X-Men is film franchise with a complicated, but surprisingly important legacy.

Although there were obviously superhero films before, and films like Blade are often overlooked, the original X-Men film is ground zero for the modern superhero boom.

Of course, it is, quite rightly, impossible to talk about the series without acknowledging that Bryan Singer is a well-documented sexual predator. This informs the films’ complicated legacy, although it seems under-discussed compared to the emergence of the MCU. It would be something for the X-Men franchise to forgotten or brushed aside because it was build by a rapist, but it is perhaps revealing that the biggest reason modern fandom are so indifferent to the films is because they don’t look like the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The spectre of Bryan Singer is a powerful thing. The cornerstone of the modern American pop cultural landscape was laid by a serial sexual predator. The modern default blockbuster was built to a blueprint he laid. While it seems like the cultural mood has shifted on the X-Men films, it’s strange to me that this isn’t the catalyst for the shift away from them.

The original X-Men seems quaint by modern superhero blockbuster standards; a fifty million dollar budget, a one hundred minute runtime, and abundance of exposition accounting for things modern audiences take for granted. The original feels almost like a “beta” release for the superhero blockbuster, a proof of concept assembled in a rough outline of what the genre might look like.

It’s notable, for example, how X-Men hedges its bets, unsure that audiences are ready for a proper full-blooded superhero blockbuster. The film’s setting is still synopsised as “the near future” in external material and Patrick Stewart’s opening narration (and  even the presence of Patrick Stewart himself) contextualise it as a sci-fi film. This is something that could, innocently enough, be packaged with Minority Report or I, Robot or The Sixth Day. Just in case things went wrong.

Notably, X-Men is much more careful about its blunt “this is what each character can do” exposition and set-up than a lot of later blockbusters that take this stuff for granted. Indeed, it often feels like Stewart was not cast for his impressive dramatic chops, but because he is very good at articulating high concepts to an audience. There’s even a section in the middle of the film in which his voice-over plays over a wholesome montage, evoking a corporate orientation video to the very concept of “the X-Men.” I actually don’t mind this excessive clarity. To a certain extent, it reminds me of the absurdly purple prose written by famous X-Men writer Chris Claremont.

It also helps that X-Men cannily casts Wolverine as an extremely cynical audience member. (“You actually go out in these things?”) He’s basically a sulking teen doing RiffTrax on the film. (“What’s your code name? Wheels?”) It’s similar to the ironic deadpan snarking we’ve come to associate with MCU films, but not quite as self-satisfied. It is also a lot more understandable, rooted in a desire to hedge bets.

At the same time, X-Men is surprisingly like the superhero films that would follow. The opening to X-Men was a rarity for a blockbuster to that point, but unheard of for a comic book film. It’s still one of the iconic comic book movie scenes. It takes the premise seriously. Opening a superhero film at a concentration camp was a risky move. It’s an absurdly fine line to walk in terms of taste. (See Apocalypse as an example of how wrong this can go.) Here, it signals a willingness to accept the source material at face value in a way no previous comic book adaptation had.

“When they come out... does it hurt?”
“Every time.”

It’s a beautiful moment.

To be clear, it’s not realistic. Rogue is still talking about extremely sharp blades that emerge from Logan’s knuckles. However, it is serious. It asks how a real person would respond to this metaphorical trauma. This is another small, effective example of the willingness to take the material seriously. I love the Burton Batman, Donner Superman and the first two Blade movies, but X-Men takes its characters more seriously.

On the subject of Logan, there’s an oft-underrated narrative choice in the original X-Men: the twist that the film is about Rogue and not Logan, that Magneto’s evil plot hinges on her rather that him. The twist works in the context of the film, in the context of the source material and especially in the context of the films that follow. All of these things suggest the audience should focus their attention on Logan, because he’s very much the key to the franchise.

While there’s no doubt bringing back Patrick Stewart was the right choice, I wonder if a version of Logan with Logan and Rogue could have worked. (There is nice symmetry in Logan in how the film parallels the Logan/Laura relationship with the Logan/Rogue one from X-Men.)

As an aside, X-Men benefits greatly from doing a lot of low-key comic book stuff very well. It’s a bit more serious than a lot of comic book films to that point, but it’s still very comic-book-y movie. The soap opera Logan/Jean/Scott triangle is pure comic book, for example, and the film commits to it. Again, it’s the sort of soap opera plotting from which the Marvel Cinematic Universe seems to have shied, but which works like gangbusters here.

Similarly, Magneto’s frankly insane plot to turn a bunch of world leaders into mutants (who will most likely explode) is pure comic book nonsense. It’s a plan that makes no sense, no matter how straight Ian McKellen might play the exposition around it. And the film is unapologetic about that silliness, committing whole hog to a scheme that’s comparable to Lex Luthor’s landgrab in Superman. Then again, X-Men gets away with a lot just by casting Stewart and McKellen. Again, I love the Donner Superman or Burton Batman movies, but Stewart and McKellen raise the bar on the types of performances in the live action superhero genre. McKellen treats Magneto as a real person.

