This mutant-fest is that rare beast, a classic piece of summer cinema.

Rating: 10/10 (22 September 2000)

While Bryan Singer's X-MEN has received what can only be described as a thumbs up among critics and a slightly more wavering response by the audiences I feel most have missed out on it importance. Leaving the cinema on a hot summer night, I recognised a strange smile amongst the males that exited with their satisfied but less than impressed girlfriends, the kids, boy or girl did not have this almost uniform smirk either. The men, who have grown up on STAR WARS, INDIANA JONES and BOND, seemed to recognise something they'd long been missing. I can only describe it as akin to the feeling explicated at the end of FIELD OF DREAMS by James Earl Jones. It may not of had the John Woo inspired chaos, or the Bruckenhiemer orange filtered cool, it lacked the set in stone star power machismo of a Mel, Bruce or Nic, and it wasn't plagued with a critical case of referential irony. While I certainly enjoy all these in a movie (except the latter as you might have guessed) X-Men had something the blockbusters of late had lost in the brew or just plain didn't care about. It had a story, it had characters, it had ideas and best of all it wanted to present them as well and as intelligently as the summer action seat filler would allow. This was the reason we went to see JAWS all those years before high concept was branded on the arse of every piece of cinematic entertainment. Sure the shark was cool, we went to see the effects and the action and jokes, but what made us buy another ticket, what made us recommend it to our friends, what made us queue around the block for a third viewing, what made us hum the theme tune in the local lido, what made us watch it on TV, video and DVD year in, year out? I'll tell you what; an incredible piece of story telling with characters who actually seem like people as opposed to archetypes from other films. And in recent years the most we could hope for is the star gets some choice wisecracks and the action is half as exciting as it was in the trailer. Comparing and contrasting with recent examples is a futile exercise. The two most successful blockbusters of last summer, THE MATRIX and THE PHANTOM MENACE, don't deserve as near as much the adulation they received and continue to gain. They both suffer from the same problems that the X-MEN miraculously lacks. They both set up over-complicated plots. The essential premise is understandable from the trailer but they still find it necessary to bog the section after the opening action sequence down with an hour of exposition. THE MATRIX for all it camera tricks and location changes essentially has Lawrence Fishburne lay down the plot for over forty minute of cleverly shot talking heads. Where is the spectacle in that? STAR WARS I is crippled by even worse pacing and expositional problems. It needs to set up all the characters for the next two films but also have a story within this one. So while all the future relationships get their first meeting scene, it's hard to feel excited about any of the paths joining as that's all that happens. For a film that opens with standard rolling introduction titles to brining us up to date, all we basically chalk up for the following two hours is movie of scene setting for later installments. Yes, Obi Wan and Annakin do meet but little occurs between them, the same can be said for the mother of his future children. As Andrew O'Hehir concluded in his report at the time of its release, ` This installment feels less like an opening chapter than a stammering, parenthetical preface.' X-MEN should ail with same defect. It is the opening part of a franchise and worse still has thirty years worth of idolised comics to condense into two hours. Unlike BATMAN which not only had huge audience recognition from non-comic readers due to the camp TV series and only one lead to introduce, X-MEN has a diverse cast to acquaint as well as a world that is obviously different from ours despite parallels. To deal with the huge roll call of introductions the scripting team of Tom De Santo, Singer and credited writer, David Hayter, have gone for what I'll call the Star Wars approach (A New Hope, that is.) Establish one character and then have them promptly meet up with everyone needed on his quest. In the same way Luke Skywalker briskly picks up the droids, the sage, the pirate, the muscle and the plucky heroine on his journey he also has plenty of adventures on the way, culminating in one big dénouement. This way the plot is peppered with action that effects the proceedings and all the characters are introduced both in time to have purpose in the last act but also for future episodes. The mission still propels the story but it also requires that the whole gang is assembled. X-MEN follows Rouge and Wolverine as they discover who they are, what their powers are and what their place in society is. Like the hierarchy set up in Star Wars where the characters understanding of the mystical force sets the characters social standing, here the more control a character has of their mutation the higher their ranking in the group. Clasical actors Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen take the roles of leaders of each side but also the Alec Guinness' role in Star Wars of swiftly explaining the complicated mythology in simple but legendary sounding terms. Here mythology is replaced with political import. The science introduction that hears Stewart booming about evolution and mutation should, if the producers have any sense become the regular opening for all entry in the series but apart from that most of the old hands speechifying is used to show their strange relation. Singer far prefers to show everything visually. Whether it be Wolverine's ability to smell danger, Cyclops' power, people prejudices of mutants or what Magneto's doom machine does. By keeping dialouge for character as opposed to signaling plot changes we have a far quicker, fluid reality created.
In nearly all press interviews Singer has explained what drew him to the project he knew little about was the comparison to Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. We sense that Magneto and Xaiver have history merely from the casting. When Magneto, says `By any means necessary,' this doesn't seem like clumsy misuse of a historical slogan or tacking on importance via historical events. Taking events were people lost lives to add verisimilitude is probably the hardest (and half-witted) thing to achieve as a director, Spielberg can be hit and miss and James Cameron's focus on a pair of stroppy teen in TITANIC was insulting. X-MEN uses it's history deftly; Ellis Island, Civil Rights, Gun Control, McCarthyism and most risky of all Nazi concentration camps work together as evidence to supports the reality these mutants live in. X-MEN is probably the most distinct cinematic allegory since HIGH NOON. It's subject is political intolerance. It's brave and skillful inclusion of a tragedy like the holocaust to open the film, setting out its stall not as merely popcorn fodder but as a piece more interested in a human side than car chases. It wants to show how these characters developed their ideals not their powers. Magneto is presented as someone so obsessed with equality he's willing to turn everyone into someone like him. Interestingly, the starting point to this particular battle is a vote grabbing Senator who is riding on people's fears to pass a witch hunt law against mutants. After Magneto's plan fails, one of his hench mutants actually disguises herself as the now dead Senator and turns the vote around. How's that for two opposing side causing moderation? The bad guys actually stop the bill because the good guys stopped their far more nefarious scheme. It's a more pertinent message on modern living than `We need guns. Lots of guns.' Nearly every blockbuster of the last decade has been as flawed, so it really is unfair to pick on the Wachowskis' and Lucas's successes to this extent apart from the fact they've had such special treatment compared to everyone else. X-MEN earned a favourable review and an in depth article by Kim Newman in film magazine of record Sight and Sound. Newman's piece however was concerned with the process it took to get the film from the funny-book into the can and the review still felt like it was selling tickets as opposed actually judging whether the film would have any after life apart from sequels. This is the cackhanded way all Hollywood summer juggernauts are brushed aside by the university degree press, and Sight and Sound is more than guilty of this. Perhaps this will go some way to redressing the balance. These movies are the most watched, have the most effect on the economics of the movie business and really do make or break careers. The fact that Singer has once again proven himself to be the master storyteller, as he did with The USUAL SUSPECTS, and made a movie that displays all the merits of big budget entertainment should be of note enough. The fact that it could have more import than a thousand worthy documentaries on modern day prejudices should be celebrated.