X-2 Official Movie Magazine

Poles Apart

The events of X2 force arch nemeses Magneto and Professor X into an uneasy partnership. Ian McKellen discusses X2, and reflects on how it feels to be starring in two film franchises.

Writer: Abbie Bernstein

Sir lan McKellen has the distinction of playing contrasting yet oddly similar roles in two hugely successful film franchises. In X Men and X2, he is mutant leader Erik Magnus Lehnsherr, a.k.a. Magneto, who uses his powers to fight against humanity, while in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, he earned a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination as the benevolent wizard Gandalf.

McKellen, born in Lancashire, England, in 1939, has made his mark in every genre of film, from fantasy to docudrama, portraying real life figures ranging from D.H. Lawrence (Priest of Love) to politician David Profumo (Scandal):, from Adolf Hitler (the TV miniseries A Countdown to War) to director James Whale (Gods and Monsters, for which McKellen received a Best Actor Oscar nomination). McKellen co-adapted the screenplay for the 1995 film of Shakespeare's Richard III, in which he had the title role, and has been acclaimed for his stage interpretations of Shakespeare over decades. The actor has toured with his two award winning one man shows, Ian McKellen: Acting Shakespeare and A Knight Out. The punning title of the latter refers both to McKellen's knighthood, conferred in 1990, and to his activism on behalf of the gay community.

The civil rights metaphor in the premise of X-Men and X2, is a large part of what drew McKellen to the project, he explains. "When Bryan Singer invited me to play Magneto, he explained the story of the tussle between Magneto and his alter ego or at least old friend Xavier, in terms of a civil rights movement in which the X-Men, the mutants, could be seen as any other minority within society that is despised, perhaps, wondering how to deal with their place in the greater world. Should they be like Martin Luther King in the civil rights movement for the blacks in North America, and recommend wholehearted integration into the greater society, for the greater good? Or should you, perhaps, as Malcolm X might have recommended, take to the streets and stand up for yourself in a very positive way?

"This is the argument which is [between Xavier and Magneto] in X Men and what appealed to me about it. I think you'll find that Marvel Comics are particularly fond of this franchise, because it appeals to young black people, young Jewish people and young gay people, groupings within society where you can easily be mocked or bullied at school. And if you feel, at least in this comic, that there are powerful mutants, like powerful blacks, gays and Jews as adults who have achieved a great deal in their lives, and come through, you can look to them as role models, as they try and cope with the difficulties of being different.

"Perhaps that's what drew an audience in, in part," reasons McKellen. "I'm sure it was also the glamour of the cast, which is considerable--Berry and Hugh Jackman and others lighting up the screen in the same movie and the cunning of the way the story was told, and the effects, and so on. But, for my money, it's more than just a popular film it's a serious theme."

Playing someone who has superpowers, even one with comic book origins, doesn't mean that the character will be cartoonish, McKellen feels. "Characters like Magneto and Gandalf do have special powers which involve holding your hand out and emoting and having whatever effect is required by the plot. But in the end, what's interesting about a character is not those sort of abilities, but their inner life and their inner strengths and the complications of their relationships with other people. That's what I'm always looking for in the script.

"You can, at times, look in vain for those sorts of details in a script based on a comic, because, after all, the dialogue in a comic is perhaps not as interesting as the flash and the bravado first film." of the pictures. But I believe in Magneto. I believe he's a man with a real past and a real dilemma and a real purpose for being alive. His abilities with regards to bending and attracting metal are, in this sense, incidental to why I like him."

In X2, Magneto and Xavier must work together against a common foe, McKellen reveals. "The villain in X Men 2 is [played by] an old friend of mine, Brian Cox. His character, Stryker, is your typical corporate sort of person that we all, with reason, suspect in this day and age, when perhaps companies aren't more open or more susceptible to public examination. Stryker has a social conscience of the worst possible sort he thinks that anything that ruffles the calm [is bad. He] wants us all to be the same so that they can more easily market their product.

"Those sorts of people can't stand it when there are individuals, or individual groupings or minorities, that say, 'The point of being a human being is that we are all different, not that we should all behave the same, buy the same, vote the same, think the same! X-Men 2, like X-Men 1, is a cry for freedom and individuality. And Stryker is the enemy. Magneto is certainly in the thick of it and the argument continues between him and Xavier as to what is the best way of dealing with the future of the mutants: should it be all out revolution or should it be something a little bit more tempered?"

McKellen has no hesitation about reprising Magneto in sequels: "There's of course a huge confidence following up the success of the first film and then realizing that if you liked the first film, you're going to like the second even more, because there's more of everything. There are more characters, there's more action, there's a more complicated plot. My goodness, you have to have your wits about you if you're going to understand this story. It's the sort of film you'll want to see more than once, I'm sure, if you enjoy it first time around. And many of the people working in the film, not just in front of the camera, but behind it are veterans of the first film.”

In fact, X2, marks McKellen's third teaming with director Singer, following X-Men and Apt Pupil. "Bryan is a good friend;' McKellen notes. "It's great to see him on and off the set. And so it's a little bit like a family coming back together again, with confidence that, 'Well, we did it first time. We can certainly do it second time round.' There's a bit more money this time, everyone's a bit more relaxed, we all think it's not quite so risky an enterprise as perhaps we did when we did the first film. And in fact lots of the backstage gossip [among the cast] is always about, 'Well, are we doing a third film? Or a fourth?'

"I'm sure if I looked into my past in the theater, I could come up with some stage equivalent," he asserts. "Well, there was Henry IV, Part II, wasn't there? Shakespeare wrote two plays with the same title, Part I and Part II, and that was a continuing story.

I'm not going to grumble that I happen to find myself in two hugely popular films worldwide," he offers in closing. "It's rather intriguing for me to have ridden on the back of other people's work, the creators of X-Men and the creators of Lord of the Rings. To be in the middle of it all and to be doing work which turns out to be popular with a very wide range, young people and old people, people of all races, people of all nationalities well, it's a part of what one wants to be an actor for, isn't it? To reach as many people as possible, with a story that is as well told as possible."