X-MEN
Fun, but shoulda been a lot better

  I was never a big fan of superhero comics or movies, so if any of you people were fool enough to take this review as gospel, you're more the fool now.  Don't get me started on Batman.  So my familiarity with the X-Men is limited; as such, I won't refer often to the comic which inspired the film.  All I know is, when this movie was confirmed to be in production, I was hoping Nightcrawler would put in an appearance so that the foley guys would have to figure out a way to sonically convey the sound "BAMF!"

Having had about a third of its running length cut out of it due to test audiences with short attention spans, X-Men frequently shows signs of amputation, which is doubly sad considering some of the crap left in that should've gone out the window.  X-Men is not as good as it should have been or anywhere near as good as it could have been, but despite its many, many problems, I found myself enjoying it throughout.  I get the feeling that the full-length version will be released on DVD - many moons after a whole lot of poor saps have bought the truncated version. (sort-of disclaimer: director Bryan Singer has since denied that there is this much missing from the movie and puts the figure at about twenty minutes.  Whether or not this is true doesn't really change the fact that the editing's kinda choppy and fat is still fat; the Holocaust flashback is still unnecessary, and the love triangle still serves no function in the story and tells us not a single detail about the characters except to reveal that Wolverine isn't gay.  And I dunno about you, but I just kinda assumed that already.)

X-Men opens with an unnecessary prologue from Patrick Stewart explaining that mutations are responsible for evolution, and every once in a great celestial while, a whole lot of mutations happen in a short period of time.  We appear to be entering that period of time, since this movie is loaded with mutants, mutants, mutants!  Then there's a further unnecessary flashback to the Holocaust when a boy bends steel with his mind as he watches his loved ones hauled off to a concentration camp.  This scene tells us nothing that wouldn't be nicely conveyed some 20 or so minutes later when we see the number on Ian McKellen's arm, but I guess director Bryan Singer wanted it clear from the get-go that this was going to tackle a bit more serious themes and ideas than did, say, Batman & Robin.

We are then introduced to Rogue (Anna Paquin), a teenaged girl in rural Minnesota (it was Minnesota, right?) who's making plans with her boyfriend for a post-graduation road trip to Anchorage. (Anchorage?)  Then she kisses him and puts him in a coma for three weeks.  He probably has no regrets.  But she understandably freaks and heads on up north anyway, eventually ending up in Northern Alberta. (this subtitle resulted in many a whoop of triumph from the Southern Alberta audience I saw this with)  With typical American bullshittery, Northern Alberta is a snow-buried wasteland (at least it's a very pretty snow-buried wasteland) while upstate New York is summery and lovely, go figure.  Rogue makes her way to a bar, a really nasty place where burly, sweaty Albertans lacking a bit in the grey matter (probably from Edmonton) engage in cage matches against one tough guy named Wolverine (Hugh Jackman).  Wolverine has super-healing powers and big steel claws that pop out of his fists. (minor spoiler: it's a PG-13 movie, and could've gotten away with a PG, so these claws ultimately never actually hurt anybody in the end, no matter how many people they impale)

(Jackman has said in interviews that he was repeatedly asked by Canadian fans to "play Wolverine Canadian".  He did not elaborate on whether he was going to do this or how, but the notion strikes this Canadian as hilarious.  What's he gonna do, deliver his lines in Bryan Adams' insipid wheeze? Keep saying "aboot"?  God help us, is he gonna holler out Joe Canada's excruciating "I am Canadian" rant?)

A news program on the TV tells us that the U.S. Senate is considering a bill to have all mutants registered; a look at an identification tag around Wolverine's neck suggests that unsurprisingly, Canada has long since passed such a bill.  As the two get to know each other, they're assaulted by a big hairy bastard who looks like he should be doing vocals for Amon Amarth - he's Sabretooth (pro wrestler Tyler Mane), and he's more than a match for Wolverine.  But not for Storm (Halle Berry), who manipulates weather, and Cyclops (James Marsden),who shoots beams from his eyes, who show up in the nick of time, chase off Sabretooth, and bring our heroes to upstate New York where they stay at a school for the "gifted", under the care of one Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart).  Xavier tells Wolverine of his nemesis, Magneto (Ian McKellen), who sees these Senatorial debates as a sign of a brewing war between mutants and normals.  Xavier, however, wants to help keep the peace.  And then everybody beats the shit out of each other.

I didn't even tell you yet about Jean Grey (Famke Janssen), who is telekinetic.  Or the evil shape-shifting Mystique (Rebecca Romjin-Stamos).  Or the fiendish Toad (Ray Park), who has to be the most pathetic excuse for a super-villain I've seen in a while.  His skills are limited to flicking out his really, really long tongue, and climbing the occasional wall, and hopping.  And puking.  That, and he looks a lot like Limp Bizkit guitarist Wes Borland, and that's a BAD sign.  Coulda been worse, though; he could've looked like Fred Durst.

