X-Men
Movie Reviews | Jul 14th, 2000
Starring Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Hugh Jackman, Anna Paquin, Ray Park, James Marsden, Famke Janssen, Halle Berry, Rebecca Romjin-Stamos, Tyler Mane
Written By: David Hayter
Directed By: Bryan Singer
It’s finally here! A decent comic book movie. The comic book movies have been in the gutter lately so it’s nice to finally see a movie done right. So Bryan Singer and Tom DeSanto took the movie under their wings and I think made a very good movie. I’ve been looking forward for a X-Men movie for years now and looking forward to this movie since I saw the trailers.
I’ve seen almost every cartoon on TV (which is being rebroadcasted again started Monday on Fox, I think 3:30pm in my area) and I did collect a lot of X-men comics but I didn’t really read them. We went for the first showing at our theater and it was sold out! I said immediately that this is definitely going to be number one this weekend. I projected saying it will make 40-50 million this weekend. Anyway, this movie is great and I was entertained the entire movie. I do have some complaints about it though, but I’ll get into that later. The movie opens up with a scene in Poland and shows Erik Magnus Lensherr/ Magneto as a young boy in a concentration camp. They showed a very interesting intro of what he can do and the reason why he feels the way about non-mutants. It kind of shows the audience that Magneto is not such a evil guy, BUT is taking his approach the wrong way. The movie isn’t just about the X-men kickin’ the Brotherhood’s ass, but it’s about civil rights and equality. Bryan Singer was right about that the movie is a drama with action in it because I thought the action part was lacking. This movie was basically an introduction to many movies to come, HOPEFULLY.
Now let me talk about the characters in the movie. Hugh Jackman is DEAD ON for Wolverine. To hear the “snik” sound when he claws come out was awesome! He plays him so well and then some! He’s the man in this movie and definitely steals the show! Plus he was funny and added comic relief to the film. Sir Ian McKellen is perfect for Magneto and so was Patrick Stewart as Charles Xavier, a.k.a Professor X. For years I’ve been saying, if they ever make an X-men movie, Patrick Stewart has to be Charles Xavier. Other characters I thought did a good job were James Marsden who plays Cyclops, Famke Janssen as Jean Grey and Cyclops’ love interest (who is also attracted to Wolverine). I thought Ray Park did an awesome job as portraying Toad. They expanded and changed his character from the comics and I think for the better. He now has a long ass tongue and spits some kind of slim at people. Plus his lines in the movie are funny and he even speaks his own lines this time and doesn’t have any voiceovers like in the Phantom Menace.
I didn’t really have a problem with Halle Berry as Storm because she’s super gorgeous and I think she did a fine job. Mystique caught me by surprise and actually ended up being very cool, plus Rebecca Romjin-Stamos is very naked and very blue so that was neat. I totally respect her for sitting 8 hours to put that blue shit all over her and then a couple of hours after shooting to take it off. Tyler Mane who plays Sabretooth was okay. I thought they could have picked a better villian in the movie. But he did ok. Rogue is played by Oscar winner Anna Paquin who does an extremely good job with the character and she uses a southern accent that is really believable! The movie is basically about Wolverine and Rogue, the outsiders of the bunch. Bruce Davidson who plays the right wing Senator Kelly, wants to get rid of mutants because according to him, they are different, evil and bad.
So the whole time the X-men are trying to protect the human race from the Brotherhood of Mutants. There was a lot of cool parts in the movie and I didn’t think any of the parts were cheesy like in the trailers. I think the music made it cheesy. Another problem I had was with Michael Kamen’s score. It seems a lot of people, including me had a problem with it. It just seems like it wasn’t even in the movie. I wish they would have used the one for the cartoon but make it sound similar to something Hans Zimmer does. Mix rock with classical. I wish maybe they should have gotten a different composer than Michael Kamen, even though I liked his Robin Hood score and some other stuff. Danny Elfman or someone else would have been perfect.
But it’s kinda of good that viewers don’t really need a musical score because the movie can stand alone without it. But the score basically is just background noise. Plus the visual effects were excellent in it too. I understand that they didn’t get a big budget and a whole lot of time making this movie but I think Bryan Singer showed that you can make a good movie in a short matter of time. With that said, X-men delivers and is gonna be a hit this summer. Once the word gets out that it’s a good comic book movie, I think more people will see it. I was very happy to see this movie turn out good and I think it’s either better than the first Batman or equal to it. There are some flaws to it but I liked it a lot! It was definitely too short and an additional half hour and a good score would have made this movie gold. Go see it and you decide.
Favorite Scenes: well the whole final showdown was cool but the particular part is when Wolverine fights Mystique
Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 0 minutes
Overall Rating:
