Tweetnopsis: #XMen1stClass: Failed to impress with its revisionism, but I can’t help but admire Nick Hoult’s ability to claw his way back from obscurity.
This is without doubt Matthew Vaughn’s worst film, but I’m willing to give him a pass because this is probably most most sutdio interference he’s had to cope with on a film. Between the Fox people and the Marvel people and Lauren Schuler Donner and Bryan Singer, it would have been the first time he’d really been under someone’s thumb to make a film.
Cameo? More like “Can’t-eo”!
Despite some great cameos, some of which were definitely applause worthy, there was a gaping hole in this film where Stanley Leiber should have been. It’s a fact that he hasn’t been in every single Marvel adaptation, if they’re trying for authenticity and crowd pleasing you have to give homage to Marvel’s chairman emeritus. Excelsior!
The Temple of James McAvoy
There hasn’t been a single performance of McAvoy’s that I haven’t enjoyed, and that includes Gnomeo & Juliet. It was his presence in this film, alongside Fassbender and under the direction of my hero Matthew Vaughn, that guaranteed my presence in the theatre, but his reliance on his fingers at his temple to illustrate the use of his powers seemed like a crutch beneath the likes of such an accomplished actor. I don’t even think the actor portraying the youngest version of himself used it to herald a “telepathic moment”. Truth be told, I also felt that his portrayal of Xavier seemed far too naive for character supposedly so brilliant. You’d have thought that the only role he
played in founding the school was that he owned the property and his only contribution to Cerebro was that he attached it to his head. His idealistic naiveté is should be vindicated somehow rather than being shunned on all sides by the loss of his friend and allies in the state department.
In their own world
I remember when I was a kid I used wonder why it was that Spider-Man never hung out with The Flash or why the Hulk never arm wrestled with Superman. The business-y response of how the heroes couldn’t be neighbors because they were owned by different companies was a lame enough concept to figure out as a kid, not to mention coming face to face with the commerce of imagination – two entities I thought were mutually exclusive up until then. Now I’m seeing it all over again in the movies with Marvel a house divided against itself with different movie studios owning different properties where never the twain shall meet so long as they keep making new movies every 2 years. Not that I’ve been a huge fan of how Marvel’s handled it’s intertextuality lately in terms of the lead-up to The Avengers, but I am fond of the idea that there’s a possibility of Tony Stark having a biscotti with the God of Thunder. Sadly, there’s no chance of that happening between Spider-Man and Wolverine though.
Smallville syndrome
Wasn’t anybody listening to what Doc Brown said about going back in time and doing irreparable harm to the timeline? Smallville did enough of a number on the origins of Superman for me to cringe at the thought of what any other super-heroic revisionism might do to another dynasty. You wanna change the way their costumes look? Fine. You wanna turn Angel from the winged billionaire we barely got to see in X-Men 3 (well done, Ben Foster BTW) into a skanky version of Wasp? I dont think so! You wanna change Moira McTaggert from gifted Scottish researcher into an American CIA agent? Well, that I’m alright with – other than the fact that she already appeared in X-Men 3 as well. All of this retconning will eventually cause the mythology to collapse in on itself, although I’m sure they feel that they can muck about with it as much as they want until they decide to reboot it. Look, if you’re going to tell a story about a bunch of kids with superheroes and not make proper use of the X-Men property, well, you might as well make Misfits. Seriously, are we so bereft of ideas now that we have to jumble up old ones to make them seem new again?
A little light on details
Yeah, that’s right. I might not have had the greatest time, but I could have stood for it to have lasted a little longer. There were so many characters, and each of them had their own story to tell, but I’d say only about 70% of them got told. If you afforded everyone another 2-3 minutes to each of them just to reveal a little of what they were all about, it would have enriched the story and might have gone a long way to connecting together scenes that seemed disjointed and even out of context. I mean, I couldn’t see myself wanting to buy one of their action figures if I didn’t know anything about them. Did the guy with the whirlwinds even have a name? Was he a mute?
