VANCOUVER, B.C., Oct. 18, 2002 —
The mutant war is coming, just as they predicted in the first X-Men film.
Little did Vancouver shoppers know it would be coming to their local Sears.
The largest sound stage in North America, this vacant department store has been stripped to make room for a villain’s lair, a dank holding cell (where one character is supposed to meet a nasty end), a snow-covered church roof and–oh, look over there!–the newly redesigned X-Jet.
In one corner resides a laboratory, with mutant body parts floating in jars labeled “medical augmentation specimen,” a morgue and a surgery room featuring some familiarly lupine X-rays.
Could this room reveal the mystery of Wolverine’s (Hugh Jackman) origin? Does the lair belong to new villain Stryker? Perhaps. Lips are tight on the set of X-Men 2, next year’s sequel to the summer 2000 hit, but reporters were invited to pry from them what details we could.
This we know for sure: The characters have all returned, with the exception of Toad (Ray Park) and Sabretooth (Tyler Mane). There are four new ones, as well: Stryker, played by Brian Cox (The Ring), who holds the key to Wolverine’s past; Nightcrawler, a teleporting mutant played by Alan Cumming (Spy Kids); Yuriko, Stryker’s assistant, played by Kelly Hu (The Scorpion King); and Pyro, a pupil played by Aaron Stanford (Tadpole). One of the students from the first film, Bobby (Shawn Ashmore), gets upgraded to full X-Man status as Iceman.
Also back is unassuming director Bryan Singer, who also got a screenwriter credit for this darker (“think Empire Strikes Back,” he says) sequel as well as an increased budget (rumored to be a third more than the original’s $90 million cost).
The extra dollars show on the production comprised of 64 sets (many of which were constructed in the Sears building and the Vancouver Film Studios, right around the corner from the neighborhood Costco), shot in 38 locations and wrapped around mid-November. Drawings on the walls of the production office also reveal costume upgrades (Halle Berry’s Storm and Famke Janssen’s Jean Grey get new hairdos; James Marsden’s Cyclops gets a different visor) and X-Men that never materialized (the character of Beast was considered but ultimately left out, for now).
A full trailer, which debuted Nov. 27th attached to screenings of Solaris, Harry Potter 2 and other Thanksgiving wide releases, shows fights aplenty, an attack on the Xavier mansion and a steamy kiss between Jackman and Janssen. The film itself will open May 2, 2003.
We sat down with the cast to find out the stuff you’re dying to know. You decide how much truth they’re telling.
Hollywood.com: What’s with the kiss?
Hugh Jackman (Logan/Wolverine): It’s basically Wolverine is trying to keep [Dr. Grey] at bay, because she’s so hot for him all the time. That’s the only time…there is a little bit of action.
Famke Janssen (Dr. Jean Grey): Cyclops [James Marsden] is sitting right next to me.
Jackman: Oh, sorry! I said he wasn’t to be invited! The love triangle, I suppose. And I’ve got somebody kicking me in the shins [director Singer] right now, so I can’t talk about it no more. That’s it, that’s all I can tell ya.
How do 13 characters manage share the screen?
Bryan Singer (director): It will be a longer movie and that way everyone will get the
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same amount of time. I think some characters that weren’t utilized as much in the last film will emerge a great deal more. Every character serves a story at any given time, so it’s hard; I have no tally in my head. Sometimes certain characters have more lines, have less screen time and vice versa.
You new folks, tell us about your characters.
Brian Cox (Stryker): I sort of represent the human face of this film. [laughs] Because they’re all, as we know, mutants. I’m the only human that I know of in the film. As the film is going on, I’m not so sure if I’m a human. [Stryker’s] the guy who basically is the odd man out trying to exercise some control over them by various means, which I am not at liberty to talk about.
Shawn Ashmore (Bobby/Iceman): Well, I obviously can’t get into too much detail…he’s still a student at the school. But I think mainly his role in the film is just to be brought in the fold a bit and join the group and become a more important part of the whole adventure that happens.
Kelly Hu (Yuriko Oyama): I play a mutant. I wasn’t allowed to talk about it before, and now I’m so scared. Anyway, it’s such a fun character for me to be doing. I get to do a lot of… [pauses, looks at Singer worriedly]
Singer: Fighting.
