QUESTION: Can you talk more about war aspects and about relations to current events?
SINGER: I think a lot of those are very coincidental. The storyline was conceived prior to September 11th and remember the X-Men universe was created in the early '60s during the height of the American Civil Rights movement. So these ideas of bigotry, tolerance, fear, war, fear among society, I think, are perpetual ideas. We've had them for thousands of years ever since man recognized his fellow man and they saw that two people had different color hair.

So I think it is oddly relevant. I desperately tried to not to let current events as they unfolded impact the process of making this film. This film is, for me, primarily a wonderful piece of fantasy entertainment. I think if it didn't have some relevance to some social issues or some personal issues then it wouldn't be truly entertaining. I think truly entertaining movies affect you. I think Star Wars talked about growing up and religion and myth and many kind of serious things, but in a spectacular way. I think good science fiction ultimately tells stories of the human condition from an extraordinary perspective.

So in that way, it's ironic but there's nothing wrong with it. But it is eerie in certain aspects.

QUESTION: In a way the film is very anti-establishment. There are a lot of people who look like special ops getting killed, police getting killed, the air force getting dogged. Did you worry about that in these times?
SINGER: No, not at all. The soldiers depicted in this film are truly following...they're not even working for the United States. They're working up in Alberta in a secret base. They're working for a person who's completely rogue from the government. The President of the United States is very on the fence and very concerned, justifiable, about the issue. There are mutants who possess incredible power and who are terribly violent and dangerous to human society and mutant society. I view these as henchmen.

ESSENTIAL X-MEN VOLUME 1 TPB

In terms of airplanes getting dogged and police getting dogged, no one in that sphere is seriously harmed. It's not about bullying the authority. I personally have tremendous faith and support of our authorities and military. Having shown it to friends of mine that are in the military, they get a kick out of the fact these soldiers are a bunch of rogue dirtbags who get what's coming to them. And then we see that. We definitely see that. This guy Stryker, he's operating in his own universe. He's tricking the President. He's conning the President into his operation. So it's quite the opposite, if anything. He's more of a terrorist.

QUESTION: How involved are you in the video game spin-offs from the movie?
SINGER: The Wolverine's Revenge game was designed separately from the picture, but what I did was I had the game creators come on up and take a look at the sets and tour them and take a look at a lot of our artwork and our conceptual designs and take them through some of the story and so that they would be able to infuse the game with a lot of the properties that we created, a lot of the designs. It's nice. It's created kind of a synergy between the game and the movie, but at the same time, the game stands alone and the movie stands alone.

QUESTION: How intrusive is that? By the time you factor in the DVD and the video game, how intrusive is all that on the movie-making process? SINGER: I don't find it intrusive at all. It's a welcome distraction. I shoot pretty tight movies. I don't shoot a lot of fat, a lot of things to cut off or cut out as it were, but ultimately if there's a moment that you find precious that you've shot, and you know it just doesn't work in the context of the picture, you always have that in the back of your mind, "Oh, I'm putting this one on the DVD"

I think, for that, as a filmmaker it's real fun. There's one little beat in X-Men 2, a subtle little beat that I was very proud of, just directorially, it's very subtle and silly, but for me I'll enjoy putting that on the DVD.

And then getting some perspective from it. I was able to with X-Men 1.5, get some perspective on the movie a year later and actually talk about it on a running commentary, which I didn't feel I was able to do the first time around.

QUESTION: Has it gotten to the point with these event kind of films, where you actually start discussing the DVD prior to the shoot?
SINGER: What I do, in the case of the X-Men 1 and the X2 DVD, there's a gentlemen named Rob Burnett, who's a DVD producer, who I've been friends with for years and he produced the re-release of the Usual Suspects DVD. He does a really good job and is very creative and very thoughtful. He kind of outlines the kinds of things he'd like to do and then I tell him a few of the things that I think would be interesting and then I step away from it.

I provide him with materials he needs, throughout the process and give him what time I can, but I will not allow anything to intrude, whether it's the marketing or the publicity or press or any of these aspects to intrude the process of making the film because it would ultimately sabotage the entire event itself.

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