Rating in Stars: *** (out of ****)
Cast: Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Famke Janssen, James Marsden
Director: Bryan Singer
MPAA Rating: PG-13 (for sci-fi action violence)
Running Time: 1:44
Release Date: 07/14/00
X-Men satisfies threefold: As an introduction to a team of superheroes, it is comprehensive, immediately defining the character’s personality traits and supernatural abilities simultaneously in a way that connects us to their struggle in a world that rejects them. As a spectacle, it is engaging, with action sequences that have pizzazz and pop, even in spite of visual effects that might seem a little less refined (but are still effective) 16 years later. As an allegory with genetic mutation as the stand-in for differing racial heritage or sexual orientation, it may be a bit obvious, but at least screenwriter David Hayter is willing to go there. The film is, in many ways, a precursor to something like The Avengers, and it holds up now as something just as good.
The heroes are members, not of some elite squad (although later installments in the series would place them into one), but of a school belonging to Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), aka Professor X, who has advanced telepathic powers. His primary teachers are alumni who include Scott Summers (James Marsden), aka Cyclops, who can shoot a fiery beam from his eyes or the visor that protects them, Ororo Munroe (Halle Berry), aka Storm, who can control the weather (Ok, not all powers are equally sensible, I guess), and Dr. Jean Gray (Famke Janssen), who shares telepathic powers with Professor X and has telekenesis, to boot. The students have an array of powers, from the ability to create and control ice to, well, the ability to produce and control fire (Another can walk through walls).
Our central protagonists here, though, are Logan (Hugh Jackman), aka Wolverine, who can heal rapidly and out of whose knuckles protrude knives of hardened steel, and Marie (Anna Paquin), aka Rogue, whose touch invites some sort of allergic reaction. Rogue happens upon Wolverine in a rundown bar in the middle of nowhere and latches onto him just in time to be attacked by a pair of fellow mutants, the wolfish Sabretooth (Tyler Mane) and the amphibian Toad (Ray Park), before being saved by Cyclops and Storm and brought to the “X-Mansion.” The attackers were merely pawns of Magneto (a commanding Ian McKellen), who can control metal and whose minions are rounded out by Mystique (Rebecca Romijn-Stamos), a blue-skinned beauty skilled in martial arts and the ability to transform into others.
The real conflict stems from within a system rigged against these mutants in such a way that they are forced into hiding from the outside world. The allegory isn’t exactly subtle, especially when a heavily conservative Senator (Bruce Davison) claims, “We must know who they are, and we must know what they can do” (a statement that seems even more relevant today than it did in the film’s pre-9/11 era). Professor X believes that there is some sort of peaceful resolution to be had, but Magneto, an old colleague who helped him to build a large room that tracks mutation, disagrees and fashions a machine that can manipulate DNA to cause rapid mutation.
Hayter expertly weaves between this major plot strand (which is thankfully unburdened by any others, with the exceptions of a lingering attraction between Jean, who is Cyclops’s fiancée, and Wolverine, as well as Rogue’s increasing feelings of inadequacy and fear of her own powers) and action sequences (such as a nifty one that pits Storm against Sabretooth and Cyclops against Toad and the charged climax atop the Statue of Liberty), and director Bryan Singer keeps the film streamlined at well below two hours. X-Men is a solid entertainment machine and a promising start to a franchise.
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