Is it a bird? Is it a spider? Yes, it's the X-Men!

Rating: 8/10 (20 July 2009)

This film is based on the lives of America's greatest heroes the X-Men, men and women who were both experimented on and exposed to radioactive radiation and subsessfully their cells changed them into freaks. The American government ran these tests in secrecy in the hope to make an army of super soldiers who could attack the Germans and French in the First World War between 1970-1952. The Government hoped to give one man the powers of a spider, one the powers of a bat, one the powers of a superintendent etc. Of course things went wrong and they all escaped into hiding. The natural human DNA meant that good people stayed good and didn't want to fight the English, while the bad humans went worse and decided to gang up and destroy the world. This is why there are bad and good guys. Any time you see a film or book or TV with goodies and bad guys it is because of this incident, known as the Holy Resolution. This was mostly a secret until one of the robots (Auptocop I think) befriended a young boy called Stanley and told him his story. Stanley decided to write comics for a living when he grew up, and thus comics were born.
The X-Men is one of Stanley's most famous and least known works having been turned into a book, a play, an ice theatre, a series of TV series and a series of movies. There have been countless toys, posters, Cd's featuring all our favourite X-ers singing in their favourite styles- Wolfy sings Death Metal, X-Wafer sings Morissey covers, Storm sings Naked R'n'B, Jean Gay just cries for 3 minutes, Gandalf does prog-country, Rogue sings Blues songs about rapin' and a killin', Ham-bit does reggae, Debbie does Dallas, and Memento sings old Shakespeare bits but in rapping couplets. You get the idea. Of course there are plenty of action figures and other junk; top tramps playing cards, vehicles, games for your home video game entertainment computer system (the one for the Nintendy Segi-box in 1984- a rolling beat you up is a particle favourite), posters, bed quilts, condoms featuring Humphry Jackman's face on them, bubbly gum, guns, gum shields, gun shields, paint, ladders, mp3 players, diapers shaped like Captain Jean Luc Pickal's head, phones and answering machines, and of course staples.
This is the first movie based on the comic which was based on the real events of the second World War which was in turn based on the Vietnam war. Stanley pops up in the film as a young boy being crushed to death by a tree (sadly this actually occurred and Stanley is still alive). The film shows some of the histories of some of the main characters, but I was quite annoyed that Superman wasn't in it. He could have just punched all the bad guys across to India! Anyway, Magenta wants revenge for something that happened once and he tries to recruit Wolfy and Raque as they are very strong. He wants as many X-Men as possible so that he can turn the Statue of Liberty into a giant Sentinel which will then crush all the cities of America meaning he will become rich and indestructionable. Some of the fights and excitements here are second to none, second only to the second film which has scenes which are second to none, except when comparing them to those in the first. The fight on top of Her Majesty Liberty is a good, and when the statue comes alive and walks through New York it look like nothing can stop them. She eventually climbs the Entire State Building and is about to eat everyone inside when Slimer (being carried in Rogue's bra) jumps out and leaves a trail of slime around the top so Liberty loses her grip and falls into the ocean, carrying all the bad X-ers with her. Hooray! But will they return for a sequel? Probably not! One extra note- the music here is very good, written by Jon Willyams and merging his previous scores from other superhero movies like Big, Transformers, and The Princley Bride.
Best Scene: When Wolfmarine is fighting Beastor with trees- it's like Croucing Tiger, Hiding Lager but with 200 foot redwoods being swung around instead of swords. It is truly a sight to behead!