The Movies That Moved Me: Bryan Singer’s X-MEN
Pardon me while I saunter back to a time of gleeful, youthful innocence and escapism when all I cared about was music, my main squeeze at the time, and movies.
Honestly though, by the time Bryan Singer’s X-Men came out I was as single as a pringle out of the container, but that’s neither here nor there… More importantly though was its arrival at a time when Blade and The Matrix were leveling up on Hollywood spectacle to the benefit of superhero adaptations, culminated further with the involvement of stunt teams transplanted from Hong Kong with studios courting the likes of Corey Yuen, the man behind the action.
I remember seeing the characters for the first time on a magazine cover back in the late 90s. I forget which one though, but all the heroes in their costumed portrayals donning black tactical suits with small differences to make them distinct for their derivative deviations from the more colorful “comic book look”. It was…interesting, perhaps as much as seeing what Hugh Jackman looked like as Logan, and how his hair would be tailored for his character, particularly for an actor no one had ever heard of.
To say the least, it worked, which is why X-Men was such a big, big film for me and many others at the time. Indeed, I was a fan of the comic lore and even more of the animated series on Fox Kids. I was sold on the hopes that Singer would do fans proud on bringing some of these characters to life, and boy oh boy, did he? That he got to bring Jackman on board for the pivotal role of Wolverine is also something of a miracle, and the story behind it is as epic as you might imagine. You can read more about it here in a lengthy Facebook post written last year by Matty Granger, who worked as a videographer on the production at the time.
Honestly, that Jackman got to herald the iconic superhero for as long and as many times as he notably has is a feat certainly worth the praise. It was a performance that hailed a new era of superhero movie fandom that carries on to this day, in a film that that serves plenty of memorable moments that contributed to the film fan I am today, including the one below courtesy of Movieclips.
Honestly, I’m of the opinion that we’re long overdue for a Wolverine-vs-Sabertooth fight scene that tops this one, and I personally wanna see Marvel’s future films iteration pit the adamantium-clawed hero against Omega Red for a change. In the meantime, and as Hollywood forges on with a new crop of creative and prospective (and safe) directors to bring the next phase of Marvel’s cinematic future to big screen fruition, I’ll take this one with me as a classic fave.
Lead image cropped from IMPAwards
