Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot Meets X-Men
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.
Read the insigtful (really) article again: He means post-Columbian, because nerds and goths have been looked down on since way before the Columbine incident, though perhaps not going back as far as 1492.
A trait of a civilized an honorable culture is to not destroy that which is less advanced, instead protecting it. In the XMen scenario, it is the humans that are picking a fight.
If the humans are actually superior, they are dishonorable. If they are inferior, then they are stupid. Either way, Magneto is simply engaging in genodefense (if I can use that term).
.02
My
Quux26
My
Quux26
www.crashspace.net
It's the best Magneto-as-noble-villan issue ever. Everyone involved has well thought out plans and motivations and intelligent tactics are used by both sides. It'll probably cost you eight to ten dollars or more, but its worth it. Other good stuff: the Age of Apocalypse (alternate universe fyi) and X-Men 1-3 (X-Men, not Uncanny X-Men, different titles).
That's the theater doing it, dummy. If it truly was the movie, then go to another theater chain and see if they show the same commercials. If you're right they will show the exact same commercials and trailers. Gee, between the commercials and trailers they usually show the "consession stand" commercial. Are you saying that this is the same in every theater as well?
bitch to the theater manager
it's gotta be the teens vs. the world, doesn't it?
"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"
I hate to defend Katz, but where in that statement does it say anything about teens?
Is it okay to cry "Movie!" in a crowded firehouse? --Steve Martin
The guy with the fire could've been Pyro, except that I don't think that he ever went to the school, and they continuously repeat that Pyro can't make fire, he can only manipulate existing fires. It could've been Rusty Collins, another fire guy (I don't know most of his story). I think he becomes a bad guy later on.
As long as they don't make X-Men: The Musical, I'll be okay.
Although if they do, Hugh Jackman will still be perfect for the part of Wolverine. Apart from movies and television, he also has a strong background in musical theatre. :-)
Ms. Marvel is alive and well, and she's a current member of the Avengers (she just came back, after quitting because of her alcoholism). She's now called Warbird, I recommend you pick up some of the current Avenger's issues, they're pretty good.
...
The other characters
That's Pyro not the Human Torch (the Human Torch is not a mutant BTW).
The kid with the basketball is not Nightcrawler. Nightcrawler always looked like a freak (non-human), and the kid seems more of a speedster (ala Quicksilver), rather than a teleporter.
I think Singer (the director) has said Gambit is going to be in the next film.
- sigs are for wimps.
Mags can manipulate far more than just metal, its just that metal is the easiest material for him to manipulate. I wondered why he bothered with the helicopter at the train station, when he could have easily picked up Rouge and his henchmen and flew away.
He can do other cool stuff with his powers, like form an air bubble around himself and fly into space w/o a suit (in the comic he built at least two space stations) and has used molecular dispersion to get rid of a couple of bad guys.
Bullets are made of lead, but they're commonly jacketed in steel. Which is most certainly subject to magnetic fields.
Am I the only one who thinks the action should have been better? I don't mean more explosions or more gore. I mean the fight scenes, well, quite frankly sucked. I understand that at this point in the story the heroes are wet behind the ears and not quite as skilled, but obviously they have some training. I was looking for at least Jet Li type wire effects if not a Jackie Chan style ass woopin. These guys are supposed to have super powers more-or-less right? I guess what I'm saying is I got superman where I expected Batman. The other thing that bothers me is the girl who could walk through walls. Ok now I can settle fine for laser beams coming someone's eyes and a fast healing rate but someone care to enlighten me as to how in "Zeus's butt-hole" a mutation would cause somebody to be able to walk through walls? Throw me a freakin bone here.
At the end, Rogue temporarily "inherited" Wolverine's claws when he saved her by touching her. But the claws are not his power. His power is his ability to heal rapidly!
Could go either way, and indeed it certainly has in the comics. When Wolverine first appeared in an ancient issue of The Incredible Hulk, he was just some Canadian bloke with claws in his gloves. Chris Claremont wrote that out as a stupid idea ("if they're just clawed gloves, then anyone could be Wolverine!") and made him a mutant with rapid healing, with the skeleton and claws being artificial. As you say.
But this was later changed again, when Wolverine had the adamantium ripped out of his body by Magneto (who was being written as somewhat more psychotic than he should have been, at the time). Much to everyone's surprise, Wolverine popped bone claws out of his hand. So the official line is that he always had claws as part of his mutation, and they were only coated with adamantium, not added to him at that point.
It's risky to say that anything in the X-Men movie contradicts the comics. They've contradicted themselves so often in the last 35 years that almost everything has been "true" at some point. ;-)
We were never supposed to hate Magneto at all. Did he kill anybody? Well, besides the Senator, no (and that was on accident).
We're supposed to understand how Magneto is thinking. You forget he was around during the Holocaust when all Jews had to pretty much be registered and wear a big prominent star. Magneto thought that if legislation passed to have every mutant registered, it would only be the beginning of another holocaust, a holocaust that he now has the powers to prevent.
Katz is just an idiot. Is he 9 years old or something? I've never bothered reading his other posts before.
Gotta love those "It wasn't EXACTLY like the comic, therefore it was crap" posts.
You failed to point out that Wolverine didn't wear Yellow-and-blue (or that browny-red) spandex, wasn't built like a brick shithouse and his hair wasn't the same size. Oh, and Storm's breasts were definately smaller.
Gee, how could they get it so wrong?!
Here's a hint: X-Men the movie = ADAPTATION of X-Men the comic. Not a copy.
Gev.
So damn witty, they only let me use half.
Ah yes. The thing I didn't like about the movie. The Physics. For some reason, whenever people get hit and go flying across the room... it looks totally, completely fake. I think I know why...
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
Yeah, her power is that of disguise. You use what you have the best you can and spying is the best use of her powers.
For an interesting, if truly sick, interpretation of a Marvel Universe where "Gamma Rays Are Not Good For You", I can highly recommend the Ruins series by Warren Ellis.
Naw, Sentinels wouldn't have to be a budget buster. Make them 100% CG and only show up in the last 4 minutes of the movie. The focus of the rest of the film would be finding out what the bad guys are doing (building Sentinels) and trying to stop them from doing it. The X-Men think they've destroyed the Sentinels, but wait! In the ruins of the Sentinel factory, a sole Sentinel boots up, leading into Movie 3.
A movie about Sentinels wouldn't have to feature Sentinels (which would still be cool if they could do it).
RE: Time Travel:
I doubt that the movies will ever go into enough detail to cover the time traveling stories, but they're great stories that each deserve a triology of their own. A guy has to hope...
Okay, so three people go to see a movie. We get whining about hackers, some comments on effects and dropped footage, and Katz whining about something that should best be left in the past and dropped in favor of actually thinking up a good, original concept rather than clinging to a buzzword that has long since lost the interest of anyone interesting. After sleeping through what I was told were the worst parts of the recent Star Wars fuckup of last year, fuck hype and fuck secondhand. I've read seven or eight of the reviews for this thing, and I'll probably skip it until it hits video. Katz is the only fucker to whine about Columbine. I think the word has been hard-coded into his neuralgia.
On that note, and in disfavor of Katz:
Realize, if you will, that no intelligent person is an outcast. GET IT THROUGH YOUR FUCKING HEADS. We are levels above the common man, with command of knowledge and skills that they have neither the patience nor the intelligence to master. The fact that Katz seems to value thier opinion does not speak well of him. We are BETTER than these people- why do so many of you seek to be LIKE them? Why does their approval MATTER to you?
Being different has been a fact of life for the entirety of recorded history. Katz more than likely keeps sticking to columbine because the idiots whose approval he is apparently going for cannot remember any popularized incident of aggression older than that. Holocaust? Salem Witch trials? The crusades? Spanish Inquisition? C'mon- different has NEVER been percieved as "good", so get fucking used to it and start getting a little more fucking diverse here. A corporate empire rising out of the ashes of post midwest gothic rebellion? Any of these elements is typical of the one-trick katz pony. With an audience as demanding as the slashdot crowd, you'd expect more diverse content rather that the same old shit reptetetively spewed for the sake of ratings. We're different, we're better for it, so quit beating it like it's a bad thing and smell the fucking coffee.
Where do I get off?
I did something few geeks have the stomach to do- I killed my TV, sold my consoles, and went to Ozzfest with the members of a band that is composed of people who were bitter enemies in high school and the best of friends in the Really Real World. I got hammered, I got high, and I have a pleasant ringing in my ears. The primal rush of seeing over an acre of mud in the air at any given moment as Static X and later Pantera smashed out of the speakers like the voice of some Angry God was enough to bathe my grey matter in adrenaline, and cause me to lose any sort of tolerance for repetetive, canned bullshit the likes of which this alleged "columnist" has been spewing for months on end. Ozzfest me realize that I can never possibly say "Fuck" more than anyone on the B stage, and it clued me into something that quite a few of us are probably missing out on: Passive Aggression is going to get you nowhere. I sat out the mudfight until Static X murdered a Ministry song.... then the next thing I knew my clothes were coated in dirt and I had sprained my shoulder from recycling dirt at the fuckers with arena seats. And I had realized something.... something that no hack, no amount of graphic wizardry or high-offer conract work could do for me. I felt alive, really ALIVE.... like I had a pulse, for the first time in years. I had realized that I had NOTHING to lose by participating, and that not doing so was only going to piss me off further. So I dove in, and emerged a new man, less tolerance and more apt to rage against this sort of ignorance. There's a time and a place for being a fucking dumbass- and it sure as hell isn't in front of the Slashdot crowd.
Can we see a real article that doesn't play to your chronic misconceptions about intelligence, John? Hmm? When you get back from the next Backstreet Boys concert?
Go to Ozzfest, Katz. Go see FIFTY THOUSAND "outcasts" in one place, having a good fucking time and seeing some good fucking bands. Let's see you review THAT without a Columbine or Corporate reference [the Dreamcast ads are between sets and on the B stage- rather a struggling company than a fatass megacorp like Sony... Hell, someone has to pay the damned bills.]. Or does metal offend your delicate, outcast sensibilities?
if Magneto was a real humanitarian
You mean "mutantitarian"?
- Isaac =)
First scene with Cyclops: BOOM! Look, he shoots lasers from his visor!
In the training facility: He wears red glasses. Either he has an extremely dumb-looking costume, or he needs those for some reason. Maybe . . . because of the lasers?
In the train station: Well, now we know why he needs the glasses.
From there, I mean . . . it's OBVIOUS. This movie did have a weakness or two (the jet takeoff sucked, and Magneto didn't lose his powers when he should have). But the only bit I can think of that confused me was Storm getting choked - I thought the special effects on the eyes were her dying, not her about to shoot off some lightning :) But that one I figured out the next time she went, uh, electrical.
Anyway. End of rambling.
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
The over-all vibe of the X-men has always been about alienation. An outgrowth of the 1960's, it's always been about equality and discrimination (as well as fights in outer space, or course). The whole mutant/human issue is, and can be, compared to any kind of ostrifcation(sp?). And there are a lot of parallels between the 'mutant registry' and things like WAVE and computerized geek profiling, etc. In fact, it fits almost exactly.
People excluded, not just by peers, but by the system, because they are different.
Is Katz a little over-zealous? Is he a little reactionary? Probably, but the comparison here is not off.
(and don't forget who it is who reads these comics)
Amber Yuan 2k A.D
"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
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!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
No, Cannonball runs, not flies. And yes, Cannonball used to wear goggles in his costume.
Someone said that Colossus was the kid running on the water. What??!!! Gigantic Russian man capable of turning his body to steel running on water? What comic book has that person been reading?
Of course, Data's "Oh shit!" in Generations would have flown completely over your head.
I've seen several reviews where people were pissed off about the director "adding" the holocaust connection. I haven't read the X-Men in about 10 years, so I don't know if that part of Magneto's past has been played down, but it used to be a major part of his character before that.
I even remember an issue I had that's at least 20 years old where it's revealed that Magneto's powers didn't manifest until shortly after the war. The first thing he did is sign on with the Israeli government as a nazi hunter. As you can imagine, when he found Nazis, he didn't turn them over for trial, either.
And where does Katz get the idea that we're supposed to "hate" Magneto? Xavier "hated" him so much that he entrusted his youngest students, the New Mutants, to Magneto's care at one point. Magneto's ambiguity was always one of the strongest points of the comic. A reader can't help but respect the man even if he disagrees with his methods. And is Magneto really that paranoid? It could be argued that Xavier is the one that is the dreamer, out of touch with reality -- but it is a beautiful dream.
Taking megalomaniacle activities to a new level instead of genocyde Magneto attempts to "genocycle" (hey did I make a word?) or recycle humans into mutants. He appeared to be attempting to be a father figure to the human race by bringing them into the mutant exsistance not realizing the threat the suddenly mutated and almost always angry (at least as stereotyped) populace of New York would be to him. They would not have lovingly accepted him as daddy but hated him for twisting thier DNA and yanking them from thier predictable acceptable lives. Possibly creating thier own militant mutant faction.
Emotional walls inside an otherwise logical and advanced mind result in the same bigoted and crippling thought processes as any other mind.
As for the actors of The X-Men movie I was sceptical of almost every one of them with the exception of Logan and Professor X. I thought; Storm should have been older (not the 20-something babe she is in the movie), Mystique totally slitheringly-disgusting (not the babe she is in the movie), Rogue a redhead (not the brunette babe she is in the movie), Cyclops a little less of a fruity jerkwad(but not much less hehe), Sabre a little older (ok so I dint think he was hot), and I was kinda hoping for a 3 hour epic but in retrospect none of that mattered to me. The movie made it as a good movie and a good big-screen translation of the comics and animated series even while rigidly sticking to neither but protraying the feeling rather than the definition (my ideas probably would have resulted in a sucky movie although I would still like to see Tina Turner flying around wi lightning in her eyes as Storm, but maybe thats just a fantasy of mine)
"He's a real midnight golfer"
Do you honestly believe that people who choose to dress in black, etc, or even do things like play quake and doom should be ostracized? Scientific study after scientific study has shown that people who feel alienated by society and other individuals will act belligerently. And things like junior high alienate a lot of us.
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
"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
Danny DeVito's character in the book was a movie star all along.
I distinctly recall being confused reading the book after the movie because of this. The first time he's mentioned, very early on, he's a rock star. In later chapters, they describe him as a movie star. The change happens before his character is introduced. I'd quote page references, but my copy's at home in Canada, and I'm at CERN.
- W. Blaine Dowler
http://www.bureau42.com
People like Spider-man and the fantastic-4 were never ostracized by the 'normal' people in the Marvel Universe. But mutants were, so why don't the mutants say that something 'happened' to them, rather then say they were mutated? Why don't people in the Marvel-verse despise and fear regular super-heroes with regular origins?
Amber Yuan 2k A.D
"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
As I said: If the people from their own country find out about this, don't you think these leaders would then be deposed, if the people are so fearful/pissed off at mutants? Wouldn't they then be unable to reconsider any such laws going through?
_____
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
Anyway, I thought this was an excellent movie, not just as an action film, but as a 'superhero' film, and even as an X-Men film.
My major complaint is mostly that the movie was a bit short, and didn't have enough development on the character side (I understand a lot of that was actually filmed, but was sacrificed in the final edit).
Specifically:
What really made the movie good, though, was the humanity. Hugh Jackman really has to take a lot of credit here. It's incredibly difficult to portray a character as tough and cynical as Wolverine without seeming either wooden, or a total jerk. But Jackman's Wolverine is wonderfully sympathetic, and believably three-dimensional.
The lack of chemistry between Jean and Wolverine didn't really bother me, thanks to the beautifully-executed chemistry between Woverine and Rogue. Personally, I found that particular subplot more touching than that of Magneto's obsessiveness and Xavier's angst. Maybe because it's the former kind of experience that really define people... after all, how many of us find ourselves in a position to change the world like Xavier or Magneto?
I went into the movie expecting Patrick Stewart to carry it, acting-wise. But, while he was definitely great, the honour really has to go to Ian McKellan and Hugh Jackman. Together with Anna Paquin, the four of them completely carried this film: not just super-powered characters, but human ones, too.
It just ain't so... According to an interview on KROQ this morning, teh movie was _never_ shown to tes audiences, because they were rushing to get it done (they finished less than a week before film shipped). In fact, after Fox realized how big this would be, they released more $$ to shoot additional scenes taht the $$grubbers had ruled out.
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
I think while the movie has some obvious flaws in terms of character development, I think the best part is the fact we concentrate on Magneto and Professor Xavier.
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.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
About the lack of development of the Logan/Sabretooth connection: considering how much they deveoped the Weapon X project without coming anywhere near to resolving it, I think it's pretty clear that they want to do a sequel that's focused on Weapon X. In fact, since that's what Logan's walking out to go look into, I wouldn't be surprised if that's the very next movie. If so, and if they make the sequel (and the box-office returns so far look very promising in that respect) you'll have all the Logan/Sabretooth backstory you could want.
--
--
Do I look like I speak for my employer?
The visor is made out of ruby quartz, apparently it (the material more than the color) filters the blasts.
To go even further off topic, in college, I was on a Rogue appriciation email loop. In one Rogue trivial quiz I got the most points for the extra credit question of "how do you keep a bleached stripe in nigh-invunerable hair, anyway?" by suggesting that it was not bleached but colored over with white glaze, and her hairstyles were all kept in place with lightly fired ceramic glaze. It made sense at the time.
So her stripe can't be natural because its placement has changed. but thats only for the nit-pickers.
-Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
Has anybody noticed that Katz sees geek alienation everywhere? What, is he wearing geek alienation eyeglasses? Or is he a mutant with the power of geek alienation detection?
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
- 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."Prejudice is wrong; you should hate everyone the same."
Katz wasn't able to review a summer movie without saying 'post-Columbine'. You would think someone who is so loquacious would manage to find a few more buzzwords to throw about...
We must respect evil, and we must make evil respect us.
I dunno, maybe because I never read the comics (though I did watch the cartoon), I was just tremendously entertained by this movie. My friends and I had fun trying to guess who was who among the kids at the school, and the powers of the mutants were just spiffy. Wolverine, always my favorite, kicked some serious ass in this movie. And watch for Ray Parks doing a little Darth Maul bit during one of the fight scenes, that was the best. Not only is that guy seriously badass, but he's pretty funny too.
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.
--
Communication is only possible between equals
To jump on a conversation from a couple of weeks go, who's the villain in Blade Runner? :P (Oh, and saying "replicants are the villians" will twist everything around and you'll have to ask, "who are the good guys?")
noticed someone in another post said that Human Torch was at the Xavier School...Unless I'm mistaken Fantastic 4 never really crossed over with X-Men???
Not an X-Fan. Just a casual once-in-a-blue-moon reader, but I remember everything I ever see/read/hear, so here goes...
