Slashdot Meets X-Men 578
Rob's Take:
Warning: My mom thought comic books were bad -- so I didn't read many of them when I was younger. I did read many issues of X-Men, but I was never fanatical about them: I enjoyed them, but it wasn't a religion.
As a movie, X-Men is great. It's not the best movie in history, but it certainly is a great action movie.
The movie throws some off-beat slapstick humor in with amusing references to the namesake comic books. The characters themselves are all enjoyable: more developed than the characters in most movies, even if the depth any one of the characters could have achieved is only hinted at.
That's partly because X-men is ambitious: it has a lot of characters in it, and not all of them are given enough screen time to develop them fairly. The focus is largely on Professor X, Magneto, Rogue and Wolverine. The Jean Grey/Cyclopse/Wolverine love triangle thing is done up pretty well, but Cyclops is (as CowboyNeal put it so eloquently) "Just as gay as we always thought he was." Other favorites swoop through as well, including some cameos in the professors school that I won't spoil.
I was kinda sad that Mystique was essentially reduced to a covert-ops sort of character instead of a bad-ass. I'm not sure if her lack of lines was intentional, or if perhaps they ended up on the cutting-room floor because Rebecca Romain-Stamos can't act. Maybe [director Bryan] Singer just wanted her silent and cold, but I'd always thought of her as more of a leader than she ended up being portrayed here.
The sets are fantastic. The respective compounds for both the forces of good and evil are entertaining, and the fight scenes in and around the Statue of Liberty lives up to all the pre-movie hype -- many shots are indescribably cool.
The action is great. Watching Wolverine slice guns in half. Watching Magneto throw cop cars around. Watching Mystique transform from Wolverine to herself mid-kick ... its simply intense and entertaining. Very well-realized, considering the tons of source material, from which a lot had to be dropped simply for time.
It's not gonna make the hardest-core of the comic community happy, but I don't think that ever was Singer's intent. I think he wanted to first and foremost create a good action movie that was true to the spirit of the characters. And I think he did that.
So No, it isn't a masterpiece, but it's a damn entertaining 90 minutes, and I'll go see it again. It was everything good about a Hollywood summer film. If you enjoy a well-crafted blockbuster, you'll enjoy this movie. If you are the anal-retentive comic book collector from The Simpsons, you'll get angry. If you're just looking for an enjoyable film with fighting and explosions and laughs, look no further. X-Men is it.
The Movie Katz Saw:
Warning: some plot is discussed in my review, but nothing relating to the ending, which we all know anyway:
Director Bryan Singer had a particularly tough job when it came to making X-Men. He had to try and please the rabid X-Men fans -- who make up one of the most impassioned sub-genres of outcast culture and who were noisily vigilant for even the slightest deviations from the comic version. He had to attract millions of plain-ol' movie goers who don't give a hoot which joint Wolverine's knife-fingers spring from. He had to find actors who wouldn't be blown away by Patrick Stewart (Prof. Charles Xavier) and Ian McKellen (Magneto). And for good measure, he had to live up to the high expectations set by his last movie, Usual Suspects.
Despite the fact that X-Men was good, and at times gorgeous, fun, he didn't totally make it on any of these counts. His biggest problem was that Stewart and McKellen's acting almost totally overwhelm the movie. You had to feel sorry for Hugh Jackman (Wolverine), James Marsden (Cyclops), Halle Berry (Storm) Anna Paquin (Rogue), Rebecca Romijn-Stamos (Mystique) and the others who seemed to literally shrink in the company of Stewart and McKellen. You can hardly blame them, in the presence of two of the most decorated and experienced actors in the English-speaking world. This imbalance is most evident from the very first encounter between the noble-minded Prof. Xavier and the allegedly evil Magento.
It's easy to see why some geeks and many outcasts have always loved the X-Men a sentiment very much reflected in the movie. It's easy to resonate with a film that has a U.S. Senator pushing for the public listing of all "mutants" and seeking to remove them from the public school system of America because they might conceivably be dangerous. The very same thing, of course, is happening to "geeks, Goths and freaks" all over the United States today, post-Columbine.
But X-Men has to be judged as a film and not as a political statement With the possible exception of Wolverine and Rogue, we never really get to know any of the X-types well enough to care a lot about what happens to them, or to understand why they're doing what they're doing. Until the very end of the movie, which is a somewhat hokey confrontation at the Statue of Liberty, they never really seem to jell as a team.
Despite the sensibilities and complaints of X-Men fans -- it's obvious why the comic series meant so much to hunted brainaics everywhere -- Singer is under no obligation to be completely faithful to the strip. He had to make a gazillion-dollar Hollywood movie that lots of people who'd never heard of the comic book would go see, and filtered through that Hollywood prism, there's no way he could keep the brooding, sometimes haunting edge of the comic.
Beyond that, Singer's particular rendering has some big flaws as a big-screen tale. We're supposed to hate Magento, but there isn't anything particularly hateful about him. He's trying to save his species from what he believes from personal experience is a possible Holocaust-style extinction. He might get carried away by his fervor, but he's admirable in many ways, and even the silver-tongued Xavier doesn't make much of a case for his stubborn defense of the human race. (Magento's Holocaust connection was written into the series 20 years after its creation).
One of the soft spots of the movie -- and this hurts the story line as it's presented on the screen -- is that despite their powers to morph, melt through walls, move people through the air, what really terrifies the renegade wing of the mutants and motivates them to wipe out the human race as it's constituted isn't some powerful enemy, but pending legislation in Congress, one of the world's least effective and menacing institutions.
This leaves the movie without a villain to really hate or a cause we can particularly identify with. We love the leaders, but the superheroes themselves are too wooden and poorly developed. The movie has too little humor. Apart from a couple of lame jokes cracked by Wolverine, it wouldn't have any.
On the other hand, X-Men is beautiful cinematically. Magento's headquarters and Xavier's School for Gifted Youngers are wonderfully rendered. So are most of the other special effects, which are sometimes brilliant but move too quickly.
So for my money, the bottom line on X-Men is that it's disconnecting. The strange thing is that despite all of these disappointing flaws -- the original strip and premise really did deserve better -- the movie is still one of the best of this disappointing summer crop.
Michael spills his guts:
It was odd seeing this movie directly after coming from the MPAA/DMCA/DeCSS forums at H2K, where Emmanuel Goldstein made the insightful and disturbing comment that there was really no one who could even report on the trial impartially, since every major news entity has an ownership relation of some sort with the studios who are suing 2600. So why did I feed the media monopoly another $9.50? I'm not really sure.
It certainly wasn't because I thought it was going to be a great movie. No movie that opens in the period late June-late August is ever worthy of the title "great," and this was no exception. Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen were given the job of carrying the movie, which is challenging to do when your character is unconscious for half of the film, not that I'm giving away part of the plot or anything.
Minor characters apparently had to beg for lines -- the three evil henchmen have a grand total of perhaps three lines between them, two for Toad (wisecracks), one for Mystique (supermodels should be seen but not heard) and zero for Large Grunting Guy. The minor good characters don't fair much better.
It felt like a fair amount of the movie ended up on the cutting room floor. Somewhere in there was probably an explanation of why Cyclops can't open his eyes without huge bursts of ravening energy pouring from them, but we didn't get to see it. It used to be that these "blockbusters" were short so that there could be one more screening in a day. Well, not any more. Once you've added in 30 minutes of advertising at the beginning of the movie, it's as long any other film. And the 25% advertising/75% content ratio is about right -- pretty much the same as television, yes? I'd recommend that this movie be seen on video -- VHS, the last format we'll ever have where you can still skip the advertising.
