Movie Info
Movie Name: X-Men
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Genre(s): Comic Book/Action/Adventure/Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Release Date(s): July 14, 2000
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Don’t cry Rogue…there are plenty of sequels
Mutants are now the hunted species. With increasing pressure for a mutant registration led by Senator Kelly (Bruce Davison), any mutant sentiment is growing. When a girl named Rogue (Anna Paquin) meets a fellow mutant named Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), they find themselves the target of the Brotherhood of Mutants led by Magneto (Ian McKellen). Rogue and Wolverine are saved by a team of mutants named the X-Men and they are about to discover that not only are they not alone, but others are out to fight Magneto’s plans. Magneto however still has plans for the homo sapiens and the battle against humanity means a head-to-head confrontation with the X-Men.
Directed by Bryan Singer, X-Men brought the popular comic book to the screen. Fairly well received, the movie which was in production hell for years helped create the boom of comic book films and became a massive box office success.
Hey…she’s not wearing clothes!
I grew up with dreams of seeing the X-Men on the big screen. With talk in the ’80s of a film with Storm played by Grace Jones, Colossus played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Wolverine played by Clint Eastwood, the idea of a live action film was a long time coming. With all this anticipation, I worried that I would be disappointed…surprisingly, it was a rather strong film.
The movie does have some faults but is a rather solid plot. The film managed to introduce a number of popular characters while having a cohesive story that actually flowed through the script and didn’t simply revolve around having multiple fights. The only problem with the script is really some rather spotty dialogue (“Do you know what happens to a toad when it’s struck by lightning? The same thing that happens to anything else…yeah, that might have worked in a comic but not here).
…and now the X-Men have been attacked by an Oompa Loompa
The casting did a great job. The movie turned Hugh Jackman into a movie star although Russell Crowe was the original first choice for the film. Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen were perfectly cast as Professor X and Magneto. The movie also did a great job with the rest of the X-Men cast. Paquin is nice and innocent as Southern girl Rogue (which probably didn’t hurt her future casting as Sookie in True Blood). I rather hated Ray Park as Toad and Tyler Mane as Sabretooth is a bit too cartoonish. Halle Berry looked the part of Storm (despite the bad hair and spotty accent) and both James Marsden and Famke Janssen were a good pairing for Cyclops and Jean Grey. Rebecca Romijn as Mystique also helped turned the somewhat fringe character into a major player in the Marvel Universe. Other character cameos included Henry Gyrich (Matthew Sharp), Kitty Pryde (Sumela Kay), Iceman (Shawn Ashmore), Pyro (John Allerdye), Jubilee (Katrina Florece), and of course Stan Lee as a hotdog vendor.
We’re still going to be besties, right?
Special effects for the film were also a bit on the cheap side. For the most part, they do work, but there are occasions where a bigger budget could have benefitted the movie. The difficult part about this film is that the movie was a lead in to bigger sequels which had to match up visually…which probably led to some downgrade in future films.
X-Men (along with the strong showing by Blade) opened the floodgates to superhero films and helped show they could mean big money for Hollywood. You could argue that this was a good thing or a bad thing, but X-Men was a big part of how the movie market is today. X-Men was followed by X2: X-Men United in 2003.
Related Links:
X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)
