X Marked the Spot

Rating: 9/10 (1 May 2010)

I'll admit I'm not one for origin stories. Even with the original Superman: The Movie, Iron Man and the rebooted Batman Begins, I'm thoroughly impatient for them to get to what I came/paid for to see: the character in the suit. That said, I enjoyed every minute of X-Men. Even the Nazi intro.
I don't even know how they could've made these characters any more interesting. Especially Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) who seemed to fit perfectly in those claws. And though most of the superheroes were younger, the main characters were much older – a rarity in superhero movies. That was refreshing to see more of an adult and comic book adventure.
Dr. Xavier (Stewart) has taken the high road in educating young runaway mutants at his school while his old pal, Eric or Magneto (McKellen) curved left and wants to prove to the world mutants are the next big thing, by any means (he feels) necessary. Pretty much both were at opposite ends of the same goal: mutant acceptance. Unfortunately, this is an age-old story of true life wars on racism and homophobia, and it never seems to end. Here, in X-Men, at least we can enjoy an adventure movie while learning tolerance.
I definitely liked both characters, and Stewart was perfect for his role. But, McKellen was delicious as the deep Magneto. He played the "bad guy" as not so bad, if you pull back the layers.
Meanwhile, we have a least a dozen other characters, all given a perfect amount of time to develop and make us care who lives or dies. Wolverine, a personal favorite of mine, probably has the biggest background (so much so, they continue his journey into his sordid past through 2 sequels and a spin off. Enough already!) but it's also the most interesting this time around. The weakest is Rogue (Paquin) and, like Wolverine, they stretch out her story to the thinnest level in sequels to come.
While some of the characters were as weak as Rogue – namely Cyclops (Marsden), most were awesome to watch and even better on how each person's power and personality fed off each other to further the plot along.
And speaking of whichMagneto has developed the power to make us mortals into the evolved mutants and plans to use a summit to prove mutants are superior. It's the X-Men to the rescue! Though the movie had a decent budget, it almost felt like they held back a little, avoiding some of the more popular X-Men characters so they could test the waters, obviously for further installments. That was probably the movie's biggest flaw. They didn't do that with Superman: The Movie or Batman. Thankfully, the film was a (deservedly) hit and they were able to expand.
This movie is highly recommended. Great action, score, acting, depth, originality anda message! I would even say to see it for non-comic book fans. If they ever make a Justice League movie or The Avengers, let's hope it's even a 1/10 of how great this movie was.