There are a few ways to approach the comic book to big screen transition.
Some comic book movies are ultra cheesy (Judge Dredd), some are darkly
artistic (Batman), and others are in between. X-Men is an in between movie.
It wanted to be as serious as possible while providing decent entertainment,
but it fell somewhat short.
The story is simple comic book fare. Some humans, called Mutants, are
developing special abilities as they evolve. Depending on your mutation, you
might be able to control metals, regenerate incredibly fast, or shoot laser
beams out of your eyeballs, among other things. A bunch of politicians want
to force Mutants to register as such and have their abilities on record. Of
course these actions scream HITLER and NAZI, and the story is presented as
such in an almost annoying way. Any reasonably intelligent person can draw
these parallels with subtle hints, but for some reason this movie assumes we
are all morons and feels the need to beat this point into our heads. Over
and over again. Anyhow, there are two Mutant factions. One faction, led by a
man named Magneto, feels that Mutants should take over and essentially go to
war with non Mutants. The other faction, led by Professor X and the X-Men,
endeavor to protect the humans from Magneto and his thugs while being
persecuted by the very same people they are trying to save.
The greatest failure of the movie is that I didn't find myself rooting for
the X-Men. The Magneto guy really had a point and didn't come off
sufficiently evil enough for me to care about the X-Men's fight against him.
I found myself thinking that Professor X seemed more evil than Magneto,
particularly after the whole Sabertooth mind control scene. I was far more
interested in Wolverine and how he ended up with a skeleton welded with
metal than I was in the fight to save humanity from Magneto's Mutants. I
think this movie tried to do too much. The greater story arc just wasn't as
interesting as the details of characterization, probably because the regular
humans were all portrayed in a negative light. At the end of the movie I
found myself wondering what Wolverine would discover, what would happen to
Rogue, and whether Dr. Jean Grey would stay with Cyclops. I didn't give a
shit about all the asshole humans the X-Men saved.
The acting is decent. It's hard to do a good job while spouting about
mutants and calling your co-workers names like "Cyclops", so the actors are
to be commended for carrying out their lines without falling into
uncontrollable fits of laughter on the floor. The direction was good, and
the sets were fantastic. Unfortunately, the X-Men costumes weren't very
interesting, but the special effects made up for their blandness quite well.
The extra footage included with the DVD was lackluster. There were some
deleted and cut scenes that were interesting, but the making of Fox special
was really badly done. Of course the sound and picture quality were
outstanding, which is a good reason to go DVD even if the extras aren't
worthwhile.
But none of this review matters because for a large portion of the film you
get to watch a naked blue chick with amber eyes perform martial arts moves
in slow motion. That, my friends, is the real reason to watch this movie.
Demonika
Order from Amazon