PG-13, despite the fact that it is the first official X-Men movie without Mr. Knife-Hands. There is an f-bomb from Scott "Cyclops" Summers...really out of the blue. It wasn't one of those necessary f-words. It was just...there. There's violence. People die horribly. Magneto goes to town with some of the insane violence. Really, the entire final fight is an excuse to kill people in cool ways using mutant powers. Some major characters are bumped off. There's an attempt at finding a debate about morals that could be awkward. PG-13.
DIRECTOR: Simon Kinberg Yeah...that was a fizzle. I was in the minority of people who thought that the trailers looked like they could be promising. Everyone said that the movie was going to be blah. Maybe I just convinced myself that the movie couldn't be that bad. Yeah, the trailer didn't knock my socks off. But I'm one of the handful of people who kind of dug X-Men: Apocalypse. I didn't have X-Men fatigue, despite the fact that I rarely got into the comics. Boy, I was wrong. The first thing I was wrong about was that there was no real world moral debate about seeing this movie. I mean, I still have to sleep on the fact that I thought that this was a Bryan Singer entry in the franchise. I was watching this movie and, thinking that he had lost his mind as the press has suggested, really had no idea how to make a movie anymore. Then, the first thing that pops up in the credits after the movie ended was, "Directed by Simon Kinberg." That's when I thought that he got taken off the film like he did with Bohemian Rhapsody. That seemed like the most likely scenario. I read that he was disappearing off the set of X-Men movies too. After the fact, I read that J-Law only agreed to do Dark Phoenix if Bryan Singer wasn't directing it. Ever since Fantastic Four (I refuse to look up where the "4" goes), I haven't had the greatest respect for Simon Kinberg, which isn't really fair. His name is on a lot of the X-Men movies I actually really like. It's just that this feels like the Simon Kinberg of Fantastic Four fame. I mean, I kept waiting for the movie to get good or even have a sense of cohesion. I knew that this was 20th Century Fox making up for X-Men: The Last Stand. This is the film franchise that actually got a second chance to make it right. People be obsessed with Jean Grey and the Dark Phoenix story that the movie studio actually gave the kinda / sorta same folks an opportunity to have a do-over. It's not even a complete reboot. It's some of the same people who worked on the original to do it again. There's actually some even references to the fact that the movie had been made before. There's actually a scene where Jean lifts up the Professor and you think that she's going to shred him apart again. The same scene...again. Again, I'm actually very forgiving of The Last Stand. Dark Phoenix is so much worse. I can't understand why it is so much worse. But you know what I'm going to try to do? I'm going to try and figure it out. I take it all back! (Okay, I take none of it back. I just know what's wrong.) The biggest thing that I had issues with is that I didn't care about...any of the characters. The previous films in the X-Men universe focused on three people: Xavier, Magneto, and Mystique. Those are the characters that have been set up as characters who matter. In the original trilogy, the heavy hitters were Xavier, Magneto, Wolverine, Rogue, Jean, Scott. I'm sorry, Storm. But we actually had pretty intense storylines with those characters. I suppose we had that cool Quicksilver sequence in this one as well. I adored the Quicksilver sequences, by the way. Side note: The coolness of those scenes always put Quicksilver out of commission way too fast. He became way too powerful to actually be a character. This movie also puts him out of commission to give Jean a chance. Anyway, Jean and Scott aren't major characters in the reboot films. Nightcrawler was barely a character. Dark Phoenix asked us to care about characters who never mattered before this point. As much as I didn't want another chapter in the Xavier and Magneto / Raven drama that the other films have been playing up, we have been set up for that. There has been a mission statement for the new X-Men movies and this hard left as a conclusion makes no sense. Yeah, we want to do Dark Phoenix. I'm not even all that mad about it. Sure, I wanted to see what Bryan Singer was going to do with that character after being promised that for so long. But the reason it works far better in a bad movie like The Last Stand is because Jean, Scott, and Logan were set up for the inevitable conclusion. I was doing something insane before writing this and reading comments about Dark Phoenix. Note: I almost never do this. But Dark Phoenix was a really big misstep and I needed to hear bias confirming vitriol from the masses to make sure that I wasn't insane. One of the comments, believe it or not, was actually remarkably smart. Dark Phoenix is a Thanos level character. This is something that needs to be rolled out slowly. It has to be teased over many, MANY movies before being unveiled. I know that Dark Phoenix was supposed to be two movies at one point. I mean, I'm counting my blessings that it was only one film because I was mortified that I dragged my wife to that movie. (It's emotional collateral to bring my wife to movies that suck because then I don't get to take my wife to movies for a while after that.) But the X-Men have been so sporadic. There was this gimmick that I initially loved. I talked about this in my other X-Men reviews. The film followed the characters once a decade since the '60s. It really works for the '60s and '70s. Those really grounded the film around major events that reflect the events of the characters. The '80s didn't really have that as well as the other films. There was nothing important about setting this movie in 1992. It went to a place that didn't really make sense for the X-Men. The X-Men were finally accepted. They were full fledged superheroes. It's an interesting place to take the characters. I know what a message could have been. Sure, it would have had nothing to the '90s, but commenting on how woke we thought we were during the Obama administration only to turn around and be the same phobic people we've always been. The '90s don't do anything for this movie. The setting is actually a waste. Making the X-Men heroes without hammering that point home is a completely mixed-message. Also, I really have a problem with the aging system in the X-Men later sequels. It seems so minor, but these characters haven't grown. At all. In forty years, both physically and mentally, they are pretty much the same characters. They have learned some lessons. The superficial part of me can't get over the fact that in a decade, James McAvoy is supposed to be Patrick Stewart. I admit it. It bothers me. But look at Hank McCoy. Nicholas Hoult is playing Beast the same way in the '90s as he did in the '60s. I hate me from nine years ago. Always. I hate that guy. I want to think that I'm growing and changing as a person. My responsibilities tend to match my age and those responsibilities change my outlook on the world. Some things will always stay the same. But having