X-MEN:
Uncanny Portrayal of
Comic Book Heroes
by Chris Chandler
Special to CineScene

When it comes right down to it, the primary requirement for a comic book adaptation is capturing the elusive thrill of super human powers being used in battle. X-Men passes this test with flying colors, even if the special effects wizards do not top the sheer wow power of The Matrix. In fact, X-Men may well be the most successful adaptation of a comic book in the (post) modern history of the genre. For my money, the only real competition comes from Superman II and Dick Tracy.

X-Men delivers the same goofy but honest thrill of watching two grown-ups in skin-tight costumes clash in midair, as Superman II did. Both films also manage a respect for the characters as well as the action underpinnings of the comic experience, without relying on the urban gothic atmosphere and retro-futuristic props so prevalent in the (awful) Batman movies.

What separates X-Men from Superman II is the same thing that separates their comic book inspirations. The DC Comics Superman is the quintessential Golden Age hero: well-mannered, hard working, honest and adult. Basically, Superman is an upper middle class white bread bore. He and his Justice League pals pretty much ruled the comic book landscape through the 1960s.

The inestimable Stan Lee and Marvel Comics grabbed the stage from DC Comics in the 1970s by turning their costumed heroes, beginning with Spiderman, into human beings with real-world problems. What was groundbreaking about Spiderman was not so much his cool costume or his spider danger sense, or not even his witty repartee with villains, like the Goblin or Dr. Octopus. What made Spiderman "relevant" to that generation of disaffected youth is the fact that he had to wash and mend his own outfits, had trouble getting a date for Saturday night, and was generally ambivalent at best about the prospects of being a costumed freak the rest of his life.

After a false start, the 1975 re-working of The X-Men took the same humanizing approach and created a whole cast of new young characters fighting not just against the evil machinations of arch villains like Magneto, but also against the larger system of human intolerance. None of The X-Men chose to be a mutant, much less a superhero. Cyclops, Storm, Wolverine, et al were misunderstood lonely and sometimes bitter teenagers - not unlike teenagers in general, really. Marvel Comics has ridden this formula to unprecedented success, with The X-Men franchise having spun off a dozen or more comics, an animated television series, tons of merchandise, and now a blockbuster film.

(As for Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy, well, it was solid entertainment, and I believe quite faithful to the spirit of the original, but poor old Dick will never quite get over fighting Golden Age mobsters, now will he?)

Thanks to a seemingly limitless advertising budget, X-Men is one of the most highly anticipated movies of the summer, and not just for the usual comic book fanatics. Thanks to screenwriter David Hayter's respect for the original material, it should more than meet the expectations of both "X-perts," and casual moviegoers.

The Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island form the backdrop of the final battle in X-Men, and this is not a coincidence. Politicians are gathered at Ellis Island to discuss the ominous Mutant Registration Act (bad!). The evil Magneto (Ian McKellen) and his band of creepy mutants, Toad, Sabretooth and Mystique, are not pleased with the small minded machinations of the "normal" human beings, and plan on taking matters into their own hands from a base within the torch of Miss Liberty (worse!). Wolverine, Storm, Cyclops and Dr. Jean Grey (Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, James Marsden and Famke Janssen respectively) must use their mutant powers for good - protecting the lives of the politicians, despite the fact that those very men are in the process of trying to label and control them. "Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, but no mutants, please!"

The sometimes heavy-handed nature of the film's overt theme - homo sapiens' intractable intolerance of The Other, is balanced by director Bryan Singer's (Usual Suspects and Apt Pupil) even hand with his heroes, and his villains. Magneto, played with polish and deep feeling by McKellen, watched his parents being killed by Nazis in a Polish prison camp. He's seen the worst of what human beings will do to each other, and its really not hard for the audience to imagine the mutant "holocaust" he fears will come to pass if the Mutant Registration Act proposed by the McCarthy-esque Senator Kelly (Bruce Davison) is enacted.

On the side of tolerance and peace is Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart). He argues that human beings can learn to live with mutants, and he opposes Magneto's vision intellectually and emotionally. Physically, he's tied to a wheelchair, but his mutation is the ability to read and influence minds, so he does just fine. Xavier runs a school for "gifted" (read mutant) children that hides the almost mandatory secret superhero lair. Perhaps some of Stewart-as-Xavier's conviction comes from the far future where Star Trek's "Federation" seems to have dealt with the tricky issues of intolerance and inequity once and for all.

At the character level, the film centers on the relationship between Wolverine and Rouge and how they come to be associated with Xavier's school. Hugh Jackman is absolutely perfect as the gruff and tumble Wolverine, a man whose body heals so fast that some top secret military institution got the idea to graft "adamantium" to all of his bones and equip him with retractable claws of the same comic book alloy. Anna Paquin's Rouge is isolated even more than the rest of the young mutants - her touch (and her first kiss )puts ordinary humans into a coma, and temporarily drains the power from mutants.

Clocking in at just over 100 minutes, the film doesn't do justice to the majority of the heroes, however, and perhaps takes a bit too long to bring those new to the franchise up to speed. Which to my mind says one thing: SEQUEL please!

CineScene, 2001