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"Utterly brilliant"
"Best
Comic to Screen Film Ever"
"The X-Factor" |
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The X-Men are a team of mutant peacekeepers led by
Professor Xavier assigned the task of protecting the human race against
the sinister Magneto...
Review
Although the superhero comic book has been a duopoly since
the early 1960s, only DC's flagship characters, Superman and Batman (who
originated in the late 1930s) have established themselves as big-screen
franchises. Until now--this is the first runaway hit film version of the
alternative superhero X-Men universe created for Marvel Comics by
Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and others. It's a rare comic-book movie that doesn't
fall over its cape introducing all the characters, and this is the
exception. X-Men drops us into a world that is closer to our own
than Batman's Gotham City, but it's still home to super-powered
goodies and baddies. Opening in high seriousness with paranormal activity
in a WW2 concentration camp and a senatorial inquiry into the growing
"mutant problem", Bryan Singer's film sets up a complex background with
economy and establishes vivid, strange characters well before we get to
the fun. There's Halle Berry flying and summoning snowstorms, James
Marsden zapping people with his "optic beams", Rebecca Romijn-Stamos
shape-shifting her blue naked form, and Ray Park lashing out with his
Toad-tongue. The big conflict is between Patrick Stewart's Professor X and
Ian McKellen's Magneto, super-powerful mutants who disagree about their
relationship with ordinary humans, but the characters we're meant to
identify with are Hugh Jackman's Wolverine (who has retractable claws and
amnesia), and Anna Paquin's Rogue (who sucks the life and superpowers out
of anyone she touches).
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