Kelly Hu: Fighting. I get to do a lot of fighting, I can say it! And it’s fun. It’s really exciting for me because it’s the stuff that I really enjoy doing the most.
How did you prepare for your roles?
Alan Cumming (Nightcrawler): I read some comics. It’s quite impressive, actually, because not only am I playing sort of a blue mutant with all these odd physical things, but also you know everyone in the world apart from me seems to have some idea about how this character should look or be. So there’s a bit of pressure. …It’s kind of hard because halfway through the film I realized that Mystique is my mother, which no one told me.
What about the costume–body paint, contact lenses–like the ones Mystique had to subject herself to?
Cumming: Halle and Rebecca don’t wear contact lenses any more. You get those done afterwards [via special effects]. I am wearing contact lenses. It must be a kind of rites of passage that you’ve got to go through. You just have to get into a zone where you don’t mind grown men poking at your face for four hours and spraying you with stuff.
Rebecca Romijn-Stamos (Mystique): That’s what I used to think.
Cumming: So, maybe next time I’ll get no contact lenses. I (also) have these tattoos, and I rue the day that I was the one who actually said, “No, let’s go with the tattoos. They look really great.” And now they take a lot more time to get stuck on. I’m hoping that maybe if there’s a sequel that some strange mutant accident could have taken and Nightcrawler will have no tattoos. I also thought that if the technology in this film is quite incredible, the effects, and I thought maybe next time I could do the film as me and they could put the makeup on afterwards.
You also have a tail.
Cumming: The tail, well, sometimes I’m wearing it, sometimes I’m not, ’cause sometimes it’s done afterwards. Like, I have a harness thing and than there’s various consistencies of boinginess. Some of them might slap me in the face. If I don’t have the full tail, I have this little stub thing with dots on it for the special effects people to be able to do things afterwards. And that’s quite popular with the ladies…and the gentlemen as well. And myself.
Rebecca, you had a nightmare experience with the blue paint, which caused you to throw up blue vomit.
Romijn-Stamos: The process has gotten a lot better. We’re not using the same kind of paint. We’re not using the same kind of glue. They’ve completely changed the process and we’ve gotten it down to under four hours now. But I’ve still had a few 2 a.m. calls. We’re still working on that. And the cleanup is a lot better. I don’t get sick like I did last
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time. I still have the blue in my ears. It doesn’t come out.
Ian McKellen (Magneto): My image of that last film was in, I think November, at 2, 3, 4 in the morning, outside, everyone wrapped up. I’m sure you [points to Singer] had your thermals on, three pairs of socks, boots, furs, hats, gloves, scarves, everything against the cold. And this heroine–
Romijn-Stamos: chump!
McKellen: –never a peep of complaint out of her in a situation when any complaint she made would have been understandable. And you were brilliant, absolutely brilliant, and a model. And I’ve tried to be better behaved since working with Rebecca.
Halle, does the new hairdo–shorter, more layered–signify a new Storm?
Halle Berry (Storm/Orora Munroe): I think everybody’s happy with the hair change. It’s been a big, big discussion because I know Bryan and Lauren Shuler Donner, our producer, wanted to get it right because they felt like that was something that desperately needed to be changed from the first movie. So, hopefully, everybody will like it better. And I think this time around, you get to learn a little bit more about who Storm is. She definitely is allowed to present a point of view this time that I didn’t get to present last time. What her emotional life is like, you didn’t really get a taste of that, and you get a taste of that this time. So, I think there’s some evolution.
Which Shakespearean character is Professor X most similar to?
Patrick Stewart (Professor Charles Xavier/Professor X) I would liken him to Achilles because in every sense he’s perfect, except for one little tiny flaw, which I can’t talk about. And he remains, as he was in the first film, brilliant, intelligent, compassionate, adorable, sexy [laughs], understanding, forceful, womanly, manly…
McKellen: [Turns towards Patrick with hand over his mouth] Full of sh– …
Stewart: No, not full of sh–. But I can say this, he is not quite what he seems.
