X-Men (Rental)

As we were closing out the old millennium, today's generation of hip young 5 second attention span movie-goers needed a comic book adaptation that would serve as their benchmark for all superhero movies to come. From the studio's perspective, perhaps they just needed to prove to the public that it could be done at all, when you consider all the rumours of upcoming comic-to-film transfers that have floated around over the years, many of which are doomed never to see the light of day.

In this variant of the X-Men story, the focus is placed upon the arrival of Wolverine and Rogue to Professor Xavier's little academy for mutant humans. With mutants being lobbied against by politicians fearful of their powers, the bad mutants, headed up by oldie magnethead Magneto, prepare to go to war with the humans and hopefully take over the world while they’re at it. Meanwhile, Magneto’s old friend Captain Picard, sorry, I mean Professor Xavier, is a kind old slaphead and believes in the forces of good not evil, light not dark and black leather not spandex. Mustering up his team of goody mutants he secretly goes to work defending mankind from Magneto’s bunch, which is a really nice thing to do because most humans would like to see good mutants dead too. See, I told you he was a nice guy.

While watching this dvd, I had to ask myself whether films such as X-Men would have been made if it weren't for the likes of The Matrix. The style, technology, content and sheer audacity didn't just come out of nowhere. Then again, if you really want to think a bit harder (go on, try) and you were born more than three years ago, would The Matrix have been made if it weren't for the likes of Batman in 1989 and Superman in 1978? These films had to serve their long apprenticeship in order for modern studio heads to feel comfortable in sinking multi-multi-millions into what was previously just a very popular comic book series (okay…VERY VERY VERYYYYYY popular). Then again, I guess with some of the woeful mainstream stuff out there, you'd swear they would finance a bigscreen adaptation of a botched vasectomy (oooouch!!) if desperate for a hit so this sort of film makes a welcome appearance.

I think that Bryan Singer realised that he had to find a happy medium between blatant messages of racial tolerance and outright simplistic comic book slap-bang action. The economical script with its slim 100 minutes run time finds that middle ground and works. That X-Men as a film succeeded as much as it did is quite a feat. That it did this under the watchful and ever-critical gaze of X-Men fanatics is even more amazing. When you consider the vocal minority out there that can get wind of a bad film before 99% of the general public has seen it, then disseminate their scathing reviews on the internet (where it seems everyone is an expert) effectively damning a lot of hard work to box office hell, then the fact that X-Men has managed not to offend and alienate the core of it's followers and actually make enough money to guarantee a sequel (or two or three) is a fair achievement. While this film isn’t a perfectly straight telling of the X-Men story, I think it's pretty safe to assume that it fits this requirements of its target cinema goers and dvd watchers quite sufficiently and will be followed up and much imitated in the years to come.

Mmmm…eyecandy. If ever a film needed a really good transfer to showcase the many visual effects and moody locations, then this would be it. But I have to say that it shows restraint, which lifts it from the typical action film fodder. Thankfully, all the effort hasn’t just been put into the critical effects/action scenes, then unceremoniously falling back into mediocrity for the elemental stuff. Throughout the running time you find that the transfer presents the varying palettes to their best, with a nice realistic saturation that helps the film look more natural, rather than falling into the clichéd temptation of hyper-realistic, garish colours that have a tendency to make things look like a video game. The first two chapters pretty much run the entire gamut of all the palette starting with a colourfully dynamic CG opening, moving into an oppressive cold blue/grey section (the opening shot of feet trodding through mud is sooo clear) establishing Magneto’s character then on to a warm yellow section introducing Rogue. Certainly many areas remind me of the restraint shown in Tim Burton’s Batman, but with more slightly more colour injected for contrast. A good example of this is shown in the many scenes under Prof. Xavier’s school, where many -if not all- of the surfaces are cold blue/grey metals. When a character is shown against these background surfaces, the warmer colours of their skin really enhances the separation and focal attention. And more interestingly, I think it enhances the resemblance to comic book inking.

To cap it all off, the source print is amazingly clean with hardly a distraction to tear your eyes from the action. The image also has a very good level of detail which shows the various settings and elements to their best as well. Look at the close-up of Patrick Stewarts face in the later half and you revel in the texture of his skin, while you could practically count the individual hairs in Wolverines stubble at times.

Happily, I feel that the restraint and quality shown in the look of the visuals has also been applied to the audio. While I was expecting a CRASHH BANG FFZZZEEERTTT WHOOSHHH type of highly active and loud audio experience, what I got was more of a smart action film where the sounds weren’t too densely layered, keeping everything clear and nicely delineated. So what tends to happen is you’ll be watching the story unfold until it gets to a sound effects bit, where the relevant main effect will kick in nice and clear throughout the discrete channels without too many support effects muddying things up and taking the whole thing completely over the top. The end result of this is a pleasing dynamic soundtrack with clear, natural sounding dialogue. I think some might find it a little “clinical� and lacking at times, but I believe it could highlight the over exaggerated nature of many other action films.

Well, it would appear that in a fit of rage Magneto and his little band of naughty Muties have stripped this dvd of its extra features and stashed them in their secret hiding place to await the proper retail re-release of this title, thinking that us mere mortal wouldn’t miss them. Alas, all we are left with is a bare bones release with only the movie and chapter selections. Curses…foiled again!

Forget about any prejudices against this being just a rental release, and head on down to your local video store to grab a copy. I know that extras are great fun and can be informative but the film is the main thing. On the basis of the film alone, this has won me over, and I don‘t mind saying that I was extremely sceptical at first whether Bryan Singer could pull it off. But he has, and I for one look forward to the next instalment in the series, as long as Singer stays in the chair.