X-Men (2000) - Does It Hold Up?
Welcome to the classic hold up, where we analyze media from the past. Each episode features a different host that brings a fresh take on a film, TV show, video game, or music album of their choice. Do old favorites have a shelf life? Will the classics hold up?
Speaker 2:Hello. Welcome to another episode of the classic hold up. I am your host today. My name is Bee Barnes. I am a storytelling major with a concentration in animation.
Speaker 2:As a digital storytelling major, I have a very deep love for media. My personal preference usually is animated media. Some of my favorite things that have ever been released in general, happen to be Arcane and the Spider Verse movies. But I also have a deep love somewhere in my little soul for superhero movies. Just a little bit.
Speaker 2:Maybe not really the MCU, but it's okay because we're not talking about that today. What we are talking about today is the original X Men movie that released in 2000. While X Men was not the first superhero movie, there was not too much of a market towards those movies at the time. The only notable Marvel release being Blade 1998, two years prior. It was considered revolutionary as a superhero comeback and is often credited as a spark for Marvel and other studios to create blockbuster superhero movies.
Speaker 2:The X Men movie was adaptation and I wish it was simple enough to say it was just an adaptation of something called X Men. But by God, no. It was probably the millionth thing made. The original comic was written by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and it was simply about a little band of superheroes and their struggles of being found monstrous. Monstrous.
Speaker 2:But that comic line only lasted from 1963 to 1969. Several writers and authors in additions later, had things like X Factor, Excalibur, The New Mutants. Yeah. And a whole new thing that was labeled X Men just again, which isn't confusing at all. For the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which had not existed at the time of this movie but did affect the future X Men movies, they decided to focus on specific comic releases and turn it into one continuous timeline.
Speaker 2:From there, we can infer that X Men 2,000 was adapted from a couple different of the Inline series but featured the original cast from the first comic. The X Men movie follows a world where genetic mutation can cause human super beings and a conflict between non mutants and mutated people. Mutants are commonly seen as dangerous monsters with capabilities that needed to be documented and controlled while mutants themselves wanted to defend the society and live normal lives. The main cast consists of Wolverine, played by Hugh Jackman, Rogue, played by Anna Pakeen, Professor X played by Patrick Stewart, Magneto played by Ian McKellen, Cyclops played by James Marshton, Doctor Jean Grey played by Famke Janssen, Storm played by Halle Berry, Mystique played by Rebecca Romaine, and Senator Robert Kelly played by Bruce Davidson. Even for the time, the cast was considered star studded, creating the household name of Hugh Jackman as Wolverine.
Speaker 2:The movie itself was quite an easy watch for me, with the made for theaters introduction explaining evolution down to the eerie and futuristic sound design. While exploring themes of discrimination, justice, and bigotry is not exactly uncommon in media, X Men's approach was both realistic and fantastical as could be. Mutants were similarly humans facing the aspects of genetic evolution. They were not aliens or monsters, which was noted by original comic author Jack Kirby to be by design. Another aspect that I think sets X Men's themes apart from other media was the absence of a true villain.
Speaker 2:Magneto, serving as the antagonist in the movie, serves as a perfect foil against Professor X in his X Men, but even so, it does not leave him completely unempathetic. Magneto's intentions in the movie are out of place of fear, not insanity or chaos. Professor X holds a belief that people are good by nature and thus deserve to be protected. Their fight for equal rights must remain civil. They can prove themselves good by simply being good, and that is all they must do.
Speaker 2:Magneto, on the other hand, perceives threat, and he is not necessarily wrong for thinking that way. Bills have forced mutants to reveal their identities, experimental labs, separated IDs. He believed that a true war is coming and that he must protect himself and his fellow mutants, for they are the future. Having an antihero in this situation, bullied between the concepts of good and evil, whether to earn respect or to demand it, sells a form of centrism that is solely told through the eyes of the victims, the mutants. This transcends being a story about just mutants versus non mutants and superheroes and powers and stuff like that, but a conflict between philosophies.