the characters keep returning and looking the same despite the fact that the gimmick promises me that it would be different is frustrating. This movie also continues the trend of people being mad at Xavier for choosing crappy answers in crappy situations. These character choices are rough. This also really points at Kinberg. Simon Kinberg also wrote X-Men: The Last Stand and tried getting the exact same conflict into this story. Why is this so important to the characters? I know it's cool having Xavier with faults, but we need to build up to these moments. Xavier has been this bastion of morality up to this point and then he just throws it all away willy nilly? No, that choice was made under duress. When a film has reshoots, I tend not to freak out. People lose their minds when reshoots happen and it often isn't great news. But I also understand that reshoots are part of the studio system. Geez, this movie was a reshoot nightmare. It has to be weird to be X-Men in an era where the MCU is just tearing up everything. There's a bunch of moments from this film that are reminiscent of MCU moments that really worked. I heard that a bunch of the reshoots had to do with the fact that the MCU did these moments better in other films. Apparently, the shapeshifting aliens in this movie were originally the Skrull and that this movie was actually very similar to Captain America: Civil War. There are so many elements that I can see were left that I completely believe that. But this is the big dismount! It is supposed to be the film that took so long that it had to be perfect. There had to be a moment where people realized that this film wasn't good. There's no structure to this film. A lot, and I mean a lot, of this movie is Jean moping about being the Phoenix. There's never an attempt for her to use that force for good. The Phoenix is so undefined, it is criminal. We know that she can blow things up with her head, but why would she want to? Much of the film is Jean visiting characters we've met before and being vaguely upset about having these powers. Isn't the entire series about people learning to deal with these abilities that they didn't want? Why isn't that explored? Why isn't comfort a theme? Magneto treats her with fear. Shouldn't Magneto be all rah-rah? And this leads me to the most bizarre choice: aliens. I know. The Dark Phoenix story allows for aliens. But aliens are a point in the goofy column. Evil aliens are a huge point in the goofy column. Seriously, Jessica Chastain saw that part and said, "YES! That's the part I want to play"? It's so bizarre. They add nothing to the story. Jean should be the villain. There's no need for the generic aliens. I don't care if they showed up for an issue of the X-Men. Those characters are super dumb and they add nothing to the narrative. They are playing this weird game of parallel storytelling that is just wildly embarrassing. Also, why doesn't Jean just kill Erik? She crushes his helmet, which seems like an easy way to kill him that would be appropriate. She killed Mystique and she liked Mystique. Why not smoosh Erik's head? He's there to kill her over the death of Mystique. He kind of has earned it by this point. Why not just smoosh him real good? But back to my thesis: Aliens are dumb and need to pay their dues before just being accepted nimbly-bimbly into a film. I defended a lot of the X-Men movies. They are, as a franchise, way too good to leave on this stupid note. The MCU is going to do great things with them, I hope. It's just a real bummer to think that this was the movie that is going to end the collection. The weird thing is that I really like the poster. That might make me a bad person.
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PG-13. I think every X-Men movie, starting with First Class, has an f-bomb. I don't remember specifically where the f-bomb is in this movie. I can't even with 100% certainty say that there is an f-bomb. But my gut says, "f-bomb", so I go with f-bomb. Mr. Knife Hands is now Mr. Bone Hands-but-in-knife-form. You see his tookus, for no reason. There's some sci-fi violence that gets pretty gross. There's also just a ton of death. Just...all the death. Major characters die in horrible ways. PG-13.
DIRECTOR: Bryan Singer It's the one that fixed everything. It made us believe that the X-Men movies were here to stay. According to a lot of people, it's the last great actual X-Men movie. I'm assuming that people don't count Deadpool. Also, I don't really understand how Deadpool is a mutant. I guess he has a dormant X-gene, but it never manifested until they did tests on him. I should probably review that one separately. An-ee-way. Days of Future Past is the only movie that could have saved the franchise, despite the fact that no movie following would really leave the same impact that Days of Future Past did. I want to say that it took guts to make Days of Future Past. I remember when they announced it, I lost my mind. Days of Future Past was a major story arc for the X-Men. I know, everyone always turns to "The Dark Phoenix Saga." Somehow, I think that "Days of Future Past", as a story arc for the X-Men, was a bigger nod to the comics than anything else the X-Men dealt with. Maybe it's just that cover. It's probably the most famous cover. I just Googled "Most famous comic book covers" and there was an article named "The Top 100 Influential Comic Book Covers." The EXAMPLE they used for the article was the cover of "Days of Future Past." Sure, it didn't make number one. I completely don't understand their roster. The top ten were really weird choices. Maybe I was reading it backwards. Either way, that image is so iconic. It also tells so much about the story. My biggest disappointment with this movie is that the marketing team didn't capitalize on the power of that image for the poster. Instead, we had yet another generic team shot of people looking serious and staring at the viewer. It's a choice, I guess. But "Days of Future Past" is not only a brilliant X-Men story to adapt, but it also ties into the themes that the movie franchise has dealt with from the beginning. It is the failure of Xavier's dream. It is the disappointment with the human race that has led to genocide. As a species, we had failure. It is such a commentary on humanity. Yeah, I know we've gotten the dystopia before. But this is a dystopia on a franchise that has been built on hope. The film introduces us to a world where I don't even see humanity. Mutants are being hunted to extinction, but I also feel that humans haven't been thriving either. I mentioned in my First Class review that I always found the Cold War interesting. It's because our fears had almost allowed us to destroy the entire planet. "Days of Future Past" is the logical extension of that. Yeah, we avoided global annihilation, but for only so long. It's an apocalyptic film that's actually number five in a franchise. The movies never really talked about the apocalypse before that point. That always kind of stayed as a possibility. But seeing the X-Men continue on with their mission while trying to survive. That makes for compelling stuff. I know that people get all nostalgic for the '60s. I get nostalgic for the '70s. I know, I