and movies should have stayed in the cutting room.
Ever heard of a sitcom featuring that dictator with the funny mustache?
Well, we watched it.
We're dedicated to unraveling the peculiarities of pop culture, sometimes with awesome guests.
So, if you're into the eccentric world of pop culture,

(00:48):
listen and subscribe to All Too Real 2,
available wherever you find podcasts,
and on the age of radio.
We have to give non-nerds credit.
Blue vomit all over Japan.
Absolutely bizarre.
Sweet mother Jesus, what happened to those?

(01:10):
Roadhouse.
Oh my God, you know what, let's move on.
Hello and welcome to movies.
Smash.
Hello and welcome to Movie Smash,
the show where we dive headfirst into comic book movies outside the MCU.

(01:31):
If you're new to the show, thanks for joining us.
If you've been here before, you know the drill.
Each episode, we're going to smash a movie who sourced materials from a graphic novel or a comic.
Is it worth revisiting?
Should it be forgotten?
Let's find out.
This is Movie Smash.
I'm one of your hosts, Chris Roberts.
I'm the founder of All Panel Creations.
With me today, I have Jeremy Parmentier.
Hi, this is Jeremy Parmentier of the Retrovaniacs podcast.

(01:52):
I was also shunned by my friends when I became a teenager,
but not because I had mutant powers.
And Fertile Mouth.
I don't even know how to pop that.
This is Fertile Mouth Gotham Knight comics.
We get our nerd on.
And yes, we believe we are the future of our human race
because we are homo superior, which is our mutant love.

(02:12):
So let's get into mutant love.
And our movie tonight, if you could figure it out, is 2000s The X-Men,
where it all started basically, starting Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman,
and Ian McKellen, directed by Bryan Singer.
Magneto believes that a war is brewing between mutants and the rest of humanity.
If no one is equipped to oppose them, humanity's days could be over.

(02:35):
You're a mutant.
The whole world out there is full of people that hate and fear you,
and you're wasting your time trying to protect them.
Logan, you sure you're on the right side?
I have made the first move that is all they know.
He could wipe out everyone in New York City.
Logan, help us.
So guys, before we jump into the movie, guys, we have, this is our first episode we've been on

(02:58):
together, just the three of us, in some time since Batman Returns.
And he has returned.
Yeah, it's been a little bit time.
We had a lot of guests on.
A lot of them are really good, I think.
Hopefully, you guys have been keeping up with the episodes we've been putting out.
So what was the favorite episode that you were not a part of that you got a chance to listen to?
This is a Johnny on the Spot.
I would say that White Out was an interesting episode.

(03:21):
I got to listen to that, and I thought that was cool.
And obviously, I'm still scarred by Delmorte there.
Even though I was in that episode, that scars me.
I feel like I was in Alibaba Experiments.
Yeah, I felt bad.
I missed all the ones that were kind of based on an anime or manga adaptation until the
Guyver episode recently.
So I liked Old Boy.
I thought Old Boy was a great episode.
I was sad it was not on it.

(03:43):
Yeah, Old Boy was a pretty scarring episode for Fergal.
I think you still write me letters about that.
No, I'm going to say it was Delmorte Delmorte.
That was much more scarring.
Old Boy was scarring in its sense because it made sense.
And then it got to the end of the movie.
I'm like, what am I watching?
But Delmorte, that still jumps up into my waking dreams.

(04:04):
It just gets at me sometimes.
So guys, the X-Men.
It's obviously a huge franchise.
And I'm assuming you knew about the X-Men before you saw the movie.
So what was your introduction to those characters?
The comics.
We are talking about...
So when we talk about the evolution of Marvel, we talk about Spider-Man,

(04:25):
we talk about Fantastic Four, and then we talk about X-Men.
These were 1963, I'd say bronze, silver age books.
We're talking about the three, the kind of the trinity of Marvel's entire setup right here.
Right.
I mean, you can seriously sense the juice.
I mean, even Disney's gotten to the point where they realized the next entire wave of their

(04:46):
movie enterprises built upon the X-Men.
So yeah, I mean, I was familiar with them for years.
I love these guys.
Yeah, same thing.
I wasn't as big of a fan with X-Men.
That was my brother's comic arc, but I read all the X-Men books he bought.
Again, I kind of kicked the more traditional superhero books and he had kind of the
I guess the darker edge edgy books.
X-Men was kind of his least edgy book, but I did read those.

(05:08):
I liked them.
So I knew these characters well before I saw this movie, which I did see at the time.
Unlike most of these where I see them today and I'm like, yeah, I didn't see this before.
I did see this one and I knew the characters even before then.
Yeah, my introduction to the X-Men was actually the current tune from the 90s.
I love that thing.
Except the last season.
The last season was terrible.
So Jeremy, you sort of mentioned you saw this movie in theaters.
Fergal, did you see this in theaters when it came?

(05:29):
I'm assuming you did.
I did.
And this is one of the very few movies that I own the steelbook on.
My wife bought this for me when we were dating.
This is a steelbook movie.
She bought the whole damn Kit and Cabool for me.
So I have literally I went through my movie shelf and depped up the dust off it and was
like, wow, that's a steelbook here.
Look, I should just actually put it on the screen and be like, look, Chris, you're not

(05:51):
dealing with the steelbook.
Yeah, I saw this in theaters too.
And I actually do not own the steelbook of this movie.
And that was before my when I started collecting and those things are so limited that once
they're out, they're gone.
So Fergal, you mentioned a little bit about Marvel and the history of X-Men with Marvel.
What do you have any sort of comic book lore for us when it comes to this?
Yeah, I mean, so I mean, this is I mean, it's OK.

(06:13):
We talk about some I'll break it into kind of like just a quick three parts.
One, top five most valuable comic book, right?
So X-Men number one still to this day gets well over 50 to $100,000.
It is one of the top five books released in 1963.
The legendary Jack Kirby and the legendary Stanley.
I say legendary because both Jack Kirby did DC and Marvel.

(06:36):
So he's obviously incredibly brilliant.
And Stanley wrote this.
This initially came out X-Men number one picked up again, you know, and they ran a
I think 66 issue run.
Then Chris Claremont got onto this series, which he's the one that sort of blew it up,
if you will.
So it's kind of Chris Claremont's baby once he blew it up.
And it's been it's been picked up by so many different incredible artists have made

(07:00):
their bones on this.
Todd McFarlane, I mean, still, it's the changeover.
If you look at the original X-Men, Bill Stenowitz is the one that changed it to its most
current kind of cover iteration.
He, you know, from the from the first Jack Kirby joins to it.
So I mean, it's it's one of the top all these characters are some of the top characters
in all of comic book history.
And yeah, it spawned off countless movies, countless shows, countless games.

(07:24):
And really, just, you know, I mean, it was supposed to.
Here's the funny thing about this comic.
It was supposed to be Stan Lee's answer at the time.
He's very much a beatnik and his answer for what he considered to be racial racial undertones
of the day.
And so this was this way of addressing that in a time when it was not able to be addressed.

(07:45):
If this is your first time joining us, just a heads up, we'll be discussing the plot of
this movie.
And with that, discuss some elements that might be considered spoilers.
But let's be honest with yourself, if you have not seen this movie by now, you probably
were going to.
So consider yourself warned.
Jeremy, want to run it through the plot of this?
Sure.
It's it's thankfully a brief origin of not just X-Men, but the mutants in general in

(08:06):
the evolution of the human race.
It went over about as well as you'd expect.
Anytime something new happens, people freak out and they did.
So as a result, there's kind of two different opposing mutant forces.
There's Professor X and what we say are the X-Men, the good mutants and Magneto and the
evil mutants who are trying to either usher in an age of harmony with humanity or one
that wants to destroy humanity to try to survive.

(08:27):
And so as part of this war, we're introduced to Wolverine and Rogue, kind of at the start
of the movie, who are brought into the middle of this conflict because Magneto has a plan
for them somehow.
And of course, the X-Men are stepping into one, you know, kind of bring them into the
fold, but also get them before Magneto does.
I was happy that it wasn't two hours of explaining how each character happened and then one big
battle.

(08:48):
It's nice that it is kind of this overarching story that is a good story, but also introduces
all those concepts.
Wow.
Great explanation, Jeremy.
Very well detailed, my friend.
For this movie, guys, obviously the X-Men have had multiple iterations of them.
And I think the most recent one before this movie came out was actually the animated
series.
Were you guys fans of the animated series?

