May Movie Wrap Up

[trinityvixen]

Thanks for coming out, one and all! The most fun I ever have is the hanging out with folk before and after, and truly that was excellent.

As for X-Men Origins: Wolverine, I can say that it pretty faithfully was exactly what I was expecting. So I enjoyed it, but it very rarely surprised or surpassed expectations. I think this is mainly because they were so determined to have it match up nearly perfectly with the X-Men movies that have come before. I don't see why they needed to do that. I mean, it doesn't have to match EXACTLY (and it didn't), but hewing so close took a lot of suspense out of the thing.

The movie was also defeated a bit by the anticipation for awesome things that have little to do with Wolverine. Like, say, Gambit. You know he's in the movie, and you're sorta just chugging along waiting for when they're going to get to him. What's happening isn't bad or boring or anything, but you're still waiting on something else. Even after the movie, I was waiting for Deadpool to come back. Okay, okay, so he can't really just regrow his head (nor his head grow a new body), but still. A Deadpool movie seems a natural springing off point given how God put Ryan Reynolds on this earth to play that character in a movie (for long than the ten seconds he was able to in this movie). Of course, love me some Ryan Reynolds, but Deadpool can go hang if it means we get a GAMBIT movie. I think of all the effects in the movie, Gambit's powers were my favorite. The very subtle way they showed how he charged up the cards--plus the fun way he threw them about? YESSSSS.

Also, all the ladies agreed with me that you can't write off Taylor Kitsch as Gambit forever until he's Gambit with his shirt off. Ahem.

So, on a scale from Van Helsing to Iron Man, as far as May Movies go, I'd put this as above a The Mummy Returns, about on par with The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but not as good as X-Men 2.

Comments

[viridian.livejournal.com]

Meanwhile I liked it better than X-Men 2 because I don't give a hell about the comics and was too busy wanting to DOOOOOO The Jackman, Ryan Reynolds, Liev Schrieber, and Taylor Kitsch -- whom I never found remotely attractive in The Covenant OR Snakes on a Plane, but who was a halfway decent Gambit IMO.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

The man-ogling was, truly, amazing. Also, I did not know that Gambit was in SOAP. Was he the Mile High Club guy who died in the bathroom or what?

[viridian.livejournal.com]

I think so. He was someone really random who got killed early on, if I recall correctly.

[gryphonrose.livejournal.com]

The movie was fairly good. The company was better. :)

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Yay! Glad to have you with us. We can't always promise quality with these things--in fact, I think quality is something of an exception rather than a rule--but there will always be good friends to take you down off the ledge after a poor showing :)

[droidguy1119.livejournal.com]

There are supposedly two different after-credit stingers playing in different theaters. One is Wolverine at a bar in some foreign Asian country, and the other involves Deadpool, but the details on what actually happened in it seemed sketchy to me.

I still think I'm the only one who did not like X2. X3 was worse, but my favorite is still X1, by far, and then this one, I guess.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

The first X-Men is by far my favorite. I liked X2, but I thought it had some serious pacing problems, and it just didn't grab me the way the first one did.

[droidguy1119.livejournal.com]

The key thing that makes the first one great is that it's a real adaptation of the comic. It is an X-Men movie, and it works really well. I thought the second one was just a pile of references to the comic unwillingly attached to a plotline.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I disagree. I thought the second one had a very comics-inspired plotline, but the first one was almost entirely made up and unlike anything I'd ever read. Whereas the plot of X2 centered on someone rounding up mutants under a registration policy--an idea floated around and acted upon for decades of X-Men comics by now.

Whether or not you like that plot better than the one devised for the first movie, I think you can argue that the second was more comic-y than the first.

[droidguy1119.livejournal.com]

That's actually the opposite of what I was saying: a good adaptation takes the themes from the source material and presents them in a new way conducive to whatever the source is being adapted into. Just because the second one contains more references to the comic book doesn't make it a better movie, and as someone who hadn't read the comics, it just left me wishing I was reading the comics being referenced rather than watching a movie that half-referenced them and then rushed on to the next reference. The first movie is, as far as I can tell, almost entirely altered for the screen, but I think that's for the better. It feels like a whole, and it still retains the spirit of what I know about the X-Men.

