Many would say that the return of superhero movies can come down to two trillogies, potentially more, but most argue at least two. The Spider-Man trillogy, and the first three X-Men movies... even though many like to forget X-Men 3 even exists... along with Spider-Man 3.... could someone give me a list of every movie the internet wants to forget exists, I feel like there's a lot. Regardless of that, the point of these three weeks is to look at where Marvel has been with their movies before getting to the MCU, and what better way then Kevin Feige's first attempts at a crossover between two of Marvel's IP's on the big screen. While yes, the attempt was in Spider-Man, Wolverine had to come from somewhere right? Welcome to the start of the Mutant Revolution.
Mankind has always feared that which it doesn't know. Just look at how civilizations have portreyed eachother in the past as one of the biggest examples of that. What happens when what they're afraid of is something that looks exactly like them, but has superpowers? You get the battle between Mutants and Humans that is the foundation of the X-Men stories. I will admit right here, and right now, in the context of the Marvel comics, this makes no sense to me what so ever. Some would find that strange coming from me because some people argue that Aspergers and Autism are the real life equivalent of the Mutant Gene (I'm personally not one of them). Well, allow me to explain with that example. In the context of the Marvel comics, you have tons of superheroes and supervillains who have been given their powers, or have made their powers. Look at how big the MCU has gotten so far, and that's only a fraction of the potential heroes that could be at their disposal. So... why is it that heroes like Iron Man, Spider-Man and Captain America are fine, but mutants aren't? It's like saying half the people with Aspergers Syndrome should be praised, but the other half should be feared and hated? What's the difference here? Because some mutants are villains? Ok, how many evil super soldier attempts have there been? How many "evil guy in robot suit" villains are there? Heck, Captain Marvel (the current one) is a human with Kree powers, yet the Kree are villains. Shouldn't she be feared too? Why do I bring all of this up? Because this is one advantage that the movies do have, right now, the X-Men are on their own, no other superheroes, so there's no need to explain why they are feared, because the explanation is simple, superheroes don't exist, and people are scared of what they don't know. To get onto the actual plot though...
The Mutant Registration Act is currently in its early phases, the world leaders are seeing the Mutants as threats, and when someone or something threatens entire populations, something always rises up to counter one extreme with another. Enter Magneto, leader of the Brotherhood of Mutants, who's goal is to have Mutants be safe from the normal people by any means neccesary, even if it means killing normal people and sparking a war between normal humans and mutants. To counter this force, Professor Charls Xavier has created the X-Men to try and protect humanity from Magneto and his plan to use a mutant by the name of Rogue, who's power is to borrow other mutant's powers by touching their skin, as a battery for a machine that would turn the world's leaders into mutants. Yeah, that's basically it. There's sequel bait teases on Wolverine's backstory, but its just a "this is the bad guy, stop the bad guy" story, and that's all it really needs to be. Simple is fine sometimes.
While I enjoy most of the characters and the performances from the actors, the direction overall is a bit hit and miss, and has left some of the character to be kind of annoying. I'm not a fan of Rogue in this movie, call it what you like, I was never a fan of those strong (Texan?) accents. If it helps, I'm not a fan of the strong bogan Australian accents that are in some movies too. Jean and Storm are two characters that have poor direction so come off as a little too wooden at times, but like what has been said by many other people, Wolverine, Professor Xavier and Magneto are strong stand outs in the movie. The good does balance out the bad, so there's never a time where it becomes unbearable, but there was still some work to do.
Presentation wise, like Spider-Man, the CGI is showing its age, and there aren't any big fight moments like there are in other action movies, though these do seem to play to Brian Singer's strengths, so they do feel apropriate for the movie. The soundtrack is also quite impressive as well, and has many moments to shine. One thing many comic fans dislike about the movie is that the movie avoids a lot of things that are connected to the X-Men, like the yellow spandex costumes, instead going for lots, and lots of leather. While I agree that I would have rathered costumes closer to the source material, these costumes are overall ok, and there are a lot of other aspects that do tie closer to the comics, as if there was someone behind the scenes trying to bring more of the comics into the movie. "I wonder who that could be, he probably hasn't done much since then".
This is kind of a weird movie for me. Many have said that it is fantastic, which I do disagree with. Others have said its awful, overpraised, not worth the attention, which I disagree with as well. It's still a fine movie, I've seen better, I've seen worse, its just fine. It did what it wanted to do, and it did a decent job at it. It's a fine first movie. The rabbit hole does go deeper, but before that, well. Did I ever tell you the story of the spider and the octopus?
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