Once upon a time, making a superhero movie was not considered a really cool idea, or a guaranteed money maker. Hard to imagine, I know, but you really only have to go back to before the release of Bryan Singer’s X-Men. And it’s easy to see why when watching it. From the grounding effect of the Auchwitz opening, to the comfortable suburbia of Rogue’s (Anna Paquin) introduction, the film slides itself neatly into reality, or some close approximation of it.[ftn] And this gives it a lot more power than if it had been in the same kind of ultra-cartoony universe that the later Spider-Man film used.

For X-Men is trying at least to invoke themes of tolerance, fear, prejudice and hatred, and it largely succeeds — particularly by having a villain with largely believable and consistent goals and aims, even if he is, as Wolverine later points out, “full of shit.” Ian McKellen’s Magneto is brillianltly played for the most part, and shines in particular when confronting Professor Xavier outside the station. It’s a pity he’s given a few dodgy lines of dialogue when introducing his henchpersons — “Toad has a wicked tongue, Senator”; “Mystique … takes so many shapes.”

Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, however, is the show stealer, with the then near-unknown actor turning in a performance that does for X-Men what Harrison Ford did for the original Star Wars. Namely, being someone who tells it like it is, and approaches the fantasy content with the same level of scepticism that the audience does. Moments like his “wheels” gag (ad libbed by Jackman) and his sparring with Cyclops (James Marsden) give the film that vital spark of life missing from The Phantom Menace, for example.

I haven’t got time to go through all the cast members, of course, but I particularly enjoyed Anna Paquin, Ray Park (Toad), and Bruce Davison (Senator Kelly). Oh, and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos (Mystique), of course. The direction is for the most part excellent also — a shot that still stands out in my mind is Wolverine being batted by Sabretooth (Tyler Mane) several metres away and landing in shot on the bonnet of his truck. The action is generally excellent too — Wolverine’s fights in particular being great fun.

Where the film falls down — if it does — is in the script department. There are a few clunkers, and one or two that didn’t have to be — such as Halle Berry’s (Storm) delivery of “What happens to a Toad when it’s struck by lightening.” Or perhaps I’m just a Joss Whedon apologist (the Buffy scribe was called in to tighten the script in places, and meant for the answer to that riddle to be delivered off hand, as she walked away). More fundamental problems lie in the decision to make Magneto’s Crazy Mutant Making Machine^TM lethal. Why? It undermines his precise character when he disregards Storm’s evidence — and surely his plan, even if working correctly, deserves to be foiled even if only to save Rogue? This rather odd bit of plotting strikes me as a fear that the audience wouldn’t get why the X-Men had to save the day unless LOTS OF INNOCENT PEOPLE WERE GOING TO DIE. Which is plain dumb.

As a whole, however, X-Men is not dumb, but a fun, occasionally worthy action film — with the potential for sequels to be so much more. Here’s hoping.

Footnotes

1. Minus, of course, the wildly improbable mutations, and crazy functioning of the Mutating Machine.

DVD Review

X-Men has been released three times in Australia. Each time the extras have improved, and this time they’re so close to perfect that I decided it was worth the risk purchasing it. The DVD is labelled X-Men 1.5, with the ability to play the DVD with extended scenes, and a second disc full of extra documentaries, galleries and trailers (as has become the norm). The opportunity to watch it with extended scenes thrilled me — accustomed as I was to the fantastic extended The Fellowship of the Ring DVD. Of course, if I’d used my noggin I’d have realised that that kind of detail was highly unlikely.

In fact, the ‘extended’ bit is the worst part of the DVD. If you choose to watch the feature with the extended scenes, then when you get to a scene that has an extended bit, the film suddenly stops and you’re switched to poor quality footage of the full scene, from beginning to end. Then you’re returned to the film, where you have to watch half of what you just saw again. Brilliant. Still, watching the scenes alone works alright, especially with the commentary track.

The commentary for the film is nicely done, although director Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects) has gotten some guy in to help him who only seems to have had tangential influence on the film. A member of the cast — preferably Hugh Jackman — would have been a lot more fun for the viewer. But Bryan and his mysterious friend do get on very well, which is always better for these things.

The documentaries are very good, especially the candid “Reflections on the X-Men”, as well as the documentary about costuming, design and make-up. One comes away with a deep feeling of sympathy for Rebecca Romijn-Stamos after that feature — being married to the loser from ‘Full House’ AND enduring six-hour makeup application must really suck. All in all, some good DVD material — it’s just a shame that we had to wait so long for it. I’d be severely annoyed if I’d bought one of the earlier DVDs.

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This entry was posted by the illustrious Tom Charman on Saturday, April 26th, 2003. It concerns such pressing issues as . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.