Rob's review isn't wrong, of course -- there's some good special effects (and a few bad ones), some bright flashing lights, some explosions, and some good acting by at least two of the actors in the movie. And of course I could stare at Rogue all day, she's easy on the eyes, if you know what I mean. But I didn't come away from the film feeling enlightened or even really entertained. The good news for the people who liked it is that you can expect lots more -- about 10 minutes of those 90 were devoted to setting up a sequel. The rest of us will have to stay home and rent Gladiator.
Re:The Physics and the Flame (Score:2)
They always go in a straight line. And go far too slowly to be moving in a straight line. I want one of two things:
Either they fly across the room in a notable arc (first up, then down) or...
They fly in a straight line REALLY REALLY FAST. I want to see almost instanteneous. If they're not losing altitude, and they fly all the way across the FREAKING ROOM FROM ONE PUNCH!?! than I expect them to be moving really really fast. When Cyclops' eye-beam hits someone and knocks them through... say for example... the Statue of Liberty, I want to see the beam hit them, hear a crash, and see them 40 feet out finally arcing down into the sea. I do NOT want to see them moving towards the inner wall of the statue, breaking through the wall, and travelling 40 feet out. Same goes for Wolverine getting whacked across the room by... oh... everyone.
Exception is Magneto. He controls magnetic fields and can throw Wolvie anywhere he damned well pleases in any direction at any speed.
Thank you for your support
- StaticLimit
Re:If Slashdot/Linux people had Mutant Powers? (Score:2)
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Re:Other Mutants (Score:2)
Actually, there's no telling how old Mystique is in the movie. She could be 20, she could be 40 (Good genes eh?). So we could see a slightly younger Kurt.
Of course, then we'd have to hear little BSD Daemon jokes throughout the movie. =)
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
moron (Score:2)
It isn't that the people started off like that, but that they were alienated for things that they couldn't control. Lack of social graces, etc. That alienation feeds itself until the point where those alienated have no desire to be a part of the system that hurts them? What do you propose they do? Simply forget all the pain? Do you think those that torment them would even give them that option?
If you do, then you are some sort of idiot. (Or troll)
Amber Yuan 2k A.D
I never got that about the Marval Univerce (Score:2)
Amber Yuan 2k A.D
Throwing in my two cents! (Score:2)
The reason is simple: it gives two sides on an issue that is still important right now: how do we deal with people who are "too gifted" or just "too different"?
I mean, Jon Katz has it right in a way when we have automatic prejudices against people who "march to the beat of a different drummer." I mean, we celebrate people with great athletic prowness (that's always an "in" thing to do), yet we sneer at people with great skills at science/math and music as "geeks," "freaks" and other derogatory names.
Unfortunately, this issue has been with us all the way from ancient times. Remember the herbalists/folk healers of the Middle Ages? And how the Catholic Church branded them with practicing witchcraft and went on a series of progroms that led to unknown thousands of people being killed for all the wrong reasons?
In many ways, the X-Men saga is a modern interpretation of that old struggle. Here we have humans with enhanced abilities called "mutants" being called "freaks" and a menace to society by many people, and it is this environment that we see how Xavier and Magneto operate.
By the way, for all you fans of Joanne K. Rowling's HARRY POTTER books, you see this theme strongly resonate in the four books. Consider what Petunia Dursley said about Harry in front of Hagrid:
"Knew!" shrieked Aunt Petunia suddenly. "_Knew_! Of course we knew. How could you not be, my dratted sister being what she was? Oh, she got a letter just like that and disappeared off to that--that _school_--and came home every vacation with her pockets full of frog spawn, turning teacups into rats. I was the only one who she her for what she was--a freak! But for my mother and father, oh no, it was Lily this and Lily that, they were proud of having a witch in the family!"
"Then she met that Potter at school and they left and got married and had you, and of course I knew you'd be just the same, just as strange, just as--as--_abnormal_--and then, if you please, she went and got herself blown up and we got landed with you!"
From J.K. Rowling, HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER'S STONE, page 53, Scholastic 1998.
I think that passage from the first HARRY POTTER novel does just as well summing up how normal people feel about people with out-of-the-ordinary non-athletic skills. Sadly, it appears that the theme from the X-MEN comic books is still with us today--essentially the human penchant for xenophobia and its destructive effects.
Katz's geek alienation again (Score:5)
-russ
Magneto (Score:5)
- We're supposed to hate Magento, but there isn't anything particularly hateful about him. He's trying to save his species from what he believes from personal experience is a possible Holocaust-style extinction. He might get carried away by his fervor, but he's admirable in many ways, and even the silver-tongued Xavier doesn't make much of a case for his stubborn defense of the human race.
Actually, I never got the impression that we're supposed to hate Magneto, either in the comic or the movie. (Mind you, I got into the series in about 1990 and haven't read it for a couple years now.) I've always felt he was presented as a sort of tragic figure, who has an admirable goal (mutants being able to live in peace) but is going about it in a horribly wrong way. He wants to sacrifice an innocent mutant in his quest to protect mutants and then doesn't care that his machine will result in the deaths of millions. Maybe not to be hated, but definitely the villain.Are my expectations just lower? (Score:2)
I've already seen it twice, which is probably enough, but now I'm definitely anticipating the followups that were implicitly promised by the plot. X-Men rule.
--
prequel (Score:2)
All in all it was a good movie but I thought there was too much setup for the second episode and not enough in this one. Also, was Rogue that young? I always thought she was like 25. The best line was when wolverine said something about the uniform and cyclops says "What would you prefer, yellow spandex?" That came right after I said to my girlfriend "his uniform is supposed to be yellow." Funny.
__________________________________________________ ___
Interesting URL: "MutantWatch" (Score:2)
Re:Katz's geek alienation again (Score:2)
So you're saying you DON'T have any mutant powers? Well damn, who let you in here? Someone get rid of this guy quick, he's not one of us!
Kintanon
Re:Cyclops' Ocular Bursts (Score:2)
Uh no, you see it as red. Will blend in completely with a red background too.
Re:Mag-NEEE-TOW (Score:2)
Re:Magento? (Score:5)
In NYC? Feeling guilty about seeing this? Well... (Score:2)
Come on down, you'll feel better!
-Isaac
Re:Sequel (Score:2)
...phil
Who cares if it was faithful? (Score:2)
Your average teenage movie goer or comic book fan won't notice the bad acting (though Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen were spectactular), and Wolverine and Rogue are nice subjects to focus on.
The most understandable gripe I've heard, which surprisingly wasn't mentioned here, was that the movie spent a lot of time setting up the characters for the inevitable sequel, leaving the conflict with Magneto to fall short of a spectactular climax. The sequel is obvious from a mile away, and hard core comic book fans could write the script by themselves (see below for my predictions). Hugh Jackman and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos have more or less confirmed that a sequel will happen if the original does well enough, which isn't too big of a stretch considering a opening weekend take of 57 and a half million.
Here's my predictions on the sequel, based mostly on the comic book and the events in the movie. If you've read the comic book you'll probably say "well duh," but here goes:
Wolverine discovers his past up in Canada and has a scrape with Sabertooth, predictably being absent until the last minute because the other X-Men are helpless without him for some reason. Magneto breaks out. Introduce one or two "new" characters. Mutiny in Magneto's ranks would be probable, as Magneto has been in jail for some time. I'm betting on sentinels (large robots specifically designed to track down and capture mutants) as the further advancement of the the mutant vs. human plot.
Oh yeah. Third movie: time travel!
Re:Magneto (Score:2)
Wolverine called him on this one. If he was willing to sacrifice all, he wouldn't have needed Rogue.
Re:What I'd like to see on film (Score:2)
NOT AGE OF APOCALYPSE!
