X-Men

Stream on Disney +

Runtime: 1 Hour and 44 Minutes

Rated PG-13

‍ ‍X-Men und him.

Themes:‍ ‍

Evolution, mutants, government, human rights, hatred, fear, family, not belonging, heroes, powers, mind control, war,

Language:

B*tch - 1 D*ck - 1 D*mn - 3 Hell - 5 Sh*t - 1

Stuff to be aware of: (Some of this may be considered spoiler territory)

Alcohol & Drugs - There

• During a cage match scene, people are seen drinking.

• A teen sits at a bar drinking water. Wolverine sits down beside her, orders a beer, and drinks it.

• Wolverine smokes cigars in multiple scenes.

‍ Gross -

• A boy has his life sucked from him, and his veins turn a bluish color.

• When Wolverine pops his claws out, you can see them come out of his knuckles.

• Toad eats a bird in one gulp.

• A man becomes liquid-like and escapes through bars. He later completely turns into water.

• A senator who is turned into a mutant can’t take the change, and his body bursts into water.

‍ ‍LGBTQ - None

‍ ‍Scary -

• There is a scene that takes place during WWII in which Jewish families are being separated.

• A boy has his life sucked from him, and his veins turn a bluish color.

• When Professor X is leading Wolverine through the mansion via voices in his head, it can be a bit creepy.

• Wolverine has nightmares about being experimented on.

• Toad crawls around and up walls in a creepy way.

‍ ‍Sexual - There are a few scenes with men and women kissing, and Hugh Jackman is seen without a shirt multiple times.

• One scene involved a teen girl and a teen boy kissing on her bed. Nothing happens past a kiss.

• During a cage fight, the announcer tells a fighter not to hit the other one in the balls.

• Mystique does not wear clothes. Rebecca Romijn, who plays Mystique, wears prosthetics and makeup to cover his private areas.

• It is mentioned that a man and woman share a room.

• A man walks up on a beach naked. He is jelly-like, and his butt can be seen briefly reforming.

• Professor X is seen with no shirt on.

‍ ‍Violence/Gore - There is normal superhero violence, ill mention some things to be aware of here.

• Wolverine gets thrown from a car, causing a huge gash to open on his head. It can be seen bleeding before it heals and closes.

• Wolverine accidentally stabs Rogue all the way through. His bloody claws can be seen coming out of her back.

• A man almost gets shot, but the bullet is suspended in midair.

• Wolverine stabs himself with his own claws.

• When hugging Rogue, Wolverine’s gashes open back up, and blood pours from holes in his uniform.

‍ ‍Religion - None

• God is discussed as a teacher, and a character asks another character if he “fears God.” The conversation ends with, “God works to slowly.”

‍ ‍Other - Wolverine flips someone off with one claw.

Overall:‍ ‍

Seeing It With Your Family

With Avengers Doomsday upon the horizon, and a special character being introduced in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, I thought some parents may be introducing their kids to the original X-Men. While there are some intense fight scenes, a little blood, and some cursing, the original X-Men feels pretty tame by today’s superhero-movie standards. The language, in particular, is noticeably lighter than what has become common in many modern superhero films.

What I Thought

I saw X-Men in theaters when I was in high school, and I still remember going with my best friend, who was a huge X-Men fan. We loved it. At the time, it was everything we had hoped an X-Men movie would be.

It’s also easy to forget just how different the superhero landscape was back then. Outside of movies like Tim Burton’s Batman, we didn’t have decades of superhero films, interconnected stories, and massive shared universes like we do today. X-Men, along with the Spider-Man movies that followed, helped pave the way for modern superhero culture and showed that these characters and stories could work on the big screen.

Watching X-Men now, the story may feel a little simple compared to what we’ve become accustomed to over the past fifteen years, but it still does what it needs to do, and does it well. Some of the X-Men don’t get as much time to shine as I would like, but focusing on Rogue and Wolverine as they join the team was a smart way to introduce audiences to this world without overwhelming them with too many characters and storylines at once.

More than 25 years later, X-Men remains a classic superhero movie. It may not have the scale or spectacle of the superhero movies that came after it, but it helped lay the foundation for them, and it’s still an enjoyable movie today.