The new X-Men film, X-Men: Days of Future Past, goes to some pretty dark places, with some iconic comic book/movie heroes meeting gruesome ends within the first bombastic 10 minutes alone. How does one prepare for these sorts of scenes and tone?
"Well, James McAvoy the other day claimed he heard Hugh Jackman warming up in his trailer singing Les Miz," Patrick Stewart shared, amused. "I believe it, too. If I had a voice like Hugh Jackman, I would warm up ... but definitely not Les Miz. I would find other things to sing. My musical education ended with Buddy Holly."
I spent quality time with returning cast members Ellen Page and Patrick Stewart in Manhattan's Ritz-Carlton, prior to a press conference about the film and its making.
The actress, who came out publicly this past February and was subject of The Hollywood Reporter's revealing May 16 cover story, plays Kitty Pryde, whose mutant power allows her to move through walls. Stewart plays Professor Charles Xavier, aka Professor X, world's most powerful psychic and founder of the X-Men. Ian McKellen, who plays Magneto, controller of all things metal and Xavier's longtime frenemy—and one of Stewart's real-life BFFs—wasn't here on this day, however. He was the subject of our conversation at the moment, though.
McKellen and Stewart famously posed and tweeted playfully queer photos together all over NYC, with the hashtag #gogodididonyc, while appearing in Broadway's Waiting For Godot this past winter. With a laugh, Page admitted that when she saw an image of the men holding hands, romantically strolling down Coney Island's promenade, "I retweeted it saying, 'Date already!'"
"We've known one another so long," Stewart, who married wife Sunny Ozell last year, elaborated, "and have been so intimate onstage as actors. I think we're entirely qualified to hold hands. We took what I think are some beautiful pictures down by Stonewall Inn and with the [Christopher Street] gay-pride statues. Actually, my congratulations to Ellen when she came out immediately produced a response from The Guardian newspaper outing me! They retracted it about 25 minutes later, but in those 25 minutes I got some of the nicest emails and texts I've ever had in my life."
Director Bryan Singer's return to the X-Men movie franchise he started teams up the original trilogy's cast members with their younger incarnations from director Matthew Vaughan's 2011's prequel, First Class: James McAvoy ( Xavier ), Michael Fassbender ( Magneto ), Nicholas Hoult ( Beast ), and Jennifer Lawrence ( the shape-shifting Mystique ).
X-Men: Days of Future Past begins with a dystopian future, in which mutants and their human sympathizers have been hunted to the brink of extinction by Sentinel robots, created by Dr. Bolivar Trask ( Peter Dinklage ). In a last-ditch effort for survival, Xavier sends Wolverine's consciousness back to the 1970s, where he might prevent the Sentinels from ever being. Once there, he has trouble enlisting a bitter young Charles, duplicitous Magneto and a Mystique dead set on a vengeful agenda.
"In the first X-Men, Charles was a mentor for Wolverine, and the opposite happens in this movie," Jackman noted during the conference. "And Wolverine, going back to the '70s, it's perfect. I don't think he wanted to leave the '70s! The hair, the muttonchops, the clothes! I think the moment that Tears For Fears, Flock of Seagulls and Wham! came around, Wolverine was like, 'I'm out!'"
Boasting grand set pieces, fight scenes, dark twists and hysterical bits of humor—particularly during a delicious caper sequence in which arrogant young mutant Quicksilver ( Evan Peters ), who can travel at light speed, helps break Magneto out from beneath the Pentagon—this X-Men ups the game considerably.
Like the previous films and comic book series from which the X-Men sprung, there's an analogy to be found between mutants and LGBTs. In X2, there was a memorable scene in which Iceman, played by Shawn Ashmore, came out as mutant to his family. His mother asked, "Have you tried not being a mutant?"
"It's been present since the very first film," Stewart acknowledged, "and that content has given a lot of substance. The questions of prejudice and discrimination, because some creatures on our planet are different. However in this story, mutantkind and humankind in the present day are connected, because they're facing a threat far greater than any before. A Sentinel cannot be reasoned with. You can't rationalize what the Sentinels want. You can't sit down and have a cup of coffee to talk it over. But those parallels have always been there and we've always talked about and been aware of them."
Of course, one can also draw a parallel between mutants who "come out" and LGBTs who do the same, putting a face to what some people fear and hate. Page's life has changed profoundly since she came out as lesbian at the Human Rights Campaign's "Time To Thrive" LGBT youth conference in Las Vegas on Valentine's Day. Julianne Moore has signed on to play her girlfriend in the upcoming Freeheld, a dramatization of the Oscar-winning 2007 documentary about a dying New Jersey policewoman who desperately fought to assign her partner survivor benefits.
However, Page said she isn't aware of a closeted Hollywood sisterhood, per se.
"I don't know any," she said. "I don't know any other person in my life I had something like that going on, a secret little club or something. I [came out] because I was ready to do it in my life."
Bryan Singer has already said that another X-Men film is in the works, this time starring villain Apocalypse, so it looks like this team will reunite yet again.
"We have become a company," Stewart said. "Even though there are gaps between movies, we are an ensemble and it's been a collaboration all the way along the line. When the camera stops rolling and director says cut we always have plenty to say to one another. The conversations on set are entertaining and lively. There are some jobs you get to do where it feels like the very best dinner party."