Cumming: He’s gay in this film.
Halle, did you bring your Oscar to the set for Show and Tell?
[Jackman points under the table, exaggeratedly rolling his eyes. Everyone laughs]
Berry: They’re sick of the Oscar. Can’t you just tell how sick of it they are? But no, I didn’t bring it and, no, nothing has changed…as far as this production goes. One of the good things about coming back to this, with Oscar in hand or not, is that…you know when you start a movie, the first month is spent getting to know everybody and just when you get to know everybody, the experience is usually over. Although that wasn’t the case in the first X-Men, that was six months [laughs]. But normally, just when you’re finding that groove and you’re all starting to jell, then it’s time to stop. We got a chance to reconvene and sort of pick up where we left off. So that’s been a really fun, fun part of the experience, for me anyway.
Is the success of Spider-Man a challenge to live up to?
Singer: If you get caught up in that game, the box office and trying to predict those kinds of things…I think about that stuff. You think about it, but you don’t really apply it. You just stick to what you’re doing. Our tone of these X-Men movies, particularly this one, which is a bit darker and a bit edgier than the previous one, is a little different than the tone of Spider-Man. And it’s also a universe, unlike Spider-Man, that has a specific fan base that is very strong and then it has another side that has no idea of what X-Men is, beyond the movie. Where Spider-Man is part of common lexicon. My mother knows what Spider-Man is. She doesn’t know anything about it, she just knows the red and webs.
McKellen: I’m attracted to X-Men because of … the moral basis of it [the theme of intolerance], which I think is frankly a great deal more interesting than Spider-Man, which is exactly the same story as Superman, you know. Nerd becomes a hero by putting on a fantasy frock in front of the mirror; there’s nowhere to go with that story. Except to repeat it next time. That’s why people like going to see Spider-Man, because it reminds them of their extreme youth. [Cast gasps and laughs at the same time]
Romijn-Stamos: Oh my god! Keep going!
Stewart: “A fantasy frock in front of the mirror”? That’s how we all started!
McKellen: Our movie is about politics, our movie is about what it’s like to live in the real world, even though it’s called a fantasy. So there isn’t a great stretch and difference between this and other things. What connects the sort of thing that we all try to do, I suspect here, is that the writing is good, and we have a story worth telling.
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What shenanigans have happened on the set?
Ashmore: It’s a story about Hugh, actually. Hugh’s sister actually got dressed up in the full Wolverine gear and stepped in for a take. That was probably the funniest thing I saw. It was Bryan’s reaction when he finally realized what was going on that was so funny. He was watching it on the monitor and there was a shot from behind and the shot from the side. And you could see Bryan just missing the…
Singer: I thought it was Hugh making some creepy face, or just lost an incredible amount of weight. Until it was over, I had no idea.
Jackman: It was funny to me until I actually saw it and then it was really weird. I can’t look at my sister. We look remarkably similar.
Singer: They have the same facial structure. And then they that [pointing to the facial hair] and the hair [gesturing to the top of head making the shape of Wolverine’s hair], and the tank top…
Jackman: Yup, I have breasts!
Singer: It was the most disturbing moment.
Jackman: My son looks at the photo and goes, “I have two daddies.”
Who is the better leader–Professor X or (Star Trek’s) Jean-Luc Picard?
Stewart: Charles Xavier needs more time. Jean-Luc has had 16 years, therefore more opportunities. With the same opportunities, any studio people who are here, perhaps we will see him develop as richly as Jean-Luc.
Singer: I hate to draw a comparison to other film, but in a little like the way The Empire Strikes Back sort of took everything and explored peoples’ frailties and weaknesses and also the potential weakness of the group in their attempt to try to overcome evildoers. This film is like that kind of story. So you get to see everybody’s weaker side, and then people hopefully try to overcome. Definitely Xavier, his weaknesses. He and Magneto are cut from a similar cloth and both of them are not entirely right or wrong. That makes it kind of interesting.
Stewart: Can I just add one thing to what I said? I just would like to make it absolutely clear that both Jean-Luc Picard and Professor Charles Xavier could KICK CAPTAIN KIRK’S BUTT.
