X-Men (2000)
April 26, 2024 11:51 AM - Subscribe
[TRAILER] Two mutants, Rogue (Anna Paquin) and Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), come to a private academy for their kind whose resident superhero team, the X-Men, must oppose a terrorist organization with similar powers.
Also starring Patrick Stewart. Ian McKellen, Halle Berry, Famke Janssen, James Marsden, Bruce Davison, Rebecca Romijn, Ray Park, Shawn Ashmore, Matthew Sharp.
Directed by Bryan Singer. Screenplay by David Hayter. Story by Tom DeSanto, Bryan Singer. Based on the comic series of the same name, created by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby. Produced by Lauren Shuler Donner, Ralph Winter for 20th Century Fox/Marvel Entertainment Group/The Donners' Company/Bad Hat Harry Productions. Cinematography by Newton Thomas Sigel. Edited by Steven Rosenblum, Kevin Stitt, John Wright. Music by Michael Kamen.
82% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.
Currently nstreaming on Disney Plus. JustWatch listing.
Also starring Patrick Stewart. Ian McKellen, Halle Berry, Famke Janssen, James Marsden, Bruce Davison, Rebecca Romijn, Ray Park, Shawn Ashmore, Matthew Sharp.
Directed by Bryan Singer. Screenplay by David Hayter. Story by Tom DeSanto, Bryan Singer. Based on the comic series of the same name, created by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby. Produced by Lauren Shuler Donner, Ralph Winter for 20th Century Fox/Marvel Entertainment Group/The Donners' Company/Bad Hat Harry Productions. Cinematography by Newton Thomas Sigel. Edited by Steven Rosenblum, Kevin Stitt, John Wright. Music by Michael Kamen.
82% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.
Currently nstreaming on Disney Plus. JustWatch listing.
The Donners' Company
At this point in 2000, Richard Donner was responsible for 2½ of the four good superhero movies.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 12:40 PM on April 26 [3 favorites]
At this point in 2000, Richard Donner was responsible for 2½ of the four good superhero movies.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 12:40 PM on April 26 [3 favorites]
Every time I run across this in my library I'm struck how they managed to queue up the Dark Phoenix storyline at the end of The Last Stand and then just sort of gave up on it. I never read any explainers - I assume it was a combination of contracts and costs and declining returns, like usual? Or was it just a sort of the 2000's version of superhero burnout between the X-Men franchise and Raimi's Spideys?
I mean, they came back with First Class, but that felt reboot-y like the original cast had aged out of their roles a decade later. And here's Jackman coming back to reprise Wolverine at 56-ish? Patrick Stewart was 60 for the original X-Men.
posted by Kyol at 1:27 PM on April 26 [1 favorite]
I mean, they came back with First Class, but that felt reboot-y like the original cast had aged out of their roles a decade later. And here's Jackman coming back to reprise Wolverine at 56-ish? Patrick Stewart was 60 for the original X-Men.
posted by Kyol at 1:27 PM on April 26 [1 favorite]
I assume it was a combination of contracts and costs and declining returns, like usual?
Bryan Singer opted not to direct X-Men 3 and make Superman Returns instead. Matthew Vaughn was then signed to direct, but he quit because of studio jackassery. Brett Ratner was finally hired, but by then the script had gone through so many revisions that any chance of X-Men 3 being a good movie was lost. Matthew Vaughn later came back to make First Class.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 1:41 PM on April 26 [3 favorites]
Bryan Singer opted not to direct X-Men 3 and make Superman Returns instead. Matthew Vaughn was then signed to direct, but he quit because of studio jackassery. Brett Ratner was finally hired, but by then the script had gone through so many revisions that any chance of X-Men 3 being a good movie was lost. Matthew Vaughn later came back to make First Class.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 1:41 PM on April 26 [3 favorites]
Brett Ratner was finally hired, but by then the script had gone through so many revisions that any chance of X-Men 3 being a good movie was lost.
X3 was terrible, a near-franchise-killer, next to which the inartful-but-has-its-moments X1 looks like The Rules of the Game or something.
Really there have only been 2.5 good movies (for superhero movie values of good: I write as an X-fan and as someone who enjoys superhero movies' virtues but also is aware that, like, art films exist) in the franchise: X2, First Class, and about half of Future Past. Age of Apocalypse was another stinker that basically did kill the franchise, and rightfully so; the actual Dark Phoenix did have a couple of moments I liked but was largely forgettable.