(09:08):
Yes, of course.
Of course.
I think the only one that I was a little bit was X-Men Evolution, which was another, it
was an anime based animated series.
I wasn't a fan of that one.
That was the one that was kind of went sideways.
But the 97 was a brilliant run of the X-Men.
The remake, the most recent edition, really took it to another level.

(09:29):
I mean, there are so many characters ever since when they first created this to where
we get to now.
And I think Jeremy hit it right on.
It introduced iconic characters who still exist today.
Obviously Wolverine, Patrick Stewart, Ian McCallin.
These guys are still out around there today.
But also I think it just kind of carried through to the plot and it moved rather briskly through

(09:49):
the plot.
It was actually only an hour and a half long, if I'm not mistaken, wasn't it?
It was just over an hour and a half.
I think it was about an hour and 40 or so.
I think there's actually a two hour cut out there somewhere.
Probably in the Steelbook.
So this movie, unlike several that we've been covering, is actually an ensemble movie.
As you guys mentioned, the X-Men have always been more about the team versus each individual

(10:12):
character, though they all have their stories.
In this version of the X-Men, what was one of your favorite characters?
It was brilliant to see what Hugh Jackman looked like.
Have you ever seen the behind the scenes of Hugh Jackman on this movie?
So up until this point, Hugh Jackman was a relative unknown.
He didn't do a lot of big things.
He did some things.
He had some actors.

(10:32):
It's interesting to look at him as when he's in the cage, he's fighting, he's still got
the hair on his chest.
That's something rather interesting.
It reminds me of the original Crocodile Dundee type scenario.
And then he like switches and changes over.
And so it's interesting to see the progression of some of these characters.
I don't even think it to this point was Patrick Stewart still doing, was he had already picked

(10:55):
up on the next generation Star Trek at this point or was he?
Because I think he was, but I'm not sure.
It was after that.
It was after that.
So he was still relatively decent.
I think Ian McClellan had done some pretty decent things as well.
This is before the Lord of the Rings, if I'm not mistaken.
But yeah, it was interesting to see the evolution of even Halle Berry.
And obviously we got Ray Park, which was I think a hell of a get for Toad.

(11:17):
And I cannot remember the guy's name who played Sayrochus, but thank God he came back in the
last one.
Yeah, I was actually impressed with, I mean, I knew I would, I thought Professor X was
casted perfectly.
Same with Magneto.
I thought both of them were great.
I was surprised at how good Halle Berry was at Storm and how good Storm was as a character.
Storm in the comics, I mean, when I read them with the comic book, I thought they were
like, I mean, when I read them at the time, I've read them more recently and she is super

(11:40):
powerful.
But in the comics, I never thought she had like that much going on, just that she could
fly and she could control lightning or like, that's fine.
But in this movie, they really take that character and ramp it up.
And I think she does a great job as Storm.
Yeah.
Yeah, the casting all around was really good.
I mean, there's little tidbits out there that are funny.
You mentioned, you know, did I watch the behind the scenes?
And of course, the answer to that question is yes.

(12:01):
Hugh Jackman didn't even know much about, he didn't know the comics at all.
And it's funny when he before come after being cast for it, I think there were three weeks
in the filming at that point, he saw Wolverine.
He didn't even know what a Wolverine was.
So he thought it was some sort of wolf.
So he tried to make his character more wolf-like early on.
And the director, of course, Bryan Singer was like, no, you have no idea who this character

(12:21):
is because, you know, a Wolverine is actually just a giant weasel.
He is a giant weasel, but an indestructible weasel.
A mean, mean weasel.
In my mind, I really can't see anyone else playing Professor Exon.
No, Patrick Stewart.
He did such a really good job with it.
He's the only way he carries himself.
But he plays relatively the same character in all his shows.
You mentioned Star Trek and he had been doing Star Trek for many years by that point.

(12:44):
But he basically was, he felt like Jean-Luc Picard in a wheelchair, which no complaints.
He did a really good job.
I enjoyed it.
And Magneto, the dynamic between those two, it was really just spot on.
That's probably, I think, where you have to, if you're looking at the most important interaction
in the entire movie, that's got to be between those two brothers, right?

(13:05):
Because they are brothers.
And we don't always get the, I mean, the comics give you a deep dive into the explanation.
And the newest X-Men 97 run really dives into their first meeting together.
But if you, I mean, their interactions together are what set up the kind of the tension between
the Brotherhood of Mutants and X-Men.

(13:25):
Oh, without it.
The X-Men story is really a story of those two characters and their constant struggle
between one another.
And effectively, they want the same thing.
They just want to go about a different way.
As I said, it's a Malcolm X, Martin Luther King comparison.
Reluctant enemies, friends still first, but reluctant enemies.
Now, one of the biggest characters they made a change on was Rogue.

(13:47):
How did you feel about that change?
When you say change, she's younger in this iteration.
Yes.
She's much younger, Anna Paquan.
And obviously, she's not raised as a Brotherhood of Mutants.
She's not raised by Mystique.
There are some certain things that came out.
But I always thought that Rogue overplayed it, overdramatized.
I mean, so if you look at the students, they tried to run through and give you kind of

(14:09):
a mix of the students.
I thought Kitty Pryde.
Honestly, the coolest student was Kitty Pryde walking through the walls.
But that was a completely different Kitty Pryde.
But I think Anna Paquan, it wasn't until days of future past that she stepped into Rogue.
I mean, can I just be a plonous spot?
Like the rest of it, she's just screaming a lot.
She is, but I think that character, you need that something to tie in.

(14:30):
Why have we been brought into this war between Professor and Magneto?
You don't know anything about Wolverine's past necessarily.
I mean, everyone did.
But let's assume you somehow walked off a bus from another planet and you didn't know
who Wolverine was, you didn't get a lot of his background, but you didn't need it.
But you did get Rogue's kind of awakening as a mutant.
And now she's been brought into this school and all this.

(14:52):
She's kind of pushing forward the narrative and the background of this fight for mutants
between these two brotherhoods.
So I didn't hate the character in this version.
But I didn't like, at first I was like, why is Rogue so young?
It does work.
But that was also when I first watched it.
Even the first time, I was like, well, that's a weird choice.
Why would you change the character?
I was like, well, that's a weird choice, why would you change what I'm used to seeing,

(15:14):
which is Rogue being older?
And where's Gambit?
Where's everything else?
It was like, OK, no, it works for this story.
At the time, I remember not liking it much on this watch through.
It didn't bother me nearly as much.
Fun fact from X-Men 2 until Wolverine and Deadpool, that dude wanted to play Gambit.
They wanted to recruit Gambit.
They could not find one person.

(15:36):
And Channing Tatum, when he got cocked up in this role, sort of like Ryan Reynolds,
you know, they just could not find one person to portray an accurate Remy LeBeau.
Yeah, well, they actually had some ideas for Gambit.
Gambit was actually in the original cut of this movie.
We can get more of that down the road if you want.
But they removed his character.
He was going to be like one of those cameo characters in the background at the school.
But they thought there would be too much explaining necessary to explain his powers

(15:59):
to the audience, so they didn't keep him.
He was going to be on the basketball court playing basketball and make the basketball blow up.
But they didn't know how to show that effectively.
So people were like, oh, I understand why it's working.
It'd just be, wow, the basketball ball blew up.
Yeah, I think the rogue in this character really is,
Jeremy, I think you hit on it, the substitute for the audience.
She's there to help us see the world of the X-Men from fresh eyes.

(16:21):
Because even though Wolverine doesn't know these people, he's been living for a very long time.
He's been living with these powers for a long time.
Her, it's a fresh set of eyes to everything.
And though I'm not a fan of her character in the movie,
she does feel like a teenage girl if she just found out she had superpowers.
Because I have two teenage girls and that's what happens.

(16:41):
My brother has two teenage girls as well.
Is it really as bad as he says it is?
Yeah, well, they go in waves.
Like my oldest is past that.
My youngest is just entering that.
And it's just, it's hormones.
It's all that kind of stuff.
And it's crazy.
So I can understand her portrayal of this person.
Thing I always said, I thought it was interesting was I always knew,
you know, Rogue is having the ability to fly, super strength.

(17:04):
Because she steals that from Miss Marvel, sorry, Captain Marvel, right?
She steals a lot of power from, I mean, she's actually stolen.
And so her power set is not only, you know, and you hit it right there,
because she can take power, she can also hold them.
She gets to a point where she can catalog them
and she can pull them out at different points.
So she's actually an Omega level mutant.

