X-Men are X-celent

Rating: 8/10 (5 June 2006)

X-Men is one of Marvel's oldest superhero teams, launched in the early 1960's. A comic interpretation of a ethnic or racial group that is met with bigotry, hatred and intolerance, X-Men continued Marvel's tradition of featuring heroes that were decidedly more down to earth than their DC Comics brethren. It took years of development to bring the mutant superheroes to the big screen, but it was finally tackled by director Bryan Singer, who made a big splash with his sleeper cult hit, The Usual Suspects. As realized by Singer and his screenwriter collaborators Tom DeSanto and David Hayter, X-Men would bring comic book adaptations into a more realistic world than the ones that Batman had played in in the 1990s, and successfully launch Marvel comics into a string of strong adaptations that continues to this day.
In the universe the X-Men inhabit, small numbers of humans have begun to show evolutionary mutations. Some of these mutations manifest themselves in the form of physical deformities, such as different skin coloring, scales or extreme sizes. Others appear normal, but possess powers that make them superhuman such as extreme healing abilities, control of temperature and the weather, and walking through solid objects. Normal humans view the mutants with fear and trepidation, shunning them and forcing mutants to live in hiding and with shame. As X-Men opens, we are shown a flashback scene in which young mutant Eric Lensherr, aka Magneto, reveals his powers to control metal objects when he is separated from his parents at a German concentration camp during World War II. When he grows up, his experience with intolerance at the hands of the Germans has ingrained in him a strong distrust for human society in general. When crusading Senator Kelley (Bruce Davison) decides to introduce the Mutant Registration Act, which would force all mutants to be identified by the government, Magneto (played as an adult by Ian McKellan) has determined that no mutant will ever be marked as he was as a child and plans to fight back.
Simultaneously, a young teenage girl, Marie, aka Rogue (Anna Paquin), has just discovered her power, which is to take the life energy out of any person she touches. This revelation comes to her when she first kisses her boyfriend, leaving him in a coma. Fearful of her powers, she runs away from home and in a small town in Canada discovers a fellow mutant, loner Wolverine (Hugh Jackman). Wolverine has advanced healing abilities, and is also equipped with a skeleton covered in a material called Adamantium, a metal that is indestructible, along with three sharp claws imbedded in his hands that he can unleash at a moments notice. Rogue and Wolverine are attacked by mutants working for Magneto and are saved by the X-Men, the name of a team of elite mutants that have been trained to use their powers for good by Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) who founded a school for mutants in New York. The key members of the X-Men are Cyclops (James Marsters), who can shoot energy beams from his eyes, Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) who has telekinetic powers and Storm (Halle Berry) who can control the weather. Professor Xavier believes that Magneto wants Wolverine for some purpose, so he is determined to hide him at all costs and prevent a plan Magneto has to convert normal humans into mutants.
X-Men is very much an allegorical story, depicting man's intolerance to that which he finds different. This gives X-Men a dramatic strength many other comic book stories lack, which are often a bit too wrapped up in their fantasy material. Singer and crew have made a good decision to ground X-Men in, essentially, the real world. New York is New York, there are the references to the Holocaust which provides a good basis for Magneto's hatred and the characters are smart enough to find the trappings of the comic book world they are in a bit ridiculous (In one scene, as the X-Men introduce themselves to Wolverine with their code names, he snickers and says "This is the stupidest thing I have ever heard.").
On the character front, X-Men does suffer a bit from an overload of characters. Storm, Professor Xavier and Magneto's henchmen suffer from lack of development because there just isn't enough screen time for everybody. On the flip side, Wolverine, Rogue and Magneto are fleshed out to a decent degree, allowing us to become familiar with them and involved in their story. This imbalance of character development would haunt the future X-Men sequels as well.
X-Men was a film that had the potential to be a budget buster, so some care was taken to not overload the film with visual effects and as a result, X-Men looks a little low budget and underwhelming compared to it's bigger budget successors. The action sequences are kept to a minimum, but the film is not completely lacking in it's quota of fisticuffs. The special effects are decent, but noticeably restrained, so as to keep the film in check. In some ways, this restraint is almost better, as it allows X-Men to look to something other than eye candy to fill it's running time, leaving more room for the issues and characters.
X-Men would prove to be a popular comic book translation and Marvel used it to launch itself into superstardom after that, following up with Spider-Man two years later. While it has some flaws, X-Men is a good entry in the genre and one that set the tone for good adaptations to follow.