So, okay, let's talk about the damn movie. I know I said I wasn't
going to, but it's a quiet week, and several people have asked me
to review it. X-MEN.
Bryan Singer has wisely opted not to attempt an adaptation of any
individual story. Virtually none of them are feasible for the
first movie. They all either go on too long, or involve too many
characters, or focus too much on one team member (meaning that
it wouldn't really be a film about the team), or just play too
heavily off the series' backstory. And that's before discounting
the ones that just aren't any good.
The first film, and they're being quite unabashed about seeing
the X-Men as a franchise, has to do three key things. One, it's
got to introduce the mutant concept and the three political
factions that drive the X-Men (anti-mutant human, anti-human mutant,
and nice cuddly X-Men). Two, it's got to introduce the individual
characters, and there's an awful lot of them by normal action movie
standards. Three, it's got to tell a decent story in its own
right, which has to tie in to the basic concept of the X-Men.
Singer has done about as well as can be expected with that in mind,
though the film has at least one eye on laying groundwork for the
future rather than on giving us a particularly good story for the
present. Magneto's plan to turn government leaders into mutants so
as to challenge anti-mutant prejudice is at least relevant to the
X-Men concept, and positions him as a more sympathetic figure than
he has been in the comics recently (his plan here is a self-defence
scheme rather than a bid for power), but it's still really just an
excuse to have the characters run around and fight one another.
It's not the point.
As far as introducing all the characters is concerned, efforts are
fairly blatantly concentrated on Wolverine and Jean, with the rest
of the team suffering as a result. Xavier gets by more on Patrick
Stewart's presence rather than anything else, and Scott, Jean and
Ororo are just rather watery characters in roles that a fair
number of X-Men characters could have filled. It's not that the
characters are being badly handled so much as that they're only
there to fill out the roster. Maybe they'll get more screen time
in the sequel.
Wolverine and Rogue are the sensible choices here because they play
up the theme of alienation, from Logan's history and Rogue's
powers. In fact, it's pretty much only Rogue's powers that the
story needs, since that's the bit that makes her fit the theme.
They've effectively bolted her powers and name onto an ingenue
role that's closer to early Shadowcat, and created what amounts to
a new character in the process. Nothing wrong with this; it's
what the film needs. The same applies to Magneto's henchmen, a
group of decent character designs and powers bolted onto what are
little more than blank slates.
It also helps, of course, that these two have nice easy powers to
film, avoiding special effects problems that might have arisen
with giving extensive screen time to anyone else. The SFX aren't
exactly bad, but they're certainly patchy. The flying scenes
feature some of the most obvious wires since Muffin the Mule, and
I find it hard to believe they couldn't have been handled better.
On the other hand, Mystique comes out of it rather well, and the
visuals for the use of Cerebro are effective.
The film confirms my view that the X-Men isn't, at root, a superhero
concept. It's a sci-fi concept which is played in superhero style
for the benefit of comics audiences, and the film is at its weakest
in trying to emulate those elements for a medium that doesn't need
or want it. Of course, the film has wisely dumped the comics'
costumes - the idea of Wolverine wearing either of his normal
uniforms would be ludicrous anywhere other than within the genre
conventions of superhero comics. But what they've done instead is
given everyone black leather (which simply means they've seen the
Tim Burton Batman films) and kept the codenames. This isn't
necessary, and you can see that when they resort to having the
point of view character, Wolverine, making fun of the codenames and
costumes even in the toned down form. And he's right. They're
silly and they're not helping anything. The film would have been
better off if they'd had the courage to dump this stuff altogether.
For people familiar with the comics, the film doesn't represent
much more than an opportunity to see the characters moving in live
action. The story is simply about putting over the basic X-Men
concept, which we already know, and while it gets that stuff over
effectively, there's nothing really to it beyond that. As the
beginning of an action film franchise it works, though, and you
have to look at it on that level.
