X-Men

Rating: Null/10 (19 March 2009)

I've never read an X-Men comic in my life, despite being a moderate fan of comics (read a lot but have no clue about DC or Marvel chronology and the big events going on right now and what not), so I have no prior relationship to the material. The movie's thematic preoccupations are obvious and probably come from the comics- the mutants are fighting for a world which hate them, the discrimination against the mutants in the world of the X-Men is similar to racism and discrimination by sexual preference in our world. Nothing much is done with these concepts, they are merely presented. The cast is generally good but I was only really charmed by Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. I still don't see why Bryan Singer is so relatively highly-regarded. He seems to me a basically competent director but nothing special at all. I saw nothing even remotely special about the writing or direction or cinematography in this film. The action scenes are only moderately entertaining. Overall this is on the same level as "Spider-Man", and not on par with Nolan's Batman films, "Iron Man", or the Hellboy films. Not bad, just nothing special, and I'm kind of surprised this was such a huge hit. I will still watch "X2", mostly because I have heard very few negative things about it and the X-Men world is mildly intriguing.