X-Men (2000)

[Sam Favate]

Title: X-Men (2000)

Tagline: Evolution Begins

Genre: Adventure, Action, Science Fiction

Director: Bryan Singer

Cast: Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Famke Janssen, James Marsden, Halle Berry, Anna Paquin, Tyler Mane, Ray Park, Rebecca Romijn, Bruce Davison, Matthew Sharp, Brett Morris, Rhona Shekter, Kenneth McGregor, Shawn Roberts, Donna Goodhand, John Nelles, George Buza, Darren McGuire, Carson Manning, Scott Leva, Aron Tager, Kevin Rushton, Doug Lennox, David Nichols, Malcolm Nefsky, Sumela Kay, Shawn Ashmore, Katrina Florece, Alex Burton, Quinn Wright, Daniel Magder, Matt Weinberg, Madison Lanc, Stan Lee, Marsha Graham, Amy Leland, Adam Robitel, David Brown, Ben Jensen, Tom DeSanto, Todd Dulmage, Dan Duran, Elias Zarou, David Black, Robert R. Snow, David Hayter, Cecil Phillips, Dave Allen Clark, Deryck Blake, Ilke Hincer, Ron Sham, Jay Yoo, Grigori Miakouchkine, Eleanore Comes, Giuseppe Gallaccio, Rupinder Brar, Abi Ganem, Joey Purpura, Manuel Verge, Wolfgang Müller, Ralph Zuljan, Andy Grote, Jimmy Star

Release: 2000-07-13

Runtime: 104

Plot: Two mutants, Rogue and Wolverine, come to a private academy for their kind whose resident superhero team, the X-Men, must oppose a terrorist organization with similar powers.

 

[Sam Favate]

Today is the 20th anniversary of this movie, which kicked off the superhero craze that continues to this day.

I thought it was a good film (maybe not great) and was somewhat unique for how it honored the source material in making a comic book movie. We'd seen a bunch in the 90s that didn't.

It also gave us Hugh Jackman, who joined the movie only three weeks before production, since Dougray Scott - who was cast as Wolverine - dropped out to be in Mission Impossible II. That has to be one of the worst decisions of all time. Scott got to be in what was easily one of the worst films I have ever seen, and missed out on the role that made Jackman a huge star.

Casting Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan was a brilliant move, and gave the film some real dramatic chops. I also enjoyed Famke Janssen, Anna Paquin and Rebecca Romijn.

The movie was the first of 10 X-Men films from Fox (12 if you count the Deadpool movies), and really started the modern superhero film genre. It would be followed in 2002 by Sam Raimi's Spider-Man, which was the first movie to make more than $100 million in a single weekend, which made the money people sit up and take notice. (There was a picture of Spider-Man on the front page of the Wall Street Journal the Monday after it opened, with a piece about the movie's unprecedented success.)

X-Men was produced by Richard Donner, who is credited with perhaps the greatest superhero movie ever, Superman: The Movie, and his wife Lauren Shuler Donner, who would oversee the X-Men franchise for Fox. The movie also had an associate producer named Kevin Feige.

Sure, the series had its ups and downs, but without the Donners and X-Men, would we have had this abundance of comic book films? Would there be a Marvel Studios?

As an aside, I remember seeing the film with some guys I used to work with. I had no idea they were X-Men fans, which goes to show how deep the public's fascination with X-Men was, and how many people wanted to see comic book adaptations that weren't just of the most well-known superheroes.