was born in the '80s. I shouldn't be allowed to be nostalgic for an era I didn't experience first hand. But the movies of the '70s are phenomenal. The jumps between the post-apocalyptic future and Wolverine's 1970s is what the movie really needs. The tone that this movie pulls off is something to be admired. It's a bleak film. We watch all of our heroes die in horrible horrible ways. I know that must be a director's dream. He's allowed to kill off beloved characters willy nilly and undo all of it. Sidebar: think about how freeing that would be. You finally have villains who are as scary as they have been promised. They never get nerfed. They get defeated because they never existed. Genius. Second sidebar: How did you get Halle Berry back and playing a smaller part than normal? Okay, back to the tone. The tone of this movie allows us to exist in both a bright world and a bleak one. I suppose that we saw some of that with Terminator 2: Judgment Day. But James Cameron even treated the '90s with disdain. Somehow, the world of the 1970s is great. The world is both species-phobic, yet weirdly optimistic? The cars are big and bad. The clothing is rad. But this actually kind of conflicts with the 1970s that the movie is trying to portray. I'm figuring this out while I'm writing this, so bear with me. The movie addresses Vietnam. First Class was the Cold War and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Days of Future Past is about Vietnam. But Vietnam never really seems as bleak as one would think. But characters lament the war. Charles Xavier loses hope because of the events of Vietnam. He stops fighting for his dream. He closes the school. However, the world doesn't really look like that. Mystique makes her short jaunt to Vietnam to free the mutant soldiers who would be conscripted to Weapon X. But the world at large moves on. I think that Bryan Singer, artistically, is a pretty smart guy. He's a piece of human garbage, but I think he knows what he's doing behind the camera. I'd like to believe that he's commenting on the out-of-sight / out-of-mind nature of war. The people in America are business as normal. Quicksilver is playing Pong. Nixon is reigning supreme. Bolivar Trask is making billions exterminating mutants. It seems like that is the world that Singer had built up. It's actually interesting. In terms of communicating that message, I only now get that because I'm writing about it in depth. First Class really sells its commentary on the 1960s. Days of Future Past...not as much. But I don't know why studios and producers are so afraid to make more movies like Days of Future Past. When I started the Arrowverse, it blew me away that the show would address other shows that preceded it. We got Smallville references. The old Flash played by John Wesley Shipp was canonically from another universe. There were these moments that sent fanboys screaming. The MCU has capitalized on this stuff, but I don't know why this wasn't happening previously. There are a lot of X-Men movies. This series earned bringing two casts together. But I can't believe that they actually pulled it off. On top of that, attempted to purge the franchise of the many many mistakes that had made before this point is absolutely brilliant. Clearing a silly timeline is positively brilliant. I mean, I get mad at DC Comics for doing it every few years. But as pointed out by my look at the previous entries, it seemed like the writers room didn't really care about what happened in previous movies. Again, I adore First Class, but that movie put a dent in what did and didn't happen in the franchise. By having this movie clear the plate of everything, in particularly The Last Stand, it kind of gave us another opportunity to get things right. Mind you, the franchise never really did get things right. I'm one of the few defenders of Apocalypse, but Dark Phoenix is...really bad. Like, really bad. Scary bad. Regardless, the end of this movie is such a shot in the arm. Seeing the whole old cast together again and in perfect order is almost therapeutic. It takes the Best Of elements of X-Men and purges everything else. (By the way, Dark Phoenix ruins this end and it won't play out like this. Sorry. The producers learned nothing from the anything-goes attitude that the other films had going on.) This one might be an actual Wolverine movie. I've been talking before how Wolverine is always the protagonist, despite the fact that he has very little to do in these stories besides fighting well. Making Wolverine the grounding element --and I can't believe I'm saying this --is a way to actually bring Xavier's storyline to a head. By reminding Xavier of what he will become, it reminds us what this entire series has been about. This also makes me slap it on the nose, though. Matthew Vaughan made some really strong choices with First Class. These were choices that the characters should have lived with. The choices in First Class were about learning consequences. Beast became a big blue guy because of his fear of looking different. That's Beast's cross. It's his morality tale. By trying to be normal, he reminded everyone that he is the least normal person around. The same thing happened with Mystique. She learned that her mutation is beautiful in the first one and just undid all that. Xavier was shot and supposed to be in a wheelchair. Why are we so afraid of living with those consequences? I really got that this is another example where the actors were bullying the producers of the film. James McAvoy probably didn't want to be in a wheelchair for a movie. Nicholas Hoult and J-Law didn't want to be in a makeup chair all day everyday. I get it, but there's a lot of retreading happening in this film that's just a bummer to watch. Why are these characters exploring breakthrough ground that has already been trodden? Sequels are supposed to be about growth. Instead, this is just another sequel that is often resting the laurels that the previous films had already addressed in spades. This keeps happening. On top of that, it also begins the idea that we have to ignore how old these characters are. We ignore that all the times in the comics. But by the time we reach Dark Phoenix, we're supposed to believe that James McAvoy will look like Patrick Stewart in shy of a decade. Nope. Don't buy it. You know what detail I enjoy about Days of Future Past? They never address that Bolivar Trask is played by Peter Dinklage. Good for them. The movie is great. It's fun to see the separate casts interacting. The Xavier meeting Xavier scene is something actually pretty special. Wolverine is pretty fun in this movie and I overall enjoy the storyline. Sentinels are actually there. That's great. Also, I never realized how many of these characters showed up in The Gifted. It's fun. PG-13. Despite only being on screen for less than a minute, Mr. Knife Hands says the f-word. The movie also goes into the Hellfire Club, where clothing is often discouraged in a swinging '60s fashion. There's language. There's some outright cruelty that you have to watch. The X-Men movies tend to be only slightly more adult than other superhero films, so keep that in mind. Lots of people die in this movie, often in horrific ways. PG-13.
