Mutants are not the ones mankind should fear.

Rating: 7/10 (2 February 2011)

X-Men is directed by Bryan Singer and based on Marvel Comics characters. The screenplay is by David Hayler and based around Uncanny X-Men written by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby. It stars Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman, Ian McKellen, Halle Berry, Famke Jansen, James Marsden & Anna Paquin.
It's a future world where mutants with special powers co-exist with humans. Congress wants to "out" all mutants, Magneto wants to form an army of mutants to take over the world, but Professor Xavier wants mutants to only use their powers to do good. Something's got to give! Long in gestation (1989 was when it was first mooted), X-Men finally made it to the big screen in 2000 with much anticipation and apprehension. Cast and director changes occurred, as did rewrites & re-shoots, while the film was considerably lean with a running time of just over an hour and half. Throw into the equation that early in proceedings Bryan Singer had declared he wasn't really a fan of the source material, and the apprehension of Marvel fans was understandable. Nice, then, that the final product has actually ended up rather good.
Singer had been turned around by the comics due to its thematics of prejudice and assimilation (the comic was born out of the civil rights movement), in fact it was this that also got McKellen on board with the project. Substitute Magneto & Xavier with Martin Luther King & Malcolm X and you get the picture. The whole theme of the outsiders trying to get onto a level playing field of acceptance is what gives X-Men its serious heartbeat. Sure it's fun, and you got to have some silliness in a superhero picture, but thankfully Singer has managed to marry up all the threads to keep it accessible to film watchers of all ages.
Where X-Men falls down is with its needy reliance on being the first film of a franchise. Come the mid-point of the film, one can't help thinking about the sequel that was always going to come. Problem number two comes with too many characters purely existing within a short running time. The film is dependent on Stewart and McKellen's battle of wills and Jackman's Wolverine carrying the weight of the movie. That all three men are great softens the blow of knowing next to nothing about the other X-Men and their foes. Credit to Singer and his team, tho, for cloaking a very simple story with an impressive production. The sets, effects and set-pieces are treats for the eyes, even if the finale is not as jaw dropping as one reasonably expects of a well budgeted super hero picture.
But maybe the point is that the finale is merely a bridge to a second film? With that in mind, us the viewers get an appetiser. Relief, then, that it's of the very tasty kind. Here's hoping that X-Men 2 is a delicious main course follow up. 7/10