The SmarK DVD Rant for X-Men 1.5
– As many of you reading this are likely aware by now, I’m a former comic book geek and proud of it. And, like many of my ilk, the holy grail of cinema has long been the definitive “comic book movie”, as years of waiting for a director to really grasp the art of taking the four-color page and turning it into a living world have eluded us ever since Richard Donner came closest with Superman in 1978. Others have tried, most have failed.
X-Men comes closer than most, I’ll give it that.
Bryan Singer (best known up until this movie as the director of the Usual Suspects) introduces the DVD by noting that he’s not known for putting out multiple editions of his films on DVD — which is funny because he’s had three movies, and two of them have had multiple editions. I can forgive it, because they were nice enough to put a free admission to X2 in with this badboy. Of course, the basic cynical nature of Hollywood is such that this edition of the X-Men DVD is basically an extended advertisement for the sequel (ala the “Ultimate” edition of the Mummy released as hype for Mummy Returns by Universal) but with another disc full of X-Goodness, I’m not complaining too much.
The Film
The X-Men have long been the anti-heroes of the comic world — a bunch of brooding slackers who whine about being outcasts and hated by the world at large. In short, perfect for the grunge generation. Not being the kind of guy who was filled with teen angst in my youth, I was never really into them or aware of the history of the comics until much later in my life. This is a team with a long backstory and a HUGE cast of characters, which was probably one of the reasons why adapting it into a movie was such a daunting task for the studios and why it never saw the light of day until recently. However, narrowing the focus of the main team down to 5 main players not only got the movie into theaters to the tune of $158 million in the US alone, but launched the renaissance of Marvel Comics via the silver screen and paved the way for Spider-Man to become one of the biggest movies of all-time. Not bad for a bunch of mutants.
The plot is actually surprisingly basic, focusing more on the relationship between Wolverine (Hugh Jackman before he meant anything) and Rogue (Anna Paquin), a pair of mutants in self-exile in Canada, than on the more well-known players in the comics like Cyclops and Jean Grey. The casting at the time was slightly bizarre — Sir Ian McKellan as Magneto? Who the hell is THAT? — but the three years following have shown Singer’s choices to be not only inspired, but prescient of the success that would follow for them.
The plot is the usual goofy comic-book fare — Magneto and his evil Brotherhood of Mutants have a machine that can transform normal humans into super-powered mutants. Mayhem will result unless Charles Xavier’s team of misfits can band together and stop him. Things blow up. The end.
Thin plot aside, this is actually a movie with a message about tolerance and loneliness. I can dig it. What that message IS, is never really clarified because the movie is only 90 minutes long and much of it is spent, as mentioned, blowing stuff up. And much like Chris Claremont’s original comics, the Sledgehammer of Angst is occasionally employed to drive home that Rogue is having a really rough time coping with being different. What you end up with is a movie trying to balance a morality tale with an action movie, and the twain doesn’t always meet. Sometimes you just want to see Wolverine kicking ass without being told about how he cries himself to sleep at night or whatever. I can appreciate the effort to say something different, however, even if the attempt is flawed.
However, the movie itself has some REALLY big faults that prevent it from reaching greatness (and which X2 will hopefully fix). First, as mentioned, is the length. Budget concerns and an unsure market left this one trimmed down to a brisk 90 minutes, which left the finished product lacking in a few areas. There’s not enough backstory on certain characters (Wolverine just CRIES out for more, for instance, as does Xavier), and other characters are barely given enough time to introduce their powers, let alone make them into likeable people. Cyclops and Storm fit into that category. Next, and this is a big one, there’s no kickass fight scene between the X-Men and the Brotherhood. There’s no real sense of the X-Men acting as a team and utilizing 20 million dollars worth of CGI to show it. If I go see a summer superhero blockbuster, I wanna see 12 people on the screen shooting power beams at each other and doing wire fighting, dammit! Finally, the audience this is aimed at was DYING to see Wolverine cut loose and fight 15 guys at once and WIN. He spends far too much of this movie getting his ass kicked and being in compromised positions. The surface of the action hero potential of Hugh Jackman was scratched in his climactic fight with Sabretooth on the Statue of Liberty, but this is the kind of character you could write Die Hard 4, 5 and 6 with and make millions if handled right. Again, I’ve heard that X2 addresses that BIGTIME, so good for Singer if so. And of course there’s no definitive one-liner for the trailers — Storm’s pathetic attempt at one aside.
