X-Men: Referencing the Battle of Alcatraz

X-Men: The Last Stand was a movie that was supposed to represent the guards versus the inmates. The mutant resistant were the inmates and the guards were the few mutants who were trying to protect the people. Everything went into chaos when the resistance tried to destroy Alcatraz. This fight can be thought of as the Battle of Alcatraz, the largest prisoner escape that went wrong on Alcatraz. The battle went on for 3 days and was the bloodiest Alcatraz has seen it. When looking back on this escape attempt, how the guards were outnumbered and taken by surprise until the Marines showed up, it can relate to X-Men. The mutant resistance wanted to destroy the vaccine that would get rid of the mutant gene. With the resistance storming Alcatraz that represented
the inmates taking control of weapons and taking control for the first part of the siege. Then once the the guards and the mutants helping the government came, that represents the guards realizing what has happened and them fight back. This plot line is not a very strong one, in my opinion but it makes a good action flick. Referring back to Alcatraz, they chose a good spot for a final battle, trying to represent the Battle of Alcatraz, was a smart idea.

~J.B.

Women Scorned: The Position of Women in X-Men

Perhaps at a glance you might think that in X-men: The Last Stand, women are finally given some credit as capable figures, movers and shakers. Phoenix is the most powerful of the Mutants, Storm is the new headmaster of Xavier’s school, and female Mutants generally can get things done just as well as the males. But you can also see that a significant part of their portrayal involves proneness to unplanned emotional impetus and to the influence of male leads.

Jean Grey is completely emotionally unstable; whenever anything makes her upset she goes on a destructive rampage. She ends up disintegrating her beloved boyfriend, immediately tries to have sex with another guy, and asks him to kill her when he says no. She disintegrates her mentor and joins forces with her ideological adversary, and ends up needing that other guy to go ahead and help her suicide. Not the strongest of
characters after all.

When Mystique gets abandoned by the man she’s devoted herself to, she goes and gets arrested by her ideological enemies just so she can betray him. Cunning Magneto anticipates this reaction and outsmarts her.

Even Storm, seemingly the most authoritative of the women in this film, acts largely on a reactionary basis. Her initial plans for the school she inherited were to close it, since she didn’t feel confident without Xavier. Only because a needy youth serendipitously walked in right at decision time did she decide not to just give up.


Females on the battlefield, at least, seem to be equally competent as their male counterparts (not to mention present at all) – a big step up from being a worried pregnant fiancé who isn’t even present in the action. Kitty beat blockheaded Juggernaut and saved the little kid!

~K.K.

Frenemies: Magneto and Charles Xavier

While watching X-Men III The Last Stand the relationship between Magneto and Charles Xavier was what I found most intriguing about the film. Once old colleges, they fought for mutant rights and programs for mutant education. They worked as a team recruiting mutants from all over the country offering acceptance and shelter from the one sided view of mutants in the general society. But eventually Magnetos’ values shifted after slow success following Charles’ ideals to help mutants. Magneto believed that mutants should band together and fight violently for their rights. Although they are enemies they share great respect for one another. Xavier and Magneto are striving for the same goal yet taking different paths. The two would never directly murder one another as their history has intertwined so thoroughly that killing the other would be killing a part of themselves. Each also has gained invaluable perspective, knowledge, and insight from one another.

As Jean Grey AKA the phoenix is levitating Charles, about to what seems like evaporate him in this apocalyptic scenery Magneto is watching on in terror. He cannot believe what he is seeing and at one point a look of regret comes over his face of what he has unleashed. Right before Xavier is killed Magneto bursts out an urgent cry “Charrlleesss!!” and then he’s gone.

“Charles Xavier did more for mutants than you’ll ever know; my single greatest regret is that he had to die for our dream to live.” – Magneto

-WH

X-Men: Parallels between Mutants and American Indians

There are quite a few parallels to notice between the mutants of the X-men universe and the American Indians. They are both repressed minorities fighting for the rights and status of their respective constituencies, at odds with government stances of intolerance and even termination/assimilation. Whether Indians are Americans / Mutants are Humans is controversial, and causes cognitive dissonance. In X-men, there is a governmental “Department of Mutant Affairs” whose role is to manage the policies and relationships with Mutants, but whose actual influence is seemingly not so strong. We see the various groupings of people in Like a Hurricane reincarnate as Mutants too. There are the those that try to serve their kin by joining the BIA/ DMA, trying to affect change from inside the government; there are AIM / Magneto’s vigilante-militant group that takes over places like Alcatraz, and strongly opposes the government’s handling of their affairs; and generally there are the Indians/Mutants that feel distant from the rest of the country and live off in their own communities.

~K.K.

X Men: A Unique Portrayal of Alcatraz

Looking past the action scenes that are expected in an X men movie, the main thing that jumped out at me throughout the course of this movie is the portrayal of Alcatraz. Although the island plays a lesser role in the movie when compared to other films we have watched, it serves a unique purpose contrary to that of its former role in history: “This site, which once was a famous prison, will now be the source of freedom for all mutants who choose it.” Previously home to the most dangerous criminals in our society, Alcatraz was now the site of a highly sophisticated lab. It is at this lab that a pharmaceutical company used a mutant to create a “cure” for the mutant X-gene.

They chose to create Worthington lab on Alcatraz because it was the safest location they could find. Now, instead of using its location to prevent criminals from escaping, Alcatraz is now perfectly situated to prevent the much-regarded cure of this disease from getting out to the public. Because of its highly potent and supposedly irreversible power, the medicine must be safely kept in the hands of those who created it. Like the prisoners who were formerly kept in cramped cells, if the medicine were to get out, it could pose a great danger to society. For this reason, the limited accessibility of Alcatraz makes it the perfect venue to safeguard this important medicine.

Similar to its past, Alcatraz is again the site of a major battle. Like we saw in The Birdman of Alcatraz, there is an attempted takeover of the island. Magneto and his brotherhood of mutants wish to destroy the lab and the child who helped create the cure for the mutant gene. In viewing their invasion, we are reminded that no matter how impenetrable Alcatraz was considered, it always seems to be the location of major, unanticipated conflicts.

~A.B.