X-Men

Release Date: July 14, 2000

Watch Date: August 19 – August 24, 2023

“The X-Men, a group of mutants with extraordinary powers, wage a fight against both intolerance, and a fellow band of radical mutants intent on exterminating the human race.”

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    Look, I’m sorry, I just don’t get the appeal.

    I want to, very badly.

    It kind of seems like all that anyone likes from X-Men is Wolverine, and for that I can’t blame them, but when you’re supposed to have an ensemble cast one character can’t carry the whole film, right? I mean, that was sort of the beauty of the Avengers, you had your favorite, but everyone was worth watching.

    This film is also very dark, and I don’t mean the subject matter. The actual scenes are extremely dark, specifically the fight scenes, which makes it kind of difficult to know what’s going on – which is impressive considering the fact that I find the fight scenes to be incredibly poorly paced, very choreographed, and not at all exciting.

    I don’t feel that the mutants powers are used extremely well, and maybe that’s just because the mutants on display are:

• can move small things with their mind
• can shoot eye lasers but really shouldn’t
• weather
• pointy things out of hands and unable to die
• nondescript strength and dark eyes
• gross tongue
• unable to touch anything
• can transform into anyone so mostly duplicates of other characters running around
• super psychic, but off the table for half the movie

    The only impressive one who actually uses his powers for useful purposes in the fight and in other scenes so that you know just how powerful he is is Magneto. And yes, Magneto is my favorite, and yes, I understand he’s the bad guy. But look, I empathize with him, despite Bob’s protests that one shouldn’t. He lived through the Holocaust, we can’t even imagine the amount of trauma he went through being persecuted for something he can’t help, and now he sees his people being attacked, again, for something they can’t help, with laws being proposed using much of the same rhetoric as it was in Nazi Germany. Only this time, the people in his minority group have the foreknowledge, and the ability, to fight back. Maybe they should. I empathize with the man, that’s all I’m saying. And in the end? His big evil plan isn’t to kill everyone, because he doesn’t realize his machine will kill them. It’s to activate latent mutant genes in their body, making his population of humanity no longer the minority. It’s to protect. Sometimes you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet. I’m a Magneto apologist. Bob may judge me all he wants.

    What this story really wants you to do is think about your own racial/cultural intolerances, it brings in the Holocaust, Ellis Island, references to the Nazi Jewish pogroms. What would you do in a given situation? Whose side would you be on? And then you have a tagline like – Trust A Few, Fear The Rest – which kind of undermines the though provoking you’re meant to be doing. You can’t make an entire movie that’s all about how we should be tolerant and appreciate the differences in each other and hopefully benefit from it, but then also make it so that – well most of them are really bad and so maybe we should get rid of them. Well, you could, I suppose, if your goal was to make a movie that was really thought provoking and had you questioning your morals. But it’s like the creators of the film couldn’t tell if they wanted to make that movie, or just a summer super hero blockbuster. It is, ultimately, to the films detriment.

    This movie took forever to finish, and I’ve already gotten into the why of it all, all the external reasons, but honestly, it was mostly because Bob and I just weren’t interested. This movie takes itself too seriously, and not in the kind of campy way Blade did that made it sort of hilarious, but just in a…well a comic book movie taking itself too seriously kind of way. That’s not fun to watch. But we’ve done it, and we’re headed into Superhero September with the expectation that a lot more not fun, way too serious X-Men movies are on their way. Hopefully finishing this one has broken the dam, and we’ll get back on track again. One can only hope.