First off, I doubt that was Johnnie. Reed's little brother-in-law wasn't considered a mutant, per se, because his changes came later in life (like the hulk), with the others in FF, after some experiment (was it in space? Can't recall. I think Reed Richards was running some sort of experiment with his fiance, her brother, and their best friend Ben Grimm... anyhow, though there was much more crossover between Spider Man and FF, there were a few rare instances... and one huge significant one. The grown son of Reed (Mr. Fantastic) and Sue (Invisable Girl) Richards marries the grown daughter of Scott and Jean Grey-Summers... Rachel Summers, AKA Phoenix II, IIRC, and his name I'm blanking on. Something commonplace and boring, ending in Richards.
The suggested identity for the fire kid is Pyro (I doubt it, but hey, the powers were right), but I'm wondering if anyone else noticed the other firebug in the class? There was a Japanese kid who had to be Sunfire, or whatever his name is... anyone remember Logan's Japanese love interests?
-- Still waiting for the Nike endorsement
I must plead ignorance as to what the comic book magneto would do, but I think the Hitler Parallel goes quite well with the movie magneto, and partly because he DID try and kill that innocent 16yo. girl.
First part of your message: When she yells "Look out!" in the bar, when Logan's opponent from the cage match pulls a knife. (Of course, at that point, she doesn't know about his healing factor OR the adamantium claws.)
Second part: amen. Enough of Katz - as I said in an earlier post, he's stuck on one subject. Sounds like a broken record. And from reading many of the other posts here, it sounds like we're in good company.
_____
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
Magneto killed a bunch of people in a Russian submarine in an old X-men story. That was the "classic" Magneto BTW. (they show this in a flashback in X-Men #1, the one drawn by Jim Lee).
- sigs are for wimps.
By the way, to anyone in Perth (including, I suspect, the above poster) I'm talking about the Luna on Essex Street, which used to be run by Coastal Cinemas (ala Millenium Cinemas, Queensgate)
t movie did they see? I'm sure it's been picked to death, but none of these 'reviews' sound like the same movie I saw.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Heavy corrections. Rogue never thought Mystique was her biological mother. She thought of her as a surrogate mom, and Mystique in fact did act the part, in actions and thoughts. This relationship lasted at least past the entire austrailia/shadow king thing, which was where I stopped reading X Men.
Rogue left the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants because her head was getting so filled with residuals of other people's memories that she was going insane and needed a telepath. She joined the X-Men entirely on Xavier's say so, and Wolvie in fact wanted her dead at first, having been a close pre-xmen friend of Ms. Marvel. He came over to accepting her after she almost died saving his fiance's life, and after that he reacted with fierce anger to anyone who callenged her status within the team.
-Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
Equipped with intelligence and great sensitivity toward things which cause him to feel rejected Pontificator literally fights with words. His huge speech balloons are so large as to hurl all the other characters, friend and foe alike, out of the frame when he starts a rant.
Until he learns to control his outbursts Professor Xavier is forced to keep him in a 'Silence of the Lambs' style muzzle to keep him from hammering the rest of the world into oblivion. Of course, this only makes things worse as Pontificator now feels even more rejected.
Seriously John, I suspect that many - if not most of us on this forum have felt rejection ever since we realized we were different.
Let me suggest, that you learn to protect, and turn down, your sensitivity toward rejection. The problem with great sensitivity is that it is hard to see the differences between the major issues and the minor ones; when everything hurts it is hard to tell the big issues from the small ones - pain is pain.
It is also important to understand how much of our own rejection we create ourselves. To those who are very strong at creating rejection and relatively insensitive to its effects, the people who ARE sensitive to rejection look like whining simps. The strong rejecters have no idea how much pain their rejections cause. Think about it for a second, would you want to be around anyone who complains as much as you do? Neither do the people who reject you. It really helps to learn to package your observations better; people are more likely to learn from them then.
People who are strong at anything blame the weak; after all the weak can't fight back, so they have to take the blame. If it were true that weakness and stupidity were responsible for mankind's problems then we could all blame all of our problems on rocks; can you think of anything with less intelligence or less muscle power?
What I am saying is that fewer words with a better focus an the major issues will go a lot farther than trying to hammer people into submission with pontification. For the most part the people rejecting you have no idea how much damage they are causing - the job of the sensitive is to educate the strong; trying to hammer them with your strengths won't get the job done.
We, the geeks of the world, have failed to appeal to your sense of humour. We should all commit hara-kiri today, as pennance. :)
Seriously, Wolverine flipping off cyclops with a claw didn't give you the slightest chuckle? The 'yellow spandex' line didn't make you smirk (well, that one was a bit on the 'inside', but still)? That sort of humor was too 'immature' for you?
By that same token, I'm sure that the impossible special effects were also too unrealistic to be believable, and that the whole movie just offended your sense of maturity.
Why'd you even go to see the movie then? The whole point of movies like X-Men is to entertain kids, and allow adults to suspend disbelief and distance themselves from their mudane, everyday maturity, and feel like a kid again - if only for an hour and a half. We got to ooh and aah for a while, and laugh at some dumb jokes; yes, they were dumb, but they were funny.
If you saw the film in the hope of being enlightened, well, maybe X-Men wasn't such a bad choice. But you missed the greatest benefit of such movies. Pure enjoyment, without the need to analyze, evaluate and project a front.
"Knock-knock" jokes are actually good for you. Quit brooding and see "Scary Movie", just for the dumb jokes.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
By the way "In fact I wouldn't even call it an action movie at all" Um...unless you go by something different the movie studio classifies it as an action movie, why shouldn't you?
Also love the arguement "the characters just don't know how to fly yet. Give them a break, there are at least 2 sequels coming up, you know. " HAHAHA! These are powers they had from the beginning!!!(Rogue didn't as pointed out)
As for intelligence of plot? It was pretty much cookie cutter comic book fare. If you can't see that go rent something with more depth, The Punisher or Captain America perhaps :)
Evan
"These are not people who use Linux because it is better; these are people who use Linux because they like the elitism t
As an added bonus, Century has just about the best quality control in the business. Every time I go, the projection and sound are absolutely fantasic, practically flawless.
In contrast, AMC is very bad about advertising, as is Sony's Lowes chain. Don't bother giving them your money. Shop around and find a place like Century or some other chain that still cares about the customer and support them instead.
Free Hans!
You missed something, didnt you?
Well, maybe you wer pissing when the senator melted, but the mutation thing doesnt just mutate people, because their bodies reject it and they die....to death. And the munants aren't affected.
All humans dead=peace among mutants.
The fatal flaw is in your understanding.
"There is no there, there." ---William Gibson, on Cyberspace
As for your other points....who the fuck really cares where Wolverines claws come out of? Anybody???? (besides you). Further, this is supposed to take place at the beginnning of the X-Men, when the characters just don't know how to fly yet. Give them a break, there are at least 2 sequels coming up, you know.
Finally, this was far from a "lame action flick." In fact I wouldn't even call it an action movie at all, it's more like a drama that has action sequences in it. If you missed the intelligence of the plot, or are just looking for something more stupid, go rent Batman and Robin.
The kid with the ball of flame in the classroom was Pyro, he's in the credits.
My other
As mentioned a million times before, Magneto isn't supposed to be hated. In fact, the comic has had no fewer than two plot lines exploring this - one is an alternate-universe where Xavier dies before the X-men are formed and Magneto, filled with remorse, forms the X-men and tries to live by Xavier's ideals. (He figures out a way to "deactivate" Rogue's power and marries her, too.)
<P>The other one had his mind wiped and his body youthened; he joined the X-men for a time without ANY knowledge of his past.
--
These are *MY* opinions.
These are *MY* opinions.
They will not be *YOUR* opinions until the Orbital Mind Control Lasers are operati
so what happened?
I still can't completely justify myself. "One person doesn't make a difference," "making other people aware of the controversy performs more functionality than a silent boycott," lots of rationalization. I'm human, and it hurts.
Ceterum censeo Microsoftam esse delendam.
i think she's cute. I've been to her fan sites and from what I'm reading, she's down to earth and all. I'm not much older than her so I don't care if she's underage. I just dont' like those stupid cults... "mae ling mak naked and petrified.... natalie portman naked" bah...
Just give me anna paquin in the flesh.
Yeah, it should have been marked up as funny, but I guess the moderators didn't see the movie...
My other
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.
__________________________________________________ ___
rooooar
it didn't meet all your expectations, and therefore the movie industry sucks (2600, Emmanuel Goldstein, blah blah blah).
:-P
Actually, what he was saying is that he really didn't want to give the MPAA more money to fight their own consumers with. I thought that was readily obvious. Slow down when you are reading, jackass
I suggest if you still don't believe me, go buy an issue of 2600. www.2600.com or go to borders (they have them,they are just hard to find) or Barnes and Noble.
I wasn't at H2K, but I would have given my left nut to go to there and defcon.
-Paul
That's the GOTH look, not the mansonite one, btw. ;)
-----
Shinma
Obsessed? Hardly. like I told Zico, I'd rather wear clothing I find attractive. Victorian frock coats and poet shirts are attractive to me, not Tommy Hilfiger. However, I'm perfectly willing to wear blue jeans and a tshirt, or even, *gasp* dress clothes. I wear what I find attractive, but I'm perfectly willing to look "respectable" in order to get paid. ;) BTW: define the "goth cookie cutter style," and I'll tell you how well I fit it.
-----
Shinma
I have to agree. I don't think it needed any explanation of why Cyclops' eyes shoot uncontrollable beams of fiery destruction. It was made pretty clear that they did, and that's all that is needed.
After all, I've read a couple of x-men comics, and managed to enjoy them without having read all of the series.
Politas
Correction: 1989's Pryde of the X-men is what I was thinking of - it's even worse than the Spiderman appearance.
And I haven't read the comics in a while, but Cannonball flies around like...well...a Cannonball.
And finally tonight, I have a wish of my own for the sequel: Multiple Man!! C'mon, it wouldn't be *that* hard to do...
------------------------
Co-founder of GerbilMechs
While reading aloud a JonKatz post:
- Everytime the phrase "post-Columbine" is mentioned, you drink.
- Everytime the phrase "geek alienation" is mentioned, you drink.
- When JonKatz starts empathizing with the Goths, you take two drinks.
- ...
I challenge anyone out there to get past the first paragraph without falling off their ergonomic swivel chairs in a drunken stupor!--jeddz
http://www.mutantwatch.com/
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
For such a parallel to exist, Mags would have to want to kill off non-mutants, which has never, ever been his intention (even during his most insane moments). For one thing, that would have have meant killing people like his wife, his parents and his first daughter, who were all normal humans.
Magnus (his middle name, and what people close to him call him, not Erik) sees basically two options: either play nice and and face persecution and even death, or fight so the nations of the world and the rest of humanity wont do that.
Turning the leaders of the world into mutants is one of the least bloodless paths you could take. But the Magneto of the comics would never kill an innocent 16 year old girl to power his mutating gizmo. That's what caused him to reform and even lead the X-Men for a time - in a big fight with the X-Men, he thought he killed Kitty Pryde, who was 14 at the time. Shocked that he would do such a thing (to a fellow jew no less), he stopped fighting and left to reconsider his methods.
I second that. At worst, they should let him appear in a cameo, but a more extended role would be better. Maybe he's helping Moira McTaggert, and we see him working with her when the X-men visit Muir Isle.
BTW, Multiple Man was really cool under Peter David's X-Factor run. They screwed up when they killed him, but thankfully he's back.
However, where is he ?
- sigs are for wimps.
Harris and Kliebold weren't geeks. They were dorks, morons, fucking CRAZY. call them what you want but don't *ever* group them with the likes of Torvalds or the slashdot crew!
and btw - i'll give someone $20 if they can honestly say that they never got shit talked about them in high-school. Every day the looked forward to going to school and having a really positive experience where everyone loved eachother. And maybe their high-school wasn't full of cliques and stereotyping.
Oh. i guess i'll be keeping that $20 now.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
Am I the only one who looks longingly back at the days when product tie-ins happened long after a TV show or movie had proven itself? This new stunt (a tie-in CCG) is even worse than the usual crap.
Right now, I'm waiting for X-Men cereal.
Five tons of flax.
I thought the balance between action and other aspects was near perfect. If people want to know more about these fictitious characters, read some comics. Until then, just wait until the next movie when I am sure the plot will have more to do with other characters. It was certainly open to a sequel, I'm not sure how much more open they could have left it without saying "To be continued..."
> So if you look at something that's read with red glasses on, you see it as white.
Uh no, you see it as red. Will blend in completely with a red background too.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
There was a little girl and her father sitting behind me in the movie, and during the opening scene ( without giving too much away, hint: Hitler Germany, Auswitz camp ) she asked him: "What are they doing? Where are they taking those people?" Made me think: "Kids movie? No way!"
Marvel announced yesterday that, since the movie did so well this weekend ( 60 million plus ), they are starting the sequel. Whoohoo!
I saw x-men the second day it came out since It was sold out the first day. I liked the movie as far as action movies go ... the history with magneto was nice also the casting for Prof. X and MagnetoWoverine was good casting also. Now as i remember rogue was not too young... since she was in the x-men and not a student of prof. X at this time. Also iceman's camo with rogue he was in the original x-men? some history did not make much sense ... but i hope they explain it for the next x-men movie other then not keeping to story of the comics in it. It was a bad ass movie. -a-optic
"Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish." -Albert Einstein
The only thing that I didn't much care for about this movie was the lack of a timeline. IE - Bobby's only a little younger than Cyclops, while Kitty Pride is much younger than both. Also, Jubilee doesn't show up until MUCH MUCH later in the comic, etc... Also, where were Angel, Beast, and Nightcrawler?!? Okay okay, minor characters. Sure. I'll go with that (at least with Angel -- dull).
The only other complaint were the lack of talent with their powers. I understand that they were supposed to be 'training', which would work for Cyclops and Jean Gray, but please. Storm's been using her powers long before the X-men. Her getting her ass kicked initially by Toad (and how DID he get so tough?!?) is just not gonna happen.
Dammit... one last complaint... Wolvie and Sabretooth go Waaaaay back, since well before the X-men knew who the hell he was. Please, at least ACKNOWLEDGE that in the movie... Christ. I don't know if they ever decidedly figured it out, but at one point or another it was rumored that Sabertooth could even be Wolvie's father.
Oh yeah, and Wolverine was too tall, not stocky enough. Don't get me wrong, Hugh played the part VERY well, but he was just too tall. Assuming acting ability is present, I think Chris Benoit (of WWF fame) would have made a MUCH better (visually, that is) Wolverine. Heck, his pants even remind me of the "Yellow Spandex" that wolvie used to wear. Plus, he's Canadian. :-)
Now, so it doesn't seem like I'm bitching, here are some good points:
- Hugh Jackman DID do an excellent job, despite his height.
- Famke Janssen LOOKED the part of Jean Grey to a T. Debating over wether or not Julia Roberts would have looked the part more, but that would incur much more expense.
- Again, Stewart, McKellan, EXCELLENT. First, who else is gonna play Professor X? Secondly, we're NOT supposed to hate Magneto. He actually led the X-team for awhile in Charles' absence. McKellan did an excellent job of portraying that. Their whole "different methods" approach came off on the screen well.
- Action scenes were good, and fx never seemed 'overdone'.
- Good plot... good movie.
I can see I've spoken a little too much now, and I gotta run, so, hope that clarified, and didn't seem like TOO much of a flame.Also, what happened with Rogue's "farm", where she grew up, with Mystique as her mother?!?
Excelsior!
I was pointing out the absurdity of friends calling a movie character "gay" being compared to homophobia (fear of man?) and/or bias-based violence against anyone. Political correctness started as a "system" of respect, and soon devolved into a system of control. It creates an (anti)hostile environment where everyone is afraid to say anything less it gets misinterperted as biased. Nobody is allowed to have opionons, or even mind their own damn business. Apathy isn't even an option unless you want to get pelted with slogans. You're feeding the fires, part of the problem... STFU! Never once did I advocate accosting strangers. If I call my friend a "fag" for wearing a tight shiny shirt, and I get compared to the KKK (who's hosts.deny list I am most assuridly on). Yea, that's the same thing. Following your exercise in illogic, I can say your thought-bullying is a cross-hair away from reeducation camps and lobotomies.
I think I'm going to have to go see it again, just so I can watch all the kids at the school more closely.
Intolerant people should be shot.
insightful? INSIGHTFUL? /. don't know
if people who MODERATE
the difference between Columbine
and Columbian, I should probably stop
reading this place.
The power of human stupidity....
Love's like playing "Marvel Vs. Capcom" with the default Dreamcast controller: Lots of fun but it hurts like hell
Love's like playing "Marvel Vs. Capcom" with the default Dreamcast controller: Lots of fun but it hurts l
A friend of mine is in the Canadian military, and apparently a group of them spent two evenings being filmed for X-Men, going through various exercises... and in the end about 2 seconds ended up in the movie.
--
This
..I still believe that Glenn Danzig would have made a better Wolverine. He has the hulking look that really would have carried Logan's feral nature more.
What do you mean about the flying aspect. Storm flew in the movie. And Jean Grey didnt get her ability to fly until much later in the X-men series. At least you realize that rogue hasnt taken the powers of Ms. Marvel yet and therefor cant fly and isnt super strong.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Well, the original cartoon series, and games called him Mag-nee-toh . And I wouldn't exactly say they are the defining answer or anything I assume the original creators had something to do with the cartoons and games, I personally prefer to pronounce something based upon what I heard, not how I decided to pronounce something based upon just reading the word.
Jon Katz would have the mutant power of irritating everyone who reads his writing.
Oh wait...
dave
That reminds me of something i thought of during the movie.. The connection that was made (and pointed out in the movie) between Rogue and Wolverine did not seem right to me. As I remember it, (Although, i know the X-men more from the cartoon of the early 90s than from the comics; I never had the money to buy comic books when I was into it) Jubilee came in as a teen and developed the relationship with Wolverine. Rogue came in as an adult; after Ms. Marvel and after being a bad guy. When Gambit came onto the team, he had a thing for Rougue, because they were both southern (and had accents). I don't know how accurate this is to the comic book, but i that's what i remember from the cartoon.
actually L. Ron Hubbard was one of the better authors of golden age science fiction--just pick up anything from or about that time
Slackware: old school feel, new school gear.
Yep the tall dark haired kid was Collusus (too lazy to check spelling). In the scene where the kid runs over water you can also see him painting as col. was wont to do. I'm pretty sure it was Pyro. Remember a bunch of the ages were messed (Kitty and Jubes at the same time. Iceman a kid and Cyke adult.) and he had to start up the fire with a lighter rather than generate it. Plus Pyro's real name was Johnny.
It could be Quicksilver. He's a mutant and was briefly a Xman. I can't think of any other superquick Xmen.
Actually, Anna Paquin is 18 years old, which is legal in most all states.
Dijital
Diji
"I came, I saw, I WTF'd!"
Yeah, but it makes for a better story if the protagonist's mutation(s) are useful...
Intolerant people should be shot.
