Superhero Media: X-Men

Man, remember when this was one of the best superhero films ever made? Fuck, I'm old. In a bleak time before media streaming and Cinematic Universes, teenage runaway Rogue runs into Wolverine in an Alaskan bar and the pair are soon quickly embroiled in a secret war between two rival camps of mutants, Professor X and his X-Men and Magneto and his... Brotherhood? Are they actually called that? Magneto uses the term a couple of times, but with Ian McKellen's Shakespearean delivery, it always comes across a little ironic. Uncomfortable as it is to admit with the benefit of hindsight, Bryan Singer does an excellent job directing this first outing for what turned out to be the long-running X-Men series of films, with a sanded-down version of the most iconic characters from the comics pitched at a consumer mindset that wasn't ready for the heady days of colourful costumes and fourth-wall breaks. Despite their differences, Wolverine and the X-Men come together to defeat Magneto and save the delegates from his mutant-ray, before zipping off the the next film. 

Ok, first of all, do you remember that Magneto has a DNA-manipulating science device powered by magnetism and that's it's the main MacGuffin of the film? I mean, I remember it, but I didn't remember how utterly absurd the whole thing is in light of all the other shortcuts made with the material to make it less "silly". The sleek designs of the technology, black leather costumes and lots of biomedical techno-bable to disguise the comic book origins of the content and characters are almost laughable now, but were necessary to sell the idea to a broader audience who was expecting something more like Blade or The Matrix than Guardians of the Galaxy. As I hinted above, it's the cast and crew that make X-Men, with everybody turning in solid performances, even when, like Halle Berry, they don't have a lot to work with. I think centering Wolverine and Rogue for this film works, but as we move through the series, the lack of other X-Men getting to do things will soon become tiresome. 

Aside from the really good ones, I don't find that the X-men series has a lot of value other than being a fun binge watch, even the bad ones. I know there are fans of this series, but I really don't see a miniature project of black-leather clad mutants being all that fun to put together, or even why one might choose to start their RPG in this setting, perhaps as a "lite" version of Academy X? An X-Men setting without the baggage of the other Marvel heroes does appeal, if only to avoid all of the crossover events that clog up ongoing stories. Of course, the setting of X-Men already has branching timelines, alternate universes and retcons, so maybe it's not so simple after all? I have to say that I'm looking forward to going over these films again, even just to reappraise them all these years later. Also excited to see when the mutants hit the Marvel Cinematic Universe and how that all turns out.