In some circles, this is the most anticipated movie of the year. Marvel Comics' high profile comic books have not done well on the big screen compared to DC's recent Batman and Superman franchises. As Stan Lee would say: never fear, true believer! This is the movie comic book readers have been waiting for. It's remarkably true to the spirit of the X-Men comic books and the special effects for once aren't cheesy.

The job of taking 30 years of history, picking out a few parts, and putting it all together into a movie that people who haven't read the comic book can enjoy, is quite a daunting feat. So it should come as no surprise that only a handful of major characters are present in any significant form. It should also come as no surprise that, although the character backgrounds are generally correct, the overall timing has changed to fit the story.

The movie revolves about the major plot, which is Magneto's Brotherhood of Mutants' attempt to turn all the world's leaders into mutants, through a device Magneto has developed. Aside from that, the major character plot revolves around a pair of new mutants to Xavier's School for Gifted Students: Rogue and Wolverine.

Rogue (played by Anna Paquin) is a young girl who's mutant power manifests for the first time as she kisses her boyfriend. Horrified at having put him a coma for three weeks, she runs away to Canada. There she meets Wolverine (played by Hugh Jackman), a wanderer who makes a living cage-fighting in the small towns of Alberta. Rogue attaches herself to Wolverine, but then they're attacked by Sabretooth (Tyler Mane) and saved by Cyclops (James Marsden) and Storm (Halle Berry), who take the two back to New York.

So there's this subplot about Rogue and Wolverine trying to fit into the School. Rogue is the perfect age to mingle with the younger students, and we get to see a short scene that has Kitty Pryde (Sumela Kay), Bobby Drake (Shawn Ashmore), Jubilation Lee (Katrina Florece) and Tabitha Smith (who I can't find in the credits).

Wolverine is old enough (and experienced enough) to join the main team, which is only composed of other people: Scott Summers (Cyclops), Ororo Munroe (Storm) and Jean Grey (played by Famke Janssen and looking a lot like a young Marilu Henner at times). Professor Xavier himself (played by Patrick Stewart) is the revered master of the school and guiding force for the team.

The movie is relatively short, a little over an hour and a half. I've read that about 15 minutes of footage was cut at the request of 20th Century Fox. The DVD has already been scheduled for a November release, which will have the missing scenes (mostly character development). I hope this doesn't become a trend: take the director's cut and remove a few scenes to make the DVD more enticing.

The movie itself has a few good fights and other action scenes. But there are a lot of character scenes and explanatory scenes to get the audience up to speed with this particular version of the X-Men. Cyclops, Jean Grey, Wolverine and Storm are all major characters in the comics. It's funny to see Iceman and Rogue portrayed so much younger in the movie (Iceman is kind of young, but not that young).

It's also interesting to see Rogue without her current enhanced strength, invulnerability and flight. Rogue being attached to Wolverine is not surprising because Wolverine has had a couple of teenage sidekicks that he protects like a big brother. Kitty Pryde and Jubilee come to mind, although there's probably one or two more.

So I'd say watch the movie. Don't worry if you've never heard of the X-Men. It's definitely a movie you can take your kids to see, especially kids that read comic books. It's well paced, has human elements as well as good action scenes, and is a worthy movie adaptation of the comic books.