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trinityvixenI wouldn't say I didn't enjoy the film. I had a good time, many scenes were pleasantly diverting, and the new characters that were thrown in weren't nearly as overwhelming as I'd expected. Some were useless, don't get me wrong, but I wouldn't say they were bogging the story down. Really, there was a lot of talent that was just wasted--actors I recognize thrown in to sell the thing, not to breathe life into their parts. I had totally forgotten that Shoreh Agadashloo (sp?) was in this until the credits rolled. Bill Duke I knew from the first panning shot over the President's war room (you couldn't help but know the guy right off if you'd watched Predator as many times as I have). Vinnie Jones as Juggernaut was entirely decent, which surprised me. Cain Marko isn't supposed to be terribly deep, and I was iffy on them making him a mutant, but it worked well enough to put him in as one, and he had a funny line or two.
After them, the rest of the add-ons were fairly superfluous. Callisto--who you'd have to know from consulting SuperHeroHype to know that that was her name--was really strange, useful only really once, and ridiculously powered. Maybe it's because I've only ever run across her in the animated series, but what the shit was she doing with Quicksilver's powers? And, of all people, it was![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
viridian who pointed out to me who was supposed to be Psylocke. Yes, she had purple streaks, and supposedly (I didn't notice) the same red tattoo over her eye, but her powers weren't obvious. She seemed to do the shadow crawling ability she gained from the run-in with...was it the Hand?...but the thing she crawled out of wasn't in shadow. It was more like that chick with the rainbow colored hair in the animated series. Well, at least she really was a Morlock. I resent most of the Morlocks looking more passibly human than not.
And for all the ballyhoo about Angel--he gets his own poster, for God's sake--he was utterly pointless as a character. As a motivator for the film's central question, that of whether mutation should be cured, it would have been just as easy for Warren to be the motivating force himself and not have that heart-string bullshit thrown in with his father doing the sponsoring. Isn't trying to cure himself how Angel became Archangel? Or do I need to stop basing my knowledge off the cartoon? I found the spikey kid more interesting because he was sick and ruthless and just did more. Angel cried and the actor postured about in a ludicrous manner because he had no idea how to flex obviously CGI-d wings. Did like the wing-rack though. That was impressively realistic looking, especially as the one in the comics always seemed unweildy and "fake."
The X-kids I liked a lot. I especially loved Bobby and Kitty. The Rogue-Bobby drama had me rolling my eyes, likewise her predictable reaction to Bobby cheering Kitty up, mostly because X2 did it better. Bobby and Rogue have presumably been together long enough now to work through some of this crap, so they shouldn't still be mired in that. Also, Anna Paquin, where is your accent? Waste of a good character. The girl playing Kitty was terrible cute and damn smart, which I loved. The Kitty of my knowledge is forever stuck at that spunky teenager age, being too smart for it and yet inexperienced at the same time. I loved that Kitty used her head and made the most of her mostly non-offensive power. She took down Juggernaut. Hee!
I was sitting between two slash-goggled gals, so they made noise about the Bobby-St. John thing, which of course came down to a mere flex of their powers. Really, I think Bobby's refusal to respond to Pyro's goading is one of the best bits in the movie. That's what the X-Men are about--they're not going to resort to violence because of name calling. If he'd known that Pyro was going to blow up the clinic, however... Anyway, Bobby went ice-form, I went SQUEEEE.
Other "squees!":
-Fastball special! Fastball special!
-Danger room! Danger room!
-The Phoenix effect--the makeup was truly creepy, but having Jean turn cadaver-like instead of incandescantly bright was actually real genius. It makes her that much more frightening.
-Mystique! Raven!
-Moira! Hi, Moira! Bye, Moira!
-Hank! Hank in uniform! Hank as feral!
