A Great Blend of Action, Effects, Story, and Characters.

Rating: 10/10 (15 July 2000)

I have never been a fan of X-Men in my life. The characters always seemed dumb in the cartoon series on Fox Kids, and I've never read the comics of it. I wasn't very psyched that that they were making an X-Men movie, but then I found out that Bryan Singer was directing it. That seemed very interesting, because Usual Suspects and Apt Pupil (both great films) had little to no action in them. Then I also found out that Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan were starring in it, along with a bunch of young actors with no really major credit (besides Anna Paquin with The Piano). That got me more interested, and once I saw the preview I knew I had to go see this movie. I'm glad I did. X-Men has so much to offer in an hour and a half, and as I was sitting there watching Toad walk on walls, Professor X use Cerebro, Magneto floating through the air, and the climactic battle scene of Wolverine Vs. Sabretooth on the Statue of Liberty, I was thinking, THIS is what you go to the movies for.
And not only does X-Men have fantastic special effects, great stunts, and X-ceptional battle scenes, it also has a good story and good characters. I know some of them deserved more screen time, but they still were such great actors who really portrayed the fact that the X-Men weren't all happy best friends. I loved the tension between Logan (Wolverine) and Cyclops. You can tell that they didn't like each other from the start. And the story was not built around special effects and fight scenes (unlike a very overrated movie starring Keanu Reeves), but it had substance. I could tell Bryan Singer really wanted to prove that a movie based on comic books could be more than a comic-book movie. And of course, this movie had the COOLEST villains in it. Mystique was a purely evil and sinister spy and had the coolest morphing ability (her power was probably the coolest out of all the mutants), Toad had a wicked sense of humor and was great to see in battle using his tongue, slime, and leaping ability to fantastic use, Sabretooth was a badass mutant with strong senses of smell and had sweet fight scenes with Logan (especially the fight on top of Ellis Island), and Magneto was played SO well by Ian McKellan you could just FEEL his presence throughout the movie. He also had such an awesome power. I'd love to be able to control all metal objects.
All in all, X-Men was one of funnest movies I've ever been to in a long time. It will never bore you and will keep you captivated with it's phenomenal special effects, awesome fight scenes, great humor, exciting story, and characters you can grow to love. Now I can't wait until the sequel. 10/10