I _HATED_ that plotline! Dropped the entire X-book run for the duration because I just couldn't stand it anymore.
But you do make a valid point - the disassociation from canon would make things easier on the flatscans.
I, for one, would dearly love to see them do God Loves, Man Kills, or the Weapon-X saga that the flick so clearly set up.
Redhawk
What I thought - the comic come to life (Score:4)
Okay, Katz is right - the X-Men really speaks to alienated geeks. 'Nuff said.
Alright, so I can't resist picking on Katz just a bit more. I'm weak. Flame me. Jonjon claims Congress is the most ineffectual organization on the planet. Au contraire, mon frere! Congress isn't ineffectual enough. Try this equation on for size: Mutant registration = drug user registration. "Oh but we don't register drug users - we just throw them in prison for ten years!" (let's not even start on the proposals that were made when AIDS first appeared) Leaving aside the question of which is worse, I'd say that felon status constitutes a form of registration. True to Singer's filmography (and his last film was Apt Pupil, Jon, which I'm sure about a million flaming penguins have told you by now), X-Men manages to be a wonderfully entertaining movie with a deeply hidden subtext of trenchant commentary on complex issues. Usual Suspects - the nature of reality, of story-telling, even of crime. Apt Pupil - the nature of evil, who's the truly evil one in that movie? The Nazi? Or the boy who provokes him (and more)?
Alright. Enough on Katz.
What impressed me the most was how the movie presented the world of the X-Men. It didn't try to develop all the characters - Singer knew (as he has said in interviews) that he couldn't do justice to them all. So he took two of the strongest ones (Dr. X and Magneto) and gave them to top-flight actors. Then he used two of the most appealing ones to draw the audience in - Wolverine (for the fanboys) and Rogue (for the teen girls and for the grown-ups - she has always struck me as one of the most tragic characters - her high-school kiss and the boy's unfortunate coma may have been told only once in the comics, but it stuck with me ever after). Wolverine he gave to a good actor who's unknown in the US - like Superman (and unlike Batman), the unknown face makes it easier to suspend disbelief (imagine if George Clooney played Wolverine.... ugh). And Rogue, the tragic character, he gives to a young Oscar-winning actress, who's attractive as all hell, but has been too young until recently to be seen as anything but a girl. Brilliant casting.
The plot at least makes some amount of sense (for a comic book, at least). Magneto in the comics would occasionally fall prey to bad writers and try to conquer the world. But his rhetoric matched the kinds of things we heard in the movie, and his plot fits that rhetoric well. There's a reason for the four main characters to be interacting. There's a reason for these teams of mutants to be fighting.
All the while, it kept a comic-book tone without succumbing to the gloom of Burton's Bat or the primary colors of Superman or the (shudder) whatever of "Batman and Robin." And part of that tone was that it didn't take itself too seriously. Seeing Toad pull a Darth Maul movie (alas, I was the only one in the theater that seemed to get it) was perfect. Wolverine's dialog had just that right edge of rudeness without turning him into a complete asshole - it was in some ways more than the comics (I don't think he's ever called anyone a "dick" in the comics) but that's because you can do more in a movie (even a PG-13) than in a Code-Approved comic book.
I recommend it. Even if you were never a fan, you or someone you know read the books.
"You actually wear this outside?"
"What else should we wear? Yellow spandex?"
Re:30 Min of advertising?!? (Score:2)
Since I got this too, it looks like the 25 minutes of commercials and previews before the movie is part of the package; "buy this movie and you have to show these commercials too"
As one of the guys I was at the movie with said; "damnit, I thought we go the the theater to not see these g-damn commercials"
Welcome to the real(?) world... (Score:3)
Frankly the thing that I loved about this movie is the subtle differences between Xavier and Magneto. They both share the goal of protecting mutants from the idiocy of normal humans but they are coming from different backgrounds and have other issues. Xavier has a fundamental faith in the goodness of people, and Magneto, having seen the atrocities man is capable of, does not. Magneto is a "means justify the ends" type, Xavier is not (witness the scene with the police for example).
**POTENTIAL SPOILER FOLLOWS**
By far my favorite illustration of this greyness of morality in the movie was Wolverine's comment to Storm as he was leaving to get Rogue. She's wanting him to join their cause and he questions her on whether she really is on the right side of things. This is what the world is really about folks. It is about people struggling to define themselves, define what's right in their own mind, and struggling to defend what they believe. It isn't about broadly defined black and white rules of right and wrong.
So, if you like to have bad guys to hate, and good guys to love, then go watch another movie.
---
Re:a minor correction (Score:2)
-- Enoch Root, the Karma Human Torch
Re:Magneto (Score:3)
It's important to make conclusions with valid data, and Katz doesn't understand some fundamental concepts. As you said, Magneto isn't a bad guy per se, for which I can somewhat forgive him (though he should be better acquainted with geek lore), but at the very least he could spell M-A-G-N-E-T-O correctly! Katz's review should be discarded because of bad data.
--
45 minutes cut? (Score:5)
Cool Stuff (Score:4)
Look for Stan Lee when Senator KElly gets out of the water. I presume som of the other guys with him are making cameos also.
At the very begininning when the Fox logo lights up, watch the X
Several characters from X-Men are identifiable in the School, for example, Jubilee is seen wearing her cool yellow raincoat.
I like Magento! (Score:2)
Re:Magneto (Score:5)
(Not unlike Mr Katz, too, for that matter.)
IMHO, =all= the characters in the X-Men comic books, TV animation, movie, etc, human AND mutants, have a mix of "good" and "evil". None of them are vilains, none of them are heros. The X-Men is NOT Star Wars. IMHO, it's about people and how they cope under extreme and extraordinary circumstances.
IMHO, if ANY political statement exists in ANY X-Men material, it's that "good" and "evil" is not about who has what title, nationality, skin colour, mutant powers, etc, but what you do with them. Politicians are not spawn of Cthulhu, but are often just as tragic as whoever they target.
Katz' blanket attacks and political phobia is not a thousand miles away from Magneto's various rampages, because of his past sufferings. They are a mark, not of evil, but of futile gestures in an attempt to ease a pain that can never be healed by external gestures.
Katz: Must all be seen thru geek-colored glasses? (Score:5)
I do not filter Katz.
I usually enjoy Katz' pieces.
I think Katz is a worthy
And I think Katz brings us a needed perspective.
That said:
Jon, do we need to have _everything_ run through a geek/Columbine filter all the time? Those references run through almost all your work, even when it's overkill. Virtually everyone here "gets" the alienation references in the X-Men, and doesn't need to be bludgeoned further with it.
In the canonical Katz article, we have some reference to: (circle one or more)
Geeks/Nerds
Columbine (usually referenced as "Post-Columbine)
Goths
Corporatism
All of the above
Jon, you're a terrific writer, and I enjoy your work a lot, but, to paraphrase Freud; "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar".
- -Josh Turiel
Re:Magento? (Score:2)
Re:you have to have a villian? (Score:2)
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Re:30 Min of advertising?!? (Score:2)
...phil
Except Usual Suspects wasn't Singer's last film... (Score:2)
I can't say I expected otherwise, but would it really be that hard to spend 30 seconds to check your facts with the IMDB, Katz?
Re:What other mutants were in the movie?(Spoilers) (Score:2)
Re:X-men rock! (Score:3)
School scene, with St. John Allerdyce (PYRO!) and Bobby, where Bobby makes Rogue the ice-rose.
See the Chinese girl in the yellow trenchcoat?
That's Jubilee.
Piotr's a little tougher to spot, but he's there.
