Slashdot Mirror
X-Men: First Class
The core the film takes place in the '60s, surrounding the Cuban Missile Crisis. This is a mixed bag: the fashion seems pretty spot on, which extends from mini-skirts to the actual character costumes which are generally much closer to their original comic source material than most comic movies these days. The music is pretty nice, but there are some musical cues that aren't period appropriate and it felt wrong to me.
The bulk of the story involves Professor X and Magneto meeting and starting the X-Men with a batch of kids that you mostly don't care about. Jean Grey and Wolverine and Rogue to me are the X-Men. But the X-Men pantheon is huge, and chars like Havoc and Banshee just don't have the same stuff for me. But that's ok because they are minor compared to the Professor, Mystique and Magneto in the scope of the movie.
The story is pretty simple: The psychic and his shapeshifting friend are met by the government official, and build a team to stop a super villain (Kevin Bacon) who is hell-bent on triggering a Nuclear War between the super powers. Mutant Pride! Humans Bad! Let's All Get Along! You know the themes the X-Men play with: they're all here in fairly heavy handed doses.
So here's my thoughts: Emma Frost was weak. I don't know why Mad Men's January Jones missed the mark: she was cold, but boring. It just didn't work for me. When Beast finally gets his ultimate mutation, he looks laughably bad. Watching Magneto make ridiculous faces when he attempts to move whatever giant iron plot device stands in his way gets old. And I don't know what the budget on this one was, but many of the effects were just below what I'd expect from a summer blockbuster.
The good news is that Charles & Magneto's plot is mostly solid and interesting. Watching Prof X hit on chicks as a young man is fun. Magneto's backstory is ground into you, but there are a number of really awesome scenes where he comes off as seriously badass. Mystique is mostly well handled as well. Sadly when all the X-Men pupils are together, things get a little cheesy. But I guess they are supposed to be teenagers. There are also a couple of cute cameos.
My short answer is that I went in with fairly low expectations: The last X-Men was rough — I just wanted a movie better than that. And I really got that and more. I think Thor was a bit more fun. And honestly I'm more excited for Green Lantern right now than either of these.
The movie maybe different from the (comic) book. You have been WARNED!
Borrowed from Yahoo Answers (http://au.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110604161805AApI3mr):
* In X2, you can see Beast still as human on the TV
* In X2, Magneto revealed he helped create Cerebro with Xavier. In First Class, the Cerebro prototype was made by Beast with input from Xavier.
* Emma Frost is a teen in X-men Origins: Wolverine, which is set in the 70s. In First Class, which is set in the 60s, she is an adult.
* In the comics, Havok is the younger brother of Cyclops. I'm not sure if they're are still brothers in the film, but Havok is now older than Cyclops.
Trite.
but this movie proved to me that, above all else, Kevin Bacon is really good at playing assholes in the movies
plus I liked the brief cameos: the Hugh Jackman F-bomb scene and the Rebecca Romijn Mystique reprise. But where the fuck was Storm? Halle Berry couldn't be bothered or they didn't offer her enough $ for a brief appearance?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
> What I didn't realize is that this film was going to really be a Prequel.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
While I appreciate reviews of relevant media, I also appreciate proper diction and sentence structure. For example when the OP wrote,
"So here's my thoughts: Emma Frost was weak I don't know why Mad Men's January Jones missed the mark: she was cold, but boring.",
the use of a double colon along with a lack of almost any other punctuation makes this a strange series of sentence fragments and other collections of words.
Another wonderful quip from the OP, "But that's ok because they are minor compared to the Professor, Mystique and Magneto in the scope of the movie." includes lack of punctuation and a bit of a halting choice of structure.
While this was certainly a readable piece, I do expect more from a movie review.
Havok isn't suppose to be in that time-line, at least not like that. But, no one pays attention to the details, right? Artistic liberty....
"Our goal each year should be to increase the number of goals we set for ourselves!"
You are not an X-Men fan.
Nice to see there are no spoilers in the title. Taco you're come a long way baby.
I guess they are supposed to been teenagers too.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
And they screw some things up like paralyzing charles so early, because at the beginning of the 3rd xmen Prof. X isn't paralyzed but he is by the end of this movie.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8ccSiH4olo
"Magneto ROCKS!"
