Film Summary CCCXVI (X-Men)

Oh to return to the days of simplicity. Isn't that always the way with X-Men. It starts out basic enough a Senate meeting here and introduction to mutants there. Than as time goes on everything just becomes ever more crazy. Here we just have a good old fashion story between the Merry Old X-Men and the Brotherhood of evil mutants (neither of which are taken on the respective names.)

Magneto's got a simple plan to screw with the human population, he needs to acquire one of the X-Men to do it and the X-Men up to a certain point have no idea what he plans to do. And of course we have the Wolverine story with will become more prominent throughout both this and the second movie.
And yet despite all that this film still has a few moments that makes me scratch my head. Particularly the opening scene starting out and Auschwitz of all places. It looks different from the rest of the film, it feels very different from the rest of the film. The lighting's all strange, then we follow up with Rogue almost killing her boyfriend. Another scene that comes off as a bit dark. Which is really strange considering the rest of the movie is fairly straightforward. There's some basic action, some exposition about all the characters and then some nice little conversations here in there. Oh and the kind of sloppy (yet funny) dialogue between Wolverine and Cyclops. As they argue over Jean Grey.
I kind of forgot how boring Cyclops was in these films. He doesn't really have anything to do and he's supposed to be the straight to it leader with no real flaws. So they have to give him this slightly cocky attitude and a competitive streak against Wolverine just to remind you that he's actually in the film.
I always felt a little sorry for Cyclops. He always get the short end of the stick in any of these X-Men movies even in the comics you can come off as a bit doll.

Look everyone it's Canada's old $5 bills. I kinda of miss those bills, they were so basic and straight to the point. No stupid elaborate colours or plastic feel*, they didn't look like Monopoly money. My God Canada was an adult Nation. There's no way you believe that these days. I often maintain that the Canadian Mint is run by a 5 year old boy. If the Monopoly money wasn't a dead give-away then glow-in-the-dark dinosaur money sure was.

So there's that weird scene where they trying to convince us that Magneto's after Wolverine.
But it seems pretty clear that he isn't. I mean what does Magneto need with a wolverine? What's he going to do? Play human frisbee.

The Brotherhood of evil mutants has quite the roster to it. Lots of Heavy Hitters and interesting Powers at your disposal. And you decide to use Toad! He's the least interesting mutant. And the only reason he's popular now is because of this film, before this he was just some D-grade villain that would pop up from time to time. A character the X-Men could flow around like the Power Rangers fighting against a putty.
I guess I shouldn't complain too much, they might have picked a D-grade villain as an underling but they got Mystique down pretty well. Besides her general attitude and devotion to Magneto the physical makeup she had to do was fantastic. Combine that with her movement and you have a very alien character. You just want a movie that's dedicated to her back story (which they tryed to do with other movies. But at that point the X-Men series was getting so over the top with back story that it stopped making any sense and none of these movies connected anymore. Just like the actual comic books)

There's a lot I can't forget about Wolverine in this movie. The guy's a little on edge, he has no idea about his life and he probably has little to no human contact with anybody outside of jerk Truckers. But I'm sorry stabbing someone in the chest! After that little Fiasco I think I'd have you sleeping in the basement with some security on you. I mean you're a walking time bomb at that point.

This is the worst kind of film for someone like me to try and talk about. It's too popular for me just to tell you the story, it's not interesting enough to bring up any really out of nowhere crazy facts. it's a perfect C grade film. An average plate of spaghetti in the great spectrum of pastas. There's nothing wrong with it. There's nothing great about it, it's just kind of there. Well I guess there is Ian McKellen as Magneto. He's a lot of fun to watch. Especially when he just decides to show up against the police, lift up their cars and then threaten to shoot them all. Forcing Charles into a dilemma.

Unfortunately this movie doesn't hold up like Hellboy did. This was a movie I enjoyed when I was younger and now I think it's okay but I wouldn't go out of my way to watch it again anytime soon.

*I may not like the plastic bills but I certainly appreciate them. They last five times longer, they're easy to clean and if for some reason they fall into water you can still use them. But they're still ugly.