The whole Singer-as-abuser scandal didn't help. He is probably the most imaginative director for handling action sequences for superheroes, but by the time he returned to the franchise (which he probably shouldn't have), comics movies had moved on in a big way.
posted by praemunire at 4:18 PM on April 26 [4 favorites]
X3 was terrible, a near-franchise-killer, next to which the inartful-but-has-its-moments X1 looks like The Rules of the Game or something.
Really there have only been 2.5 good movies (for superhero movie values of good: I write as an X-fan and as someone who enjoys superhero movies' virtues but also is aware that, like, art films exist) in the franchise: X2, First Class, and about half of Future Past. Age of Apocalypse was another stinker that basically did kill the franchise, and rightfully so; the actual Dark Phoenix did have a couple of moments I liked but was largely forgettable.
The whole Singer-as-abuser scandal didn't help. He is probably the most imaginative director for handling action sequences for superheroes, but by the time he returned to the franchise (which he probably shouldn't have), comics movies had moved on in a big way.
posted by praemunire at 4:18 PM on April 26 [4 favorites]
Singer is such a good action director that when they slashed the budget and he had to stage the final battle not at the Statue if Liberty but in the Statue of Liberty gift shop, he still made it work
posted by DirtyOldTown at 4:24 PM on April 26 [2 favorites]
posted by DirtyOldTown at 4:24 PM on April 26 [2 favorites]
Before getting into the franchise as a whole, I'd like to comment on how good this movie is, which I think gets lost in the high points and low points of the X-franchise in general. With all of the dramatis personae that it felt necessary to introduce--including an entire supervillain group--it was a smart decision to center the movie around Rogue and Wolverine, and they got the casting exactly right, with Anna Paquin looking like she was ready to bolt for the exit at any given moment, and of course that Australian song-and-dance man turning into Huge Jacked Man, who is also ready to bolt for the exit. With all of the mutant politics and the Scott/Jean/Logan triangle and whatnot, the movie could and did regularly return to these two very dangerous people learning to trust each other and the group of weirdos that they found themselves among unexpectedly. The overarching plot makes no sense--turning all the UN delegates into mutants is going to do what now?--but that really just seems intended to set up the cool action scenes. Enough of the movie worked well enough that it carried over into the second movie, which was also good; even if the appearance of Nightcrawler is somewhat dampened by the whole guilty-Catholic thing that may have been the influence of Chuck Austen from the comics, you at least have Brian Cox, who seems to be having a lot of fun as Wolverine's creator/nemesis.
But then you have the third movie, which for some reason thought that it would be a good idea to shoehorn the Dark Phoenix storyline into another story about a potential mutant "cure" that was from decades later in the comics. Even if it was the third movie, we really didn't know enough about Jean Grey to care whether she turned into Dark Phoenix or Dark Brandon. And on top of two not-very-compatible storylines, we've got Angel and Beast and Kitty Pryde doing more than a cameo and Juggernaut and the Morlocks and and and. It seemed weirdly desperate for a movie franchise that had seemed pretty successful in the first two installments, and like the following installment--the clumsily-named X-Men Origins: Wolverine--ended up just throwing a lot of shit at the screen to see what would stick. The X-Men: First Class sort-of reboot/prequel seemed to work, and I liked X-Men: Days of Future Past a lot, but X-Men: Apocalypse was another dud, and then they did Dark Phoenix again, and blew it again. Other individual movies have worked (the Deadpools, Logan), but there often doesn't seem to have been any real idea about what to do with these characters or the world that they inhabited. I know that a lot of people are pretty impatient about getting the X-Men into the MCU, but I think that Feige et al. are probably being cautious in trying to learn some kind of lesson from the utter hash that Fox made of the subfranchise.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:02 AM on April 27 [5 favorites]
But then you have the third movie, which for some reason thought that it would be a good idea to shoehorn the Dark Phoenix storyline into another story about a potential mutant "cure" that was from decades later in the comics. Even if it was the third movie, we really didn't know enough about Jean Grey to care whether she turned into Dark Phoenix or Dark Brandon. And on top of two not-very-compatible storylines, we've got Angel and Beast and Kitty Pryde doing more than a cameo and Juggernaut and the Morlocks and and and. It seemed weirdly desperate for a movie franchise that had seemed pretty successful in the first two installments, and like the following installment--the clumsily-named X-Men Origins: Wolverine--ended up just throwing a lot of shit at the screen to see what would stick. The X-Men: First Class sort-of reboot/prequel seemed to work, and I liked X-Men: Days of Future Past a lot, but X-Men: Apocalypse was another dud, and then they did Dark Phoenix again, and blew it again. Other individual movies have worked (the Deadpools, Logan), but there often doesn't seem to have been any real idea about what to do with these characters or the world that they inhabited. I know that a lot of people are pretty impatient about getting the X-Men into the MCU, but I think that Feige et al. are probably being cautious in trying to learn some kind of lesson from the utter hash that Fox made of the subfranchise.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:02 AM on April 27 [5 favorites]
"Does it hurt... when they come out?"
