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- NOTE: This article is about the incarnation of Mystique from the X-Men film series. The mainstream version can be found here: Mystique (Marvel).
“ | We should come up with secret codenames, we're secret agents now! I'll start, I'm going to be... Mystique. | „ |
~ Mystique in X-Men: First Class. |
“ | You know, people like you are the reason I was afraid to go to school as a child. | „ |
~ Mystique to Senator Kelly, before she pummels him to unconsciousness. |
Mystique is a major character in 20th Century Studios's X-Men film series.
She is a shapeshifting mutant who was raised alongside Charles Xavier. Despite her initial interest in aiding her adoptive brother in his crusade to make humanity accept mutantkind, Mystique ultimately discarded his pacifist approach and sided with her lover Magneto and became a member of the Brotherhood of Mutants, willing to take more extreme methods in order to reach their shared goal quicker, unlike those of Xavier's X-Men.
In the original timeline, she was portrayed by Rebecca Romijn (who also voiced The Empress in Adventure Time) as an adult and by Morgan Lily as a child. In the revised timeline, she was portrayed by Academy Award Winner Jennifer Lawrence, who also played Mother in mother!.
Appearance[]
Mystique is a female mutant that stands at a fairly tall height, her hair is crimson red usually slicked down neck length and her eyes are yellow with dark yellow pupils. In the films, Mystique doesn't wear a costume instead the metamorph naturally has a blue skin, scaled reptilian appearance and is nude with her entire body adorned in blue scales, with the exception of her midriff and part of her chest, giving her an inhuman look and is barefooted.
Powers and Abilities[]
- Shape-Shifting: Mystique is a mutant shape-shifter with the ability to change her appearance. Using her morphing powers, she makes parts of her flesh look like clothing when any of the characters she impersonates appear clothed. She can make herself look and sound like an exact duplicate of anyone she chooses. This ability makes her the ultimate spy for Magneto's Brotherhood because she can infiltrate any organization by literally becoming anyone.
Biography[]
X-Men series (2000-2006)[]
X-Men[]
Mystique is a member of Magneto's Brotherhood of Mutants. Mystique is first seen when she is disguised as Henry Guyrich, Senator Kelly's aide. In this guise, she helps in the kidnapping of the senator and his transformation into a mutant by Magneto's device. Mystique is later shown battling the X-Men inside the Statue of Liberty. Amidst the confusion caused by a thick bank of fog created by Storm to mask the X-Men's arrival, Mystique attacks the mutant heroes by impersonating Wolverine. The real Wolverine blocks her attack, and the two mutants begin to fight each other. But even in the same guise, Mystique can't match Wolverine's fighting abilities. Escaping up a storm drain, she returns to the battle again, this time disguised as Storm. Once again, Wolverine confronts her, this time using his extra sensitive smell to spot the mutant's disguise and stabs her with his adamantium claws and she collapses to the floor in her true form. Having survived the battle, Mystique escapes and, ironically, impersonates Senator Kelly to withdraw from the Mutant Registration Act.
She reprises the role in the 2003 sequel X2, where for most of the film she impersonates Sen. Robert Kelly, whom Magneto killed in the previous film. She frees Magneto from the plastic cell he is being held in, and together they help the X-Men infiltrate William Stryker's base at Alkali Lake. Romijn reprises her role one more time in 2006's X-Men: The Last Stand. Magneto frees her, alongside Juggernaut, Pyro, and the Multiple Man, but when she dives in front of a series of shots meant for Magneto, the mutant cure within the ammunition turns her into a normal human, and Magneto abandons her as she is no longer one of them. Her scorn leads to her revealing the location of the Brotherhood to the U.S. government.
X-Men series (2011-2019)[]
X-Men: First Class[]
Jennifer Lawrence portrays a younger Mystique in the 2011 prequel X-Men: First Class. Morgan Lily briefly plays Mystique as a child while Rebecca Romijn makes a cameo as a transformation Mystique takes to seduce Magneto. She is raised as Charles Xavier's foster sister, and helps found the X-Men. She initially has a romantic interest in Hank McCoy (AKA Beast), but later turns her affections towards Magneto. She later leaves with him to found the Brotherhood of Mutants.
X-Men: Days of Future Past[]
Lawrence reprises her role as Mystique in the 2014 film X-Men: Days of Future Past. In the film, it was her assassination of Bolivar Trask that leads to his martyrdom, resulting in the fruition of his Sentinel program. Mystique was subsequently captured and experimented upon, leading to the Sentinels' unstoppable shapeshifting abilities and a dystopian future. The film revolves around Wolverine's attempts to stop her assassination of Trask and avert the dark future. Mystique first appears in Vietnam saving Havok, Toad, Quill, and other GI Mutants from William Stryker. She later returns to America and discovers Trask's experiments on other mutants such as Azazel, and Angel. Distraught, she decides to travel to the Paris Peace Conference and kill Trask. Posing as a Vietnamese General, she arrives at the Peace Conference. There, Trask's mutant tracking device detects Mystique, who reveals herself and quickly disables the guards. Before she can kill Trask however, Wolverine, Magneto, Xavier and Beast find Mystique and stop her.
