X-men Month - Mini Review: X-men

It’s July, you know what that means, X-men month

Yes, I have to start by apologising that this will be almost entirely be mini reviews. I thought I might have been able to get a rage out of 3 and Origins: Wolverine but the truth is I kinda liked them and I’m not sure there’s any ground other reviewers haven’t already established. That’s not to say they’re not flawed (in many very obvious ways) but that’s for those reviews.

Just FYI, despite the X-men cameos, I’m not covering Deadpool. But if you’d like my views them I’ll briefly say overall, I enjoyed the film but it was very much what I expected out of the film and not much more. Kudos to the marketing department for helping make it a massive success.

I’m also not covering Apocalypse. I’m writing this in April, in fact 2 weeks after I should’ve done it really so I’ve not got the time to be covering a movie not even out yet.

Also, also, there will be a 4 issue test of Power Man and Iron Fist coming out this month, I know it’s late since #4 was out in May but I haven’t had anywhere else to put it. So, without further ado, let’s take a look at X-men

The 90s were not a good time for Superhero films, in fact I’ll be covering a 90s Super hero film soon (one you might have heard of – Batman and Robin) but 2000 came along and we got X-men but the history of this movie starts as early as 1984, but the passing of rights and various script rewrites and finding the right talent to direct are important, so we end up with Bryan Singer

Despite the long period to get a story done, this was a successful movie financially, raising around $300m on a $75m budget and bearing in mind the slew of cr*p we’d had in the 90s it’s a very good start. And with an 81% Rotten Tomatoes rating and 7.4 on IMDb it was critically successful as well.

One thing to know about the X-men, they’re an allegory for racism in the Marvel Universe (although largely replaced by inhumans in the comics) so all X-men movies (the Wolverine notwithstanding) will have characters that have racist undertones, it’s necessary to drive it home

So X-men is a reasonably solid movie. It has a lot of problems but I’ll start with what it did right. Hugh Jackman as Wolverine is an excellent casting choice (which is good seeing as he gets a heavy focus in the vast majority of these films). Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen excel as Professor X and Magneto respectively. The rest of the cast are serviceable, nothing noticeably bad which also puts praise with the director, Brian Singer.

The look and feel of the X-men is still pretty damn good. Wolverine’s claws look ok, the X-men base looks decent and Magneto can really flex his muscle. I also like how they handle Mystique, even if they’re rather mysterious about anything to do with her. I also quite like Rogue, which is good since her role remains in the mid-cast for the next two movies.

It’s good also that everyone gets a time to show off their skills during the movie’s fight scenes. The villains are without a doubt threatening, Magneto particularly.

But then we come to the problems, and let’s start with the logistics behind Magneto’s plan, he has developed a machine, powered by him that can create radiation waves that turn humans into very unstable mutants. So, how did he develop that machine, that seems to be a bit beyond his usual abilities, also, how do you power a machine using magnetism?

This is my main issue with the plot since it’s the driving force for most of it, also we have Sabretooth in the movie and he’s more generic than I’d expect out of the character. I’m not overly familiar with the comics but don’t Wolverine and Sabretooth both originate from Weapon X (this is something they kinda do in Origins)? That’s something that could’ve been worth exploring if they’d either held back for another movie or 2 or 3, or given us more of Wolverine’s past in this movie.

A minor point is that for a movie where the villains’ motivations come from it being humans vs mutants, the humans don’t really do anything in this movie (I know that’ll change in the next one) Senator Kelly, someone who could’ve been a legitimate threat in his own right ends up just being Magneto’s first victim.

I also don’t like them striking the fans of the comic by knocking the yellow and blue spandex

But overall the movie is entertaining and a solid start for the X-men franchise to grow upon… Only to likely be completely reversed in Days of Future Past but that’s another story entirely which we’ll get to later down the line.

Rating 70/100

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Images/clips used in this review are from X-men and belong to their respective owners. All images in this review are subject to fair use