DIRECTOR: Matthew Vaughn Do you know how hard my life is? I needed to take a 20 minute nap before writing this. I actually set an alarm and told myself that I had to get up and write. I lead THE HARDEST life, guys. I'm just chugging along this X-Men train. I don't know if I have it in me to somehow spend money to watch X-Men Origins: Wolverine. But I think I can knock out the other ones. I swore that X2 was the best X-Men movie for a really long time. Then, I swore that X-Men: Days of Future Past was the best X-Men movie. But then I heard someone out there in Internetland swear that First Class was the best. I couldn't really discourage that argument, but it's also a point that I couldn't really stand by in a lot of cases. But I watched the movie this time with that thought in my head. X-Men: First Class might be the best X-Men movie. It's got one major thing going against it, but it's really minor and it's mostly just a hangup of mine. Keeping that in mind, X-Men: First Class might be the most effective of the X-Men films. My big annoying thing is the second that the pre-X-Men join the CIA. I don't know why I find this silly. I mean, it makes way more sense than a guy building a secret base under his school / house. It also really fits the '60s vibe being thrown around this movie. (I'm starting to wake up. This nap thing might have something to it.) At first, I thought that the color palate was a bit much for an X-Men movie, but that's because I've been so used to Bryan Singer's washed out blue to his films. I actually like the bright aethetics when it comes to this movie. Random thought: I completely forgot that Kevin Bacon was in the X-Men movies. He's a great bad guy in this. Okay, Sebastian Shaw is a little underdeveloped. I actually kind of feel bad for Kevin Bacon here because he's giving it his all. There's nothing wrong with his performance in this film. I actually adore every choice that he is making on screen and can't fault him for anything. It's just that his master plan is a bit silly. (Oh, I found the real flaw of First Class.) See, First Class hits the exact right button with me on one thing. Grounding the mutant story in the cultural conflicts of the era is such a brilliant idea. It actually takes a little bit of the heavy lifting off of the film as a whole. Again, my personal biases show up, but I find the Cuban Missile Crisis to be the most interesting moment in human history. I adore the Cold War from an educational standpoint. Watching characters that I already like play around in that setting puts me in a phenomenal state of mind. Both First Class and Days of Future Past really allow history to fill in the gaps of the worldbuilding. Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix never really pick up the slack when it comes to using their eras effectively. Rather than simply use tropey items from the '60s or '70s, First Class and Future Past understand that there was a political climate to the aesthetic choices happening on screen. I'll talk about the use of Vietnam in the next one, but the Cuban Missle Crisis was a scary time. It's odd to think that the actual X-Men comic book was being created around this time in history. Sure, the mighty mutants were presented in Marvel fashion and weren't really addressing the stuff that Claremont would rest the characters on. But I do kind of adore that the movie kind of gives us a "What if..." story of how the characters would handle the '60s if given its mission statement from issue one. First Class might be one of the better prequels ever made, despite the fact that it breaks a lot of rules of a prequel. My biggest frustration with the X-Men movies is just a completely disregard for canon and continuity. A great platitude to throw around is to say that every movie should be its own thing. If you are a director and you throw that in my face, I won't have anything to fight you with. You'll e the good guy in that situation and I'll seem like the real jerk. Yes, First Class is a great film because it wasn't really being held back by continuity. But it wanted its cake and eat it too. Whenever it felt like addressing something that happened in the other movies, it felt completely compelled to do so. Stryker and Jason? They get a name drop. Cerebro looks very much like the Cerebro of the future. They even have the Blackbird / X-Jet. (What's the final name decision on the X-Men's plane? I heard them use the term X-Jet at least once in the franchise, so I'm going to lean that way.) But there is so much that is kind of ignored about the previous X-Men canon that you kind of need a Days of Future Past to even try to make sense of all of the mistakes that the franchise has made. I mean, good for Matthew Vaughn. Apparently, people hated X-Men: The Last Stand so much that there was really no need to adhere to things presented in the movie. But The Last Stand was the movie right before First Class. I know that there's X-Men Origins: Wolverine in there as well, but in terms of straight up main series X-Men movies, there's nothing in-between. That movie starts off with a poorly de-aged Professor X and a poorly de-aged Magneto recruiting a young Jean Grey. It looks like modern day, but for argument's sake, let's say the '80s. (Dark Phoenix will place it in 1974.) Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr are recruiting for the X-Men, together. First Class shows them as moderate to okay friends in this movie ending with Magneto betraying Professor X, paralyzing him. Okay. That's a big one. But let's pretend that First Class was mentally undoing The Last Stand. It's a bad excuse, but it also ignores tons of other things from the X-Men film series. Remember how Magneto helped build Cerebro? That never really happened. It's actually really weird that the CIA just has a Cerebro that's kind of attuned to a mutant exactly like Charles Xavier. Remember, Oliver Platt is overwhelmed by the things that Xavier can do. How would he have a machine ready that could just amplify that specific mutant's powers? Then in the first film, Xavier comments that Magneto must have some kind of helmet to block out his mental attacks. It seems like that helmet was really important to that story. I mean, Sebastian Shaw wears it for a large portion of the film. Magneto wears it towards the end. He even makes it look like the classic '60s style Magneto helmet. He treats it very nicely. The biggest thing that used to bother me about First Class was the Mystique element of the movie. I have somehow learned to suspend my disbelief the further I go into the new X-Men series starting with First Class. But Mystique becomes a much larger and more important character than the Singer films ever implied. All throughout the first films, the movies stressed how close Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr were. But Raven was Charles's foster sister? How was that not addressed? Xavier keeps on making these impassioned pleas to Magneto and his sister is standing next to him the entire time, chopping people with her transformer legs? Don't get me wrong, I kind of love that Mystique became a real character and, because of J-Law's fame, the center of the new X-Men movies. But, also, what? It is that attitude that they could do whatever they wanted as long as the movie was good. And it is good. I adore that Charles Xavier had to grow up quickly. I love that he kind of sucks at some things. I adore that he finds his arrested development pulled away because he adores teaching. All of the elements for great character development are in this movie. When Bryan Singer decided that his opening shots for the first X-Men movie were going to surround young Magneto in a concentration camp, I thought we got enough from our character. On paper, seeing Erik go through more of that seems a bit exploitative. But it actually makes the character more sympathetic. What makes Magneto compelling is that there's something slightly heroic to his terrorism. Seeing how dark the concentration camp got from an individual perspective is something I talk about when I address The Diary of Anne Frank. I shouldn't be evoking that text in a film about people who fight other people with superpowers, but the movie goes there so I should as well. Magneto is fascinating. We got that Magneto was a sympathetic villain before. But he becomes a full on Nazi hunter in this movie. His quest, while mirroring the Punisher, almost seems like he is the good guy at times. When he confronts Sebastian Shaw, I want him to win. I'm a pacifist. I don't like the idea of killing at all. But it made sense. Xavier actually is shown really through a lens of privilege in this movie. The movie accomplishes that like gangbusters. Because the movie leaves the confines of what a prequel should do, it is both a successful film and lacking at the same time. Yeah, I wish that First Class made sense out of all the movies that came before it. That being said, it offers some really good stuff that I wouldn't have gotten otherwise. Do I wish that the actual X-Men in this movie were fleshed out a bit more? Sure. But the movie functions. After all, this is a story about Xavier, Magneto, and Mystique. Yeah, I got really bummed with what happened to Darwin / I'm confused about what his actual power was based on what happened to him. But the movie works more than it fails and I adore that. I had a really good time. PG-13 for some pretty hot making out. Also, Mr. Knife Hands is back and there's a bunch of major character deaths. The Juggernaut famously uses the b-word, amongst other swearing. Good guys becoming bad guys gets complex for kids, I guess. Also, there's a gross scene where Angel tries cheese-gratering off his wings. PG-13.
