Escape to the Movies: X-Men: First Class

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Optimystic

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Sep 24, 2008
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Smokescreen said:
Um, no I don't. And 'kind of' knowing what is going to happen is vastly different than 'knowing what happens because you've shown me all the cool shit that's in the movie'.

The journey might be the point, except they've shown me every signpost.
You're still mistaken - you haven't seen everything cool, not by a longshot. The Magneto's Memory scene alone eclipses everything in the trailer. So, go see it.
 

Smokescreen

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Optimystic said:
Smokescreen said:
Um, no I don't. And 'kind of' knowing what is going to happen is vastly different than 'knowing what happens because you've shown me all the cool shit that's in the movie'.

The journey might be the point, except they've shown me every signpost.
You're still mistaken - you haven't seen everything cool, not by a longshot. The Magneto's Memory scene alone eclipses everything in the trailer. So, go see it.
Not that you haven't read my OP but I said I was going to see it. If all of the great moments (submarine hanging, Banshee flying, stopping missiles, reversing missiles, Azrael, Magneto responding 'We already are.') are in the trailer, that fucks up the ability for an audience to appreciate the great things that are offered along the way. And in the grand quest to insist upon your correctness, you've done nothing to actually demonstrate how the trailer doesn't show us practically everything relevant to the film and all the Wow! scenes and the best dialog.

Except put minor spoilage about the part that you think is cool that isn't in the trailer. I'm sorry, but one cool moment left out when 6 others were spoiled by the trailer doesn't really make up for a shitty, shitty trailer.
 

Aisaku

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Saw it. It was alright. Better than X2, and X3, not quite as good as TDK.

SPOILERS

TDK is a masterpiece in which no note, no scene is wasted. First Class hits a lot of good notes, but throwaway characters that are 'just there' (Banshee, Havok, Darwin,Angel), a villian who seemingly has unlimited resources and yet does not ensure his success by employing a small army, and an opening scene that does not add up until the big reveal keeps it from getting there.

Was I the only one wondering why the hell didn't he kill the nazi #### on the spot? It's not like he had a lack of sharp implements handy to do the deed...

The 'Mutant Pride' bit was a tad heavy handed, but alright... The X Men movies have moved up the ladder by a fair share thanks to First Class.
 

OutforEC

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Jul 20, 2010
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CthulhuRlyeh said:
Also, since when is Nolan some kind of God of film making?
Since 2000. Memento, Insomnia, Batman Begins, The Prestige, The Dark Knight, and Inception.
18 BAFTA, 21 Oscar, and 6 Golden Globe Nominations, with 4, 1, and 6 wins respectively.
Average rating on RT; 86.33%.
 

Therumancer

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Nov 28, 2007
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coconut_buyer said:
shiajun said:
coconut_buyer said:
I enjoyed the film, but something really bugged me in the second act...

Why did they kill the black guy?

I know it was necessary to kill one of the new recruits to move the plot forward but why did it need to be the only black character in the film? Not only that, but the other racial minority, Angel, sides with the bad guys in the same scene. In the end this leaves us with a cast of beautiful white people as our protagonists.

Its the year 2011, do movies really need to keep doing this? I really wished Bob brought this up, It would have made the review a lot more interesting.
Both Darwin and Angel Salvadore are two very newcomer characters to the x-universe. In fact Darwin existed for a time just a flashback character during the Gabriel Summers/Vulcan arc. Their addition here I found pretty throwaway. Moira, Beast, Banshee, and freaking Havok (who is my main peeve about this movie, why the heck is Scott Summer's younger brother alive and into his late teens in the 60's, is he going to become Scott's father or what?) have much more history for them to remain alive. Their characters just happen to be white. Remember Storm? Yeah, ultrapowerful mutant that isn't just Black, she's originally from a Muslim country. And she's a staple of the good guys.
I realize these characters don't have a lot to work with but why not expand on them anyways. Besides, the movies don't need to mirror the comics exactly. Better yet, why not switch ethnicities with someone from the main cast. Why couldn't Havoc or Banshee be black and Darwin be white? Their race doesn't have any impact on the story so it shouldn't really matter.
As I've said before, I'm against politically correct racial modifications of existing characters for the sake of someone's politics.