APK
P.S.=> I think it's going to be a good one personally!
... apk
Best to pretend that "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" never happened. Its in the same category as the Starwars XMas special.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
There were some minor contradictions with the previous films. For example, in X-3 there's a flashback to Xavier and Magneto going to find Jean Grey and Xavier is already in a wheelchair. Also, the previous films didn't have any references to the apparently major Mystique/Xavier backstory they added in for this movie. Taco is incidentally very correct about how funny having the young Xavier hit on girls was- that was hilarious. Although, at least once he claimed that something was a mutation which probably wasn't; someone had two eyes of different colors. This was much more likely due to some form of mosacisim than a mutation. However, given how much X-Men abuses genetics this is comparatively minor.
The problem is that the source material is pretty dire to begin with.
Comic books are the classic case of remembering things as better than they were. Any commercial entertainment is about making money but the good stuff can also fit art in there. Comics have always been about making money. Yes, you can get art in some of the short run books or occasionally some good runs on major titles but these characters are the bread and butter of the comic companies. This is a business. And you don't risk the franchise by taking risks. So you do boring, predictable storylines. You have giant crossover events that promise everything will change but the biggest constant is your continued disappointment at being jerked around.
I never had the money to get into comics but I've always been a scifi dork. The Battlestar Galactica I half-remembered from my youth is nothing like what actually aired. It was so much better. And Buck Rogers, I never remembered it being so tragically disco. And a lot of Trek is truly, spectacularly awful. My standards were increasing as TNG aired so I never properly appreciated the cringe factor of the early episodes until rewatching them.
It's possible to accidentally make a really good comic book movie. The first Iron Man was good and shouldn't have been. The producers admitted they spent more time on the visuals than the plot. All the best lines were ad-libbed by Downey. And the second one proved how big of a fluke the first one was by being as awful as it deserved to be.
The two Nolan Batman movies were better than we had any right to expect, especially given the direction the series had gone previously. I don't know what dark bargains were struck to keep studio intervention out of the process but damn, those were some good movies.
The problem with a comic book movie is a director's hands are going to be tied more often than not. The movie's getting made because a deal's been inked and there's money to be made. That's as opposed to the reverse of the process where producers are championing an idea and are selling it to the studio on the premise it'll make money. Sometimes the distinction's hard to see but it all boils down to a question of whether the director's doing it for the vision or the paycheck.
While the studio doesn't give a shit about anything other than making money, the real question is whether the creative team does. Witness "Pirates of the Caribbean: It's a Paycheck" or "Transformers 3: Michael Bay Needs Another Diamond-Encrusted Buttplug." You can't tell me anyone on those projects is is feeling the love. Contrast that with Lord of the Rings. Yeah, the studio couldn't give a shit about Tolkien or hobbits but they at least got out of the way of people who did. Then they fucked 'em on the percentage afterwards but at least not before the movies were made.
So yeah, X-Men. How could this have possibly been a good movie? Keep the dream alive because god knows it can't fend for itself.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
the only good blockbuster comic book movies were Watchmen and Dark Knight. the entire marvel series has been crap. everything is way too cheesy and never meets the expectations of the comic. you never see any blood and the "good guy" always wins. i'll pass on wasting my life on these movies.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frcCCHb9LHc&NR=1
* Yes, I truly *THINK*, that I am going to love this one...
Also, lastly/again? MAGNETO ROCKS!
APK
P.S.=> Nice post CmdrTaco - I forgot about this one coming out, & tonite? I'll be "on it, like white on rice" @ the local mall!
... apk
Ugh! You know, it's not like this is your personal blog, Mr. "CmdrTaco" (whoever you are)...
Which is very sad. Overall I enjoyed it more than any of the 3 x-men movies, with possible exception of the second one.
The first X-men movie seemed to be stiff and self-conscious. This is often the case in the first film of a franchise. What was unusual was that the second and third films were *more* stiff and self-conscious. Although there were enjoyable bits, overall the first film sorta worked as a "first film", the second mostly didn't work, and the third didn't work at all. I personally think this was due to an inexcusable overuse of Wolverine in what was supposed to be an ensemble cast. Feel free to disagree.
