As an openly bisexual Jewish man growing up in late-20th century America, Singer's life resonates strongly with the struggle for acceptance and equality faced by the mutants in the original comics. It doesn't take too much brain power to see what would have attracted Singer to the X-Men franchise. While it is very much a product of the pre-Christopher Nolan era of superhero films, much of it still holds up extremely well and it is the best of the original X-Men trilogy. Coming after the disappointment of Apt Pupil, this first film in the now-burgeoning franchise finds Singer with very clear intentions with regards to both the key themes of the story and how they should be executed. The X-Men films have always been at least a partial exception to this rule. In my now-archaic review of The Usual Suspects, I postulated that all Bryan Singer films have a confused sense of identity they "attempt to marry several conflicting elements while never quite deciding what they want to be." Superman Returns can't decide whether it wants to directly follow the campy tone of the early Christopher Reeve films or be a more emo, Smallville-esque story Valkyrie flits between a serious drama about betrayal and an old-school B-movie about blowing up Hitler and even his best-known work can't make up its mind whether it wants to focus on the characters or the ornate mechanics of the heist genre in which they find themselves.
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