That said, I believe "killing" Darwin was actually a good move to some extent. See, his basic power is that he's nearly impossible to kill. Read this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(comics)

To put it bluntly he could return for further movies at any time, the guy could have just turned into energy to deal with swallowing what amounted to a kinetic charge, one of Darwin's problems is that extreme transformations take him a while to adapt to. Darwin is capable of adapting on a literally godlike level, and indeed where the wiki leaves off you'll notice he's retiring temporarly to cope with being in possesion of cosmic level powers.

As far as why changing ethnicities for Sean or Alex would be a big deal, in Sean's case he's Irish and it's a key part of his entire schtick and what makes the character. Alex Summers is the TWIN BROTHER of Scott Summers... they were seperated at birth. As this is a prequel of sorts it would be a bit much to have Alex show up being black. Besides if they decide to get into the adult continuity again at some point and have Scott and Alex run into each other... well that's always good for a laugh for reasons I won't get into other than to say that they are both immune to each other's blasting powers, and it almost invariably comes down to a fist fight. :)

On the general subject however, I believe the issue with more "ethnic" super heroes will resolve itself should more members of minorities (well in the US and major markets, globally whites are one of the smaller minorities) choose to get into writing and art, and work to get into comics over a period of time. That's what happened with Asians, and while there aren't any asian characters in this movie, there are increasing numbers of them through comics in general.
 

Megido

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Just got home from seeing the movie (really enjoyed it,) sat down at my computer, checked the Escapist, and saw it was being reviewed. There was a brief moment of nervousness in which I thought, "God, I hope he liked it too. If he hates it, that means I'm a poor judge of movies! PLEASE VALIDATE MY OPINION, MOVIEBOB!" Then he did, and I was happy.

And no, I wasn't being sarcastic. I was genuinely concerned he wouldn't like it, and make me feel dumb for doing so. I think I need help.
 

Therumancer

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Nov 28, 2007
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I just saw this movie, and my general consensus was simply that it was mediocre. Truthfully I was kind of hoping they were going to re-boot the entire franchise, but honestly after seeing it I'm less than impressed. I think "The X-men" might need to a break from the cinema, with a potential reboot down the road by someone who has a somewhat better grasp of things.

See, I realize movies can't follow the comics exactly, or rather they could, but nobody wants to take that kind of a risk in alienating the mainstream cashbags who don't have any knowlege of the source materials... of course then again I think Hollywood underestimates the amount of knowlege of comics your typical member of the mainstream posseses, most probably don't realize it either unless they really think about it. See "reading comics" is one of those stereotypical things kids do, largely because all kids do it. Being into comics only becomes high geekdom when you see adults that are still into it, but even so adults being into comics is one of the slighly more acceptable forms of geekdom, compared to say role-playing games, or even video games. Your typical comic book can see some pretty heavy travel, I for example did most of my heavy comics reading while hanging out with an enclave of navy nerds who I played paper and pencil RPGs with in my teens, and while not as into it as much as I once was, I still keep up with some stuff. At any rate the point is that your typical schlub knows a lot more about these characters than your typical Hollywood mogul or executive thinks he does, and as a result I think we can expect more than we're seeing. I don't think it's "awesome" just because we're seeing comics made into movies anymore.

I think we can expect more from movies like this not only staying far more loyal to the characters and continuity, but also for them not to insult our intelligence while we're watching them.



See, for every thing this movie did right, it had an immersion breaking "WTF" moment attached: (SPOILERS BELOW)


For example, in this storyline they were giving The White Queen her secondary mutation, which is her diamond form power, which is something she didn't develop for a VERY long time in the comics. That's fine, but almost immediatly the writers proceed to put themselves into a corner, Baby Charles, and Baby Erik find themselves in a direct confrontation with a mutant who should have killed them instantly because the plot demands it. After all The White Queen can turn herself into diamond, which is not metallic, and which renders her immune to psionics. The solution to this? The writer/director has Magneto capture her by strangling her with a Brass bed.... which what's more manages to create fractures in her diamond form. To make things even more insulting they later try and be clever by having her cut through security glass with her finger "oh she's made of diamond!", while expecting us to have forgotten the whole previous scene where she obviously wasn't that hard.