Speaker 2:I remember growing up that my dad really liked sci fi, fantasy, and especially superhero action movies. Probably one of my favorite memories is when he brought home Green Lantern and slept over in the chair in defeat from how bad it was. X Men, on the other hand, I found that I didn't remember it quite as well in adulthood. Sure. I knew that Fantastic Four and X Men were his favorites, but the only thing I could really gather from my brain vault was that he said Wolverine a lot.
Speaker 2:In tandem to that, I had tried to get into the MCU a little bit in high school when Infinity War came out. The hype was absolutely insane and I did like the movie, but I just wasn't hooked on getting to know any of the characters. So I figured I'd take a little note from my nerd dad and make an X Men movie tier list. How good could these movies be as someone with little to no nostalgia factor and no experience with comics? Well, to my surprise, they could be pretty good.
Speaker 2:Even the bad ones, I liked pretty heavily. I guess the guy has taste, he still can't make me watch Star Wars. But the question of good or bad, unfortunately, is irrelevant here. Today, we beg the question, did it hold up? Today, I am joined by Carter Kent.
Speaker 2:Would you like to introduce yourself and your personal experience with movies in general?
Speaker 3:I suppose. My name is Carter. I actually don't have a whole lot of experience with movies. I'm not, like, a movie person per se. I also don't really have any experience with X Men.
Speaker 3:I really kinda went in blind. The only experience I really have with Marvel is probably Venom.
Speaker 2:Oh, Venom is one that I still haven't seen.
Speaker 3:I'm so Okay.
Speaker 2:Well, I guess I'm gonna. It won't be completely against my will, I guess. I suppose. I suppose. Now, I know you haven't had any experience with X Men, but I did hear that you did watch Logan.
Speaker 3:I did. I don't remember anything about it, to be quite honest. I just remember Wolverine and him in the woods, like, shirtless. But I also could just be tweaking.
Speaker 2:Okay. Well, you know what? That's fair because I think that's the only thing I also remember about Logan. So I guess that would make sense. Alright.
Speaker 2:So I wanna talk about how it was, like, looked on on release in the past. So I looked into some really old online forums, and I wanted to see how much money it made and also convert it to today's money. This movie is only twenty five years old, by the way, and money does not work the same way it used to. Again, that's a topic for a different day. I just wanna say, as it being credited for being an inspiration for the MCU, you bet your butt it made money.
Speaker 2:On opening weekend in The US, it amassed $54,400,000, and it had a worldwide box office gross of 296,000,000. Now if we convert that to today's money, that means that on its opening weekend, it made a $102,200,000.
Speaker 3:In The US, specifically.
Speaker 2:In The US only. But for the worldwide box office, that's $539,450,000.
Speaker 3:That is crazy. Anyways, you looked at your online forums.
Speaker 2:Reddit. Well, yes. But also, I looked at the
Speaker 3:I also did look at Reddit. I can't hate you.
Speaker 2:I mean, I looked at the original IMDb as well.
Speaker 3:Okay. I respect that.
Speaker 2:I mean, genuinely, that actually had critics on it, like, from the release day. I was like, oh my god. I know. I went all the way back. But here's a really funny part about going all the way back on IMDb because, I mean, as far as I could understand, like, this movie was really, really big and it was super popular.
Speaker 2:There were two things I noticed. The first thing was that, the movie was like had medium reception, which I thought it was gonna be like, this is the best thing ever. But no, even at the time, people were making fun of the CGI which is insane to me because I thought for 2 thousand, was like, this is certainly the best that they got. Yeah. People did keep bringing up the matrix.
Speaker 3:Yeah. They did compare it. I did see that. The CGI is kinda funny.
Speaker 2:It is pretty funny.
Speaker 3:Hugh Jackman cut cut to Hugh Jackman flying out of the windshield.
Speaker 2:Yeah. No. The I I mean, the CGI was obviously bad, but I just didn't I honestly love that in the 2,000, people, like, wouldn't have noticed. Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 3:No. They noticed.
