‘X-Men’ set tone for other comics-based films

Those first moments in “X-Men” -- the Auschwitz scene is not from any of the comics -- set the film apart from Hollywood convention and opened the door to a new era of fanboy cinema, which has since dominated the box office and elevated San Diego’s Comic-Con International into something resembling a Cannes for capes.

“The opening, it really was a declaration of intent,” said producer Lauren Shuler Donner. “It said to the audience, ‘This is a serious film, grounded in the realistic and the historic and somewhat dark.’ It was so smart. And it was all totally Bryan.”

Bryan Singer, the director of “X-Men” and its first sequel, was sitting next to Shuler Donner in her Beverly Hills office on a recent afternoon. Both wore big smiles -- they had been reunited by an invitation to reminisce about the legacy of the July 2000 release, which they were happy to do, but the conversation kept veering into giddy plans for the future. Singer is returning to Cyclops, Jean Grey and the other heroes of the “X-Men” universe, it’s clear now, for a project called “X-Men: First Class” -- it’s just a matter of timing.

“I had lunch with Hugh Jackman today,” Singer said, and Shuler Donner pressed the 44-year-old filmmaker for details. Singer said he is mightily enthused to work again with Shuler Donner, who has produced two X-films without him: the Brett Ratner-directed “X-Men: The Last Stand” in 2006 and the Gavin Hood-directed “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” in 2009.

“I genuinely like the people, and my personality meshes more with this universe than it does with other universes, I think; I see that now at this point,” Singer said, no doubt referring to his defection to the DC Comics universe to make the 2006 movie “Superman Returns.” “I feel a connection to the X-Men characters and also the ensemble nature of the films.”

Let’s cut to 1999, when the Hollywood approach to comic books was far different. It was the year “Mystery Men” was released as yet another campy spoof of the masked-man sector. Still fresh in the public mind too was Joel Schumacher’s “Batman & Robin,” the 1997 film that jettisoned any psychological elements of the orphan-turned-vigilante tale and instead gave the world the questionable innovation of putting nipples on the bat-suits. Marvel Comics had brought to the screen three films based on its characters -- “Howard the Duck,” “Punisher” and “Blade.”

Considering all that, the plan for “X-Men” was nothing short of revolutionary. Singer and his team, working from a script credited to David Hayter, would take the mutant superheroes of the popular “X-Men” comics and treat them as believable outsiders in a reality-based world. Instead of brightly colored spandex suits, they were outfitted in black leather, following in the fashion-savvy footsteps of “The Matrix.” “X-Men” took other liberties -- characters were tweaked in age, appearance and background and huge tracts of comics mythology were left behind, but as Singer puts it, when it came to “these people and their challenges and their relationships, those things were protected and familiar to fans.”

The approach was a sensation among loyal fans, and then the success went beyond them. “Some reviews were brutal and some lovely, but we had a $21-million Friday, a record at the time, and we knew we had turned a corner,” Singer said.

Heroes’ dark sides

The movie became the opening salvo in an onslaught of superhero movies that were like night and day when compared with the films of the 1990s and earlier. “Batman Begins” and “The Dark Knight,” three “Spider-Man” films, “Iron Man,” two “Hellboy” movies, two “Hulk” films, and “Watchmen” all followed “X-Men” in approach -- they made their heroes flawed and fallible, they rooted tales of the fantastic by emphasizing relationships and real-world dialogue, and they resisted the Hollywood tradition of winking at the audience. There are many more to come: “Iron Man 2” arrives in May, “Thor” has just begun filming and “Green Lantern,” “The First Avenger: Captain America,” another Batman film and reboots of Spider-Man and Superman are gearing up.

Shuler Donner has watched the legacy of “X-Men” grow, but she admits that in the closing days of editing she wasn’t sure what kind of movie Singer had wrought. “We were nervous,” she said. “You lose perspective, and now in hindsight it seems like the right choices were made, but at the time it was scary, believe me.”

Singer was no comic-book fan growing up. But his compass point for heroic tales was the Christopher Reeve version of “Superman” in 1978, which had been directed by Richard Donner, who was married to Shuler Donner.

Even without comic-book passion, Singer knew that “X-Men” would need to win over true believers who had been reading the comics for years. “Ultimately, the comic-book fans are your first, core audience, the ones that are going to embrace it and talk about it or reject it,” Singer said.

Jackman was the breakout star, but the cast was deep. Anna Paquin would go on to success in “True Blood,” and Halle Berry would later win an Oscar for “Monster’s Ball.” Ian McKellen was a year away from his signature role as Gandalf in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, and along with “Star Trek: The Next Generation” veteran Patrick Stewart, he brought a gravitas to the superhero film that kept it from slipping into a camp affair.

“I was a big Trekkie, so I was excited to go see Patrick and meet him,” said Singer, who dropped by the set of Donner’s “Conspiracy Theory” to make his pitch to Stewart. “He didn’t know much about the X-Men at all; we had to explain it all. As for Ian, he liked the idea of the movie because of the gay allegory -- the allegory of the mutants as outsiders, disenfranchised and alone and coming to all of that at puberty when their ‘difference’ manifests. Ian is activist, and he really responded to the potential of that allegory.”

The reviews were generally good but not fawning. Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times, for instance, was supportive but not dazzled: “While ‘X-Men’ doesn’t take your breath away wire-to-wire the way ‘The Matrix’ did, it’s an accomplished piece of work with considerable pulp watchability to it.”

The first “X-Men” film made $296 million worldwide, but its sequel -- “X2: X-Men United,” with the benefit of a bigger budget and story elements already in place -- rang up $408 million worldwide. The biggest win, though, was in the hearts and minds of Hollywood.

The third X-Men movie made the most money at the box office ($459 million worldwide), but many fans found it unsatisfying, and Shuler Donner, choosing her words carefully, made it clear that she is ready for Singer to come back to the mutant universe. “He has an authorship, I feel, and I love all of my directors, but with Bryan, I would send him e-mails saying, ‘Where are you? You should be here.’ ”

That’s why Shuler Donner went to Singer with “X-Men: First Class,” a prequel to the 2000 film that shares its name with a 2006 series of eight comics written by Jeff Parker, with art by Roger Cruz. Singer says the film will find its axis in the relationship between Professor X and Magneto and the point where their friendship soured. It will also detail the beginning of the school for mutants and have younger incarnations of some characters with new actors.

The premise has compelling elements, Singer said. “I love the relationship between Magneto and Xavier, these two men who have diametrical points of view but still manage to be friends -- to a point. They are the ultimate frenemies.”

A ‘Killer’ problem

Before Singer can dive into casting, he has a large problem -- Warner Bros. has him on the hook to direct “Jack the Giant Killer.” Fox, flush with money from “Avatar,” is eager to move forward with its mutant franchise in all of its permutations, so there are negotiations that need to be done.

Singer is uncertain whether his mutant movie from 2000 will be remembered as a pioneering moment in Hollywood.

“I don’t know if people followed in our footsteps or maybe we were just the first of a group going down the same path together,” he said. “I can tell you this, I remember when Marvel Comics was in bankruptcy and I bought stock for a friend as a joke. That was before ‘X-Men,’ and it was one of the reasons we had so much freedom. And now Disney paid $4 billion for the company. That sort of caught my attention. I just think we made some good movies. And now we’re going to make more.”

geoff.boucher@latimes.com