DIRECTOR: Brett Ratner I'm going to say it: I've never hated this movie. What few readers I have left just left the page. I get it, guys. This movie is universally reviled. But I also liked X-Men: Apocalypse, so maybe I just have no taste. X-Men: The Last Stand is another example of a disappointing movie that suffers more from being a follow-up to a great movie. Everyone was all, "Yay, X2, you're the best." Then Bryan Singer left (which apparently is something that happens) and the movie becomes only okay. X-Men: The Last Stand might be the first movie in a franchise that kind of sucks because of actor / director/ studio politics. Man, you can read it all over this movie. It's also kind of why Justice League sucks. Sorry, I'm setting all kinds of emotional fires today. I have a headache and am having a hard time writing. I apologize for whatever nonsense I present in this analysis. I don't think I'll ever know the entire background for whatever happened behind the scenes on Bryan Singer movies. It seems entirely toxic. But I do know that Halle Berry really wanted a much bigger role for Storm. I get it. Making Storm a huge part, if done well, probably would have reshaped the landscape for representation. We could have had a bigger Black Panther than we actually got. But I don't think that Halle Berry was really thinking that. I think that Halle Berry was aware that she was an A-list megastar who was playing third fiddle in a very packed series of films. That's the first thing that all the sudden stuck out to me. Storm is really pushed front-and-center out of nowhere. The movie almost retcons what Storm was in the other films. The other films definitely presented Storm as just another X-Man. She electrocutes folks and quips about Toads being hit by lightning. At one point in the film, Professor X points out that Scott never really adjusted to Jean's death, so he sees Storm as the most natural leader of the X-Men. Now, I will say that the comic books have gone this route before. But that's because Storm is actually kind of developed in the comic books. Halle Berry's Storm...isn't? That's not really her fault. But instead of getting an arc or a hero's journey. we are simply told that Storm is the most noble and level-headed in a team that has a lot of redeeming characters. Her character is almost someone completely different in this movie. I don't hate that character. I just wish that character was present in the other films and not because an A-list star was throwing tantrums about being a successful character. The new Storm is actually better. Don't ask me why, yet. I already wrote about X-Men: Apocalypse, so I can't really go back and re-examine that. But I never really thought Halle Berry got Storm. Storm is just Halle Berry with lightning. (I swear, X-Men: The Last Stand does not rest on Halle Berry. It's just something that people kind of ignore.) The Jean Grey / Phoenix story is a love triangle story between Cyclops, Wolverine, and Jean Grey. Okay, it was in the cartoon version and I liked that. But James Marsden was following Bryan Singer to work on Superman Returns. I love Superman Returns (again, hot take!), but that's a step down for Marsden. It murders his character remarkably fast just so he could go film another movie. That's really weird. These are studio and personal choices. They don't serve the film and it's so bizarre that these are the cards going into the movie. I was honestly shocked that Marsden actually died at the beginning. This wasn't a Game of Thrones season one death. (That's as spoilery as I'll go. I also, overall, like Game of Thrones. Look at all these hot takes!) The death of Cyclops absolutely reads like "We couldn't have him for the entire shoot" rather than, "No one is safe." Everyone else feels completely safe. Okay, Professor X dies. Yeah, this whole blog is spoilers now. Sorry. But his death feels like it is meant to have emotional resonance. Also, he doesn't really die. Kevin Feige's name is on this movie, so there's an after credits sequence to show that Charles Xavier took over someone else's body, despite the moral implication he himself states. I'm going to try to avoid talking about Dark Phoenix because I have a lot to say on that piece of hot trash. (Hot takes! Okay, not really. A lot of people agree with me on that movie.) But this was a conclusion to a trilogy of movies. The expectation that some characters would die is part of it. I just am trying to stress that Cyclops feels really cheap in this movie. There were two movies stressing the conflicts between Cyclops and Wolverine. That never comes to a head. It never really has a chance to. That's really bizarre. I would almost say to recast Cyclops. Marden fans might not like me for this, but I kind of feel like James Marsden wasn't a huge actor at the time. He is also a pretty standard type. Scott Summers kind of needed to have an emotional resolution in this film. But instead, he got all Poochy, became one emotion, and got blown up. Which kind of leads me to where people probably had a problem with these films. Both The Last Stand and Dark Phoenix have a really hard time explaining Jean's villainy. I'm always torn about making Professor X so morally complex. Professor X is Martin Luther King. He's the guy who always makes the rough call about avoiding violence when possible. He's the guy all about integration. In the comics and in the movies, Professor X has had to make some hard calls. I don't like when characters are perfect and make the right choice every time. But Professor X is in a really awkward position in these films. He sees this girl who has deep rooted mental issues that could kill everyone. He's the world's strongest telepath and he has the ability to shut out these violent tendencies. What is he supposed to do? The alternative, which neither movie really addresses, is to torture this girl for years. Jean, in The Last Stand, is the product of a split personality. That secondary personality is violent and wildly powerful. Her other personality is scared and in need of family and structure. How is Professor X's intervention any different than medication? Jean leads a pretty rad life. Yeah, the Phoenix is powerful when she escapes, but he had no idea that was going to happen. He did a crummy thing when there were no better solutions. Both of these movies tend to throw Charles Xavier under the bus really quickly when it comes to how he handled Jean Grey. Maybe the stories are commentaries on the dangers of overmedication, but I never really got that. By the time that Charles dies, he is pretty villified. I don't know if that is really all that fair. I love Charles Xavier. I want him to be complex, I guess. But I don't really understand how to instantly make him a bad guy is helping anyone. Also, from this movie's perspective, it's the end of a trilogy. Yeah, yeah, they left some doors open to bring the characters back. But Charles Xavier never really gets a redemption arc. SPOILERS: Dark Phoenix does the same thing to him. It at least lets him apologize, as opposed to just getting shredded into flesh fragments. But no one really gives X-Men: The Last Stand credit for what it did and what it accomplished to do. Brett Ratner...is the worst? Okay, in light of how terrible Bryan Singer is coming out of all of this, Brett Ratner probably looks like a prince. His movies tend to be a bit blah. His personality clashes with humanity. But The Last Stand looks and feels like the other movies before it. There's definitely a personality break between The Last Stand and First Class. That's a good thing, so please, understand that. The role of The Last Stand was to close threads. Despite the fact that the threads were closed in a hamfisted way and under the long shadow of a studio, it does kind of accomplish that. Jean has been teased as something larger