X-MEN!!!

i saw the movie with ben . ditto on what he said

YAH! When I started this thread, i was about the only one positive about, but now everyone here who has seen it likes it! You have seen the light! This movie kicks!

Wow, great movie. Not the best of the year, (gladiator was still better) but a great movie. The action was thrilling, but I thought there would be more X-men. Toad was a pretty cool character. I also liked storm and mystique. I cant wait for the sequal.

Before I give my review you have to promise not to throw stones.

Ok, Patrick Stewart was Great. Sir Ian Mckellen was Brilliant. The cinematography was beautifull. The movie sucked. The rest of the acting was some of the worst I've seen in a long time, the script was simpy AWEFULL!!! (What happens to a toad when it gets hit by lightning? Same thing that happens to everyone else.) There was an extreme lack of logic in almost everything (though I'm glad Rogue's hair was right at the end since Wolverine heals her hair would have gone back to normal), and the special effects were awefull! (Statue of liberty was just plain flat)
However, it's all worth it for the chess scene at the end. I can't wait for Gandalf vs. Saruman and Gandalf and Denethor.

Do you work from the Washington Post? You sound like the idiot reviewer from there. Its a superhero movie... its called "fantasy" look into it.

And how anyone can say that Hugh Jackman's acting was bad... well that is just plain silly.

His acting wasn't bad, it was shamefull!

I love fantasy, why else would I be here at Entmoot. But ther's good fantasy and there's bad fantasy. The X-Men comic books rock, the movie, if it weren't for that Chess scene it should never have been made.

I shall bear my judgment down upon this movie when I see it sometime this week.

Keep in mind that two months ago, my attitude this movie was totally pessimistic. After it came out, I began to expect that this will be at the very least a "good" film. I'm still expecting that. From what Tater is saying, it's turning out to be what I originally expected... however, I have heard excellent word-of-mouth from some other people just as pessimistic about the film as I was before the film was released.

We shall see.

Hey Parrot, when I went to see it I went expecting **** myself. Everything I'd heard about the production and the casting had me convinced that I'd be lucky to get out of the theatre without experiencing extreme pain.....

BUT ITS INCREDIBLE! Tater is in about a 2% part of the population that didn't like the movie. Especially good was Jackman's portrayal of Wolverine... he had it PERFECT. No one could possibly have done it better.

This is NOT a perfect movie, there are places it could have been better, Storm has a couple of really cheesy lines, but overall this thing is really good.

I saw it yesterday, and thoght it was pretty good. Not a great movie in any sense of the word, but entertaining, and well worth the money I paid to get in.

I finally gave in and saw it too... here's my review, from <a href=http://pub4.ezboard.com/bnicktheshadow>my messageboard</a>...

DISCLAIMER

I am not an "X-Fan". I am not going to make a single note of how faithful the adaptation of the comics is, not one bit. I don't care if Wolverine says "Bub", I don't care if Beast wasn't in it, I don't care. (Although the "yellow spandex" line was pretty funny.)

Furthermore, I made the conscious decision of going into this movie completely blocking out all my knowledge of any biological or physical sciences whatsoever, and reminded myself that this is first and foremost a fantasy film and that the ludicrous scientific implausibilities and misunderstandings hold no weight either for or against this movie.

Now let's get started...

JUST TELL ME IF IT WAS GOOD OR BAD

Marginally above average.

PROS

The look of the film was definitely, to put it, "cool". The usage of deep bluish-grey colors throughout the film with everything from sets to costumes gave the entire movie a very surrealist feeling. With comic book films, it seems like there's basically two ways to go - the dark, dank feel of the Tim Burton Batman and Batman Returns, or the bright, true-to-the-comic-book coloration of Superman and Dick Tracy. It seems that this film chose the former path, and it was certainly the right way to go because it was consistent with the more serious direction the film was heading in.

The effects work was easy to spot, but brilliant nonetheless. While it stuck out as something you'd point to and say, "that's FX work", that was certainly not a disadvantage in this film at all. The visuals were very appropriate for the film, as well as technically superb.