Speaker 2:No. They noticed. So that's really funny. I also noticed that, like, the media that they compare it to, like, when the Batman dropped, everybody was like, and the Dark Knight rises and the Dark Knight rises. In those, like, reviews or whatever, they brought up the Matrix a couple of times when they were talking about the CGI and then, like, nothing else because they didn't have any other superhero movies to compare it to.
Speaker 2:And I thought that was really interesting. But even though they didn't have the comparison, they still thought it was mid.
Speaker 3:Still made 501 half million dollars, though. So
Speaker 2:Yes. Well, that's the other part. That was weird. Right? So the reception generally was mid.
Speaker 2:The reviews were mid, but the actual, like, movie was huge. Huge. Huge. Yeah. They had whole websites dedicated to it.
Speaker 2:Halle Berry at the time was considered b list, which I didn't know, a b list actress. And then Hugh Jackman, that was, like, the thing that made him a household name. So even if the reception was medium, like, the people who liked it really liked it. Honestly, the reason why I was so surprised that people were still talking about, you know, the CGI and stuff even back then though, I laugh every time Hugh Jackman gets shout like, shot out of that truck and just slides across the ground for eight feet.
Speaker 3:No. It's good.
Speaker 2:It's good. It's some good stuff. Why did he slide for so long? That's one question I have. Why?
Speaker 3:I do like the thought that they watched that back and was like, yeah, that's good.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's know. So I guess it was not as acceptable as I thought. But X Men is considered the pioneer for the superhero genre and is often praised for what it did to kick start the industry. So looking in current online forums for how people, like, think about it nowadays, I'd always heard about the nostalgia factor.
Speaker 2:And a lot of people are still coming back to it twenty five years later, even the people who thought it was mid. So what about that? X Men, like, kinda launched off. Like I said, it was a really big movie, and they ended up making a series with a total of 13 movies. The last one was released in 2020, I believe.
Speaker 2:In addition to movie, however, a highly praised video game came out. It was called Marvel Rivals. It's so acclaimed I actually tried it. How was it? Susan Storm.
Speaker 2:That's my girl. That's my girl right there. It was okay, but it was very toxic because it's still Overwatch but with prettier characters. Fair. Fair.
Speaker 2:But they did have the X Men rebooted into that, like, video game as well. So I'm kinda hoping they'll make a fourteenth movie, perchance. Perchance. Perchance.
Speaker 3:Only one way to find out. Make the movie yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So true. I'll I'll go ahead and do that. My CGI will be worse. But, yeah, I know.
Speaker 2:I spent a bunch of time, like, flacking on the the CGI because it apparently didn't age well when it came out either. But when think about how, like, it might be in the future, I think it's just gonna that's just gonna be generationally bad. However, it wasn't uncanny valley type worse. I don't know if that's for better or for worse because, I mean, if we're talking about our girl, Twilight, like, the fake baby in Twilight was iconic, and so I'm not sure that it's gonna get the status of being iconic, but at least it's not offensive. There's only really two, like, really bad scenes of it.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:I feel like if I was Uncanny Valley, that would have probably like, it wouldn't have done as good if it was, like, an Uncanny Valley CGI.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I agree. Another thing that I think that people are starting to talk about a little bit or kind of a lot of it is the, like, concept of how women writing has been historically. I think right now, people are generally happy with X Men, but I did see a couple complaints about Jean Grey and Storm. So the only other thing I might have a worry about with it holding up to the future is it just not being age proof, which almost no movies are age proof.
Speaker 2:X Men, I still find completely rewatchable, but there are a couple movies that came out in, like, the nineties and February that I just can't I can't touch it.
Speaker 3:You know? It's just an uncomfortable experience to sit through.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Really. So this one personally made it through for me. It did have sexist writing, but it wasn't as egregious or as bad. At least they all stay clothed the entire time.
Speaker 3:Thank you
Speaker 2:so much. And the old dude did not get away get, like, get with the high school dropout. That's all I asked. Okay? He didn't and that's fantastic.
Speaker 2:But I'm just not sure how future proofed the concept of that type of story is or the visuals of it.
