X-Men 1.5

-20^th Century Fox Home Entertainment (2000)

Summary:

Those crazy mutants are at it again!

My Thoughts:

Before the fairly recent successes of films X-Men and Spiderman, the superhero film was practically dead. I remember hoping against hope that X-Men wouldn't suck. To my pleasant surprise it didn't. Films like Captain America and every Batman film except the first one have always gotten me excited to see my favorite heroes on screen, only to leave me hollow and empty from the pathetic translations. X-Men does something different by keeping the spirit of the comic alive, yet portraying its own take on the characters.

The plot of X-Men is a little less than desirable. Granted, you really don't notice the plot with all the fancy action and great visuals, but it still is rather empty. It's another comic book film with the same plot I've seen a hundred times.The film tries to overcome this by being a great introduction to the world and characters of the X-Men. Sure, there are a lot of changes from the comic book source, like Rouge being much younger than the rest of the team, but it works for this film. If X-Men's direction, acting, editing, and special effects hadn't turned out as well then it could have been another Captain America. For those unfamiliar with Captain America (the movie not the comic) it sucks hard core bad. X-Men on the other hand, isn't entirely perfect, but it's easy to overlook the flaws.

The story begins with a really great opening showing a young boy at a Nazi concentration camp being separated from his parents. The boy reaches out for them after the gates close. The metal bars begin to bend towards him until he's knocked unconscious by a guard. As a former comic book geek I found this scene as an awesome introduction to the character of Magneto. X-men then moves onto the troubled present that shows Senator Kelly on a legal rampage to get all mutants registered with the government. Not only that, but the now evil Magneto has some equally evil plans a brewing!

The casting of X-Men is simply dead on, with a couple of exceptions. Perhaps the best casting choice and most obvious of all time is Patrick Stewart in the role of Professor Charles Xavier, the founder and mentor of the X-Men. Wolverine, played by Hugh Jackman, is almost exactly how I imagined him, except taller and less hairy. The less notable parts include Anna Paquin, who played the teenaged Rouge, was pretty decent except her Southern accent kept dropping. Halle Berry who plays Storm only has a couple of lines, but it doesn't even seem like she's trying very hard.

X-Men 1.5 is a good purchase. The picture is crisp if a little dark and the surround sound is decent, but not spectacular. I did get my neighbors complaining about the wall shaking though, so that's always fun.

Extras:

This version is the second version of the film to appear on DVD. The first had a moderate amount of extras and this version has a ton more. There’s a lot of material in the 2^nd bonus disc. The main problem I had for the bonus disc was the arrangement of the special features and the design of the motion menus themselves. Normally I don’t care about this sort of thing, but I have to mention it now because it was so unappealing to me.

With that said, there is the standard commentary on the first disc with an option to watch the film with deleted scenes re-inserted into the film. Unfortunately, when this feature is activated you also have a “push enter when you see an X” function that allows you to see behind-the-scenes footage. I say this is unfortunate, because if you want to see the deleted scenes you have to sit through the film as white X’s occasionally appear and pull you out of the film. I don’t understand why these couldn’t be separate features.

Disc two is split into two main sections. The first and most commercial portion of the DVD is the “X-Men 2” section. It features a Daredevil teaser trailer and a sneak preview of X2.

The other section, “Evolution X” contains the majority of the special features. It consists of a ton of mini-documentaries that have the super special branchless white X button pressing junk found on the first disc. Please, just let me see my extras without this kind of busy work.

“Production Documentary Scrapbook” features some cool multi-angle behind the scenes stuff that is a good use of the often under used multi-angle feature. This section also contains one of the weirdest extras I’ve ever seen called “The Prime Minister of Canada” featuring the prime minister of Canada (duh) passing by a camera. 

“The Uncanny Suspects” is the section devoted to the actors of the film. It also features a gallery of concept drawings of the characters.

“X Factor” is a featurette dealing with the make-up of the characters and also features a concept gallery.

“Special Effects of X-Men” is all the special effects info about the movie you ever wanted to learn and more.

“Marketing X-Men” contains all the trailers and TV spots as well as some cool internet behind the scenes stuff called intestinals.

“Reflection of the X-Men” is info about how they expected the film to do and how it was incredibly successful. It is actually funny to hear about how they were really worried the film was going to flop before its release.

There are a lot of extras to take a look at. Enough, I’d think, to satisfy any X-Men nut. If the menu design wasn’t so crappy and it didn’t have so many branching options I think I would have enjoyed this edition a lot more than I actually did.

Score:

Film: 7.5

Extras:  8.5

Edition: 7.0

-Paul