(17:25):
So I mean, I was just, you know, what we saw, even Scott Summers, I mean,
he's an Omega level mutant.
These guys are, you know, what they show in the movie.
I mean, Wolverine is certainly an Omega level mutant.
So I mean, you know, you're looking at the major power set of the mutants
with what we saw in the movie.
With Rogue, I was looking, I was trying to figure out why.

(17:45):
And I was watching a documentary and Bryan Singer was talking about it.
About how the reason she doesn't have the ability to, you know,
those are the powers she stole from Captain Marvel
and put Captain Marvel in a coma.
There was like a storyline of the cartoon about that.
Only reason I know it.
And the reason why she doesn't have those powers here is because at that point,
this is when Marvel had sold off their rights to different people.

(18:06):
And the Captain Marvel rights were not held at Fox.
So they had to remove that from Rogue's storyline to be able to explain it.
It's also interesting to see what Marvel looked like at that point.
That was 2000.
So that was just before they almost went out of business.
Right.
Like that was literally, you know, you may not, if you just kind of find some
articles at that point, they were pretty much, they did a Ford Motor Company play.

(18:27):
They like mortgaged and sold off everything they owned to just keep their company alive.
Oh, yeah.
Obviously, like I said, the X-Men is an ensemble group and
they've had different members come and go.
But in this origin story, who would you have liked to have seen on that team that wasn't there?
Colossus.
Beast would have been another one.
I would have just liked to see the Kirby, Stan Lee guy.

(18:50):
I mean, if we're talking about we're introducing the X-Men.
Now, I get it.
From a time perspective, you could not put all these characters in there
and make them make sense.
I mean, even as I was doing the math in my head, like, so they show the first scene in the movie
in 1944.
That's when because that fit perfectly into when the Hellfire Club comes up and, you know,

(19:10):
Sebastian Shaw.
Okay, but it's 1944.
It's 2000.
So you do the math and you had this 50.
How old do you think he was in 1944?
Probably 12.
Right.
Maybe something like that.
So now you got a 68 year old man in 2000.
That's how old he's supposed to be in 2000.
So I guess his magnetic powers keep him young.
Well, he could be young spry 60 something.

(19:30):
Yeah, but remember those movies went on for an additional 20 plus years.
So that would make him 100.
So I guess he has to be his magnetic powers keep him kind of.
Once people get to adulthood in comics, they don't age past that point.
Unless there's a special comic that does it and they put old man in front of it.
Old man Logan, right?
That's the only time you age.

(19:51):
I love it.
This movie, it was the beginning of the X-Men series, I guess.
There are 10 total X-Men movies that are considered part of the X-Men universe.
And this was the beginning.
This was the origin for it.
And it's the only one that didn't pull from other comic book stories.
Yes.
This movie opens up on a concentration camp scene.
How'd you feel about that scene?

(20:12):
Great way to explain Magneto.
And again, if I'm being just a nerd, right?
When you go on 24 years, kind of looking at it.
Because I watched it through Disney Channel T.
Because obviously, I've seen this movie so often.
I didn't even need to watch it to go through this entire movie.
I've seen it that often.
But I wanted to watch it again.
And what I do see is that the directors over the last 24 years have paid homage.

(20:35):
And there were scenes that picked up exactly where that first scene came.
Again, that Sebastian Sasse.
Even though it's a completely different Magneto, it's a completely different movie.
I can see exactly how that fit in from that first scene.
So in that respect, I thought it was cool.
I wrote in the notes, I love the concentration camp intro, which makes me sound terrible.
But I think it makes sense for the X-Men.

(20:56):
If you're going to talk about someone who has been twisted by seeing what the worst of humanity is,
you can't get much worse than a concentration camp.
That's pretty much it.
So having it start there, it makes sense for the time.
It makes sense to show why Magneto is already so hell-bent on it.
No, we're never going to be coexisting peacefully with humanity.
It's not going to happen.
We have to force it.
Because he's seen what happens if you just let things occur.

(21:19):
So I thought that was a good way to start the movie.
Yeah, I think it really set the tone because the whole point of the movie,
the series, I think really is about humanity coming to terms with that they're going to be,
they're the past.
Evolution is now occurring and leaving them behind.
And they have one or two things they can do, either accept that or try to find a way to stop that.
Which is exactly why 1963, and that's exactly, I mean, if you ever go back to any documentary,

(21:46):
where Stan Lee talks about his vision, this is exactly what he was aiming for when he created
X-Men because he had riding on the success of Spider-Man.
He was riding on the success of the Fantastic Four, the nuclear family,
that he had to go with this one because he wanted to shake the status quo.
I love the intro of Wolverine.
I just, I think, you know, when I watch it again, it reminds me of Roadhouse.

(22:11):
But a twisted Roadhouse.
Yeah, of course.
And the fact that I brought Roadhouse into this, both of you, you're welcome.
So it just reminds me of what, like, he gets his ass, he's in the cage, he's getting his ass kicked.
And then he just stops and he hits him with his hand and it's like,
oh, and he just bangs him across the head twice and the guy falls to the ground.
I'm like, that is so with the cigar, the whole nine, and then he's got the blades and he's,

(22:36):
look, I mean, he did that.
He had the growl, because if you go back and all the movies, the growl had to be right.
He caught it right in 2000, which is absolutely phenomenal.
First off, I think Roadhouse has come up in a previous episode of ours.
I do not remember what that episode was.
Every single episode, we actually talk about Roadhouse.
There's no reason not to.

(22:56):
It's the third act of our show.
We always bring up Roadhouse and now it all is interconnected to Roadhouse.
The other thing was that scene that you just brought up, the bar scene right there,
that's the same bar that the concentration camp was filmed at.
Wait, there's no bar in the concentration camp.
They're on the outside of the bar. That's where they were all stuck in that little
corral area. All that was filmed outside that same bar.

(23:16):
Oh, wow. They were saving some money.
You got to love how these producers come up with how these location people come up with,
oh, we can film three different scenes here and it will not look the same at all.
Wow. That's impressive.
What I liked was all the scenes with, part of the plot of this movie is that
Magneto's found a way to force a mutation in regular humans to make them, quote,

(23:38):
also mutant brothers.
Now, it's not stable and there's a lot of problems with it, but when all the scenes
involving after the senator that they capture and do this process on is slowly falling apart,
I love all of that. We talked about it for the Guyver, but it's got a body horror feel to it
and I think that's really cool.
Yeah, he just turns that puddle at the very end.

(23:58):
Yeah, when you can watch him dissolve and it's like when he first tried to squeeze through the
bars and he becomes this gooey liquid man, I'm like, okay, this is cool.
Well, I do remember when I first saw this movie, I was wondering what villain or character he was
there trying to turn him into. Is it a weird version of the blob? Where is this thing going?
I don't think it's supposed to be any character.

(24:18):
It's a random mutation. Mutations are random. You don't know how they're coming about you,
but his plant is quite a genius, but he doesn't want to die doing it.
Of course, he's willing to sacrifice all the other players except himself, which actually,
there's a scene at the very end with the chess scene between Patrick Stewart and Ian.
Yep.

(24:39):
The little tip that came up from watching the documentary on it, the two of them did not know
how to play chess before that movie. No idea. They had two chess masters come in and actually
play the game for them. When it's zoomed in, it's not them, it's just chess players playing it.
The style Ian is using, or Magneto for those who don't know, the actors, he's using a very

(25:00):
aggressive style. You can see he has sacrificed things like five or six pawns by that point of
the game, but Patrick, or Professor X, he's only lost one person the entire time. He's playing very
defensively in that game. It's actually just showing the way they take their philosophy of
this evolution and how they manage their people into that chess game too.

