X-Men - Movie Review

iliekpiez X-Men Dark Phoenix is coming out in 2019. It will tackle my favourite storyline in all of comics, the Dark Phoenix saga. So before that movie comes out, I will tackle all the X-Men movies. This will include the Wolverine films and the Deadpool films as well. I might skip one Wolverine film which shall not be named. However, this franchise was pretty successful and still is going on to this day.

To give a bit of backstory to the film, comics were seen as kids stuff. Movies like 'Steel', 'Batman and Robin' and Power Rangers were not helping, but clearly worsening the situation. I did mean the franchise of Power Rangers as a whole. Really only 'Blade' was one of the only good ones of the 1990s. However, superhero movies changed in 2000, when X-Men came out and started the superhero boom. It was praised and the film does not get as praise as it deserves for what it did and the themes that it tackled.

X-Men is directed by Bryan Singer who went on to direct a much better movie in X2, a massive disappointment in Superman Returns, came back to direct the amazing X-Men: Days of Future Past and then directed 'X-Men: Apocalypse' which was not as good as First Class or Days of Future Past. It stars Hugh Jackman (Wolverine), Halle Berry (Storm), Patrick Stewart (Professor X/Professor Xavier), Ian McKellen (Magneto), Anna Paquin (Rogue), James Marsden (Cyclops), Rebecca Romijn (Mystique), Tyler Mane (Sabretooth), Ray Park (Toad), Shawn Ashmore (Iceman) and Bruce Davinson (Senator Kelly). The story is that some children have evolved and have special powers and the US government makes them to go to a school for mutants led by Charles Xavier/Professor X. There is a team called the X-Men and they are locked in a battle against Xavier's former friend, Magneto.

The character interactions were phenomenal. The interactions between Rogue and Wolverine was amazing. You could see both were outcasts; and both led sad lives yet they shared a connection with each other. Wolverine was missing a companion and so was Rogue, and their dialogue was some of my favourite from the movie. The dialogue between Magneto and Xavier is also pretty good as both want to do good; just that their form of good does not fit with each other. The senator and Jean, both wanting peace and to get other and done with, but it will take a while to do so. You can feel that the characters do have connections when Xavier brings up the fact that some of his first students and most likely his favourites were Storm, Cyclops and Jean Grey.

The action scenes are great. The end fight is awesome. I could watch all day long. The fight that takes place between Wolverine and Mystique is only a physical battle; but a battle of wits as well. Storm killed Toad, that was an awesome moment in the film as well. However, while the action scenes are awesome, you can feel that a lot is on the line. In the train station, Rogue is at risk and you care about her character as she is so well developed. The end fight when you feel that mutant and human relations are at stake and you want the X-Men to defeat Toad, Magneto, Mystique and Sabretooth. The build up is so good it gets a massive payoff when the end fight scene happens. The action scenes themselves are also filmed so well by Singer, who did such a good job with the film and his direction of the film really helped carry the film to what it is- a phenomenal movie.

The characters themselves are so well done as well. I will type about the acting performances and the characters themselves in the film.

Wolverine - This is my personal favourite Marvel character as a whole. He is very interesting and such a cool character. In the movie, he is masterfully portrayed by Hugh Jackman one of the best acting performances in any superhero movie in history. However, the character himself is awesome. Jackman is a big part of what makes his character so phenomenal. I love seeing Wolverine fighting Sabretooth and Mystique as well. This is also a tragic character as he really has nobody close to him really other than Rogue in the film. So when Rogue nearly died you would have felt the tragedy and the emotions that Wolverine was feeling.

Rogue- Anna Paquin gives a great performance as well as Rogue as she gives in a performance that shows that Rogue is afraid of Rogue. The character as a whole is pretty great as well. When she discovers that she cannot touch anybody-a kiss, a hug, a touch-any form of it she cannot do to anybody. Paquin shows the horror in her face really well. In fact, you feel for Rogue throughout the entire film. When she leaves you do want someone to notice immediately but you can see why-all her loved ones are estranged and will stay that way for the rest of their days on Earth. Combined with that, she might have murdered her boyfriend-who she deeply cared about. This is a character you will never stop feeling sorry for.

Magneto- Ian McKellen gave a performance that will not be forgotten for a while as the character Magneto. Now normally played by Michael Fassbender, McKellen still gives the best acting performance of the character. We can see why Magneto hates humans-they have given a massive pain: killing his mother and the child actor for Magneto, Brett Morris did a good job of showing the character's pain of losing his mother. You can see why he is doing all this, and makes his character so interesting. McKellen adds charisma to the character as well.