"Every time."
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:17 AM on April 27 [5 favorites]
"Every time."
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:17 AM on April 27 [5 favorites]
I also appreciated that this movie understood what the movies have not always kept in mind: what is heroic about Wolverine is that he is willing to get hurt to help people, which still hurts as much as it would for anyone, even if he will heal.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:19 AM on April 27 [9 favorites]
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:19 AM on April 27 [9 favorites]
This movie is very good for its focus on character interactions and development. But in retrospect, that focus on just a few characters set the stage for the larger cast of characters not getting similar focus that could have elevated the franchise.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:54 AM on April 27
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:54 AM on April 27
I also appreciated that this movie understood what the movies have not always kept in mind: what is heroic about Wolverine is that he is willing to get hurt to help people, which still hurts as much as it would for anyone, even if he will heal.
But does he actually enjoy the pain?
posted by biffa at 9:52 AM on April 27
But does he actually enjoy the pain?
posted by biffa at 9:52 AM on April 27
Brian Cox, who seems to be having a lot of fun as Wolverine's creator/nemesis
This is where I first became aware of him, and I'd say he easily outclasses every other non-mutant villain in the entire series, as well as most "normie" bad guys in the MCU (which of course this film is not part of).
posted by praemunire at 10:30 AM on April 27 [2 favorites]
This is where I first became aware of him, and I'd say he easily outclasses every other non-mutant villain in the entire series, as well as most "normie" bad guys in the MCU (which of course this film is not part of).
posted by praemunire at 10:30 AM on April 27 [2 favorites]
> "But does he actually enjoy the pain?"
My understanding from the Logan trailer is that he hurt himself today to see if he still feels.
posted by kyrademon at 12:37 PM on April 27 [6 favorites]
My understanding from the Logan trailer is that he hurt himself today to see if he still feels.
posted by kyrademon at 12:37 PM on April 27 [6 favorites]
But does he actually enjoy the pain?
You were watching Lawrence of Arabia.
posted by GenjiandProust at 1:01 PM on April 27 [2 favorites]
You were watching Lawrence of Arabia.
posted by GenjiandProust at 1:01 PM on April 27 [2 favorites]
are you saying that it's not so much that he enjoys as doesn't mind?
posted by kokaku at 4:16 PM on April 27 [2 favorites]
posted by kokaku at 4:16 PM on April 27 [2 favorites]
and then they did Dark Phoenix again, and blew it again
Yeah, because they hired the same writer who had previously botched the same story in X-Men 3, and also invited him to direct it as well! I guess in fairness, he also did the screenplay for Days of Future Past which was way better than I expected it to be for what is a pretty esoteric and lore-heavy little corner of the comics. Then again, he wrote Apocalypse as well, so he's one for four.
posted by whir at 9:51 PM on April 27 [2 favorites]
Yeah, because they hired the same writer who had previously botched the same story in X-Men 3, and also invited him to direct it as well! I guess in fairness, he also did the screenplay for Days of Future Past which was way better than I expected it to be for what is a pretty esoteric and lore-heavy little corner of the comics. Then again, he wrote Apocalypse as well, so he's one for four.
posted by whir at 9:51 PM on April 27 [2 favorites]
What this movie did that very few, if any, other superhero movies have done was situate these characters into the mundane without making them mundane. This is, imo, one of the keys of what makes early Marvel Comics successful. The MCU does not do this.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 10:54 AM on April 29 [2 favorites]
posted by kittens for breakfast at 10:54 AM on April 29 [2 favorites]
You are not logged in, either login or create an account to post comments
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:53 AM on April 26 [1 favorite]