“Did the guy with the whirlwinds even have a name? Was he a mute?” See, now I thought they handled the screen time pretty well. Do we even care about the whirlwind guy? What purpose would there be to give him additional screen time (in an already 2h 10m movie)?
Clearly, I don’t have the same kinds of issues with this flick that you did because I have never read a single issue of X-Men. Though leaving out Stan the Man is a pretty horrific offense…
Clearly you do not. For the uninitiated, I figure this film would be a much different experience, as you wouldn’t be tuned into what’s been omitted or changed. As far as I’m concerned, the founding of Xavier’s school is very well explored in the mythology. No Jean Grey? No way! Alex Summers without Scott Summers? Come on! These are all little blasphemies that took me out of enjoying the movie for it’s own sake.
However, if they’d given up just another 10 to 20 minutes, perhaps some of the changes and adjustments might have been explained away. Perhaps. As for Mr. Twister or whatever his stupid name was, why couldn’t they get an actual established bad guy from the comics? Like Avalanche or something?
I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. I’d even rank it #2 out of the 4 X-Men films. I thought the story had some substance to it unlike a lot of action type movies. The main focus was Magneto and Xavier and how they became enemies with the formation of the X-Men, Mistique and Beast as the main secondary storylines. All the other character were mostly support roles. I kind of figured the others were throw-ins based on how they were mostly introduced and featured through time-advancing montages. If you throw in any more main characters it would have become a convoluted mess. Save them for future sequels. This was the Magneto/Xavier origin.
Maybe I liked this more because I’m not an X-Men purist. My introduction to X-Men was the 90s cartoon on Fox and I never followed the comics very closely. And based on that, one of the few continuity things I wondered while watching was, “Isn’t Banshee a bad guy?”… I’ve been aware of Emma Frost’s name over the years, but never actually knew who the hell she was.
I liked how they were able to explain how 40+ years later Mistique and Beast still end up looking like they’re thirty-something. I enjoyed the couple cameos.
I thought I had just missed the Stan Lee cameo, but knowing now he wasn’t even in it is disappointing. I was more disappointed that there wasn’t a cut scene after the credits. There were quite a few people who stayed through the credits only to be shocked there was nothing at the end.
I will give you that James McAvoy’s Xavier was a bit odd. It’s difficult to picture a younger “Patrick Stewart” behaving like that. When Xavier says at the end “I can’t feel m lets” all I could think about was that guy in ‘Can’t Hardly Wait’ screaming that out drunk at the house party.
And I’m happy to take the 70% of story told in this movie than the 5% that was crammed together in Sucker Punch.
All good points, Leeroy! Especially about Sucker Punch – ouch!
I’m not saying they needed more people, they just needed the right people and enough time to properly outline each of them. When I think about it, I didn’t need the whirlwind guy to talk – if he wasn’t gonna talk, why the heck was he there in the first place?
I wasn’t watching it as a Magneto prequel, even though I suppose I should have been. They’ve been threatening to do a movie about that unto itself. They handled him well, although I didn’t like the shot for shot reconstruction of the concentration camp scene off the top. They should have tried to improve on the original (although I likely would have complained about that too).
When measured up against Stardust, Layer Cake and Kick-Ass, this is the weakest of Vaughn’s efforts for sure – but since I see other people’s styles at work here, I can’t put that all on him.
Really? #2? Better than 1 & 2?
“although I didn’t like the shot for shot reconstruction of the concentration camp scene off the top. They should have tried to improve on the original (although I likely would have complained about that too).”
Haha – I was thinking the same thing…on both counts. They just can’t please us sometimes! But hey, at least it was only a minute or two.
It didn’t occur to me until later that the only reason they didn’t use the exact same sequence was because they couldn’t swap out the actors. Wonder if Bryan Singer was B-unit director for that scene or if he just noted Vaughn to death about it.