The Central Theme of the X-Men Stories: The X-Men could be seen as a metaphor for any persecuted element of society. McKellen agrees with that and is disappointed he hasn’t gotten much feedback from the gay community about the films.
“Less than I would have hoped, actually,” acknowledged McKellen. “Certainly, Marvel says that the demographic for the comics is young blacks, young Jews and young gays. They respond most to the idea of mutants. They, more than most teenagers, are taught to believe that they are mutants. So when you get a story like this one in which a cure is found, a cure for being Black, a cure for being gay, a cure for being a mutant, it comes right home. But actually in the circles that I move in, the gays have never heard of X-Men.
I think that it's more an American phenomenon than British, and maybe younger than the crowd that I mix with. I do know that it does appeal very much to, if not just being an adventure story, to a lot of people who see it.”
McKellen on the Possibility of a Magneto Prequel: “I'm not surprised. That's what the comics have been doing for years. They've been having prequels and sequels and changing the plot, going back to the past. It would be an obvious thing to do, to have a young Magneto story.”
Aske who he thinks should play a younger Magneto, McKellen had a surprising answer. “Well, I'll be playing the part (laughing). I don't know if it's in the notes, but the first time that Patrick Stewart appears in this film, we appear to be 25 years younger than we are. That's been done by a technology that's never been used before which involved no makeup, no special FX whatsoever. We just go into the studio and do the scene as is, and then they morph our faces onto photographs of ourselves 25 years ago. And lo and behold there we are.
They can take any shape of person and they can build you down. They can build you up. They can bring out your shoulders and change the color and style of hair, and remove every wrinkle. They removed so many wrinkles from my face and I look so young that Brett said, 'You've got to put a few wrinkles back. It looks ridiculous.' So that means that I could easily play myself at 25 as long as I can keep myself lithe and sounding young.
That's the big story of this movie… Once the stars realize that they don't have to have facelifts anymore, at least as far as their work is concerned, it ‘s amazing. I can go on playing Romeo and Juliet for the next 20 or 30 years with no problem. It's astonishing. It's like airbrushing, but for the moving picture.”