than herself technically from the first movie. The end of X2 really rode the Phoenix thing hard. Do I wish that Jean was allowed to be the Phoenix before she became the Dark Phoenix? Sure. That isn't my argument. I read that somewhere. The reason we don't really get attached to Dark Phoenix is because there is very little build up. We don't see the potential of Jean as Phoenix before things go south. The Logan / Jean storyline comes to a head. That relationship that has been poking its head for a while is finally addressed. It's attempting to be sexy. I do believe the relationship between Jean and Logan. Considering that Logan's feelings for Jean are pretty selfish and he's in the wrong, Logan's arc to being a team player and sacrificing for the X-Men is played out here. It's addressed more in The Wolverine, which I may or may not watch based on how masochistic I feel. Also, this movie gave us Beast. A really good Beast. I love Nicholas Hoult, but Kelsey Grammar is inspired as Beast. He's unabashedly blue and he even says, "Oh my stars and garters." He's the character in the form that I wanted to see him in when he was teased on the news. (Again, a continuity error because X-Men could not care less about what they previously teased.) If the series started with Rogue as the center of attention, it doesn't really give her a close. But it does give her a story that makes sense. Tying into Josh Whedon's X-Men arc, the series plays with the concept of a cure. It adapts a lot of that. Ultimately and despite the fact that I respect the attempt, this is a poor decision and distracts from the Dark Phoenix stuff that takes an odd backseat considering how dangerous the situation is. Rogue takes a cure for mutanthood and disappoints those around her, despite the fact that she still is seen as sympathetic. There are some really good choices going on here. It feels like the rest of the series, but just a little more discombobulated. I actually will go as far as to say that X-Men: The Last Stand is a halfway decent X-Men movie. It has all of these faults. The movie had an impossible list to deliver on. We all kind of hated Brett Ratner. The studio kept on sticking its stupid head into the movie and the politics behind the scenes affected the final product. But X-Men: The Last Stand is a watchable movie. There's a great Magneto moment, which is great. Sure, it backpedals out of consequences really fast. (In fact, a lot of this movie backpedals out of consequences, shy of Cyclops who physically couldn't play the part.) But I'll go as far as to say that I enjoyed the movie for most part. Give it another whirl, especially if you were disappointed by Dark Phoenix. Again, low expectations definitely help... Not rated, mainly because it was a Fathom release. Maybe there's a rating somewhere out there, but I'm not seeing it on IMDb. Ah, well. While visually and audibly, there isn't much to object to, it is about a mass shooting. It takes something that we all heard about on the news and makes it far more real. We understand the upsetting nature of mass violence. I am not ready to show my kids this. But some day, they might have to watch something like Emanuel.
DIRECTOR: Brian Ivie The long and short? It was very tempting to just not write this. If anything goes wrong while trying to publish this and I'd have to write it again --which has happened --I might just close shop. When I verified my new website, I lost all of my old readers. Yeah. It's also 10:40 at night and I really want to play some Red Dead Redemption 2. I also wrote a review of this for CNA that is in the ether right now, so writing about a movie for the second time when you don't feel like writing can be a challenge. But none of this is Emanuel's fault. I'm actually remarkably in awe of this movie. When my other review sees the light of day, I'll post it up here as well. But until then... It's weird that mass shootings happen. I know that someone probably knows the history of mass shootings. I'm actually getting pretty disturbed by the notion that someone has probably devoted their entire life into becoming an expert on mass shootings. But from my perspective, it all really started at Columbine. Before 9/11, Columbine scared us more than anything else. How could kids pick up a gun and just cause massive casualties. We know how this cycle goes. In a way, we've all become experts on gun violence and mass shootings. It probably contributes to the fact that a lot of us are depressed. Again, I have no data in front of me. I think it would just depress me. We know that the second that someone gets shot, the period between the news breaking and the rallying cry behind the political agendas gets faster and faster. Do you want to know something really depressing? It took a long time into the movie before I remembered which mass shooting this one. The only reason I remembered is Dylan Roof. As sad as this is, Dylan Roof's goofy name is the only reason that I kind of remembered what happened. Does that make me a bad person? Maybe. But I think that it is a symptom that this stuff just keeps on happening. I know that just me reviewing a movie about a mass shooting is political. I claim to be mad at people being political and the very nature of me addressing that people get political is, in fact, political. I am human and, thus, I am part of the problem. I'm really treading over some of the same ground that I get to in my article. Perhaps this one is a bit more cynical because I have the ability to breathe out when it is in blog form. It might be a coincidence that I just watched Jon Stewart talking to Congress about 9/11 victims, but that guy gets reading the room. The movie starts off with Stewart's clip from The Daily Show. He had nothing to joke about. It's kind of come full circle with him still having nothing to joke about. The world is a crummy place. Brian Ivie (there, I got back to the movie) and his team behind Emanuel don't really aim for this tone. They acknowledge that the world has become a crummy place full of mass violence, but the movie doesn't really have much political to say behind shootings. I didn't know you could talk about violence and not get political, but I think that Emanuel might be the movie that gets closest to that goal. We tend to forget victims. I always, in my cynical cynical heart, roll my eyes when I see people posting about not glorifying the killer but stressing the victims. The sentiment is gorgeous and I'm a terrible person for not taking it seriously. But I also know how the world works. The killer always gets the lion's share of attention and to expect anything different is foolish. But that's kind of why Emanuel makes sense as a documentary. This shooting took place in 2015. It's been a while, especially when it comes to documenting a mass shooting. The movie covers the events. I hate to say that sometimes I need a refresher when it comes to these kinds of things. But the movie keeps the stuff about Dylan Roof's background sandwiched in the middle. If you want people to tune out something weaker, stick it in the middle. There's something disturbed about me that I wanted to know more about him. The movie does a more than adequate job covering Roof's life. But the movie pivots the focus onto the victims of the shooting and, in particular, within the context of faith. One of the truly memorable things about the Emanuel AME shooting was that many of the parishioners immediately forgave Roof when they had the opportunity to confront him. This is the central theme of the film. I don't know if it is as out there as the movie really wants it to be. Considering that a lot of the film is focused on interviews with family members done in long cuts, the message of forgiveness is there, but it doesn't get the attention it deserves. Part of what is going on is that they have to work