That’s the faults, but the good far outweighs it. First of all, the CGI in this movie is awesome and is so well integrated that Singer is able to create a superhero world without making it feel computer-generated. The story, while simple, is a solid one, and Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan (as Professor X and Magneto) proceed to treat their essentially goofy roles as Shakespearean drama, thus giving the movie a darkness and gravity it wouldn’t have with just about anyone else in the primary roles. When Patrick Stewart says that humanity is in trouble, you BELIEVE it. Plus basing the movie in a superhero school ensures that characters need not get stale — if 4 or 5 sequels have burned out Wolverine, there’s hundreds of new kids to take his place. Finally, and I can’t stress this enough, Famke Janssen and Rebecca Romjin-Stamos are both REALLY hot and spend much of the movie in either leather suits or naked and covered in blue paint.
Most of the comic book fanbase has already seen it so there’s not much need for a recommendation there, but even for casual viewers it’s got a lot to offer just as a 90 minute diversion with a nice little message about how you should be nice to mutants wrapped up inside.
The Video
This is basically the same transfer as the original DVD, which is fine. There’s tons of blacks and reds (in the costumes and Cyclops’ eyes respectively), normally the kiss of death for a DVD, but they hold up well without pixilation or compression artifacts. Contrast is great, colors are a bit muted but that’s intentional, and there’s no dirt or scratches on the negative that I can see. It’s not quite reference quality, but it’s close.
The Audio
Bit of a change from the original, as the Dolby 5.1 soundtrack has been augmented by a BOOMING DTS track, which was something I was looking for in the first place. If you need a reason to buy this over the first release, there you go. The sound mix is really effective, boasting strong action scenes and bass all over the place. Basically everything you’d want in a superhero movie soundtrack.
The Extras
Biggest change from the first release comes here, with an entire second disc added as well as a commentary track.
The commentary is with Bryan Singer and another guy named Brian, whose role is never defined, acting as moderator. It’s a fun track where Singer addresses both the good and the bad of making the movie, and even gets fed an actual punchline to the infamous Toad v. Storm one-liner that bombed so badly.
The movie itself offers branching (just like the original DVD) where you can view deleted scenes and featurettes as you go along. The deleted scenes are the same thing from the first DVD, the featurettes are new (although standard EPK junk). They’re not viewable separately, for some reason.
Over on the second disc is where the meat of the extras lies. It’s essentially composed of four BIG documentaries and the usual bevy of production stuff. You get:
– The Uncanny Suspects. A 20-minute or so feature about the actors and crew of the movie, which allows everyone to talk about the characters and how their roles came together. Really cool stuff, especially when the subject of casting Hugh Jackman so late into production came up.
– X-Factor. Another 20 minutes, this time covering the costumes and Singer’s anal attention to details like the reflective surfaces of Cyclops’ visor.
– Special Effects. Running about 10 minutes, this covers the multitude of CGI used and offers a neat look at the animatics (rendered in the computer, of course) that the movie was based on.
– Production Diary. Oddly enough, this one isn’t even listed on the back of the box, which is odd because it’s an HOUR long, sprawling catch-all behind-the-scenes feature ala Phantom Menace. It’s by far the most purely interesting of the features, offering all sorts of cool candid moments.
– Reflection of the X-Men. A look back by the actors and crew and look forward to the sequel.
All this stuff is ALSO branching, with pop-up featurettes and bits of behind-the-scenes goodness that you can select at the appropriate time. And, the best part is that you can either view the documentaries one-by-one, or Play All and view the whole thing as one big three-hour extravaganza. I always appreciate that choice.
But wait, there’s more!
You also get the now-standard multi-angle scene deconstructions (still not as good as Speed’s, but good), production galleries (as though anyone ever views them), 3 trailers, 9 TV spots (most of which are the same) and 12 mini-featurettes produced for the website, like with the first release of Fellowship of the Ring. Quite the second disc there.
So is worth dropping another 20 beans on this release? Do you have a DTS receiver? Then yes. Want another 3 hours of documentaries? Then yes. Otherwise, if you’re just a movie-only kind of guy, then no, because the original release featured an already-awesome video transfer and kickass Dolby 5.1 mix. However, look at it from a financial standpoint — this one includes a $12 coupon for X2 (or Daredevil), so really you’re only spending $8 on it, and you can always sucker someone else into buying your old copy for that much.
So basically, yes for fans, no for those who already have the original and don’t plan to watch it another 15 times like I do.
The Ratings:
The Film: ****
The Video: ****1/2
The Audio: *****
The Extras: *****
