In association with

X-Men [2000]
from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
starring Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman, Ian McKellen, Famke Janssen, James Marsden
directed by Bryan Singer

Features:

• PAL

Editorial Review:

Although the superhero comic book has been a duopoly since the early 1960s, only DC's flagship characters, Superman and Batman (who originated in the late 1930s) have established themselves as big-screen franchises. Until now--this is the first runaway hit film version of the alternative superhero X-Men universe created for Marvel Comics by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and others. It's a rare comic-book movie that doesn't fall over its cape introducing all the characters, and this is the exception. X-Men drops us into a world that is closer to our own than Batman's Gotham City, but it's still home to super-powered goodies and baddies. Opening in high seriousness with paranormal activity in a WW2 concentration camp and a senatorial inquiry into the growing "mutant problem", Bryan Singer's film sets up a complex background with economy and establishes vivid, strange characters well before we get to the fun. There's Halle Berry flying and summoning snowstorms, James Marsden zapping people with his "optic beams", Rebecca Romijn-Stamos shape-shifting her blue naked form, and Ray Park lashing out with his Toad-tongue. The big conflict is between Patrick Stewart's Professor X and Ian McKellen's Magneto, super-powerful mutants who disagree about their relationship with ordinary humans, but the characters we're meant to identify with are Hugh Jackman's Wolverine (who has retractable claws and amnesia), and Anna Paquin's Rogue (who sucks the life and superpowers out of anyone she touches). The plot has to do with a big gizmo that will wreak havoc at a gathering of world leaders, but the film is more interested in setting up a tangle of bizarre relationships between even more bizarre people, with solid pros such as Stewart and McKellen relishing their sly dialogue and the newcomers strutting their stuff in cool leather outfits. There are in-jokes enough to keep comics' fans engaged, but it feels more like a science fiction movie than a superhero picture. --Kim Newman

Customer Reviews:

• Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0

• You see the numerous models and yet ...
  The special effects are good. The characters are simple and varied enough to make us like that universe of monstrous mutants that look just like us but can turn into whatever they want. Welcome to Carrie, Christine, Firestarter, the Tommyknockers and many other Stephen King paranormal beings and situations. Of course, this film adds to that berserk universe a good old American wrapping but with a twist. The statue of liberty standing on its nice little island as the symbol of what it is called after and yet... more info

• To me, my X-Men
  X-Men could have been a bit of a disaster, it had brand recognition amongst the core sci-fi and superhero fan sets but as a concept was relatively unknown to Joe Public. The director, Bryan Singer, was best known for low budget movies and ensemble character pieces and the cast was (at the time) pretty bargain basement. As it was though it all worked out rather well.
  Based on Marvel's franchise about mutants born with an "x-factor" who struggle to protect a world that hates and fears them X-Men had... more info

• Quality action
  The opening shots depict a bleak concentration camp and a family being seperated. As the rain pours down and the parents are dragged off through the mud, a boy reaches out; his pain drawing the metal of the gates towards him until he is crudely beaten with the butt of a rifle and knocked senseless.
  The beginning suggests that this film will take the exploration of discrimination of the x-men comics seriously and this is continued through Washington hearings as a senator whips up public support for the... more info

• ok
  this is solid and watchable but a bit anticlimatic as the film never gets in to first gear

Similar Products:

More from Amazon