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X-Men: Tinker, Xavier, Lensherr, Spy
In each of the X-Men movies so far, the scale of the conflict has been a product of its time.
In the first movie (X-Men, 2000), the danger is terrorism: a radical ideologue threatening a gathering of world leaders with a radiological weapon. It’s interesting to examine X-Men’s sympathetic treatment of terrorism, and its skepticism about the growth of government powers, in light of the War on Terror (fodder for a future post, if anyone wants to submit an article). In the second movie (X2, 2003), the conflict is now over racial identity. Does being a mutant automatically require conflict with established institutions, or can mutants and humans live in peace? By the third movie (X-Men: The Last Stand, 2006), the conflict turns into outright war. Magneto gathers an army of mutants to attack a pharmaceutical company, and the confrontation is public and explosive.
So where does that leave X-Men: First Class?
First Class is set in 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis. It is the height of the Cold War, with tensions between the West and the Soviet bloc as hot as they could get without reaching outright bloodshed. The U.S. places ICBMs in Turkey, close enough to destroy Moscow. In return, the U.S.S.R. dispatches ships loaded with ICBMs to Cuba, which will put most of the Eastern seaboard in peril.
(SUBSTANTIAL SPOILERS for First Class follow)
Despite the explosive mutant battle on the shores of Cuba that caps the film, the primary conflict in First Class is espionage. Sebastian Shaw operates behind the scenes to provoke the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. to the brink of nuclear conflict. He’s an ex-Nazi scientist, but he’s so useful to the Eastern and Western powers that they still take meetings with him. To combat him, Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr team up with the CIA. They recruit a team of special agents from the private sector and turn them into paramilitary operatives.
First Class is a story of the Cold War. While there are established (if not always honored) rules of warfare, a cold war – a war of spies and diplomats – has fewer explicit codes. The question of methods is foremost. Is blackmail acceptable? What about torture? Assassination? If you use immoral means to achieve a moral end, does that leave you on the side of the angels? And if you use moral means but fail to achieve your end, was it worth it to even try?
A Wilderness of Mirrors
While First Class is notionally about Charles Xavier’s first class at the Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters, the teenagers get very little...
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