In the scene when they're looking outside, and Xavier's doing the voiceover thing
That would be Piotr. No Colossus armored-form, unfortunately (sayeth the Rasputin fanboy) but I'll take what I can get.
Redhawk
Re:Can somebody explain... (Score:2)
Anything and everything is susceptible to Magnetic Fields. It is only limited to the strength of the magnetic field. Everything can be magnetized, as magnetism is merely the alignment of atoms. There are guys levitating spiders and magnetizing living objects likes frogs over at Fermilab and other places. The field strength of these things is enormous however. I believe the idea is to perfect anti-gravity and hopefully utilize this technology as some form of propulsion. The problem lies in the amount of energy required to generate such a dense magnetic field. (Think of powering New York City for a month and using all that energy for all of a few brief seconds)
So, Magneto has the ability to generate and control magnetic fields. In the comics he became so powerful as to be able to stop a persons bloodflow by controlling the ferrites in the persons blood. Magneto in my opinion is a character that lends himself to become all powerful, because as he learns to control his abilities and generate denser and more powerful magnetic fields he might literally be an unstoppable character. No one would be able to come close to him, they would die before they had a chance to do anything.
Magnetic fields are an interesting phenomena in their own right. I am by no means a physicist, however think for a moment that since all things can be magnetized, theoretically, all Magneto need do is generate a dense enough magnetic field to magnetize the copper and then he can control it as he sees fit.
Dan O'Shea
review of Katz's review (summary: katz != siskel) (Score:5)
a trivial writer seeks to trivialize a movie which he isn't capable of comprehending. end result - he trivializes himself further.
Katz(x) = 1/x as x->infinity
His biggest problem was that Stewart and McKellen's acting almost totally overwhelm the movie.
sorry Katz. Stewart and McKellen were magnificent, but if you didn't catch the nuances of the "supporting" cast then you weren't paying attention. Each actor did a terrific job and were equal to the Big Two which you've pedestalized. If you were so easily captivated by the Big Two then its no wonder you missed the rest of the movie.
It's easy to see why some geeks and many outcasts have always loved the X-Men a sentiment very much reflected in the movie.
wrong again, idiot. X-Men is not merely about Geeks and Outcasts. The intolerance theme is far deeper. Did you miss the reason why we saw Poland 1944 in the beginning of the film? Did you fail to notice the allusions to homosexual persecution ("they could be among us - do you want them leading boy scouts?" etc.) ?
The very same thing, of course, is happening to "geeks, Goths and freaks" all over the United States today, post-Columbine.
gee a reference to Columbine. how chic. this has nothing to do with Columbine. Geeks and Outcasts always suffer unfair persecution by peers, but the Intolerance that X-Men is about is far deeper and more fundamental. You're just trivializing what you don't understand.
With the possible exception of Wolverine and Rogue, we never really get to know any of the X-types well enough to care a lot about what happens to them, or to understand why they're doing what they're doing.
consider that this film was barely an hour and a half. consider that sequels are planned. Consider that Singer's budget was slashed. Consider that this is a summer movie that needs a balance between character development and heavy action to compete (and action is what X-Men is about just as much as Intolerance). Consider that the X_Men universe is a rich one that needs more than one film to tell its story. This movie set the stage.
of course if you had your way and the entire film was nothing but exhaustive character development and no action, you'd complain that it lacked "energy" wouldn't you, Katz?
Until the very end of the movie, which is a somewhat hokey confrontation at the Statue of Liberty, they never really seem to jell as a team.
this is precisely the point. and you thought it was hokey? care to explain that opinion? why was it hokey? what was hokey about it?
Despite the sensibilities and complaints of X-Men fans -- it's obvious why the comic series meant so much to hunted brainaics everywhere -- Singer is under no obligation to be completely faithful to the strip.
wrong! Singer is a fan, by the way. And if X-Men was as blatantly non-canon as the Superman or Batman movies were, it would suffer the same fate. Die a slow death. By remaining true to it, he is building on and inherits the rich legacy of material that the X-Men comics have already charted. There are GOOD and SOLID stories there. Abandoning the canonical treatment and going off in a differrent direction would take away from the X-Men and rob future films from using that rich world.
filtered through that Hollywood prism, there's no way he could keep the brooding, sometimes haunting edge of the comic.
have you ever read the comic? at times it is brooding, yes. But the X-Men comic is about hope, and about relationships between people. It is not dark or brooding overall. Were you expecting another Batman Movie clone? hoping for a re-derivation of the X-Men into some formula film so you wouldn't need to think?
We're supposed to hate Magento, but there isn't anything particularly hateful about him.
you idiot, we AREN'T supposed to hate Magneto. Even Senator Kelly's initial position is a REASONABLE one. This is why X-Men is so powerful as a story. The issues and moral stands are ambiguous. The reason for showing us Poland 1944 was supposed to give you the context if you had been paying attention. This was not a movie about black and white good vs. evil. Perhaps you're just incapable of seeing that however. A simple flick with neatly structured plot of Good Guys vs Bad Guys is what you'd prefer?
Even Wolverine, our hero, had to ask - "you sure you're on the right side?"
Magento's Holocaust connection was written into the series 20 years after its creation
shrug. if true, so? what's your point, that the X-Men therefore has no tolerance issues anymore? judge the movie on its merits. Even a non-fanboy can derive the basic points that this is not a simple matter of Goos and Bad. Its a more complex issue of Us Vs Them which isn't the same thing at all.
what really terrifies the renegade wing of the mutants and motivates them to wipe out the human race as it's constituted isn't some powerful enemy, but pending legislation in Congress,
another brilliantly idiotic statement. yes you are correct that the mutants collectively could band together and take over the world. And Prof X hints that any attempt at taking his students by force would not be met with *passive* resistance. But the essential point is that MUTANTS ARE PEOPLE. They want to live their lives. As a citizen the idea that you must be registered in a govt database because of your genetics, doesn't scare you? Are you honestly unable to understand what effect such legislation would have? Did you pay attention to Jean Grey's Senate speech?
This leaves the movie without a villain to really hate or a cause we can particularly identify with.
wrong. The villain is FEAR. the hero is HOPE.
the bottom line on you Katz is that you barely paid attention to this movie and have pretensions that you think you *know* something about the X-Men. You'd prefer a nice simple flick that had a nice bad guy and a good guy, and the issues that it discusses are too deep for you so you just relegate it to simplistic "hey this movie is anti-geek!" to try and curry favor with the /. readers who smell your BS at twenty clicks of the mouse away.
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______________________________________________
Katz totally missed the point - again. (Score:5)
Katz doesn't seem to grasp the kernel of what makes X-Men (movie, comic, cartoon) a great concept.
There are not easy answers; there is no black and white; there is cruel irony all around us!
We are not supposed to hate Magneto, not at all. We're supposed to understand, and even accept his motivation. We are supposed to see his view throught his eyes, and see it as completely justified.
The openning scene of the movie was absolutely powerful - it set a tone that (IMO) the rest of the movie failed to live up to. If the entire movie carried the emotional payload of the first five minutes, it would have been draining, and not envigorating. It would have left half of it's target audience, the early-teen boys, in shambles, asking some very hard questions. The first scene, hopefully, foreshadows the potential of the (impending, I'm sure) sequels. X-Men SHOULD be a franchise, but I hope that it will not be another Batman; it has much more potential than that. But I digress...
X-Men is about difficult choices, and about there not being a simple black and white world.
There are multiple conflicts in the X-Men saga:
1. Between the mundanes and the mutants; driven by fear on both sides. Fear of the different and potentially superior vs fear of the establishment.
