This is where the superhero movie genre began

Rating: 7/10 (15 April 2018)

Contrary to the ongoing publicity from the MCU, the superhero-film genre did NOT start with Iron Man (2008). It began 8 years earlier with X-Men and director Bryan Singer's deft vision of how to take realistic people who just happen to have mutant powers, and convincingly put them on screen.
My rating for IMdB really means a 7 "with an asterisk". Several years ago I would probably have given X-Men a higher numerical rating for IMdB, but of course the field has kept rising in the nearly two decades (!) since.. But that's really the whole point: this ground-breaking movie itself deserves a ton of credit for getting that train rolling. With apologies to the classic Superman and Batman films of the previous generation (ca. 1980-90), they really had no successors, and the special effects capabilities were not really up to the task. X-Men is what made this genre stick. I watched it again recently on DVD after many years' absence, and it still holds up quite well. It's just so likable. The characters are engaging like people you'd want to know better, the storyline is clear, and the ending is satisfying while obviously leaving threads for a followup. Its eagerly welcomed sequel X2: X-Men United (2003) raised the bar in every way and it still ranks IMHO among the handful of the best superhero films ever made.
X-Men gets a lot of things right. For one thing, the X-Men comics from which it draws its basic elements has had a very strong cohort of female characters almost right from the beginning. Sure enough, in this movie the cast of players has something approaching gender equity with Jean Grey, Ororo, Rogue, and Mystique (Famke Janssen, Halle Berry, Anna Paquin, Rebecca Romijn) alongside the leading men (Professor X, Magneto, Scott Summers, and of course Wolverine -- Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, James Marsden, Hugh Jackman). The only thing that doesn't *quite* make it to full gender equality is that the agendas driving the plot are still being set by the two older men who lead the opposing teams of good and bad mutants.
Another obvious highlight is the quality of the casting. Stewart and McKellen, already well established top actors at that stage, gave the cast instant credibility are almost perfectly suited for their roles. Hugh Jackman was a revelation in his breakout role as Wolverine: the snarling, physically intimidating antihero continually plagued by the mystery of his own origin. Halle Berry, who I guess was intended to lend another reasonably big name to the list, looked the part of Storm all right but was too soft-spoken: that character needs to have a commanding, regal demeanor. James Marsden is fine as action team leader Scott Summers, though a dozen other guys would do as well. The young Anna Paquin plays a mutant who hates and is trapped by her own power. Famke Janssen, though not a great actress, nevertheless nicely puts across a charismatic warmth. In a key too-short scene halfway through, we get an early foreshadowing of her capability for self-aware self-sacrifice: the mind-enhancing Cerebro computer (straight from the comics!) has been sabotaged and puts the Professor into a coma after he tries to use it. Jean, knowingly putting her entire mind at risk, uses it to uncover Magneto's location. In X2 -- where she's really the central character -- she will choose a much costlier action to save the entire team.
For the villains (here called the Brotherhood -- the "Brotherhood of Evil Mutants" as it was in the early rather simplistic X-Men comics, just wouldn't have worked -- Tyler Mane and Ray Park as Sabretooth and Toad don't have much to do before the final dust-up, but they're fine. The shapeshifter Mystique (Rebecca Romijn) doesn't need to do much either except look spectacular, which indeed she does, but in the final action scenes she has a great all-out fight with Wolverine. Storm also gets to show off her full weather-controlling power at several points throughout.
The first 20 minutes or so has the difficult job of introducing not just one new leading character but an entire team of them. To get this across, we get a very nicely staged series of dramatic entries. First is the flashback to the concentration camp in 1944 where young Erik (now Magneto) has the traumatic experience that shapes his entire life. Then it's the present day with Jean speaking at a Senate committee meeting that also introduces Senator Kelly (an effective Bruce Davison) and the "mutant problem" that underlies all the X-Men movies, along with Charles and Erik behind the scenes . Then in rapid succession we get Rogue, Logan, Scott, and Storm expertly linked, and finally the X-mansion where the main plot can finally get started. A nice touch is that all the action is placed in historical context: the shadowy contest between Professor X and Magneto and their teams has already been going on for years, and this plot is just one episode in a bigger story. X2 continues the saga pretty much where this important first one leaves off.
Finally, I'll repeat what I said in my review of X2: they both succeed because the storyline and the characters take center stage -- not the action scenes. X-Men doesn't skimp on action, but it's what happens *between* the action set pieces that makes a movie like this last.