(25:22):
Magneto is very aggressive. He's willing to sacrifice everybody but his king. Professor
X does not want to lose anybody, so he's defending everything.
I will give you one more thing. X2 flows perfectly from X1.
What did you guys think of the Mystique Wolverine fight?
She was a little bit more powerful than I would have thought. That's Wolverine. I expected him to

(25:43):
have slit her up into a thousand pieces, so she's fast. I thought she's always been powerful, but
she's not more overpowered than Wolverine. But in this one, they made her graceful, they made her
powerful. I think, again, I'm going to sound kind of dumb here, but there's been a lot of movies
made. They have, even through the Jennifer Lawrence Mystique days, they kind of kept the same level

(26:04):
of gracefulness that Rebecca Romain-Stamos, who is so hot, by the way, was in that movie. She was in
the chair for eight hours to get that makeup. She's completely naked, except for the makeup.
The amount of time and energy it put to create those prosthetics for her, it just layered on top
of her. She was interviewed about it. She goes, oh, she doesn't feel like she's naked or anything

(26:24):
like that, because it feels like a full set of clothes, except the fact because everything's
held on by adhesive. It does not protect you from the cold whatsoever.
Not at all.
I did not. I mean, it was fine to watch at the time. I was not a fan of that fight. I think
one of the downsides of this movie is, other than Magneto, the other mutants that you meet that are
bad are just, oh, they're real strong. They're fast. They're real strong. She has the ability

(26:45):
to morph into all these other people. That's interesting. She's got the ability to morph into
all these other people. That's interesting. But we also made her real strong. They're just real
strong. Okay. The rest of the good mutants, other than Wolverine, don't have that level of strength.
You're not seeing Cyclops all of a sudden bench pressing a guy, but for whatever reason,
all these other characters are like, all the bad guys are either super strong, like Sabretooth,

(27:07):
where he's just literally like the Hulk almost, or you've got ninjas. I thought it was kind of
uninventive, but it works. I guess you're limited by what you can conceivably do with effects and
you have. So in the same way that we didn't have Colossus, I was okay on this view through of like,
okay, we have a small number of mutants. Although Toad, admittedly not the biggest X-Men fan

(27:28):
beforehand. I don't know if Toad was one of the original super villains in X-Men. It was not one
I would have picked off of a chart at the time. I didn't know Toad at all. So I was surprised there.
But yeah, I mean, it's fine. But I thought that was another fight where it's kind of like, I get
that they're trying to do the thing where now they've split up enough where you don't know who's the
real person, who's Mystique or whatever. That was kind of cool. But the long fight with Wolverine,

(27:50):
they could have done something else. I mean, Sabretooth is there. They could have used him
for that. And you know, let me just add that piece. If you look at the newest, so Ryan Reynolds is
such a brilliant strategic thinker about what he's trying to do with his franchise. If you look at
that movie and you see that one fight 25 years later between those two characters, the amount of

(28:12):
excitement around that fight was probably at a knife's edge. You could cut the tension in that
fight. Yeah, personally for that fight between Mystique and Wolverine, the sort of who's who,
that's, you know, obviously it's a cliche. It's been done before. But you're right, Jeremy,
she is a ninja effectively in this movie. But I do like the fact that the way we find out who's who
is Wolverine cuts off her claws because hers are obviously steel or adamantium. So they just cut

(28:38):
right through. A little interesting thing about that though, that was actually the last shot
Rebecca did for the movie. She wasn't in most of the movie, obviously, but that was her last day
of filming. So to celebrate, she brought a bottle of tequila for everyone to drink and have fun with
for the last night. But because she had just filmed that part, she got sick and threw up
blue vomit all over Hugh Jackman. Perfect. Well, it is Rebecca of a mainstay most. I don't know

(29:04):
how mad I would be. I had a feeling you might say that. Like, you know, you might actually enjoy the
blue vomit. No, no, I wouldn't enjoy any vomit vomit. I'm a sympathetic vomiter. So if I'm gonna
come flying my way, somebody else better get out of the way because it's going out the door.
How did you guys feel? Obviously, the movie ends for those who have not watched it, which would be
very surprising to find anyone who hasn't. The movie ends inside the Statue of Liberty. Magneto

(29:30):
has converted the torch into this device that will turn everyone at this UN event, this UN gala into
mutants. How do you guys feel about that final scene with all the brotherhood coming together
and the X-Men coming together for one big final battle? A little over, again, to Jeremy's point,
the bad guys seemed a little bit more overpowered than the good guys. But then Wolverine,

(29:52):
you get to see him kind of stick his claws through himself. I thought that was dope.
I thought, you know, doing the thing where he spins around and comes back after Sabretooth,
I thought, was it Sabretooth or who do you come back with? It was Sabretooth. I thought that was
cool. Yeah, I mean, like certain things were good. I thought when Rogue took his powers,
he opened up way too many wounds. I don't remember him getting sliced like that. Did he get sliced

(30:14):
all those different ways? No, I think it's more about not that he's taking on more wounds,
it's that his body is sort of pulling in on itself. His skin gets so tight and dried,
it starts cracking on its own. Well, the face wound he has is from the very beginning when he
goes through the car and they have the car crash and she sees him heal. It's the same spot. I think
that's the reason for that to kind of show like, you know, yes, he has super healing, but this stuff

(30:37):
is still healing in the background and not having it means these other things that would have been,
you know, fatal wounds may reopen at this point. I think it was a throwback more than anything else.
Now, I gotta say, there's one wound Hugh Jackman probably recovered from in that scene where he's
that six foot jump, but he was like flinging off the Statue of Liberty. He was in a giant harness
for that and his testicles got caught in the harness. Oh, sweet mother Jesus. What happened

(31:02):
to those? They weren't adamantium. They were not adamantium. Although would you really have
functional testicles if they were adamantium or could you just use them as deadly weapons?
That's why they're called balls of steel.
I'm just thinking out loud. How would you make your costume? What would you do? Cause I mean,
there's only one part that really is. You get the truck nuts and just hang a pair of truck nuts on

(31:24):
there. I don't know how we got this way, but let's move forward. So any other scenes stand out to you
guys? We've sort of high level covered this for our audience line. We're hoping they have all seen
this movie and they can follow along with us, but were there any sort of like scenes along the way
that you want to make sure we touch on? Magneto's quiet power. I like the gun scene. I thought that

(31:47):
was really cool. I mean, he's got a lot and really they only showed up such a small portion of it.
I mean, he's at that age. He's got massive power. They never really give you, you know,
I think the cartoon can give you a better scale of his power, but in the movies it takes a lot.
They don't really, you know, I just don't think they give us, I thought the power display was
great, but I'd love to just see more of that. More of that. Cause I think they gave us Professor X

(32:10):
with Cerebro, his power, but they didn't really give us an opportunity to see how badass Magneto
really is. I actually kind of like that they didn't give us backstories on every single
character. Like when you're introduced to Cyclops and Jean Grey, it's just like, yeah, they're
mutants and you move on. And it's kind of the same even with Professor X and even Magneto. Yeah,
you saw him at the beginning and you've seen him do some stuff, but you're not really quite

(32:32):
a hundred percent sure if you've seen everything they can do. And I liked it. We didn't have to
sit there and have a bunch of flashbacks for every single character. I enjoyed that. There's so many
of these movies we watch where they spend the first half an hour just doing that. So I was
happy not to waste a ton of time doing that for every character. I'm glad you said that too,
because that's one thing we keep bringing up with these superhero movies is that these origin movies

(32:52):
in particular, that they feel the need to cover so much backstory and spend half the movie's
runtime telling us who these characters are, which I get. I understand that, but there are other ways
of doing it. And this movie, maybe it's because it was an ensemble cast and they couldn't spend
the time to do it. By the end of this movie, if I did not know the X-Men, I think I really would
have understood some of who Wolverine is. He's a guy who doesn't remember his past. His body is

(33:15):
covered in this metal and he's just the warrior, sort of feral type. I understand Rogue is being
scared. I understand Magneto is torn. Professor X and Magneto are sort of two sides of the same coin.
All that is understood through this movie. And I did not need to know Cyclops when he was a kid
and first learning about his kinetic eye blast or anything like that. You don't need to know that.

(33:38):
We'll save those stories for other movies. I agree with you. Marvel took a lot of
chances on this movie. Again, this was at a point in its time where it was close to being out of
business because they had made a lot of bad movies. Movies that now are called classics, but then were
just critically and commercially a failure. This was one of the first ones that really wasn't

(34:02):
and sort of allowed them to continue to build on it. And actually, the idea that this started
sort of giving us more of the Stan Lee, started creating that bit of an openness, kind of started
bringing that whole process together. And again, I think it's fitting that it's back now, right?
Because now the technology has moved in such a way as to where we've had this resurgence of love of

(34:25):
mutants. And I think you're seeing it now. These are beloved characters, man. And they did a really
great job. And I think spending too much time on it would have made, possibly ruined it and maybe
stayed, changed the future of these characters. Now, one thing I always like to do is try to figure
out what was the director and their producers, what was their intent? What were they trying to
go for? And in this movie, Bryan's intent was to make it, could these characters exist in the real

(34:47):
world? Could this be happening in real life? And he actually wanted, because as you know, Fergal,
from your reading, some comics can get a little outlandish, a little nutty sometimes with the
power sets and the world, all the stakes involved. So he wants to feel like it was more real world.
This could happen tomorrow. He banned comics from being on the set. He wasn't looking for people who

(35:10):
knew these characters, which it feels so different than movies these days. Now you see someone doing
a press junket about a movie like, oh, I've always been a fan of these characters. Or I've read up on
this, I've read a hundred comics on this character before I started playing them. And it feels very
different between what Bryan was going for. Between those two models, guys, which one do
you think works the best? I think it's a mix. I think what ends up happening is that it's a mix.