2. Between Congress and Individuals - between "The Law" and those who seemingly live beyond the laws of nature.
3. Between the good and the 'bad' mutants; though the 'bad' get a bad rap for nearsighted reasons. This is really a conflict between lawful and chaotic, in AD&D terms. Xavier wants to play by the rules, while to Magneto, the old rules are no longer applicable and new ones should be enforced.
4. Between individual characters: Cyclops and Wolverine, Xavier and Magneto, Wolverine and Sabertooth; more to come as the series goes on.
5. Within each character: Rogue, in effect a vampire, can kill with a touch and as a result can never be close to anyone; Woverine's healing factor is what singled him out for the adamantium infusion - and cost him his identity and memory. His cavalier attitude is a cover for the deep pain of not knowing who he is; Xavier's telepathy allows him to run around the world in the blink of an eye while his body is bound to his chair; Mystique, who is an outcast BECAUSE she is a chameleon.
In effect, each of the characters is crippled by their mutation (See: Algernon's Law.) The symmetry of this irony is a beautiful thing. X-Men is about opposites.
Also, Jon, the movie IS hilarious - it's just loaded with inside jokes. Wolverine complaining about the X-Men uniform, and cyclops suggesting yellow spandex had the theater in stitches!
I recognized Bobby right away, but was that Torch?? I hope the next installment will feature Beast as one of Xavier's school-teachers... Apparently he was left out since 'doing him justice would have blown the budget'. I can believe that. I'm really looking forward to the sequels - there is huge potential in X-Men.
Jon, you ought to see the movie again. Pay attention to the subtleties, since the movie tracks very well with the spirit of the X-Men.
Re:What I thought - the comic come to life (Score:2)
Jon
Some cute lines. (Score:2)
The response from Wolverine to Cyclops was cute."How do we know it's really you", response, "You're still a dick.".
I don't think Wolverine said "bub" in the movie once.
What happens when lightening hits a toad?
Singer's Last Film (Score:2)
Katz is a writer? (Score:4)
Beyond that, Singer's particular rendering has some big flaws as a big-screen tale. We're supposed to hate Magento, but there isn't anything particularly hateful about him. He's trying to save his species from what he believes from personal experience is a possible Holocaust-style extinction
That's exactly the point! Writers don't usually like to crate black and white tales of good and evil. No one in the world is EVIL, the whole point is that evil actions are done by those who most fanatically believe they are doing good.
This is called good storytelling in most fiction-writing circles -- you give your characters depth beyond "he's the bad guy" and "they're the good guys".
That's why the spend so much time questioning who is right and wrong -- maybe Wolverine is right to question "are you sure you're on the right side?" This is a war, and normals won't hesitate to kill the mutants.
Should the mutants hold to ideals of freedom and sacrifice, knowing that Rogue will die because Xavier is unwilling to kill Magneto when he has the chance? Should we stand by and sacrifice innocents so that we can nobly allow murderers to live?
Does being "right" matter in the end if you are dead?
This is (hopefully) a little more complex than DieHard (I'm the robber, you're the cop, catch me!)...
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.
Re:Curious (Score:2)
Re:as soon as Katz makes a statement... (Score:2)
Star Wars... were you referring to Terry Brooks (a pretty good sci-fi author of Shannara) or R.A. Salvatore (the author of the Canticle and the Drizzt Do'Urden saga)?
Re:Katz's geek alienation again (Score:2)
-russ
IMDB? Katz, learn to fact-check. (Score:2)
Bryan Singer's last movie was apt Pupil.
Post when?? (Score:4)
This MUST be a typo. Surely you mean "post-Columbian". I'm sure you don't mean to imply that, previous to 2 years ago, the mildly-to-radically different were accepted with open arms by all segments of society.
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Ridiculously detailed box office stuff.... (Score:3)
The good news is that the film should bring in a total of $180-200 million in the states, figure about $400 million worldwide (all that based on this weekend's numbers). The film will be quite profitable - and there will definitely be sequels. So...
Based on this why then do the DVD producers get such a bug up their arses about copy protection, encryption, and making reverse engineering illegal?
Because 70% of the films they make lose money. Warner Bros. spent $250 million on Batman and Robin, and only made about half of that back. A couple of years later they spent $220 million filming Wild Wild West and only made $100 million back. Therefore, they squeeze all the money they can from their successful films to pay for the stinky ones.
Also, the people in charge of the studios, and most American corporations, rarely take the humanistic view that "okay, we've made enough money from this project. Let's give it away for free now!" Those few companies that do that usually go bankrupt within a week or so.
The definitive X-Men Review [pointlesswasteoftime.com]
Sets (Score:2)
Cyclops' Ocular Bursts (Score:2)
X-Men/Trek crossover (Score:2)
Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard meets Patrick Stewart as Professor X.
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Great Bad Guys Make Great Movies (Score:2)
It wasn't just a rock 'em, sock 'em, blow 'em up summer bash. There was some great character exploration, especially WRT to Woleverine and Rogue as a big brother, little sister relationship. And Magneto and his minions weren't mindless baddies bent on world destruction: they were serious in their beliefs that mutants were the next thing in the world but humans were holding them back.
Similar to The Rock [imdb.com], even the bad guys were "good" guys in the sense that they believed their cause was just and the means justified the end. (Means don't justify the end, but it's at least a forgiveable mistake.) With the size of the villian creating the size of the hero, huge Sabretooth kept me wondering how the X-Men would beat him, Mystique was the changeling who surprisingly kicked some serious wolfish butt and Toad--Ray Parks a.k.a. Darth Maul was excellent in this role--was menacing enough, although the first encounter with him painting some machinery left me thinking he was some geek boy. (Oh wait--that's Cyclops. ;)
Anyway, back to my point: Magneto and his Brotherhood keep the movie engrossing. Knowing about the bad keeps you interested in the good. After the heart-stopping opening scene, we're not supposed to hate the bad guy, we're supposed to feel sorry for him, just as Xavier does. And when viewed in this light, the movie succeeds terrifically for me. I'm going to go watch it again.
--
Here is my own review of X-men (Score:2)
JonKatz Manages To Piss People Off, Film at 11 (Score:2)
This just in, JonKatz has yet again managed to alienate programmers and developers everywhere... And nobody even woke up to read the headline since this is becoming his modus operandi.
We're all different.
Re:Will Rogue off Ms Marvel in the next film? (Score:2)
My own review as an outsider (Score:2)
He absolutely loved the movie. It was new, exciting, interesting and just plain fun. He is eagerly awaiting a sequel and is definitely planning on seeing it again. He is completely new to the series and liked the characters and story, et. al. He said the acting was good and that he knew he really liked the movie within the first 5 minutes of the movie. He also had never really seen any previews or reviews of the movie before going to see it, so he had a completely open mind about it.
I, on the other hand, had seen a lot of the previews, had read some reviews, knew about the story, and wasn't really expecting much (I thought the previews made it look very cheesy and like it was just going to show some interesting costumes, while being a completely dispicable movie in the lines of "Batman and Robin" [or whichever the one was with Schwartzeneger and Uma Thurman]). This movie was one of those that could be really bad or really good depending on who made the movie. After about 5 minutes into the movie, I could tell this was going to be a good (action) movie. The movie looked good; the actors reacted well to each other; the story and plot were thick enough to hold the moviegoers attention and not make you think about every little detail, while not bombarding you with a ton of info, either. The other nice thing was that it didn't try to be the "good" movie with emotional plots, well developed characters, tearjerking scenes and such. It was an action movie, plain and simple. The worst downfall of such terrible movies as Armageddon and MI:2 was that they tried to be "good" movies instead of action movies. They just end up boring you during the parts where you want action and making the BIG hollywood actors look stupid because they are just eye-candy and not real actors. It also wasn't heavy on some of the worst parts of a typical action movie, either: one-liners. They are typically just for the people who can't process a seriously funny line and for a part of the movie where there isn't room for one, but the action is slowing down and needs to keep the audience's attention. There are still a few in there, but most are genuinely funny and they are sparsed out.
