Remaking Man in Our Own Image: C.S. Lewis' Conditioners and the World of X-Men 3: The Last Stand
by Marc T. Newman, Ph.D.

C. S. Lewis argued in The Abolition of Man that humans, unmoored from the restraint occasioned by fidelity to a transcendent moral order, would create a world of their own choosing. Humans think that by doing so they will be free to make of themselves what they will, but Lewis disagreed, noting "For the power of Man to make himself what he pleases means, as we have seen, the power of some men to make other men what they please." The men in charge of such a program Lewis called "the Conditioners" – and they are making a spectacular appearance this weekend at your local theater in X-Men 3: The Last Stand.Memorial Day weekend has become the kickoff point for summer popcorn flicks, and in that area X-Men 3 does not disappoint.

Summer films are dominated by action, and X-Men 3 has enough spandex-garbed mutant superheroes, battles to the death, explosions, gunfire, and other visual eye-candy to satisfy the adolescent male in many of us. And while X-Men 3 is the weakest in the series (blame the exit of director Bryan Singer, who left the franchise he built to direct Superman Returns), amidst the mayhem it still raises significant questions about the making of moral decisions in a culture that has abandoned God, the threat of Conditioners to remake humans in their own image, and the need to reassert a transcendent vision of humanity if we are ever to survive the technologizing of the West. the rest