You can say "so what, that's only a couple of scenes", well I'm not going to go over this movie with a fine toothed comb, but it wasn't just a couple of scenes.

See, the thing here is that the scenes not only did no justice to the characters, they also actively insulted the intelligence of the viewers. Not to mention demonstrating a constant Hollywood problem, in that writers can produce drama really well, but when dealing with the extraordinary they oftentimes are incapable of writing their scripts and scenes as if it was normal.

In the above case, the problem is literally that the guys doing the writing and directing had a certain flow of events that they wanted, which for dramatic purposes involved Erik and Charles defeating The White Queen, but they had absolutly no idea as to how to bring this about using the characters that they developed, so they improvised something that was stupid. The script doubtlessly having been written with the idea of the characters actually having and using powers (despite the premise of the movie) being almost irrelevent.

We won't see any really good Super Hero movies, until we start seeing the development of writers and directors who can deal with the material consistantly and according to it's own logic. I gave the first modern, big-budget movies of this sort something of a pass personally because it was new and exciting, and we really hadn't seen it done very often before... but really, there isn't an excuse for it here. The movie manages to be passable, but if I look at it objectively.... well there are a few scenes this movie relies on to move things along that are just terrible. Logically, both of the main characters should have been dead part way through Act 2... of course then again, why they bothered to give The White Queen her secondary mutation other than "it's part of the character as most people know it and gives our FX people something to do" is beyond me. Really that was added to the character in the comics because The White Queen started out as a telepathic rival for Professor X (as in the X-men meet the Hellions and OMG there is another psionic out there who can take on Chuck! Crisis!) but over the years sort of wound up being second rate in that department, being surpassed/trounced by both Professor X and Marvel Girl numerous times, as people liked and wanted to use the character she was given something else to make her a major player again. At this point there was no need for this, as she only needed to match a fledgeling Professor X, and the telepathic battles could have been left unresolved as long as they wanted, it took a while in the comics for that one to ever be settled if I recall, even though she did do some time as a "knockdown villain" for a while once it was. It was just horrible, horrible, planning, and writing, and choosing to ignore it BECAUSE it's a super hero movie is not a good thing. Really I think the suckage of the last two X-men movies made this one look a lot better than it actually is.

As a disclaimer of sorts, I will say that the "Watchmen" movie was pretty good, but that had the advantage of being based on a stand-alone graphic novel, and dealing with a cast that generally didn't have any powers. Doctor Manhattan being more of a plot device than anything and the way he was written making him relatively easy to do in the movie. Even so, I feel the Graphic Novel was far superior, and if someone ever comes up with the idea of doing "The Watchmen" as a mini-series that follows the Graphic Novel more literally... I think the film can be easily surpassed. I felt that the stories within stories, and all the subtexts were what made "Watchmen" such an amazing work, and really the film only captured a part of it. I don't think you can really "get" the messages (there is more than one) inherant in "Watchmen" from that movie.
 

Therumancer

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Nov 28, 2007
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Aisaku said:
Saw it. It was alright. Better than X2, and X3, not quite as good as TDK.

SPOILERS

TDK is a masterpiece in which no note, no scene is wasted. First Class hits a lot of good notes, but throwaway characters that are 'just there' (Banshee, Havok, Darwin,Angel), a villian who seemingly has unlimited resources and yet does not ensure his success by employing a small army, and an opening scene that does not add up until the big reveal keeps it from getting there.

Was I the only one wondering why the hell didn't he kill the nazi #### on the spot? It's not like he had a lack of sharp implements handy to do the deed...