In all, this was a fun movie. I will probably see it again as it has good replay value: because you always knew how it was going to end and pretty much what was going to happen, it won't lose much. There ARE some criticisms of the movie apart from the rabid fans, but they aren't too critical to the enjoyment of the movie. They left a lot open for sequels and for imagination (like why certain things did certain things and what exactly was Sabre Tooths superpower besides being strong).
For an action movie I give it 8.5/10. Just as a movie, I give it 7/10.
I thought it was great, agreeing with Rob (Score:2)
JonKatz, being a gasbag, complains that we can't hate Magneto. That's the point, foo! The whole point of the X-Men comic is that there's questions of morality and evil and good are not always clearly divided. That's SuperMan, not X-Men.
The fact that you can't hate Magneto only makes the movie better and more entertaining. Nevertheless, I hope that numerous sequels are made because this movie just touches on the characters and their development over a long time.
Oh, and that the characters don't gel as a team, Jon? Of course they don't, they just started working together. Geez. And that crap about actors "overwhelming" the others? Total crap.
Re:45 minutes cut? - DVD fodder! (Score:2)
Real Evil (Score:2)
Real evil does not show its true nature until it believes it has won; caution is the watch word of evil. As long as there are forces opposing it evil clouds itself in doubt; Lenin's true nature didn't show up until the Soviet Union was consolidated. Hitler - had he not started WW - II doubtless would have been considered a great German leader.
Magneto's real nature was outlined by one of the X - men toward the end of the movie when he said "You're so full of shit, if you really cared about mutants it would be YOU in that machine instead of Rogue" (Or words to that effect - sorry only saw the film once on Friday.)
I *knew* it (Score:5)
This was as easy to predict as Independence Day falling on the 4th of July: KatzBot had to plug Columbine in there, and mark the parallel between X-Men and the alienation of geeks.
To whoever coded the KatzBot: great job.
(To moderators: don't mark this post as Insightful just because it's flaming Katz. Mark it as Flamebait, cause it's what it is. Oh, and see if I care.)
--Enoch Root, the Karma Human Torch
$58 MILLION OPENING WEEKEND (Score:2)
That stack would be 58 million apples high.
Boggles the mind, doesn't it? [pointlesswasteoftime.com]
"Bad" Guy (Score:5)
I personally thought that this was one of the most remarkable parts of the movie, the fact that an action movie can have two sides that you can both identify and agree with. This was perhaps the most realistic part of the film, that neither side was the best solution to the answer (will Dr. X's efforts really save the mutants/Magneto is fighting for their rights but in a violent manner) and that both can be seen as good and bad. As one reviewer put it, Magneto is Malcom X to Dr. X's Martin Luther King, Jr. In life, nothing is as simple as Luke and Darth Vader, and I think that the fact that the writers of this movie/comic book realize that makes it all that more meaningful to me.
I don't think I've seen another action movie have such thoughtful and meaninful antagonists since The Rock.
Great Job! Great Movie!
And to paraphrase George Carlin's retort... (Score:4)
Presuming that's true.... (Score:2)
Remember, they intentionally went for a PG-13 rating to get the kids in there (yes, some comic book fans are children). You can't get kids to sit through a 2.5 hour movie, no matter how good the character deveopment is... so it wouldn't surprise me if Singer turned in a much longer cut and they made him trim it. And of course you cut the character/background stuff - and not those expensive effects sequences. That's just the way it works. [pointlesswasteoftime.com]
Fatal Flaw (spoiler ahead): (Score:2)
Kevin Fox
Haiku (Score:2)
Lost on the cutting room floor
He said "Napster Bad! [campchaos.com]"
Sequel (Score:2)
Katz is a little off here... (Score:2)
You didn't read the comic, did you? Since when are we supposed to hate Magneto?!?? I see him (as most fans do, IMO) as a tragic man, who if circumstances were different could have been a great leader. Hell, in the film itself, you have Xavier who still tries to give Magneto hope in the good nature of humans, and Wolverine (quite appropriately IMO) questioning whether Xavier or Magneto is leading the right side. The only point where anyone could hate him would be where he's killing Rogue to further his aims: _that_ action pushes him over the top (and Wolverine says as much! It's all there!)..
I think the correct feelings towards the Magneto character are more like Pity and Fear than Hate... Unless you're one of the kine forming up against mutants
Your Working Boy,
Will Rogue off Ms Marvel in the next film? (Score:2)
I would also love to see Nimrod (or some Sentinel) make an appearance and take out a bunch of mutants.
Large Grunting Guy (Score:2)
Wolverine deserves his own film! (Score:2)
Re:Katz's geek alienation again (Score:2)
Katz doesn't understand his own teachings (Score:2)
The mutants are afraid that they'll be seen as outcasts. *That* is what they are fighting. You should know this better than anyone. Regardless of the effectiveness of any legislation passed, the mere passage of the bill and even the discussion leading up to it would clearly increase the fear of mutants in the general population. Senator Kelly was saying outright that mutants were unsafe to be around. Such campeign speaches could have a drastic affect on public opinion. Really, Katz, isn't this your own turf here?
Also, according to a friend of mine who was a fan of the comics (which I never read), Senator Kelly was the ultimate evil, NOT Magneto. Magneto was bad, yes, but Kelly was causing the problems in the first place by turning the human race against mutants.
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Nine screenwriters (Score:2)
As many as nine different screenwriters worked over scenes (including the Usual Suspects writer Christopher McQuarrie - surprised he didn't try to slap a surprise ending onto the thing). Point being, if it feels like something is missing, there are many, many stages where it could have been lost. Any time you hear about a script getting worked over that much you usually assume it is a bad movie. Here I think Singer overcame all of that, being the director that he is, and in two hours pieced together the world that the comic had years to build.
X-Men, or X-crement? [pointlesswasteoftime.com]
If Slashdot/Linux people had Mutant Powers? (Score:2)
Katz, you are soooo annoying (Score:2)
I'm not saying you are not a good writer. I'm not saying that you do not have something to contribute with your writing. But it is obvious that you do not know anything about X-Men.
Just so you know, Magneto is NOT supposed to be hated. Duh. You wouldn't know that because you never really read the series. But that's not the problem. Lots of people never read it, and I'm not annoyed with their wrong conclusions. But then they don't try to come off as an expert, do they?
Geez. Just stick to what you know and respectfully admit when you *might* not know what you are talking about. *sigh*
Re:Some things. (Score:2)
"Scream for me"
"You still owe me a scream"
Or something like that - both directed to Storm
Oh wait - he had a couple short ones with Magneto too...something like "They got away" or "With them" or something.
I like Katz (Score:2)
We're all different.
Nah, Magneto could have sacrificed himself! (Score:2)
A careful view of the screenplay paints M as only evil. The entire plot line of the film depends upon it. Had Magneto made the self-serving, if misguided, effort to change the world himself (sacrificing his life to do so), he might well have succeeded -- he was able to hide his throughts and location from view. Instead, he conspires to get W, as a vehicle to get R, and thereby invoke the wrath and intervention of the Xavier school cabal.
Were M not evil and self-concerned, the screenplay would have to be much more introspective (and there would be no reason for W and R to be part of it).
No, I see it (from the Movie point of view), that this is a good mutant-bad mutant thing. No tragic anti-hero, M. He could have been, I agree -- but not in this screenplay.
