#GODonFILM: Exegeting X-MEN

I really enjoyed our talk on X-Men: First Class for the new GOD on FILM series at Harvest Houston Church; preached my heart out and felt a connection with the audience, especially as we have a spike in attendance over the summer due to incoming high school graduates and returning college students.

As an unrepentant nerd, I’ve followed the X-Men comics long before the movie hoopla and even the cartoon television series; I was nurtured on the classic storyline of the “freaks” ostracized by society; deported to apartheid-like islands (Genosha), running from mob-like discrimination (the Sentinels) and struggling with identity and seemingly unlimited and uncontrollable power (the Phoenix). A powerful concoction every pubescent 13 yr old can relate with, yes.

So naturally I find deep themes to draw out here.

And I narrowed in on the deep themes of rejection, foreignness, freakishness, being the Other, the outcast, the reject, the carny, the misfit, the person with the huge scarlet letter emblazoned on their chest. In short – I think X-Men touches a nerve with so many because YOU (and me too) are ALL FREAKS. And we need some solace. Some meaning, something that speaks to our inadequacy to fit into society; in many ways, the X-Men story is the modern-day Kafka narrative of angst and existentialism.

So in the end, what did I think of the movie? I don’t know; I haven’t watched it yet.