(35:35):
Keep in mind, it's a different, I think the world was different in 2000 than it is today,
number one. I think you have to, you've built 10 years of a successful franchise. It's almost
irreplicable. You almost can't do it again. But Marvel is trying to do it again. So they built
a franchise and then God bless them for it. It's amazing. But the public is kind of burnt out,

(35:58):
right? They're kind of tired of the story. They need something new. And ultimately you have two
choices. Someone can write a brand new story or you can just mine the shit out of the 60 years
of material, 60, 70, 80 years of material that currently exists out. That's actually brilliant.
I think the biggest difference, like Fergal said, is the timeframe. We've mentioned that

(36:20):
at this time, Marvel was almost bankrupt. They almost closed the business. Comics were not
popular. Comics were not. Comic movies up to this point, other than Batman and Superman, really
hadn't done what you need comic movies to do. Especially if you look at even earlier,
the early 80s, late 70s, any of those adaptations that failed or did come out and were terrible
outside of Superman, they really haven't had a solid set of Marvel movies. This movie and

(36:44):
Spider-Man kind of reopened the door for people to say, hey, look, yes, these are based on comic
books, but you don't have to follow the comics to understand this. And you could like this.
And then you go back and try to get into the comics after you've learned those. I think the
movies today, specifically, and probably because of this movie and Spider-Man and the things that
came up after this, it's assumed that you like comic books or you like superheroes or you like

(37:06):
this stuff. It's not, hey, we're trying to get people who would never read a comic to see a movie,
which I think X-Men had to do. Yes. Yeah. Jeremy, I think you're right about that one. I mean,
at the time, the superhero market, superhero audience, I guess, really wasn't there. I mean,
now it's huge. Now it's gigantic. Now so many people go to see these kind of movies that have
never read a comic book in their life. But at the time, that really wasn't the case. And I think

(37:27):
this movie with a few other movies really helped bridge us to get to this point. Like Bryan Singer's
attitude at the time was that he wanted to keep this movie very, very grounded. And that's one
of the reasons why he banned comic books from the set. He wanted to keep all the fans full out if
he could. That's also the way he cast a lot of actors who had no idea who these characters were.
And in fact, I was reading on one of those, or watching on one of the commentary tracks,

(37:48):
Patrick Stewart was speaking and he even said that at the time this movie was, he was being
cast in this movie, he had no idea what it was about. He thought it was connected to the X-Files
somehow. That makes sense. Well, keep in mind, and this is also important to mention, Stanley is a
brilliant writer. He created some great stories, but the material is circa the time for its kind

(38:11):
of invention. I think it wasn't even until you got to the 70s, until you got to the Claremont days,
the Storenko days, you had to kind of push forward that you started getting great, the Perez days,
George Perez, a lion of the X-Men, made some amazing stories. Material is everything.

(38:32):
Right. I think one of the reasons why X-Men 97 is the best new Marvel project out, just right now,
like out, is because of the fact that they were pretty, the adaptation to some of the stories
were amazing. Now this movie comes in at, you mentioned earlier, just over a hundred minutes,
104 minutes. Time-wise, was it enough time to hit all the points or do you want more or was it just

(38:56):
the right amount? Or less? You could have asked for less still, I guess. I think it hits a good
mark. I thought this movie moved well. It did have a good story. It wasn't one of these things like,
like Ghost Rider or something where you felt like you had to build up the whole character for the
whole movie. And then the actual end sequence is like, yeah, that's fine. I thought this hit what
it needs to. It keeps that larger scale discussion of the two different brotherhoods of mutants

(39:17):
against humanity. And still on its own, if they never made a sequel, I felt good. I wasn't like,
okay, now I need the sequel to tell me XYZ. I think most of the current Marvel movies,
you kind of feel like the first one is, okay, this is an interesting character because I know
this other thing's coming later. This feels like a good cohesive block and it moves fast.
I actually agree. I think this, this movie has a very simple process. It tells who you got to,

(39:42):
if you're not a Marvel fan, so here's, if you're not even an X-Men fan, you go out of this movie,
okay, going, okay, there are two brotherhoods, there are two factions, two leaders,
teammates on each team. And then you've got this amazing school at 107 Gray Malkin Lane,
I mean, in Westchester, New York. And I mean, it's not just a school, you've got strategic pieces,

(40:02):
the med bay, Cerebro, the aircraft, the school itself, the different classes, that there are
more than a few mutants. I just think you've got all of that. And then you've got an overarching plot
where it just sort of, you know, okay, how do we, we got to move to the plot. They get you to the
plot. It's the first time Wolf, you know, Magneto and Wolverine, you know, oh, what interesting

(40:24):
metal. So it just kind of, you know, it just, it's, it introduces that subplot, it's a lot of
subplots and then it ends succinctly. It doesn't give you a lot of, you know, cliffhanger scenes.
And really had they not made a second movie, that would have been cool. But I think the fact that
they made the second following right into the first was awesome. One of the things I'm just
sort of upset about with the MCU movies that Jeremy sort of hit on it is that it feels like

(40:47):
the commercial for the next one, which was cool at first, but after a while, you can sort of know
over what sort of overbearing this, this could have been a standalone. They could never made a
sequel. It would have been fine. I'm glad they did, but yeah, it's, it's a good standalone movie
that's pacing for me works just great. There is, like I was saying, there is a two hour and 32

(41:08):
minute cut version of this film. Do you want to see that movie? I may have seen that, but that
would have been years ago when I first got this as a steelbook. I haven't opened that movie up.
I've got a whole like shelf of movies that have pounds of dust on them because I stream everything
now. I mean, I would be interested in that, but I'm also, you know, a comic fan. I'm an X-Man fan.
I'd like to see what they cut, but I don't know if I, if I think it would make it a better movie,

(41:31):
having the extra time, right? I'd like to know what's in that extra 30 minutes.
So this movie, most superhero movies, effects are very important. How do you guys feel about
the special effects? Since this has had some CGI to it, how does it stand up?
As opposed to the day, you can see the limitations of 2000. I think this movie more than most shows
you the practical effects are phenomenal. The CGI, I think it was good, but I think when you compare

(41:56):
it to what is recently been in the last few years, you can just see it's been like another level of
evolution. I don't think they went super heavy on the CG though. So it's not, again, it's not
Ghost Rider's head, right? There's nothing in this. I was like, Ooh, the whole time this was this,
this ended up because it is so many practical effects. And it was a lot of, I mean, as much as
I complained earlier about the Mystique and Wolverine fight, the fact that it was a physical

(42:18):
fight, yeah, those hold up as well as they ever would, right? Those don't really age well or,
or, you know, better or worse over time if it's physical effects and people actually fighting.
So I think it, I mean, I think it held up a lot better than I expected, especially because
we've watched so many other movies that have not from this same general timeframe,
but no, I think this holds up well. Yeah, there are only a couple effects. I
can't remember. I think there was the one with the jets flying low across the harbor, but beyond that,

(42:42):
most effects hold up to this day, I think, because I think it's, it was at that, that
prime period where CGI was being used to act, accentuate the practical effects versus taking
over everything. Yes. I mean, he's right. Ian McGowan shortly right after the filming of this
went off to go to Lord of the Rings. And that is so much practical effects and very few CGI. Like

(43:02):
said, I think we are still at that sweet spot where the practical effects are still appreciated
and they were like putting their toe with the CGI to see how it could make things better
versus eventually becoming just everything. Actually, Lord of the Rings was the, you know,
like Avatar, it was the revolutionary groundbreak. What Peter Jackson Studio did was give you this

(43:24):
amazing, real everything and then blend the most, I mean, you know, Golem or whatever, the little,
my precious, that Andy Serkis changed the game on stop motion technology on that movie. It was,
I mean, he changed the game forever. And then it went off to make The Hobbit. And of course,
you went off to make The Hobbit, which is phenomenal. Guy so rich, he doesn't have to work ever again.

