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In recent years, X-Men and X-Men 2, with their subtexts of gay persecution and subsequent rebellion, blossomed into one of the most expensive and largest grossing film sagas ever to hit theaters. As giant, summer action blockbuster movie events, the X-Men films have taken the current gay/straight world situation, presented it symbolically, and hoisted it aloft for all to see.

On May 26th, the third, and perhaps most queer X-Men film, The Final Stand, will hit theaters all across America. Are we as gays ready for our metaphoric close-up as evolution's latest and greatest creation?

Just how gay is X-Men? Let's start with the film trilogy's cast. Verily, there is more than enough gay sensibility here to go ‘round.

The first two X-Men films can boast of having an openly gay director (Bryan Singer). Singer has used suppressed/sublimated homosexuality as a subtext in past films he's directed like Public Access, The Usual Suspects and Apt Pupil. His life experiences growing up in at least two cultural minorities (gay and Jewish) influenced his development of the X-Men movies.

There's an openly gay star playing the lead hero/villain (Ian McKellen) and a straight star who doesn't even mind being labeled gay (Patrick Stewart).

The complex, understated relationship between the saga's main characters, Professor Charles Xavier's (Stewart) and Eric Magneto (McKellen), is most fascinating. Despite their differing attitudes on how to deal with prejudice from homo-sapiens, these two elderly mutant leaders are clearly endeared to each other. Although now estranged, they were at one time very close friends and appear to have had some sort of “past” together.

Unlike all other characters in the film (who often use their “mutant” monikers), “Eric” and “Charles” maintain a first-name basis familiarity between each other. McKellen especially plays off Stewart like a quaint, cranky old gay lover might regard his one-time life companion. McKellen's Magneto displays his contempt for those who discriminate against mutants with an almost Quentin Crisp-like ironic bitterness.

Also, in X-Men there's plenty of reluctant hero/leading man beefcake in the form of testosterone-dripping, buff Logan/Wolverine (Hugh Jackman).

And speaking of buff, there's the oh-so-gay-named Mystique. Fabulously glittered and blue-skinned, her shape-shifting abilities may be likened to the gender-bending talents of drag queens.

And a new character introduced in X-Men 2 is openly bisexual actor Alan Cumming's tortured artist/confused euro-goth Kurt Wagner/Nightcrawler.

“Have you tried not being a Mutant?”
Viewers will recall the key scene in X-Men 2, in which young mutant-in-training Bobby Drake/Iceman (Shawn Ashmore) outs his mutant self to his shocked, suburban, steadfastly "normal" parents. Says Mom, "Have you tried being, you know, not a mutant?" Gay director Singer wrote the scene as a not-too-subtle take on the typical gay teen angst we all experience in trying come out with our big dark secret.

X-Men producer Lauren Shuler Donner commented on the message of this memorable scene in the X-Men 2 DVD production documentary. “If there is any oppressed minority--homosexual… religious… Muslim… whatever it is--that is the most absurd question that people do ask. ‘Can you try not to be who you are?' And so we felt it was very important to show this whole absurd side”.

As Singer said in an interview with the BBC, “A gay kid doesn't discover he or she is gay until around puberty. And their parents aren't gay necessarily, and their classmates aren't, and they feel truly alone in the world and have to find, [or] sometimes never find, a way to live”.

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