Xmen Movie

Xmen movie

I am critiquing the movie “X-men”. This movie is based on a comic book and on an animated series. Both the animated series and the comic book revolve around mutants. These mutants often look human, however many look quite different than any normal human and also their powers are quite extraordinary. This creates one problem when converting to movie form. Make-up gadgets and special effects must be used so that our reality where the film is made may accurately reflect the reality where the film is set. Also, the characters from the animated series and the comic books all have personalities and physical features that the actors in the film must try to match. This is a difficult thing to do. Not only must the actors physically look like the character concept but they must also be able to play the correct personality. The movie also must keep in context with the animated series and the books. The sources both share a timeline and general background knowledge and stories that the movie must conform with. When you add this onto the feat of making a movie that is aesthetically and engaging for audiences you have a very tall order. For the most part however, the movie was successful in many of these areas.

The special effects were well done in this movie. Storm’s power over the elements is well displayed. I believe that it is one of the high points in the movie when we get to see storm use her powers. Cyclops’s eye beam was also well done special effect wise. However the head gear that they used, while close enough to the original, was very bulky. This hindered the actors acting capability. Actors do a lot of acting with their faces and facial features. Entire messages are sent with the eyes. This did create some problems for Cyclops in the movie. The headgear, while it was aesthetically pleasing, should have been reduced somewhat in size in order to better see the actor’s features. Rouge’s powers are well displayed as well. At this point in the timeline she has not yet gained her super strength or power of flight. So that is one less problem. She still however has the power of pulling other mutant’s powers from them. This tends to be a case of simply overlaying the special effects onto her from the original. However the only power that she really takes advantage of is wolverine’s healing. The special effects on this part seemed realist...

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...e well. The casting was quite difficult also due to the fact that the sources portray the X-men as being larger than life. For instance the average human is six heads tall while the average X-men is eight. However the X-men did tend to dominate over the few humans they encountered, making up for the loss in dynamisms.

Most of the movie kept in context with the sources. The back-stories of the characters that were explored were mostly in sync with the sources. The only area where this was truly lacking was an obvious marketing attempt. The younger X-men that were at the academy at this point in time actually should have been long gone at this point. Both Kitty Pryde and Iceman for example were X-men long before Wolverine or Rouge. However as it is portrayed, there is even so much as a teenage romance blossoming between Rouge and Iceman. This was obviously done for marketing purposes in wanting to include as many X-men in the movie as possible. However, if they decide to make a sequel they will have to address this problem or diverge further and further from the time line of the original source material. All in all I liked the movie though and I thought it was rather good.