Wittily titled X-Men opinion (X-Men (DVD))

Member Name: The Duke

Product:	X-Men (DVD)
Date:	23/02/01 (26 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: good entertainment, recognisable actors

Disadvantages: only if you like sci-fi comic books

I heard somewhere recently (don’t ask me where – I can’t remember) that X-Men, from Marvel Comics is the biggest selling comic in the world beating other, more famous offerings like Batman, Spiderman and Superman. Whether this is true or not, I do not know, but a film version was always going to at the very least interesting. The only stuff I knew about X-Men was from watching the cartoon series on Fox Kids, so coming into the movie I knew at least a bit of background of the characters.

**Basic plot outline – skip to next paragraph to avoid potential spoilers**
Starting off with a view of a Second World War POW camp, we see a young boy get separated from his parents – as he is dragged away, he starts screaming and reaching for the gates. After a struggle, he is hit in the face by one of the soldiers and knocked unconscious – we then pan to the camp gates and see that they are all bent towards the boy. Cut to the not too distant future… The human race has entered into a new phase of evolution – some people have developed special powers which kick into action at stressful times during puberty. This, of course, has spread panic across the world, but particularly in America where Senator Robert Jefferson Kelly (Bruce Davison) is trying to bring about a bill that will require “mutants” to register their identities and mutated abilities. The mutants are split into two camps: one sides with Erik Lehnsherr aka Magneto (Ian McKellen) who believes that a war between mutants and humans is imminent, and the other with Magneto’s old friend Prof. Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) who believes that a peaceful resolution can be found. The film is basically a scene setter for what hopefully might be a more action orientated second movie, and tells the story of the first major engagement between the two old friends. By the time the story starts, most of the mutants have taken the sides they believe in: Myst
ique (Rebecca Romijn-Stamos), Toad (Ray Park) and Sabretooth (Tyler Mane) with Magneto and on the other side Cyclops (James Marsden), Dr. Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) and Storm (Halle Berry) with Xavier. The only two mutants to be recruited during this first movie are Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), and Rogue (Anna Paquin) and we are introduced to Xavier’s school for gofted (i.e. mutant) children.

It’s directed by Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects) and like a lot of recent comic book adaptations, the garish colouring is replaced by a darker, more menacing look and feel the whole thing. In the case of the X-Men, like Batman before it, the darker look suits the story better bascially because the tone of the comics is generally darker than say Superman or Spiderman.

Most of the cast names should be recognisable, if not household names with maybe the exception of Ray Park (who was Darth Maul in The Phantom Menace) and Tyler Mane (who I believe is a wrestler). All the actors do their jobs well, McKellen and Stewart shine as the two main adversaries, but the show is stolen by the fantastic Hugh Jackman as Wolverine.

The special effects are also quite good - there are no real standout set pieces that make you go "Wow!", but they compliment the story well.

The story, like most introductory pieces, is largely character driven to give us a feel for the characters in the hope that further episodes will allow the plot to become more action oriented, and so, while nothing special, does it’s job.

I watched this on rental video a few days ago, and having heard nothing about the film, I was pleasantly surprised at how entertaining the film was. Running time is 104 minutes, and I barely noticed the time pass as I was engrossed in the film.

I don’t know whether it will end up taking the amounts of money that Batman did, or if further episodes will be made (although I hope so) but if you haven’t seen i
t, and have a few hours to kill, you could do worse than rent this out.

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