The 'Mutant Pride' bit was a tad heavy handed, but alright... The X Men movies have moved up the ladder by a fair share thanks to First Class.
SPOILERS


The Nazi guy was Sebastian Shaw and he's been around a lot longer than the Nazis. He would have spanked the crap out of Magneto at that point, however yes... it does not make sense that there wouldn't have been a confrontation there.

The Hellfire Club in the comics doesn't employ an army because it's not out to exercise that kind of power, it could (and does) hire armies to do things in various parts of the world, but it's not an organization like say "Hydra". The basic premise in the comics is that they are a group of ancient and powerful mutants out to gain power and control through economic means. The "Club" they run is for the rich and powerful and offers not only sexual services (heavy on the S&M) but also operates as a sort of favor exchange. One client needs something done, they use another client to do the job, anc collect tons of money and favors themselves by operating this way.

The Hellfire Club is pretty much too arrogant to think it needs an army directly, and besides it operates through secrecy. Each member of The Club is supposed to be an incredibly powerful mutant, not the kind of mutant that say... throws fireballs for lulz. Each one of these guys in the inner circle... named after a Chess Piece, is basically an "OMG" class super villain and probably worth an army or a team of super heroes individually.

I think they were used largely because people knew about Emma as a former super villain, and have heard of the Hellfire Club. The writers hoping the name recognition would be sufficient and nobody would know much about the group in the comics... however if this seems like it doesn't fit their M/O and the bad guys and the plot don't seem to match... you'd be right. Technically Selene... The Black Queen, might be interested in doing something like this so she could feed off the death, she's a psychic Vampire and was responsible for making a big mess during that whole "Necrosha" thing a while back... but she wasn't in this movie, and generally speaking if she tried something like this she'd probably get the other members of the club after her with mixed results (it's happened before). Selene's only real major, consistant weakness is a lust on for Gambit.

This is not to say that I would put setting up a nuclear war past The Hellfire Club, but only if they had something to actually gain from it. They aren't really a group of mutant supremecists in that way, they don't want to see the destruction of society (as they have said before) they want to pull the stringes from behind the scenes. There would have to be something other than "the mutants shall rise... booyah!" crap behind it. Indeed Magneto has been a member of The Hellfire Club in the past, and he's always ultimatly fallen out of favor with them for philsophical differances along these lines. After all, The Hellfire Club benefits from the social order, what's so great about having these powers if all there are is mutants? Favors are kind of pointless if everything collapses to make them meaningless.
 

Therumancer

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Nov 28, 2007
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honestdiscussioner said:
Sequel? The Sentinels? Jeez I hope so. Seriously, how could they only exist in the crappiest movie as a just a training program . . . oh and in the GAME for the third movie which was also very bad.

I'd love to see me some big giant robots go up against mutants.

Well, The Sentinels would be difficult to do well. They killed off Shaw who was heavily involved in developing them, and with his motives in the movie they make no sense. If I remember Tony Stark was also involved in their development, and while that might be doable, since he was given a more modern origin in the movies it's not likely you'd see The Sentinels until the timeline moved forward quite a bit, which would require trying to bring the X-men into the whole "Avengers" timeline and so on... assuming they still want to go with their "movieverse" thing.

Sentinels would be cool, but I can see of various reasons why they shouldn't do it, because saying "hey! we're going to make it happen anyway" is pretty much how you ruin franchises, especially when trying to develop a shared universe. Not to mention the simple issue of the FX and choreography, in general I find MOST super hero fight scenes to be lacking in movies nowadays, and I think that's because the writers and directors have limited budgets, and on top of it are not quite sure how to go about it. Trying to get a bunch of mutants duking it out with three story tall robots is not something I think any directors and FX teams can do well, when I think they are still struggling with just trying to get a decent fight between guys in spandex who throw energy blasts.

Just my opinion of course.
 

Ericb

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Sep 26, 2006
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SecretNegative said:
Ericb said:
Trolls gonna troll.
Go on, live in a world where everyone likes the movie that you likes.
So, the shoe did fit.

SecretNegative said:
Or the way they "neatly tied everything together" in the last ten minutes was awful. I mean, let's count the things what happened.

SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS!

1. Bad guys lossed.
2. Bacon got killed.
3. The ship fired at them.
4. Big M and Big X became enemies.
5. Magneto and Xavier had a last struggle over who was right.
6. Magneto get evil.
7. Big M and Big X got their gang.
8. Big X got cippled.
9. Moira and Big X got together.
10. They freed Emma Frost.

Yeah, a lot.
The end did feel rushed, thanks for pointing that out. Though 9 seemed to hint at a future thing, not current.

Optimystic said:
The Magneto's Memory scene alone eclipses everything in the trailer.
And in the movie, possibly. Beautiful work done by both actors. =]
 

Fangv2

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Jan 20, 2011
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Having never seen a X-men movie before nor reading the comics and only seeing bits and pieces of the cartoon I can still say I enjoyed this.

The one cameo of Wolverine made me chuckle also.
 

Azriel Nightshade

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Therumancer said:
coconut_buyer said:
shiajun said:
coconut_buyer said:
I enjoyed the film, but something really bugged me in the second act...

Why did they kill the black guy?

I know it was necessary to kill one of the new recruits to move the plot forward but why did it need to be the only black character in the film? Not only that, but the other racial minority, Angel, sides with the bad guys in the same scene. In the end this leaves us with a cast of beautiful white people as our protagonists.

Its the year 2011, do movies really need to keep doing this? I really wished Bob brought this up, It would have made the review a lot more interesting.
Both Darwin and Angel Salvadore are two very newcomer characters to the x-universe. In fact Darwin existed for a time just a flashback character during the Gabriel Summers/Vulcan arc. Their addition here I found pretty throwaway. Moira, Beast, Banshee, and freaking Havok (who is my main peeve about this movie, why the heck is Scott Summer's younger brother alive and into his late teens in the 60's, is he going to become Scott's father or what?) have much more history for them to remain alive. Their characters just happen to be white. Remember Storm? Yeah, ultrapowerful mutant that isn't just Black, she's originally from a Muslim country. And she's a staple of the good guys.
I realize these characters don't have a lot to work with but why not expand on them anyways. Besides, the movies don't need to mirror the comics exactly. Better yet, why not switch ethnicities with someone from the main cast. Why couldn't Havoc or Banshee be black and Darwin be white? Their race doesn't have any impact on the story so it shouldn't really matter.
As I've said before, I'm against politically correct racial modifications of existing characters for the sake of someone's politics.

That said, I believe "killing" Darwin was actually a good move to some extent. See, his basic power is that he's nearly impossible to kill. Read this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(comics)

To put it bluntly he could return for further movies at any time, the guy could have just turned into energy to deal with swallowing what amounted to a kinetic charge, one of Darwin's problems is that extreme transformations take him a while to adapt to. Darwin is capable of adapting on a literally godlike level, and indeed where the wiki leaves off you'll notice he's retiring temporarly to cope with being in possesion of cosmic level powers.

As far as why changing ethnicities for Sean or Alex would be a big deal, in Sean's case he's Irish and it's a key part of his entire schtick and what makes the character. Alex Summers is the TWIN BROTHER of Scott Summers... they were seperated at birth. As this is a prequel of sorts it would be a bit much to have Alex show up being black. Besides if they decide to get into the adult continuity again at some point and have Scott and Alex run into each other... well that's always good for a laugh for reasons I won't get into other than to say that they are both immune to each other's blasting powers, and it almost invariably comes down to a fist fight. :)

On the general subject however, I believe the issue with more "ethnic" super heroes will resolve itself should more members of minorities (well in the US and major markets, globally whites are one of the smaller minorities) choose to get into writing and art, and work to get into comics over a period of time. That's what happened with Asians, and while there aren't any asian characters in this movie, there are increasing numbers of them through comics in general.
Brief note- I spent a good 5min considering if it was appropriate to condense the quotes for space. I chose not to for the sake of honoring the words typed.

