PG-13, 104 min.
Director: Bryan Singer
Writers: David Hayter, Tom
DeSanto, Bryan Singer
Starring: Hugh Jackman,
Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Famke Jansen, James Marsden, Halle Berry, Anna
Paquin, Tyler Mane, Ray Park, Rebecca Romijn, Bruce Davidson, Shawn Ashmore
It’s easy to forget that
“X-Men” was really the first of this current wave of comic book cinema to get
it right. The first two “Spider-Man” movies and “The Dark Knight” trilogy
really overshadowed it in the years that followed, and once “The Avengers”
Phase One movies came along “X-Men” became old news, and yet somehow has
managed to put out six installments with a seventh on the way in about a month.
“X-Men: First Class” jump started the flagging series two years ago, and it
seems Fox is determined to ride the franchise to Avengers style success, with
even a Marvel style cameo for Mystique at the end of Sony’s “The Amazing
Spider-Man 2”, opening this week. But, it was way back in 2000 that comic books
finally got past the stylistic stumblings of the original Batman franchise with
this movie.
The villainous plot of
Magneto’s in “X-Men” isn’t particularly good, especially when compared to the complexities
expected of comic book vehicles today, but it’s simplicity allowed for the
success of the other elements established in this film. Instead of spending too
much time on plot, Bryan Singer firmly established the socio-political
criticisms the X-Men are really about to an audience that would’ve been mostly
unfamiliar with the notion of mutants at the time. He took the major popular
characters of this vast universe of them and confirmed why these mutants were
the most popular. He built the core of the “X-Men” franchise into a solid
foundation from which everything else would spring.
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