with the information they have. The movie really wants to push through a barrier and discuss the difficulties and truths about forgiveness. It reaches out to people who can't forgive Roof and his activities. The movie weaves in people from the Black Lives Matter movement, ones who can't really understand people's ability to forgive. There's a dialogue there that needs to happen. I really want that. I really want to go beyond the story about open forgiveness and look what it really means to forgive when it seems impossible. Getting those people into the same room would be a bit of a reality show when it comes to getting drama and I don't really want that. But Emanuel really gets there for the most part. It opens that door to discussion without really slam dunking it. The fact that many of the interviewees were people who forgave despite their pain is powerful. The fact that the movie didn't just say that forgiveness is as easy as making a choice is another. THese are people in real pain who needed to forgive Roof. To them, it was the right choice. But they also seemed like they needed to forgive him to purge something toxic out of their lives. I love it both from a religious and ethical perspective, but also from a therapeutic perspective as well. There's something almost too simple about Emanuel. I saw an early cut of the movie. I can't tell you if the one I saw was the final draft that hit theaters. The movie started off with a disclaimer saying that there might have been more to the film before it hit cinemas. I kind of hope that's true because the movie really drags and shows its flaws at times. Ivie does something pretty risky with the way that he presents his information. Rather than using interviews by just showing the data he needs, he presents these interviews in almost the long form. This does a couple of things. In terms of getting to know the real heartbreak of the interviewees, A Plus! It does the job. We get to know every single interviewee who lost someone and the personal relationship that they have. We get to almost get to know the victim because their love ones get the time to really express their feelings. That was a choice that Ivie made. But it also really slows the movie down. These moments almost feel like the entire film is a rough cut because we tend to have a camera focused on one person. Sometimes, it'll cut to a second camera. But there's almost no editing. From an emotional perspective, there's something to be said about that. But also, it doesn't really provide a patchwork. Instead, it's like eating an entire entree and then eating another whole entree. I wanted to find parallels in stories. I wanted to see how complex of a web this story left on its victims and on society. I wanted to find different elements. The stories are all sad and all need to be heard. But the final result was...sad. That's it. That's the depth. When we get out of the interview stage of the film, there's an odd sense of relief that something else would actually happen. As part of this, we also have these odd cutaways. People's interviews often didn't have much visual to play with. Instead, we got rather generic images that didn't really match the tone or mood of what the interviewee was saying. That's hard to do, but I also think that this is a byproduct of the long form interview. It does a job, but that job doesn't always work. Emanuel probably won't be seen by many. Maybe it will hit a Netflix or some other popular streaming service (by default...Hulu? Amazon Prime?) It's a really positive documentary despite the fact that it covers a bleak and morbid subject matter. Do I think it can be improved upon? Probably. Do I think it NEEDS to be improved upon? Not so much. The documentary does mostly what it sets out to do. Yeah, there's a discussion that needs to happen in relation to the ideas explored in this documentary. But that discussion may have pulled away from a documentary that really has laser sharp focus. They wanted to talk about victims' families and their relationship to faith and forgiveness. The movie does that. Go see it. PG-13, because Mr. Knife Hands is back. But I should probably mention that blue lady is naked through the entire movie. I didn't really notice this until X-Men: First Class, that full on addresses that. But there's some more violence. There's more making out and sexual encounters. The language is a bit heavy at times. Hey, a guy drinks while being seduced. Also, people are ripped apart by tiny balls of metal. It's grosser than you would think. PG-13.
DIRECTOR: Bryan Singer In 2003, I was convinced that there was never going to be a better superhero flick. This is something I really thought. Heck, X2 isn't even the best X-Men film. But all that being said, it is a movie that does exactly what a sequel needed to: it delivered on a lot of its promises and those teases that were dropped in the first film. Sure, Senator Robert Kelly is actually dead. Sure, the Chekhov's gun that was loaded in the first film was never really addressed. But if you wanted to know more about Wolverine's background without letting the cat out of the bag, this movie kind of pulls that off. The first billion times I watched these movies, I was always weirded out that these were all Wolverine and the X-Men films. Wolverine takes such a central role in all of these movies. But the more I think about it, Wolverine is always incidental. I know that this isn't an accident. Magneto actually says that Wolverine keeps making the same mistake thinking that the issue is always surrounding him. It wouldn't be until Days of Future Past that Wolverine actually gets a central role in these films. It is really bizarre storytelling. Wolverine's storyline, despite the fact that it might be the most compelling part of this movie, actually seems to be the B-plot. Finding out what Logan's past is seems to be something that the character always deals with. In some ways, the X-Men films kind of follow the Veronica Mars method of storytelling. The films in the X-Men series are episodic, so I will treat them as episodes of a TV show. For all intents and purposes, the A-plot is the plan that they have to foil. In the case of X2, the plot involves stopping Col. Stryker from murdering all of the mutants on the planet using Cerebro. Honestly, for a guy who gets criminally little screen time in these movies, Professor X should actually be the protagonist of the film. Breaking this story probably had a lot more focus on Charles Xavier. The reason that all of this is happening is because Xavier fails to help Jason control his powers. His failure also extends into ideology. Jason never really embraces Xavier's attitude of co-habitation. By training Jason to become a stronger telepath, he harms his mother and awakens his father to the dangers of mutants. Professor X also becomes the means to the end that Stryker wishes to achieve. But look how little screen time Professor X has. I'm just burying myself deeper in the nerd hole that I made myself, but Professor X has the same problem that Superman does in the first season of Justice League, and by proxy, in the Justice League movie. He is terribly overpowered, so he has to be taken out quickly. In the first film, Mystique poisons Cerebro, placing Professor X in a coma. As shown in the shot where Xavier is controlling Toad and Sabretooth, we know that he could potentially do that again. Honestly, everyone should be wearing Magneto helmets. But the second film has him kidnapped. Throughout these films, we're teased with how powerful Professor X is. X2 starts with Xavier using his power on a museum. We understand that this is almost child's play for him. He has these magnificent abilities, but we aren't often given the opportunity to see what would happen if Professor X tried taking care of the problem itself. Because of