X-Men Movie coming Summer '09

by Sasha

Haven't held it yet, but planning a party for my twin brothers turning 9 this summer, when the new X-Men movie is coming out.

I think it's important if we remember that X-men was created to show how tragic prejudices are. The whole theme of the comics, cartoons and movies is that humans don't like mutants because they're afraid of them and that leads to some mutants hating humans and other mutants trying to convince everyone to get along. This is an important thing for children to understand. In my opinion you would not be doing the X-Men or your child justice to not play up this theme.

For the invitations, we will be sending a card from Professor Xavier (on school letterhead, or cards) with an invitation to join him at his School for Gifted Youngsters. They are being asked to join the Prof. to celebrate the birthday of his friends Tom and Jerry (not their real names!)During their stay at the school, the children will need to be prepared to help the X-Men, if something should arise. They will need to bring with them the following items: a swim suit, goggles if they have any, etc. etc.

Since this party will be taking place in the summer, we will be having a swim party. We will be decorating the house and patio to look like Prof. Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. This doesn't take a lot of work. We are simply placing school-related objects everywhere: cups full of pens and pencils, stacks of paper, trophies, etc. Xavier's school is a boarding school so it looks a lot like a house full of school kids.

We will also be placing a sign in the front yard welcoming people to the school and several large banners inside as well as postings of "school events" - we will be turning these "events" into party games, keep reading.We're making all of this with paints and paper and our computer printer.

The door to the patio will be decorated with an X-Men emblem ( a X in a circle) and made to look like a steel door. This will be the entrance into the X-Men's secret layer. . .also known as the patio.

The patio will be decorated with a giant X-Men emblem and the walls covered with silver paper (we're painting a roll of that thick brown paper they sell in the paint isle, don't know what it's called but you can buy it at the hardware store. $5 for a huge roll).

The table and chairs will be covered in sheets of aluminum foil. For the table we're piecing sheets of aluminum foil together on a paper tablecloth and gluing them in place. Probably do something similar for the chairs, or just wrap them in the stuff.

More banners and postings will go around the pool. We're thinking about making the fence and gate look like the entrance to Cerebro, from the films.

Games will mostly be water games. We aren't doing anything "humans v. mutants" because we want to discourage prejudiced thoughts. Whether you think so or not it does send subtle subliminal messages to your kids if they've seen the movies or cartoons and then you play humans against mutants.

We will start with school races. If there is a large number of children we will split them in teams and make it a relay race. Then we will have a "diving competition". Each kid will jump into the pool in the craziest way they can and each person will win a metal for their efforts. (9 yr olds + real competition = ugly mess)

From here, we will be receiving an urgent message from the X-Men that they need our help to stop Magneto and the "Brotherhood" (the Brotherhood of Mutants, the bad guys) from attacking . . .something (take your pick, president, UN, any human political organization works including your child's school).

This is all an elaborate way of coaxing the children out of the pool. We are still in the process of planning a series of games to prevent Magneto from destroying whatever it is he's attacking.

We're thinking up some plan that involves a mutant who confuses the X-Men so they can't remember who anyone is. We describe the mutant's powers to the kids and they have to tell the X-Men who that mutant is. (For example: we say "This mutant can control the weather" and the children would tell the X-Men that she's Storm and that she is one of the X-Men. Or, we would say "This mutant can control metal" and the children would say that he's Magneto, he's one of the Brotherhood).

After the children are finished stopping Magneto we'll have a celebratory dinner (or lunch). Then cake, etc. Usually the kids spend the extra time swimming before they have to go home.

We usually wait until the kids start filing home to give them the goodies. Otherwise they tend to get lost. Haven't decided what to give out yet. We are making placemats for each child by laminating pictures of the X-men (from the movie in our case, possibly some comic book pics along side) on a background. You can add glitter and confetti too. We'll probably let the kids take these home.

If you don't want to bother with the hot laminate, you can buy clear contact paper or no-heat laminating paper. It isn't quite as nice, but we are talking about kids here. They'll probably have them torn up by the end of the party either way to be quite honest.