Many of us were excited about the prospect of The New Mutants a few years ago. The sales pitch of an “X-Men horror movie” sounded like a match made in heaven. As often happens, the film that was released was far more of a pillow fight than the cage match I’d hoped for.
But as we excitedly embrace the kid in us with the release of X-Men ’97 on Disney+, I couldn’t help but imagine a more adult side of that universe. What if the X-Men franchise embraced the opportunity to lean into the horror genre? I’m talking about the body horror of its mutants, the cruelness of its villains, and the potential for superhumanly violent finishers that would make Mortal Kombat blush. With all that in mind, I took a look through the original X-Men films on a horror scavenger hunt and found some pretty cool trinkets along the way.
The body horror of the X-Men films is the thing that stands out the most. We’ve watched Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) be impaled with multiple needles in his face and body, pumping him full of boiling adamantium. We saw a young Archangel (Ben Foster) hiding from his father in the bathroom while he dismembered himself, attempting to cut the wings off his own back while feathers and blood flew around him. Even the simpler moments like Wolverine explaining to Rogue (Anna Paquin) that it hurts “every time” his claws rip out of his skin will give you the willies if you think about it. The guy pulls out the claws like every twelve minutes. Imagine three huge knives ripping out of your skin every time someone talked in a theater or cut you off the interstate!
The best example of the type of body horror the X-Men horror universe could potentially provide comes along with Senator Kelly (Bruce Davison) in the first X-Men film in 2000. The ever-petty Magneto (Ian McKellen) decides that the best recourse for the Senator whose biggest fear is mutants is to turn him into one himself. He uses some kind of superhero Easy Bake Oven to turn the Senator into a mutant whose body turns into a gelatinous-type matter. This doesn’t seem all that bad as the Senator can goop his way through the jail bars and escape, but after he takes a tumble into a body of water and is forced to do the walk of shame out of the ocean, his body eventually flubbers into a state of shock and bursts into nothingness all over the X-Mansion floor. The scene is all at once shocking, cool, and gross. Like any good horror movie.
There are many more body horror examples such as Stryker (Brian Cox) sewing Deadpool’s mouth shut and giving him arm swords but for the sake of Ryan Reynolds and his feelings, we don’t have to talk about that. We watched Wolverine alone go through absolute Hell across multiple timelines. From being literally cooked by a nuclear bomb to ripping open his own chest and pulling a parasite out of his heart. He also had to deal with Cyclops. And we’re not even touching the Deadpool films and all the “Mother, are you there? It’s me Margaret” moments of body dismemberment. There are countless examples of body horror that the franchise has done so well already. Then there’s the kills…..
Again, Wolverine throughout the franchise and its spinoffs probably takes the lion’s share here with some amazing slicing and dicing. Specifically in Logan, where we get a taste of just how many different ways people can be mauled in the face berserker style. And it’s impossible to forget the brutal death that Wolverine suffered at the hands of X24, ultimately being impaled. This was a violent scene both physically and emotionally but we can’t get into that because the X-Men franchise is stuffed full of emotional horrors and we’d be here all day.
Some of the most creative kills come from the different iterations of Magneto. In X-Men: First Class, Magneto (Michael Fassbender) uses his powers to get revenge on Shaw (Kevin Bacon) by slowly and I mean SLOWLY forcing a large coin through his skull and through the back of his brain. That’s something we’ll never see Michael Myers or one of those Conjuring entities do. In X2, another Magneto uses the iron in a shitty security guard’s blood to levitate him off the ground and with the turn of his hand rip the blood from his chest. Also, in X-Men: First Class, the demonic-looking Azazel (Jason Flemyng) picks up his victims and flies them into the sky, smiling at them in the moonlight and dropping them to their deaths. In X-Men Apocalypse, Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac) beheads three folks in an instant before pushing one inside of a literal wall. I’m not a physicist but…ouch.
There are some pretty freaky moments in the X-Men franchise as well. One particular moment that has always stood out in my mind is Professor Xavier’s (Patrick Stewart) death sequence in X-Men: The Last Stand. Magneto and Professor X make the mistake of visiting Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) while she’s in her goth phase and unable to control her powers. From the moment they walk in the door the items on the wall and furniture start shaking like we’re in the old-school Blumhouse intro. As she loses control her entire aura starts to darken in a pretty haunting way.
Knowing what’s about to come, Professor X turns to Logan (who is using his adamantium claws to hold on to the wall with all his might from the force of Jean’s powers) and slowly smiles the creepiest smile that ever smiled. Then he’s shockingly ripped apart and into the ether. Gone. Most wouldn’t consider this a pure horror scene. I understand. But there are elements in Jean’s appearance and the situation. Not only does having your skin ripped off by a telepath count as horror in my book but to have such an important and empathetic character die so suddenly and horrendously just felt mean in a way that’s usually reserved for horror. This moment was even more shocking and horrific for me than the peanut allergy kid from Hereditary!
While there are many more examples to choose from in the X-Men franchise (and again New Mutants was some type of horror ultra-light gateway something all in itself), these are the ones that most speak to me as tiny examples of the many horrors that exist in the X-Men universe. And we haven’t even mentioned the awful things the villains of the universe the great Stan Lee created can do. Forget the world beaters like Onslaught and Apocalypse. On a smaller horror scale, imagine Sabretooth in the hands of a gore enthusiast. Or how frightening Mr. Sinister would look in the right makeup, costume, and lighting. There’s even a villain from the comics called Shadow King who literally exists on the astral plane and takes control of peoples’ minds. The opportunities are endless! But for now, we’ll just have to settle for these and the many other horror examples from the X-Men film universe.
Who knows, maybe superhero fatigue will set in so deeply that Marvel will set its sights on horror in the future a little more than they have in the past. Sam Raimi’s take on Doctor Strange was great….but I’m talking about really leaning in. It could happen and I’m here for it!
The post Mutants, Monsters and Mayhem: Looking at the Body Horrors of the ‘X-Men’ Films appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.