Speaker 3:That's fair. I feel like something like that movie specifically would probably hold up just because, like you said, it's not as bad as like other movies that were released in like two thousands that do, like because of how sexist the writing is. It's uncomfortable to sit through because it wasn't, like, necessarily uncomfortable to sit through. Was just like, that's interesting, like, throughout the movie.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I agree. Also, I mean, I'll be super honest. I expected much worse out of it Mhmm. Considering Mystique's costume is body paint.
Speaker 2:That was also a really big thing that was talked about a whole bunch. I was surprised a lot of the early reviews were kinda just talking about, like, oh, who's this Hugh Jackman man? Oh, he's Australian. That's cool. I like him.
Speaker 2:But I remember kind of I wasn't alive when it came out, but I remember when I was young and I think x three or something was gonna come out. My dad was talking about it. And the one thing I do kinda remember him talking about was Mystique a bit. That was, yeah, that was kinda weird to me, but I was a wee baby.
Speaker 3:Mhmm. I feel like in a way it does. As unfortunate as it is, it is kind of like an iconic character design. Like, I've always known the X Men name, but I never really watched any of the X Men movies or anything. But I've always known Mystique.
Speaker 3:I mean, part of it was her power, but also the fact that she doesn't really wear clothes.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That is very true.
Speaker 3:Hot sexy woman superhero. No need clothes.
Speaker 2:No need clothes.
Speaker 3:Except she's not a superhero.
Speaker 2:She's a
Speaker 3:anti villain or antihero. Yeah. That's what it is.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think definitely more along the lines of an antihero.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:The villain in that movie seems more, like, kind of humans, but they also weren't shown in the worst light. Like, even senator Kelly got
Speaker 3:A redemption.
Speaker 2:Yeah. He got a bit of a redemption, especially when he heard Storm say that she was scared of people. He was like, dang.
Speaker 3:Yeah. That is one thing that I did really enjoy about the movie is that nobody like, you can argue that certain characters are bad or good, but you can kind of do that with most of the characters, and so in a way that they're all kind of antiheroes. At least in that movie specifically, some of them, you can't really argue, like, antihero, and it falls more into the hero category. But most of the characters aren't, like, bad. They're just antiheroes where they're, like, really in the middle.
Speaker 2:Right. Yeah. That was something I really liked about it too. The the concept of good bad and the fight between philosophies, but neither the philosophies were they made a a middle ground. They made, like, a gray area, but I feel like their writing towards a gray area was actually pretty strong.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. You didn't feel very passionately about, like, Magneto is wrong, and he deserves to die.
Speaker 3:Like Yeah.
Speaker 2:Or that anyone really was super villainous because they didn't put a lot of focus on the humans Mhmm. Which I guess isn't surprising for the mutant movie. So they didn't really have, like, a bunch of people showing support or a bunch of people showing that they were against mutants, but that kind of just let their arguments be stronger as they were focused on the main characters.
Speaker 3:Mhmm. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:I also noticed the X Men really likes to play with historical events. Events.
Speaker 3:Yeah. They did.
Speaker 2:Yeah. They did. And they still do, if I remember correctly. So I'm not sure how that's gonna age at all, to be honest.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Because Magito's storyline literally involves the Holocaust.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:He is Polish.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And I know that that was a big inspiration for why he has the philosophy that he does, which actually tackled that a lot with their whole, like, good versus evil bigotry discrimination thing. Like, antisemitism is supposed to be a huge section of it. Mhmm. That's talked about in the movies. You know, while that's good and all, I'm not sure how well it's gonna hold up to time, all these superheroes, like, being a part of, like, real historic events.
Speaker 2:Honestly, I kinda feel like the closer you are to the event, the more people will care, and nobody cared when that movie came out. I didn't see a single review talking about it. So it might end up holding up just fine, but I just wanted to mention that because I'm not I'm not really sure if how exactly I that would think
Speaker 3:it'll hold up okay. I think that it is, to a degree, personally, I kinda like when they do add real events into superhero movies because it makes them feel more human that even though that they have these cool sick powers, they're still they still experience the same things that we do, and I think it brings more empathy to certain characters. And I think that specifically too, it also helps explain why he thinks the way he does. And it's also not like a huge focus of the movie. It's like a ten minute intro where you see, you know, him experiencing the Holocaust, and then it moves on.