Less than squee-worthy:
1) Resolving the Phoenix storyline without Cyclops or Xavier
Audiences want the Jack-man, I get it. He's got more sexual tension and whatnot. I'll even forgive the Xavier-throwing-out-all-his-ethics approach to cutting Jean off from her powers. Something similar was done in canon, for her own protection, but it was very different from how in the movie Xavier basically turned off her powers entirely (in X1 she could barely read minds and had only a rudimentary control of her telekinesis, which is sad for a woman obviously in her thirties who'd been a student for decades at that point) because he didn't seem to trust her to do the right thing with them (to be fair, the presentation of young Jean argues he was probably right about that). But the whole "Phoenix is a split personality of Jean's"? Bull-fucking-shit. Either Phoenix is Jean or she isn't. The sort of psychological explanations necessary to reconcile a person with multiple-personality disorder wouldn't fit into an hour-and-a-half movie even if it were only about that person. Plus, why would the entity that's Jean's id, basically, be called Phoenix prior to her resurrection? Meh, weak writing, weaker explanatio and too much exposition just stuffed in Xavier's mouth.
Too much groping by the Jack-man, too. It was nice he did eventually remember that Jean was supposed to be in love with Scott and that he eventually noticed she wasn't inquiring about him or answering questions about the glasses (did he even tell Storm or Xavier he found those, or was he hoping they'd just assume Scott was still out finding himself and reconciling with fate?). But I felt that the romance between Jean and Logan was always a forced one, since X1. Jean didn't have enough going for her, lines-wise, sassy-ness-wise in X1 to merit Logan's attention in the first place. The X2 pairing off bothered me less because there was an established attraction (maybe not established well, but one taken for granted), Jean was concerned about Scott's disappearance and thus more vulnerable to it, and Logan pressed his advantage as a source of comfort and reassurance. Sorta.
Now, Jean's back and she doesn't give a fig about her fiance, she's practically humping the Wolverine in the med lab, and this is all okay because they have better chemistry? I didn't see why they had chemistry at all. Logan was hung up on her for less than obvious reasons (I mean, she was generally hot and powerful and awesome, but why they two generated sparks, I couldn't tell you). Her letting Logan get near enough to kill her GRATES ON MY SOUL. There's no way he would have survived, healing factor or no, when the Phoenix is atomizing people completely with a sweep of her hand. Unless his healing powers make him essentially a sponge and he can reassemble individual cells back into place, Logan had no chance of surviving. And it was weird to see his flesh peeled back to the adamantium on his skeleton. It just made him look like a T-800.
Bottom line: the Wolverine shouldn't have been the one to bring Jean back or get her to calm down enough so's he could kill her.
2) The X-Men using the cure against their enemies.
This struck a majorly wrong chord with most people who saw the film with me. Xavier would never go so far as to do that. He's stripped people of memories, locked them in rooms to prevent them from using their powers, etc, but permanent drug-induced suppression of mutation? It's the antithesis of his dream--not equality but elimination. And he should know that that won't stop future mutations, so why sacrifice the chance at making peaceful connections between human and mutant today for this cure that won't keep mutation gone forever?
But they did it. Hank McCoy at least seemed appropriately horrified by the prospect, then resigned to it. I'm still just disgusted they eventually went along with it. I thinkfeiran and ivy03 were the ones to point out that the plan might have worked better if the cure were used on Jean, not Magneto, but the Phoenix proved she wouldn't be having none of that shit. She'd much rather go out dramatically and let Logan kill her so that the Jackman might end yet another movie cradling a female body and being upset.
3) Funeral rites
Fine, Xavier died. Might I remind you that the one who killed him is still running around out there? A seriously powerful, possibly indestructable woman who used to be your friend but decidedly isn't any longer? This is really the time to go, "Hey, we need a ten-stone granite monument with an ugly engraving of Xavier and a cheesy eternal flame erected right now and we should have a wake." While we're at it, wouldn't it be nice if Cyclops' death were addressed, too? Nah, he might still be alive. Better hold off.
