X-Men (12)

Before X-Men, the outlook for the superhero flick wasn't healthy. Audiences were staying away and projects were languishing in development hell. Now the studios are falling over themselves to buy the rights to anything in tights and Lycra. But beyond that, Bryan Singer's effective, mutant-powered movie cut away the worst excesses of comic-book cinema and brought back such novel ideas as character development and narrative structure. Sure, it tries a little hard to set everything up, shoehorning reams of plot exposition into any quiet moment, but as an origin story it's a superbly entertaining night's viewing.

DVD Extras:

Mutant Watch behind-the-scenes featurette, Hugh Jackman's screentest, interview with Bryan Singer, art gallery and animatics, trailer and TV spots. Mutant fans will find a mixed bag of, (ahem), x-tras on this disc. Definite highlights are the Mutant Watch featurette - which takes the effort to be clever as well as interesting - and the fun, computer-generated animatics used to plan two fight scenes (the train station and the finale). Elsewhere, there's production art (including one of two hidden extras featuring unused character sketches for Beast and The Blob), an interview with the director and a few deleted scenes - which can be viewed either separately or via a movie "branching" system (think The Matrix's White Rabbit option). But it's nothing really special - the deletions are mostly blink-and-you'll-miss-them set-ups for characters to be used later in the franchise. Nice try, but there's the hint of a missed opportunity here.

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