The cast blended into their roles very well - something that is absolutely necessary in a "superhero" film, because they need to escape their real-life personae and become the character. While this was achieved mostly because of costumes and effects rather than acting, it worked and it worked well. The exception is Patrick Stewart as Professor X, but that's not a flaw in this film - it's actually Star Trek's "fault" for making audiences immediately think of Captain Picard whenever they see Patrick Stewart on screen. I'd like to make a special note of Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) and Cyclops (James Marsden). With these two, effects, costumes and acting were successfully combined to make the character memorable without actually going into too much depth beyond what the audience sees.

The fight scenes, although certainly lacking in length, were exciting, well-shot and well-edited. Seeing that this was a fantasy action movie, it seems that both the "fantasy" and "action" parts were well done. The fights were almost all just FX and not a whole lot of raw stunts or skill, but again, this was a superhero film so I did not hold that against the movie.

Also, might I make a note of a particularly special "unfolding plank" where Magneto pieces together a bridge as he is walking on it... you'll know it when you see it. I want one. That was just too cool.

CONS

This movie tries to crunch way too many characters into a short space of time. The characters were memorable, sure, but for the most part that was because of their costumes and abilities, not because they were well-developed. Wolverine's background in particular was too much of a tease, and it seemed like they stuck it in there just so they could expand on it in a sequel. Really, the only exception to this at all is Magneto (Ian McKellen), who was explained somewhat adequately by the opening scene of the film which depicts an episode out of his childhood - and even that did not relate well enough to the mutant-human rift that he puts so much emphasis on. Professor X was developed to an extent, but that was from what we saw of him in the present, without any motivic explanation from the past.

The film is too short. This is basically a one-mission plot which largely involves introducing characters - it seems that this film was made demanding a sequel. Someone said that this would be excellent as a pilot episode for a television series - and they're absolutely right about that. I thought that exact thing coming out of the theatre. But let's face it - even pilot episodes of television series are slightly longer than the 104 minutes X-Men offers, even barring commercials.

The villains, Magneto aside, were incredibly weak. They were stuck in there purely as henchmen, and had no substance whatsoever. Sabretooth (Tyler Mane) in particular was terrible, because he didn't have a cool enough costume or abilities to act as a temporary placeholder for character development as his comrades Mystique (Rebecca Romijn-Stamos) and Toad (Darth Maul - er, Ray Park) did. Speaking of Toad... while the homage to The Phantom Menace was a well-placed reference, Ray Park was generally wasted. They could have easily used someone else in his place. Because almost all his fighting involved his FX-created tongue and jumping around a lot, it was kind of like Jet Li in Romeo Must Die - his fighting skills, while shown off to an extent, were overly FX-aided and we didn't get to see him really shine.

Two other issues with characters. First of all, Halle Berry as Storm was just terrible - poorly written, and the acting didn't help one bit. Secondly, Senator Kelly (Bruce Davison) was a character that was so heavily emphasized in the film's TV commercials and the Mutant Watch promotional website that if you looked at the film as if it stood alone, Kelly is just stuck in there. Because of this, the film doesn't hold up as well without the Senator Kelly commercials - the marketing is actually a part of the movie. Fortunately, I have received word that all the Mutant Watch material will be included with the release of this film - good move, because if people in the future watch this movie by itself on video without the aid of the commercials, Kelly will look incredibly weak to them.

Another small issue: the editing in the beginning, from the end of Magneto's introduction up until Wolverine's introduction, was simply choppy and largely incoherent.

The script, while not intrusively bad, was certainly not something great. All the even remotely quotable lines are rather average in nature, and unfortunately, this suffers from one of the afflictions Titanic did - the most memorable line in the movie, the line that will be associated with this film from here on in, was just ****. While Titanic had "I'm the king of the world!" and "I think I'm flying!" X-Men has the overly silly "What happens to a Toad when it's struck by lightning? The same thing that happens to everything else." I mean, what the hell is up with that?

Possibly the biggest issue with X-Men is that while the art design and cinematography implies that the film is meant to be serious, rather than a movie that intentionally tries to be an escapist comic book like the wonderful Warren Beatty Dick Tracy or the entertaining Batman Forever, there are some things that obviously detract from that. This film cannot decide when it wants to be serious and when it wants to be comical. Sometimes you get gadgets and technology (particular Magneto's device that is the core of the film's one-mission plot) and cheesy one-liners that would be great in a "comic book" movie that wants to be a comic book; and that makes the tone of the film rather inconsistent. Again, this is not even taking into account scientific implausibilities, because I promised to ignore those at the very beginning of this review.

