The X factor

Rating: 9/10 (16 April 2005)

Comic books have always been more about surrealism than action. When Jean Paul Satre wrote about being chased around Paris's streets by giants crustaceans they gave him a Nobel prize for literature, but if you write a story about a person who dresses up as a spider or a bat to fight crime you are considered somehow low brow.
X-men was the first comic book to change that. It arrived a time in American history when issues such as race where still being debated seriously and the future of humanity was first seen to be in the balance.
The X-men, who were mutants with powers were doing what humans do, making choices about how to use their new power. Do they use it for good or ill. Even if you have read a lot of other comic books you will see this exact same story line copied over and over again.
So the movie X-men starts on the moral heights, by showing us the depth of human depravity; the Nazi death camps for Jews. Here we meet Magneto and there is little more that needs to looked into to understand his character.
The brilliance of this movie continues. Particular by focusing on Wolverine, one of the most loved characters in the X-men series. He is like many of the favourite comic book characters, he doesn't really want to take sides. However he is not a bad person and will fight for those he cares about, rather than causes and purposes. He is most like us in this respect.
Through his eyes we learn about the X-men and what they hope to do. He is a fun character and gets all the best lines. All the hero work and best fights are down to him as well.
I love super hero stories because it is the great metaphor for the scientific age. We are now gods and we have to choose to make the world better or maybe we can spend our time caring about whether we have cool clothes and an i-pod.
Having read the original movie script online I can see the difference between the final product and the original. It is a pity they didn't put as much time or effort into X-2.