On Topic- I liked the movie just fine,then I toke time to think about it. Therumancer makes the point that the way Darwin is killed, and because of how his power works in the movie and comics, can lead to interesting things in the future, but that isn't good enough. Why should we have to wait on small possibility that the character, who received next to no development, could make a return when the only reason for his death is lazy writing? Why couldn't he have been injured and spent the duration of the training montage with the rest of the X-men, the conclusion of which could have been his recovery. That could have been kinda cool. I do not accept that this is the best idea that the people involved with this movie could have come up with. I've looked up their past work, they can do better.

While I'm on the subject of lazy writing how come barley any of the villains in this movie say anything? Emma is portrayed by a boring actress who is just there for eye candy, and for the record her character is more than just eye candy in the comic. Azazel(Red Man) and Riptide(Tornado Guy) have no personalities. This same issue goes for the rest of the X-men, but to a lesser degree. It makes me not care about anything they do and the fights the get into feel dry.

I think thats my main issue with this movie, its lazy with its characters, yea Prof. X and Magneto are cool, but this movie has other characters and all they are used for is to hold up the pedestal that Prof. X and Magneto stand on. However, I may just be bitter at seeing yet another non-white character getting shafted. Situations like that make me want to get good grades in college and become a writer.

I apologize of any typos.
 

Optimystic

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Smokescreen said:
Not that you haven't read my OP but I said I was going to see it.
If you're going to see it anyway, why all the pointless bellyaching over the trailer? In the thread for a video that sings the film's virtues no less.
 

bluepilot

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No way, no way...an x-men movie actually turns out to be good....even though it is a prequel...

After that terrible terrible plot-miss (if you can say there actually was a plot) in wolverine, I had vowed never to watch an x-men movie again and stick to my festering comic pile. But, this movie actually looks quite good, even if just for the eye candy.

Out in Japan next week, off to see if whee!
 

honestdiscussioner

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Therumancer said:
honestdiscussioner said:
Sequel? The Sentinels? Jeez I hope so. Seriously, how could they only exist in the crappiest movie as a just a training program . . . oh and in the GAME for the third movie which was also very bad.

I'd love to see me some big giant robots go up against mutants.

Well, The Sentinels would be difficult to do well. They killed off Shaw who was heavily involved in developing them, and with his motives in the movie they make no sense. If I remember Tony Stark was also involved in their development, and while that might be doable, since he was given a more modern origin in the movies it's not likely you'd see The Sentinels until the timeline moved forward quite a bit, which would require trying to bring the X-men into the whole "Avengers" timeline and so on... assuming they still want to go with their "movieverse" thing.

Sentinels would be cool, but I can see of various reasons why they shouldn't do it, because saying "hey! we're going to make it happen anyway" is pretty much how you ruin franchises, especially when trying to develop a shared universe. Not to mention the simple issue of the FX and choreography, in general I find MOST super hero fight scenes to be lacking in movies nowadays, and I think that's because the writers and directors have limited budgets, and on top of it are not quite sure how to go about it. Trying to get a bunch of mutants duking it out with three story tall robots is not something I think any directors and FX teams can do well, when I think they are still struggling with just trying to get a decent fight between guys in spandex who throw energy blasts.

Just my opinion of course.
So what you're saying is that we need a John Woo for superhero flicks?
 

CthulhuRlyeh

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mojodamm said:
CthulhuRlyeh said:
Also, since when is Nolan some kind of God of film making?
Since 2000. Memento, Insomnia, Batman Begins, The Prestige, The Dark Knight, and Inception.
18 BAFTA, 21 Oscar, and 6 Golden Globe Nominations, with 4, 1, and 6 wins respectively.
Average rating on RT; 86.33%.
If he were a God of film making, the RT rating would be 100%, wouldnt it?
But that is beside the point. There are loads of better director than Nolan, Nolan is just more popular nowadays.
 

Therumancer

Citation Needed
Nov 28, 2007
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Azriel Nightshade said:
[]
Brief note- I spent a good 5min considering if it was appropriate to condense the quotes for space. I chose not to for the sake of honoring the words typed.

