FEATURE: X-MEN

Professor X, Wolverine, Cyclops, Storm, Jean Grey, Rogue… six powerful superheroes who energized the box office in 2000 with the awesome X-Men.Now they’re turning their powers to DVD, in what could be one of the most successful discs ever…

Featured: JEAN GREY • PROFESSOR X • ROGUE Plus in print: Wolverine, Cyclops, Storm

X-MEN is released on Region 2 DVD on March 12 by 20th-Century Fox

Buy the Region 2 DVD @ BlackStar:
10% discount on pre-orders & free postage!

Thoughts on the film
“I really don’t see X-Men as a comic book movie, even though it is. Because it’s called X-Men people will perceive it as being of that genre. But Bryan Singer’s approach makes it much more than that, and I think the film will appeal to a wide audience.”

If I had special powers...
“I would like to be telepathic, but only if I could manipulate people’s thoughts, that would be more interesting. Especially in Hollywood it would be really nice to sit in a room with a director who goes, ‘Wrong person’, and all you can do is just turn the thoughts into, ‘Oh she’s starting to look really good, right person!’”

On X-Men 2
“The interesting thing about Jean Grey is that she goes through different transformations and she turns into Dark Phoenix at some point, which of course we didn’t even touch upon in this film. But the little times that we’ve foreshadowed something was the sense of what Professor Xavier teaches at the school is you have to be in charge of your powers. That’s one of the things Jean is not that good at yet, and that’s one of the things that eventually will turn her into Dark Phoenix.”

JEAN GREY

Special powers
Telekenesis and telepathy

Played by:
Famke Janssen

Whose other DVDs include:
GoldenEye, House on Haunted Hill, The Faculty

PROFESSOR X

Also known as: Professor Charles Francis Xavier

Special powers
The world’s most powerful telepath

Played by:
Patrick Stewart

On taking on another sci-fi icon
“I had concerns. It felt, at the beginning, like a lot of baggage. But I didn’t feel like I was in a comic book movie, I was in a real modern movie with serious themes. It’s so separate from the tone and quality of The Next Generation that I no longer feel any conflict or unease at all. I’m just proud of the work.”

Why X-Men appealed
“I was attracted to the idea that here is a minority individual, a man in a wheelchair. Yet he is the brains of the group and the spiritual leader too. There’s a potency there.”

On playing opposite Ian McKellen’s villain Magneto:
“There were a lot of discussions about whether we should have met more often, and should there have been more open conflict between them. In fact I think that those two encounters are so strong and reverberate so well, that in fact there’s no need for other encounters.”

On having an action figure
“If you can find any first edition Professor Xavier it’s already worth more than it was when it went on the shelves, because it no longer exists. It’s horrible! it doesn’t look like me, it’s a distorted looking face, it’s just… really bad. And I know my action figures.”

On X-Men 2
“I would hope we might find more time for Magneto and Xavier to be together.”

Whose other DVDs include:
Star Trek: Generations, First Contact, Insurrection,
The Prince of Egypt, Conspiracy Theory

Ever felt like an outsider?
“I think in about third grade I changed schools and I was probably the most shy and quiet seven-year-old on the face of the planet. Everyone already had their own friends, and I was the odd one out and spent a good year sitting by myself being too shy to actually go up and talk to anyone. I kind of used a lot of that for playing Rogue.

"Then there’s the whole adolescent thing, but I’m not really out far enough that I can really talk about that yet! Maybe catch up with me in about 10 years time and I can tell you how stupid I felt.”

If I had special powers...
“Rogue’s power isn’t really something you can work with too much. If she touches anyone ever that’s pretty much it for them. I think it’d be really fun to have Mystique’s power. I’d kind of like to try being a few other people and shapeshifting here and there.”

On X-Men 2
“I think next time I’d like to do a bit of fighting, because Rogue spends most of this movie being a damsel in distress.”

ROGUE

Also known as: Marie

Special powers
Absorbs power and memories from those she touches

Played by:
Anna Paquin

Whose other DVDs include:
The Piano, Amistad,
She’s All That