So, having watched X2 twice in just over a week, I decided to rewatch X-Men (for only the third or fourth time), and I was reminded of something I notice every time I watch the movie but never bring up (since I decide to ignore it once I’ve finished watching it…but I’m still in the middle now).
Senator Kelly doesn’t become a Mutant after Magneto’s ‘treatment’. By Marvel terminology, a Mutant has his X-Factor activated in the womb. Transforming him in his adulthood puts him in the class of Spiderman, The Hulk, or The Fantastic Four. Non-mutants, all.
Geeky, geeky, GEEKY nitpicking, I know.
But…he’s not a Mutant!
Yes he is because HE is not Senator Kelly anymore, he’s Mystic imitating Senator Kelly.
The attempted mutation by Magneto doesn’t work for the very reason you mentioned the genetic mutation must already be present. To attempt to force a mutation will only result in death as it did with Sen. Kelly and would have with the members of the UN if Magneto had been successful.
Doesn’t say much for the future of gene-therapy does it.
Er, in the first movie, Senator Kelly does become a mutant. He gains the power to become sort-of amorphous…stretchy, able to ooze through bars and the like. The mutation is similar to Mystique’s, but limited.
And, actually, I’d like to point out that radiation does not cause mutation in currently living individuals–at least, not in the way that entertainment ordinarily portrays it.
The thing with the movies, though, is that they can deviate from the comics/TV show. The cause of mutation appears to be simply genetic in the movies; if Magneto found some way to overwrite part of the genetic code of humans–not entirely impossible in their world, as people can make things float and heal extra-quick–he could make it so that people became mutants. If it’s just a quick overwrite, though, he might not have corrected the things that would go along with the mutation, hence the excessively short lifespan.
Mystique imitating Sen. Kelly doesn’t enter into this. Senator Kelly turned to a big pool of water, and is dead. Senator Kelly is not a Mutant, although ‘Senator Kelly’ is.
This isn’t a discussion of the movie, so much as a discussion of how it differs from the comics.
In Marvel comics, you cannot make a Mutant, but you can trigger changes in a person’s genetic makeup - IE, the aforementioned non-mutants. Even if Kelly had survived the change, he’d not have been a Mutant.
The point is, the whole premise of Magneto’s plan DOESN’T WORK by the concepts layed out in the comics. You cannot make a Mutant after the fact. Superpowered non-Mutants aren’t hated as a rule - some, like Spiderman and The Hulk, are, but then there’s the Fantastic Four, and the non-Mutant members of The Avengers (Such as Captain America.), who are not.
By the conceit of the comics, Sen. Kelly, or the various deligates at the UN thing, would simply be super-humans. NOT Mutants. Mutant concerns wouldn’t suddenly become their concerns.
Hmm…I can’t think of an example of a superhumans (at least of the non-cyborg type) in the Marvel universe who are anti-Mutant. (At least vocally so…) That’s actually kind of surprising.
i don’t really recall X1 that well, but maybe Magneto wanted to get them to feel how mutants are by mutating them… and then letting them die a slow painful death. in X2 he didn’t really care if the human race was on the earth, so killing humans with a slow and painful death wouldn’t be all that improbable with Magneto.