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New Century of Cinema
DOWSE Guide to the
Movies
by Tony Lee editor of
Pigasus
Press
X-Men
104 minutes (12) USA 2000
20th Century Fox, 2.35:1
Director: Bryan Singer
review by Tony Lee
In Washington, a wily US senator demands the public exposure and
registration of naturally occurring human mutants, as the first step in his political
war against the new evolutionary offshoot of mankind, a race of homo superior that
(he fears) will supplant sapiens as the dominant species.
A girl in the Midwest nearly kills her boyfriend with a kiss. Later, she meets
Canadian drifter, Logan, who settles bar fights with blades that emerge like claws
from his hands. Out on the road they are attacked by a hulking beast-man resembling
the legendary 'Sasquatch'. The girl calls herself 'Rogue', her protector is dog-tagged
'Wolverine', their attacker is known only as 'Sabretooth'.
"Sabretooth?" asks Logan, incredulously, of wheelchair bound psychic saviour,
Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), and - "What's a Magneto?"
"A very powerful mutant," replies the X-Men's physically disabled mentor with
calm deliberation, effortlessly carrying the audience through the potentially
embarrassing game of superhero names. Now we are there. In the Marvel universe,
accepting Halle Berry in a white wig as the weather-controlling 'Storm', new Star Wars'
villain Ray Park as whip-tongued, wall-walking hunchback 'Toad', unknown James Marsden
as ever-goggled, laser-eyed 'Cyclops', model Rebecca Romijn-Stamos as (pivotal to the
plot) blue-skinned shape-shifter 'Mystique', ex-Bond girl Famke Janssen as telekinetic
Doctor Jean Grey (even the X-Men comics stopped calling her 'Marvel Girl' long ago),
and especially Ian McKellen - who needs no help from Stewart to make us believe he is
the electromagnetic force wielding super-villain comics' fans know so well from
Marvel's monthly four-colour X-Men adventures.
The fantasy action directed by Bryan Singer is remarkably athletic, with fast
cutting and impressively blended stunts and CGI ensuring noisily convincing fight
scenes, which mostly involve the animalistic Wolverine (Hugh Jackson, looking
uncannily like the comics' character). This is the first serious attempt to turn a
Marvel comics series into a big screen success, and I'm happy to report that a
success is exactly what it is. The impossibly agile sports jocks, talented prodigies
and social misfits (so despised by Bruce Davison's witch-hunting senator, until...),
that make up the secluded outsider community of Xavier's school for gifted children
in New York state is just a front for Prof. X's super-team. The 'X-Men' aren't keen to
fight for Superman's much vaunted 'truth, justice, and the American way' but they
will make an effort to stop Magneto's clever plan to irradiate world leaders at a
specially convened UN summit, and try to save mankind from its own self-destructive
impulses - which is decidedly more pragmatic and honest than the woolly principles
Krypton's last son upholds. Not everything in the garden is lovely, either. The
new blooms have thorns - Wolverine's is inside him. He's been surgically transformed
into a formidable living weapon, his memory wiped clean. Xavier and Magneto are old
friends who can't agree on the shape of things to come anymore. Rogue seems doomed to
victim status, Wolverine is prepared to kill his enemies, while the rest are full of
doubts and uncertainty - just like us regular folks!
Missing from this version of the X-Men's redoubtable internationalist super-heroism
is a Russian 'Colossus', Germanic 'Nightcrawler' and Irish 'Banshee'. But then this is a
Hollywood movie, and are US blockbuster cinemagoers ready for such un-American characters
yet? Sequels tend to signify pure commercial exploitation, usually tolerated only as a
necessary evil of an industry that needs to keep the reels turning. Yet the comics format,
unlike novels, short stories or plays, as source material for movies would seem to demand
a filmed trilogy, at least. I'm looking forward to as many X-Men sequels as they care to
make.
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