X-Men (2000): still a darned good flick

[Set Harth]

A lot of people don't accept Barack Obama as president, but they can't get rid of him until Election Day 2012 at the earliest.

January 20, 2013, technically.

 

[Dream]

But that kind of generalization is an unfair prejudice. Why should someone with a harmless mutation, like, say, purple skin or butterfly wings or the ability to understand any language, be treated as no different from someone who can destroy cities with his mind? That's gross bigotry. It's as immoral and unjust as, say, throwing Japanese-Americans into internment camps after Pearl Harbor. It's persecuting the innocent majority for the actions of a few.

I'm not saying that all mutants should be put into interment camps, but there should be a record about who is a mutant or not. That isn't any different from a doctor putting down the race of the child on a birth certificate.

 

[Broccoli]

Xavier also says that Jean and Scott were "among his first students".

I am not bothered much by the inconsistencies. I consider both the X-men prequels as existing in their own continuity.

I brought up the Scott/Jean point earlier on how that was contradicted as early as X2.

I hate the name X2 as well (it's a coordinate, not a title), but the full title of the film is X2: X-Men United, which isn't nearly as bad. Okay, maybe "United" isn't a very good description given how much of the movie has the team divided, but at least it has, you know, actual words in it.

You may not like it, but that doesn't make X2 any less valid a title. Honestly, though it is silly (well, as silly as anything that stems from an X-Men comic book), I've always looked at that title as reflecting the duality the film presents with its characters and situations.

Also, "United" is a very good description as the term X-Men is generally broadened to be synonymous with mutant. Both mutant "good guys" and "bad guys" unite against the thread of Stryker, a human.

 

[Christopher]

I'm not saying that all mutants should be put into interment camps, but there should be a record about who is a mutant or not. That isn't any different from a doctor putting down the race of the child on a birth certificate.

And it can be argued that there's no scientifically valid definition of race so even that practice is questionable. And it's even more problematical trying to define a mutant. Like I said, everyone's got mutant genes of some sort. If you can drink milk as an adult, or if you have blue eyes or red hair, then you're a mutant in literal genetic fact. So where can you validly draw the line between Homo sapiens and Homo superior? This shouldn't be treated as a trivial issue, because there's immense potential for abuse and error.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I'm not saying that all mutants should be put into interment camps, but there should be a record about who is a mutant or not. That isn't any different from a doctor putting down the race of the child on a birth certificate.

And it can be argued that there's no scientifically valid definition of race so even that practice is questionable. And it's even more problematical trying to define a mutant. Like I said, everyone's got mutant genes of some sort. If you can drink milk as an adult, or if you have blue eyes or red hair, then you're a mutant in literal genetic fact. So where can you validly draw the line between Homo sapiens and Homo superior? This shouldn't be treated as a trivial issue, because there's immense potential for abuse and error.

While I agree with everything Christopher said here (and I should emphasize that I completely agree), within the universe of the film series there is evidently a scientifically accurate means to distinguish the so-called mutants from normal humans.

• In X2 [that's actually the full official name of the film as given on screen], Cerebro can locate and distinguish between mutants and normal humans.
• In the first film X-Men, Magneto's machine mutates normal humans, but does not affect mutants.
• In X-Men: The Last Stand, the cure that is derived from Jimmy targets specific individuals, and nothing in that film even remotely hints that these individuals are not precisely those whom all the characters identify as "mutants". Jimmy depowers mutants and doesn't affect normal humans at all. [Note: The very concept of depowering implies a baseline that is regarded as "normal".]

Indeed from the first film, we learn of the X-factor. From http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/X-Men.html:

In every organism on Earth there
exists a mutator gene - the X-factor,
as it has come to be known. It is the
basic building block of evolution -
the reason we have evolved from homo
habilus...

... to homo erectus, to homo sapiens
Neanderthals, and, finally, to homo
sapiens.

Taking it's cues from the climate,
terrain, various sources of
nourishment, the mutator gene tells
the body when it needs to change to
adapt to a new environment. The
process is subtle, normally taking
thousands of years.

Only in the last few thousand years
did mankind begin to make clothes for
himself, build shelters, use heat and
grow food in large quantities. With
this man-made environment remaining
relatively stable, the X-factor became
dormant.

Until now.

For reasons still not known to us, we
are seeing what some are calling the
beginnings of another stage of
evolution -

Unfortunately, the film series didn't really shed any light on why the new stage in evolution was occurring.

 

[TremblingBluStar]

But would they have a choice? A lot of people don't accept Barack Obama as president, but they can't get rid of him until Election Day 2012 at the earliest. Lots of leaders have people who hate and/or fear them, but that doesn't stop them from staying in office.

Yeah, but Obama hasn't suddenly become something other than human. If he one day revealed he's an alien, don't you think people would demand his removal?

Initially, it kinda did. One of the few things the Bush administration did right was that it initially made a big push toward education, insisting that it wasn't about Arabs or Muslims and that intolerance toward Arab- and Muslim-Americans was not acceptable.

I'm not even going to touch this one!

A lot of people don't accept Barack Obama as president, but they can't get rid of him until Election Day 2012 at the earliest.

January 20, 2013, technically.

Technically, people vote on election day.

Of course, Obama is going to be reelected, so this is a moot point.

 

[Set Harth]

A lot of people don't accept Barack Obama as president, but they can't get rid of him until Election Day 2012 at the earliest.

January 20, 2013, technically.

Technically, people vote on election day.

But the question was when people can expect to "get rid of" Obama. Even if voted out of office he remains the president until January 20, 2013.

 

[Captaindemotion]

^ But they actually take the step of 'getting rid' of him on election day - that sets in motion a process which ends on inauguration day. The people, the electorate, don't do anything on the latter.

 

[Skellington]

Deals can still be signed in those few weeks. If there's a change of party, the Prez can commit the next administration to policies that may prove unpopular - souring the milk, basically.

 

[Set Harth]

^ But they actually take the step of 'getting rid' of him on election day - that sets in motion a process which ends on inauguration day. The people, the electorate, don't do anything on the latter.

I interpreted it as when the people are rid of him, not when they do anything.

 

[Christopher]

Yeah, but Obama hasn't suddenly become something other than human. If he one day revealed he's an alien, don't you think people would demand his removal?

One more time:

There is a Constitution.

This is a nation of laws, not mob rule. People can't get rid of presidents they don't like just by "demanding" it. If it's an election year, they can do it by voting them out of office. Otherwise, the only legal way to do it is by impeachment and conviction for "treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors."

Of course, if a sitting president were revealed to be an alien in the literal sense, i.e. someone not born in the United States, then his or her election would have been fraudulent, and that would probably fall under "high crimes and misdemeanors" and be an impeachable offense. But if a president who was provably a native of the United States were subjected to a mutation ray and genetically altered in some way, that would not be actionable under the Constitution. In order to be eligible for the presidency of the United States, the Constitution only requires you to be:

1) A person.
2) A "natural born citizen" of the United States.
3) At least 35 years of age.
4) Resident within the United States for at least 14 years.

Now, "person" is generally assumed to mean "human being," but that's not a strict legal definition. In law, a corporation, a labor organization, etc. can be defined as a person. As Wikipedia puts it, "A person is recognized by law as such, not because he is human, but because rights and duties are ascribed to him. The person is the legal subject or substance of which the rights and duties are attributes." If an individual of any species could be demonstrated to possess the consciousness and agency commensurate with those rights and duties, then an objective court would be likely to rule that individual as a person.

Not to mention that we don't even have a specific legal definition of "human" anyway. "Person" is legally defined, but "human" is not. So if Magneto's device changed the President into something that was no longer genetically Homo sapiens, that wouldn't have any legal impact on the President's personhood and therefore on his or her eligibility for the office. People might not like it, but they couldn't do anything about it until the next election.

Same if the President were a member of an extraterrestrial ("alien") species but had been born in the United States and resided there for at least 14 years out of at least 35 years of life. For instance, in John Byrne's version of Superman's origin, he wasn't technically born (i.e. decanted from his gestation matrix) until he landed in Kansas, so he was eligible for the Presidency, as we were shown in a "possible future" storyline.

 

[Captaindemotion]

^ But they actually take the step of 'getting rid' of him on election day - that sets in motion a process which ends on inauguration day. The people, the electorate, don't do anything on the latter.

I interpreted it as when the people are rid of him, not when they do anything.

Re-read the original post:

Why? Assuming they retain their reason and don't mutate into some form that poses an immediate threat to others, why would they be automatically removed from office?

Because, if as shown in the movie the world really hates and fears mutants, or at least the leaders do, I wouldn't see them accepting a mutant as a leader.

But would they have a choice? A lot of people don't accept Barack Obama as president, but they can't get rid of him until Election Day 2012 at the earliest.

I added the bold face added to show that what Christopher meant was that the people cannot do something about getting rid of their leaders until election day. That's when they get to exercise their mandate and do something about their views on Obama.

If he'd said 'they won't be rid of him' then your interpretation would be correct.

 

[Christopher]

That's what I meant, yes. The action of voting out a president is taken on Election Day, even if that decision doesn't take effect until later.

 

[Broccoli]

How did this go from X-Men to the ins-and-outs of a US president's removal?

 

[Captaindemotion]

^ You're surprised that a thread's taken a detour? Have you been on the BBS before?!

 

[Broccoli]

^ You're surprised that a thread's taken a detour? Have you been on the BBS before?!

No, I'm new here. This BBS is about that old Ed McMahon show, right?

 

[Captaindemotion]

^ I thought it was Gilligan's Island...

 

[Broccoli]

Same thing, isn't it?

 

[Skellington]

I kind of assumed it was a Fantastic Journey fan BBS.

 

[Chris_Johnston]

As an X-fan (I mean, seriously, look at the avatar), I recall Roger Ebert's review on Ebert & Roeper. He gave it a lukewarm thumbs down, but I thought it was neat that in the same review, he wanted to see a sequel because he felt X1 spent a lot of time on character but not enough on action. It's not often you see a film critic disapprove of a film but then outright want a sequel.

It's even less often that you hear a film critic complain about too much character development!