Speaker 3:And it's just like a precursor to why he feels the way he does about humans because he's scared that the same thing is gonna happen essentially.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think that's fair. I mean, it makes sense to me. I also like it because it's very it it kind of pulls you in that this is, like, a realistic story. Like, these aren't people on alien planet.
Speaker 2:They're in freaking New York. The UN Summit is on Ellis Island. They fight in the Statue Of Liberty. Like, it makes it feel a little bit more like it's grounded and supposed to be happening in our world and not some other world. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Which, again, was kind of what they were going for. So I think they landed it.
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Speaker 2:My name is Annabelle Velton. My name is Jenna Coleman.
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Speaker 2:I want to make movies. I want to animate for adult cartoons.
Speaker 4:My name is Troy Wells.
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Speaker 2:So what did you think of the movie as someone going in completely headfirst and didn't really know anything about X Men? What did you think?
Speaker 3:I enjoyed it. The CGI was very silly that I did giggle about. I enjoyed Overall, it was a really good movie, and I can understand. I understand and I appreciate why it has the reputation it does, because it was important to superhero movies that we have now. Realistically, superhero movies probably would have happened regardless, But I think that it definitely did launch and let directors know that, and just like movie studios know that superhero movies were profitable.
Speaker 2:That's fair. I honestly only went into it when I was watching it for the first time. I only went into it with the idea of being a nerd. So I wasn't really thinking about the impact of the movie. I more so just stopped completely, I was like, is this gonna be good, though?
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And I resoundingly really liked it, and I really liked the characters. I liked Rogue Tulareen a lot. I like Professor X. Shout out Mike Goat, Patrick Stewart. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I came out of it. I I really did expect it to be a lot worse and for it to just kinda make money for being extremely goofy and bad. And then after that is when they were like, okay. We'll start with Captain America and then do Iron Man and then go on until people won't stop talking about spoilers for Infinity War. But that just kind of didn't read as the case to me.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. I was also shocked that there's somehow 13 movies and when I made it through all of them, I still didn't feel like I had enough of it.
Speaker 3:Fair.
Speaker 2:So do you think that it holds up after this conversation and our little watch through? Yes. You do. Thank you. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3:Do you think it holds up?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Honestly, I was going I I tried to go into it being really harsh about it, and I was like, there's no way on earth. And I will be honest, watching it again for this podcast specifically, it was harder to watch than it was the first time. Because the first time, I was just like, oh my god. It's that Wolverine.
Speaker 2:You know? So some aspects of it were a little bit more lost at times than I thought they were, like some of the dialogue options. You know what happens to a frog when struck by lightning? The same thing that happens to everyone else. Fantastic, guys.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 3:Yeah. No. I knew I know they thought they were cooking with that line.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But also to be fair, I have not watched a single, like, Avengers movie that they don't stop talking while they're fighting and everything that they say is just so cheesy that it's it's just bad. Right?
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So if you compare it to the actual Avengers movies that are still coming out to, like, you know, media that's coming out twenty five years later, I guess maybe X Men just originated doing cheesy things while you're in the middle of a fight because it still happens. So you can't even make an argument that that ages it at all because it doesn't broke. If it ain't broke. Let's see. Let's do, like, a, like, a pros and cons sheet.
Speaker 2:I think a good pro of the movie for holding up was the aspect of it having rich characters even with even characters that didn't have much dialogue. I think, obviously, something that ages up very badly is the CGI. The characters who didn't really even have any talking scenes felt like you could kinda just feel their personality through the screen.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:They were very, very rich characters.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Really liked. Yeah. Yeah. I think, like, a character like Storm, she didn't have many lines throughout the movie, but she still had, like, a personality, and it wasn't just a hot woman superhero, say couple words, and then she's just there.
