UK Film Review
- Nov 11, 2021
- 3 min read

X-Men Throwback Film Review

★★★

Directed by: Bryn Singer

Written by: Tom DeSanto, Bryan Singer, David Hayter

Starring: Hugh Jackman, Ian McKellen, Anna Paquin, Patrick Stewart

Throwback Film Review by: Rachel Pullen

X-Men (2000) Film Review

I was getting into a deep convo with some pals the other day. I spoke about how Dr X from X-Men can use his legs and is simply using his disability as an excuse for a pity parade so that people won’t be mad that he is profiteering from war crimes. I decided to start way, way back, before superhero movies were beaten to death in front of our eyes in order to score a quick buck, back to 2000, to where it all began, the first, but sadly not the last, X-Men movie.

You’re 17, you wanna bone everything in sight, but oh no, when you do people seem to die, so you run away and meet a man with dreadful sideburns, he has pointy things in his hands, but does not know how they got there...cool who cares, not you, you got touching issues to worry about. But it's not long before some people hunt you down, because humans hate mutants, other mutants hate mutants and you end up at Dr X's school for freaks, or mutants...at this point, I was too distracted about seeing if he was going to use his legs.

Dr X has built a school for the mutants to hang out and learn to use their powers more safely in, to do good I assume, although as I said, he could be profiteering off war crimes, who knows, but what we do know is at this point is all the X-Men wanna hump each other and Dr X is pretending he still can't walk...get up, I know you can.

But life is not all school lessons and trying to hump, apparently, there are bad guy X-Men who wanna ruin things and make the normal humans hate the mutants more, jealousy clearly, and it's not long before Magneto (played by Ian McKellen) wants to steal the Rouge girl from the start of the movie, because her powers are valuable to him, I'm also gonna say it, why can't they heal Dr X so he can walk? Like if they all have different powers surely someone can do that, but they don't...because he is a war criminal and this is all a lie!

Back to the movie...

Of course like all superhero films play out, they have a showdown on a famous monument, or in a well-recognized location like the moon or on the tip of the Eiffel Tower, which always seems to have just enough space to accommodate all the kicking and flipping that's gonna take place, this time they chose the Statue of Liberty, which was explained to me because it was gonna use the copper to help with the radiation or something.

They fight, they win, and the humans are all like...thanks but we still don't like mutants, conveniently leaving an open end for a sequel, and another, and another, but while it is known that I'm not one for the superhero genre of films, I do quite enjoy this movie.

Now I'm not going to call it a masterpiece or anything but it has a certain charm to it that I quite like, it's not too over the top, special effects are minimal because it was 2000 of course, and due to that I feel like we get to spend more time with character development, I really felt connected to the outcomes of the characters’ story arcs and I haven’t really felt that way watching some of the more recent contributions to cinema from the MCU, and so I say, well done X-Men, this hammy little contribution shall not go forgotten.

So if you wanna enjoy a superhero film but not be overwhelmed by flips and kicks and lazers and rainbow bridges that I couldn't care less about, then slip on your leather wear, retract those claws and settle in for a simpler time in the world of superhero films...and Dr X can walk, no one will convince me otherwise.

So this week we have learnt.