So already we've got a major problem here, all in the vain hopes (I suppose) of satisfying fans of the comic book who all wanted their favorites to show up in the film.  None of these characters is given enough time to expand beyond two dimensions, and even then, there's only a couple of them who manage to get that far.  Some, like Cyclops, don't even get one dimension.  Batman & Robin had a lot of lessons to teach those who would dare make this kind of film, and one of them was not to clutter up your movie with too many heroes and villains.

All this having been said, the cast is fair all around, but only fair.  As for the X-Men, Berry lets her breasts do most of her acting for her, which is as smart of an acting decision as she's ever made.  (Marsden) doesn't register at all as Cyclops, though I was under the impression that the comic book Cyclops was blind (if he wasn't, please correct me). (my question's since been answered, and it turns out he wasn't blind.  Maybe I was thinking of Daredevil...) Janssen looks pretty but the biggest thing she has to do is be the center of a love triangle (and get her face puked on).  Paquin is warm and endearing as Rogue, and Jackman is earthy and mildly misanthropic as Wolverine, both actors lifting their characters above the rest.  And Patrick Stewart is appropriately sensible and gentle as Professor Xavier, though he spends much of the movie in a coma.

The villains perform about as well.  Much has been made of how McKellen sees the role of Magneto as not just a role for the cash but a complex character; well, you wouldn't really know it from seeing this film, though maybe you would in the 135 min. version, I don't know.  The script smartly doesn't make him hissably evil, just desperate and angry and with a very hard-ass plan to make mutants acceptable.  Park just hops around a lot as Toad.  Romjin-Stamos (enduring the most lengtly makeup-application regime I've ever heard of to clad her head to toe in blue scale-feather-lookin' things) slips into her role nicely, however, beating the crap out of people with grace, thankfully not having to demonstrate her acting limitations with too many lines.  Surprisingly, I found myself wanting to see more of Sabretooth.  Super-villains which are just really strong, inarticulate, and big are a dime a dozen, but there's something about this guy; he doesn't get a lot of acting to do, but he's got more screen presence than anybody else here.

This film takes a refreshingly straight tack on the absurdities of superhero life, such as its campy names and costumes.  Seen mostly through the eyes of Wolverine, it all makes sense to those who live it every day, but seems goofy to the outsider, and how can it not?  Still, the script isn't too afraid to deviate from that which would have made the least cinematic "sense" had it been translated directly from the comic book; one line referring to Wolverine's vastly different comic-book outfit is like a hilarious pre-emptive strike against those who really WOULD rather see him in yellow spandex.  And nobody here has plastic-molded abs (or nipples).

As I said before, for all the cuts this movie took prior to its release, a lot of crap has inexplicably been left in.  There's this silly romantic triangle between Cyclops, Jean Grey, and Wolverine, which comes out of nowhere and goes nowhere and if it ever goes somewhere in a sequel I'm gonna wish it hadn't.  That whole prologue was pointless, and for that matter, the script itself needed a lot of tweaking; Halle Berry's breasts are very nice, but her character doesn't bring anything to this movie, and neither does Toad.  Fortunately, we're spared "origin stories" of every character except Rogue and Magneto (though Magneto's is, like I said, unnecessary).

While blessedly not edited super-frenetically a la Bruckheimer, the action sequences seem to be a little lacking.  While I confess that I haven't seen Romeo Must Die, the climax of this movie has some of the worst wire-work I've ever seen, especially that leap Wolverine takes at Sabretooth.  (though I did like that punch Sabretooth delivered that sent Wolverine flipping about three times in mid-air)  Oh, there are a lot of moments of fine ass-kickery, but the editing seemed a little...off.

Similarly, the visual effects are quite haphazard; particularly awful is one scene where one recently mutated fellow discovers his own powers by squeezing through prison bars.  Mystique's shape-shifting is nothing we haven't seen done before and done better, though Romjin-Stamos is way better looking than Iman or Robert Patrick, even with sixty pounds of blue scales on her.

And (sniff sniff) Entombed's classic "Wolverine Blues" is nowhere to be found here.  The upcoming Hollowman probably won't have that song in it either.  Life sucks, I wish I was dead.

I know, bitch bitch bitch.  But like I said, I enjoyed this movie all the way through, warts and all.  God knows I expected to see American bills in that Northern Alberta tip jar, good to see I was wrong on that one.

As sure as the sun comes up in the morning, after this movie's huge opening, everybody involved started saying "we always envisioned it as a trilogy!"  This is a rare instance where I believe it, though I don't think anybody's limiting themselves to imagining only two more films.  X-Men, constructed as it is with way too much setup, will probably seem a little more satisfying when a sequel or two comes along.  But that remains to be seen.

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