I don't know, I'd say the ages aren't that skewed (other than Collosus). Kitty was around 13 when she first showed up, and is now generally portrayed at 17 (give or take a year I'd say), and Jubilee was about the same age when she showed up, and has been around for I'd say 2/3 as long, so she's probably 15, leaving a fairly small difference. (keep in mind just how slow Marvel characters seem to age. real history events keep getting written back to earlier times in a character's life to adjust somewhat for this. The original team has aged ten years, _tops_) As for Bobby being younger, that's not a problem, he always was supposed to be younger than the other original members.
Intolerant people should be shot.
Heh. I remember when movie soundtracks didn't hit the store a month or more before the movie. I also remember when product tie-ins were unusual, not a given (and they usually stuck with popular tv cartoons)
Intolerant people should be shot.
They've still got Bolivar Trask if they want Sentinels, and if they want a senatorial threat, they can introduce Graydon Creed. (Of course, that'd mean giving some Mystique & Sabretooth backstory)
Intolerant people should be shot.
K. I didn't stick around to see the credits. I almost never do.
Intolerant people should be shot.
Bryan Singer, the director, says it does relate to social injustice. That was his plan, anyway; it seems the editors felt some of the scenes without action weren't needed, and ended up on the cutting room floor. (I've heard estimates that 20 minutes of film are missing.)
As far as the "geeks and freaks" bit goes, X-Men storylines have always dealt with elements of discrimination. If Katz is most sensitive to a certain kind of discrimination, that's what he'll see. The same is (theoretically) true for all audience members.
- W. Blaine Dowler
http://www.bureau42.com
When my local paper reviewed the X-Men, it made an excellent point--namely, light shows are cheesy. It doesn't really matter how computer-generated they are, they just are.
And another thing that's cheesy? Live-action
people flying around. You can make that look cool in the comix, but Ian McKellen levitation around the screen brings Baron Harkonnen from Lynch's Dune more to mind than menace.
demi
Yeah, that's right. He ended up in a monastery though, didn't he?
Then there's the movie "industry"-- dredging up everything from Lost in Space to effing Les Miserables in an obscene attempt to squeeze "safe" and "successful" money out of long-dead cultural icons.
Christ, I must be getting old. I just found myself wishing for the "good old days." Anyone else remember the days when everything wasn't just a cheap knock-off of everything else?
Five tons of flax.
Last such soundtrack that springs to mind is Interview with the Vampire. Its a whole disc of opera, with a Guns and Roses cover of Sympathy for the Devil (which I liked. sue me.) I'm certain that there have been many more since then though. After all, pretty much every Hollywood movie has a soundtrack available for the last 10 years, so there's bound to be lots. Episode 1, Red Violin are a couple that seem likely from last year...
Intolerant people should be shot.
Oops. forgot to include other commentary...
Laser Quest Academy????
I never saw IKWYDLS or any of the other annoying teen slashers from the last few years.
Lost in Space was crap, with bad effects. Les Mis? Did I miss something? I remember when the stage show was here, but that's it...
I don't know. Everything's been derivative forever. Shakespeare was a blatant thief. I think it's just that as we get older, we can see what the new stuff is knocking off. Which isn't a bad thing on its own; the problem is that everything is a _bad_ knockoff of something else. (which in many cases was also bad)
Intolerant people should be shot.
See this post.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
They were mutated with Gamma radiation, it changed their cell structure.
Just like Spiderman except with a different effect.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
I heard a bunch of radio commercials for off-broadway dramas starring Patrick Stewart, and almost got tickets to see him in Hamlet. Couldn't make the date, though.
+++ATH0
Uhm, actually if you wear red glasses and look at something that is red, it is black, not white.
-Phredrick Dobbs
Emperor of the Universe
Grand and High Protector of Everything
-Phredrick Dobbs
Emperor of the Universe
Grand and High Protector of Everything
Yeah Katz. He has power over magnetic fields, not power over colors. Otherwise Magneto's machine wouldn't have irradiated/mutated everyone, it would have turned them all purple. :)
Come on down, you'll feel better!
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
A few corrections to Jon Katz: I love your articles man, but please, PLEASE, don't say 'post-Columbine' one more time. PLEASE. I'm going to have to shoot myself 'post-annoyance' if you do. Secondly, his last movie was Apt Pupil, not The Usual Suspects (though it was a wonderful film).
It was sadly apparent that Bryan had to cut 30 minutes out of the film. You could just feel the "emptiness" in the congressional meeting, the lack of ANY character development other than four characters (Prof, Magneto, Wolvie and Rogue), and the lack of the Danger Room, which would have been in the film had the budget not been sliced.
But, let's face it: This was Wolverine's movie. Everyone's favorite X-Man got all the screen time he needed. Patrick Stewart was amazing, and I was rather impressed with the gorgeous Anna Paquin (Rogue). Nice effects, a few 'blah' ones, but on the whole, you'll like it. There's nothing anyone can really trash this movie for, other than the compactness of its running time. Sigh.
I am glad taht I am hearing good things about this movie. I am planning to see it this weekend. I don't have to waste my 6 bucks.
Several of the Slashdot crew spent their lunch money on tickets...
;)
O come on...
<accent=Yorkshire> When I was in my twenties I really had to starve through lunch if I wanted to see a movie... </accent>
You Post-Internet-IPO types just dont get it, do you?
No harm meant
/nutt
All the actors had signed on for two sequels early on in the development of this movie. Doesn't guarantee anything, but the movie opened really big ($57.5 million for opening weekend - a new July record), so you can be pretty sure they'll make at least one more.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
It was designed to be a trilogy from what I've heard. All the main actors signed three film contracts before this first film was even produced.
And after the success this one will be (based on the $57 million opening weekend) they will be doing the sequels.
Though I can't speak for the entire X-Men fanbase, those I've talked to, who read and enjoyed the comic, tended to like the film. Fans seem to be understanding; X-Men is a huge undertaking, and the movie does the best it can. My friends and I could spot the inaccuracies a mile away and predict the plot scene for scene, but we were still genuinely entertained, focusing more on what they got right rather than what they skimmed over.
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!
--
Oh, God, PLEASE NO!
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
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?"
-----
Klactovedestene!
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"
I'm not so sure we were supposed to hate Magneto - I think Singer intentionally "failed" at that task. We were supposed to understand his motivations and realize that there were two sides to this. I think the adjective we were supposed to walk away with for him was "Misguided", not "Evil".
I found that while the movie was very entertaining, a lot was left unexplained. I saw if with four friends. Of them, two had watched the cartoon, and I was the only one who read the comics as a kid. So while I sat in the movie understanding everything and recognizing every cameo and enjoying the animosity between characters, my friends didn't get a lot of it. I found myself doing a lot of "Well, in the comic book....etc." after the show.
Singer didn't leave himself any time for character development. I knew the characters already; and I felt that they were well-illustrated in this movie. But for people who had never seen or read anything X-Men, they really didn't understand some of the interactions. They didn't understand exactly why Cyclops was a dick. "He didn't seem that bad at all, what was that about?"
This movie is a great introductory movie. It sets a stage, it tells a fun story, and it introduces a group of characters. I think this particular franchise would benefit greatly from sequels.
-brennan
The Weapon-X story would be great! A chance to see Canada's super team. Go Alpha Flight!
I am a comic book geek. I've been reading XMen for years.
I thought it was a fun movie. Yes, there were a lot of differences between the comics and the movie, but it didn't bug me too much.
You yourself hinted on the way to watch the movie when you pointed to the Age of Apocalypse as a good storyline. One of the central ideas that is used over and over again in comics, particularly XMen, is the idea of multiple timelines: tweak the universe a little, and familiar characters and situations come out differently. XMen the movie is just another timeline, a What If on the big screen. (That big bald guy sitting behind you was the Watcher) Dig into your archives and re-read AoA or Days of Future Past, or go down to your comic shop and pick up an issue of Mutant X or Children of the Atom and remember that not all stories are set in the same continuity.
(Note that this method doesn't always make a comic movie enjoyable; it just makes the continuity discrepencies go away)
"The Usual Suspects" was not Singer's last film, "Apt Pupil" was...so there! though it seems no one remebers "Apt Pupil" I'm still itching to see it sometime, it's supposed to be disturbing...I like movies that fuck with the mind.
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.
---
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Yeah. I thought it was bad enough when they started showing one commerical. This movie had what seemed like a dozen commercials... and that was before the PREVIEWS started... I felt I had been sitting there for ages before the movie actually started. I think if you pay full price to see a movie, you should be spared the d*mn commercials...
- Spryguy
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
The way i see it, this movie is all about if you read X-men as a kid. Many people did, myself included. Many more, however, didn't.
Whether you like this movie or not is all about if you read X-men or not.
Perfect example: when i saw the movie with my girlfriend, i thought it was the best movie i've seen since the Matrix, she fell asleep for over a hour.
If you know the characters and more history than what they show on the screen it is much more interesting, since they really do a good job of sticking to the entire X-plot. On an interesting side note, i think Hugh Jackman (Wolverine) did a fantastic job considering he never read X-men at all.
Bad spellers of the world, untie!
I used to read X-Men for about 8 years. I was really expecting the movie to blow. I thought the plot would be all but nonexistent and the lines to be incredibly cheesy or make little sense. In fact, offhand, the only line I can remember that didn't exactly sound like it made much sense was Storm's line to Toad as she was getting ready to fry him, "What happens when a Toad gets hit by lighting? The same thing that happens to everything else."
The plot wasn't as good as the Usual Suspects, but it was decent. I was also happy with the acting. I didn't feel that great span of talent between Stewart/McKellen and the rest of the cast. If you want to see what a real difference of talent is like, go see the last Highlander movie that Sean Connery did, I swear you can catch him laughing at the difference sometimes. Anyway, I know Stewart/McKellen are great actors, but I think the director did a good job smoothing out the difference between them and the other actors. If there was any difference, I interpreted it as their character's relative experience and intellect. Xavier/Magneto are supposed to be more wise, intelligent and should have more presence when speaking.
As for the details. I wasn't expecting them all to be there. I was happy to find that they tried to work in many aspects found in the comics. Little things like Wolverine's claws hurting him whenever they come out. These small details make all the difference to a die hard fan, which I almost am. There is so much content to pull from the comic, that if they didn't use as much as they could, we might have felt alienated. I'm glad they used many real Marvel Universe characters for the background characters, like Iceman, instead of coming up with some new characters that might be more 'hip' or generally pleasing to a general audience. Say what you will about consistency with the comic books, but this is probably the most accurate adaptation, given the complexity of the original story. Sure, Batman may have been more like the comic... but (IMHO) compared to a lot less complex and interesting.
I am tremendously pleased they kept the characters alive. I'd be hard pressed to find another action/sci-fi film other than Star Wars/Star Trek that, first of all has many characters, and second of all keeps them alive. I never really pay attention to who directs a film, but I will remember Bryan Singer, who I think deserves the credit for many of the positive features I've mentioned above. I assume one of the main reasons movies don't have many main characters, is because it's hard to direct them in a way that doesn't do one of two things, leave some of them looking like extras with a few lines, or makes all the characters less detailed. Whoever wrote the script deserves credit as well, for nicely integrating the tidbits of information that fleshes out the characters and links them to the comic that much more.
I can't wait for the sequel. Though not really my favorite character, I'm hoping Colosus is in the next one, just because he would look so cool. The array X-Men characters is a playground for special effects; I never imagined there would be a movie that would depict the characters with their powers so well back when I was an avid reader 10 years ago.
One last thing, I'll have to check if/when I get this movie on DVD, but I think we catch some of the New Mutants in the film. At one point, a bunch of kids run down some stairs past one or more X-Men walking around the mansion. It looked to be about 5-7 kids, one of them with tall, blond hair (Cannonball), and one shorter, with darker skin (Sunspot, he was the last one I think). I couldn't pick out anyone else. I started reading comics with the New Mutants. They were relatively new when I first started so I could read the story from the begining, and they we really cheap, back issues were like 25 cents at this store near me.
In the scene where rouge is first in school, the human torch and ice man are sitting right around her.
sometimes we change our job, our friends, and our spouses, but we never change ourselves...
Perhaps this is a tad off topic. I heard on the radio this morning that the film cost $50 million to make, and has already taken $40 million at the box office.
No doubt it will make a few more million over the next few weeks, especially once it hits screens elsewhere in the world (can't wait fo it to hit the UK). It will easily make several million beyond its cost, as do most movies these days.
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? Not to mention making DVDs bought in one country unplayable on a player bought in another country.
You've already made more money than anyone needs at the box office. Quit whinging.
Backups? We don' need no steenkin' backups!
He has to do that in the comics as well though. What bothered me most was how one dimensional some of the other characters were, especially Cyclops. Wolverine and Rogue were treated well, as were Magneto and Prof. X, but Storm and Cyclops were kinda weak. I wish Cyclops had come off as more of leader and less of an arrogant pretty boy.
So far I've gotten all my Karma from telling people they are wrong... :)
You missed Nightcrawler (as a kid) playing basketball.
I agree with you, though. I think people are unfairly bashing this movie. The comic book fans weren't going to like it no matter what. I think it is the same phenomena we saw with SWE1:PM. People go in the theater with such high expectations that they can never be happy. People went into the theater to see SWE1:PM seriously expecing a movie to change their lives.
-
The Human Torch wasn't a mutant. That was Pyro sitting in class. Jubilee and Shadowcat were also in the Prof's office - I can only hope that the kid playing basketball wasn't a weak attempt at a Nightcrawler.
At least two women I know -- one with a passing familiarity with the X-Men comics, and one with no familiarity whatsoever -- reported that they were easily able to follow the characters and story points. Which means that Bryan Singer's goal of making the movie accessible to non-fans was a total success.
-- Enoch Root, the Karma Human Torch
How the Statue of Liberty all of the sudden became sensitive to magnetism so Magneto could rip it apart at the top and use it to trap the X-Men up against the insides?
Amazing what can happen to ordinary copper when lights shine and cameras roll...
I liked her spray-on costume =]
Did you notice how you never see a full-on front shot?
Eiffel65 eat your heart out..
Lars -
Sure the action was great, but there wasn't much character development. According to Ebert, 45 minutes were cut after the movie was shown to test audiences. Perhaps that's why it seemed like there were too many people wandering around without lines or any other reason to care about them.
I don't think Magneto knows/believes that it will cause millions of deaths. When storm told him that the senator had died, his response was a sort of I-know-somthing-you-don't "are you sure?" There very well could be something I don't know, since I've never read the comic book, but I wouldn't be surprised if the senator is still alive in some water form. Not that that sort of thing is good to do to 9 million new yorkers.
In fact, if you stay as predictable as you are, I'll be able to host one hell of a party in just a few weeks, and soon I'll be set for life.
Goth and Evil Corporate Republic references are side bets.
SPOILERS
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.
His biggest problem was that Stewart and McKellen's acting almost totally overwhelm the movie.
Actually from my days of reading the X-men that is how it was supposed to be. ProfX and Magneto are both highly intelligent, and extremely powerful. They are leaders because of their appeal and overwhelming sense of power. The movie portrayed this in many ways, if the choice of actors did so on purpose or sheer luck it worked well and simply added to their charisma.
But X-Men has to be judged as a film and not as a political statement
Then why include such a paragraph as
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.
And yet another bit of brilliance, and wonderment :)
they never really seem to jell as a team.
Nor did they in the comic series until MANY issues had come out, I forget the exact issue, but even until the late 300's it wasn't still peachy keen at the Mansion. I haven't read many since then so it may still be shaky ground
We're supposed to hate Magento, but there isn't anything particularly hateful about him.
Your right on this one, I'd never hate anyone who wanted to kill me because I wasn't "as good as him". Thats the irony of magneto, he basically wants to beat the homo-sapiens to the extinction of the other species. And to top it of, to reach his moral high ground of saving mutants, he is more than happy to sacrifice and destroy other mutants. On top of that he has no problems destroying children (Rogue) and some of the more compassionate mutants, trying to help save other mutants from the same alienation and hatred they have endured (ProfX).
isn't some powerful enemy, but pending legislation in Congress, one of the world's least effective and menacing institutions.
Again read the comic a bit, and learn about the fairly clever ways of dealing with mutants the government comes up with. Or if your looking at it from the point of view of someone who's never read the comic (obviously) then just think about it for half a second. While we aren't as powerful as mutants, the odds are quite in humans favor. They don't even have to kill all the mutants, just a few like magneto. Also, with one bad really powerful enemy you find a way to kill him and the stories over. If you kill the congress every non-mutant in america is going to be getting their shotguns and going witch hunting.
Over all I really hope you'll get a good job one day, so you can afford some mental help, your cynical and depressed view of everything must make your life quite miserable. Try smiling it does the body good :)
Blue women with scales are fine as long as they're not kicking me like that.
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Mr. Katz,
Please do NOT ever review a movie ever again.
Slashdot webmasters,
Please do NOT ever again put a piece jon katz writing in a post that can't be filtered by the "don't show me these authors" filter. . .
Thank you both for your cooperation in keeping us sane.
** Martin
(from Cleveland, Oh. for those who heard katz on the Diane Rehm Show)
Katz, C'mon, at least pretend you saw the movie. We know you actually saw Rocky Horror Picture Show and you're just talking about Magenta. C'mon, fess up. And Post-Columbine? Couldn't you have left your catchphrase out just once?
So there I was. Naked. In a refrigerator. With a potroast on my knees. Smokin a cigar. That's when it got REALLY weird.
C'mon now. Magneto couldn't have been the Hollywood bad guy! He didn't seem British at all...
I can't see anything particularly 'gay' about that line. It sure was LAME, but it wasn't at all gay. In fact, any number of gay men I know could have come up with a MUCH better line :-)
- Spryguy
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
First of all: /. contributor
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
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
However, now that the civil rights movement is on the back burner in this country the story wisely decided to refocus its subcontext, moving away from the political problems a bit and treating the mutants as real people with emotions and problems (as well as making them younger) rather than just archetypical superhero figures/tools for advancing an agenda. I really did feel like they were "updating" the story for today and the problems kids are having (no matter how tired you are of hearing "post-Columbine" and other buzzwords it IS still an issue).
So, believe it or not, Katz's mentioning nerds, goths & geeks being persecuted in schools today wasn't that far off!
-----
--Xel
"Eagles may soar, but weasels dont get sucked into jet engines."
Jesus Christ, you paid $9.50 to see this movie?? Why the hell did it cost that much? o.o
:P
Here in Muncie movies are like 6.50 and i got in for 5.00 with my Ball State ID. I don't think I would ever go to the theatre again if it cost me $9.50, that price is way above MY demand curve.
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.
Agreed - God Loves, Man Kills was a great story and probably about the right length for a movie adaption too.
---
Jon E. Erikson
Jon Erikson, IT guru
----Spoilers----
I saw this movie and liked it, and I'm a hard core fan. (I have every issue of X-Men from 105 - 250)...
Anyway.. if michael is going to be picky about lines Sabertooth (aka Large Grunting Guy) had two lines, "I want to hear you scream.", and "You still owe me a scream."
