X-Men 1.5

Rating:
Summary: Factors In X
Review: Based on the wildly successfull Marvel Comic Book, X-Men The Movie, does a fine job at staying true to its source. Like most long running comic books, the storylines and characters go through many incarnations and some retooling, over the years, in order to stay fresh. This concept is especially true of super hero teams. The film follows in that tradition...mixing it up a bit

For the unimformed, sometime in the near future, beings with incredible power will be living among us in secret at first.. Known as mutants, most of these folks are in hiding and are feared by our government. There is one place the mutants are able to go for training, so that they can learn how to use their powers for good. However, there is a war brewing between the good and the evil mutants. Professor Charles Xavier,(Patrick Stewart) thinks that mankind will accept the mutants, once they learn not to fear them. He leads his team on the side of good. While Magneto (Sir Ian McKellen) is sure that mutants are headed for extinction once they are discovered. He and his team set out to prove his point by kidnapping Senator Kelly, (Bruce Davison) who leads the mutant opposition, and they hold NYC hostage as the world decides what to do next.

Directed by Bryan Singer, the film is a feast for the eyes, while its solid cast brings these characters to life with believability. My one minor gripe is that the film is at times, too character heavy. While focusing on X, Magneto, Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) and Rogue (Anna Paquin), other and sometimes more popular characters get left behind. Storm (Halle Berry, my favorite from the comic book), Cyclops (James Marsden) and Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) are left pretty much in limbo here. While I realize, that origin tales with multiple characters, are hard to tell on film, I hope the sequel does a better job at dealing with this issue. Those problems aside, I think the film is worthwhile and entertaining.

As much as I loathe when movie studios release multiple versions of films on DVD, I must say that I enjoyed the "updated" 2 disc set, a lot. With the promise of a new director's cut, and more how could you go wrong? Sadly, the new cut is not in the set, but what is new, is still worth it. The audio commentary with Singer and Brian Peck is both informative and enjoyable. Disc one also allows you to watch 6 deleted scenes (with optional commentary) and 17 "new" making of featurettes, as the film plays in that mode The idea is similar to the Infinifilm DVDs put out by New Line.

Disc 2 has a clever intoduction by Singer. It also includes 4 more featurettes, the best of which is the retrospective called "Reflections...", movie premiere footage, and most everthing else from the previous edition. Thank goodness someone decided not to include that dopey television special that ran on FOX and was on the other version. Finally a non spoiler, yet fluff fillled preview of X2 and the theatrical teaser for Daredevil top it all off.

A much improved, and yet still padded at times on disc 2, reissue. Recommended just the same over the previous release. It's worth the purchase or rental

Rating:
Summary: An OK Step Up
Review: X-Men 1.5, the movie itself, is no different from the original DVD. The extras are OK, nothing too great, and it mainly focuses on building up the companies future releases of DareDevil and X2.
I enjoy the movie itself, brings back nice memories of the characters when I used to follow the Marvel cards and watch the cartoons! It's a well rounded movie with action and imagination, and seems to set-up the future of the series very nicely

Rating:
Summary: A great film that has lots of room for improvement.
Review: The first in a possibly long "X-Men" movie franchise is a great but flawed movie and it is one of the one of my favorite movies of 2000.

It starts with a young teenage boy by the name of Eric Lensherr who struggles against the Nazi during WWII and his powers manifest for the first time in his life when he manages to warp and damage a gate to a concentration camp before being knocked unconscious. It is not seen however but Lensherr escapes however and would eventually meet Charles Xavier. Their friendship would eventually continue sort of in a way but at the same time, it would turn into a bitter rivalry as prejudice against mutants worsens and worsens and Xavier seeks to mend the rift between normal humans and mutants while Lensherr on the other hand, believing that humans will never accept mutants into their society, seeks to wage an all-out war against them and rid the world of them. In this flick, Magneto has plotted a special machine that irradiates a force field that mutates normal human cells and the normal human body rejects the mutations and dissolves into water while mutants are completely unscathed. Also, Wolverine escapes a military testing compound with little or no memory of his time there.

The cast of the film is hit and miss, not by the actors themselves but simply how some of them act out their character roles.

The best ones for their characters are Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, Patrick Stewart as Professor Charles Xavier, and Sir Ian McKellan as Magneto. Hugh Jackman has the right kind of expressions that would remind one of Wolverine from the 1992-1996 cartoon series. Patrick Stewert does a wonderful job playing Xavier, I would even go far as to say that Stewert IS Charles Xavier. Sir Ian McKellan cannot be outdone playing the master of magnetism Magneto and has the right kind of sinister voice that would definitely scare young kids. All three of these actors give solid performances and they alone steal the show with their skillful performances in this movie. Rebecca Romijn Stamos' does a good job in her role as Mystique which will be forever remembered with the 'costume' merely being blue body paint and the bizarre stick-on scales to make Mystiques course skin and it's probably Stamos' most famous role in her entire career. Interesting camera angles I must admit.