Parenthetically, why do "blockbuster" movie scripts suck so often? If "the last stand" had a tenth of the creativity and pathos of "god loves man kills" it would have been worth watching. As it is we got a bunch of set-piece battles and some big digital effects, but the rest was cliche even for a comic book.
Anyway, First Class had its problems (excellent dialog over here, really laughably bad dialog over there, like the writers were bipolar) (the change of Raven's appearance from appliances and body makeup to some kind of zip-up wetsuit) (Charles' inexplicably inept handling of his relationship with his adopted sister) but in general the story worked. It's the first x-men movie I've wanted to see twice.
Yeah, Alex was really Scott's younger brother, Sean was a contemporary of Charles, yadda yadda. We've had so many different versions of the story in the comics (I prefer "Ultimate x-men") that I can't see how we could complain that the backstory has changed again. The movies really only need to be self-consistent. And worth watching. The last one wasn't. This one was.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Someone, please tell me why we are seeing a movie promo on slashdot?
Well, this flimsy plastic movie made by a bunch of fat dudes in Kentucky or wherever may still pack a punch. Never underestimate bad taste.
I will see it!
What is this doing on Slashdot.
That's ok. Just watch all the other high brow stuff that's available in illiteratevision, like all the great Asimov, Heinlein, Haldeman adaptations... I guess you could watch 2001 over and over and over... have fun.
I read a lot of old school X-Men comic books growing up, and while there were plenty of inconsistencies both when measured against the X-Men canon and even internally, I found that the overall excellent writing and clever use of mutant powers won me over. This movie was a lot more subtle than its predecessors, from the 60's touches to the stronger focus on the characters, and I appreciated that.
They made some weird choices for characters. I don't know if Darwin even has a precedent (probably not, given his character's treatment), but who was the guy who blew the tornadoes? Azazel was also an odd choice. He doesn't really belong in the Hellfire club, from what I can tell, though he does set up Nightcrawler fairly well.
Spoiler (and an example of internal inconsistency) -- what the devil happened to all of that energy Shaw sucked out of the submarine? I felt his powers were somewhat poorly defined to begin with, but when you suck a nuclear submarine's batteries dry, doesn't that energy go *somewhere*? I suppose it could be explained away in one way or another, but it would have made a lot more sense if there were an explosion or some other kind of awesome manifestation of the power he ate.
The moon may be smaller than the earth, but it's much farther away!
There doesn't have to be an inconsistency with Cerebro. The Cerebro in First Class looks more like a first gen beta version. Magneto could have helped build the other one.
This signature is a waste of 42 characters
SPOILER: When Xavier was trying out Cerebro for the first time and sifting through the minds of millions of people, one of the images to fly by the screen was what was clearly supposed to be Ororo as a child.
None of the movies that are in the hands of Sony/Columbia/Etc. are going to get the treatment they deserve. The X-Men's first class was Marvel Girl (aka Jean Grey), Cyclops, Iceman, Beast, and Angel. Period.
Spider-Man and other super-hero movies do not need two or three villains to tell a good story. Let me repeat this - they DO NOT NEED TWO OR THREE VILLAINS. One main villain (or group of villains - Hydra, The Hand, and such are OK) and some good character development on both sides and BAM! instant summer success. Add in special effects to compliment and enhance the story, not to tell the story because your writers suck.
So, until said studios lose their rights to those properties and they get a proper treatment MAKE MINE MARVEL!
Dream as if you'll live forever.
Live as if you'll die tomorrow.
~Anonymous~
Because we nerds LOVE THIS STUFF is why, much like Star Trek & such!
APK
P.S.=> Hey - I read this stuff as a boy, 1970-1980 & loved it... Marvel's Avengers, Fantastic Four, & yes, X-Men sort of really "inspired me" to TRY to be a better person, & to try to change the world for the better when & where I could in fact over time (mainly lately, vs. idiots like malware makers out there trying to rip you off & otherwise harm you personally).
Comics also directly helped me as a child too, in aiding myself as a builder of my vocabulary & reading skills hugely in fact! I liked reading them, nobody had to "force-feed" them down my throat in other words (My Father brought home an "Incredible HULK" comic for me, & the rest? History!)... best thing you can do for a child imo, is to get them reading! It pays off in this life...