On Topic- I liked the movie just fine,then I toke time to think about it. Therumancer makes the point that the way Darwin is killed, and because of how his power works in the movie and comics, can lead to interesting things in the future, but that isn't good enough. Why should we have to wait on small possibility that the character, who received next to no development, could make a return when the only reason for his death is lazy writing? Why couldn't he have been injured and spent the duration of the training montage with the rest of the X-men, the conclusion of which could have been his recovery. That could have been kinda cool. I do not accept that this is the best idea that the people involved with this movie could have come up with. I've looked up their past work, they can do better.

While I'm on the subject of lazy writing how come barley any of the villains in this movie say anything? Emma is portrayed by a boring actress who is just there for eye candy, and for the record her character is more than just eye candy in the comic. Azazel(Red Man) and Riptide(Tornado Guy) have no personalities. This same issue goes for the rest of the X-men, but to a lesser degree. It makes me not care about anything they do and the fights the get into feel dry.

I think thats my main issue with this movie, its lazy with its characters, yea Prof. X and Magneto are cool, but this movie has other characters and all they are used for is to hold up the pedestal that Prof. X and Magneto stand on. However, I may just be bitter at seeing yet another non-white character getting shafted. Situations like that make me want to get good grades in college and become a writer.

I apologize of any typos.
No worries about cutting quoting, and typos are a way of life on the Internet.

I don't think that killing Darwin was that big a deal, chances are nobody would care at all if he wasn't black though, and I think that's the only reason we're having this conversation. I think that's the bottom line. In the end I think the desician was largely made to kill someone off to give the movie some bite, and really Darwin was the sensible one to use since if they land another X-movie, he's the easiest character to bring back.

I'll also be somewhat blunt in saying that another reason I feel they killed him off was simply because his power would have been too difficult to use in the fight scenes, and require too much of an FX budget. I think they wanted to establish him for later movies in hopes they could do him right later. Considering that this is a movie where they have Magneto defeat Emma Frost in her diamond form using a brass bed (cracking the diamond), I don't think there was a whole heck of a lot they could have done with this character other than what they did.

In the end people upset about it are not going to receive any answer that is going to satisfy them though. Just on these forums it's become a political point already, and that's both a bad thing in general, and for the future of super hero movies. If it gets to the point where we start seeing them have to treat black heroes with kid gloves just because they are black heroes, that's going to get really bad, really quickly.

In the end it's a self correcting problem overall, if these movies inspire more minorities to get into comic books as writers and artists, eventually some of those making the attempt will succeed, and we'll probably see more minority characters trickling in. Basically Blacks, Hispanics, etc... need to go the same basic route the asians did. Granted it might not make anyone happy right now, but to do things right without bringing ridiculous political correctness into things takes time and effort. Maybe in 30 years or so... and I say 30 years because Asian comics arguably started to hit their stride overseas in like the 1980s. Right now you'd be seeing other minorities starting cold, and it simply takes time. Right now if you did see a generation of artists and writers appear your talking what typicall starts in high school, and then leads to art classes in college, and then involves all of the competition which can take years, then you'll see a period with more minorities working on existing characters and books, then you'll see some of them becoming well known and accepted to get a shot at doing their own characters, and out of those a tiny portion will actually succeed and stick around. As I said, roughly three decades for that to happen providing there is enough interest among minorities for them to get into comics. I think it can happen. Immediate gratification and trying to ignore the existing processes is just going to lead to more of the kinds of conflicts your seeing now over Heimdall and "OMG, they killed Darwin, and let's make it a racial thing since he happened to be black".
 

Therumancer

Citation Needed
Nov 28, 2007
9,909
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honestdiscussioner said:
Therumancer said:
honestdiscussioner said:
Sequel? The Sentinels? Jeez I hope so. Seriously, how could they only exist in the crappiest movie as a just a training program . . . oh and in the GAME for the third movie which was also very bad.

I'd love to see me some big giant robots go up against mutants.

