True to its comic book origins

Rating: 7/10 (26 December 2000)

I've not seen a comic hero from my childhood brought to the screen with this kind of devotion to the original since Superman (1978).
Making the X-Men real was equally difficult, more so in many ways. It's darker, edgier, and certainly more political. They had to handle the balance between reality and potential without getting lost on either side. All this, while injecting the sense of human issues that were at the heart of many X-Men sagas. The series was never black and white; it was all about shades of gray.
The film creates a believable present day (or near future) controversy on which to hang an 'us versus them' battle. It introduces the characters in a way that people who don't know the stories can get swept into things while leaving those with some background information confused about what, where and why (it's a comic book, within three minutes everyone knows the who and has some idea of the how).
It was very well cast with the exception of Halle Berry. As Storm she is just not sufficiently emotional. Unfortunately, she's also left to handle a big "let's make a point" scene of the issue... err movie. We're left not really feeling her pain about being an outcast mutant which makes it impossible to feel much one way or another from Senator Kelly's apology. I also had a feeling in a couple places that Patrick Stewart might have suggested some changes, making the dialog a bit forced at times.
Many people have commented in a negative fashion about the ending. All I can say is, they don't know or appreciate comic books. It's a comic book picture and has a true comic book ending.
Comic books have served as Philosophy 101 for our nations youth for many, many years and this film does justice to this series and its values. Comic series based on Superhero's were nearly always about the conflict of 'good versus evil', and while the battle was nearly always won, the war was far from over. That meant that most (or all) of the high echelon bad guys were dealt with, but the progeny of evil often skipped away (most often hurt in some way) to surface again in a later issue (or against some other hero). Occasionally, the hero suffered a serious setback, just to keep the whole game appearing honest. The ending wrapped up this battle in a rather tidy way, leaving the war far from decided.