(For myself @ that early time even, & enough so that I was a national spelling bee contestant, just because I remembered "big words" I read in comics quite often (especially from the likes of say, Reed Richards of the FF!))
Next thing I know? Hey - They're making hit films from said material!
That's a statement in & of itself I feel... I must not have been alone in it!
...apk
I've heard it argued that they deliberately created the Jean Grey discontinuity in order to nullify the third film. While this is a good dream, I have little faith in that explanation.
Wtf man? And it is not even Star Wars.
Xavier has been disabled and healed so many times in the comics. Savage Land, Secret War, recent Secret Invasion, etc. Likewise Beast has had relapses to humanity, and also used an image inducer, so the TV appearance isn't off. The cerebro thing is hard to reconcile though.
to me *are* the X-Men
Silly movie fanboy! Jean Grey is the only one of those three that qualifies as an original X-person (along with Cyclops, Beast, Angel and Iceman). Wolverine was originally a throwaway character in an otherwise forgettable Incredible Hulk issue and Rogue was a third-rate villain in an Avenger's Annual (number 10). Wolverine at least has the distinction of being a member of the team that launched the title to fame (starting with Giant-Sized X-Men #1 and Uncanny X-Men 97), so he's got some credibility. But Rogue? Meh.
Kids these days! No appreciation for history.
Little confused; did you like X-Men: First Class better than the other 3 X-Men movies, or did you like the Star Wars Christmas Special better than the 3 X-men movies? Because one statement says a lot more than the other one!
I saw this not having seen any of the previous X-Men movies and enjoyed it, found the story between Xavier and Magneto pretty engaging and liked the actors. There was a lot intentional(?) camp though and this has to be the first movie ever where I laughed out loud during a Nazi concentration camp scene. Multiple times.
January Jones is a seriously awful actor though. I guess the Mad Men writers are really good at hiding that, more props to them.
I went with someone who was at least familiar with the other movies and some of the comics, and it was cool asking him "so this guy with the chest laser is going to turn into the guy with the eye laser?"
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
Five out of five...well done all around.
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
I know women wear smaller bikini's these days but masses of women in lingerie must have been nice to live with while the sexual revolution was in full bloom and women had not yet become equal.
The film was enjoyably sexist (as a male fantasy). Perhaps from Mad Men ? (which I haven't watched).
I think this is the 2nd or 3rd reboot of continuity now. They don't toss everything out but they do drop big chunks. Clearly Xavier and Magneto are NOT children of the atom due to the new Retcon to their origins being well before the first A-Bombs dropped.
I found the "gay and proud" to be jarring and heavy handed. And a bit cliched. And a bit "90's"/early "00's" when it was cooler. Or perhaps just no delivered well by the actors and shoehorned in to scenes. The "don't ask don't tell" reference was better delivered and flowed better.
I thought the death scene was pretty damn "Phantasm" horror movie terrible and implicitly Xavier helped since he could have released control of Shaw and chose to scream instead.
It was a bit sad to see all the familiar X-Men youthified. I remember Rogue deaging from a competent mid 30's adult to a 20 year old not legal to drink character. I was also said that professor X got the chair in this film. It would have been nice to have that happen in a second or third film. And it violates canon (which showed him bald and young walking around the middle east and fighting a powerful psionic there).
I remember the original shaw having different powers ( mind control?) and being more sean connery like in appearance.
I severely disliked the VTOL blackbird. I liked the 'stunt character' drop ins (storm, wolverine) but disliked the John Saxon (and the guy from Roswell/Bones) on the ship. Saxon was fine in Starship Troopers but out of place here. An anonymous actor would have been better here.
Overall I would say it was a "1st class" movie-- just don't think about it too much.
And loved Moira in lingerie. Even tho it covered more than a bikini which might stir any interest at all.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Your standards are increasing. That is a myth.
Your tastes are changing. That is the truth.
You don't like disco now. But had you loved disco now, and skin tight jump suits, you'd be a lot more forgiving to buck rogers.
So television and movies now, has a little fashion and music to suit your CURRENT tastes.