Sabretooth-If I had an issue with this film, and it is a issue with this character. He was absolutely terrible and awful. He was a terrible character. He was like an animal that had some awareness of humans around him and could barely mouth a word. He was cool when fighting Wolverine, but when you have someone who has the same power as Wolverine, it is bound to awesome at the end of the day. He was a big disappointment and I wish that he was a much better villain. I also disliked Tyler Mane's acting performance as Sabretooth as well.

Jean Grey - This is a character who evolved in X2, and they improved upon her character by a quite a massive margin really. In this film, Famke Janssen is portrays the character. The acting performance by Janssen is pretty good. The best in the film? No, but she still did well in the film. She was a good character, had a cool ability and clearly almost showed that she might have actually been stronger than Charles and certainly had a similar ability to Xavier. This does make a good character as a whole but ne that certainly evolved in X2.

Professor Xavier - Patrick Stewart gives one of the best acting performances in the film as Professor Xavier/Professor X/Charles Xavier. He is such the perfect actor for this character. In fact the character has a cool ability and has good relationships with characters like Storm and Wolverine. The devices that he creates are also pretty awesome. The device Cerebro shows just how much intellect the character has and that he has very good interactions with other characters in the film,

Cyclops - He has a laser ability and wears sunglasses. But at the end of the film however, we see how the laser ability affects him - by that he cannot really open his eyes or he will cause major damage. The actor, James Marsden did a pretty good job with the character and gave in a decent performance. I did like his interactions with Wolverine as he clearly cared a lot about Jean - both some of Xavier's first students at his school. He was a pretty good character but his best portrayal was definitely in the 1990s X-Men cartoon.

Storm- Halle Berry was a massive star in 2000. A huge, huge star. She was pretty much everywhere and two years after X-Men, she was a Bond Girl in Die Another Day (an awful film). Anyways, in this film Berry did a pretty good job and was maybe the right actor, maybe they could have done better, but Berry still did a good job as Storm. Her ability to control the weather is pretty cool and I really like the scene when she struck Toad with lightning.

Toad - I don't like Sabretooth in the film. I kind of hated him in the movie as a manner of fact. But I liked Toad. I liked Ray Park and he was the right actor due to his acrobatic skills. He gave a very good performance. I did like Toad; they captured him pretty well from the show and comics. His effects don't really hold up well but we will get on to do that later.

Mystique - Jennifer Lawrence now portrays Mystique. I always thought that Lawrence was overrated. Anyway, I always liked Rebecca Romijn more than Jennifer Lawrence's portrayal of the character. Anyway, Mystique was awesome. She could toy with the X-Men's mind, she could be anywhere; she could be Storm, for all we know Storm might have been dead. She was cool in that she would always defeat the humans for Magneto, probably because she would have been more useful in that situation.

I will not type about Iceman or Senator Kelly as there is not much to type about for those characters.

If I did have an issue other than Sabretooth is that some of the special effects have no aged very well. For example when the Senator got through those cell bars, those have aged pretty poorly along with Toad's tongue effect. It isn't; all of them; just some of them.

Overall, X-Men is a phenomenal masterpiece. It has the characters. Some of these characters and actors do a brilliant job with their characters and the writers write the characters really well. If you want the action scenes you got it. The way that Singer films these makes them even better as it is great camerawork. The way that they build up to them is even better and makes an even bigger payoff at the end of the film. Overall, a film that I would definitely recommend, even for people that dislike the MCU and superhero movies nowadays.

Score: May seem controversial, as many people would not rate the film by this score, but this film is outstanding and the superhero film the genre needed at the time along with Blade. I would rate X-Men a:

10/10

This is a film that tackles serious issues and does it so well. The camerawork is stunning and pays off. This is a film that deserves so much praise than it actually gets.

Comments

Nice review

also please turn on DMs - visitor

This review's not bad but it's 95% about the characters and 5% for every thing else. Yeah characters are a main part of a movie but there's still a lot more like the visuals and story. Not saying It's a bad thing. But my problem is. Is that if I or someone else were to do a review like this you would probably criticize my review or their review for the reasons I said above. No offense though. Keep up the good work man. - B1ueNew

I do agree with you. I think I accidentally made a Top 10 List in the review - iliekpiez