Danger Room

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The Danger Room^[1] is a fictional training facility^[2] built for the X-Men of Marvel Comics as part of the various incarnations of the X-Mansion.

[edit] Early designs

In the early books it was filled with traps, projectile firing devices, flamethrowers, and mechanical dangers such as presses, collapsing walls and the like intended to challenge the trainee. Meanwhile, an observer is in the overhanging control booth^[3] managing the room's mechanisms to oversee the exercise while manually ensuring the subject's safety. Later the Danger Room was upgraded with machines and robots^[4] for the X-Men to fight against.

After befriending the Shi'ar the X-Men rebuilt the Danger Room with Shi'ar hard-light holographic technology. These upgrades were largely added by Dr. Hank McCoy (Beast). The Danger Room is located in the X-Mansion; every destruction of the latter led to a rebuilding, and usually upgrading, of the Danger Room. The training facility has endured a lot of damage over the years, usually from X-Men training or X-Men going rogue, as Colossus did during The Muir Island Saga. Supervillains have dealt critical damage to it as well as taking over the facility, especially Arcade. The security and safety protocols that ensure the safety of anyone using the Danger Room have frequently been disrupted, tampered with by villains, failed, or have been completely negated in all the years of its use, each time happening more frequently as the room began to get more and more upgraded.

It is suggested in the X-Men Official Guide that the objects in the danger room are holograms surrounded by force fields, supposedly confirmed in Astonishing X-Men when a student managed to kill himself by jumping from a holographic cliff face. It is also revealed that the Danger Room can display holograms in only 32-bit color.

"Danger". Art by John Cassaday.

[edit] Sentience revealed

In Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men, the Danger Room has developed self-awareness, attacked the X-Men and traveled to Genosha to kill Professor Xavier. As a sapient being it has been named "Danger" and taken on a female appearance. Xavier was revealed to have known the Danger Room's sentience and chosen not to reveal it, much to the dismay of the X-Men who seem to view this deception as a taking on of Magneto's former ideals. This storyline is somewhat similar to a Generation X storyline where their version of the danger room (a hazardous arboretum known as the "Danger Grotto") attacked them.

With its female appearance destroyed by Beast, "Danger's" consciousness was presumed to still exist within the conflicted consciousness of a Sentinel that destroyed Genosha. Later, "she" was shown in a new humanoid form, in which "she" infiltrated S.W.O.R.D. headquarters to speak with Ord of the Breakworld.

Danger and Ord both ended up on Breakworld, along with the X-Men, and after the robot encountered Emma Frost and an unconscious Cyclops, Emma told the robot that it has let the mutants live too often, meaning it hasn't overcome its parent programming, so it cannot kill any mutant. Cyclops recovers, and Emma tells Danger to help the X-Men in Breakworld, and in exchange, it will be given Professor Xavier. Danger later attacks some of Breakworld's inhabitants.

[edit] Danger Cave

With the Danger Room gone, the X-Men have resorted to using the empty room to train with their students. Also, the student Prodigy, using the borrowed knowledge from several X-Men, and built a "Danger Cave" underneath the X-Mansion that is a giant stone room with a large metal circle control center.

The Danger Cave is similar to the Danger Room but what makes the Danger Cave unique is that it uses holograms to train the students by re-enacting renowned battles the X-Men were involved in, like Inferno, Broodworld, Planet X, or Onslaught, even going so far as to dress the participants up in what the X-Men wore at that time.

[edit] Alternate Versions

[edit] Ultimate Danger Room

The Ultimate X-Men also have a Danger Room with similar technology, including smaller holographic training rooms in the hidden safehouses prepared by Professor X. However, these are prone to malfunctions, such as a fight sequence producing Hasidic rabbis instead of ninjas.

[edit] In other media

[edit] Television

• The Danger Room was in some X-Men specific episodes of Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends^[5][6][7] and the 1980s Pryde of the X-Men^{[8][9][10][11]}.
• The Danger Room was often on the 1990s animated X-Men^[12].
• It was used often for training in the animated series X-Men: Evolution^[13]. This version is purely mechanical, similar to the earliest comic incarnation of the Danger Room.

[edit] Video games

The Danger Room, out of control, was the basis for all but the last level of the first Sega Genesis console's X-Men video game.

The Danger Room is Cyclops' stage in the arcade and console-imported game, X-Men: Children of the Atom. The holographic backdrops change occasionally, and Professor X is in the background. The stage music is also called 'Danger Room' on the game's official soundtrack.

In both X-Men Legends & X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse, the Danger Room is used by the X-Men (and the Brotherhood in Legends II) for training and gaining levels, items, new powers, and rare character exclusive equipment.

[edit] Film

In the second X-Men film, there is a brief scene where a room saying "Danger" can be seen. The room was to make an appearance in the film in which Wolverine would do an exercise and after construction began on the site, the idea was quickly scrapped due to budget concerns.

The Danger Room makes its first true appearance in the film X-Men: The Last Stand where the team has a training exercise against a Sentinel, among other threats, and is holographic.

[edit] The Kitchen

The new headquarters of the Justice League of America employ a similar training facility dubbed "the Kitchen," meant to coincide with the phrase "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen." JLA member Black Lightning commented, "That sure is a dangerous room." "The Kitchen" was designed by Niles Caulder, DC's wheelchair-bound leader of the Doom Patrol

[edit] References