Watching X-Men with BAE, Part I: X-Men

This is an installment of Watching X-Men with BAE, a special feature where BAE and I are watching all of the X-Men movies to get ready for X-Men: Apocalypse next month. Logically, we started with the first one: Bryan Singer’s 2000 X-Men.

Do you remember anything about this movie? No. Neither did we. It was weird watching this movie because it was like watching it for the first time.

To me, the central thing going on here is that Bryan Singer et al had to glean through decades of mythology and backstory to figure out what to make into a good movie comprehensible to a mass audience. Sure, that’s true to all superhero films, but there’s more potential protagonists in X-Men than there are in other franchises. There’s a big opportunity cost to any character you choose to foreground.

Singer et al landed on Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), the most recognizable X-Man, as the main protagonist and perspective character. Going into the movie, Wolverine doesn’t know anything about the X-Men or mutants. He’s you the audience, if you the audience were some drifter with serious amnesia and knives in your hands (and if you hadn’t watched the X-Men cartoon on Fox in the ‘90s).

The choice to foreground Wolverine means the movie’s not really about any of the other X-Men. Wolverine is dealing with his issues and learning about the X-Men and being heroic and stuff. The other adult X-Men have some awesome fight scenes but lack depth other than that Cyclops (James Marsden) comes across as a dick.

Something BAE pointed out is how crazy it is that Wolverine sort of automatically trusts Professor Xavier (Patrick Stewart) once he’s taken into the world of the X-Men. All Xavier really tells Wolverine about himself is that he has had the ability to control people’s minds since he was a young person. To a reasonable person this could be a red flag that you’re dealing with someone who is maybe not trustworthy.

The villains are more interesting. Singer et al hit you on the nose with Magneto (Ian McKellan)’s motivations by opening with a holocaust scene. Beyond this, the villains are just more visually interesting and in their non-fight scene screen time they’re doing more than just standing around the X-Mansion looking at screens.

BAE and I agreed that the best character in the film is Mystique portrayed by Rebecca Romijn (fka Rebecca Romijn-Stamos), which feels like a betrayal of Jennifer Lawrence on some level. All those scenes where she’s being a naked blue ninja still hold up.

BAE’s least favorite character was Toad (Ray Park), because she was grossed out by his tongue but I actually thought his fight scene with Storm (Halle Berry) and Cyclops was visually one of the coolest parts of the movie. I like the idea of Toad as a formidable mutant combatant.

My least favorite character was Rogue (Anna Paquin). She’s used as an in your face plot device to teach you about mutant powers throughout the movie and that’s kind of annoying. She’s also kind of just an annoying Hot Topic teen. On top of that, the juxtaposition of Rogue’s fraught but normal teenage sexuality juxtaposed with Anna Paquin’s later portrayal of Sookie Stackhouse in all those very sexual episodes of True Blood made us feel gross.

All-in-all we were both pleased we rewatched this movie. It was fun.