Not my favourite comic book superhero flick.

Rating: 5/10 (1 August 2008)

X-Men is set in the near future where evolution has gone haywire, strange genetic mutations have begun to reveal themselves & 'normal' people including politicians are scared of them, their powers & what their existence means. Treated like freaks & outcasts mutants are shunned by normal society & Senator Kelly (Bruce Davison) is trying to get a law passed in which every mutant has to be registered & therefore controlled. Not everyone likes his idea & evil mutant Magneto (Ian McKellen) who can control metal objects with his powerful psychic abilities wants to wage a war against normal human beings as he believes mutants are the future. However Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) runs a private school in New York for young mutants & also leads a team of mutants known as X-Men who use their unique abilities for good & are determined to stop Magneto & his evil plans to wipe out the human race...
Directed by Bryan Singer this along with Spider-Man (2002) really kicked off the whole Marvel comic book superhero trend that has continued with the likes of Iron Man (2008), The Incredible Hulk (2008), Punisher: War Zone (2008) from the Marvel stable & Hancock (2008), Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008) & of course the mega hit The Dark Knight (2008) this year alone. To be honest I am not a huge fan of the comic book superhero genre & I personally just don't think character's designed to be drawn in 2-D make the transition to live action film that well. With the possible exception of the Blade trilogy of films & the Spider-Man franchise I just can't get that excited by them. Here in X-Men the film concentrates on only some of the character's, the actual comic books contained more X-Men & evil mutant bad guys for them to fight with the main focus of the story being Wolverine who goes from shunned outcast into a superhero. The script is alright but I really can't raise any more enthusiasm for it, the plot about Magneto bombarding politicians & world leaders with radiation to turn them into mutants is rather basic actually, X-Men is more of a character driven film but as I said I just don't think character's like the X-Men translate to film that well. There are obvious allegories & references to racism, intolerance & acceptance too just to try & add some dramatic weight & give the audience a moral message to think about. The X-Men, mutants & their powers can often look silly, some of the CGI computer effects don't do them any favours & it's hard to relate to them in any way as 'people'. At only just over 100 odd minutes at least it's a lot shorter than the average two hour plus superhero film, it moves along at a decent pace & it tells a reasonable story but I must say I couldn't get into it, I couldn't get into the world of the X-Men & what they were about & I did lose interest in the film & it's plot quite quickly although I did manage to watch it all without becoming bored.
The special effects are generally very good as one would expect, there's plenty of CGI ranging from the impressive to the substandard Playstation game graphics. I was also a bit disappointed in the villains, Sabretooth doesn't do much, Mystique is very blue while Toad just looks daft & if I was him I would be very upset if I saw the immense & useful power mutants like Magneto & Wolverine had & I had to be happy with pale green skin & a long tongue! The final climatic battle is set on the Statue of Liberty & is quite good as are all the set-pieces but I couldn't honestly say they were much better than quite good. I only saw it last night & the only scenes I remember are the ones at the train station & the final fight. Apparently 20th century Fox originally approached Tim Burton to direct by turned it down, imagine how that X-Men Tim Burton style might have turned out!
With a supposed budget of $75,000,000 X-Men was fairly low budget for a summer blockbuster which usually have $100,000,000 plus budgets. Although set entirely in the US the film was shot almost entirely in Canada. The acting is OK, Patrick Stewart & Sir Ian McKellen add the distinguished weight while Hollywood starts of the day Halle Berry & Hugh Jackman get plum roles as X-Men.
X-Men is a film that I can't say I loved & yet I can't say I hated, I just found it watchable & not much else, nothing more or nothing less. There are worse films out there to be sure but if your not a comic book superhero fan than you can live without seeing X-Men. Followed by X2 (2003) & X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) while two money grabbing spin-offs X-Men Origins: Magneto (2009) & X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) are due out next year.