It also has somewhat more convincing special effects, I say somewhat, because more capable special effects usually means that movies have more improbably stupid shit in them.
In the end, it's still just entertainment. And none of it is particularly all that much better then the stuff in the past.
The hair splitting you are doing is differential in tastes. You remember that.
Cause 20 years from now, tastes will have changed a great deal, and all your favorites will once again look retarded. And you'll be dead.
you, bastard, what do you have against fucking whores? Where would the world be without them exactly?
You can't handle the truth.
I quite liked it. Rivals the original (#1) as my favorite. Would definitely see a sequel.
I think that while it is meant to generally be a prequel, they kind of purposefully ignored any continuity errors they would have created for the sake of their story. If you want to pretend there's a movie canon, I'd assume this movie takes precedence.
Although, from reading the comics, you should know that Professor X gains/loses the use of his legs back and forth every 6 months or so. That is when he's not in a coma or abducted by aliens.
Do those continuous sequels, prequels, reboots and remakes still interest somebody ? What's it gonna be like in 50 years after the 12th Batman reboot ? There are plenty of books (comics or not) still worthy of being turned into a movie, why not work on those instead ?
Non-Linux Penguins ?
I saw this movie Friday, and while I didn't love it, I thought it was extremely enjoyable and a good fit with the rest of the Marvel stable of movies. Yes, it's a prequel and you know how it's going to end. Even so I thought the key story, the relationship between Charles and Eric and their back stories, was done very well. X-men has always been a gray area of debate, no clear good/bad side - Xavier's point of living peacefully with humans and Magneto's point of mutants dominating - are arguable from both points of view. This story set the baseline of that debate.
I thought it interesting that most of the cast was comprised of mostly unknown (to me) actors. Not being steeped in comic lore, I knew who a few characters were, but not all. The writers seem to expect viewers to know characters very well as they never once (that I caught) mentioned Riptide and only said Azazel a few times. i.e. for non-comic book mavens, a little more introduction would help.
I thought the main item lacking was the amount of action and especially working as a team. It's as if their powers were for display only. The montage of training and finding mutants was my favorite part of the entire movie. One point of annoyance was Banshee's mumble, but again, maybe that's part of his character and I just didn't know it.
If you try and lookup a few Marvel characters, you'll quickly realize that the movies can pick and choose any timeline or group they wish. Marvel has had so many reboots, re-writes and re-groupings it takes a real comic geek/genius to keep up with it all. I thought Havok was Cyclops' father by the movie timeline only to find out later he's his brother according to the comic history. I guess we're lucky to have anything resembling a thorough story for the movies.
Because no one's going to go watch The Monk. (I kid -- if made well, it'd likely be better and more lucrative than many blockbusters.)
Why does Mystique sabotage Cerebro so that Xavier gets put out of commission by it? Would she do that to the brother she grew up with? In wolverine: Origins they supposedly cause the 3 mile island meltdown, which really happened in 1979. during that time we saw Emma Frost as a youngish girl helping the others to escape.. that doesn't work out with her being a sexy adult in the 60's.
In X-Men Origins: Wolverine, it shows a non-handicapped, bald, older Xavier greeting the mutant children.
Was he supposed to be old? My recollection of Xavier was that, like Montgomery Burns, he lost his hair in high school.
Unless he intends to say that he enjoyed "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" better than any of the other X-Men movies which means he needs to be put out of his misery...
The continuity of Wolverine has been publicly and intentionally discarded with respect to the rest of the franchise.
I saw it with my 11 year old boy and we had a blast! - cheers
I refuse to believe that anyone who cared about Tolkien was involved with the making of the LOTR movie trilogy. They were good movies if viewed on their own, but they committed a travesty on the books.
He liked The Star Wars Christmas Special obviously since the only other option he could possibly be referencing doesn't exist.
I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
You seem pretty strong about how they messed up the books. Care to explain? I know that Tom Bombadil was left out of the fellowship of the ring, but his role was pretty small if I recall. In the big scheme of things, I thought they did a decent job. Hell, they made the Two Towers good, and when I read that I felt like this is the most boring s#!t in the world. Granted, it had been several years between me reading the books and watching the movies, so there are certainly plenty of the smaller details that I am missing. I should also add that I am thinking of the extended releases on DVD that almost pack an extra hour into each movie, so given more time they covered maybe some more details that you might have missed.