Well, The Sentinels would be difficult to do well. They killed off Shaw who was heavily involved in developing them, and with his motives in the movie they make no sense. If I remember Tony Stark was also involved in their development, and while that might be doable, since he was given a more modern origin in the movies it's not likely you'd see The Sentinels until the timeline moved forward quite a bit, which would require trying to bring the X-men into the whole "Avengers" timeline and so on... assuming they still want to go with their "movieverse" thing.

Sentinels would be cool, but I can see of various reasons why they shouldn't do it, because saying "hey! we're going to make it happen anyway" is pretty much how you ruin franchises, especially when trying to develop a shared universe. Not to mention the simple issue of the FX and choreography, in general I find MOST super hero fight scenes to be lacking in movies nowadays, and I think that's because the writers and directors have limited budgets, and on top of it are not quite sure how to go about it. Trying to get a bunch of mutants duking it out with three story tall robots is not something I think any directors and FX teams can do well, when I think they are still struggling with just trying to get a decent fight between guys in spandex who throw energy blasts.

Just my opinion of course.
So what you're saying is that we need a John Woo for superhero flicks?
Not how I would have put it, but that's exactly the case.

Truthfully given some of the truely wierd stuff Japan and the Hong Kong Action Cinema has produced live action I wouldn't be surprised if the "right" director came from that part of the world.

I think the problem is that a lot of the good directors that do these movies, and arguably help sell them with their names, are all wrong for this material. These guys made their bones by doing dramas and perhaps a few more traditional science fiction and action movies, none of which translates well into this paticular style.

What's more I think the script writers and directors are kind of lost. I look at the whole scene with Charles and Erik defeating Emma Frost, and to be honest that should never have happened. If that went down like it did in the movie they should both be dead... meaning that the scene should never have existed and something making more sense should have been contrieved. The problem was that the writers and directors had a script they wanted to flow a specific way, but really had no clue or concern for making things work with the actual characters they happened to be writing, them having super powers are at best secondary to the storyline, and in comic books it really can't be, since the entire premise revolves around these characters and their powers. That one scene arguably ensures that this movie would be no more than mediocre if viewed fairly since it was just plain out bad, and sadly it's hardly alone. The guys doing this seemed to continually forget who the players actually are at key points in the storyline.

Of course then again, this also has a lot to do with them picking characters for the movies based on popularity, rather than who would work with the movie. What's more when dealing with something as long-running as the X-verse, they are also using the versions of characters as they are most well known. Emma Frost for example should not have had a diamond form, especially if she was dealing with a newbie Professor X who was just developing. They gave her that because of how she is in the current cartoons and comics and such, when they probably shouldn't have, and thus created their own problem in the scene above.
 

honestdiscussioner

New member
Jul 17, 2010
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Therumancer said:
I think the problem is that a lot of the good directors that do these movies, and arguably help sell them with their names, are all wrong for this material. These guys made their bones by doing dramas and perhaps a few more traditional science fiction and action movies, none of which translates well into this paticular style.

What's more I think the script writers and directors are kind of lost. I look at the whole scene with Charles and Erik defeating Emma Frost, and to be honest that should never have happened. If that went down like it did in the movie they should both be dead... meaning that the scene should never have existed and something making more sense should have been contrieved. The problem was that the writers and directors had a script they wanted to flow a specific way, but really had no clue or concern for making things work with the actual characters they happened to be writing, them having super powers are at best secondary to the storyline, and in comic books it really can't be, since the entire premise revolves around these characters and their powers. That one scene arguably ensures that this movie would be no more than mediocre if viewed fairly since it was just plain out bad, and sadly it's hardly alone. The guys doing this seemed to continually forget who the players actually are at key points in the storyline.
You know who WOULD be good at it then? Video game cutscene directors. Look at the recent trailer for the Old Republic:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/trailers/3412-Star-Wars-The-Old-Republic-Return

That's how action is done. Far better than any non-space battle in the six Star Wars movies.

Obviously, the transition from CGI to liveaction wouldn't be seamless, but it could be done, I mean look at stuff like RvD2, or even the original RvD. Sure, all my examples are Star Wars related, but the talent is out there, someone just has to give them the reigns.