As I mentioned in the previous paragraph, we have kind of encountered the X-Men (or rather Professor Xavier's school) in the aforementioned "Generation X" but this movie thankfully goes a bit further into the actual superhero side of things rather than being a kind of Buffy the Vampire Slayer with mutants instead of vampires (and without any of the good bits of Buffy). Let's investigate shall we?...
The film starts with a bit of background on two of the main characters in the film as we see a young boy separated from his parents as they're taken into Auchswitz - he lets out a scream and the gates of the camp bend and almost fly off their hinges before someone subdues him. This, we will later learn, is Magneto. We don't learn anything else of his backstory and why he later decided to become a supervillain which seems like a bit of a big plothole to leave but there you go. We also see a teenage girl and her boyfriend have their first kiss which results in the girl shooting powerlines through the boy's body and leaving him unconscious. This, we later learn, is Rogue.
Elsewhere in the present day, we see a session of the US Senate debating whether to introduce a Mutant Registration Act. The two protagonists are a scientist Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) who's arguing against mutants having to register themselves (as we'll see, because she happens to be a member of the X-Men) and Senator Kelly who's in favour of it. Afterwards, we see Professor Xavier, the leader of the X-Men (Patrick Stewart) and Magneto, leader of the Brotherhood of Mutants, (Ian McKellen) arguing over whether they need to intervene in the hallway.
Meanwhile, Rogue has gone on the run and ended up in Canada where she witnesses a cage fight in a bar involving Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) which ol' Wolfy wins quite easily due to his adamantium skin. However, when the losing fighter tries to attack Wolverine afterwards, he gets threatened by a claw to the throat which causes Wolfy to get thrown out of the establishment with Rogue stowing away in the back of his truck.
The two of them end up driving through the Canadian wilderness and slowly bonding before their truck is attacked by a giant mutant known as Sabre-Tooth, one of Magneto's Brotherhood. He gets the better of Wolverine but luckily the two mutants are saved by the intervention of two of Xavier's X-Men, Cyclops who has laser vision and Storm (Halle Berry) who can summon thunderstorms to electrocute her enemies.
Wolverine wakes up having been transported to the X Academy (last seen in the Generation X film) where he meets with Professor Xavier after an unsuccessful escape attempt. Rogue has enrolled in the academy while Xavier, Storm, Cyclops and Grey offer to help Wolverine discover why the Brotherhood are chasing him. However, Wolverine and Cyclops don't exactly hit it off after the former tries to chat up Jean Grey without realising she's the latter's girlfriend. Oops.
Meanwhile, Brotherhood members Mystique (Rebecca Romijn), a shapeshifter, and Toad (who can leap really high, spit poison goo and has a prehensile tongue) have kidnapped Senator Kelly and brought him to Magneto's hideout where he's used as a test subject for a new weapon Magneto's built which will allow him to create a magnetic sphere forcing normal people's bodies to mutate.
Kelly manages to escape from Magneto's hideout by using his new mutation to squeeze through the bars and flees to the X Academy where Xavier and the X-Men take him in. However, despite their best efforts to look after him, his body has rejected the mutation and he ends up dissolving into a pool of liquid.
The X-Men have bigger things to worry about though as they find out Rogue has gone on the run after Mystique infiltrated the school and disguised herself as Rogue's sort-of-boyfriend Iceman then persuaded her that she would be better off away from the place.
Storm, Cyclops and Wolverine track Rogue down to Grand Central station in New York but Sabre Tooth, Toad and Magneto are hot on their trail and kidnap Rogue after beating ten shades out of the three X-Men. It turns out that Magneto wasn't after Wolverine at all but Rogue who he plans to use as the energy source for using his mutator beam to envelop the whole of New York. Can the X-Men stop him in time? Ah-ah, not so fast, this movie's good enough that I'm not giving spoilers out to those who haven't seen it - you'll have to track down a copy yourselves. Don't worry, I'd imagine it won't cost you too much to do so.
Like Men In Black before it, X-Men does what every good summer smash movie should with a good script, decent action sequences and enough drama to keep you gripped for a couple of hours. Yes, there are a couple of noticeable plot holes here and there but overall this movie got one of the longest-running Marvel franchises off to a solid start and, more so than Blade or even Men In Black, was the film that proved to the world that superhero movies in the 21st century could actually work. I'd say it only just loses out to Men In Black for the top spot in the table by a whisker but don't worry, there's even better ones to come in this series. Of course, there's also some decidedly below-par X-Men films we've still to encounter but let's just try not to think about that for now eh?...
FINAL RATING: ⦻⦻⦻⦻⦻⦻⦻⦻ (8/10)
CURRENT MARVEL FILM TABLE
1. Men In Black (1997) (8/10)
2. X-Men (2000) (8/10)
3. Blade (1998) (7/10)
4. The Incredible Hulk Returns (1988) (6/10)
5. Conan The Barbarian (1982) (6/10)
6. Conan The Destroyer (1984) (6/10)
7. The Trial Of The Incredible Hulk (1989) (6/10)
8. Doctor Mordrid (1992) (5/10)
9. The Punisher (1989) (5/10)
10. Doctor Strange (1978) (5/10)
11. Nick Fury: Agent Of SHIELD (1998) (4/10)
12. The Fantastic Four (1994) (4/10)
13. Red Sonja (1985) (4/10)
14. Captain America 2: Death Too Soon (1979) (4/10)
15. Spiderman (1977) (4/10)
16. The Death Of The Incredible Hulk (1990) (3/10)
17. Spiderman: The Dragon's Challenge (1979) (3/10)
18. Howard The Duck (1986) (2/10)
19. Captain America (1990) (2/10)
20. Captain America (1979) (2/10)
21. Generation X (1996) (2/10)
22. Spiderman Strikes Back (1978) (2/10)
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