Anyway, granted I would've loved to have heard Sabertooth call Logan a runt and bad mouth him as he beat him about with the log, but I understand why they didn't. Hinting at a connection between Sabertooth and Logan would've been a distraction from the plot of "X-Men" and they never would've been able to deal properly with "Magneto" as the villan. Hopefully if they do a "Wolverine" movie as they seem to hint at the end, they will include Sabertooth as the villan in that.
As for Mr. Katz review and claiming that he never hated "Magneto", that's good you shouldn't have, "Magneto" for all intents and purposes with respect to mutants is "Malcom X", and Charles Xavier is "Martin Luther King, Jr.". The whole point of the conflict is that you should be able to see both sides, and that the conflict is a grey area not black and white like most comic book conflicts. That's what makes the comic, and the movie interesting to watch.
I would suggest you read The Uncanny X-Men #139 - 141. Its a series entitled, "Days of Future Past". I believe you can also get it in trade paperback if you don't feel like shelling out the 25 bucks each book is currently worth.
It essentially deals with a stituation in which a government official is murdered by mutants causing widespread anti-mutant sentiment, which causes (several years in the future) an apocolyptic war between mutants and humans.. it probabaly best illustrates the dicotomy between the Xavier/Magneto.
In my opinion, he's done for Wolverine what Sean Connery did for James Bond: other people might play the character in the future, and even do it well, but they'll always be compared with the first, and usually lose.
I thought the movie was great. I thought it was as faithful to the comic as a live-action Hollywood film will ever get -- if you expected more I suspect you have little clue as to exactly how Hollywood works. And when the movie is available for purchase, I'll buy it (hopefully the director's cut, since my understanding is there's an extra hour of movie that got CUT in the final version). And when the sequel comes out, I'll be going to see that too (apprently the whole cast has signed on to a sequel, if rumors turn out to be facts).
+----------------------------------------------
+------------------------------------------------
+ The urge to destroy is a creative urge
The particularly fast kid playing basketball was (probably) Quicksilver, and Jubilee was in the classroom sitting next to Rogue (slightly out of step with the comic - she's a much later character.) Couldn't for the life of me figure out which one was Colossus (though as another poster pointed out that may have been the one running on water.)
Will we get Sentinels in the next one?!
My question is, is it just me or did anyone else expect Famke Janssen to be cast in the role of Rogue? Rogue always struck me as a strong, kickass femme with an attitude, and Janssen is a tall, handsome woman who tends to play strong-willed characters. It's true that Rogue was also a chronic self-doubter, but then so was Jean Grey. (BTW, does Rogue have her southern drawl in the film?)
I admit I don't know anything about Anna Paquin, but from what I've seen of the trailers and so on, she seems like a young, inexperienced coquette, which makes me think more of Kitty Pryde---although Kitty never had much sex appeal...
Anyway, I'm looking forward to seeing a strong actor like Janssen as Dark Phoenix in the next film... and I can't wait to see Storm with a mohawk in her leathers...!
BH
Fools! They laughed at me at the Sorbonne...!
Regular X-Fans on the internet are used to this. Along with Magneto's fellow member of the Brotherhood of Chromatic Mutants, Rouge. :-)
Sorry guys I couldn't help myself, plus I'm at work and bored.... This imbalance is most evident from the very first encounter between the noble-minded Prof. Xavier and the allegedly evil Magento. \---- Magento... must be Magnetos color co-ordinated gay brother following in his footsteps
Everyone probably already knows this, but just in case, the reason Cyclops can't control his bursts without his visor is because he fell out of a plane when he was a child, and suffered mental damage that prevents him from controlling the bursts. (The whole plane thing is important for other reasons too) He has to use the visor to control the beams.
Nightcrawler? Without the blue fur? Never.
I think we were supposed to feel sorry for him, see how he could arrive at his conclusion due to his past, see that his means were obviously wrong but the sentiment stems from a yearning to prevent a holocaust, not cause one.
His master scheme could clearly have been more malicious. His villainous flaw was he was willing to sacrifice others to achieve his end goals.
If we were supposed to hate him, he would not have been given such a sympathetic introduction, and Prof. X would not have continued to consider him a friend.
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
Because that's their mutant powers, while Cyclops' inability to control his blasts (according to the comics) is due to brain damage he suffered as a pre-teen.
But the point you wanted to make is: why explain bit details of the characters when they don't impact the story at all? And there's no reason, and that's why I'm glad it was omitted. It was obvious from the movie that Scott can't control his blasts, and anyone else would've figured that was just the way his powers worked.
No, you don't need a villan, but you need a pro and antagonist, which the movie had. Just in its own twisted way. Sorta the Gov't vs Magneto vs X (Jean Luc Jean Piere Jean Jean Piccard)
---
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
i liked this movie about as well as any of the movies i've seen in a long time. it was entertaining but not gripping or really remarkable. anyway, what really bothered me is how every actor aside from patrick stuart, ian mckellen and hugh jackson were basically pieces of bright-colored pieces of foam wrapped in leather. james marsden (cyclops) in particular was doing a wonderful job un-acting, and i'm not quite sure if that was his character or if he really doesn't have any life like features. it sort of reminds me of keanu reeves, but then again, everyone loved the matrix. i guess that's what to expect from a cast of unknowns with a couple of good actors thrown in to put on the posters.
hugh jackman was pretty good, though. and anna paquin is hot.
As for the worst part of the movie.. when Storm tried to make a wisecrack or i don't even know what that was.. (the part
when she's fightin toad).. that should go down in history as one of the gayest lines ever
Aargh! Yes, that was definitely a low point in the movie. It went something like this
"Know what happens when a Toad gets hit by lightening?"
Pregnant on-screen pause while the audience prepares itself for a really cool line
"Same thing that happens to everything else"
Audience members exchange quizzical looks, ask people near them if they heard correctly. We'd waited so long to hear Storm say anything, and we were ripped off. Actually, Storm's character seemed pretty weak. In the comics, she's seen as being very... imperial. In the movie, she faded into the background. Or at least as much as a white haired Halle Barry in tight spandex can fade into the background.
Other than that, it was quite enjoyable
I believe a LOT of people caught the names of the students. Even vaguely hinted about them.
Trying to do our best not to spoil that aspect of the movie.
:)
-Vel
I haven't read the newer stuff in a while myself, they just got too expensive. And the old issues are reprinted since the originals really get expensive. Basically the X-Men were really crappy before #94.. and really still weren't that good until maybe #120 or so. You can get reprints of most issues, and occasionally they rebound a whack of 'em into graphic novels.
"Days of Future Past" is a good one.. the "Mutant Massacre" is also a good series, but I don't know if they ever rebound those into any format. That was about X_Men 203 -212, as well as some issues of X-Factor, and New Mutants.
The Wolverine mini-series is really good too, that is a graphic novel, written by Frank Miller(Most famous for: The Dark Night Returns)
The best thing to do is go to a comic book store and browse through the graphic novels.. as well as issues of "Classic X-Men" (which are valueless reprints of the originals) I strongly recommend anything written by Chris Claremont, or Frank Miller... although i don't know if Frank Miller ever did the X-Men.
loev,
Axel
mhm23x3, alt.fan.karl-malden.nose
Ok, I've never bitched about how much I've hated Katz or how he sucks or he should go somewhere or another, I've generally considered him this overly loquasious guy who is more impressed with his on vocabulary that his ability to research what he's writing on.
;) Jean Grey was good. Storm wasn't the best, but hey, she didn't have a big part. Sabretooth was menacing, though the extensive past relationship wasn't explored between Logan and Sabretooth. That is my only gripe about the comic -> movie translation. For what was expected, the movie was nothing short of a phenomenal success. It had a veritable shoe string budget (for a summer/action flick) a cut production time and the length of the movie was cut down. I give it two thumbs up. Even the snooty movie reviewer in Charlotte NC (Lawrence Toppman) liked it. He's the snootiest guy I've ever seen :) So uhm, there's my review. Cool flick, see it twice, buy the DVD and hope Singer puts the outtakes on there :)
Note: Next time you hand Jon Katz a computer/type writer/word processor, also hand him a clue.
A) it's "Magneto," Master of Magnetism, not "Magento" master of the color red.
B) They are claws. Not knife fingers. They don't flex or have joints. He's called "Wolverine." Wolverine's carry neither knifes nor have fingers.
C) My biggest complaint: We are never supposed to hate Magneto. He's always been my favorite "villian" for one reason. He's not a bad guy. He's just a poor, mis-guided man who has been affected by traumatic events in his past and is just trying to protect his on. As someone else said, this is the most dangerous kind of person.
I must admit I know Katz probably liked that movie. He knows most everyone else who saw the movie enjoyed it. It raked in *57 MILLION* dollars in its first weekend. In three days. What movies beat this? Episode I and Jurassic Park 2. MI:2 also made more in its first week, but I don't count that because it was released on a Wednesday. Arguably, X-Men was better than JP:2 and SW:E2. Anyway, he's probably thinking "let's bash X-Men and get everybody up in a huff!" Eh, worked for me. I went in with 3 friends (male) and my girl friend. I've pretty much kept of with the X-Men for the last 10 years, one guy knew nothing about it other than the commercials, 2 guys had a fairly good grasp on what it was about, and my girlfriend had just seen the cartoon. And each and everyone one of us was like "OMG That was cool, let's see it again." Sometimes you old farts (*cough*KATZ*cough*) need to remember that movies are necessarily works of art. They aren't always commentary on social situations. They aren't generally supposed to inspire people. They are entertainment. When you go to a movie, the hope is either a) you're rolling in the aisles laughing b) you're holding on the arm rests because of the intensity or c) you're crying because something sad had happened. 2 out of 3 ain't bad, especially when we were not supposed to be crying. Stuff like Logan touching Rogue so she could heal herself or the "You're a dick" comment (that was great) made it feel human. Anna Paquin did a very good job as Rogue. Hugh Jackman did an *extremely* good job as Logan. Remember how much people bitched when he was cast as Wolverine? He had a big uphill battle and he nailed it. And yeah, Cyclops is as gay as we had always thought
Jubilee appears in the credits, so I guess she was supposed to be one of the children there, but I couldn't find her and I saw it twice. I also didn't see Colossus, who was also in the credits.
My other
We got commercials, but they were before the trailers, not before the main film. I think that the original poster was seeing stuff inserted by the theater.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
Some people have said that the kid playing basket ball is Quicksilver. No way.
:)
Is he Canonball ? Could be , but probably not, the Canonball does not wear glasses in the comics, and he flies like a rocket, not zips by at super speed like Quicksilver or Flash.
I think he was just a made up filler mutant. (and I loved the "Hey, no powers" line
- sigs are for wimps.
I am JellyFish, Extremely dangerous if I happen to drift into you, I will cause your skin to burn with pain!
MAGNETO MAGENTO MAGNETO MAGENTO anyone else notice this? or get totally annoyed by it?
i could live a little longer in this prison
And she was identified as such in the credits. It makes me wonder if she had some lines that went to the cutting room floor. (Kitty, also, was identified in the credits, but she was called by name onscreen).
I think those were the only two cameos mentioned by name in the credits (I don't consider Bobby to be a cameo because he had an actual effect on the plot.) I was pretty sure I saw Mirage, or at least a girl of the right ethnicity and hairstyle. The kid with the lighter had the same powers as the villain Pyro (who never, ever, attended the Xavier School). There was also a tallish blonde kid who might have been Cannonball.
Oh, and how's this for a nit-pick: I would have liked to have seen Kitty have her Semitic kinky hair instead of being generic looking. That was as much her identifiable look for most of the comic's run as Jubilee's yellow shirts.
-- I'm not evil, I'm
Jon Katz, like anyone else with a loud voice in a public forum, uses his voice to perpetuate the spreading of his adgenda at every opportunity. You are correct in pointing this out, but I don't think anyone should be surprised about it.
At the risk of plot spoiling, Jon's constant references to geek oppression run very much parallel to a main theme in the movie. The interesting thing is that we (I use we so as to avoid making this a "pick on Jon Katz post") seem to use the same tactics tovocalize our feelings about geek oppression as the Senator used to facilitate mutant oppression. Unfortunately the victims of mutant terror greatly outnumber the victimized mutants, and therefore the X-men will always lose the sympathy vote.
This is all a question of perception. If we want people to understand us better, we need to change their perception of us. Crying about discrimination isn't goin to do it, but activism might.
An interesting parallel to this concept is a series of books written by Terry Goodkind, called the "Sword of Truth" series. While the books aren't the best written books and at times seem to borrow heavily from some of Mr. Goodkind's fantasy fiction writing peers, there does run a constant line of plot centering around oppressing those who employ magic. The politicians use the same tactics to stir people up against the use of magic that people in the United States use to whip up frenzy over gun control. Throw in a few buzz words, talk about danger to children (We don't want these Mutants in our schools...its just like bringing a weapon to school!) and next thing you know you have a frothing crowd of angry, frightened, and horribly mis-informed parents on your hands.
I guess the point is, Keep it up Jon, but try some new tactics because your sympathetic audience is tremendously small!
It's about time Forum 2000 started doing movie reviews again. They're just about the best part (other than the Ayn Rand/Anti-Ayn dynamic).
Dan Bongert <*> http://www.tiltingatwindmills.net
This is a Chao. A Chao says "Mu."
[many chuckles]
Wolverine has been overused, but he's popular, so c'est la vie. Anyway, since this movie focused a lot on him, perhaps they have enough sense to veer off to one of the other characters before they follow-up on the very obvious Weapon-X dangling plot threads.
As for Watchmen, it's the best movie adaptation of a comic that hasn't been made yet.
Other ideas: a Superman movie that Doesn't Suck. A Batman movie that Doesn't Suck. Hell, I'd even be willing to give a Wonder Woman movie a chance (Lucy Lawless perhaps?) once they get it through their Hollywood dope-addled heads that the story is important!
/// Not a super-genius . . . yet. ///
So here's my question for the /. comic book guys, how should I start reading the X-Men comics (or any other series)? Should I just pick up the current issue and start reading? Or would it be better to get some of the earlier issues in a book or something? (older issues of popular comics do get bound into large volumes right?)
Thanks
--
A buddhist walks up to a hot dog stand and says ``Make me one with everything.''
He last directed The Apt Pupil.
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?
Tort
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.
Au contraire mon frere, I heard a rather well written piece discussing the court case this morning on NPR... this is Public radio, we - the people - own it and contriubute to it.
- passion
I'm pretty sure the kid playing ball that was zipping around / teleporting was cannonball. I'm sure they didn't mind using their creative lisence to make him younger than 16 - no big deal really. And about a half a second before the kid was running across the water there was a shot of a kid drawing in a sketchbook - that was colossus. In the comics he's real big into illustration and painting.
Look again.
... the camera flashes past a big dark-haired kid with a sketchpad, drawing.
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
This parallel begs the question: Was X-Men produced and released because it would draw a comic book audience or an alienated teen audience? Perhaps they were COUNTING on the /. effect to make them some $$$... ;-)
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
> Oh yeah. Third movie: time travel! Cable ! Stryfe ! Phoenix/Askani ! Bishop !
No way ! Time travel, and space exploration should be avoided at all cost !!! They would just be too confusing for the general audience.
I think the second one will be about Sentinels, and the third one : Apocalypse, with one of the team members being a horseman (could be somebody else besides Angel).
But no, please, no time travel, that's one of the things that makes the X-Universe so complicated !!!
- sigs are for wimps.
I thought that the movie did suffer a bit from having to introduce more than ten characters of major involvement in a very short time span, as well as actually having a plot. That, in my opinion, was the strangest thing.
Also, the plot, standing alone from the fact that it was the X-men, was not very original or captivating to me. If the movie had been about another ragtag bunch without the background, it would have been just another story.
I think that there is very good potential for a sequel though, because we might actually get some more character development, which I thought was the main thing that this movie needed more of.
Despite these flaws, the movie was cool, because I do have a limited familiarity with the X-men, and it was impressive to make the X-men not seem "totally gay" (as other readers here might say). Cyclops' beam looked believable, as did Storm's abilities. Having Rogue and Storm float around, however, probably would have seemed kind of silly. (Although, I have since inferred that Rogue's flying was from another mutant in some other story somewhere) Another cool thing to have seen, would have been a sentinel, but it would have been nonexistent from my understanding of the progression of the series. It was close to being too geeky as to bother a female friend of mine who is one of those rabid anti-star trek types :), but it did a good job of not being so.
-Phredrick Dobbs
Emperor of the Universe
Grand and High Protector of Everything
-Phredrick Dobbs
Emperor of the Universe
Grand and High Protector of Everything
Jon, I have agreed with you on many issues, but here I have to say you just seem to hate "guy stuff".
I have yet to see the movie (yea, flame on, but that is a different set of mutants (Fantastic 4)), but your whole criticism of the movie is that "the man" ruined the comic strip? Combined (or is that Columbined?) with the criticism of why the Mutants are kicking butt (Congressional legeslation).
Jon, it is a movie! Just a movie! You fail to mention how hot the chicks are and how stuff gets blown up, 2 of the 3 B's of great movie making (Bombs, Bullets, Babes). The 3 B's are what counts, it sounds like it has them and I am going to see it a couple of times before it gets to video. When it is on video, I can stare at freeze-fremed Rogue and Storm for hours on end, as well as replaying explosions and stuff over and over.
You missed the stuff about chicks in Scream!3 and you missed it here. Perhaps you need to work on your movie review skills? Perhaps you should have reviewed the script instead, since you read very well, you just miss the important stuff, like stuff blowin' up and bein' shot and hot chicks.
BTW, hope your book is going good, congrats on that deal again!
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
He did say "bub" at least once. I can't remember exactly when it was, but I think it was when he was fighting Sabretooth the first time.
I thought the lightning-toad line sucked. I would have preferred Wolvie facing Toad.
Wolvie: What's green and red and goes a hundred miles an hour?
Toad: I dunno.
Wolvie: SHING!
--
Pretend there is some witty statement here.
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.
--
______________________________________________
Don't blame me - I voted for Howard Dean. http://dean2004.blogspot.com
I already said this in a sub-post, but was anyone else amazed by how few people seemed to know who Ray Park is? The Darth Maul-esque twirl of the pipe toward the end was appreciated by about three people in the theatre.
The movie was awesome, (from this X-Men reader's perspective.) I've already seen it twice. Logan absolutely stole the show - My biggest complaints are Halle's acting, (the writer didn't help her out much,) and the hair in Rogue's mouth at the end. I wonder if those 45 cut minutes will be available on the DVD? If so, I might have to finally buckle under and get a DVD player...
Best line in the movie =)
I don't know, maybe it's the result of post-Columbine stress and alienation; I don't know. Jon, what's it like to be an outcast among the outcasts? Does it make you normal?
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.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
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?
Fight Spammers!
If you look something through a red filter, the red filter transmits the red light and absorbs the rest. That is why it appears red.
When viewing a red object, almost all of the light is red, and it passes through brightly, i.e., white. In the case of a green object, red's complement, there is very little red light contained, and it appears dark, i.e. black.
Red text on white paper viewed through red glasses will disappear, because the level of red light reflected (and thus, transmitted through the glasses) is nearly the same.