Mystique is surprised to see her brother, Xavier, who tells her that he will not let anyone experiment on her. This heart-felt reunion is quickly shattered, however, when Magneto betrays the group and tries to kill her. She escapes by jumping out of the window, which exposes mutants to the world for the first time earlier than in the previous timeline. While Beast tries fending off Magneto, Mystique escapes. President Nixon approves the Sentinel program. While Trask Industries ships the Sentinels to Washington, D.C. for their national presentation, Magneto secretly surrounds the Sentinels in steel, allowing him to control them. After commandeering the Sentinels to attack the crowd and holding off Wolverine, Xavier, and McCoy, but before he can kill what he believes to be Nixon (really a disguised Mystique), McCoy suppresses his mutation with a serum causing a Sentinel to turn on Magneto.
Magneto quickly disables it, but the distraction allows Mystique to shoot him with a plastic gun, wounding him and releasing his control of the Sentinels. Mystique is about to kill Trask, but Xavier tells her that she has so far saved humans and she can show the world a better path and lets her make the ultimate decision. She finally realizes her mistake and decides to let Trask, Nixon, and his cabinet live. The world sees that a mutant saved the President and the Sentinel program is shut down. Trask is arrested for selling military secrets to foreign powers, erasing the dystopian future seen earlier in the film. Mystique remains a rogue agent, disguising herself as William Stryker to retrieve Wolverine from the Potomac River.
X-Men: Apocalypse[]
Mystique appears in X-Men: Apocalypse serving as one of the main female protagonists of the film. He first appears in West Germany where she sneaks into an underground fighting ring where she helps Nightcrawler escape after managing to survive a fight with Angel (later Archangel). After rescuing him, she manages to help him escape to the X Mansion in Weshcester and meets up with Beast after a long leave of absence. She says that she isn't staying, but Beast insists that she does and remains at the Mansion, albeit reluctantly. Mystique was present when Apocalypse and his Four Horsemen arrive and abduct Charles and destroy the mansion.
Mystique is saved by Quicksilver and reveals her true appearance to the surviving students that Quicksilver saved, but was soon surprised to see William Stryker arrive and knocks all of the mutants out resulting in her and the other mutants being captured. Mystique winds up being held in a prison cell in a secret Weapon X facility located in Canada. She's eventually freed when Nightcrawler, Jean Grey and Cyclops arrive and manage to break them out and escape after Wolverine was let loose and killed the guards in the cell.
X-Men: Dark Phoenix[]
To be Added...
Trivia[]
- Jeri Ryan was running for the role of Mystique in X-Men, before Rebecca Romijn got the part.
- Before Jennifer Lawrence was cast in X-Men: First Class, Amber Heard was rumored to play Mystique.
- Rebecca Romijn was actually naked when playing Mystique, with only layers of blue paint and a few very small costume pieces covering her up. When Jennifer Lawrence played Mystique in X-Men: First Class, she developed a serious allergy caused by the body paint, and a specialist doctor had be to be called in, to the set, to tend to her after her skin broke out in rashes and boils. Fortunately for Lawrence, Mystique was wearing clothes often in First Class. Later in X-Men: Days of Future Past, Mystique returned to her nudist appearance, like that in the first three films, but this time, Jennifer Lawrence was given a blue suit up to her shoulders to reduce the 7 hours makeup procedure.
- In the first film, Rebecca Romijn wore colored contacts to make her eyes yellow. In the second and third films, her eyes were changed digitally.
- In the original ending for X-Men: Days of Future Past, Mystique was going to side with Charles after giving up her intentions to kill Trask as she returns back to Charles' mansion, where her gunshot wound is tended to by Hank, in addition to that she would appear in the altered future (with Rebecca Romijn considered to reprise her role) teaching a biology class with Hank and then in the past, it explains why Mystique knew of and rescued Logan (under the guise of Stryker). However, this was changed to Mystique escaping after giving up her intentions and then making her own agenda by shape-shifting into Stryker by retrieving a drowned Logan from the Potomac River after the producers felt that the ending was too unpredictable, thus her appearance in the altered future was not shot, but the ending was trimmed for pacing reasons.
- Mystique appears in every X-Men film except for X-Men Origins: Wolverine, The Wolverine, Deadpool, Logan, Deadpool 2 and The New Mutants.
- Since much of the events of the first three films were erased in Days of Future Past, Mystique and Magneto have become enemies.
- Her quote in Dark Phoenix “And by the way, the women are always saving the men around here. You might want to think about changing the name to X-Women” became infamous for not only being highly political but also it contradicted the fact that she was saved by Nightcrawler earlier in the movie.
External Links[]
- Mystique on the X-Men Movies Wiki
- Mystique on the Heroes Wiki
- Mystique on the Wikipedia
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Movies Villains | ||
Brotherhood of Mutants Department of Domestic Security and Defense Team X Omega Gang Hellfire Club Yashida Corporation Trask Industries Ashir En Sabah Nur/Horsemen of Apocalypse Essex Corp Others |