4) Closing the School
This was so much bullshit. As if they'd end the third movie--potentially the last in the franchise--on that downer. No Cyke, no Xavier, no Jean. Mutants losing powers forever on the bad guy side (oh Mystique, how I LOVE you). And no more school. Right. It felt like a false, eleventh hour misstep, and an excuse to revisit Angel's "drama" (more like lack thereof), as if they considered making this a possible consequence of the X-Men's actions and the fight against humanity and the Brotherhood but decided not to go into it and instead resolved it too quickly. Gah, I hate when that kind of lazy story writing occurs--if the idea isn't going to be developed, don't introduce it and dismiss it. Just don't introduce it period.
All in all, I got most of what I wanted out of the movie. Mystique is still the awesomest thing that awesomed about these movies. She is the hardcore girl that none of the three or four others who came to the forefront in the Brotherhood could ever be. She's the mover and the shaker and the risk-taker. And when she lost her powers to save Magneto, I wanted to die. Magneto is a bastard, walking out on her. This cure couldn't have been three days in the public eye, and he was already assuming that it was totally irreversible and abandoning his number one agent who'd he'd worked so hard to find? God, Mystique made me ache for her. She was hilarious and scary and beautiful when she was captured and breaking out, in that way the films always managed to make her. She has a playful, wicked sense of humor, but God help you if you push her...
And then she was just this achingly beautiful woman being left behind, and the betrayal in her eyes burns me. I wish we could have seen a clip of her tattling on Magneto instead of it just being a side-feed-video, because I bet Rebecca Romijn bitched the hell out of that. Mystique without her powers is still very, very dangerous. I cringed at the "hell hath no fury" bit, but I could imagine the scene unfolding where Mystique plays her hand at revenge on Magneto and the government agents both and how satisfying it would feel for her to know that she could put Magneto in his place by putting him in hers. Just, yeah...
So, I had a good time. Was it as good as X2? No. Good as X1? Probably not. Fun? Definitely. Too many cooks spoiling the proverbial sauce? Absolutely. I wonder what Singer would have done with it...
Oh! Speaking of Singer, here is the summation of those rumors I was talking about at the screening. It details why certain characters got short-shrift and why others were embellished because their actors ::coughcoughHalleBerrycoughcough:: are pushy enough and have enough box office draw to get things written in their favor.
Honestly, this was a bit sad for me. Yes, the franchise doesn't have to be over, but it feels like it should.ivy03 very astutely posited that since it was envisioned as the last movie, the studio felt no compunction against "breaking all the toys" now they were done with them. There's always room for your typical comic-book comeback, but I hope they don't. For one thing, it would lose dramatic impact (as it has done in the comics). For another, I really don't want to see any more. I would love more X-title movies, perhaps New Mutants or Generation X, or just X-Men continuing in the future with the X-kids in this one taking wing as X-Men good and true. I think it would do well, as I quite enjoyed seeing some of the kids we met in X2 back in class in X3. They've got presence, and we notice them.
But Hugh Jackman was looking old in this movie, as was Famke Jannsen and Shawn Ashmore. For a guy with perpetually youthified features, the Wolverine looked as old as the hills in parts, and Famke was a bit long in the tooth for Jean back when X1 came out. Shawn Ashmore has developed some wrinkles across his forehead that cannot be disguised, it seems, because he looks his age, too, or at least he looks like he's no younger than upperclass level college age. Next to Kitty, who looked twelve, it was particularly noticeable. Halle Berry continues to look fabulous, but her portrayal of Storm ought to have been retired before she ever finished X1. What I wouldn't have given to see Angela Bassett as Storm...