0x0D 0x0A
Actually, he did say "bub" once. It was when he was fighting Sabertooth on the statue of liberty.
Dennis
LOL! This is exactly what I was thinking when I read that line. You're not supposed to hate him, that's the whole point. I love it when movies present these kind of issues to the audience. Not all "bad guys" are hate-mongering evil-loving monsters. In this case we see a pretty rational, intelligent person take a course of action he believes is right. In fact, he thinks he's even giving the normal humans a gift by making them mutants.
I only wish they hadn't made Magneto so ready to take life. I suppose they put that in so that people like Katz could figure out he was supposed to be the bad guy. :)
-Zane
This sig is worse than my last.
"Know what happens when a Toad gets hit by lightening?"
Pregnant on-screen pause while the audience prepares itself for a really cool line
During that pregnant pause, I was trying to figure out how you could make a cool line out of "Their legs jerk around."
Storm was definitely the weakest link.
___
__
Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
I'm not going to rag on Katz more than necessary, but hey man - ever heard of the Internet Movie Database? Singer last directed Apt Pupil, not The Usual Suspects. And considering that Apt Pupil was pretty crappy, I don't think there was all that much pressure on Singer, from the directorial aspect. Thanks for the thought, though.
I'm normally not a critic of Katz's, but this just got me:
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.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Before that incident, did you see CONGRESS discussing legislation to mark those who didn't fit in so that authorities can recognize them? Sure, geeks, freaks, and losers were persecuted by society, but not with the consent and even participation of Authority. Hippies and Communists got somewhat the same reception, but those cases don't fit as nicely with this movie.
The Establishment has recently threatened to brand a "group" of people as dangerous because of the actions of a few of them! And in one case (a certain detective company) they've tried to get the "normals" to finger the "mutants". It seems to almost directly parallel the movie. So Katz is right this time, even though I too am tired of the subject.
I was trying to figure that kid out too, maybe I haven't read X-Men recently enough to know who it is. I thought it might be a weak attempt at Cannonball.
You can probably get the soundclip from the siskel-ebert.com web site, once they get it up there.
Did anyone see Stan Lee? He was in the 'jellyfish' scene. Right after the kid poking the jellyfish, the camera pans, and you see Stan Lee doing something...
Hey, can anyone tell me what Rogue meant when she told Wolverine she saved his life? (When he was at the bar).
http://www.talknerdy.org
Isn't that what they were building up to? The next film is totally Weapon-X stuff. They left themselves wide open.
--Hail Mary, for she has the largest shotgun of them all.--
actually, the book for Battlefield Earth was incredible. I read it about 5 yrs ago and had to read it again (yes, over 1000 pgs read twice). But stories like that usually only attract a younger crowd.
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)?
Ooh, a Wonder Woman movie, staring Lucy Lawless, directed by Tim Burton. Oooooh!
Tim Burton is about the only director I've seen that can do comic book movies justice. Batman is the litmus test by which all comic-book-derived movies should be based against.
My favorite comic-book-movie is still Mystery Men! I want a sequel with Flaming Carrot! And I want a live-action big-budget Tick movie!
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
I paid nearly $8.50 for my ticket, the fourth-highest I've ever paid for a movie ticket in my history. To put that dollar amount into perspective, imagine a stack of apples about two dozen high. That's how many apples you could get for $8.50.
"And for good measure, he had to live up to the high expectations set by his last movie, Usual Suspects."
Bryan Singer's last movie was apt Pupil.
When punk rock is outlawed, only outlaws will have punk rock.
For those of you who don't get the quote and think it's flamebait, here's the background...
Stallman was sitting around with some of his fellow nerds lamenting that nobody calls anything GNU. He says, "See this Linux distro? 99% of the source and binaries are from the FSF, but do they call it GNU/Linux? No. And see all these web servers? Are they hosted by GNU/Apache? No. Just Apache. How about this one, it's called Slashdot, running Slashcode? Slashcode is released under the GPL, but does anybody say, `Hey, did you see the latest story on GNU/Slashdot?' Does anybody say, `You can run your own GNU/Slashdot look-alike news site by running GNU/Slashcode'? No. Of course not. It's just called Slashdot, running just Slashdcode. Nobody uses GNU in naming anything...
"But fuck one goat..."
"The very same thing, of course, is happening to "geeks, Goths and freaks" all over the United States today, post-Columbine."
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.
--
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
"In life, nothing is as simple as Luke and Darth Vader..."
Uhh, IMHO Vader ain't a simple character. He's in the thrall of a dark force that weakens his resolve to be good or kind, but even so he still struggles towards his own better side. I don't think Vader has the MOST shades of grey in character history, but Star Wars exists in an Avalon-like universe of high contrast between kindness and cruelty. I think Vader shows a pretty deep-seated longing to return to the light side.
I agree with you totally that Magneto isn't supposed to be easy to hate. Every scene between Magneto and Xavier is meant to drive HOME that point. They could easily be two voices within the same man: one counseling hope for the future, one demanding justice in the present.
-C
Actually, the studio spent about $70 million on the X-Men production, and another $30-40 million on promotion and other costs. That's the bad news for the studio.
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
Phallic Symbols in LOTR
The movie was shot in an around Toronto. Most of the shots at the school were done at Casa Loma, a castle that was built around the turn of the century by some crazy rich guy. I was married last June in the 'classroom' where Storm is teaching in one scene.
Well they didn't get into nightcrawler's character at all. They didn't say that he developed his powers, nor did they show he had no tail. I didn't really take note of how many fingers he had though.
forgey
At the risk of saying "me, too." - uhh, me, too.
I had heard good things about this movie before going -- enough, in fact, to lead me to believe that it might not totally suck, as I would have expected from a Marvel movie.
Instead, I was shocked to find that it didn't suck at all. I'd give it 3 out of 4 stars overall, or (given my low expectations) 4 out of 4 in the genre of "comic book-based action movies."
My biggest fear going in was that it would try to develop every character - especially the ones, like Angel and Beast, that did OK in the comics, but really wouldn't translate that well to the big screen. Sure, they didn't develop anyone in too much depth, but they got everyone familiar with who they are.
My personal hope for the next movie - Focus on one character. I don't care which, although its set up to be Wolvie as Weapon X.
My personal fear for the next movie - Wolvie's headed to Canada. I just hope he doesn't run into Alpha Flight...
Law is whatever is boldly asserted and plausibly maintained. -- Aaron Burr
Two Thumbs up for your review !!!
> wrong. The villain is FEAR. the hero is HOPE.
You paid attention to the movie, unlike Katz. I really liked the way Magneto made fun of Charles' "hope" and the "I will bring you hope" line. Great exchanges between these two.
And yes, it's annoying that Katz seems to be talking about the comic book as if he's read it, when it's obvious he's not familiar with X-men at all !!!!!! Jeezz.
- sigs are for wimps.
Trying to quote as closely as I can
Magneto says "We're the future Charles, Not them!"
Then he tries to genetically alter a human so that they can join the Superior Race. Be made like us or die in the process. Nice. Oh, and sorry little Rogue (if only I were 16 again...Mama Mia), I'll just butcher you in the process. Its for everyone's own good, though, so be a happy little hero, would you?
Can you say Racial Supremacy Complex, and a huge, ironic Hitler parallel? There is planty to hate here. I guess people could make the arguement that good ol' Adolf was just misunderstood, but had good intentions, too!
C'mon people. He was a madman, and his only saving grace was the long time affection that Prof. X had for him.
There is not reason why he has it, he was born with it. They first started at puberty. The reason why he wears those glasses is because they filter the bursts, kind of like the way that if you put red glasses on, it filters the red. So if you look at something that's read with red glasses on, you see it as white.
hlag
OK. So, I used to read Mr. Katz writing till I realized that he had NO idea what my life as a geek was about. . .So, I'll explain why I think he's absolutely full of shit. . .
Yes. I'm a "geek" (Mr. Katz word). Yes, I was different than many other people in high school. I was smart, not particularly outgoing, didn't enjoy sports, etc. Had Mr. Katz seen me, he would have likely written that I was an outcast. He would have gone on for paragraphs of poor grammar about how bad my life was and how hard it was for me to get along. . .
Well, you know what, in my schools there were dozens of other kids just like me! We hung out together. Were we all outcasts? Consider this: We also had jocks, burnouts, and people who fit into category. The jocks didn't talk to the geeks or the burnouts. The burnouts didn't talk to the jocks or the geeks and the geeks didn't talk to the jocks or the burnouts. So, we've got lots of seperate groups, all of who do not talk to each other.
So, which ones are really the "outcasts"? Which ones are different? We ALL were different. There was nothing unusual about the geeks being a group that hung out together because there were other groups that did the same thing. But our dear dear Mr Katz always talks about us "geeks" like it was our life that was so bad and everyone else was normal. Sorry Jon, my life was as normal as the next guy's.
How does that relate to your movie review? Simple, we geeks are smart enough to know that "Magneto" is not spelled "Magento" (Who is "Magento"'s nemesis anyway, "Cyano"?)
** Martin
I agree. The final scene with the chess game was rather telling of the nature of the two characters, and made me respect Dr. Xavier much more for not completely villainizing Magneto.
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Marvel and Paramount have done X-Men/Star Trek crossovers. So, what I'd like to see is....
Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard meets Patrick Stewart as Professor X.
--
Pretend there is some witty statement here.
For those of you complaining that the movie was too short or did not have enough regarding plot and character development:
As I understand it, the movie was supposed to have almost another extra half hour of footage. However, the higher-ups in 20th Century Fox decided it would be better to cut it so that the movie would have a higher action/content ratio. That way the saps going for pure action wouldn't get bored with silly things like a developed plot. Not exactly the best decision on their part, IMHO, but it's understandable.
As for me, I went in to the movie just hoping it wouldn't suck. Going in with that outlook, I left a very happy weeble. I'm looking forward to a "Director's Edition" on DVD. That would please me very much.
Beating up or oppressing someone for being gay is wrong. Calling someone a fag is a schoolyard taunt. This difference is not subtle. Stop trying to bully everyone into being as damn sensitive as you are. I for one don't want to live in your humorless milktoast aftershool special world, homo.
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, 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.
--
Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
Now I'm no Katz fan by any means, but this time I think he did fairly well. Not toooo overwritten, fairly sound points (I can still argue though), and doesn't stick out like some of his others...
:)
At least it wasn't a blind Katz post (Timothy: Did you learn your lesson??
We don't need no Net Explorer We don't need no Thought control
I reviewed X-men also, and you are welcome to read it. My quick summary is that I thought they did a great job of making a fun movie without being either completely unfaithful to the comic book or being slavishly faithful where that would have hurt the movie. I liked that they gave Magneto a good reason to hate normal people.
Jon, my man, buddy... We need to have a little talk. I like you man, I really do, you funny man. Openning your story, by calling the people who like X-Men alienated from society, and pretty much starting on a round of geek bashing, and slamming people who are into comics (I don't even get that much into comics, but I picked up on it), in /., which has been all a twitter since the day this damned movie was announced... Really bad idea man. Come on dude, you don't write columns to people, and have them want to continue reading your column, by saying "I'd first like to say that you're all a bunch of raging assholes." Dude, I'm not trying to be mean here, but a lot of people here don't seem to like you much already, but I do, which is why I'm trying to help you man. Bashing the audience is not a good way to help your case man. Please refrain from it.
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.
Eh...
This is all at least 5th hand information and all are reported to be just ideas being kicked around for use in a possible sequel.
I personally would like to see some straight-up sentinel action in the next movie since that would be more in line with the 'mutants vs. humans' angle as opposed to the 'mutants vs. bad muthaf-cker' angle that would occur if Apocalypse is used.
Also, I'd hope they would bring in Colossus (as mentioned by many), Nightcrawler and Beast (furry or non-furry) to round out the original X-Men as well as make Storm a real character as opposed to the window-dressing role she has in the movie.
I really liked Hugh Jackman's Wolverine, even though it's an easy part to play...
An easy part to play??? Jackman played a dynamic character so smoothly that I didn't even notice the transformation until the movie was over and I was thinking back to the beginning. The writers deserve a lot of the credit for this too, but most actors would have botched it completely. Jackman pulled it off admirably. I was as impressed with his acting as with Patrick Stewart's, and Stewart is my favorite actor.
As good as Jackman and Stewart were, though, I have to say that Ian McKellan stole the show. A sympathetic, sane bad guy? It would have been much easier, and much less effective, to play Magneto as a monomaniacal nut case who lost his mind along with his respect for ordinary humans. The script would have allowed it, too. The same lines spoken by a bug-eyed, angry fanatic would have sounded loony. Instead, you find yourself understanding Magneto's ideas, almost even agreeing with them.
The original Howling Frog is a fictional character and has no UID.
Is the Age of Apocolypse series, which IMHO is the best story ever run in the history of the X-Men. Since it's a (relatively) short story which by X-Men standards is fairly disconnected with what preceeds it, the jump from comic to film could be made a lot easier. And the very dark setting would make for a great film.
Of course, it'll never happen :(
Still, I've pretty much given up on ever seeing a film based on a book/comic/graphic novel that isn't at best a poor approximation of the original. The things that are the most deserving of moving to film are those which will make the transition the worst - they're too long, too detailed, too intelligent or just too bizarre for Hollywood to either accept or do well.
No, the book to film genre will remain at best a poor copy of the original for a long time to come. Maybe when we can create fully realistic, 100-hour CGI epics we'll get faithful versions of classic books and comic stories, but until then it'll be much like this film sounds.
---
Jon E. Erikson
Jon Erikson, IT guru
Somehow I doubt they'll have the Sentinels - didn't they openly kill off one of the main guys responsible for their creation? (Gyrich - the other being Trask)
"But the point you wanted to make is: why explain bit details of the characters when they don't impact the story at all"
/. posts.
Actually, that is what I meant to say. Thanks for the clarifying point--I really do need to sleep more before writing
http://thechubbyferret.net - Ferret pictures and informative links.
Frankly, I didn't get into comics until after highschool. Wolverine is probably my favorite character. This made the movie very enjoyable. I've always liked characters like Batman, Punisher and DareDevil because they were somewhat more believable. Cyclops and other spandex heros always turned me off. Give me a gritty character with real motivation. I'd still buy comics but they just got too expensive. For the same $7.00 buying two comics I can get a book that lasts more than 30 min.
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.
IANAL, but I play one on
Actually the Japanese Gardens on the San Fernando Water Reclamation Center in the Sepulveda basin. They also used it in Night at the Roxbury.
-dan
Well, I thought it was an excellent movie. Not magnificent, but excellent. The movie reflects very well the basic conflict of humans versus mutants, and the very deep ethical questions lying within.
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.
Taco:
Thank you for a well-balanced review. (Yea, some people will say I'm biased. Whatever.) Of course, X-Men is not Hamlet - it's based on a comic book, for cripes' sake (as you mentioned.) But it's a fun and well-written movie, so there's certainly a lot to enjoy about it.
Katz:
Dude. SHUT UP. Go back to Salon, where someone is still interested in your whining about "geek oppression". I think the funniest thing about it is, on a self-professed nerd/geek/whatever site, you preach to US about what it's like to be a geek-type person - how would YOU know? You aren't us. It's that simple.
You're TOO stuck on this one subject. Find something new, we're getting tired of it.
Michael:
You're right - as I mentioned above, X-Men is a far cry from Hamlet - look where it's coming from. But you've got to give Bryan Singer and company some credit. Your review sounds like you were expecting a filet mignon, and you got something that was a couple notches down (New York strip, maybe?) - it didn't meet all your expectations, and therefore the movie industry sucks (2600, Emmanuel Goldstein, blah blah blah).
There have been a handful of really barrier-breaking films lately - none of which will probably compare with anything Shakespeare wrote, but they're still well-written, well-acted, and at least fairly balanced. Comparing this stuff to Shakespeare, though, and saying "Well, if it doesn't meet this standard, it's drek" is no good - no one's going to meet that standard. You're not going to find perfection. But you may as well enjoy a good story instead of nitpicking because it's not flawless.
_____
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
Someone else may have pointed this out but during the whole thing I'm wondering how this ended up with anything more than a PG rating. Skip to near the end with this bit of witty banter:
Wolverine: Hold up it's me!
Cyclops: Prove it!
Wolverine: You're a dick.
Cyclops: Good enough.
That had me crying I was laughing so hard.
And as to the Stan Lee cameo, Check out the extended cast list for the movie on IMDB. I'm actually going back to see if I can figure out where the hell Collosus was in the movie. I did catch Pyro and Iceman though.
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
What I liked most about the pre-movie hype is that there wasn't much unlike that other movie that we all saw that didn't live up to it.
Hey FOX, let's have them back on the DVD! Wow, 45 minutes is like a full third of the movie.
I don't think he'll ever recognize the silliness (and to some, the insult) of comparing the discrimination against people for how they were born with the discrimination that people bring upon themselves by purposely acting antagonistically toward the rest of society. He actually had the stones to say that it's "the very same thing, of course, [that] is happening to 'geeks, Goths and freaks' all over the United States today, post-Columbine.'" (Emphasis mine.)
Sorry Jon, but racial/ethnic discrimination (or the movie's allegory, against mutants) is not at all similar to people looking down on some loser who dresses in all black, puts a ton of piercings in their face, or carves up their arms for the main purpose of sneering at society. Not even effing close.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Actually I think that the kid who used the lighter to create the fireball, was Pyro. Jonny(john) is his first name also. We discussed this and thought that the Human Torch would not have used a lighter to do it.
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.)
Well, first some background. Been reading X-men and related X-comics, and all things Marvel for quite a while now. I'm a huge, massive fan. I own shirts and trinkets and just *stuff*. I go to cons. I know which character I most resemble (For the record, Kitty Pryde) -- I write fan fiction, I watch the cartoon, and I follow newsgroups, wed pages and mailing lists avidly.
I am a comics geek.
So, the arrival of the X-Men movie left me with some apprension. Marvel hasn't really managed to do a decent comic-to-movie translation.
I was aware that, they were NEVER going to get 35 years of comics into 2 hours of movie. It just isn't possible, so I steeled myself for that.
I was still impressed, and pleased. I loved this. I've seen it twice. (Once opening night, once 2 days later, and seeing it again today) I'll buy the DVD. I'll buy the soundtrack. I'll buy the toys and the shirts and all the stuff. The movie was GOOD. No bones (admanatium or otherwise) about it.
And so, on with my review of the review.
Ok, Well, Rob liked it, so I can't bitch too much about his comments. Hell, on re-reading it, I can't bitch at all. My onle response to anything is the following
***Quote***
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.
***ENDQuote***
I suspect this was done more to keep her (and the rest of the mutie lackey crew) from overshadowing Magneto. Mags wasn't supposed to be Evil, as much as he was Misguided (And, maybe not even that, but I digress) -- His henchmen aren't supposed to be stars. Or leaders.
Okay, onto JonKatz's comments. Woo. I have a lot to say here. This is gonna get long.
***Quote***
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.