[droidguy1119.livejournal.com]

Just because the second one contains more references to the comic book doesn't make it a better movie

Er, not that I'm saying that's why you liked it, but that was my experience watching it.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I suppose it depends on how you use the term "comic-y". As a pejorative, I'd say the first one was very comic-y, but I didn't enjoy that because it was so far-fetched. Whereas the second one you could call it "comic-y" in its faithfulness to certain ideas explored within the comics themselves. I found that it also hewed closer to "reality" in the sense that they were taking advantage of realistic human responses to new challenges in the idea of interning the mutant "menace." It's an understandable, relatable sort of story--you get why someone might go the way that Stryker does even if you can't really imagine living in a world full of mutants. The accessibility is a major factor.

I also just thought it was funnier, which always helps :)

[droidguy1119.livejournal.com]

Well, sooner or later I'll get the Blu-Ray box and see it again, I haven't seen it since it came out. But again, comic-y or not comic-y wasn't really my problem (although I agree that the first movie is more outlandish), but that the first is a better movie, based on or adapting the comic book into a movie as opposed to just literally piling direct references from the comic on-screen. It's a cinematic distillation of 35 years of comic history into a single movie, and doesn't resemble any exact X-Men comics, and is better for it.

By the way, here's a really bad cam of the Deadpool ending with a bunch of jackasses talking over it. I dunno if you got this version or the Japan one, but here it is.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Awesome! Yeah, we got the Japan ending, which was met with much derision. Oh well, it'll all be on the DVD eventually.

::goes to start Deadpool: the movie campaign!::

[arcane-the-sage.livejournal.com]

It was fun ^_^ Still think that X3 was better than this, and I'm going to stand by that comment =-þ

[ecmyers.livejournal.com]

Maybe I can borrow your DVD of X3, because I clearly haven't seen the same version of the film that you have...

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Whatever version he is working off of? Must be some really strong stuff...

[saturn-shumba.livejournal.com]

I LOOOOVE Ryan Reynolds. But other than that, this movie was just ok.

And I have no idea how an X-Men comic fan would like this, although I'm quite curious as to what they think.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I feel like there were certain things that were much more entertaining than the movie that contained them, you know? It doesn't help that I'm not overly a fan of Wolverine (though Hugh Jackman was perfect in the role as ever), but it felt like the little touches that were just tantalizing enough were way better than the central story they were trying to tell.

Like the cadre of assassins. I felt like you could have built them into being the entire movie, honestly. I think it hewed close to the Origins story, et al, but maybe that was the problem--too easy to anticipate. I think Wolverine staying in the program and taking the adamantium for a different reason would have been a more interesting take than the revenge/love interest thing. There's a great storyline in comics where he becomes one of the four Horsemen--and gets a new adamantium skeleton (which he needed because Magneto ripped out his last one)--solely because he knows that if he doesn't, Sabretooth will and that will royally hose everyone. I think something like that would have been great, especially since Sabretooth, in this movie did want to get his own to match.

So, yeah, the Wolverine story they told was a little cliched and predictable. As a result, the few genuinely fun things about the movie otherwise really stood out and sort of jarringly so. I can't speak to what comics geeks think really, since I'm not widely read, but that was my impression. Ryan Reynolds was perfect for Deadpool, which I knew already, and in his one scene where he was allowed to speak, he nailed it. (I liked all the assassins, but I'm partial. I want a Deadpool movie!) Gambit was fun, too. Necessary? Oh hells no. But for fan service, he was fine. I absolutely loved the way they showed him charging up the playing cards and the action shots of him throwing them. It's a hell of a lot more subtle (and thus awesome) with the slight frisson of visible energy (in the card and in his eyes) before the explosion.

Liev Schreiber needs his own movie as Sabretooth. He could have done so much more than what they gave him.

[mithras03.livejournal.com]

And it's official: http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118003226.html?categoryid=13&cs=1

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

SCHWEEEET.

Also, just, no. We don't need more of the Jackman as Wolverine, much as I love him. The Japanese era of his travels seem like an opportunity to engage in cultural insensitivity/othering, nothing more. Besides which, it would have been cool if, like, any of that period had shown itself in the way Logan behaves in the other movies. If they're so set on making the movies form a linear, united narrative, I call BS on no one--not the Wolverine, not any of the psychics probing his brain pan, nobody--mentioning he'd spent like umpty-bumpty decades in Japan. Let it just be an in-reference and let it go.

BUT BRING ON THE DEADPOOL MOVIE! (That quote at the link, about Deadpool actually referencing Ryan Reynolds just proves my theory about him being destined to play this part. AND NOW HE WILL!)