After them, the rest of the add-ons were fairly superfluous. Callisto--who you'd have to know from consulting SuperHeroHype to know that that was her name--was really strange, useful only really once, and ridiculously powered. Maybe it's because I've only ever run across her in the animated series, but what the shit was she doing with Quicksilver's powers? And, of all people, it was
viridian who pointed out to me who was supposed to be Psylocke. Yes, she had purple streaks, and supposedly (I didn't notice) the same red tattoo over her eye, but her powers weren't obvious. She seemed to do the shadow crawling ability she gained from the run-in with...was it the Hand?...but the thing she crawled out of wasn't in shadow. It was more like that chick with the rainbow colored hair in the animated series. Well, at least she really was a Morlock. I resent most of the Morlocks looking more passibly human than not.And for all the ballyhoo about Angel--he gets his own poster, for God's sake--he was utterly pointless as a character. As a motivator for the film's central question, that of whether mutation should be cured, it would have been just as easy for Warren to be the motivating force himself and not have that heart-string bullshit thrown in with his father doing the sponsoring. Isn't trying to cure himself how Angel became Archangel? Or do I need to stop basing my knowledge off the cartoon? I found the spikey kid more interesting because he was sick and ruthless and just did more. Angel cried and the actor postured about in a ludicrous manner because he had no idea how to flex obviously CGI-d wings. Did like the wing-rack though. That was impressively realistic looking, especially as the one in the comics always seemed unweildy and "fake."
The X-kids I liked a lot. I especially loved Bobby and Kitty. The Rogue-Bobby drama had me rolling my eyes, likewise her predictable reaction to Bobby cheering Kitty up, mostly because X2 did it better. Bobby and Rogue have presumably been together long enough now to work through some of this crap, so they shouldn't still be mired in that. Also, Anna Paquin, where is your accent? Waste of a good character. The girl playing Kitty was terrible cute and damn smart, which I loved. The Kitty of my knowledge is forever stuck at that spunky teenager age, being too smart for it and yet inexperienced at the same time. I loved that Kitty used her head and made the most of her mostly non-offensive power. She took down Juggernaut. Hee!
I was sitting between two slash-goggled gals, so they made noise about the Bobby-St. John thing, which of course came down to a mere flex of their powers. Really, I think Bobby's refusal to respond to Pyro's goading is one of the best bits in the movie. That's what the X-Men are about--they're not going to resort to violence because of name calling. If he'd known that Pyro was going to blow up the clinic, however... Anyway, Bobby went ice-form, I went SQUEEEE.
Other "squees!":
-Fastball special! Fastball special!
-Danger room! Danger room!
-The Phoenix effect--the makeup was truly creepy, but having Jean turn cadaver-like instead of incandescantly bright was actually real genius. It makes her that much more frightening.
-Mystique! Raven!
-Moira! Hi, Moira! Bye, Moira!
-Hank! Hank in uniform! Hank as feral!
Less than squee-worthy:
1) Resolving the Phoenix storyline without Cyclops or Xavier
Audiences want the Jack-man, I get it. He's got more sexual tension and whatnot. I'll even forgive the Xavier-throwing-out-all-his-ethics approach to cutting Jean off from her powers. Something similar was done in canon, for her own protection, but it was very different from how in the movie Xavier basically turned off her powers entirely (in X1 she could barely read minds and had only a rudimentary control of her telekinesis, which is sad for a woman obviously in her thirties who'd been a student for decades at that point) because he didn't seem to trust her to do the right thing with them (to be fair, the presentation of young Jean argues he was probably right about that). But the whole "Phoenix is a split personality of Jean's"? Bull-fucking-shit. Either Phoenix is Jean or she isn't. The sort of psychological explanations necessary to reconcile a person with multiple-personality disorder wouldn't fit into an hour-and-a-half movie even if it were only about that person. Plus, why would the entity that's Jean's id, basically, be called Phoenix prior to her resurrection? Meh, weak writing, weaker explanatio and too much exposition just stuffed in Xavier's mouth.
Too much groping by the Jack-man, too. It was nice he did eventually remember that Jean was supposed to be in love with Scott and that he eventually noticed she wasn't inquiring about him or answering questions about the glasses (did he even tell Storm or Xavier he found those, or was he hoping they'd just assume Scott was still out finding himself and reconciling with fate?). But I felt that the romance between Jean and Logan was always a forced one, since X1. Jean didn't have enough going for her, lines-wise, sassy-ness-wise in X1 to merit Logan's attention in the first place. The X2 pairing off bothered me less because there was an established attraction (maybe not established well, but one taken for granted), Jean was concerned about Scott's disappearance and thus more vulnerable to it, and Logan pressed his advantage as a source of comfort and reassurance. Sorta.