(43:48):
So guys, this movie, obviously with a movie this big at that time, there were a lot of things,
a lot of changes that it went through. And I want to sort of touch on a couple of those. I wonder
where your thoughts are. So I got, I reviewed one of the original scripts. Now they went through a
lot of rewrites, but one of the original scripts, I want to walk you through the plot of it. I want
you to tell me, do you want to see this movie? So the X-Men, and this time it's composed of Professor

(44:11):
X, Cyclops, Jean Grey, Beast, Iceman, Iceman, I mean, sorry, Angel and the new Wolverine,
new member of the Wolverine. So it'll still follow Wolverine joining the group. They got to fight
the Brotherhood of Mutants, which are composed of Magneto, Sabretooth, Toad, and their newest
member, The Blob. And the Brotherhood of Mutants are trying to conquer New York City, right? At the

(44:33):
same time, three Sentinels sent in by the government are there to stop both groups at the same time.
And it focuses on a rivalry between Cyclops and Wolverine for the heart of Jean Grey.
They also explained that Magneto caused the Chernobyl disaster. They add that in there too.
And they had the X-Copter instead of the Blackbird. And the Danger Room does make an

(44:55):
appearance. Do you want to see that movie? Yes. Why not? It's a very busy show. I think they just
did that in X-Men 97 Season 1. I would say that's all things that we've seen in other X-Men movies.
But I think as the introduction, again, if you're trying to sell this movie as a gateway to people
who don't normally want to go see comic movies, that's too much. Just the addition of the Sentinels

(45:18):
is too much. That's too much for people to walk into. Yeah. When I was reading over that, I was
like, okay, I can see this. You have the same battle between the Brotherhood and the X-Men.
And all of a sudden, they're like, oh, well, we throw in three Sentinels. Oh, that would be dope.
If they were comic accurate Sentinels, that would be kind of fresh. Now, would it have thrown off
non-nerds? Perhaps. But we have to give non-nerds credit. I think you're right. Now, you totally

(45:41):
can. Today, they could do a movie that is nothing but Sentinels and all of a sudden, and it would be
fine. And no one would bat an eye. The introduction of the formal X-Men into Marvel could be that.
And everyone would be like, that was awesome. But I think at this point in time, you could not have
done that. Wasn't one of the X-Men first class ones have a bunch of Sentinels? It did. Actually,
it was Days of Future Past. Oh, guys, I totally brought it in there. There's the rogue cut out

(46:02):
now. Okay. So here are some casting changes that were made. And I'm going to go through a couple
characters. I want you to tell me, what do you think of these choices or the choice of not to
have them? Okay, hold on. Before you start, I'm going to put $5 that at least one of these
characters, and I would say possibly even rogue, is Sylvester Stallone every time he's listed as an
actor. Yeah. So why don't we do that? So we got Sylvester. So who are you guessing is going to be

(46:25):
in this lineup? You got Sylvester Stallone. Yep. Every time. Every time. Okay. You got to give me
all the characters. You got to give me all the actors. Okay. You want to go one by one. Okay.
Just give me all of them. First, we'll go with Wolverine. Who do you think is on this list?
John Gervonta. Okay. That's interesting. And Jeremy, who do you think's on this list for Wolverine?

(46:46):
From this timeframe? I mean, I'm still going to go with Sylvester Stallone, despite that. I
don't think that's the answer. Okay. So here we go. Ready? We got Russell Crowe, who, by the way,
is the one who recommended Hugh Jackman for the role when he turned it down. Because he thought
he had just done Gladiator and that was like a wolf symbol on his armor. He thought that was too
close to a Wolverine. He wanted to play two animal spirits at the same time. Oh, wow.

(47:09):
Mel Gibson. Interesting. Mel Gibson. Yeah. I could see that, but a younger Mel Gibson, even in 2000.
But yeah, I could see that. Aaron Eckert? Aaron Eckert, no. Podcast favorite, Jean-Claude Van Damme.
There you go. That's the other one. But no, I'm just going to do it with you.
Wait, I want you to stop. I want everybody to stop at this moment. And I would like everybody

(47:32):
to put together your version of Jean-Claude Van Damme. I don't care whatever period of movie we're
going to. And then I want you to add the mutton chops, the claws, and the uniform. Put it all
together. Imagine his Wolverine accent, though. That would be so incredible.
I'm so sorry. I don't even know who. Oh, the guy who played in the violent. Yeah, no.

(47:54):
Yeah, I think after you see that, you might think so. But before that, I wouldn't have thought that.
Ed Norton? Not at all. He played a horrible Hulk.
No. You know what? We've already had this fight before. But no, it would not work.
Well, Fergal wasn't here for that fight about Ed Norton. Remember, that was when it was just you
and me. He wasn't here. We discussed why Ed Norton made a great Bruce Banner.
No, he's not Mark Ruffalo. He's not that. Oh, my God. You know what? Let's move on.

(48:22):
Yeah, we only have so much time for this. Wow, Jeremy, there's a stirred passion in you. I love
it. Let's do this. Obviously, you have not listened to that episode. Next up, Keanu Reeves.
Not a chance. No way. And last but not least for Wolverine, Nick Offerman.
Who is that? Can I stop at this? Is that just some entitled young gentleman? I don't know. Who is

(48:45):
that? Nick Offerman? Nick Offerman was a Parks and Rec, the guy who hates everybody that works in
the office. He's great. I love Nick Offerman. He would be a horrible Wolverine. The way he would
deliver his lines would just be maybe too perfect. It would sound like Beast. If Beast and Wolverine
were the same person. But Beast with a chip on his shoulder. Yeah, that's what I mean. Beast

(49:06):
with Wolverine. How about Rogue? Who do you think Rogue should have been? I already guessed Sylvester
Stallone. That's my guess. Oh, Sylvester Stallone. Actually, I think that the let's go ahead and up
the game a little bit. Let's go with that six foot block opposite Sylvester Stallone, Rocky IV.
For Rogue? For Rogue. Yeah, I think she's perfect. Kirsten Dunst. Now, when you asked this question,

(49:28):
were you also knowing that Rogue was going to be younger or were you going into this thinking,
I owe Rogues in this movie, Rogue should be X as somebody who's older, like a Sigourney Weaver.
That could have worked for Rogue as an older character. This is after the script had been
written. So they knew he was a young Rogue. Yeah, we know each other. So I stay with Sylvester Stallone.
There's a Rogue that's on YouTube right now. There's a video, a spin off on video. It's got

(49:50):
one of the Keradine brothers in it. It's a really cool like 10 minutes short of Rogue and Gambit.
That Rogue is the perfect. It's very hard. I don't know. It's very hard to find that.
Who would be the... I think you should have had an older Rogue, number one. I just think it would
have been cooler. Here you go. Sarah Michelle Geller. 2000s Sarah Michelle Geller. Maybe.
Right off Buffy fame. I think maybe we could pull her off. Too old, though, for a character that's

(50:15):
supposed to have just become like a teenager. Jennifer Love Hewitt. No. I think it's the same
argument. I think they're too old at this point. How about Natalie Portman? That could have worked.
That could have worked. Alicia Silverstone? Nah, too old. No, no. Because I mean,
was this before or after Clueless? I think this is after Clueless. It would have been after Clueless.
Was this after Batman and Robin or whatever one she was in? Yes. Yes. I think so. No,

(50:39):
that's 100% no. Well, why don't we move on? There's so many more for Rogue, but let's move
on to Magneto. We have, let's see, we have David Hemberland. Who is that? I forgot to ask who you
guys thought should be Magneto besides Ian. Because I think there is one in your head that could be a
good Magneto that's on this list. Ah, Sybessa Stallone? No. He would be a great Magneto. I

(51:08):
think he would give you a performance that would be different. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Well, actually, okay. So in fact, David Hemberland, he played General Zod in the Man of Steel movies.
Oh yeah, that'd be good. But the one I think would make some sense, Christopher Lee.
Yeah, in the same way that Ian McKellen. I almost think Sam Donaldson should play

(51:28):
Magneto. The newscaster? No, although that would be interesting. But there should be another Sam
Donaldson. He's like a gruffy kind of a cowboy guy. All right, let's change gears. A storm. Who do
you think could be that storm? Grace Jones. I think Halle Berry was a perfect storm. So it's hard.
That's one of those things were on paper when it was mentioned. I was like, oh, that makes sense.

