The Weird Turn Pro

X-Men
Directed by Bryan Singer
Story by Tom DeSanto and Bryan Singer
Screenplay by David Hayter  

Yul Brynner is dead. It's obvious we waited FAR too long for an X-Men movie.

People don’t give this movie enough credit.  Admittedly, it contains scenes which are ludicrously campy, but let’s be honest.  A good portion of the population will never take seriously a film that features people shooting fire out of their hands.  So if you have it in you to just get past such things, you might realize that within that context, X-Men is a good film.  The cast is decent, the script is decent, and as hard as this may be to believe, it actually has something to say.

Soon after the credits stop rolling we hear a narration which he explains mutation’s role in the evolutionary process.  This is technically true, although I think it would take a great many mutations before someone could shoot laser beams out of their eyeballs.  Here it is—the great stumbling block.  Swallow what they’re telling you, and it’s all smooth sailing from here.  The narration continues:  “Sometimes humanity takes a leap forward.”  That’s X-Men in a nutshell.  Mutants are people too.

We open to a concentration camp.  Nazis are separating the children from their families as they get off the train.  One child is going to pose a bit of a problem.  It takes a large group of grown men to subdue the hysterical boy, and when they do, it is made clear that the boy’s anguish has somehow torn a hole in a large iron gate.  The boy is Eric Magnus Leshnerr, and will survive to the staunch belief that humanity is ultimately evil.  He is a mutant with powerful telekinetic control over metal.  Growing up, he adopts the comic book codename ‘Magneto’ (Sir Ian McKellen), and leads a mutant “brotherhood” who’s solution for mutant acceptance lies with destroying humanity.  A war is coming, so the thought goes, and all mutants must be on his side if they are to prevail.

He’s the ‘bad guy’, in other words.

Let me say, before going any further, that I think it took some seriously huge, hairy balls to write a comic book movie who’s villain is a holocaust survivor.  This is not to say that Nazis haven’t made their comic book debut many times already, and a few of the venerable World War II era originals (i.e.: Captain America) were created, essentially, to sock Nazis in the nose.  However, the existence of a concentration camp in a story transforms Nazis from comic caricatures into the grim reality of true evil.  Because Magneto faced this evil and survived, we are expected to empathize with him… or at least, we’re to understand why he came to his decisions, even if his decision is: kill all humans.  That’s the rub, I think, and it provides an effective allegory for the lessons of history.

This is the first film of many, so what follows are a bunch of origin stories.  There isn’t really time to linger too long on any one, so they go by pretty quick.  It isn’t long before we have a school full of mutants and a team to fight… what else?  Magneto’s mutant Brotherhood.  The comic book roster for this team is quite large, numbering in the dozens of people, but here we will only concern ourselves with a manageable four: Cyclops (James Marsden), Jean Grey (Famke Janssen), and Storm (Halle Berry), with Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) coming later.  We will spend a great deal of time with Wolverine, the fan favorite.  As such, Wolverine gets a meaty back story as an animalistic cage-fighter.  Hugh Jackman is pretty good for the role (if a bit tall), and his bad-ass-with-a-heart character derives itself mainly from his scenes with Rogue (Anna Paquin).  Rogue is a youngun in this film, and her relationship with Wolverine is of the father-daughter type.  They have a believable chemistry in this respect.

The Brotherhood, rivals to the X-Men, are revolutionaries.  They want mutant rights, but their methods are radical and dangerous.  The team is comprised of Magneto, Sabertooth, Mystique, and Toad.  Ian McKellen is… well… Ian McKellen, and he plays these roles well.  While Sabertooth is, unfortunately, just a cardboard, grunting strongman, the other two are an absolute delight to watch.  Toad is played by the legendary Ray Park, made famous by choreographing the only interesting thing to watch in Star Wars Episode 1—Darth Maul’s lightsaber battle with two Jedi.  He creates similarly entertaining moments in this movie. Rebecca Romijn does a surprisingly excellent job as Mystique.  She could have just cashed in an average performance as eye-candy, but looks ferocious as this shape-shifting acrobat.  It’s hard not to cheer for her as she wipes up the floor with our heroes.

Without saying exactly what happens, the film remains exciting to watch all the way through.  Characters are likable, the story flows well, and the dialogue is fun and snappy, save for one awful, awful, awful moment.  Don’t worry that I’m not mentioning what it is because there’s no way on God’s green Earth you can miss it.

Review by Master Jimmy