Speaker 3:No. She felt like she still had, like, a personality.
Speaker 2:Yeah. She very much gave mom friends to me. Mhmm. She seemed like a very, very caring soul, and she was really, like, soft spoken.
Speaker 3:Mhmm. Alrighty. A pro is definitely that the movie holds up because of the historical references matching matching to the exact timing in the world, making it feel more realistic and, like and as you were saying that it's not, like, a completely different world with, like, aliens. It's our world with, you know, people in it, like real people. A con would probably be maybe the sexism.
Speaker 3:While it's not, as we were discussing before, as bad as other movies around its time, there is still blatant sexism from the costumes to, I'm sure, the fact that really only, like, two ish female characters got a good chunk of lines compared to the amount of male characters that got a good chunk of lines wasn't necessarily an accident.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Probably not. I would say too for, like, a team up movie. Right? Mhmm.
Speaker 2:It kind of didn't tell the whole team story a little bit. And, like, to to back off of that sexism point, honestly, I think the thing that bothered me most sure. Mystique, like, isn't wearing clothes. She and she doesn't get any lines. So she's just there as eye candy.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. I still don't even think that that was a super most egregious thing. Strom was the only one in the whole group who wasn't emotionally inclined to somebody, who didn't have, like,
Speaker 3:a boyfriend or something. Yeah. Like a male character.
Speaker 2:Right. And Rogue got away with it. I mean, her story was she kissed her high school sweetheart, and, you know, that's how she found out she had her power. So Rogue can give a little bit of a pass to. Jean, on the other hand, was about to cheat in the last three minutes of the movie.
Speaker 2:What was She was kinda
Speaker 3:ready to cheat the whole movie. Like, even just the first scene that he was hitting on her.
Speaker 2:I mean, maybe, but also the only speaking lines that girl got was when she was about to cheat. Yeah. And I thought that that was really, really, really weird. And if they wanted to upsell that, like, Cyclops is a is a bad, mean spirited dude, and maybe that's why she wanted to cheat because he's so, like, uptight and and dumb, the only, like, point of view that they ever maybe did that through was, like, Wolverines, and I would argue that Cyclops was being reasonable a majority of the time.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I just don't think that that really sold, like, the, you know, the, oh, I'm so tired of this relationship. Relationship. I'm I'm gonna gonna go cheat now thing at all. So the last three minutes that she was like cheating. I know.
Speaker 2:So, like, last three minutes, she was like, well, I was like, I I don't know.
Speaker 3:Yeah. She would definitely would have just, like, cheated to cheat. Right.
Speaker 2:I think our verdict is in.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:I think we have both agreed that the movie holds up even though we spent some time talking about some cons of it. The pros overall has very strong characters, even the ones who don't talk a lot. Even with the issues that we just spoke about, at least they have personalities at minimum, which some movies, even Avengers movies released today, cannot say the same.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:I think that even though the CGI was bad, the practical effects were very clean and nice with the the metal, cerebral, things like that. It looked pretty cool. And we also talked about the real world, which I think that real world movies are actually much harder to sell. It like, Alien, for example, still. It's still talked about.
Speaker 2:It's still famous. It's still popular, but it's also set on a different planet. So you don't really have anything to compare to other than other movies.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Other ways to, like, forcibly be shown visuals that aren't from our normal world, while real world world movies don't get that privilege. Right? So I think overall, all in all, the movie does hold up.
Speaker 3:Yes. I agree.
Speaker 2:That has been this episode of the classic hold up. Thank you for coming by, Carter. It was very nice talking to you. I'm glad you came over and watched the movie with me.
Speaker 3:I'm glad I did too. I peed for kitties.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you did. This episode was written and produced by b Barnes with special guest, Carter Kent.
Speaker 1:Find the classic holdup on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Follow us at audio video land for updates, teasers, and behind the scenes content of all audio video land productions. The classic hold up is an audio video land production by students of the college of communication arts and sciences at Michigan State University in collaboration with Impact eighty nine FM.