Jean gray dark phoenix12/16/2023 This means that Disney, and by extension Marvel Studios, now owns the rights to the X-Men franchise. It’s a nice moment of closure for the two men who have always been at odds.ĭisney and Fox are in the process of merging their studios. The fate of the X-Men franchise is unclear, but this scene seems to suggest that Fassbender and McAvoy, at least, are retiring from these roles. This scene likely represents the end of the X-Men film franchise - for now Ultimately, however, chess is just a game, and the two men are able to overcome their misunderstandings to become friends. Magneto, meanwhile, vacillates between foe and friend, playing more aggressively when the two are on opposing sides and promising to “take things easy” on Xavier when the two (briefly) team up. If we examine the chess games chronologically (according to the internal timeline of the movies, not the release dates), Xavier begins as a cocky player but is humbled by his early defeats and becomes better at looking into the future and making sacrifices in order to achieve his goals. The two men have always been the two masterminds of the series, each trying to predict the future and the best way to move their pawns in order to defeat one another. The game represents their evolving relationshipĪt this point, Xavier and Magneto have played chess in just about every decade since the 1960s. In this scene, the game is a peace offering of sorts, acknowledging the two men’s contentious past but signaling a brighter future. He also offers him a spot in Magneto’s peaceful colony of mutants. Magneto approaches him with a chess board and proposes playing another game. That’s exactly what happens in the movie too: In the end, an over-confident Xavier is badly injured, losing the use of his legs, and fails to stop Magneto from doing exactly what he promised to do: kill shaw. But in the scene, he blows his lead by acting overly confident, while Magneto bides his time and eventually wins. The board in this scene is set up such that Xavier would have the easy win. Do you have it in you to allow that?” Again, the chess game represents their conflicting points of view: Magneto is willing to murder for the greater good, while Xavier is not. Magneto says, “I’m not going to stop him. Later in the movie, they are playing chess again when they discuss how to stop Shaw. They are not actually playing chess during this scene, but the board lies between them physically: They are not adversaries yet, but they are laying out their respective perspectives and taking sides. Xavier argues that the mutants and humans share a common interest and can co-exist. Magneto lays out his concerns: That the government will identify mutants, round them up, experiment on them and eliminate them. In this prequel, Magneto (this time played by Michael Fassbender) and Xavier (now James McAvoy) first play chess on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial while they discuss helping humans to stop a mutant named Shaw who essentially creates the Cuban Missile Crisis. Instead, Xavier is facing off against Jean Grey, who dies at the end of X2 and wind ups the antagonist in the next film, Last Stand, when she returns as Dark Phoenix. Intentionally, it is not Xavier and Magneto who are literally playing chess in the early scene: The two mutants are not adversaries in this movie and eventually team up to fight Stryker. The next move is yours,” referencing the chess game to represent the power balance between mutants and humans. Later in the movie, Xavier confronts the president over his hostile actions towards mutants and says, “We’re here to stay, Mr. Thus Stryker is playing his own metaphorical game of chess against the X-Men at this moment in the film. The assassination attempt convinces the president to endorse Stryker’s extreme measures against the mutants. Xavier later finds out that a human named Colonel William Stryker (Brian Cox) secretly used his own son, who has mutant mind-control abilities, to brainwash Nightcrawler to commit the acts of aggression.
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