Pretty good start to new franchise

Rating: 6/10 (23 September 2015)

This film here was clearly the big winner at the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films Awards in 2001. It was the beginning to a super successful new franchise: the X-Men movies. Writer and director Bryan Singer was mostly known for his Academy Award winning work on "The Usual Suspects". And it was definitely quite a leap from the world of crime into the world of superheroes, or I should maybe say mutants with superpowers. The cast may appear to include some big names, but that's only because of what happened in the last 15 years. There is certainly some irony to the fact that only Anna Paquin, the youngest cast member, was an Academy Award winner back in 2000. Berry had her win not much later. Famke Janssen looks absolutely stunning in here and was mostly known for her portrayal of the very memorable Xenia Onatopp at this point. James Marsden was fairly unknown and same can be said about Hugh Jackman, an Australian actor that nobody knew before this film was made, but who since has risen up into the elite of Hollywood. Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen were both very established actors already, even if McKellen did not yet have the LotR-trilogy under his belt. And finally Rebecca Romijn, who received lots of recognition and awards for her portrayal here, which baffles me as I felt her character was 99% makeup and special effects instead of a really convincing performance, even if she played a memorable character. Oh yeah and Bruce Davison is in here as well, a Golden Globe winner and Oscar nominee.
So yeah, the story here is that the world of humans is also packed with mutants and there are obviously skepticisms coming from both sides towards the other. Mutants are also separated into two groups, the ones who aim at peace with humans and the ones who look forward to war. Anna Paquin plays a young mutant who is a key figure in the evil mutants' plans, but the main character Wolverine intervenes. He is still portrayed by Hugh Jackman these days and I think it was a bold move by Bryan Singer, who also wrote the characters, to have Jackman carry this franchise on his shoulders, at least in this first film. Quite a vote of trust. I assume Singer was already planning a second film when he made this one here. He included an ending where it was left open if Jackman may return depending on how audiences would like him and also an ending in which McKellen could very well return as the main antagonist, even if he was not 100% evil, just disappointed and desperate I guess. I expected a final fight between Stewart's and McKellen's character as they really built up that storyline, but Stewart was pretty much missing in action for the entire final fight sequence and the young guns took over instead. Still, they reunited the two for the very final scene, which again shows that McKellen's character is not 100% evil playing chess with his mentor and antagonist. The two just have completely different political positions.
This was a good film in terms of special effects and characters. They were all fairly memorable and easy to distinguish with their costumes and abilities, which is always important in sci-fi films. It was unusually short for a superhero movie, only 95 minutes (without credits) and completely different compared to today's standards. I must say this one got me curious about the next installments to the series and I will certainly check these out at some point. As for this very first, I recommend it. Good watch.