X-Men
X-Men (2000)
"Does it ever wake you in the middle of the night? The feeling that one day they will pass that foolish law, or one just like it, and come for you? And your children?"
I'm somewhat mixed in my views regarding this film's story/plot. As a massive comic book nerd, I always appreciate when superhero films cleave closely to the source material. However, I'm not opposed to the odd deviation, as long as the essence of the characters remains. That's one of the reasons I was so irked with Burton's two Batman films; he fundamentally misunderstood (or ignored) critical aspects of the characters in the movie. I am happy to say there's less of that in X-Men. Even though director Brian Singer deviates from the comic in several ways, he manages to, for the most part, maintain what makes the characters who they are. That being said, I'm still a bit mixed on the overall story for the film.
The main thing about the story that I liked was that Singer kept in the core theme of the comics, which is a theme of tolerance and acceptance. One of the reasons the X-Men have been as popular as they have been for so long is that everybody, everywhere, can relate to them. Doesn't matter who you are or where you grew up; you probably have felt like you didn't belong at some point in your life. Singer leans hard into this theme; the whole plot is based on humans' bigotry surrounding mutants. Even though there were some significant deviations from the comics, the fact that the story maintained this core theme was enough for me to appreciate the story.
However, one issue I had with the story was with the villain's evil plot. This is something I often cite with these early comic book films as a negative. Magneto's evil plan is to use a massive device to turn all of the world's leaders into mutants. In Magneto's mind, this will somehow make them react more sympathetically towards mutant-kind. This is clearly an absurd idea, and while it would certainly fit in with a comic plot from the Silver Age, it was a little too goofy for more sophisticated moviegoers in the early 2000s.
However, the thing that bugged me the most in the film was it was pretty Wolverine-centric. I understand why the filmmakers did this was at the time, Wolverine was (and still is) one of Marvel's most popular characters. I like Wolverine fine, but they didn't really focus on the most essential aspect of the character, which was Wolverine's desire to bury the animalistic killer he was in his past. I also think that they could have spent more time on other characters, such as Jean Grey (Janssen), Storm (Berry) or Cyclops (Marsden), all of whom are interesting characters in their own right.
Overall, however, I enjoyed the story. There's enough to connect all of the action beats, and the plot has enough twists and turns to keep the audience guessing. And for a film like this, that's enough.
Acting/Characters:
I have to lead this section off by discussing the great Sir Ian McKellan. I'm not sure they could have picked a better person to play Magneto. One thing that irks me a great deal, as someone who appreciates genre film, is that many actors and directors look down on these types of movies (I'm looking at you, Scorsese). Fortunately, Sir Ian held no such lofty opinions and jumped whole-heartedly into the sourced material. McKellan has long been an outspoken advocate for LGBTQ rights and was someone who could certainly identify with the pain and anger felt by Magneto. In my opinion, it's one of the best portrayals of a villain in modern cinema (that's right, Scorsese, I said CINEMA!).
Moving on, I also have to give props to Sir Patrick Stewart for his portrayal of Professor Xavier. Long before this movie was made, Stewart was at the top of the list in most fan-castings, and it was a joy to see that become a reality. Stewart plays the psychic Xavier as a mentor and a teacher, and a man with quiet conviction. He's experienced much of the same pain and anger as Magneto, but rather than let it consume him like his old friend, he channels it to do good. Again, it's a classic performance, and in my mind, he'll always be my Professor X.
The rest of the cast is solid, for the most part, with notable performances from Bruce Davison as the bigoted Senator Kelly, Ray Park as the loathsome Toad and Hugh Jackman as Wolverine (I'll get more into him in a later review). A few performances fell flat for me, though, including Halle Berry as Storm (not entirely her fault, though as she didn't get much to do) and Anna Paquin as Rogue, who just seemed a bit wooden to me.
Visuals:
I think that visual effects for movies from the early CGI era tend to be hit and miss, and it's mostly a miss for X-Men. Although the morphing effect for Mystique (Romijn) still looks pretty decent, as do Wolverine's claws. The set design is outstanding, though, as Xavier's school looks like it was ripped right off the comic page, as does the X-Men's underground compound. Since CG graphics were still in their infancy at this point, I'll give the visuals a pass since that was the best they could do with the technology at hand. Plus, they get better in future installments.
Score/Soundtrack:
I've said it before, and I'll say it again, Michael Kamen wrote the music for the film. But, I have to say, prior to me starting this blog, I didn't realize how prolific Kamen was as a movie score composer. He's written the music for some of the biggest film franchises in history, including Lethal Weapon and Die Hard. However, I think his efforts on X-Men are amongst his best, as he composed one of the more iconic superhero themes. It's so iconic, in fact, that in future installments of the franchise, Fox played his X-men theme over the 20th Century Fox logo instead of the typical fanfare. It really is a solid score top to bottom. Oh, and yes, I have found myself humming it absently since viewing the movie.
Action:
There's not as much action in this film as one might expect. Nevertheless, we've got some nice sequences, such as Wolverine duking it out in a cage match, the ambush up north and a fight inside a train station. However, while a neat idea, the big climactic battle atop the Statue of Liberty wasn't really executed well and left me a little flat. Fortunately, Singer and company learned from this outing and made up for it in future installments. But that is for another review...
Final Verdict:
This is an uneven genesis to what has become an inconsistent franchise. Overall, though, I'd have to say I enjoyed the film. That may just be the comic book nerd talking, but it's definitely worth a watch, particularly if you enjoy these types of movies. But, who am I kidding? If you dig comic books or superheroes, chances are you've already seen this and have drawn your own conclusions.
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