X-Men: First Class Character Profile: Darwin

X-Men: First Class Character Profile: Darwin: "

I readily admit that I am one of the people that are waving
their torch and pitchfork at the X-Men: First Class movie for its very liberal
changes to what many of us see as the comic canon. I understand this is
supposed to be a different universe and I know that movies are going to have to
make changes to try to appeal to a larger audience, but mostly everything I’ve
seen so far has me grinding my teeth when I go to bed at night. One change that
I can live with though is the addition of Darwin to this team.

What makes Darwin compelling is his unique power in that it
is not done by conscious thought, but instead as a “Reactive evolution or
adaptation”. If Darwin is falling from a tremendous height, his body may turn
to rubber to avoid injury, or if found in deep space, he may no longer need
oxygen to breathe. But, with no way to control his power, Darwin often finds
himself at the whim of his body and does not always evolve abilities that make
him terribly useful to the team as he just finds a way to survive. The most
notable example of this came up when the Hulk attacked the Xavier Institute in
World War Hulk. When Darwin went to attack the Hulk, Darwin developed the
ability to siphon off gamma energy. When the Hulk started producing more energy
than even Darwin could handle though, his body felt the best defense would be
to teleport him away from the battle.
Darwin was created by Ed Brubaker and Pete Woods and
introduced back in 2006’s six-issue Deadly Genesis mini-series that explained
how some of the original X-Men's memories of their fateful battle with Krakoa, a
living island that feeds on mutant energies and trapped the original X-Men when
they went to investigate it, were falsely planted by Professor Xavier and that
in reality a second smaller ground of X-Men were used by Professor X to save
the originals. Unfortunately, in the ensuing battle against Krakoa, of the four
new X-Men Xavier sent, only Vulcan, the younger brother of Cyclops and Havok,
and Darwin were able to survive. Darwin showed some of the lengths his powers
would go to though by converting himself into pure energy that Vulcan absorbed
and carried with him for years until Rachel Summers finally freed him. And due
to this strong link to the original X-Men, I can live with him being a part of
this origins movie.

The big question though is how big a role will he play in
the movie. How will he be introduced to the team? It’s not like we’re going to
see him take on Krakoa after all. In the comics, he is originally found by scientists who experimented on
him before being rescued by Moira MacTaggert and brought into the fold to join
the “Missing X-Men”, so will it be something as simple as being found by a
Cerebro scan or will there actually be some flesh to his back story in the
movie?
Also, I spent much of my Sunday morning digging for the
single still you see at the beginning of this article that shows Darwin, played
by Edi Gathegi, dunking his head in a fish tank in order to grow gills and
demonstrate his power. With many of the commercials and trailers out there,
we’ve never seen Darwin for more than a few seconds total between all of them and he isn't even on the movie poster! Is this because his power is
too unpredictable and therefore Xavier keeps him behind most of the time until
he can control it? Or is it that maybe a highlight of the movie will actually
be seeing Darwin in action and Marvel Studios and 20th Century Fox
actually don’t want to giveaway ALL the surprises of the movie, including how
Darwin may solve some of the problems put before him?
Well, I know Darwin is one character I’m going to be looking
to keep on eye out for, but what do you folks think? How much of Darwin will we
actually see in the X-Men: First Class movie? How effective will his powers be
as a part of the team? What weird adaptations might we look forward to? Let us
know what you think with comments below!
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