Others though don't fare as well. While none of them are near horrible or fatally catastrophic, some characters should've been giving much larger roles and could've been much better both appearance wise and personality wise. Rogue, Storm, and Cyclops are among the best characters off all time but in the film, they are reduced to two-dimensional characters with Rogue and Storm being the particular ones as the comic books show them as beautiful, intelligent, and elegant, but on the film they hardly show any of the elegance nor intelligence that they have been in the comics for almost 40 years! Anna Paquin doesn't do a bad job playing Rogue but her character hardly shows Rogue's emotional trauma that the comics have showed time and time again and simply looks more like a helpless victim. Sabertooth while awesome looks more like the bearded lead singer in the rock band Metallica (No offense to the band). Jean Grey looks more romantically involved with Wolverine than with Cyclops. What's with that? Cyclops is almost as uninteresting as your average stranger and hardly shows the romantic relationship with Jean Grey. All of these characters in my opinion are in dire need of improvement on their part especially Storm and Rogue. However, all of these flaws in the characters I mentioned are forgivable in my opinion, considering how difficult it was to adapt a HUGE and rich comic book series to the big screen and it could've turned out disastrous, but instead they pulled it off quite well. There's lots of room for improvement though and hopefully the cast will do an even better job on X-Men 2.

Although I'm not complaining about it, some characters don't even show up in the film at all. Gambit doesn't join the X-Men until much later, Henry McCoy aka Beast doesn't either, nor does Jubilee. That's OK though. Gradually the X-Men movies shall improve upon the previous as time goes on and hopefully it'll have a long theatre life as opposed to the Batman movie series that probably wound up being killed by the box-office bust, "Batman & Robin".

Although I love this movie a lot, even I cannot deny that there were plenty of flaws to the film. Despite all of these things, this movie is a great one to own and has a strong message of the effects of bigotry, prejudice and racism and it's destructive effects on society as a whole. The fight scenes in some of them are awesome especially Wolverine battling Sabertooth atop The Statue Of Liberty and the incident at the train station. Overall, while this movie could've been better. This is just my perspective but I think that this first X-Men movie is more of a warm-up to the possible action-packed sequel X-Men or the ones after it. I just hope that this will become like a long lasting movie series that'll go for years and years. I think that they did a good job at adapting the X-Men to the big screen and is a good first start. Buy It Today!

Rating:
Summary: They're Uncanny
Review: The movie was EXCELLENT in 2000 and it's still EXCELLENT in 2003

This DVD will ROCK! If you didn't like the first release or didn't buy X-Men. Then this DVD is for you Take a look at what you get with X-Men 1.5

Disc 1: Widescreen anamorphic format, Enhanced Viewing Mode containing 6 deleted scenes and 17 behind-the scenes featurettes, Commentary by director Bryan Singer

Disc 2: Introduction by Bryan Singer, The Uncanny Suspects Casting Featurette, X-Factor: The Look of the X-Men Costumes Featurette, The Special Effects of the X-Men Featurette, Storyboard-to-Animatic-to-Film Comparisons, Reflection of the X-Men Publicity Featurette, Exclusive Movie Premiere Footage From Ellis Island and around the world, Multi-Angle Scene Studies, Still Photo Gallery, 3 Theatrical Trailers, 14 TV Spots, 12 Web Interstitials, X-Men 2 Sneak Preview (Teaser and Making), DareDevil Teaser

Plus when you buy this DVD you get a FREE Movie Ticket for DareDevil or X2. The only other thing you get with this is a FOX DVD sampler with the all new X2 trailer (That will be seen with DareDevil), DareDevil trailer and more

Rating:
Summary: Two years ago this DVD would have gotten 5 stars!
Review: The fact that this DVD even exists is testament to the extent movie studios will go to make extra profit. X-Men 1.5 has THE EXACT SAME MOVIE that was released on the original X-Men DVD two years ago (a great film, by the way). The difference is that -- in a ... attempt to ... additional coin from all of the hard-core fans out there (myself included) -- this version includes additional bells and whistles such as director's commentary, deleted scenes and featurettes not included before (including a sneak peek at the sequel). So I'm giving this five-star movie one star because it's two years too late!

Studios should only be allowed to release a film on DVD once...that way, they'll get it right the first time! Fox dropped the ball when they came out with the first DVD by including very few extras, and now they're trying to make up for it by releasing a version that includes all of stuff the first disc lacked!

