X-Men

A film set in a world where mutants exist. A bill is being debated. It would require mutants to be registered, and there is a senator arguing for it. Rogue takes the power and the life of whoever she touches. She runs away from home and meets Logan at a truck stop in the north. The two are taken to a school. Xavier's school looks like an ordinary boarding school from outside and trains mutant children. Magneto is on the other side. He survived a concentration camp and does not believe coexistence is possible. From there the film becomes a plan. A museum, a railway station, a Statue of Liberty and a machine. What the narrative is interested in is not power but minorities: the film builds being a mutant as a question of identity outright, and the argument about registration leans openly on real history. The relationship between Xavier and Magneto is its best feature. The two are friends and each is right in his own terms. Logan carries the film. He does not remember his past and belongs to nobody. The costumes are black leather. The coloured outfits of the comics were deliberately dropped and the film makes a joke about it in one line. The part of Logan changed shortly before shooting. The first actor could not get free of another production and it went to a then little-known performer. The production was made on a modest budget for its time, and its success started the wave of superhero films of the next twenty years. Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Famke Janssen, Halle Berry, Anna Paquin and James Marsden are in the cast. Bryan Singer directed. Who it is for: anyone who wants to see where the genre started. Who it is not for: anyone expecting scale; the film is short, plain and its effects are modest by today's measure.