You reviewers were 100% ... OFF. (Score:3)
2. Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) out acted every single star in the movie hands down. There is NO arguing that. Stewart and McKellen were dwarfed by his acting ability. No doubt he will be in a TON of movies after directors see how well he does.
3. X-Men were never a 'well formed team' .. Ever. They were ALWAYS a band of bickering freaks. They split to form many seperate groups (X-Factor, X-Force, etc) *many* *many* times. There was very little love between members, but when there was, it was very special because it was so RARE.
In short, the reviewers here don't know what the heck they saw, and obviously never read an X-Men comic to save their lives. Action movie? Pshaww...
The article drinkypoo read (Score:5)
The only person I really can agree with much here is Rob, so I'll just start from the top and work my way down. Don't worry, I'm not going to comment on every paragraph, nor bother trying to fix any spelling/grammatical errors. I have work to do today :)
There we go. This really says it all. X-Men wasn't meant (obviously) to be a canonical X-Men history lesson in a movie. If you did that, there wouldn't be any room for anything other than history, just for the main characters in the movie, let alone the kids at the school.
Okay, I'm just going to have to disagree with this one. I'm not saying that either of them hosed it up, because they didn't. They are both eminently competent actors in everything they do. However, this movie didn't really require a lot of range out of either of them. I was a whole lot happier with Hugh Jackman, who I hadn't seen before, than I was with either of the odd couple of grumpy old men.
Everyone's said it, but I'm going to go for that "Redundant" action. This has been happening throughout history, both before and after columbine. Take a look at the Jews, the Christians, and so on. This ain't new. Build a bridge, and get over it. I'm not saying it's not a real issue, but it's NOT because of recent events.
Obviously you've never read the comic for extended periods of time. He's not supposed to be a BAD guy per se, just misguided. You could say the same thing about Hitler, but except when some lame-ass writers fucked around with him (I believe someone else has made this point) he's generally not been out to terminate mankind. His methods are just the violent counterpart to Xavier's.
It's a movie, and you're not willing to go through some suspension of disbelief? How do you manage to enjoy any works of fiction?
This, I feel, was the most insane thing to leave out. His eyes become an important plot point at a number of times - wouldn't it have made sense to explain what's up with them?
Anyway, I think y'all are missing the point here on some level or other (Except perhaps Rob.) This movie was supposed to be fun for the majority of moviegoers. It was not there to please the kind of people who flip through their back issues looking for contradictions or art errors. It was also not there just for the moviegoing public at large. In the sense that it appealed on some level to the biggest parts of both groups, it's a wild success. It also made fifty mil already, so it's a Box Office success, too.
Some parts of the movie bothered me. I'd have liked to have gotten a bit more into the histories, but on the whole I'm pretty satisfied with how things turned out. I think that in order to make a "better" movie you'd have to accept poor sales, and that hurts the chances of a sequel. Considering the generally high quality (I think) of the one we've seen, I actually have high hopes for a sequel which we all know will be coming. As you know, trilogies always have a bad film in them - I think Return of the Jedi was, for the most part, lame. It was actually okay just about up to the point where they wander around on endor with the teddy bears and sing happy songs.
As long as they don't make X-Men: The Musical, I'll be okay.
as soon as Katz makes a statement... (Score:3)
"He had to try and please the rabid X-Men fans -- who make up one of the most impassioned sub-genres of outcast culture and who were noisily vigilant for even the slightest deviations from the comic version"
This is not specific to just teenagers and comic books. Hell, I know plenty of ADULTS that were upset that the Horse Whisperer was so bad compared to the movie... and just as many ADULTS that got pissed that Battlefield Earth was so crummy. And just by looking at the cross-section of people that were in the movie theatre that I was in, it was as wide-ranging a crowd as any I've ever seen. It wasn't just geeks. It wasn't just teenagers. Hell, I was sitting behind two OLD LADIES.
Personally, I don't think the movie did the comic book series justice. There wasn't enough character development... not that there ever really would have been. But it was a good ENTERTAINING movie.
Hopefully they'll do Lord of the Rings much better.
Katz misses one very important point... (Score:2)
The lines are not so well defined. Sometimes humanity isn't worth saving. Sometimes Prof. X's quest seems rather quixotic. Sometimes Magneto has the right idea -- fighting for the survival of his species. But that's why X-Men is so great.
-JF
I for one am glad that Katz where's geek glasses (Score:3)
However, I for one am glad that he wears them all the time. I mean, without his glasses, a huge destructive beam of GEEKS would shoot out from his eyes, vaporizing anthing in its path! Nobody would be safe! Think about the incredibly effort Katz must have invested to learn to control that powerful "gift" - I think we all owe a debt to Prof. X!
The Physics and the Flame (Score:2)
That said, I thought it was great. The X-Men francise has been going for so long now that to do proper character development on even one of the minor characters could easily be a 3 hour movie. I have no problem whatsoever that they assumed some foreknowledge of the characters or some acceptance that they got how they are somehow and it would take "Too Damned Long(tm)" to describe how. This movie would have had to have been a 40 hour epic to appease some of the rabid fans, but you just can't do that with a movie. All in all, I'm glad they did no background on most of the characters instead of doing a crappy 2 minute blip... if they'd done that, they would have had to change most of the backgrounds just to make them fit. As it is, this leaves the door wide open for the series. You can do prequels on any of the characters as well as a ton of sequels.
As for the complaints that there was no clear-cut, "EZ2Hate (tm)" villian... I'm disappointed, especially with Katz. I figured everyone would be happy that a movie broke the tired formula of absolute good -vs- absolute evil that's so common in action flicks (Hear that Katz? It's refreshing when people break out of the same tired formula!) Although it doesn't take the time to fully explore it (nor could it, even in 3 hours), it hints at a deeper, more meaningful conflict.
As for the cast, I was certainly a bit depressed that there was absolutely no development, and barely even a line for any of Magneto's henchmen. I think it was a mistake to do so little character development on the villians and their motivations. They should have sucked it up, made it a full 2 hours, and given us more of an explaination there. I thought Patrick Stewart was good, but I disagree that he and Ian McKellen outshone all the other stars. Heck, Prof. X was unconscious for the most important part of the movie. In fact, I was by far the most impressed with Hugh Jackman's Wolverine. Wolverine is supposed to be the coolest character, and I think he was well scripted, and not overdone... reasonably well balanced with the other heros. It actually seemed like a team effort (another rare phenomenon in action flicks).
All in all, I really enjoyed the movie. I hope to see more of them! There's TONS of potential in this series. And they'd better not screw it up like they did with Batman!!!
- StaticLimit
West Coast Premier + Sites (Score:2)
I went to the west coast premier of the X-Men. It was held at 12:01 a.m. Friday at the Avco Theater in Westwood (a part of Los Angeles), CA. I had a great time.
It appears the premier was organized by Counting Down [countingdown.com]. You can find their X-Men fan site here [63.251.216.10]. People started lining up the Monday before the movie. At 5:00 p.m. Friday night a mock "rally" was held to "protest Senator Kelly and his poisonous agenda." It was all in good fun, and some of the drivers on Wilshire Blvd. honked their horns in support.
The nicest thing about the premier was that Tyler Mane, the actor who plays Sabertooth, showed up. (A former WCW wrestler, he is a *big* guy.) Tyler was a great guy, introducing himself to the people in line, signing autographs and even taking the tickets at the door. (Got an autograph for a friend.)
The theater let us in about an hour early. Everybody got a X-Men pin and/or poster, plus Senator Kelly's campaign literature. They tossed beach balls into the audience to keep us occupied (it did), and then held an X-Men trivia contest. Among the prizes were t-shirts, trading card sets, red sun glasses (very popular), and a Sony Playstation complete with X-Men game. (I won a Xavier School for Gifted Youngserts t-shirt.) I very much liked the fact they made sure the little kid next to me got a set of trading cards.