***End Quote***
Um, were we watching the same movie? The X-men one, right? Good. Thought so.
Okay, well, while yes, McKellen and Stewart were great actors, intense guys, gave a wonderful performance -- the focus of the movie was NOT on them. Hell, Xaiver was taken out of the action for the entire end scene.
Magneto is the Big Bad Guy. He was supposed to have the spotlight. And did. And did an excellent job. The point is, he WAS supposed to outshine his lackeys. They are not the focus, despite nifty blue or yellow skin. Despite amazing powers. Despite nakedness, feralness or badassness. Magneto is the focus.
As for Xaiver, I'm sorry, he was a backround player. Yes, Stewart was rather intense, but, he was by no means outshining Jackman (Wolverine) - Perhaps, yes, he did make his prescence known with the rest of the X-men, but again, he's supposed to. The scenes that involved him, he was the focus. He was speaking, giving the audience information.
***Quote***
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.
***END QUOTE*
What are you, a Perl script?
Jesus on a pogo stick, can you go an entire article, can you go 100 printed words without mentioning Columbine? I agreed with you to some degree and even I'm sick of it. This movie has nothing to do with geeks or our so-called social problems.
Yeah, yeah, you protest "Mutants are outcasts, just like geeks." Woo. So are gays, blacks, jews, women, the disbled, etc, etc, etc, etc, so on, so forth, yadda, yadda.
Yes, there's a theme of acceptance, understanding and destroying prejudice. Its a nice theme. A happy theme.
Know what? Very few people give a flying whoosis about it. We like the characters. We like the stories. The theme is bloody secondary.
***Quote***
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.
***End Quote***
HOKEY???? HOKEY? Puh-lease. What would you have had them do? Sit down with Magneto and offer him tea?
That confrontation was beautifully filmed. It showed the X-men AND the BoM (Brotherhood of Mutants, I'm not typing it out long again)'s powers, it gave Jean and Storm a chance to be strong women, it had a really pretty fight scene with Wolvering and Mystique, the effects were flawless, the martial arts were well done, and the setting made sense.
As for team dymanics -- Did you miss Storm and Cyclops rescuing Rogue and Wolverine? Were you getting soda or taking a poo at the time? Did you forget that Cyclops and Wolverine Do Not Get Along? You don't see them as a 'team' until the fight, and, frankly, you didn't need to. They acted as a team in the statue just fine, even cooperating to get Scott's visor back to him, regardless of the fact that Wolverine does not like Scott and vice versa.
***Quote***
We're supposed to hate Magento, but there isn't anything particularly hateful about him.
***End Quote***
No, we are NOT. We're supposed to see that he's NOT hateful. That he's wrong, but not Evil. That he's tragic. Like MacBeth, or Hamlet. Or like your precious Columbine geeks.
Right idea, WRONG implementation.
***Quote***
The movie has too little humor. Apart from a couple of lame jokes cracked by Wolverine, it wouldn't have any.
*** End Quote***
Ah, you must have been out for a poo during the following scenes: (I don't gaurantee accuracy. I'm a fan, not a critic or tape recorder)
Xaiver (speaking to Cyclops, referring to Wolverine) - "You don't like him, do you?"
Cyclops - "No, how could you tell?"
Xaiver = "Well, I am psychic, you know."
and
Wolverine (in his spiffy black leather X-men uniform) - "You actually go outside in these?"
Cyclops - "Would you prefer yellow spandex?"
-- You know, Katz, you really gotta get ahold of that problem with your bowels. Going out for a poo so many times in the movie is really ruining your experience of it. I recommend a steady diet of cheese and whole milk.
Okay, enough of ripping poor Jon to shreds. On with the next review.
***Quote***
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
***Endquote***
They're HENCHMEN. THey're not supposed to be talkative. And, given that Mystique talked as Gyrich, and Drake, and Kelly, I'd say she had quote a few lines. The actress didn't. The character did.
Toad had more than two lines, but, yes all were wisecracks. Again, he's a henchman. You want Shakespere?
Large Grunting Guy (Sabretooth. And his name was given at least twice. Pay attention please) - Had several lines. (What, were you people all pooing? Lord, you gotta take care of that) -- "Scream for me" and "You owe me a scream" -- which, I might add, are dead-on-perfect for the character. Also, he's a BIG scary feral guy. He's not supposed to talk, he's supposed to just, growl a lot and bite people. Duh.
***Quote***
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.
***End Quote***
Quick thought. The guy is a mutant. Xaiver SAID some of them can't control their powers. Isn't that about all the explanation you need? Do we NEED a 5 minute discussion on the man's eyes? Not really. We got the idea at the train staion. Exposition wasn't needed, warrented or wanted. It was all there, you just needed to THINK a little.
***Quote***
And of course I could stare at Rogue all day, she's easy on the eyes, if you know what I mean.
***End Quote***
She's also SIXTEEN. Good grief. Stare at the nude blue chick, or the hot redhead, or the regal black lady with the white hair. But not the kid. Sheesh.
***Quote***But I didn't come away from the film feeling enlightened or even really entertained.
***End Quote***
Funny. The two audiences I saw it with, and my friends, and THEIR audiences were clapping, cheering, and obviously entertained. You gotta get ahold of those bowel problems. You guys are missing all the good parts of the movies.
***QUOTE***
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
***End Quote***
And this is different from any other movie, because??? Yeah, yeah, they setup a sequal. They worked it into the script well, they tied it into the characters well, and they tied it into the previously existing character histories as well, nice tidbit for us fans.
---
*pant pant pant* Longest post I think I've ever written.
Kudos to a friend of mine, Redhawk, for the comment about Katz being a Perl script. I lifted that right from him saying it today (And if he got it from someone else, well, I'm not aware of it, so, tough)
http://quiz.ravenblack.net/blood.pl?3357354385
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
The bit when all the mutant kids are goofing off behind the teacher's back in class; Jubilee makes a little fireball in her hand and starts playing with it, Iceman puts it out...don't know about Colossus though
I am an X-Men fan since the late 80s, and while I wasn't blown away by the movie, I am impressed with how well it paralleled the comics while trying to entertain the masses. My wife never read any comics but she really liked the movie. Much better than that crock of dookie Me, Myself and Irene (which we snuck into afterward.)
i was bothered by that too, best i could come up with is that she meant when she warned him that he was about to get stabbed.
Somebody get our flag back!
I am not a huge X-men fan (I was more into excalibur), but the fact that Brian Singer is the director makes it a must see. If you haven't seen "The Usual Suspects", rent it. NOW. I mean put down the coffee, go to the video store grab the DVD, and when you get back to work you will be ten times better for it. The intricately woven plot line, the character development, and the shots just blow you away.
If X-Men is half as entertaining it will be well worth the money!
"If voting could really change things, it would be illegal. " - Revolution Books, NY
This will likely never happen, but it'd be nice to see a sequel based on the Age of Apocalypse books.
A friend of mine turned me on to the X Men right in the middle of the AOA. I bought every one I could find in comic book stores, trying to catch what I'd missed (and trying to figure out how to follow such a twisted crossover). When the anternate timeline ended, I kept buying the books, and kept thinking "Where'd the plot go? When is it coming back?"
Then I realized that there was no plot, just good guys bashing bad guys. All of the really interesting stuff happened hundreds of issues ago. The characters have been developed into flatness. I think the artists who developed them are all gone now.
--Threed-Looking out for Numero Uno since 1976!
can't wait for it to get to the uk. X-men...pretty good. but with added Patrick Stuart in it it's gonna be like pizza with extra cheese and pepperoni :-)
That $58 million take represents the fourth-highest opening in movie history. To put that dollar amount into perspective, imagine a stack of apples, one for each dollar the movie made.
That stack would be 58 million apples high.
Boggles the mind, doesn't it?
Phallic Symbols in LOTR
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!
Like Katz!!
---
"Eagles may soar, but weasels dont get sucked into jet engines."
Easy part to play? I, for one, would find it difficult to be suspended by my balls twisted up all beans-and-franks in a bungee cord.
Ow.
Posts about a petrified Anna Paquin involving Hot Grits.
Burning Karma...
"We were half way to Rivendell when the drugs began to take hold."
-- Hunter S. Tolkien
Not like it matters much, but Wolverine's power is also involuntary.
> I only wish they hadn't made Magneto so ready to take life. I suppose they put that in so that people like Katz could figure out he was supposed to be the bad guy. :) Hey, this is the guy after all, that pulled Wolverine's adamantium out of his bones a couple of years ago.
They did portray him a bit more "eviiil" in the movie, but he's been like that in the comic books too, depending on who's writting. Of course, he's also been a good guy.
But your point is valid, this was probably to make it clear to the masses that he was the main bad guy. The Roger Ebert & the Movies show had one reviewer saying "I couldn't tell who the guy guys and the bad guys where".
*sigh*
- sigs are for wimps.
Yes, that's something I noticed, and I'm glad the first post mentions it. I'm a newbie(TM) but I've learnt about the anti-Katz movement and tend to agree with their argument, that all Katz ever do is try to feed on the insecurity some geeks may have about themselves. Now to be off-topic (or rather on-topic, since I'm going to rant about one of the movie's actresses), yes, Rebecca Romjin Stamos is a dumb bitch. She was on some show about supermodels once, and I (perhaps unfortunately) watched the interviews as well as the videoclips (nice clips they were), and at one stage they talked to her, and her answer: "How does it feel to be a model? I don't know, how did Louis Amstrong feel when he walked on the moon?" and then, rambling about teamwork, "There's no "I" in "team". There's no "I" in "unity"." If you want to get some sort of a geek statement here, I find it unfortunate and perhaps unfair that along with Pamela Anderson, Britney Spears, etc, etc, she'll make millions of bucks because she's got a pair of titties, while I (and perhaps others here, I dare not say "we"), the geek(s), have to do real work to make a living.
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
-f
-f
www.blackant.net
I saw at least 3 almost-explicit allusions to oppressed groups.
1) Magneto survived the Holocaust.
2) Senator Kelly might as well have a flashing neon sign on his head reading "I AM A McCARTHY FIGURE."
3) Magneto's "by any means necessary" remark, referring to Malcolm X. (Lovegoat makes this same point a bit further down in this thread.)
Ceterum censeo Microsoftam esse delendam.
"...and sometimes, it's a big, brown dick!"
"And like that
So, who posted the bet on how soon it would be before Katz used the term "post-Columbine" in an article about X-Men and geek alienation...somebody's getting paid today...
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
Blue women with scales are fine as long as they're not kicking me like that. It's hard to fight someone like that when you're trying to hide an erection.
prel -e 'echo "Just another bad perl hacker./n"'
...The movie's already 1:40 long. I personally think 2:25 is wayyyyy too long for a superhero movie.
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.
Phallic Symbols in LOTR
Magneto thinks turning everyone on Manhattan Island into mutants will promote peace and understanding?
Kevin Fox
Kevin Fox
Is when Stephen Baldwin's character is sitting on the roof of that boathouse and he quickly ticks off all the movements he'd have to make to shoot the "terrorist" guys down on the dock.
"Oswald was a fag."
Just classic.
-The Reverend
-The Reverend (I am not a Nazi nor a Troll)
=(.\')=
Rogue easy on the eyes? I think Mystique was a bit more easy on the eyes. Mmm...blue women with scales....
I don't think that'll happen in the movies. They'd have to think of a good way to get Rogue to fight Ms Marvel, which won't be easy since in the movies Rogue is never a villian.
Sentinels would be cool. The "Days of Future Past" issues would be particularly cool as a movie.
See that "Preview" button?
[possible mild spoilers ahead]
Jon Katz said 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.
I didn't hate Magneto either, so I guess in that respect, I'm with you. But I thought that was exactly why he made such a good bad guy. You didn't like what he was doing, but you could sympathise with why he was doing it. It was obvious that he didn't see himself as evil, just as he saw Xavier as weak and frightened. Even the way in which he carried out his plan showed that he thought of himself as righteous: he wasn't going to kill anyone, just bring them to his side permanently.
- fader
Sabertooth had lines
Lost on the cutting room floor
He said "Napster Bad!"
Ok, now on to Singer's brilliance. He managed to throw references to the "Red Scare" and McCarthyism of the 1950's throughout the film including Senator Kelly's "I have a list of dangerous Mutants (Communists) who are tearing up America.
The best allusions of the film, though were the references to the politics of the Civil Rights Movement. Magneto was Malcolm X (did you catch his word-for-word recitation of X's classic line "By any means necessary" toward the end. Professor Xavier was Martin Luther King, jr. and even faced martyrdom for the cause. Both men had the same goal: the acceptance of the new race (read Blacks) and their essential difference was the methods they were willing to use to reach that goal. As we all know, it took both men to reach the point we are at today in Civil Rights.
Maybe Singer wanted to teach all the young white men who are surely seeing this movie about the sacrifices one must make to realize a dream.
"These are the days that must happen to you." -Walt Whitman
I've always wondered about the nature of both Cyclop's vision and his visor. Given the unique nature of his eyeballs, is his visual spectrum receptivity the same as a humans? If so this would mean that he would be effectively color blind while wearing either the visor or his special glasses. Unfortunately there was never any indication of this that I can remember from the Marvel series.
Of course, they have left the movie wide-open for a sequel. In fact, Famke Janssen has already said she would be keen to act in a "Dark Phoenix" inspired movie. That, of course, is hardly surprising...since she would be the main character!
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).
:p
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,
You've got to be kidding right ?
... try writting that script buddy.
I loved a lot (if not all) of that story line, but that would be the most complicated thing in the universe to bring to the big screen, specially for non-fans !!!
C'mon, do you really think that people will understand Legion going back in time to kill magneto, and then killing his father and creating an alternate timeline where Bishop (another time aberration) is the only one who remembers the original timeline ?
hehe
- sigs are for wimps.
I would also love to see Nimrod (or some Sentinel) make an appearance and take out a bunch of mutants.
Well Katz, that's the whole point of Magneto. He's not an evil person, his intentions are very good, they're just extremely misguided. He's supposed to be a complicated, difficult to understand characters. In fact, he often times has sided with the X-Men in the comic books and cartoon.
In the scene when they're looking outside, and Xavier's doing the voiceover thing ... the camera flashes past a big dark-haired kid with a sketchpad, drawing.
A-ha! I do believe you are right. Thank you. I knew they lingered on that scene for some reason, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it.
It's stuff like these 'cameos' that really make the movie for the fans.
Did the good guys win in then end?
I can't immagine a holywood movie that didn't end that way. Holywood would never upset me
It really seemed to me they set it up in such a way that those people wouldn't have died - we were made to think the senator died, but later Magneto hinted that he didn't really die. I thought the next sequel would probably be the senator rescuing (or at least releasing) Magneto.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
HUMANS BAAAD!!!
-----
-----
"The crowning intellectual accomplishment of the brain is the real world."
bryan singer's last film was apt pupil, not usual suspects.
The kid playing basketball is not Nightcrawler at all !!!
Nightcrawler teleports, and this kid seems to be running really fast. The best guesses have been Quicksilver (unlikely) and Cannonball (maybe). I think he's none, just a made up nameless cameo mutant.
- sigs are for wimps.
This is very insightful. It really strikes to the heart of the difference, not only between Magneto and Xavier (and their respective followers), but, say, Batman vs. Superman as well.
Jon Katz may have been looking at Magneto (Magento -- ha ha) as though this was supposed to be a typical summer action flick. I mean, in "Mystery Men," the bad guy was just bad, as bad guys are, and we should always root against them and hate them strongly, that was that, and that's the way it is and was and will be, forever and ever, amen. I'm surprised that Katz didn't APPLAUD the 3-dimensionality of Magneto.
The multiplicity of conflict here was terrific. Magneto is a 'bad guy,' kinda, but so is Senator Kelly, and Xavier is fighting both of them, kinda. A triangle. And Kelly is arguing with other politicians, and so on, so it gets to be a very multidimensionsal thing. Cool and geeky.
Ceterum censeo Microsoftam esse delendam.
Like I said, it doesn't really matter. :-)
The official comics lines are: Scott's powers are supposed to be controllable, but due to brain damage he can't turn them off. Rogue's powers are "always-on", and while there's speculation that this may be a psychological issue, the official line is that that's just how her powers work. Wolverine's fast-healing factor is automatic, just like your slow-healing factor is. And Mystique, unless she's using her powers to disguise herself, is always blue.
On the fringe, telepaths typically have to learn to block out stray thoughts, and people with powers like Storm's have to learn not to let heated emotions trigger their powers accidentally. But that can be controlled with practice.
Usual schlocky sci-fi dialogue, however delivered by Shakespearean actors. (Stewart & McCellan) That is the best part of the movie.
What is WITH this? Is there some secret subliminal message in the Slashcode that makes people misspell the names of X-Men characters as colors?
What next?
Kelly as Aqua-Man?
Ceterum censeo Microsoftam esse delendam.
He's better known as Sabretooth in the comics, Michael.
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
I really liked Hugh Jackman's Wolverine, even though it's an easy part to play. (Just growl and act tough.) There are so many questions surrounding his origin that my hope is that the next sequel is all about him. It can take place in the same universe as this one, so maybe Rogue can come along or the Professor can have a little cameo, but I think his character alone could make a high quality flick. I think a solo movie for any character would be better than a film that tries to do too much in too little time.
grep -ri 'should work'
It had like all the Marvel superheroes. And it blew. Give me Pokemon or Magic any day.
:)
NOTE: I've listed the games in popularity, and not preference.
Is this post not nifty? Sluggy Freelance. Worshi
Lets see, we'll give a bunch of strange creatures unusual powers and set them off against one another. Pokeman or X-Men?
There is a problem determining who will win in X-men battles because the strength of the powers are unknown.
Here's a scenario:
Ms. Marvel is fatally wounded, there's no way to save her. Rogue is the only one around, and comforts her on her death-bed. Marvel asks Rogue to take her 'spirit'/'essence' (whathaveyou) so that she may live on in some small part... Simple, clean, believable.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
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.
------
You are a Katz!
Whoa, that's just a little uncalled for. I'm just getting sick of these large post-Columbine corporations trying to control my thoughts by forcing legislation through Congress that discriminates against geeks and...and...Geeks! Post-Columbine!
Shit, I am a Katz...
My other
Actually, its not even that he hasn't read the comics, he simply must not have paid attention while the movie was playing. I was with a friend who had never heard of the X-Men prior to the movie, and she thought one of the best aspects of the film was the fact that Magneto was a sypathetic character. Did Katz think the opening scene in Poland was just there for the hell of it? Or the fact that Magneto wasn't trying to kill the world leaders, but rather make them understand?
It's also helpful to remember that the screenplay for this movie went through a BUNCH of rewrites.
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?
Phallic Symbols in LOTR
Ok, remember that part where the senator oozes through the bars? Magneto comes in and bends the bars apart so he can walk through but then rips the entire bar/window structure off the wall and it flies back towards the camera revealing a large hole in the wall. 2 shots later he bends the same bars that had been thrown across the room back together locking sabertooth outside. huge continuity error if you ask me.