(51:49):
Like I didn't even question it. Can we have Angela Bassett? Too old. Janet Jackson. What? Also too
old though. No, I mean with everybody else being, with all the other characters being the age they
are, that those are both too old. Jada Pinkett Smith. Maybe. Yeah, I could have seen that.

(52:10):
And Vivica Fox. Nah. I'm trying to think age. She was in Kill Bill. She was the Kill Bill girl.
Yeah, yeah, no. I think I could have worked too, but I think Halle Berry was perfect for this. So.
Okay. We only got a couple more to go. Jean Grey. Ready? So who do you think would have been a good
Jean Grey? Julia Roberts. That's a pick I can see on that list, but that would be awful. That's no.

(52:31):
She's not on the list, thankfully. Charlize Theron. Of course. She's a go-to. She's a go-to. Yep.
That's a guarantee. You have Julianne Moore. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think she would have done a very
good job at it, but I think she would have been. To me, I thought Fampke Jensen looked a little older
than she needed to look for Jean Grey. Like she looked older than Scott. Am I the only one that

(52:53):
saw that? Thinking back, I know she did look a little older than Scott, but they know. I don't
know. They're supposed to be around the same age, aren't they? They are supposed to be almost the
exact same age. Okay. Lucy Lollis. Right off the scene of Warrior Princess. Probably not. No,
but I could have seen her as a Mystique. Yes. Oh yeah. That's true. Helen Hunt. No. No. No.

(53:15):
Okay. Let's change. I'm not doing all the ones off these lists, obviously, but Cyclops.
Who do you think they're going to be? Helen Hunt. Cyclops. Helen Hunt of Cyclops.
Helen Hunt of Cyclops. Sylvester Stallone. See that one I couldn't see. He's too old.
Okay. Cyclops. Ben Affleck. Yeah. I can see him on the list. Again, I don't think that's a good
choice, but I can see 100% someone else. Tom Cruise would probably make a good choice.
It's that kind of character. I mean, the guy they have is a very Tom Cruisey looking guy.

(53:40):
Well, whenever they mentioned Ben Affleck, you've got to also mention Matt Damon.
Matt Damon. Also, Ethan Hawke. What? Ethan Hawke of Cyclops.
It's not working. It's not going together. Okay. Speaking of Mystique, we said Lucy Lollis could
have been out. She wasn't on the list, but I have two for Mystique. Jerry Ryan. Okay. From Star Trek.

(54:02):
Seven of Nine? Yeah, Seven of Nine. And Lucy Liu. No, she would have been Litty Deathstrike.
Yeah, no, I don't see it. No? Okay.
Let me make sure they were under blue makeup the whole time. It wouldn't have been any different.
But yeah. Okay, here we go. These, there's only one option for. First off, Remy LeBou,
the Gambit. Who do you think they actually had slated for Gambit until they decided not to put

(54:22):
it in? I don't know who. Keanu Reeves.
Oh, Scott Bakula. I was throwing names. That would have been a good choice.
Could you see Keanu Reeves as Gambit? I think he would have looked fine, but I
don't know if he would have had the accent right. Exactly. The accent or the, well,
he's clearly done the martial arts, but did he do the Matrix at this point?

(54:44):
Yes, Matrix was done by this point. That was late 90s, I think, right? Like 99, 98.
Yeah, it was Matrix One, not two and three. Yep, just the first one.
Just the first one. Okay. So we had some martial arts going on. Maybe you could have did it.
I say the best for last. Professor X, just give me one name.
Tom Selleck. Tom Selleck. Interesting choice. He'd
have to shave. Yes.

(55:05):
Jesus. I don't know. Again, that's another one that's like Storm, where it was like,
of course it's Patrick Stewart. It makes sense it's Patrick Stewart. If you're going to go with
the old Professor X, Gene Hackman. Michael Jackson.
That would have been bizarre. Absolutely bizarre.
But do you want to see that movie? Yes, that I do. I'd love to see.

(55:25):
No, we've already seen that one. That was the road to Oz. There was already a
movie where we seen Michael Jackson do an acting thing.
You think Michael Jackson could not play a Professor X?
I don't think that in any world that reality, if you want your company to be alive six months
from the date you put that movie out, you don't put Michael Jackson in that movie.
Guys, for the movie we did get, what did you love about it and what could they have done better?

(55:50):
Perfect movie. I mean, maybe, I don't know, maybe give a... No, actually, I think this movie did
everything, maybe throw a couple additional characters, a little bit more in school, but
in general, the movie did exactly what it needed to do to keep alive the entire Marvel Universe.
Yeah, I think if anything, I would add more characters. I liked the school as a location.

(56:11):
I liked the idea of having these younger mutants. I don't think they spent enough time on it, but I
also don't think that's what the movie was about. So I don't care too much, but that's what I would
have wanted. In fact, if that extra half an hour is mixed in footage of things happening at the
school with different mutants, I'd be in. Yeah, I feel sort of the same way. I spent
some time thinking about this question about what could they have added to it to make it better?
And I think because it feels like there is just enough, right? There's not too much.

(56:35):
Like we've seen that with later X-Men movies where there are just so many characters where
nothing concrete happens in it. It just becomes a list of cameos. This, I think it feels like there
was just enough where I'm wanting more, but I think if you gave me more of it, it would ruin
the whole movie. Speaking of that mansion, by the way, that mansion that was used in the shot for
this, that was actually also used in the movie Billy Madison. It was also Luther's mansion in

(56:59):
Smallville and the Queen mansion in Arrow. That thing has been used everywhere.
That is a used mansion. I would not want to stay there.
Well, that's how you pay for the maintenance on it. Just keep renting it out for studios.
Maybe the studios built it and own it. Who knows?
With this movie being over 20 years old, not part of the MCU, sort of not, I guess,
for the newest Deadpool movie, they're talking a lot about introducing the X-Men into the MCU.

(57:24):
Besides the little cameos we've seen here and there with the Marvels or Deadpool,
how would you like to see them introduce the X-Men into the MCU?
To the opening of them, I think the way they've done it is absolutely... I think that they've
created a situation where in one universe mutants didn't exist and another universe they did. I

(57:45):
think they built a perfect situation. Sometimes the execution of it has been horrible, but I think
the Fantastic Four leads to the battle world, leads to the X-Men, leads to... It just continues
to open up. I think they're doing it in multi-levels, so cartoon, real life. I think
they're doing a pretty decent job right now. I mean, you've got to give us all of them.

(58:07):
I think we're starting to see more of mutants. I think Adamantium, I think Tiamat, that whole
celestial that nobody talked about that came out of the earth, that's supposed to be Adamantium,
which will then kind of give us Wolverine a little bit more, allows us to get more explanation on that.
Yeah, I think since they've introduced all the other universes and other timelines,
all the other stuff, it's easy to introduce these to the universe without saying like,

(58:30):
well, they've been here the whole time. We just didn't see them. They were on an island, right?
You can do whatever and it would work. I think as a whole, and we don't talk a lot about the current
MCU, it's a little too large and unwieldy, so I'm okay if they keep this as a compartmentalized thing
that we occasionally get glimpses into, and that's fine with me.
Yeah, you sort of touched on it too. Having them be part of the world that was already there seems

(58:51):
a little far-fetched because you think it would have come up storyline-wise, but I also hate the
multiverse. As a writing device, it just makes things way too easy.
It is easy, but the mutant story is the story, right? Deadpool showed that.
Well, it could also be that mutants just now start appearing because of the whole

(59:13):
celestial stuck out in the ocean. I think Fantastic Four soft reboots the whole thing.
That's me. I guess this would take place in the 60s or something, isn't it?
No, it's ultra weird because the technology feels aesthetically from the 60s to 70s,
like Mad Men type era, but they're actually in the 25th century level technology.

(59:38):
So, it's a really weird multiverse that can sense sort of like a Victor Timely, what the
Kang was supposed to be. They know where others are not supposed to know, and they know when
they're trying to stop it. So, given how many Congo movies are out there right now and the fact
that the X-Men are probably going to get re-induced to the MCU, should people go out and find this
classic or if they haven't seen in a while, go back and re-watch it?

