director
Bryan Singer
screenwriter
David Hayter
based on
characters created by
Stan Lee
Jack Kirby
Len Wein
Chris Claremont
John Byrne
producers
Lauren Shuler Donner
Ralph Winter
cinematographer
Newton Thomas Sigel
music
Michael Kamen
editors
Steven Rosenblum
Kevin Stitt
John Wright
cast
Patrick Stewart (Professor Xavier)
Ian McKellen (Magneto)
Hugh Jackman (Wolverine)
Anna Paquin (Rogue)
Halle Berry (Storm)
Famke Janssen (Jean Grey)
James Marsden (Cyclops)
Rebecca Romijn-Stamos (Mystique)
Tyler Mane (Sabretooth)
Ray Park (Toad)
Bruce Davison (Senator Kelly)
mpaa rating: PG-13
running
time: 104m
u.s.
release: 7/14/00
video
availability: VHS - DVD
official
website
other bryan
singer films
reviewed on this website:
- apt
pupil
- superman returns
- the usual suspects
- x2
see also:
- x-men:
the last stand
|
At
some level, X-Men -- the comic book and the new movie
it has spawned -- is, has been, and always will be adolescent
hokum, but it's adolescent hokum that can get around your shields
and get to you. When writer Chris Claremont gave the X-Men
comic a makeover in the mid-'70s, he knew exactly how to turn
it into a fan favorite: tap into the average comic-book reader's
feelings of being misunderstood, ridiculed, alienated from the
popular crowd. The noble mutants -- superheroes born with uncanny
powers, and persecuted by society for it -- were stand-ins for
their audience. Whether X-Men can connect with a summer-blockbuster
audience on the same metaphoric level remains to be seen, but
it deserves to; it's probably the most fully-rounded and satisfying
bit of popcorn entertainment we've gotten this summer, or are
likely to get.
The movie opens, oddly enough, in a Holocaust concentration-camp
setting; we witness a young boy, who will grow up to be the vengeful
Magneto (Ian McKellen), traumatically separated from his parents
by Nazi soldiers. Manifesting his powers, the young Magneto causes
the camp's iron gates to bend. Some will question whether Holocaust
imagery should be used to spruce up a summer comic-book movie,
but the moment has surprising power; so does much of the rest
of the film. Director Bryan Singer (The
Usual Suspects, Apt Pupil),
who has never worked on a blockbuster scale before, tosses off
the special-effects scenes -- they're necessary, but he's
not all that crazy about them -- and focuses, believe it or not,
on the personalities and philosophies in conflict.
Mutants are under attack; the self-righteous Senator Kelly (Bruce
Davison), using rhetoric straight out of Joe McCarthy's playbook,
calls for all mutants to be registered ("Would you want
your children to go to school with mutants? Be taught
by mutants?"). Magneto, who has seen this sort of thing
before, mistrusts humans and sees the conflict as a war that
mutants must win in order to survive. His opposite, Professor
Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), is more optimistic -- he runs
a private school devoted to helping young mutants refine their
"gifts" for the greater good. Among Xavier's recruits
are Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), a brutal scrapper with claws that
pop out of his fists; Storm (Halle Berry), who commands the weather;
Cyclops (James Marsden), whose eyes shoot lethal lasers; Jean
Grey (Famke Janssen), a budding telepath; and Rogue (Anna Paquin),
whose touch robs people of their essence and/or mutant abilities.
Magneto plans to use some sort of mutating ray on the world's
leaders, to turn them into mutants and therefore level the playing
field. Trouble is, he's too old to run the machine himself any
more; it takes too much out of him, so he kidnaps the young Rogue,
and her fellow X-Men swing into action. But X-Men is less
about action than about the awkward electricity passing between,
say, Wolverine and Jean Grey (she's involved with Cyclops but
doesn't seem very intimate with him), or the ideological opponents
Xavier and Magneto. X-Men packs a lot into its 104 minutes,
but still finds time for a nicely understated scene between the
skittish runaway Rogue and the slowly sympathetic Wolverine in
his dingy truck; the dialogue, credited to David Hayter (as many
as five other writers worked on the script), has much less macho
attitudinizing than Claremont's own verbiage (I revisited some
back issues after seeing the movie, and winced). Singer and Hayter
have taken Claremont's compelling basic blueprint -- weird heroes
with wounded souls -- and streamlined it.
The movie deftly sets up each character in a way that establishes
his or her powers and personalities (Wolverine is a cynical loner;
Cyclops is a stiff; and so on) lightly and quickly, and then
gets on to the next thing. As summer movies go, X-Men
is remarkably crisp and economical; it's not overawed by its
own special effects, even when an unfortunate character's too,
too solid flesh melts, thaws, and resolves itself into a dew.
The acting is also a lot better than it had to be -- Hugh Jackman
nails the balance of brooder and berserker that Wolverine fans
will demand; Anna Paquin's untouchable Rogue gives you a pang
of sorrow for this poor girl -- though I wish Ian McKellen's
saturnine Magneto had more lively henchmen to bounce his wit
off of; his minions (Tyler Mane's animalistic Sabretooth, Ray
Park's tongue-lashing Toad, and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos' shape-shifting
Mystique) have little or no dialogue, yet I must admit that Mystique
the freaky blue hellcat is a terrific visual.
Singer and McKellen worked magic together in Apt Pupil
-- another movie that used the Holocaust as a jumping-off point
quite effectively -- and McKellen approaches this comic-book
villain (with the rather embarrassing pronunciation "Mag-neato")
without a scrap of condescension or even conscious hamming. The
role doesn't take dignity away from him; he gives dignity to
the role, and to the film. Like the misbegotten Battlefield
Earth, the movie ends with the promise of more to come
(there's a terrific final scene between Xavier and Magneto),
but in this case you want to see more. Bryan Singer brings
a casual touch to blockbuster wizardry, as in a charming classroom
scene when one bored mutant idly makes a fireball and another
bored student turns it into an iceball. X-Men shows every
sign of being a smart, truly magical adventure-movie series --
if there's an audience for it. |