--
|-_-| . o O ( bEef!)
Politicaly Correct - adj. see anal-retentive
"I'm making perfect sense, you're just not keeping up."
Yeah, except nightcrawler was born that way in the comic books. He had 3 fingers on each hand and 2 toes on each foot. He also had a tail. That was not a costume. He did not suddenly realise he was a mutant. Also, he didn't go "BAMF".
Lowmag.net
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*
"Doubt your doubts and believe your beliefs." -- Switchfoot, Ode to Chin
Actually he had 2 lines:
"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 actually like Katz and agree with a lot that he says, I just noticed a strong string of mildly upset posts in his direction in response to this article.
We're all different.
Eh...
Personally, I really like the movie. While Katz has a point (gasp!), he is treating X-Men as a single movie, which it was obviously not intended to be by the producer or the original authors. There is no way to put so many decades of comic books into a single movie.
It should also be noted that it makes excellent business sense to set up sequals. Everyone I have talked to was quite satisfied with the movie and most will be more than happy to see the sequal. My friends and I saw this one twice this weekend, and we represent a good mix of long time X-Men fans and newbies.
Free as in speech, free as in beer, or free as in lunch?
I think the screenwriters addressed that carefully when they gave W the line, I can't remember exactly what he said, in response to Magneto's statement that he was sacrificing one for the good of all. I think the line was something to the effect of, "if you were so concerned for the benefit of all, it would be YOU operating the machine."
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.
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...
I eat the flesh off the living, and I vote!
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.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
So far, the best review I've seen of X-Men is the review done by Forum 2000. In it, Zorak and Sigmund Freud reveal that Patrick Stewart was chosen for the role only because his baldness filled a deep need in so many of us soon-to-be-bald geeks. Ouch!
One of Singer's cardinal rules for this movie was that if it wasn't realistic, it was thrown out. That includes Cyclops being able to open his visor without actually touching it. (According to a dated comic reference, he has a button embeded in the glove of his costume that opens and closes the visor, but that's contradicted so often you may as well accept that he controls it psychically.)
Actually Michael, you are wrong in your review about there only being 3 lines. "Large Grunting Guy" had two lines. 1.) "Scream for me" 2.) "You owe me a scream". I know it's not a big deal, but if you're going to nitpick about something that small, at least get the facts right ;-)
it's gotta be the teens vs. the world, doesn't it?
"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.
>> was kinda sad that Mystique was essentially reduced to a covert-ops sort of character instead of a bad-ass.
> Being Covert-Ops and Being A Bad Ass aren't nessisarily mutually exclusive you know. Ever hear of Solid Snake?
Not only that, but Mystique HAS BEEN PROTRAYED in the comic books as being "cover-ops" type of character. She's a mutant terrorist, and has infiltrated SHIELD and other government type organizations before. You don't get more cover-ops than that.
- sigs are for wimps.
Actually, what Katz said was exactly what I thought as I watched the movie.
I kinda wondered if that was a part of the reason for the X-Men's popularity. A sort of tapping into the unconcious undercurrent of a community of people bonded by a certain kind of shared pain.
It's a theme I see repeated a lot in the comics that people seem to go for. Mythology often reflects a shared spirit. I think it's a valid comparison.
Seen in this light, Rogue's line "Do they hurt when they come out?" and Wolverine's reply "Yeah, every time." was classic, and one of the most poignant scenes in the movie. Abilities and skills that are useful and feared, and yet, every time you use them you feel like you've deepened the gulf between you and everyone else.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
We were *not* supposed to hate Magneto. It's not supposed to be as simple as "X-Men good. Magneto bad. Humanity innocent victims."
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
MrJoy.com -- Because coding is FUN!
Many readers on this thread have complained about Katz's "geek-colored glasses." And there can be no doubt that he wears them. Basically every post is about geeks, quite predictably in the "post-Columbine" era.
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!
Can your IM do this?
I can't believe no one else has mentioned this!
At the end, Rogue temporarily "inherited" Wolverine's claws when he saved her by touching her. But the claws are not his power. His power is his ability to heal rapidly!
Doh!
--
I've only read half a dozen X-Men comics and had rabid fans rave about them to me. And of course I watched a number of episodes of the cartoon.
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
1) Marcus Aurelius was the Roman Emperor at the time of the beginning of the movie and
2) Commodus was his son
were inaccurate. No Roman General by the name Maximus ever existed, Aurelius died of old age/opium poisoning (disputed) and Commodus was strangled by his wrestling partner. Historically inaccurate, but still an entertaining movie.
I saw it- twice now. And I'll probaly see it at least five more times. I've been waiting for thi movie to come out for 15 years now at least and im not gonna miss a chance see it as much as possible. I dont have any idea what move these "reviewers" saw, but it looks to me as though they we two busy writing their reviews to actually watch the damned movie.
In fact, the biggest problem I found was getting used to wolverine being so small. However, that's more the fault of the artist drawing him in the comic book than the movie. He had always been descibed as small. chris Claremont even called "scrawny" on several occasions. So, in an odd twist, the movie had a better portrayal of him than the original comic book. And, any fan will love all the extras in there, like the comment about yellow spandex.
Speaking of extras, maybe someone who ACTUALLY WATCHED the movie can asnwer something. There was the scene in the class where the kid makes the fireball and Iceman freezes it. Storm called the the kid who made the fire ball "Jonny". Now, isnt the human torch from the Fantastic Four also named jonny? I know the human torch isnt a mutant, but any one think maybe Byan Singer was just having a little fun in there.
BTW, who else saw Magneto ask Wolvering how tightly the metal was bond to his bones and then had flashbacks to X-Men (or was it Wolvering) #75? when magneto ripped the adamantium out of wolverine's body?
Well, all i know is the actors had to sign a contract to do three episodes and with the success that the film has already had, im sure they'll make the other two.
cant wait.
"I mean, All you can definately say about a fellow who thinks he's a poached egg, is; He's in the minority." James Burke
Katz is not the first to make the Columbine-Xmen connection. Joe Casey wrote Xmen Children of the Atom several months ago (and while it sucked ass) one of it's major points was to start the fear of the mutants as an offshoot of fear of armed humans. The references were obviously to the school shootings. :)
Xmen has been political before. Read the letters pages from the early eighties. There were times when they were parrelling fear of mutants with fear of gays and AIDS. (comic geeks - what do you think the legacy virus is?)
Senator Kelly and his scheme are straight out of the comics.. and it makes me very happy to see the bad guys be much more ruthless then they are in the comics by actually doing somethign about it for a change.
Anyway, I went in expected to hate it and name issue numbers. and I didn't and Marvel is probably going to see more of my money because of this than they have in years. I've got my few pet peeves, but for every continuity thing that was broken, a few more were fixed. (like we have an explanation for rogue's hair anywhere in the comics)
One of the big points is that there are no bad guys.. we're all just human beings.
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. You can find their X-Men fan site here. 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. (Warning: Flash "enabled" site -- but fun.
If you are concerned about mutant rights, you might want to check out Mutant Rights. They don't have much there yet, but promise more in the furture.
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
I think of him more as a repressed "in the closet" kind of gayness. Heh. You know: very straight-laced guy, good-looks, and he even has "his girl."
Not true. Patrick Stewart has done many stage productions after Star Trek but you don't here about them much because he has been dismissed as just "that Star Trek guy."
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
I had a
There have been four Batman movies, the first two were good (and done by Tim Burton, no coincidence). The last two, I agree, were a waste.
My
a.k.a claws.. like a wolves..
and your're not supposed to hate Magneto.. he's the good guy gone bad.. you're supposed to think of him as a friend who sees differently than you..
what terrifies the mutants is the legislation by congress to register the mutants.. same as it would terrify you, if congress passed legislation that everyone who's smarter than the average jock or politician should register.. because we don't know how smart they really are.
But then again.. even though i'm not a rabid x-men fan.. I do know a bit more about X-men than what Jon seems to know... interesting to see how a person new to the x-men world saw the movie..
I thought it was pretty cool myself.. just like the comic books.. leaving u with a feeling of.. damnit i don't want this to end..
As for the worst part of the movie.. when Storm tried to make a wisecrack or i don't even know what that was.. (the part when she's fightin toad).. that should go down in history as one of the gayest lines ever..
I really like his work. His words are good, I apologize.
We're all different.
Eh...
I like to wake up to industrial-techno, the kind of metallic, clanging beats that can only be achieved by welding together two mini-vans at 50 miles per hour with the intent of smashing them head on into a brick wall done up with nitro-glycerine. But that's just me. NPR is OK too.
--Hail Mary, for she has the largest shotgun of them all.--
The movie was good in my opinion. But most of my friends who saw it, and never read the comic book or saw the cartoon, thought that the movie was missing a background that explained the mutations them selves. And a lot of the history between Professor X and Magnito was not given.
But for the rest of us, we thought that the movie was well done despite the disappearance of some characters(Jubille?).
Considering that the movie was based on a comic book it was well done just like "Men in Black". How long untill the sequal is ready?
-----
If my facts are wrong then tell me. I don't mind.
Or perhaps he just wants to milk this sacred cow for all it is worth?
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.
In the scene where X is introducing everyone..."Scott Summers, also known as Cyclops," I was hoping for a "Jean Grey, also known as Jean Grey." Would have been worth a laugh.
Colin Winters
Or was that Triangle man? I always forget that damn song.
--Hail Mary, for she has the largest shotgun of them all.--
I wish that my Katz filter worked for every utterance by Jon Katz.
What struck me most (apart from the symmetry of each mutants 'gift' being also their curse) was the amount of conflict in the film (and complete X-Men saga), and the way it's shown in the context of accelerated evolution. It parallels very well with a Babylon 5 concept, that hardship, conflict and the fight for survival is a requirement for evolution.
I don't know if this is an intentional, integral part of the X-Men, but the argument is that without hardship, there is no need for evolution; so in the X-Men Universe, where individuals are evolving in different directions very rapidly, it makes sense that they be conflicted internally, as well as externally. It adds a lot of depth to the plot - and becomes a theme as well.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
"And for good measure, he had to live up to the high expectations set by his last movie, Usual Suspects."
Bryan Singer's last movie was Apt Pupil. Hire a fact-checker.
Wu-Tang Name: Half-Cut Skeleton Get your own Wu-Na
Thank you good night.
--Hail Mary, for she has the largest shotgun of them all.--
Let's go drink a beer and fuck goats, and join a frat, man!
--Hail Mary, for she has the largest shotgun of them all.--
Slashdot. Where the "geeks" are sycophantic posters, and grown-ups just stay away.
I saw 'Patriot' the week before and was ready for disappointment. How could X-Men live up to any expectations, let alone someone who was enough of a casual X-men fan to have his favs (Gambit first, but you gotta like Wolverine's Bad-Ass-Ossity). I was not disappointed. It was ane enjoyable yet short film. I hope that :45 mins cut end up on a DVD. Some of the action sequences capture that comic book feeling, and that's not easy in real life. Try not to think too hard, and go see the movie.
------------------------ LordLobo - Because I can
I hate Wolverine. I hate the character, I hate the rabid fanboys of him. I hate the fact that he shows up in EVERY SINGLE DAMN MARVEL COMIC!! If Marvel printed Archie and Jughead, Wolverine would show up, beat up Jughead, and molest Veronica! I want to see nothing more than Wolverine vs. Galactus. Galactus pulls him up to orbit, let's him suffocate, then hurls him back to the earth. Repeat until dead!
But, I do hope that X-Men does well at the box office (even without my dollars). I am dying to see even better comic books made into movies. I would give my right scrot to see The Watchmen, directed by Terry Gilliam. At least SpiderMan is finally being done, with an excellent director (Sam Raimi, of EvilDead!)
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
The good news is that here in the midwest tickets are $6.00 for evening shows and $4.00 for a matinee.
The bad news is that I live in the midwest.
In fact, I think if I was gonna pay $8.00 - $9.00 for a ticket the film had better be damned good. AS it is, you can't get too upset about a film you only paid $4.00 to see.
(okay, so I'm cheap)
Phallic Symbols in LOTR
Now THAT's a battle! Rouge vs. Magento! Jean Grey could help, too.
___
__
Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
I dont recall having ever agreed with anyone but a few of my closest friends on the quality of movies. This is no exception. Katz rambles on about alienation, again. Go figure. I agree most with Rob--it was a cool action movie. I never got into comics much, simply because I saw the fact that I would never pay enough money to keep up with them all. But from the comics I borrowed and read in the store, this was a good movie. Think about it, they honestly could have went off on some tanget, made Magneto the uber-villan we all love to hate, and made this a classic good versus evil match with some dudes having a few extra 'abilities' that arent cool guns or cars (that motorcycle rules).
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
http://thechubbyferret.net - Ferret pictures and informative links.
* We're not supposed to hate Magneto, at least entirely. He was intentionally depicted as a villain with sympathetic qualities. * Why they edited out Cyclops and the other mutants' origin stories: Because it wasn't necessary to show in relation to the movie's essential plot. At the movie's climax, Magneto and Rogue are the ones who are key to executing Magneto's plan in "mutating" the New York City populace. That's why we are shown Magneto's origin, followed by Rogue's, only -- it's the whole "events come full circle" theme. Look, I'm as much as a geek as many of you people here, but I know this movie needed to be produced and edited toward the taste of a general audience. (I loved how they plausibly worked into the plot the "origin" of Rogue's white-streaked hair and why Magneto was wearing his trademark though damned dorky red helmet.) Thus, showing the origins of Scott, Jean, Xavier, etc. would have been outrightly geeky, patronizing to the hard-core geek demands of "going into more detail" that this contingent usually expects. Bryan Singer et al did this without sacrificing the spirit of these characters. Plus, us geeks will be satisfied when they release X-Men on DVD later this year with all the edited footage included. As for Magneto, in the sequel (and from the looks of it, we'll get one), I think he could become the good guy. He could take over Xavier's school (at Xavier's request) when something happens to the professor, and Magneto could lead the X-Men against a greater enemy which threatens all mutants and humanity. (There was a long-running arc in the comics where Magneto switched sides.) The first movie establishes the credibility of this possibility. AF
Er, how long have you read the X men? Before all of Marvel turned into Revlon commercials, and every single woman turned into an identical supermodel with waist-long hair, the real Rogue was :
Shorter than Wolvie (the only person on the team who was).
Dressed to not impress. (she wore loose clothes or spandex with a sweater or jacket over it.)
Fairly frumpy looking. Kinda butch really, but not in the "Storm with a mohawk and leather fetish" way.
And it all made sense. We're talking about a woman who has had maybe four satisfying physical encounters in her entire life. She isn't a sexual woman who just can't be touched, she's a very scarred woman who fears touch on many levels.
Rogue is an attractive woman in an understated way, but frumpy is just right for her, and the latter day sex pot was pure marketing crap.
-Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
I saw a kid writing in a sketchpad when that one kid ran on the water (the artist was collosus, he always drew).
But where was nightcrawler. He could have been the little kid that played basketball on his own team by teleporting, but where is the blue and the tail and whatnot? And some people say that was Cannonball.
I also saw Iceman (Bobby, the one that made the rose) but isnt he too young, and why isnt he covered in ice??
Jubilee was in the yellow trenchcoat, and Kitty (Pride) was Shadowcat, the one that walked through walls...
But where there any others? What about Beast, Angel, Dazzler, Gambit, Blob, Juggernaut, etc.etc.???
Anyone else see any of the other mutant cameos?
If so please reply, or just email me.
"There is no there, there." ---William Gibson, on Cyberspace
Taco:
A good review. Objective and he obviously had some knowledge of the comic before seeing the movie.
Katz:
Looks like Katz stumbled into this movie looking for gay porn or something. Jon - X-Men is a comic book, the original series was called the Uncanny X-Men. To review the movie, you might want to read an old issue or two.
Of course he slips in his token plug for Hellmouth...
Stewart and McKellen's acting almost totally overwhelm the movie
Well... Duh. That's the only way any of this is believable. Professor X, while not physcially impressive must be gripping, otherwise, how would he attract all these muties to his cause. Magneto, is a very similar character, although, he should have been more physically impressive than Mckellen. When these two are on screen together, we SHOULD feel overpowered. These are supposed to be two of the greatest minds, they did well here.
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.
The X-men (or the compliation featured in the movie) don't gell as a team. They are a very "cliquey" group. There's quite a bit of competition in the movie, like there should have been with two alpha males.
We're supposed to hate Magento, but there isn't anything particularly hateful about him.
Again, you don't think that was intentional? Magneto wants the best for Mutants, and he isn't all bad believe it or not. He's a hero one day, and a villian the next. Excellent transfer on screen.
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
They're probably worried that some senator is going to get pissed off and create giant mutant-hunting robots. Maybe they'll call them sentinels or something.
Micheal: :).
Go see the movie again when you're not so pissy. Really it is a pretty darn good movie. Maybe sneak in, that way you can have the enjoyment of ripping off the MPAA
Did I *say* it wasn't the theatre? Did I SAY it was part of the movie itself? Yeesh. Read what I say, and don't spend so much of your time and effort reading things into it and assuming stuff. Someone else bitched about the commercials at the beginning (and the insane number of them), so I added my two cents worth. I really doubt we saw it at the SAME theatre, so the fact is, we're commenting on an annoying *trend*.
- Spryguy
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
>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.
Jon, while there is little doubt that Congress is ineffective in many of its actions, there is also little doubt that despite that - in fact, in no small degree because of that - it must be counted amongst the most menacing outfits in human history.
One need only look at the CDA and the DMCA as the most recent examples of Congress's on-going mission to shred the Constitution and eliminate its protections. If that is not menacing then it must be said we don't know what menacing is. Hitler's power came from the people and the gov't that supported him regardless of how insane or odious he was. If he had taught us nothing else Clinton has taught us that it could happen here as well. Luckily Clinton, bad as he is, is no Hitler. We might not be so lucky the next time we decide to keep a cad in office.
#1: Even though I'm a fan (though I haven't read the comics in yearsa), I didn't want to sit in the movie theater with even short bios of every single character. Interesting, yes, but it would have taken the whole 1 1/2 hours to accomplish that, and would have alienated the non-fans in the theater with me. Their attitude was "Okay, he shoots these beams out of his eyes, and he needs that visor thingie to control it." Good enough.
;)
#2: The "villian" of the story is people's own intolerance of those who are different. Magneto is a tragic antagonist, Charles a flawed protagonist. Charles *would* fight the non-mutants if they endangered his "children", and told Magneto such.
#3: Mystique didn't say much? Wait. She's not dead yet.
where's
anthing
incredibly
Can your IM do this?
Worst crossover ever.
--
perl -e '$_="06fde129ae54c1b4c8152374c00";
s/(.)/printf "%c",(10,32,65,67,69,72,
$_="06fde129ae54c1b4c8152374c00"; s/(.)/printf "%c",(10,32,65,67,69,72, (74..76),(78..80),(82..85))[hex $1]/eg;
Sorry - don't mean to be snotty - just popping up with a correction.