This disturbing rerelease trend is happening with increased regularity (SEE ALSO: The Mummy Ultimate Edition, Lord of the Rings) as the DVD phenomenon continues to explode. Now, I can understand a rerelease for a movie that originally came out a long time ago when deleted scenes and similar extras were relatively rare...but, c'mon, X-Men is a recent movie!

So the fans are ... yet again...while Fox laughs all the way to the bank!

Rating:
Summary: An Uncanny movie gets an Uncanny DVD
Review: X-Men, based on Marvel's heroes of the same name, implements many of its own elements, but nevertheless stays true to the spirit of the comic book. Foregoing the somewhat cheesy yellow and blue spandex, the movie takes on leather and moves the X-Men into the next generation. The movie is an excellent adaptation, with superb choices for the characters (Hugh Jackman was born to play Logan). It carries it's story very well and keeps a very comic book feel to it without going into the utter circus that was Batman and Robin or Batman Forever. With X2 being released in three months, this is an excellent way of celebrating. Since the first DVD was rather lackluster (no DTS, no commentary, only one featurette), this is the DVD fans have been waiting for. If you're merely a casual fan of the movie and already own the first movie, then there's no need to buy this one. Although, if you love the movie, then definitely purchase this. It contains an excellent Bryan Singer commentary, several featurettes, and a couple of much appreciated extras- a Daredevil trailer and an X2 preview featurette along with a trailer for it as well. It also has a DTS track for sound buffs. The introduction to the movie was slightly altered. With all these new features, X-Men still keeps the old, so there's no need to buy both DVDs. With this DVD you get all the deleted scenes on the first release and the other extras from the disc as well. Don't miss this excellent 2-Disc set. It's the special edition I, and all other fans, have been waiting for since the first DVD was released.

Rating:
Summary: A Wealth of Cinematic Knowledge
Review: Byan Singer really pulled no puches in supplying the goods on this jammed packed 2-DVD set! Which, incidentally, includes a free ticket to see either X-Men 2 or the sooner-to-be-released Daredevil movies. So it's really, really worth the purchase! For those who really enjoyed the film and want to know literally everything about the making of it to those studying film or filmaking, I highly recommend this DVD... even if you have the first release. NOTE TO PARENTS: The interviews are very candid and a lot of the scenes contain R-rated language.

Rating:
Summary: X-traordinary movie!
Review: From the pages of the popular Marvel Comic, the X-Men spring to life on the big screen in a very successful way. The story deals with Mutant beings who are feared and loathed by human beings because of their powers, a team of good mutants led by Professor X ( played by Patrick Stewart) must protect mankind from a evil mutant named " Magento" ( played by Ian Mckellen), whom believes that man can never co-exists with Mutants.

A highly entertaining and phenomenal sci-fi comic book that has great acting, excellent cast ( Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Ray Park, Bruce Davison, Rebecca Stamos, and Anna Paquin), a good storyline and tons of intense spectacular special effects. A comic book movie that kids and adults can enjoy together, it's truly one of the best comic book movies ever.

The DVD is X-cellent, it has a great transfer with excellent sound, tons of extras like Still Gallery, Trailers, TV Spots, Easter Eggs and more. So own this DVD if your a fan of Comic Books, Sci-fi, action or just a lover a movies and share it with your family on a film they will never forget.

Also recommended: Spider-Man, The Crow, Batman, Superman, Scanners, Akira, Carrie, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, The Fifth Element, The Matrix, Attack of the Clones, Resident Evil, Dark City, Ghost in the Shell, Total Recall, Supergirl, The Hulk, X-Men 2, Daredevil and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Rating:
Summary: It's a great film, but ...
Review: Same transfer.. No extended cut as expected. If you own the original, why bother to upgrade to 1.5? If you don't own it already, it's an easy purchase. "Nuff said," as Stan Lee would say.

Rating:
Summary: 0 Stars for 1.5
Review: 5 stars for X-Men the movie but 0 stars for X-Men 1.5 the DVD. Why were these bonuses not featured on the first release of the X-Men DVD? I bought the movie once. I'm not going to buy it all over again just to see some deleted footage I probably already saw anyway. Besides, there are reasons why these scenes were cut from the movie. Meaning they are not worth the $17-$25 you will spend on this re-release. And behind the scene footage is usually very boring anyway. My advice is to wait for X-Men 2 but don't buy it when it comes out on DVD. Wait until X-Men 3 is about to come out. They will release X-Men 2 1.5 with all the stuff the suckers didn't get the first time it was released.