"Mankind has always feared what it doesn't understand"

Rating: 7/10 (27 August 2000)

I don't really know if X-Men is the greatest superhero movie ever made, but it's certainly the coolest.
The comic series was the ultimate in style over substance, and very chic it was too. It originally stiffed as a Stan Lee/Jack Kirby alternative to Marvel's own range of Fantastic Four/Avengers/Spiderman, et al., almost coming close to cancellation. An idea of how relatively unsophisticated these early issues were reveal that the "X" in X-Men originally stood for "Xtra". A five-strong team, only two of them really make it through to the movie. Angel, a winged playboy, is wholly absent, while plans to include the acrobatic beast were dropped after his later transformation into a blue-furred creature proved too extensive an undertaking. Bobby Drake as the Iceman does get a small role in the form of Shawn Ashmore, though this is as a young student, and not the same age group as Cyclops or Jean Grey. Jean Grey (codenamed "Marvel Girl" in the comics, one of the series' less inspired inventions, and absent here) appears with James Marsden as the guy who can shoot lasers from his eyes.
When the comic became cool was when it's allegorical issues (mutated humans as oppressed minorities) were scripted by Chris Claremont in the mid-seventies onwards. He totally reworked the team into largely what it is on screen. (Though the popular Nightcrawler is missing, and I didn't spot Colossus, played as a bit part by Donald Mackinnon). Debatably the most popular superhero of the Marvel range, Wolverine was also arguably the first short superhero, his 5'3 frame here being transformed into the 6'2 build of Hugh Jackman. Jackman is magnificent, his cynical, taciturn view emerging from the seedy bars and fighting clubs he frequents, later being used to prick the more absurd elements of the plot. His adamantium claws are truly impressive on screen (the special effects being used, as elsewhere, to serve the plot, rather than being the plot. George Lucas, please take note), and he even gets to use them on Cyclops as a new form of "giving the finger". His sniping, macho relationship with Cyclops provides some of the better sequences, and Jackman's timing means that these elements always seem spontaneous, not bog-standard retorts written to order. Best line? After emerging from a battle with the shapechanging Mystique (Rebecca Romijn-Stamos) who assumed his form, he finds Cyclops ready to blast him, just in case. "Wait, it's really me" he urges. "Prove it", he's told. "You're a dick" comes the reply. Cyclops can only nod in agreement. Perhaps less successful is his love for Jean Grey (Famke Jannsen) which, while again being true to the comic, isn't that well developed on screen.
Wolverine gets all the best lines, all the coolest things to do, and is one of the three main characters involved, the rest just peripheral to greater or lesser extents. Patrick Stewart gets a fair chunk of the earlier part of the film, doling out exposition as Captain Jean-Luc, er, Professor Charles Xavier. It must be disheartening for some of the cast that Stewart is such a good actor without having really to try, and there is evidence here that's he going through the motions. Halle Berry gives a great effort as Storm, yet doesn't really impress. Maybe she's miscast, as I always imagined Storm with a bit more attitude, sort of a Grace Jones type.
Then there's Ian McKellen as Magneto, unused to the SF franchise lark, and so managing to outact Stewart by a considerable margin. His character is still fraught with the odd problem, mainly, his origins. The X-Men series is, of course, foolproof, as no real "origin" is needed. There are no cosmic rays, no gamma blasts, and no getting bitten by arachnids of radioactive properties. They've got the powers from birth/puberty and that's all there is to it. Yet the film casts McKellen as Erik Lehnsherr, Jewish victim of the holocaust. This is still reasonably true to the comics, and the sequence is brilliantly shot, lashings of rain making it look like a Kurosawa wet dream, yet this does take something away. The whole idea about the X-Men is that it's allegorical (later sequences allude to, but do not directly represent, the McCarthy witch trials), yet the idea of the lead villain being a persecuted Jew is spelling it out. This comes across as similar to a scene in "Beneath the Planet of the Apes" where we are shown chimpanzee war protesters. Allegory and literalism are two separate elements, and should not be mixed. Again, McKellen is ideally suited towards this sort of thing, being homosexual in real life, though it's all-encompassing reference to persecution of minorities is somewhat offset by the generic good looks of the cast.
Characters are reasonably well drawn, the script is literate, and there's a real sense that the people involved cared about what they were making. There's nice little in-jokes (a reference to Wolverine's comic book "yellow spandex", whereas here the group wear cool black leather) and cameos from mutants that don't have a real part to play, though not introduced to casual audience distraction (Ariel/Shadowcat in particular getting a nice throwaway appearance). There's even a great explanation of how Rogue (Anna Paquin) gets the white streak in her hair.
But this isn't a film for comic book fans, it's based purely towards casual audiences who may never have even picked up an issue. Some argue that it's too short, but for a superhero movie it sensibly neglects the dragging two-hours plus duration and goes for the 104 minutes slot. It has three clear acts and leaves you wanting more. Note how Wolverine's mysterious origins are not revealed, but left hanging, rather than the neat sewing up of loose ends that left Batman with nowhere to go after he avenged his parents' death in the first Tim Burton movie. Also notable (if not necessarily commendable) is that the X-Men kill their enemies, and it's not just Wolverine doing the slaying.
I don't know if this film will stand up to repeated viewings. In five years' time it might be hopelessly outdated, or it's funky, slick style and stylish - though not ostentatious - direction might be lost on me. I suspect it really contains very little substance at all, but it's snappy, yet realistic dialogue and "wow" super-powered fight scenes are clouding my reasoning. Who needs one Batman when you can have a whole army of mutants? No, in just a few years' time I might wake up and see this for what it really is. But for now, X-Men is the best summer blockbuster film of the last ten years.