James Marsden Double Dip
Cyclops / Richard White

There’s still a couple more weeks left in this blogathon before I call it to a close and I’d say it was pretty good for my first one. If you haven’t done your article yet, be sure to get it in. There were another two entries these past couple weeks so head over to the blogathon main page to go see them. For my third entry in this blogathon I chose another member of the X-Men who followed Byran Singer to his other superhero project and played both Cyclops and Richard White. I’m talking about James Marsden.

I think it’s interesting to check out James Marsden’s X-Men career right after Halle Berry’s since they have similar yet almost opposite trajectories. While Halle Berry’s credit kept rising from movie to movie, Marsden’s kept falling until he got pretty much a large cameo in X-Men 3. I think a large part of that was just that Cyclops’ role in the movie wasn’t a very likable one. Even though he was the leader of the X-Men, the most popular character was inarguably Wolverine, and Cyclops had the girl that Wolvie wanted, so that immediately made him unlikable to Wolverine and therefore unlikable to the majority of the audience. And to top it off, he essentially got written out of X-Men 3 in order to work on Superman Returns so he got the worst end of the deal in that movie with a less than stellar send off.

But on the bright side, he got to play a much better character in Superman Returns as Richard White, though still not destined for audience likability. He was Lois Lane’s love interest which makes him come into conflict with Superman, although Superman is a much more decent person than Wolverine and goes through more subtle ways to win back Lane’s affection while still being friendly with White. One of the biggest problems with the movie is that Richard White is such a great guy, there’s no reason for the audience to want Superman to take Lois away from him. In many ways, he’s more Superman than Superman as far as Lois is concerned. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.