(On that note, Toad is one of the great goofy comic book elements in X-Men. There’s a short scene where he kills guards on Ellis Island by hopping on them in the style of Mario jumping on Goombas. It’s ridiculous in a comic book fashion.)

In terms of balancing its influences and being its own thing, I really like Michael Kamen’s score to X-Men. It comes close enough at times to evoking the iconic soundscape of the nineties cartoon - especially during the Blackbird sequences - but without ever being pandering in the way that the Justice League score would be.

At the same time, there’s a sense of the film not entirely understanding the genre that it’s codifying. The film has an ensemble roughly equivalent to that of the first Avengers movie, but twelve years early. However, while it gives Storm and Cyclops individual good scenes - Storm and Senator Kelly, Cyclops and the comatose Xavier - it struggles to give them actual arcs and character development. Superhero films would get better at juggling the demands of ensembles of this size, but there’s an awkwardness in how X-Men tries to do it.

“You going to tell me to stay away from your girl?”
“If I had to do that, then she wouldn’t be my girl.”

The X-Men movies have no real idea how to use Cyclops, but I dig his straight laced stuck-in-the-mud western hero persona here. Cyclops is the hero of a forties or fifties film or television show; it’s no surprise that Marsden should break out almost two decades later playing a wholesome robot cowboy on Westworld. I have a huge soft spot for Cyclops’ cool and calm stoic demeanour, to the surprise of absolutely nobody who knows me.

It feels like pop culture has only recently caught on to James Marsden’s strengths as a performer; his very old-fashioned factory-designed good-looks-and-forthrightness persona. Cyclops typifies that persona very well. He’s a standard hero, just a kinda dull one. X-Men uses him primarily as a contrast with the rougher edges of Logan, to illustrate that Logan is a more modern style of protagonist; Logan is Clint Eastwood to Cyclops’ Gary Cooper.

As an aside, there are few cultural markers in X-Men that anchor the film as firmly in the context of 2000 as firmly as the inclusion of Fluke’s Atom Bomb in Logan’s joyriding sequence after he steals Cyclops’ motorbike. Also, hey, where’s the internet outrage mob about Wolverine stealing Cyclops’ motorbike?

“You're so full of sh!t. lf you're really so righteous, it'd be you in that thing.”

Much like how Nolan’s Dark Knight would later approach the Joker, X-Men is clear that Magneto is a villain. He remains, to quote Grant Morrison, “a mad old terrorist twat.” No matter how good their rhetoric or arguments, these characters are villains because they still cause innocents to suffer in pursuit of validation of their personal political beliefs.

It’s interesting how effectively X-Men codified a nascent genre, while still seeming just a little “off.” In particular, despite being released in July 2000, it feels surprisingly like a “War on Terror” blockbuster in terms of tone, theme, content. It seems an awkward fit for a nineties or millennial blockbuster, seeming like it’s waiting for the next cultural shift to take place. This may explain why X-Men II feels much more comfortable in its skin and much more of its moment, instead of awkwardly invoking “the near future.”

After all, the first X-Men movie finds a terrorist hatching a plot to radically destabilise global political structures, which involves weaponising (and destroying part of) a New York landmark. Again, it’s odd that the film arrived in July 2000 rather than two years later. This is one of those strange synchronicities of X-Men and the soon-to-be-standard superhero blockbuster. The film prefigures a lot of what would follow, but not everything; and so it feels out of place slightly, out of time. It exists within a genre uncanny valley.

To pick another example, X-Men provides the first formal intersection of Joss Whedon and the superhero genre, its obvious (and acknowledged) influence on Buffy notwithstanding. But again, the synchronicity is weird and uncanny. Only two of Whedon’s lines made it into the finished film. There’s a tangible sense of, “almost, but not quite.”

In terms of that weird transitional uncanny valley that X-Men occupies, the ending is surprisingly old-fashioned. The music soars and the swells I n a way that an Marvel Cinematic Universe film would never allow. The characters cradle each other melodramatically. There is heightened, emotive angst. This is pure soap opera, which comics have always been, but from which a lot of modern superhero films retreat. It’s refreshing to see it here.

It also helps that X-Men cleverly decides to close on a low-key closing scene between Charles and Erik, allowing Stewart and McKellen to wrap a bow on the film. Part of this just two great actors, but part of this is also helpful reframing of thematic concerns. It feels “almost, but not quite” like the now-expected sequel-hook and post-credits scene, right down Erik broadly foreshadowing the raid on the school “in the middle of the night” in the next film. It’s not as precise or elegant as the modern blockbuster machine, but it is lurching strongly in that direction.

X-Men understands the future is coming, even if it’s not exactly sure what it will look like yet.