My father is a Tolkien scholar, I've watched the theatrical releases 3 times each (in theaters), and extended editions 4 times each - it is possible, but extremely unlikely, that I've missed something. * Elrond, Faramir, and the Ents for starters. * Missing the Houses of Healing, the Scouring of the Shire * (also, but less importantly, missing Ghan-buri-ghan and Bombadil) * Plus some retarded scene with Aragorn falling off a cliff. * Gandalf was a pansy (cf. showdown with the Witch-King and being scared to go into Moria) and Aragorn was whiny (cf. everything).
Well, I suppose the original comment could be read that way, so I guess a touché is in order, although if she "plows 15 black men a night" that doesn't really leave much room for any other "extramarital excursions." Anyways, it's probably a good idea for anyone who "benefits" from Asperger's to get paternity tests done; that is after all, part of the reason why God/Spergy-types invented paternity tests in the first place, so it's good that you have Taco's back.
Don't forget my favorite bit... Frodo being turned paranoid by the Ring and sending Sam away at Gollum's behest.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
RE; the lord of the rings trilogy.
First off, I did enjoy them, especially the extended versions,however.
As you previously stated, they left out Tom Bombadil (understandable, but still sad)
which required them leaving out the barrow wights,and how the sword pippin uses injures the witch king of angmar;
also screws up old man willow pretty good vs the book.
I understood, but regret the removal/merging of Glorfindal and Arwen.
The whole fuck up about Faramir taking frodo, instead of re the book, realizing how important what he(Frodo) is doing is vs his (Faramirs) desire to please his father, again weakining Faramirs 'Charactor' Vs Boromirs 'Charactor'
The MAJOR (IMO) leaving out the Scouring of the shire, which is the whole point of the entire quest, showing how these four hobbits have matured into truly great people, vs how self centered and selfish they were at the beginning. (also gives meaning to the whole farmer maggots crops section)
the murder of saruman on Orthanc instead of in the shire,
the 'enlightenment' frodo has acheived by the end of the story whereas he doesn't condone any killing, no matter how justified.
Those are off the top of my head, but as I said I did enjoy the films no matter how badly they mangled parts of the story.
Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans. No-one sees motorcycles
But by the end of the movie the two were clearly at odds and resigned to the paths that remain with the characters indefinitely. Are you suggesting the one day Magneto wakes up and decides, "You know, maybe today I'll go visit X and help him thwart all of my plans for the future"?
A/C 'cuz I've been modding here.
-gnick
Yeah, that one too - which falls more into the category of unnecessary (ala Aragorn falling off a cliff), rather than missing something important or over the top character assassination like the rest (Frodo slowly losing control to the ring IS a theme).
When the initial trailers showed Emma Frost and the Hellfire Club, most people assumed this would not be part of the X-Men film universe, but part of the relatively new Marvel Film Universe (that is to say, it would co-exist with the current Iron Man, Avengers, Captain America, Hulk and Thor). Emma Frost had already appeared younger and later, and nothing like Emma Frost at all, in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, so it was a reasonable assumption that these wouldn't be in the same universe. I was hoping these three would be followed up with three that didn't have atrocious writing. The X-Men movies, god only knows how they've been so successful, they contradict themselves and the source material at every chance they get. I'm not saing the source material was perfect, a lot of writers worked on that over the years, and obviously nobody can remember EVERYTHING any other writer has EVER written into the plot, but with just a handful (relatively) of writers working on the movies, you'd think they could at least maintain internal consistency.
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
I think Batman was a bad example to pick. The first reboot (second move) and even its sequels were vastly better than the original. And the current reboot/sequel are vastly better than those. So far, the Batman reboots have taken a campy series/movie, moved it up from campy/ridiculous, to silly/fun, and moved that up to an actual dark serious movie franchise.
I think it's on par, but it's arguable I guess. For me, Frodo was slowly losing control to the Ring, but a major theme was also that the bond of friendship between Frodo/Sam was so strong even the Ring couldn't destroy it, and it was one of the biggest things that kept them going. I see the movie scene as flying in the face of that, but YMMV (and obviously does).