Now, Jean's back and she doesn't give a fig about her fiance, she's practically humping the Wolverine in the med lab, and this is all okay because they have better chemistry? I didn't see why they had chemistry at all. Logan was hung up on her for less than obvious reasons (I mean, she was generally hot and powerful and awesome, but why they two generated sparks, I couldn't tell you). Her letting Logan get near enough to kill her GRATES ON MY SOUL. There's no way he would have survived, healing factor or no, when the Phoenix is atomizing people completely with a sweep of her hand. Unless his healing powers make him essentially a sponge and he can reassemble individual cells back into place, Logan had no chance of surviving. And it was weird to see his flesh peeled back to the adamantium on his skeleton. It just made him look like a T-800.
Bottom line: the Wolverine shouldn't have been the one to bring Jean back or get her to calm down enough so's he could kill her.
2) The X-Men using the cure against their enemies.
This struck a majorly wrong chord with most people who saw the film with me. Xavier would never go so far as to do that. He's stripped people of memories, locked them in rooms to prevent them from using their powers, etc, but permanent drug-induced suppression of mutation? It's the antithesis of his dream--not equality but elimination. And he should know that that won't stop future mutations, so why sacrifice the chance at making peaceful connections between human and mutant today for this cure that won't keep mutation gone forever?
But they did it. Hank McCoy at least seemed appropriately horrified by the prospect, then resigned to it. I'm still just disgusted they eventually went along with it. I think
feiran and ivy03 were the ones to point out that the plan might have worked better if the cure were used on Jean, not Magneto, but the Phoenix proved she wouldn't be having none of that shit. She'd much rather go out dramatically and let Logan kill her so that the Jackman might end yet another movie cradling a female body and being upset.3) Funeral rites
Fine, Xavier died. Might I remind you that the one who killed him is still running around out there? A seriously powerful, possibly indestructable woman who used to be your friend but decidedly isn't any longer? This is really the time to go, "Hey, we need a ten-stone granite monument with an ugly engraving of Xavier and a cheesy eternal flame erected right now and we should have a wake." While we're at it, wouldn't it be nice if Cyclops' death were addressed, too? Nah, he might still be alive. Better hold off.
4) Closing the School
This was so much bullshit. As if they'd end the third movie--potentially the last in the franchise--on that downer. No Cyke, no Xavier, no Jean. Mutants losing powers forever on the bad guy side (oh Mystique, how I LOVE you). And no more school. Right. It felt like a false, eleventh hour misstep, and an excuse to revisit Angel's "drama" (more like lack thereof), as if they considered making this a possible consequence of the X-Men's actions and the fight against humanity and the Brotherhood but decided not to go into it and instead resolved it too quickly. Gah, I hate when that kind of lazy story writing occurs--if the idea isn't going to be developed, don't introduce it and dismiss it. Just don't introduce it period.
All in all, I got most of what I wanted out of the movie. Mystique is still the awesomest thing that awesomed about these movies. She is the hardcore girl that none of the three or four others who came to the forefront in the Brotherhood could ever be. She's the mover and the shaker and the risk-taker. And when she lost her powers to save Magneto, I wanted to die. Magneto is a bastard, walking out on her. This cure couldn't have been three days in the public eye, and he was already assuming that it was totally irreversible and abandoning his number one agent who'd he'd worked so hard to find? God, Mystique made me ache for her. She was hilarious and scary and beautiful when she was captured and breaking out, in that way the films always managed to make her. She has a playful, wicked sense of humor, but God help you if you push her...
