"Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light."
~ Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love

Saturday, December 12, 2015

X-Men (2000, PG-13)



*Disclaimer: I was a fan of Bryan Singer for a number of years, and although his was a case where I did hear about allegations against him years before MeToo and TimesUp, I’m sorry to say that I bought into his counter claim, that allegations against him were lies motivated by homophobia. I believed that the accusations of abuse were attempts to tear down an openly-gay director, and so I continued to watch his films without guilt for many years.  It wasn’t until a more recent article came out detailing allegations against him from multiple accusers that I really faced up to it.*
 
Since the trailer for Apocalypse just came out (young Storm!  young Nightcrawler!  squee!,) it’s as good a time as any to start looking at the original X-Men trilogy, before the current McAvoy-Fassbender prequels came along.  In general, they’re a mixed bag.  This film gets the franchise off to a middling start, but the pieces are in place for better things to come.



Our main ins into the world of mutants are teenage runaway Rogue and amnesiac drifter Wolverine.  The girl who sucks the life force out of anyone she touches and the man with an adamantium skeleton who can heal from any wound find one another amid a society that’s less-than-sympathetic to their kind.  The pair are brought to Professor X’s school and safe haven for mutants.  There, Rogue wrestles with understanding herself and coming to terms with her powers, while Wolverine is introduced to the war being waged by those like the professor, who want to live in peace with humans, and Magneto, who believe in mutant superiority and want to destroy the humans who try to persecute them.



We’ll start with the casting.  As Professor X and Magneto, Patrick Stewart and Sir Ian McKellen are so right for their roles, it’s uncanny, and Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine isn’t far behind (his extreme overuse in the franchise can rankle, but he still is very good.)  Of course, it helps that all three characters are given fairly strong material to work with.  The intense friend-turned-enemy-but-despite-everything-still-friend connection between Xavier and Magneto is a highlight of the film, while the franchise has pretty much always done well with the way Magneto’s past damage informs his present actions.  Rebecca Romijn also stands out as the shape-shifting Mystique.



Meanwhile, I have a hard time connecting with Famke Janssen’s Jean Grey, and Anna Paquin and Halle Berry feel miscast as Rogue and Storm.  James Marsden as Cyclops and Shawn Ashmore as Bobby do all right, but they don’t have a whole lot to do.  And I know it’s not supposed to be a huge role, but Ray Park does action scenes so well and he’s kind of wasted as Toad.



The story generally excels when it focuses on mutants as a metaphor for actual marginalized groups – showing the discrimination they face, the comfort they can find within their own community, and the resentment that, in a few, leads them to lash out against the distrustful majority.  It also tends to do well with interpersonal relationships.  Like I said, Professor X and Magneto are excellent, and the wary connection between Wolverine and Rogue is interesting.  Unfortunately, the film seems less interested in the comic-book stuff.  The world-building is rather thin, and there’s an almost-tentative feel to some of the action and heavier comic-book elements, like the movie is a bit self-conscious about it.  When a work shies away from its geek cred, it actually tends to feel less cool, because it comes across as reluctant to own itself for what it is.  However, what does work works well, and there’s enough additional potential that, with some finesse, the franchise takes a nice upturn with its next installment.



Warnings


Comic-book violence, language, and sexual content (including mutant nudity.)

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