Interesting and successful take on a classic American comic

Rating: 7/10 (6 July 2010)

Now to be honest it took me a few years to find this movie to be any good. Strangely I did not like this movie very much when I first saw it because it was quite different than the comics and television shows. After getting a little older and watching it a few more times it grew on me. I now recognize this movie as a classic superhero film that helped pave the way for other comic book movies.
The X-Men movie does away with the colorful costumes of the comics in favor of all black suits. For what this X-Men film was trying to do I actually think changing the costumes was the right way to go. The X-Men film was covering some pretty serious themes and the colorful costumes would have taken away from the seriousness. X-Men has just the right tone, seriousness, and believability to work. The plot focuses on the war between mutants and regular humans with Professor Xavier trying to make peace and Magneto trying to fight against them. The acting is a huge part of why this movie works. Patrick Stewart as Professor Xavier and Ian Mckellen as Magneto was the best casting choices that could have been made. Both men brought so much to their characters. Hugh Jackmon as Wolverine was also probably the best casting choice that could have been made. Hugh was fantastic as Wolverine!
The downfall of this film is the lack of screen time for some of the characters such as Cyclops and Jean Grey. They try to make us care about Wolverine being in love with Jean Grey but we don't know her enough to really care. Cyclops is the most important X-Men in the comics and he barely has anything to do in the movie. Anytime he is on screen there doesn't even seem to be a purpose other than he's there because he was in the comics. Another downfall is that the movie lacks that epicness that it could have had. Although it's a cool movie and it entertains, the movie does leave you kind of disappointed. It ends with a generic battle against the bad guys and nothing about the mutant rights is ever resolved.
X-Men is very important to the superhero and comic book movie genre. Overall X-Men is certainly missing that certain something that could have made it great, but it's still a good movie. And it is a great set up for X2.