And then she was just this achingly beautiful woman being left behind, and the betrayal in her eyes burns me. I wish we could have seen a clip of her tattling on Magneto instead of it just being a side-feed-video, because I bet Rebecca Romijn bitched the hell out of that. Mystique without her powers is still very, very dangerous. I cringed at the "hell hath no fury" bit, but I could imagine the scene unfolding where Mystique plays her hand at revenge on Magneto and the government agents both and how satisfying it would feel for her to know that she could put Magneto in his place by putting him in hers. Just, yeah...
So, I had a good time. Was it as good as X2? No. Good as X1? Probably not. Fun? Definitely. Too many cooks spoiling the proverbial sauce? Absolutely. I wonder what Singer would have done with it...
Oh! Speaking of Singer, here is the summation of those rumors I was talking about at the screening. It details why certain characters got short-shrift and why others were embellished because their actors ::coughcoughHalleBerrycoughcough:: are pushy enough and have enough box office draw to get things written in their favor.
Honestly, this was a bit sad for me. Yes, the franchise doesn't have to be over, but it feels like it should.
ivy03 very astutely posited that since it was envisioned as the last movie, the studio felt no compunction against "breaking all the toys" now they were done with them. There's always room for your typical comic-book comeback, but I hope they don't. For one thing, it would lose dramatic impact (as it has done in the comics). For another, I really don't want to see any more. I would love more X-title movies, perhaps New Mutants or Generation X, or just X-Men continuing in the future with the X-kids in this one taking wing as X-Men good and true. I think it would do well, as I quite enjoyed seeing some of the kids we met in X2 back in class in X3. They've got presence, and we notice them.But Hugh Jackman was looking old in this movie, as was Famke Jannsen and Shawn Ashmore. For a guy with perpetually youthified features, the Wolverine looked as old as the hills in parts, and Famke was a bit long in the tooth for Jean back when X1 came out. Shawn Ashmore has developed some wrinkles across his forehead that cannot be disguised, it seems, because he looks his age, too, or at least he looks like he's no younger than upperclass level college age. Next to Kitty, who looked twelve, it was particularly noticeable. Halle Berry continues to look fabulous, but her portrayal of Storm ought to have been retired before she ever finished X1. What I wouldn't have given to see Angela Bassett as Storm...
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no subject
Date: 2006-05-27 08:00 am (UTC)Very much agree with a lot of what you said, though I *REALLY* hated the whole "oooh, big bad indestructible doomsday" mutant thing, since that really doesn't work too well on screen.
I actually felt the axing of Magneto, and the scene at the end of him alone in the park, to be more saddening than Xavier's explosive exit or Jean/Phoenix's moronic "OH GODS KILL ME NOW" bits.
Definitely agree on Kitty=Cool
I think I'm dreading X-4, just from the ending of X-3.
If Phoenix didn't translate well to screen, I shudder to think what they're going to do with Onlsaught.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-27 08:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-28 03:54 am (UTC)I completely agree with you about Magneto alone in the park being soooo sad. But I really wish Mystique had been there to stuff it in his face. Or kill him. He wouldn't have been able to stop her, and she deserved it. Her tattling-vengeance could not have been enough.
Yeah, let's hope they let X-4 die for many years. Then they can make another that's not with the same people.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-28 07:46 am (UTC)More movies
Date: 2006-05-27 04:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-27 08:19 pm (UTC)Angel had his wings naied to a stone slab in the sewers, it was pretty fucked up. The wikipedia entry on archangel is pretty good (I'd completely forgotten about the thing with Callisto). Just like the movie blurred plotlines, so did the TV show.
And I thought it was pretty obvious that she wasn't really trying to kill Wolverine at the end, rather she was resisting the actual moment of suicide and venting the frustration towards someone who could absorb it. I don't think they'd make that glaring of an error.
I agree, the Angel storyline was strained at best. They should have left the "cure" to be developed by someone else, maybe Cameron Hodge (again, see the wiki entry). That would have given some good setup for an Apocalypse movie (squee).
no subject
Date: 2006-05-28 03:55 am (UTC)Phoenix was nicely done, effects-wise. Otherwise, not so much.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-28 04:26 am (UTC)If only...