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.
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."
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. :)
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.
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."
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 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.
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
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!
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.'"
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
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? --