X-MenSave

We open in Auschwitz, Poland, 1944. A young Erik Lehnsherr — 12 years old, Jewish, being separated from his parents at the camp gates — bends a metal gate with his bare hands. The guards beat him unconscious. He has just demonstrated his mutant power for the first time. The trauma of the camp will define his entire adult identity. Cut to: near-future America. Senator Robert Kelly is pushing legislation called the Mutant Registration Act — requiring all mutants to publicly identify themselves to the government.

Marie / Rogue (Anna Paquin) — a teenage mutant from Mississippi — runs away from home after accidentally putting her boyfriend in a coma with her power-absorbing touch. She hitchhikes north, ending up in a Canadian bar where she watches a man named Logan (Hugh Jackman) — a former Wolverine, capable of healing instantly and growing adamantium claws from his knuckles — win a cage fight. Logan takes Rogue with him, partly out of guilt.

Logan and Rogue are attacked en route by Sabretooth — a mutant with similar abilities to Logan, working for the Brotherhood. They are rescued by the X-Men: Storm (Halle Berry), a weather-controlling mutant, and Cyclops (James Marsden), a precision-laser-eyed mutant. They are brought to Charles Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters — Professor X (Patrick Stewart) running a secret academy for mutant children, training them in the use of their powers.

Magneto / Erik Lehnsherr (Ian McKellen) — Charles Xavier's old friend and now-leader of the militant Brotherhood of Mutants — has been planning a mutant-emancipation strategy that involves forcing global political change through fear. His plan: use a stolen Statue of Liberty plus a mutant child's natural ability to convert humans into mutants. Magneto intends to convert every world leader at the United Nations summit into a mutant. The conversion process, as Charles Xavier soon learns, is lethal — but Magneto doesn't know this.

The film's first half is character-focused. Logan slowly learns about his own past — the metal in his bones, his amnesia of pre-1979 events. He develops feelings for Jean Grey (Famke Janssen), already in a relationship with Cyclops. Rogue absorbs Logan's healing factor in a moment of crisis.

Magneto kidnaps Rogue, intending to use her power-absorbing ability — combined with a magnetic-energy conversion device — to convert the world's leaders. The X-Men intercept at the Statue of Liberty. The final battle is across Liberty Island. Wolverine and Storm fight Sabretooth, Toad, Mystique. Magneto activates the converter with Rogue trapped inside. The X-Men destroy the converter just before the conversion completes. Magneto is captured and imprisoned. Rogue is restored.

X-Men (2000) grossed $296 million globally on a $75 million budget — strong commercial success. The film established the X-Men franchise that would produce nine theatrical sequels (until Disney's 2019 Fox acquisition). More importantly, it established Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, Patrick Stewart as Professor X, and Ian McKellen as Magneto for the next two decades. Bryan Singer's serious tonal approach influenced every subsequent superhero film, including Batman Begins (2005) and Spider-Man (2002).