You’ve got to love the classics, even when they may be somewhat goofy by today’s standards. I was recently rewatching the original two X-Men movies, and I will always stand by that they are some of the best superhero movies around, even if they are a little goofy.
What else can I possibly say about such classic superhero movies other than that they are great in their own goofy, heroic way?
Okay, with the boom of Disney’s MCU, the fantastic Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy of the late 2000’s (and early 2010’s), and the infamous trainwreck that is the DCEU in the last twenty years of cinema and pop culture, I feel like the OG X-Men movies have wrongfully been forgotten about.
Sure, the X-Men as a brand have not been completely forgotten by Hollywood or the general audience as the James McAvoy-Michael Fassbender reboot in the mid 2010’s and James Mangolds’ The Wolverine and Logan films were released to general success, but most of these movies (not including the Mangold ones) lack what made the original two great: heart and naive creativity.
I’m not saying that I dislike X-Men: First Class or X-Men: Days of Future Past (these are some of my favorite superhero movies), but I am saying that they are products of their time. These movies were released when a “formula” for creating a blocker buster superhero film was already perfected by Disney, making it much easier for 20th Century Fox to replicate what worked and what didn’t with audiences.
The original two X-Men films didn’t have that luxury…which is why I like them so much.
(20th Century Fox-X2-Mystique)
Not only had the CGI and special effects practically mandatory in today’s superhero movies yet to be invented, but the very tone/structure of what made these movies work did not exist either.
The only “superhero movies” that existed at the time were the classic, outdated 80’s Superman movies, the Michael Keaton Batman films, which were much darker in tone than the X-Men comics, and the Joel Schumacher Batman movies, which were far stranger and comedic than the X-Men comics, forcing director Bryan Singer and his cast and crew to have to create a new genre of superhero movies themselves.
And I’d say they did a fantastic job.
Things like Wolverine’s claws, Jean Gray’s transformation into The Dark Phoenix (which mainly happened in X-Man: Last Stand), Storm’s lightning powers, Iceman’s frost powers, Rogue’s power-sucking abilities, Magneto’s metallic pull, Mystique’s shapeshifting, and Charles Xavier’s telepathy all had to be created from scratch, while events like The Battle of New York and the showdown in William Stryker’s bunker used state of the art CGI at the time to set the modern-day trend.
The CGI Disney used (and still uses) was fantastic and revolutionary, though a lot of it had the luxury of using past examples, such as the X-Men and Star Wars Prequel movies, for inspiration.
Plus, they not only captured the essences and powers of the main characters, such as Wolverine, Professor X, Mystique, Magneto, Jean Gray, etc., but they also masterfully presented the fundamental theme of the X-Men: outsiders being shunned from society due to an inborn genetic/heritage.
(20th Century Fox-X2-Charles Xavier)
That kind of realistic, human struggle is seriously missing from the mainstream Marvel superheroes of today, and most of the DC characters that have similar struggles have been either misused or ill-adapted. Like I said, the CGI of the OG movies is really outdated and some of the dialogue is corny, but that shouldn’t detract from the fact that these characters are some of the best Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and the rest of the original Marvel comic book writers ever created.
So, in the end, I guess this article was more of a love-letter to the OG X-Men movies than anything else.
Images Source: Featured Image: (20th Century Fox) (X-Men)
In Text Image 1: (20th Century Fox) (X2)
In Text Image 2: (20th Century Fox) (X2)