this glaring flaw, the movie instead centers on Wolverine. Wolverine is where the soap opera is at. His long narrative, despite being practically divorced from the main plot, takes a much greater importance in the grand scheme of things. This kind of forces suspension of disbelief to take over. Stryker has a realtionship with Logan. He magically holds all of the cards to Logan's memory and he is the big villain. Don't attack X2. This is a pretty common device. Logan goes to look for his past. Instead, his past finds him. It is a bit of a cop out that Professor Xavier doesn't really help Logan all that much. It isn't that Logan's trip to Alkalai Lake awoke Stryker into his plan. It's actually too much of a coincidence that all that happened. It gave us exposition that there's nothing on the surface of Alkalai Lake. Okay. Sure. But as much as I'm pointing out all of these flaws and cheats in the storytelling, that connection between Stryker and Logan actually makes the movie interesting. You put Hugh Jackman in a room with Brian Cox (hey, both "Stryker" and "Bryan Singer" misuse the letter I) and the movie gets really interesting. This kind of also leads into X2's biggest success. X-Men was about broad strokes. It was very clear that humanity hated mutants. Got it. But it also really felt like another world. Those people are crazy because they don't really act like us. They make effigies that say "Mister Mutant" on them. I don't often see effigies, possibly because I don't really participate in hate marches. But the conversations between Stryker and Logan also tie back to the smaller world building moments that are far more accusatory than X-Men's scenes ever were. Again, Wolverine is in these scenes because everyone loves Wolverine, but this scene isn't about him. Bobby Drake's return home is one of the emotional powerhouses of the movie. Logan and Jean are fine melodrama. But having Bobby Drake come out to his parents about mutanthood is fascinating. What I liked about the mutant allegory is that both sides come off as kind of making sense. Yes, I am supportive of the mutants. As disgusted as I am that Bobby's parents don't accept him after he freezes her coffee, it also makes a heck of a lot of sense without portraying it as nuts. The Drakes, immediately after they are told that their older son is a mutant, witness mutant violence involving Bobby's friends. But this scene is what the allegory is all about. The protests are interesting, sure. In this day in age, we see protests get bigger and bigger, so it makes sense. But the emotional connection, the stuff that really hurts, is when it is on this scale. All this is really just set up that I want the movie to actually be called Ronnie Drake is the Worst: X2. I invert the title because I really want to stress how much Ronnie Drake sucks. He's terrible. For years, I've had that joke under my belt and I've finally gotten an opportunity to type it. That's how long I hate Ronnie Drake and I don't know how he thought that whole thing would turn out. I mean, what did he think would happen? His best case scenario is that his brother goes to prison. That's it. That would rip the family apart. The John / Pyro thing is not something that is ever fleshed out. It is odd that every story really needed to involve Magneto. I'm so torn about this. I adore Ian McKellan as Magneto. His scene escaping from his plastic prison is inspired. But it's almost absurd that Magneto finds himself in the center of all of these stories. Building Pyro into this story seemed like it was going to go some place. Maybe the next movie shouldn't have been named X-Men: The LAST Stand. So much was rushed before the story actually had a chance to play out properly. Perhaps we can blame Brett Ratner. Brett Ratner is easy to blame for lots of things. But the takeaway from X2 is that we get Catholic superhero Nightcrawler. I know, he's played by Alan Cumming. It's an odd choice, especially in consideration of the many other roles that he has played. From an action movie standpoint, Nightcrawler might be one of the coolest characters ever. The opening sequence with Nightcrawler in the White House sold the movie to me. I remember that I was riding on air after how cool that sequence looked. No one could have told me that the movie wasn't any good after that scene because it was just that cool. But from a Catholic perspective, I may have cooled on it a bit. I know, it's 2003. It's not exactly the best time to make movies. In retrospect, we had a lot of oversimplified storytelling in this era. Back in the day, I was so glad that they even acknowledged Nightcrawler's Catholic background. But X2 Nightcrawler is a bit of a lunatic when it comes to his Catholicism. I love his thoughts on faith. I love that he prays when he is upset. I also like that he views his mutation as his cross to bear. It's the CARVING INTO HIS OWN FLESH that makes him a crazy person. I'm not going to throw the character completely under the bus. I think that a lot of these choices came from the concept that Nightcrawler would look really rad with all those angelic glyphs all over him. I agree. He looks super cool. I also don't think that everyone thought he was a nutbar for doing that. But it reads a little bit like The DaVinci Code version of Catholicism when one of our heroes rips into his own flesh to atone for his sins. I wonder why Nightcrawler didn't show up for a lot of the franchise after this. I think I remember that Days of Future Past reboots him a bit. I think that X-Men suffers from stars not getting enough attention. I know that Halle Berry infamous hates how little attention Storm gets. I imagine that Alan Cumming hated getting in absolutely insane makeup. But his character is so interesting that ending his story here is kind of a waste. There's so much left ot his character to explore. I want to see the Nightcrawler / Wolverine relationship. From this perspective, the two never really get along. Whatever happened to all of the "Elf" stuff? It's kind of a waste because the character is so cool. Maybe there was no story there. Maybe the Brett Ratner stuff put a kibosh to a lot of the ideas that might have been in the pipeline. Regardless, it's a shame to see this stuff not really come to fruition. Why does Jean get out of the plane? Like, I get it. It is emotionally satisfying. But she puts this force field up around herself for a long time. I'm pretty sure that the plane would like a force field as well. I get it. The death of Jean Grey and the tease of the Phoenix is really memorable. It ends the movie in a spectacular way. But it also...doesn't make sense? It's when a character offers to sacrifice themselves when there are far greater options presented. This one is one of of those. I know, we're supposed to shut off our brains. But Jean really could just lift the X-Jet. If she can move all that water, why not...not move the water and just focus on moving the X-Jet? Okay, dramatic intensity. I get it. It seemed like I grip a lot about X2. It really is a good movie. Yeah, the end of the movie runs a little long and I have no idea who Lady Deathstrike is based on this film. But X2 is one of the best superhero sequels of all time. It takes what was set up in the first one and expands on it in a direction that is fascinating and fun. The Wolverine stuff is just the right amount. Stryker and Jason make great bad guys. There's some real builds with the world that move it into the right direction. I adore this movie; perhaps not as much as I used to. But it is still a really solid X-Men movie. |
Film is great. It can challenge us. It can entertain us. It can puzzle us. It can awaken us.
AuthorMr. H has watched an upsetting amount of movies. They bring him a level of joy that few things have achieved. Archives
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