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X Marks the Spot--Don't Miss X-Men

© Elizabeth Burton

I first met the original X-Men when they were just two years old, and it was love at first sight. As life eventually intervened, I lost track of them until I caught a few episodes of the animated series a few years ago. I was happy to see that the new characters added over the decades had all the depth of the originals.

Bryan Singer has preserved all of that depth and brought it to life on film, doing so without falling into the "superhero" trap that has turned too many comic book heroes--and villains--into caricatures. These are the X-Men and Women I knew and loved, and it is a credit to Singer's talent and dedication that the story is as familiar to me as though I had been following their exploits all along.

Just as their Marvel comic counterparts, Cyclops, Jean Grey, Storm and Wolverine are real people who just happen to have special talents. That those special talents make them outcasts from their own families and the targets for racial venom only makes them more human than those who attack them. There is all of the wry humor and irony that set Marvel's comics apart when they first appeared, and the characters are strong enough to stand up to the necessarily fantastic special effects.

As the tormented Wolverine, Hugh Jackman has just the right balance of bitter anger and pathos. He is a man without a past who has met with constant hatred and fear no matter where he goes, and yet has not been able to destroy his basic need for acceptance and companionship. Ian McKellen's Magneto is a man who has known the terror of facing death merely for being "different," a complex, multi-sided being who will stop at nothing to survive. As for Patrick Stewart, the man born to be Professor X, he gives a taut performance in which his calm, serene exterior clearly contains deeper, harder emotions.

Although the three X-Men are less well-defined, Halle Berry and James Marsden manage to exude a sense of deeper personality that simply lacks sufficient opportunity to develop. Famke Janssen's Jean Grey, however, needs work. The character--and, therefore, the performance--seems lackluster, without passion.

Nevertheless, X-Men was well worth the wait and, unlike a certain prequel that shall remain nameless, actually came up to all the hype that preceded it. All too often, when a comic is turned to cinema and there is talk of a sequel, the usual reaction is a groan. In this case, provided it meets the high standard set by this film, a sequel is something devoutly to be wished.