Review: Less enchanting than its predecessor, ‘Disenchanted’ gets by on the charm of Amy Adams, Robert Pattinson and Jared Leto. But the film will be remembered, more than any other ‘X-Men’ installment, as the turning point in a series that left us with a taste for the weird, and a hunger for more of it.
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One of the things I find most appealing about the “X-Men” universe, of which there are several, is that it takes the superhero genre and turns it on its ear. It’s a different kind of superhero, a kind that’s actually interested in philosophy, that treats the superhero as a metaphor for the human condition. The X-Men (as they’re called by fans) explore their own humanity, in the pursuit of self-actualized freedom.
The “X-Men” universe is unique among other superhero-based stories, in that it’s not exactly a traditional one; it’s more like a hybrid of the “Godfather” and “The Empire Strikes Back,” where the heroes are not so much the heroes as the players in one of the most complex epic stories ever written. It’s a narrative in which mutants, mutants, mutants. The X-Men themselves are, at the end of the day, little more than a vehicle for the protagonist (a good role for the leading male in the X-Men franchise, in my opinion) to fulfill the purpose of the story he’s created.
“X-Men” is an ambitious series that has a lot of story to cover. It’s like a “Doctor Who” episode, the series that began it all, but where instead of a traveling companion, the Doctor has a traveling robot, the X-Men —