The couple my wife and I went with (get that, heh ;) were worried that like every other comic movie that it would try to take on too much...and they were pleseantly surprised when it didn't. They LIKE the fact that it didn't go into detail on why cyclops has to use a red visor, or even that it's ruby IIRC.
;). Personally, I LOVED those two. I though they made great great leaders. You could feel their overwhelming power in their personalities, as well as their mutant power.
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?
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
The aspect that stuck out for me was that he had to fiddle with his visor to fire his beam. He looked like he was browsing through a Viewmaster during fight scenes.
Especially considering his parents are Mystique & Sabertooth (allegedly).
I also think he would have been a little young to be Quicksilver, Magneto's son. (I could be wrong on this but I'm confident I'm right.)
Katz, if you're going to write about a movie and one so close to the heart of geeks that you proclaim X-men is and that you're one of the geeks, atleast spell the name correctly.
the name is Magneto.
the name is not Magento.
Mystique doesn't have fur in the comic books, just blue skin.
> Furthermore, she wasn't walking around BUTTASS NAKED in the comic books!!
I haven't heard many guys complaining about this, but it makes sense. You'd think that a "morph" would be naked in "natural" form. In the comic books, when she morphs, her clothes go away. The movie way make a bit more sense.
- sigs are for wimps.
In the beginning, when Logan finds Rogue hiding out in the trailer she tells him - "I saved your life" and he replies "No you didn't"... What was that all about? How exactly did she save his life? Just left me scratching my head...
On to Katz... DAMNIT KATZ! Get over it. Columbine is past, history, you sold your book to any any all who would listen now shut the fuck up! I specifically have my settings to avoid Katz posts, but it isn't really fair when they sneak him into a post by Hemos, Timothy, or Taco. There should be a "regular expression" Katz filter on /.
Nothing pisses me off worse than hearing Katz bitch and whine about ancient history.
OK... I feel better now.
There is no way that is Nightcrawler.
Nightcrawler was born as an elf/devil looking person. That's an integral part of his origin. When he was born, his mother (Raven Darkholme aka Mystique) "threw" him away, after a crowd was chasing them.
The town tought, Nightcrawler was born a demon.
In contrast, he is very religious, and is now (in current continuity) studiying to be a Catholic priest.
Anyways, when Nightcrawler teleports, he leaves a stinky cloud behind , hence the *BAMF* effect in the comics. This guy, was just going really fast, that's why they bothered to put a "blur" effect.
- sigs are for wimps.
Not to mention that Rogue couldn't fly until her and Mystique's gang busted up on Ms. Marvel (if we really wanna be geeky fanboys here) and Rogue permanently stole Marvel's power.
And Anna Panquin was (I think) quite cute there, in an "I-dig-those-frumpy-geek-chicks" sorta way.
Wu-Tang Name: Half-Cut Skeleton Get your own Wu-Na
I've been reading X-Men, Iron Man, Punisher, etc. Since the mid 80's....(I wish cloak and dagger would make a comeback) "Dressed to not impress. (she wore loose clothes or spandex with a sweater or jacket over it.)" Are you kidding!?!? I always thought that wearing the jacket over the Spandex was even sexier than just wearing the spandex alone. You must be smoking something real good to think that "FRUMPY Rogue = GOOD" -Evan Aside: I missed a few years in the comics...I noticed someone in another post said that Human Torch was at the Xavier School...Unless I'm mistaken Fantastic 4 never really crossed over with X-Men??? If I'm incorrect, resist the urge to flame, I stopped reading comics in 1994, and I honestly can't remember storylines(Except for cool ones like the Secret Wars.
"These are not people who use Linux because it is better; these are people who use Linux because they like the elitism t
I just found out that IMDB has a credit for Cannonball. I don't know if this is correct or is supposed to be that kid. If it was supposed to be that kid then it makes no sense, because his powers are different.
:)
There is always the possibility that it is Nightcrawler, but since he is young he is just discovering his powers and the physical mutation has yet to occur (remember the mutations don't start untill age 13 or so). I've never been a big comic book reader, so I don't know if this fits in with his history. When I saw the movie the kids teleportation made me think of Nightcrawler, and I still can't think of any other character it could have been. I can't wait for the sequel
-
Cannonball does not run !!!! He flies like a rocket !!!!
....
I found this bio which is very old (External and Sam's mom references) but the power description is right on
+--------------------
Cannonball
http://www.columbia.edu/~djs58/comics/c.html
Real Name: Samuel Guthrie
Affiliation: X-Force
Previous Affiliations: X-Men, New Mutants, Hellfire Club
Relatives: Zebulon (father, deceased), Lucinda (mother), Paige (Husk, sister), Joelle (sister), Elisabeth (sister), Josh (brother), Zachariah (brother), one other
unnamed sibling
Powers: Sam generates a thermal/kinetic field around himself which renders him invulnerable and allows him to fly. Though it usually emanates from his lower body,
he has been able to extend it outwards as a shield and channel it to his fists for added punch. Cannonball is also supposedly an External, an immortal mutant, an
attribute which was revealed when he was impaled by one of Sauron's wing talons. While Sam finally made the grade and became an X-Man, he returned home to
help his sick mother, and has rejoined his old teammates in X-Force.
- sigs are for wimps.
Probably depends on the size of the beam....kinda like you could take the same amount of metal and make either a bat or a sword; one will bash and the other will slash.
That's the only explanation for the fact that there was a Sabretooth/Magneto at the end of the movie.
Not necesarily. Sabretooth has the same mutant healing factor as Wolverine, only his is generally stronger. Strong enough that he could recover from a big hole through his body if it didn't kill him instantly; it would take him a while, but you'd probably want to make youself veeerrrrry scarce afterwords.
As for Magneto, he can normally deflect Cyke's optic blasts in his sleep, and at least in the comics his costume is chain mail armor reinforced by his powers. Only reason Cyke's blast had any effect is becase Mags was weakened from giving his powers to Rouge and he was using his remaining strength to keep Wolverine from slashing his gizmo.
Ask yourself after seeing it: did I enjoy it?
Answer yes if you are pondering it the next day.
"Three Kings" failed (because it presented what I already knew in a particularly glamorous fashion). Not to say it wasn't good, but not good for me.
"The 13th Warrior" passed!!! It presented some aspects of different cultures that couldn't be brought down by Desperado Man. It was campy and the mesage was narrow, but it felt good and that's the point.
"X-Men" passed. It's not great, but i'm thinking enough about it to write this, and i'll go to the sequel. Can't say that about some of our other recent comic adaptations. I think it's most powerful feature is that it presents a fantastic (as in 'of fantasy') world so well that it thins gap between our reality and our fantasy. And folks, our dreams/goals are part of our fantasy until we bridge that gap. I liked it.
"X-Men" has *Infinite* extensibility. There's room to go with any of 10 characters and over time more can be brought it.
rant over.
Ted
You way way overestimate the power of slashdot. Granted, it is a fairly sizable population. But it is not one which producers will spend millions of dollars developing for; slashdot is simply too small. Even "geeks and freaks" are obviously not their prime target here, this movie has definite mainstream appeal, and it has nothing to do with social injustice. X-Men is fundamentally an action movie. That is what is bringing the dollars in, I assure you.
With all due respect to Michael, I found the X-men movie to be both fun and entertaining. It was light on plot, but heavy on fun, between watching Magneto handily deal with several dozen policemen, Sabertooth and Wolverine's memorable fighting scenes, and Mystique's very impressive control over her own body (illustrated in not only her morphing ability, but also her fight scenes).
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.
-- "God, Root, what is difference?" - Pitr, "User Friendly"
You forget Gambit just sort of came along as well. He never really joind the school until after joining the X-Men. Having Prof X try to get Wolverine and Rogue into the school was enough of a plot without having to try to get Gamibt in as well.
Gambit's power is going to be kind of hard to explain as well.
Balls. Look at Batman for example. Hollywood blockbusters don't always have to be happy-joy cheese-tastic brainlessness festivals. Starship Troopers also springs to mind here (not on the brooding-haunting front; more on the fascist-lunatic-pisstaking front).
It's quite amazing how Katz, who's supposedly employed 'cos he's down with this whole geek-culture thang, knows bollock all about it. In future, timothy, could you not post Katz's rubbish for him? Look down this page (at -1, lots of these complaints will get "Redundant"ed) --- do you see all the people who've engaged their Katz filter? Who don't like to see anything get round it? Who are therefore baying for your blood for this (and for the "book review" disaster)?
nal 11
Am I the only one who thought Sabretooth was being played by James Hetfield of Metallica?
ROAR!
bun-fhuinneog agam!
All the hype was worthwhile for the studio. The X-Men made the fourth-highest three-day weekend opening ever. Here' s the story. Personally, I enjoyed it more than any of the top three.
What's up with that 30 minutes of advertising that was mentioned in one of the reviews?
It it added by the theater or is it part of the film?
Either way, paying $9-10 to watch advertising is wrong. Except for the advertising awards films run at one our local theaters. With those you know what you are in for and the foreign ads can be very funny.
-- Spammers: My E-mail server is in California. Consider yourself warned.
Cannonball does not run fast, he flies like a rocket. If that's him, then he has different powers, or they just look very different.
- sigs are for wimps.
Mutations aren't necessarily supposed to have a 'point'. They're mutations.
> Someone said that Colossus was the kid running on the water. What??!!! Gigantic Russian man capable of turning his body to steel running on water? What comic book has that person been reading?
Did you see Colossus ? It was neat, noticed it the first time, it was the guy drawing by some lake. Nice detail.
- sigs are for wimps.
Cyclops:
What *are* his eyebeams? They are not lasers because the don't cut or reflect. They seem to be an impact weapon that breaks/bashes. That's the only explanation for the fact that there was a Sabretooth/Magneto at the end of the movie.
What'd the point of volentary accelerated healing be?
Intolerant people should be shot.
His biggest problem was that Stewart and McKellen's acting almost totally overwhelm the movie.
What a strange criticism -- those actors are just too darn good. What, should that have hired BAD actors?
Bravo!
I so much want to avoid jumping on the Katz hating bandwagon.. but well, he just keeps screwing up so badly.
This is a good response.
Sigs are awesome huh?
Well we all know that Katz has to make a reference to all those social outcast geeks around the world in every article he writes. Again he tries to give meaning, reason and rhyme to the geek culture. Its just a bloody film!!! When I watch a film, I don't want to rip it to shreds and analyse it to the core from every social angle. I want to be entertained. Why does he have to disect everything in the way he does?
Was Magneto's character interesting? Yes.
(Just like in the comic book) Magneto isn't supposed to be evil and feared. That's what makes the character and conflict interesting - you can actually understand his viewpoint. Considering his (retroactively added) history, he sees Mutant registration as just the first step in the slipperly slope leading to the of branding mutants and herding them into concentration camps.
Was the threat perceived by Magneto actually a threat? Yes.
Congress may be ineffectual, but all it takes is one bill to start broad socioeconomic change and head down the slippery slope just mentioned. (e.g. - prohibition) To me, this means the plot is completely valid, and the conflict very believable. Think registering those who are feared is ridiculous? It happened to the Jews, was discussed with AIDS, and happens with sex offenders.
Was the plot silly? No.
Magneto wasn't trying to promote peace and understanding. And he wasn't trying to take over the world. He wanted to prevent the Mutant Registration Act from passing. Period. Not only here, but in other countries, as well. So, how did he go about doing this? Well, he figured, "If the leaders of each country are mutants, they will be a lot less likely to pass a law that discriminates and persecutes them." Maybe its a reach, but there is at least a line of reasoning behind it.
Fourth - Not all long time fans are "rabid." I've been reading the comic book for over 20 years. I don't mind minor changes to the X-universe, as long as it makes for a good movie. I don't mind if they to do away with spandex (contrary to what the idiot reviewer at EW thought). I don't mind altered histories. I don't mind Wolverine being too tall. He had claws and looks close enough to recognize. Good enough for me! All I wanted was a movie that wouldn't make me embarrassed to be an X-fan. I got that and more. I got a GOOD movie. It was a good action flick. It made me laugh a few times. It had some SFX that made me go "Wow!" That's all I expect from ANY movie. X-Men is a movie I can happily recommend to my friends. And hopefully they will walk out and go, "Wow. That was cool. So that's why you've been into the book for so long..."
And if nothing else, I now know how to prove I'm not a shapeshifting imposter to my friends...
Refrag
I have a website. It's about Macs.
...and while you are at it, proofread your work before posting it world wide. Sheesh!
-- Don't call me "Sir," I increase entropy for a living!
I was kinda sad that Mystique was essentially reduced to a covert-ops sort of character instead of a bad-ass.
Being Covert-Ops and Being A Bad Ass aren't nessisarily mutually exclusive you know. Ever hear of Solid Snake?
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.
In my opinion the best villians are ones who aern't doing it for the heck of evilness, but doing it because they're misguided but steadfast in their beleifs. Take a look at say, Kefka and Sephiroth... Neither of them cared about the state of world distruction until experimentation showed it's ugly head. You feel sorry for them, but know you have to defeat them.
Sabretooth *DID* have one line, I forget what it was, but he did.
I personally liked the movie... they did a lot of cool things.
----
Oh my god, Bear is driving! How can this be?
ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
check out the pictures from the X-Men movie....
i found some of the captions to be pretty hilarious
Hilarious movie pictures and captions at stanlee.net
I was just wondering, of the kids in Xavier's school, did any of you see any that you recognized as other mutants from the Comic? My roomates swear that the kid playing basketball and teleporting is an x-man in the comic.
I went and saw this movie on saturday and i was pretty impressed by the action sequences and the special effects. The big thing that I noticed was almost the entire movie was sort of a get to know the X-Men and were setting up for sequels. I can't wait for more X-Men movies to come out I loved the comic book and the characters were portrayed pretty accurately.
I loved the movie. Would go see it again or better yet, can't wait for it to be available for home viewing. Storm to me was just so cool. She sure kicked that nasty toads ass. And her eyes....MONDO COOL!!!! You gotta see this movie.
Katz sez: [Bryan Singer] had to live up to the high expectations set by his last movie, Usual Suspects.
Actually, his last film was the less well-received Apt Pupil (mind you, 99% of filmdom qualifies as less well-received than Usual Suspects).
--
I like my movies to actually have dialogue, and possibly, when the director and writers have time, some actual character development. I'm pretty familiar with the X-men mythology and I had to stifle more than one yawn while the non-comic fans were trying hard not to fall asleep. Luckily, this $8 dose of Klonopin kept the little kids asleep and not crying or shouting for more popcorn.
Its like the production was exactly half done, they got their bare-bones story, visuals, and actors down, but no one bothered to build even cheesy dialogue between characters just a few cliches that don't exceed 3 syllables. Was there some hidden mutant with the power make people really quiet? The Librarian perhaps?
So, did anyone else notice a couple of very nice techno tracks during the movie? I thought they were very well done, but can't find any evidence that anything other than the Michael Kamen orchestral score CD will be released. Anyone know anything or own the score already? Are these tracks in it? Email me here if so... I'd love to know.
Heh, Jean didn't lose control during the Pheonix days... She was stuck in a coocoon beneath the harbor in new york... ;) Dark Pheonix != Jean Grey (Recently, the real Jean is going by Pheonix, though)
That had to be cannonball. He was just running so fast it looked like a teleport. Obviously it wasn't nightcrawler, since he wasn't blue and since *I* didn't smell any brimstone! ;)
Nevermind that the use of Magneto's powers causes him brain damage, drving him insane....and for this story, he was made insanley powerful so he could kick everyone's ass (hmm, maybe his insanely powerful powers will drive him insanely insane?). Nevermind that in their last encounter, that the X-Men went and attacked him even though he didn't wish to fight him, and Wolverine almost eviscerated him. Nevermind that Bob Harrashole (editor in chief of Marvel) made Scot Lobdel (writer of that particular series, Fatal Attractions) rewrite one of the issues four or five times "because Magneto wasn't evil enough."
But your point is valid, this was probably to make it clear to the masses that he was the main bad guy.
Too bad they felt the need to do that. They could have played up the Malcom X/Martin Luther King analogy that so many people draw....same goal, strongly disagree on how to accomplish it.......
Gen'ral Stan
--The Guy Who Can't Seem To Remember His Account--
dbates@mediaone.net
just a thought, and i may be wrong because i have read the comics before so i can't really have a subjective opinion, BUT wouldn't you come to the conclusion he has to have something over his eyes to keep them from going crazy once you see the seen in the train station, where he loses he glasses and starts shooting off like katz on a post-columbine topic? Also in the "hokey" statue of liberty scene, magneto says something to the effect of "you better close your eyes". I know there are dumb people in this world, but even with a little bit of sense i think you'd be able to figure it out by yourself.
X-Men is like Chinese food. Fills you for an hour or so, then you're hungry for more. I was not impressed with the lame special effects, nor was I happy with the exclusion of powers of the X-Men... Wolverine: The claws don't come from inbetween his fingers!! Rogue, Storm, Jean Grey ALL know how to fly!!! But what REALLY pissed me off was Rogue wasn't HOT!! They turned her into a frumpy, ugly little girl...Rogue is supposed to be GOOD Looking!!! What should have been a decent movie, got raped into a lame action flick. Peace, Evan-Xun
"These are not people who use Linux because it is better; these are people who use Linux because they like the elitism t
Okay. Super dork warning, but I had a crush on Kitty Pryde when i was a young'n. Nice to see her in the film.
Also, I'm hoping nightcrawler makes it into one of the movies. He's long been one of my favorite x-men, though what with him being Mystique's son, and given Mystique's character being apparently rather young to have an adult offspring (though it's possible, i suppose. Apparent age wouldn't mean much if you're a shapeshifter), it wouldn't seem likely.
Oh well. One can hope.
Another damned comic
+++ NO CARRIER
Also, didn't they forget Gambit in there somewhere? he was just as major as Storm or Cyclops. And definately cooler. (maybe I'm wrong, but wasn't it Rouge and Gambit, not Wolverine?)
And why didn't we have more flying around? Supposedly, Rouge, Storm, and Jean Grey can all fly - only Storm did, and only slightly. I think the characters were all downplayed, other than Prof. X and Magneto, just because they were 'minor actors/actresses'.
I might say, though - Mystique was probably not (IMO) a good choice of an opponent. I'd personally prefered to see someone a little more challenging - say, Blob. But I'm guessing that Mystique was put in the movie for basically one reason - skin. I mean, c'mon, she had virtually nothing on there. Cheap shot at the average American teenage guy. Pashaw.
-------
CAIMLAS
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
And I stand by my assertion. The Revlonization of rogue was gross. She is not some long leggy bimbo with giant tits and a painted on costume. Look at her evil-mutant days. she wore a sweatsuit for crying out loud! All X-Women are beautiful, but they don't have to all be in the same way. Rogue's look always struck me as closer to Kitty Pryde's than say Rachel-phoenix's. A good looking frump, but no sexpot and no supermodel. Then everyone devolved into tall, leggy triple Ds with hair down to their asses. Yuck and double yuck.
Defender of the good-looking frump - Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...