(01:00:00):
Re-watch it. Re-watch any of the old Disney movies. Now it's all in one station, so I enjoyed it.
I put it out and I was like, oh, shit, here we go. Go over it.
Well, and I think because this is a unique story, it's not from a comic directly. It's
a self-contained box. Yes, it has, you know, obviously leads to the next movies that did

(01:00:21):
come out, but at the time they didn't know there was going to be one. So, this is a very good
self-contained movie. I don't feel like you'd have to feel like, well, now I've seen this,
I've got to watch X2 and I got to watch the others. You might want to, but you don't have to.
You've got a full story here and it's fine.
Yeah, it is the beginning of a 10 movie saga that are all interconnected. But you're right.
I think if you just watch this one as a refresher, you don't need to see the other ones. So,

(01:00:43):
we'll probably cover the other ones at a later date. It's not a commitment that you're making.
Though, if you feel like these days at the MCU, you are making a commitment to have to go back
and watch the entire catalog to remember what's happening, to figure out what's happening.
Not, I think that's where Marvel is trying to make another chapter. I think ultimately,

(01:01:03):
that was their problem. I think that's where it became unwielding, because they were trying
to tell the same story in Chapter 2, and it was not working because it gets bigger and bigger and
more unwielding. So, you have to close Chapter 1 and reopen Chapter 2 and literally just close
off what you just did so you can do something completely different.

(01:01:24):
It's hard. I mean, you can tell when they started with Iron Man and the MCU that they had no idea
that they were going to have to go as far as they did, that it would be as successful as it was. So,
after Thanos, you're kind of like, well, now what the hell do we do? And it's felt like that. It's
felt a lot like, well, now we're just going to make stuff for people who are already into characters
and comic books and this other stuff. And it's fine, but it doesn't feel like it's building up

(01:01:44):
to anything. It feels like it's just happening. I know that there are overarching stories in the
background building up, but I also read comics and pay attention to that stuff. I don't know if
everyone else feels that way or if they're just tired of it all because it is the same story over
and over. Kind of. It's a little bit, but that's supposed to change. So, fingers crossed.
Why I'm a little interested in the fact that DC is rebooting their universe.

(01:02:05):
Have you seen Creature Commandos? I was just about to ask that question if
you guys have seen that yet. And it is amazing. It's great.
It's better than good. I am blown away by how they took this character and they kind of kept it to
the movie. Well, first off, can we just get a second to talk about that intro? Marvel went one
direction and gives you every character as it leads into a Marvel side. DC just gives you Superman.

(01:02:31):
I'm sorry if I ruined it for somebody, but watch that intro. That is a cool way to bring DC out.
And one thing I like about it, Jeremy, have you seen it yet?
No, I have not. Okay. I won't spoil anything for you because we don't spoil things here.
Well, until 20 years later, you can do it 20 years later.
We'll remaster this one 20 years from now and I'll spoil everything.

(01:02:52):
The nice thing about it is that, first off, if you like James Gunn movies like Guardians of the
Galaxy, Peacemaker, or The Suicide Squad, you're going to like this series. It feels very much like
his show and it is. But I like about it because of the fact that he worked on the previous DC

(01:03:12):
universe, he obviously has some good feelings towards it and doesn't want to give those up.
Within the first 10 minutes of this episode, you know what's canon from those previous stuff
and what is not canon. Exactly.
Which is, he doesn't want to ruin it. Yeah, he doesn't want to ruin it.
Absolutely, Chris. I could not agree with you more. You should watch it. I'm sorry we didn't
mean to plug DC, but damn, James, you're putting out some stuff. I'm just going to leave it there.

(01:03:35):
And I love the fact that James Gunn has this habit of taking these really low level characters
that no one has ever heard of that do exist and bring them to the forefront because I think it's
around expectations. I have no expectation when it comes to The Bride. I have no expectations
around The Weasel. I have no expectations around Phosphorus Man or whatever his name is.
We're getting off topic here, but let me just say, I'm surprised Weasel has stood around this long.

(01:03:59):
Which is amazing. So for our listeners, if you have not seen the show, go on HBO Max,
go watch the first two episodes. They're out there while we're recording this. I think they're
coming out every Thursday. It's worth the watch. And I would love to say DC is paying me to say
that, but they are not. But if they want to, they want to go to www.movie-smash.com. Send me a little
note. We'll gladly be your shill. But in closing for this movie, X-Men 2000, how would you guys rate

(01:04:28):
it? I'd give it a thumbs up times two. I give it, it re-inspires certain feelings and gives you,
we've seen Hugh Jackman through 25 years of Wolverine. And it really does look like something
else when you see it all the way through for what it used to look like. Even Patrick Stewart or Ian
McClenn. You can see Patrick Stewart in the last Dr. Strange in the Multiverse. He's like,

(01:04:51):
that dude is really old. He's really in that wheelchair.
I'm going to go with three claws at about a 45, 50 degree angle. So it's like three quarters of a
thumb. Not very good at math, but three quarters of a thumb.
I would probably give it like three quarters of a thumb up. I was thinking about this because we
have watched so many movies by this point. I think my personal rating of movies has gotten a little

(01:05:16):
more lenient towards them because we have seen some serious dregs out there. Like we did recently,
most movie that we did recently that we all gave it high remarks. Oh, the Guyver.
Yeah.
Guyver. I was surprised that we all gave it such raring reviews and it's not a high quality movie,
but it was a fun movie. Yes. It was the most enjoyable movie that we've watched in a long time.

(01:05:39):
Yeah, exactly. Because it knew what it was. It didn't shy away from it. First off, I'm surprised
you guys are giving this a three quarters. Now, Jeremy, I love your claws. Like seriously,
I match you with my Carbanium little lines from Omega Red. Seriously, that was fresh. But I think
we should definitely give this a high. I love the quarter thumb, three quarter thumb. This is a

(01:06:01):
great movie. This saved Marvel's company, gave them the space to give you Iron Man.
Yeah. If you take away the lore of what this did for the future of movies, that kind of thing,
I think it's all right. It's a good movie. I like the fact that it's tight. It doesn't have the
weight of anything around it. You don't have to know these characters going into them, even though
it doesn't do a huge job of introducing them. I like that. But I have to sort of pull back saying,

(01:06:25):
I might be loving it so much because we haven't done a good superhero movie in a while.
So I got to make sure I'm not overstating it. It's a great watch. People just go find this
if they haven't seen it, which would really surprise me. If you're listening to our show,
you have not seen this movie before. But before we head out, guys, I do have a mailbag for us.
Oh, man. I know for our listeners, if you want to drop us a note, just go to movie-smash.com.

(01:06:48):
On the bottom of the page, there's a way to send us a note. We will probably read your,
unless it's just blatantly false. Even then, we'll probably read it. What am I saying?
So go on there, send us a comment, let us know what you think of the show, or just have a general
thing you want to ask the crew here. But for this one, it says, after these last couple movies,
are Fergal and Jeremy getting the therapy they need after watching Cemetery Man and Scott Pilgrim?

(01:07:12):
Well, I mean, first off, somebody needs therapy after Scott Pilgrim? What?
You should listen to it. I had a breakdown because it's essentially about me.
If you get rid of all the fun, that's Scott Pilgrim. I liked it, but I didn't like it when
it was new for reasons I talk about on the episode. I mean, no, as my wife will tell everybody,
I have not gotten the therapy I need. And I will probably never. I'll just continue to do podcasts

(01:07:34):
and hide in my basement. Well, and that's why we buy toys. I mean, let's be honest, I buy toys.
It helps me to avoid dairy. I love comic books. I'm a comic nerd. So I love life, and I've got a
wife and I've got a son. I love amazingness, but I love comics too. And I am actually genuinely
excited when I see low level characters like that in Creature Command. Disney, you didn't pay me to

(01:07:54):
say that. But like Chris, if you want to, we're always available.
You know, as my youngest daughter would say, Fergal, that sounds like a lot of cope.
It is, but we work with it.
Jeremy, where can people find you outside this podcast?
I can always be found at Retrovania.net, where the Retroveniax Podcasts lot is.
And Fergal. Oh, we got that Facebook page out there. We're continuing to do this Movie Smash.

(01:08:18):
We're continuing to build up different opportunities and I'm excited to get ready to come back here
shortly. And so we'll keep you guys in tune as we build Gotham Knight Comics returns.
And for me, besides finding me here at Movie Smash, you can always find me at Off Panel
Creations. We're always building some piece of nerdy furniture. I want to thank you, our listeners,
for spending some time with us. And if you have any thoughts about the X-Men and how they're

(01:08:39):
even better, or maybe it's the best X-Men movie, who knows? Anyway, send us a note over
at Movie-Smash.com and we'll see you in a couple of weeks.

(01:09:14):
We hope you found this video helpful. If you haven't already, please subscribe to Movie Smash
on a future episode. If you haven't already, please subscribe to Movie Smash, wherever
you listen to your podcasts.