X-MEN  (2000)  **1/2

Reviewed 7/15/00

Superhero comic books have always been among the most difficult adaptations for live-action film (and television). Despite the similarities in storyboarding structure, comics by nature are a medium of unreality and exaggeration. Their cartoonish appearance provides an accepted detachment from realism, a detachment live-action films cannot have. So suddenly, flying men and spandexed women look irredeemably silly. Tongue must be kept firmly in cheek when watching Linda Carter's Wonder Woman, Christopher Reeves' Superman, or Lou Ferrigno's Hulk. Another problem arises because comics are usually a continuous series during which the characters and character relations can develop and change drastically, and all regular characters eventually get a chance to shine. Movies, often limited to 2-hour running times, cannot manage to do this and so make startlingly uninformed abbreviations that shortchange character and story. These revisions inevitably disappoint the comic book's fans. The most popular comic book for the last 2 decades, Marvel's Uncanny X-Men, after much haranguing, finally makes it to the big screen, and it fails to solve any of the problems addressed above.

The Matrix showed that one can really get the comic book sensibility across on screen if one takes the time to develop the characters and the world they live in. Director Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects) on the other hand seems to take the X-Men's world for granted instead of showing it emerge before our eyes. The premise of X-Men is that genetic mutations in homo sapiens produce homo superiors who have super powers. At first this seems like a convenient way to make superheroes without resorting to bites from radioactive spiders or bombardment by cosmic rays, but original X-Men-creators Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were smart enough to place this scenario in the context of the reaction regular homo sapiens would have -- fear and distrust. X-Men would not gain true popularity though until writer Chris Claremont took the helm in the mid-70s to re-emphasize this aspect, all the more so by putting together a new team of X-Men with diversity in ethnicity and nationality. Within the comic book story, the crippled Professor Charles Xavier, a mutant with telepathic powers, puts together the team of X-Men to train them in their powers and to defend humankind against evil mutants like Xavier's arch foe, Magneto, master of magnetism. Losing his parents in the Holocaust (a Claremont idea), Magneto also lost faith in humanity. His absolute belief that homo sapiens will do anything to destroy mutants drives him to do anything to put humans under mutant rule.

All of this is treated strictly on a surface level in the movie however. The McCarthy-esque Senator Kelly trying to pass a mutant registration act represents all the human "fear and distrust" in the entire movie. The intriguing concept of mutants' inability to harness their powers, the need to train their powers, and being in wonder of their powers is ready to be explored, but nothing in the movie indicates super powers are really anything special at all. Is this aspect not the primary source of interest in any superhero tale? The 1978 Superman got this right in Superman's night-time flight with Lois Lane. In the comics, the first X-Men were recruited as teenagers, and their problems with their powers acted as a metaphor for the confusions one suffers through at that age. The students at Xavier's school shown in the film instead are merely in-jokes for the comic's readers with cameos by Kitty Pride, Bobby Drake, and Jubilee (whose position as Wolverine's sidekick has been relegated to Rogue). Cyclops, in the comic book, is a serious, insecure, introverted leader forever fearful that a simple glance from him may someday accidentally kill someone. In the movie, he's a totally unsympathetic smirking hotshot. The change is odd in that Cyclops could have demonstrated very essential X-Men themes and the film's story could have remained exactly the same.

The movie ultimately is less an X-Men story than a Wolverine story. Wolverine quickly became a fan favorite during the Chris Claremont-John Byrne run of Uncanny X-Men because at the time, he was a very different sort of superhero. Unlike the very morally-straight Superman or Captain America, he was a bad-ass, and sometimes he actually killed people. Of course today, comics are overrun with bad-ass types, so much so that the straight ones are a rarity. That was the effect of Wolverine. In the movie, he is only toned down a little, and as played by Australian Hugh Jackman, the movie gets him more or less right (outside of the fact that in the comic, Wolverine is a near-midget). On the X-Men side, Anna Paquin plays Rogue, a mutant who drains the life force and powers of anyone she touches; Halle Berry is Storm who controls the weather; James Marsden is Cyclops who fires optic blasts from his eyes; and Famke Janssen is Jean Grey, a telepath and telekinetic. Opposing them is Ian McKellen, wonderfully hamming it up as Magneto; professional wrestler Tyler Mane is Sabretooth, a bestial mutant; supermodel Rebecca Romijn-Stamos is shape-shifter Mystique; Ray Park (of Darth Maul fame) is the accurately-named Toad.

As the X-Men mentor, Patrick Stewart plays headstrong moralist Charles Xavier perfectly. Unfortunately, Xavier is rarely around for any other reason than to provide verbal exposition, and the film has way too much of it. A subplot involving a love triangle among Wolverine, Jean Grey, and Cyclops goes nowhere because we never even see Cyclops and Grey interact as a couple. Its another reference to the comics that remains purely on the surface. Finally, we have the action, which as far as these things go is pretty mediocre. The further infection of Hollywood films by Hong Kong stylization has Corey Yuen (Fong Sai Yuk, High Risk) coordinating the fight sequences with too little novelty and too much obvious wire work. These sequences have none of the fine strategic combat Claremont and Byrne affected so well, always emphasizing how the X-Men worked as a team. X-Men's highlights stem from the performances of Jackman, Stewart, and McKellen, but they don't make up for the lack of wonderment in this world of fantasy.


Copyright © 2000 George Wu