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
The core the film takes place in the '60s, surrounding the Cuban Missile Crisis. This is a mixed bag: the fashion seems pretty spot on, which extends from mini-skirts...
The Cuban Missile Crisis occurred in late 1962. Miniskirts did not actually appear as normal "fashionwear" until at least 1965 (in London) and were not prevalent in US fashion until around 1967. Of course, you couldn't bother the writers to actually get this correct, with their detriments of (a) being from Hollywood and (b) being gen-Whatever slackers who were hard-pressed to research the 1960s enough to come up with a historical event around which to base the movie... Maybe we could do it around the Korean War! That was in the sixties, wasn't it?
And I speak of this as an old fogie who understands that the greatest downside of computers was their replacement of attractive young file clerks in short skirts.
That is all.
The Scouring of the Shire was a significant loss (but a useful, albeit harsh, choice). How the army of the dead was employed was not my favorite, but I understand how it usefully simplified the movie.
Bombadil is just a distraction. His is a wonderful side-trip into the vestigial ancient "fairie" foundations of Middle Earth, but it was properly removed for the movie.
Whether Gandalf is a match for the Witch King in a straight fight is not thematically important. In the Big Picture, his primary role is to inspire heroism and rally Men to their destiny, not solve the big problems with a sword.
I was impressed how the films highlight the nature of the temptations of both Boromir and Saruman in a very human way, and their fall. Emphasizing Gandalf's fear of Moria helps there. But it also true that such fear is actually subtly implied in the source material, otherwise one has to wonder why a ranger and a wizard are so stupid as to almost get the halflings killed in a failed trek over the mountain range. Are they both incompetent, or was it a reckless choice justified for other reasons?
Between what you wrote and the previous person to reply to my post, I certainly don't remember much of these story details from when I read the book to when I watched the movies. Maybe I need to reread the books, but I would certainly loath reading the Two Towers again :)
I think I read the books around 1996, which was certainly enough time for some of the details to become lost between then and when the movies were released.
Jennifer Lawrence and January Jones (in that order) are the very best of this movie. I want a Jennifer Lawrence. How much is it?
Perhaps I'm trolling, perhaps I'm not.
"Stuff that matters" ...some random person's movie review.
????
If anything, I would suggest that the Scouring is THE thematic center of the trilogy and that (other than the character assassinations of Faramir, Treebeard, and Elrond) it was the single worst crime Jackson committed against the books. Cinematically, it isn't an "epic" follow up to the grand battles of Helm's Deep or the Battle of Pelennor Fields, but its message is essential to Tolkien's work.
The incident with the Witch King is just one of many incidents that "wimp out" Gandalf, but it certainly represents a major departure from canon. Gandalf is one of the Maiar - an angelic being who existed before the creation of the world and is a closer peer to Sauron than to some wraith. As far as the fear of Moria goes - in the source material Gandalf recommended Moria from the start, and it was Aragorn's fear for Gandalf's sake that prevented them from doing so earlier.
And all this still leaves the aforementioned character assassinations. Faramir of the movie bears no resemblance to his namesake in the books (if anything he is the polar opposite), and the Ents most certainly did NOT have to be tricked into their attack on Isengard. It also seemed as if Hugo Weaving was still playing Agent Smith rather than one of the oldest and most noble living beings in Middle Earth.
Alpha the Ultimate Mutant works in mysterious ways.
MMM
There are plenty of good comics out there like Sandman, Swamp Thing, league of extraodinary gentlemen and Transmetropolitan. The Punisher MAX series was pretty good, and there are plenty of storylines for mainstream superheroes that have been really well written.
Also, I don't understand why you don't like the original star trek series. It was colorful, inventive and had a lot of concepts for the future that were really interesting to explore. Yeah, some of the episodes were weak, but for every one of those there's a genius episode like "City on the Edge of Tomorrow", and "The Doomsday Machine"
I question the idea that an interesting concept for a movie like this is tedious and reliable, and I question the idea that the green lantern movie will be good.
PS: Battlestar sucked.