Also, what's the deal with the United Nations? Why is it always the United Nations and some big conference with all the delegates that gets picked on? It's been done in the 1966 Batman, and this film doesn't improve upon the concept one bit.

And the last note: the musical score by Michael Kamen, who wrote a brilliant score for Brazil, but has never done anything else useful since. I'd heard some horror stories about how distractingly terrible the score was. Well, while it wasn't as terrible as the score to Mission to Mars, which still makes me wonder what aliens from outer space abducted Ennio Morricone and replaced him with a tone-deaf impostor, it certainly took away from the film. If they are going to turn this into a franchise, and it appears that's the direction they're heading in, with sequels already in the works, they need to establish a clear " X-Men theme". Nope, no theme here. I'd say the score is about on the level as The Matrix - however, The Matrix had a large repertoire of appropriate selections from existing metal bands to compensate for the poor orchestration. X-Men does not.

OVERALL

I expected this film to be terrible. It exceeded my expectations by far, but is overall just slightly above average. There were simply too many flaws that took away from the movie for this to be a masterpiece by any means, and they weren't flaws that were disguised by the rest of the film at first viewing as was the case with The Phantom Menace, for example. Hopefully Bryan Singer will use his success with this film to make successive sequels build upon this foundation - because that's all this film really is, is a foundation. It is not really a complete movie in itself.

I just liked that blue babe if ya know what I mean *wink wink nudge nudge*

I expected a very bad movie adaptation and saw a completely adequate one!

I was pleased overall. This was a comic book movie and they did rather well with it.

The characterizations were true to the comic book. I couldn't have asked for much more, except more length and more development.

But then, this is intended (obviously) to be a series.

My favorite comic book was THE FANTASTIC FOUR and I eagerly anticipate new Marvel Comics movies!

Most importantly, I now know that Gandalf is in good hands!

[Estel13]

Well, I just saw X-MEN for the 1st time and I thought that it ROCKED!!! The acting was great, the script superb, and the special effects were good, though I've seen better in THAT particular realm. My fave was Wolverine. The best scene of his was when he pulled in the 2 outer blades and held up the middle one to Cyclops. I loved that scene!!! If some people *looks pointedly at Darth Tater* didn't like the movie, that's their problem. Film Hobbit, glad we agree on Wolverine!

[Bombadillo]

X-Men!!! Dittle diddte diw dw dw, ditle diddte dew DW DW, DIW DIW DEW! < That's the theme song.

I tend to hate movies based on books don't I? But I gotta admit, the actors didn't do a bad job on this. I loved it in the beginning when Sabertooth whacks the trailer with a tree and Wolverine goes flying half a block and just gets up like "dammit!" with half his face missing and then it grows back and... and...

I'm an X-Men freak.

[gimli7410]

i cant wait for x-men 2.night crawler is gonna be in it so i am looking forward to that

[Varda Oiolosseo]

I saw the second one advertised the other day in the cinema and i was like wow i gotta see that!
But i hadn't seen the first one so i borrowed it off my mate yesterday and Oh My Gosh it's fantastic!! I don't understand why i hadn't seen it before!!!!

I am sooooooooooooooo looking forward to the second one!

I like Storm i think she'a really cool! well they all are but she's my favourite.

[Huan]

As a comic book nut, I didn't love the movie first time I saw it coz of my own heightened expectations, but I saw the 1.5 DVD last night and realized I really do dig the movie. The second one looks truly cool, particularly since Nightcrawler and Kitty Pryde are my favorite X-Men, and it looks like both of them will show up in the movie. And I hear that seeds will be planted in this one so that the third movie can be the Dark Phoenix story. yay! Famke Janssen as Phoenix. yummmm. Yes, very sexist of me.

[Eowyn, Lady of Rohan]

My favorite X-man is Pheonix and Rouge. What's yours?

[Aralyn]

hmm I'm gonna go see it but the first one will always be the best by far. did you know it's gonna be kind of a trilogy. They're gonna do one more after this.

My faves are Wolverine and Rogue

[Bombadillo]

I like Beast and Bishop the best. Too bad Beast will probably never be in the movies. He'd have a really expensive costume job.

But I saw the commercials too, and I want to see it. I don't know how they're gonna pull off a good movie because it was already revealed that Senator Kelly is Mistique, but I trust there's something good.