NRO Weekend, July 15-16, 2000
Take Two on X-Men
A two-part review for two different kinds of people.

By Jonah Goldberg, NRO Editor-----------------------JonahEMail@aol.com

his is a two-part review for two different kinds of people. The first half is for that vast swath of America that either has never heard of the X-Men at all or never dedicated immense chunks of their time reading the works of Chris Claremont, John Byrne, Jack Kirby and the rest.

First, for the people who don't know how the Banshee lost his voice or who Magneto's kids are, the new lavish film X-Men is a fairly good — though not spectacular — superhero flick. It's juvenile to be sure; if it's target audience is over 13 I'd be surprised. The dialogue isn't entirely silly from the point of view of even a comic book neophyte, and the special effects are enjoyable, though certainly not up to the caliber of The Matrix. The fight scenes are disappointing in that they're lazy and fairly familiar.

If you have kids, take them to see the movie. They'll get a kick out of it, and you won't be bored to tears. It's not all that violent — all things considered — and the profanity is minimal even for PG. If you're a dad, you'll certainly dig looking at some of the ladies — Rebecca Romijn-Stamos plays a shape-shifter named Mystique and while you're never sure what you're looking at, it's certainly fun trying. Then there's Ditto Famke Janssen as Jean Grey. She looks like a younger, more attractive sister of Julia Roberts. If you're a mom, well, I dunno…make dad take the kids. Or buy the tickets and pick the tykes up afterwards. I don't want to traffic in gender stereotypes, but there's little hope of salvaging a chick flick out of X-Men.

The movie takes place some time in the "not too distant future." For whatever reason, mutants are multiplying. Mutants are not deformed human beings, rather they are the next stage in human evolution — "homo superior" in the comics, though I didn't hear them use the phrase in the movie. In other words, the mutants are naturally born superheroes. No need for creative origins involving radioactive spider bites or long commutes from Krypton. Humans fear homo superior and threaten to round them up, the precursor to witch is "The Mutant Registration Act."

The debate over how to respond to this resentment pits Charles Xavier, founder of the School for Gifted Youngsters, against Magneto. Professor X is the world's most powerful telepath. Magneto can manipulate anything magnetic. Xavier subscribes to a "can't we all just get along" philosophy, while Magneto — a survivor of Nazi Germany — is a "by-any-means-necessary" kind of guy. Mutants are being forced to choose up sides in the coming "war." The X-Men work for Xavier and the "Brotherhood of Mutants" ("Brotherhood of Evil Mutants" in the original comics) are signed up with Magneto.

Anyway, that's all you really need to know if you want to see the movie, Blah, blah, blah, fight scenes are a modern parable about minorities being seen as internal threats…blah, blah…good guys win. Not since the old serials of Superman has their been a film more intentionally designed for multiple sequels. So, if the movie does well, expect a zillion X-Men movies. So you might as well get in on the ground floor.

X-Aficionados
Okay, you go away now and let me talk to the geeks. Or, if you want to hang around, fine — but don't make me interrupt or explain anything to you. Okay?

I had a hard time really getting into it. First of all, I've read every X-Men comic from the original 1964 cast to — I guess — around 1987 or 1988 (and then I get spotty). X-Men was not only the most important comic book series of the 1980s, it was the most important comic book series in my life in the 1980's — which is why I found it difficult to separate myself out from the story in my mind and the story on the screen.

Indeed, the original story is mangled pretty severely. This is not the origin of the New X-Men as told in "Giant-Size" X-Men #1 (which I bought with Bar Mitzvah money for $60 almost two decades ago). The Beast and Angel are totally absent. The Iceman is a teenager. Rogue, also a teenager, is a central character and has a Kitty Pride style crush on Wolverine. Of the "original" New X-Men, Wolverine, Storm, Jean Grey (thankfully they dropped "Marvel Girl") and Cyclops are here but Colossus is entirely missing — as is, tragically, Nightcrawler.

Bryan Singer, the director of Usual Suspects, was not the best choice for X-Men. The film can't seem to decide whether it's campy or serious and often flip flops between the two sensibilities. He can't commit. Another failing of the movie is that there are not enough villains. Since choosing from across all time for the Brotherhood of Mutants, it would have been nice to have more bad guys than just Magneto, Sabretooth and the Toad. Surely the Blob or the Juggernaut wouldn't have been expensive additions. By the way, the movie is filled with Wolverine back stories, yet there doesn't seem to be any sense that Sabretooth (who mostly grunts and growls in the movie) and Wolverine know each other.

