It's great because we can all identify with superpowers

By Amy Diaz
X-Men (PG-13)

Slam! Bang! Pow!

The Marvel Comics legend comes to life in the movie X-Men, a live action version of the cartoon/comic book/superhero franchise.

I have to say up front that I didn’t come to this movie as a long time fan of the X-Men. Though it is exactly the sort of superhero fantasy world I love, I never got into the X-Men world.

Until now.

I can't tell you how faithful this movie is to the series or the mythology of the X-Men universe. (And those things are important. As an X-phile and a hard-core Buffy fan, I understand the need for adherence to a mythology.) What I can tell you is that as a first time watcher, I was completely entertained.

The movie centers primarily around Logan a.k.a. Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), how he comes to meet Rogue (Anna Paquin) and how they find Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and his X-Men. The X-Men are humans with mutations that give them abilities such as mind reading, shape shifting or zapping things with eye beams. In the case of Wolverine, he has heightened smell, a skeleton structure re-enforced with metal and claw-like knives that shoot out from his knuckles when he gets angry. His non-superpowers include a crazy cool hairdo, a killer leather jacket and a rebel-with-a-heart attitude that has been sucking geeky females into cartoon universes since forever. Along with Storm (Halle Berry), Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) and Cyclops (James Marsden), Wolverine and Rouge - teenage girl who can unintentionally kill with a touch - are part of the group of good guy mutants.

Magneto (Ian McKellen, who plays the Big Evil like no one else) and his minions - Mystique (a latexed Rebecca Romijn-Stamos), Saber Tooth (Tyler Mane) and Toad (Ray Park, who is better known as Darth Maul) - are the bad guys. Magneto and Professor X have a few verbal sparring sessions and an evil plot to take over the world ensues.

X-Men is great because it deals with outcast youngsters (who doesn't identify there?) and how they use their deformities/super powers to save those who despise them. Like all really engaging cartoons and comics, the characters have back stories and hidden motivations for their actions. I would compare this mythology to Batman. X-Men ventures into similar territory about how people deal with injustice. Professor X tries to educate a populace that fears him while Magneto has given up on humanity and wants dominance and vengeance. Batman wrestles with equally dark parts of the human soul - fear, guilt and the need for vengeance. Both comics explore morality and justice with such panache that the messages don't weigh down the action and the plot. Non-cartoon stories should be so lucky.

X-Men has not received the 11-on-the-hype-o-meter treatment that has doomed many other comic book movie adaptations. (Though with excellent special effects and some damn fine campy acting, it would deserve the hype.) To use the Batman comparison again, X-Men is similar to the recent, wonderfully dark television cartoons of Batman and nowhere near the fiasco of the many post-Burton live action Batmans.

This movie hooks you in like good episodic television and, just like a standout episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or a Star Trek the Next Generation season finale, leaves you wanting more. X-Men screams for a sequel and I, for once, eagerly await it.