As you will suspect, the audience *loved* the movie. Everyone had a great time
I also saw the movie with a friend on Saturday night, which was interesting. While this audience also obviously enjoyed the movie, it was clear that they didn't get a lot of the inside jokes. Still, it was worth seeing twice.
If you want to know if you are a mutant, you might want to check out Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters [x-men-the-movie.com]. (Warning: Flash "enabled" site -- but fun.
If you are concerned about mutant rights, you might want to check out Mutant Rights [mutantrights.org]. They don't have much there yet, but promise more in the furture.
What I thought of it... (Score:5)
I saw it Friday night (I wasnt planning to, I just tagged along with some friends who happened to mention they were going) and was quite prepared to be disappointed. I was pleasantly surprised. Not particularly with the basic story, that was pretty predictable and I knew a lot of the significant points of it from my memory of the comic books anyway. Where I really was impressed was with the characters and the casting. They looked right! Even viewed in mufti rather than in uniform it was easily possible to recognise them - for Cyclops they picked a guy that looked like he was drawn, Storm was unmistakeable, You take one look at a still shot of Rogue, get told its an xmen movie and you knew who she was playing. Wolverine? Nuff said. Thats even leaving aside the perfect casting of Prof x and Magneto.
OK, thats the characters looking right now are they playing the right parts? Cyclops is an uptight arrogant asshole -Check! and whats more he isnt just opening fire on a whim but is constantly adjusting his visor, just like in the comics. Storm is portrayed as she was originally drawn - She was always the most vulnerable of the team in a straight fight until she lost her temper so her fight with toad was particularly well scripted - even down to the snippy one-liner she so often comes out with before she really cuts loose. Jean Grey was a little underused in the story but then she was truly developed as a character much later in the series anyway. Wolverine was properly portrayed as more than the supreme thug he's sometimes characterised as. Rogue was also shown as she truly was in her early days. Add in the cameos by "future" x-men at the school and you realise that this film was made by guys who read the comics.
All in all I went in there fully expecting it to suck as badly as the cartoon series did but it didnt. I heard many hardcore fans saying the same things as they walked out of the movie and the few I talked to tended to agree with me - overall I think this film got it right, but there wasnt enough of it. Just like we always ended up chafing as we waited for the next comic issue I fully expect fans to now be waiting for the sequel to this.
# human firmware exploit
# Word will insert into your optic buffer
# without bounds checking
Re:And to paraphrase George Carlin's retort... (Score:2)
- -Josh Turiel
Or perhaps he just wants to milk... (Score:3)
Hmmm, let's see here:
a) One untalented writer
b) Thousands of young, impressionable, and immature "geeks"
What's a spineless hack to do? Perhaps sell to these kiddies who'd gleefully swallow anything that "speaks" to them. Blah.
...I tire of all this apologetic crap. Nothing is simply wrong, misguided, or even manipulative these days.
Slashdot. (Score:3)
Re:Katz's geek alienation again (Score:5)
I'm waiting for Hemos' review demanding more nanotechnology in the sequel. And Nik probably has a review on the BSD page that I'll never notice.
This is why I dont take movie advice from anyone (Score:4)
Instead, Magneto and Prof. X both have some good and bad points to them. THe right/wrong combo doesnt have a clearly drawn line, it is very jagged at best. There were times I could understand Magneto, and times I was not too pleased with what Prof X did. And yes, both of them were justified in their views. But, does that give Magneto the right to pursue war with normal humans? Or Prof X to for a vigilant force to do with as *he* sees fit? Very cool stuff, if you think about it some. And throw in the cool effects, some great one-liners (Saw Scary Movie the night before X-Men, X-Men beats it out for best one-liner hands down). And I dont think I need to mention the special effects magic; it was just plain cool.
Oh, and Michael, re-read what you wrote here:
"Somewhere in there was probably an explanation of why Cyclops can't open his eyes without huge bursts of ravening energy pouring from them, but we didn't get to see it."
This just strikes me as dumb. By the same note, why didnt we learn why Magneto got magnetized? Or why Rogue can suck you drier than a mosquito? Toad, Mystique, c'mon they didnt explain much anyone, with the partial exception of Wolverine. Singer assumed some small prior knowledge of characters, which IMHO was a good thing since it allowed us to skip a lot of background that would not have applied to the movie as a whole. Instead, the characters are given the brief explanation, like Prof X's original X-Men at his school, and then they are developed in relation to one another and Wolverine from there. Good depth for a (relatively) short movie. My opinion, should you choose to accept it, is that this is just a plain cool movie if you know of X-Men, but dont worship them. And also if you dont see the world as a huge entity working tirelessly to alienate geeks and Hollywood as a miracle working place where a movie can please 14 different levels of knowledge on the subject at once. Come on people, its a movie not an epic saga or anything, like the long-running comic strip. Give it a chance in the proper spectrum.
Ah well, that was rather rambling. I need to sleep more O:-)
-pogle
Re:Katz's geek alienation again (Score:3)
Check out this Slashdot post [slashdot.org]. Last Wednesday, DeadSea estimated that Katz would be comparing geek and mutant alienation within a week. Not only that, but Ralph Wiggam was talking about [slashdot.org] making side bets on the occurence of phrases like "post-Columbine".
--Phil (Still hoping for more (hopefully better) columnists for Slashdot--get rid of the Katz monopoly.)
Why I liked the movie... (Score:5)
They enjoyed Ian McKellan and Patrik Stewart (in the role he was born to play
As for the secondary characters, I think they actually did a good job. It's been a while, but I don't remember Toad ever being such a bad ass, and so smart with the use of his powers. I don't remember Mystique being a martial arts expert (but it could have been, I am not an Xmen cult member). Sabertooth...well, ok, he grunted a lot, but he's not really supposed to be a man of words. At least I wondered what was going on under his rather hairy furrowed brow.
The movie made wonderful reference to other Xmen still in development, with the obvious one being Rogue, but the not so obvious ones as well. Did anyone else catch the name of the girl walking though walls was Kitty, as in Kitty Pride? Or Bobby, as in Bobby Drake, freezing things? This was the sort of thing that should appeal to the more hard core Xmen fans...you are suppose to feel like you are in the school.
Personally, I liked it. It wasn't the deeply emotional and bloody violence of Gladiator (which I LOVED), but it was fun. I am enough of an Xmen fan to appreciate all the little side jokes (yellow spandex).More importantly, my wife, who has never read a comic book, really had a good time. She didn't feel the need to ask me about cyclops. She saw the love triangle. So, she had fun as well.
It's like I said before, doesn't anyone go to the movies to escape anymore? To have fun and not have to have a deep plot?
Re:Magneto (Score:5)
Fun & Entertaining (Score:3)
I certainly found it more enjoyable than Gladiator, which was far too contrived, poorly written, and historically inaccurate to be taken as seriously as it was intended.
But The X-Men was exactly what it was made to be, and nothing more: a fun, satisfying first movie for a franchise which (hopefully) is only beginning a long run on the big screen.
you have to have a villian? (Score:4)
Sabretooth..... (Score:3)
Am I the only one who thought Sabretooth was being played by James Hetfield of Metallica?
ROAR!
Re:Magneto (Score:3)
I think that they did an excellent job at portraying his personality. For while he was one of the X-Men's greatest enemies, he also LED the X-Men during one of Professor X's 'trips'. And they wouldn't just hand the X-Men over to a clear-cut simple villan, like Apocalypse or such. *grin* Magneto is a well-rounded deep character, with his demons that he ends up overcoming down the line.