Still, Singer did avoid many of the pitfalls of previous comic adaptations. First and foremost he ditched the costumes. In a very well done article in Entertainment Weekly last month, Ken Tucker offers some pretty good advice about how to make a big screen adaptation of a comic and why it's so much harder than it seems. Among his best advice was not to borrow the costumes directly from the comics. Superman got away with it because he's been depicted on screen for more than half a century — and even there, it's sometimes awkward to see how little imagination is required to see where the super in Superman comes from. But almost all other superheroes look ridiculous when depicted in live action in the same costumes. X-Men solves this by giving everyone a leather suit. When Wolverine complains about his leather uniform, Cyclops (played forgettably by James Marsden) says, "Would you prefer yellow tights?" This was a dye-marker moment in the theater; everyone who read the comics laughed, everyone else said "huh."

I had expected to be annoyed with the heavy-handedness of the Nazi parallels and the multi-cultural stuff in the movie, but I've got to say they didn't go too far. Partly, alas, because the comics already had. By the time Marvel was in a death spiral the Mutant heavy-handedness was way over the top. At one point I remember a tagline on a Spider-Man book which read: "The Non-Mutant Superhero." I thought it was some glaring bigotry considering the premises of the Marvel Universe. Imagine if it had said "The non-Jewish" or the "non-black superhero"?

Speaking of Spider-Man, it is funny to see how far the genre has come. The original X-Men were all basically Peter Parker rips offs. Young white kids with lots of middle class, Catcher in the Rye angst about how they felt different. In the 1970s young white kids were out and the new quest was for diversity. All of a sudden the New X-Men formed a rich ethnic cocktail from across the globe. What had been bad tempers on good kids became dangerous rages from possible menaces, with Wolverine leading the pack. In the original series you had kids everyone could relate to and in the newer series you had angry mutant Rap Browns. Don't get me wrong, I loved the New X-Men and got as bored with the old ones as anybody. One positive aspect of the movie is that it tries to blend both themes together.

Okay here's what you really want to know. Do Wolverine's claws look cool? The answer is yes. One of the big fears of Wolvie fans is that his claws would look as dumb as, say, Spider-Man's webs in the TV show. That is one benefit of the new CG era — super-powers can be believable. However, Storm and Cyclops, for some reason, are cast as rookies with their powers which doesn't make much sense. Hugh Jackman plays Wolverine very well, better than I would have expected. The downside is that he's not physically intimidating enough and he's not enough of a wild creature of the woods.

As for the rest of the casting, obviously, Patrick Stewart pulls off Xavier as this is the role he's born for. Thank god the right bald actor was available, otherwise we might have another Gene Hackman as Lex Luther problem on our hands. And Ian McKellen is also well-cast as Magneto. The debates between the two come across not merely as debates between old friends among kids, but they seem to be dialogues between two actors annoyed with all the kids around them. Halle Berry is not very impressive as Storm. This Famke Janssen who plays Jean Grey is a spicy number and pretty well cast. Whether she'll ever become the Phoenix is unknown, though they give the possibility some room.

Anyway, I'd love to have an excuse to write more about comic books, but this movie doesn't really offer it. I think it might be enough of a hit with kids that they'll green-light a sequel. Which would be great news since one of the best comic books in history deserves to live on for a while longer.

Production Notes
Directed by Bryan Singer; written by David Hayter, based on a story by Tom DeSanto and Mr. Singer; director of photography, Newton Thomas Sigel; edited by Steven Rosenblum, Kevin Stitt and John Wright; music by Michael Kamen; production designer, John Myhre; produced by Lauren Shuler Donner and Ralph Winter; released by 20th Century Fox in association with Entertainment Group. Running time: 105 minutes. This film is rated PG-13.

With: Hugh Jackman (Wolverine), Patrick Stewart (Xavier), Ian McKellen (Magneto), Famke Janssen (Jean Grey), James Marsden (Cyclops), Halle Berry (Storm), Anna Paquin (Rogue), Tyler Mane (Sabertooth), Ray Park (Toad), Rebecca Romijn-Stamos (Mystique), Bobby Drake (Iceman) and Bruce Davison (Senator Kelly).