I agree with most of what you say, about things being better remembered than they actually were. I was an avid comic book collector as a kid and teenager, and over the past decade have re-collected all the comics from those days and re-reading them is more for nostalgia than anything else.
That said, this is exactly why x-men first class succeeded. They paid lip service to the overall theme which is pretty much archetypal (mutants = [insert your oppressed minority here]) and basic archetypal relationship between certain characters (prof x and magneto being yin and yang).
But beyond that, they brought in characters that most outside of the avid fans really don't know alot about and re-imagined them in a way that made it both fresh and new, and yet for those of us who have been x-men fans for decades, it was enough that we were able to connect them, accept the differences and enjoy them.
I for one really liked x-men: first class. it wasn't X2 good, but it was still an awesome movie. I'm also willing to accept non-earth-616-canon depictions of characters.
Watch the end of the X-Men: First Class (Charles becomes paraplegic), then watch the end of X-Men: Origins/Wolverine. In the latter, a clearly-older Charles Xavier has miraculously regained use of his legs. Oops.
I don't get it. Where was Superman?? Also, who were all those weird people? And what's this Cerbebro thing all about? And that blue thing. I'm all confused.
Because for every modest or major financial success like Sin City or 300 there's a modest or major flop like Watchmen or Scott Pilgrim vs the World.
Unless your source text has wizards, hobbits or sparkly vampires to draw a guaranteed audience, it's hellishly difficult to persuade a mogul to finance your "comic thing".
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
It was an X Flick and a Cold War James Bond flick.
Loved the cast.
Subby,
Relax, it's a fucking movie.
Trivia: The CIA HQ shown in the movie didn't exist during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
Interesting you should mention TNG because comics are in many ways trying to do the same thing: tell stories that reflect the issues we face today. X-Men is basically a commentary on prejudice in the modern world, particularly racism.
Perhaps movies are the wrong medium. All the TNG films sucked because they had to blow that budget somehow which didn't leave much opportunity to explore the issues. On the TV series they could save money and make a good show by having characters talk at length about things. TNG was less action oriented to begin with though, and I think comic book adaptations always suffer from having to be primarily action films.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I wrote I was going to see it yesterday, & did (thanks to CmdrTaco posting about it - again, thanks Taco):
http://entertainment.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2216146&cid=36353196
I am GLAD I did... best X-Men to date, & yes (once again, as per what I wrote in that post above)?
"MAGNETO ROCKS!"
APK
P.S.=> Kevin Bacon did an OUTSTANDING job too, I was surprised, as the "villain" (or rather main villain) of this piece... I also loved the relationship Charles/Prof. X & Erik/Magneto had - too bad it ended as it did (but, to tell the truth? I'd be more with Magneto & his viewpoint were I involved!
I say that, because I asked my nephew & his friends one night over a game of chess "What would you think of a BETTER & NEW KIND OF HUMAN BEING, genetically engineered to be faster, stronger, & smarter etc./et al?" because I had just finished a course in academia on genetics... do I think it's "doable"? Yes, absolutely. Probably being done as I write this, if not before that (put it this way, I know of Marines (my brother) who set PT records & got their cheeks "swabbed" - that tell anyone, anything? Does me!)
Anyhow/anyways:
They all, unanimously, said:
"Other people wouldn't ALLOW it, & kill them off!" & I was astounded actually!
I was like "Man, I would PAY a guy like that to have kids w/ my daughters actually, to give those grandkids of mine a BETTER SET OF ODDS vs. life!"
Depends on your "pov" I suppose... just like it did in the film (optimists like Charles Xavier believe in the good of people, & I used to (still do, just not as much as when I was younger & more innocent)... Magneto? More of the "realist" imo, & unfortunately so... life's shown me that more & more over time is why!)).
This film, imo @ least? Says a LOT "between the lines" & do I think "genetically engineered supermen" ala GATTACA are on their way? Yes, I do...
... apk
The characters are flat. Aside from the first 4 being best categorized as wolverine 1, 2, 3, and 4 the majority of them are just shadows. Their existed therein a few actors that fit the role like a glove, but were utterly underused.
It's hilarious to see Villa Gesell with lakes and mountains... its a beach !! Don't this people do a little search before representing a place ?? Not to mention how they changed the Cuba missile crisis...