The distressing opening scene that builds the backstory of this movie’s main antagonist (Magneto) consists of little more than screaming, crying and white noise sound effects. Not a good start for those who prefer smoother action hero movies while trying to steer clear of horror and unpleasant drama genres. Fortunately, this only lasts a few minutes, and then the drama scenes become increasingly interesting until we see Logan (aka the Wolverine) in an old-school no-holds-barred cage fight around 10 minutes in. That scene is still full of white noise though – not particularly pleasant on the ears. Someone needs a word with the atmospherics director, else at least the head of sound.
The real top-tier action begins at 13 minutes in, as the losing cage fighter suspects Logan of being a mutant, then tries to stab him in the back, at which point Logan then reveals his hidden weapons and his true colours.
By the end of the first hour, we’ve had a good dose of action, the sci-fi plot is quite intriguing and the drama scenes are generally quite interesting for an action movie fan. The miserable gritty stuff from early on seems well behind us now, thankfully.
Core Cast & Characters
All the main characters were quite well established in the first hour, including all the main members of the X-Men team led by Professor Charles Xavier aka Professor X, a powerful mind-reading & mind-controlling telepath played well by Patrick Stewart (perhaps best known as Captain Jean-Luc Picard from Star Trek), as well as the main antagonist (Magneto, a powerful telekinetic of metal, played equally well by Ian McKellen who looks a bit like Ron Paul), and his main accomplices.
The movie mainly follows the life of Logan aka the Wolverine, played very well by Hugh Jackman. Among his fellow X-Men, are Ororo Munroe aka Storm who has weather-control powers like wind, thunder & lighting, while occasionally displaying glowing eyes like Thor and is played adequately by Halle Berry; as well as Famke Janssen (with vibes of Jennifer Garner from Marvel’s Elektra, or Gal Gadot from DC’s Wonder Woman) who is also a telepath (called Doctor Jean Grey) but has not yet learnt to fully control and harness her powers. There’s also Cyclops who shoots a laser beam from his eye and is played adequately by James Marsden. Logan also befriends a girl called Rogue who has the ability to take people’s powers from them, and is played adequately by Anna Paquin. On the baddies’ team there’s Sabretooth who’s like a stronger but slower version of the Wolverine and is played adequately by Tyler Mane (behind heavy mask & makeup); as well as a weird shapeshifting unclothed blue woman with reptilian scales called Mystique played by Rebecca Romijn, and an equally weird leaping long-tongued creature called Toad played by Ray Park.
The X-Men vs The Avengers
This whole setup of so many people with different superpowers in one movie, reminds me of the more recent Avengers movies by Marvel, although I have to say, everyone seems a lot better co-ordinated in the X-Men movies. This is probably mostly due to there being a single clear leader in Xavier who everyone generally trusts & respects, but it may also be partly due to there being a different intention behind the script.
In the Avengers movies, Captain America tries to take the leadership role but he’s clearly one of the weaker Avengers, or at least somewhere in the middle, so it doesn’t really work, and Iron Man tends to steal the show every time although it should probably be Thor since his scenes are generally the best and he’s a practically indestructible deity, as opposed to a feeble man in a suit or an enhanced man with a shield.
But they have to downplay Thor’s abilities and role to prevent him overshadowing the other Avengers since they’re all pretty feeble in comparison. Even in his own movies he’s frequently stripped of his powers to make his dilemmas credible. I mean Thor alone is not much less powerful than Thor with all the Avengers by his side, considering how he sometimes mows down entire fields full of alien warriors with his lightning powers and his practically unstoppable weapons, so people like Captain America and Black Widow and Hawkeye by his side can’t really add much value on the battlefield unless Thor’s role & powers are heavily downplayed while the others are massively overplayed. Guys like the Hulk and Iron Man and the Scarlet Witch seem powerful enough to add value to Thor’s team, but even their powers are typically downplayed in order to allow the weaker Avengers to still look good. Why not just bunch the best ones together to form a better version of the Avengers? Because it doesn’t suit the agendas. They need Captain America as their front man at all costs, it seems, even if he’s the least interesting of all and is feeble in comparison to the likes of Iron Man, Hulk and Thor.
The second hour
The second hour of X-Men continues with a lot of scene setting still. There appears to be a lack of direction to this movie – the introduction phase seems hard to move past. But eventually we switch into a serious battle which merges into the final action scene. These final action scenes certainly have plenty of time to be delivered diligently – they’re well built, not rushed at all, and the mild drama scenes that finish off the movie are pretty well poised and well delivered too. But as a result of going from a prolonged bout of scene setting, straight into the semi-final and final action scenes, it seems like we’re missing a layer or two in the middle somewhere. This movie seems a bit one dimensional for this reason. Fortunately, it can be treated as the first movie of many in the X-Men movie series, and this is kind of its saving grace, turning it from a movie that’s too short, missing plot development in the middle, to a movie that can be treated as just the first chapter of a well developed story – not dissimilar to an old comicbook in this respect. Nevertheless, when rating this as a standalone movie, I have to acknowledge its lack of plot direction and lack of development in the middle. While the team is well coordinated, and the sides are well opposed, and the scene setting was decent, and the ending was cute and nicely multi-layered, it seems Xavier was out of action for the most part, offering no leadership of any kind in the second half of the movie. His powers are massively under-utilised and the heroes seem short of a mission, aim or direction. For these reasons I have to rate this movie just OK, but if these things were corrected it could have been rated several levels higher.
The school setup, with kids having superpowers being trained in a secret school for mutants, could have been a bigger factor in this movie too, adding plenty of value to the script, but that could have caused the main characters to lose screen time, or made the movie inappropriately long. So I don’t blame them for keeping this aspect of the plot quite simple and untapped into. Still, if I remember correctly, this school setup becomes a big thing in at least one of the future movies in the X-Men movie series, so the opportunity’s not totally wasted.
Sequels and Spin-Offs
If you enjoyed X-Men (2000) and wish to watch its immediate sequels next, check out X2 (2003) then X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) to complete the initial trilogy from the noughties.
After that, you may wish to move on to watching the spin-off Wolverine trilogy (released 2009, 2013, 2017) alongside watching the four X-Men prequels (released 2011, 2014, 2016, 2019). Since they have inter-splicing release dates they’re probably all worth watching in one long list in order of release date rather than separating them into Wolverine spin-offs and X-Men prequels.
Following all of that, you may wish to move onto the Deadpool trilogy (released 2016, 2018, 2024) where Hugh Jackman also features as Wolverine. Or if Ryan Reynolds’ toilet humour is not your cup of tea, you may wish to swerve all the Deadpool movies. Perhaps instead move on to the Fantastic Four movies from the noughties (released 2005 & 2007) starring Jessica Alba, if you haven’t already seen them recently, since they’re also based on Marvel Comics, and just like the original X-Men trilogy, were also released prior to the beginning of the modern Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) by Marvel Studios, Phase One of which officially began with Iron Man (2008) then The Incredible Hulk (2008).
There’s also been a recent Horror genre spin-off from the X-Men movie series, called The New Mutants (2020), but that’s the wrong genre for this website and for me personally, so I’ll be swerving it. It appears to lack strong cast members anyway.