The X-Men movies, the Marvel/FOX movie franchise that splits people right down the middle, some people think Hugh Jackman brings much needed humanity to Wolverine, some people think this weakens the character, some people think Origins is the worst film, others think Last Stand is, some people love Bryan Singer’s work, some hate his work. In this article I’m going to be giving my own personal views on all five movies that have come out including how I think some could have been improved, plus my expectations for the next two movies.
I think I’ll begin by stating my views on the quality of the movies themselves, (from best to worst)
1) X2
2) X-Men
3) X-Men: First Class
4) X-Men: The Last Stand
5) X-Men Origins: Wolverine
In my mind X2 is a near perfect X-Men film, it improves on the first one, it gives us what we want to see (ie Wolverine’s origin), more depth is given to the characters and we’re given new characters that move the story forward without making us wonder why they are there in the first place. The fight scene between Wolverine and Lady Deathstrike is in my top five greatest fight scenes.
The villain isn’t just a rehash of the first movie, but he’s just as complex and interesting as Magneto and played by the brilliant Brain Cox. Cox plays these villain almost as a loving stepfather who is just trying to make his favourite boy Wolverine join the football team and gets annoyed when he fails, and I love it. The look into Wolverine’s past gives us just enough information while still being fairly mysterious, it also creates a hellish depiction of the room where Wolverine was experimented on which just makes for a gorgeous set. Nightcrawler is just amazing, giving us one of the best opening set pieces I’ve ever seen in an action movie, the choreography, editing, pace is just perfect.
Then we look at how the movie ends. *SPOILER* Over the course of the movie Wolverine has confessed his love for Jean and been rejected in favour of Jean’s current boyfriend Scott, Wolverine has also been confronted with his past and chosen not move on, leaving behind who he was and who Stryker intended him to be and set off to become a new man with his new family, and finally Jean dies saving the rest of the team, leaving both Scott and Wolverine mourning her equally, and in the very last frames of the movie we are given a hint of the Phoenix saga. Interesting points to be picked up on you would think… well I’ll talk about X3 soon.
So yes I love X2, as for the other movies, well I love Bryan Singer’s way of telling these stories, it’s about victims and personal struggles and relationships. He moves the story along at just the right pace to allow time to add not just the big action set pieces but also the quieter moments, either soft like Wolverine and Rouge’s conversation on the train or funny like Wolverine proving he’s not Mystique in disguise by calling Cyclops a dick.
The characters in this movie are good but clearly not as well thought out as in X2, mainly because Singer had to concentrate on introducing these people and didn’t have the time to develop them fully. But none the less all the characters are likeable, I know a lot of people don’t like Hally Berry’s Storm but personally I have no problem with her at all, her calm delivery which people sometimes call wooden I feel gives her a great air of leadership and control. The character I always liked was Cyclops and I always felt he was underused by Singer, he’s meant to be the great leader and Singer portrays him more as a boy scout who the audience laugh at whenever Wolverine makes a joke at his expense. I really wanted to see the scene of him truly taking command and giving Wolverine orders, but he was always sidelined to make room for more scenes with the much cooler Wolverine. I’ll talk more about him when I get to X3.
It’s clear to see that Singer had a clear vision of what these movies should be, and considering what comic book movies had become at the time it’s fair to say it was pretty extraordinary what he achieved despite a rather small budget.
I’m not the biggest fan of First Class mainly because I don’t think it’s anywhere near as tightly paced and envisioned as Singer’s movie. The film moves at 200 miles and hour trying to fit in its witty moments and complex story, introducing Magneto’s origin, a new villain team, the forming of the XMen themselves, Mystique’s confusing and pretty strange origins, the Cold War.
The film works best when focused on the relationship between Charles and Eric, in those scenes I love the film, the Magneto Nazi hunter scenes, the games of chess, exploring Eric’s damaged mind, all fantastic. But when we start getting into the other characters, origins of characters who don’t really need any more backstory like Beast and Mystique, the new team members who we’re never going to see again and are not practically interesting.
The cast is in my mind a little hit and miss, James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender both nail their roles, making both characters so much more interesting and making us truly care about what happens to them, especially Fassbender as Eric whose calm presence and likeable personality only adds to the dread of seeing him finally turn away from his friend, and when he talks about his point of view, it’s tricky not to agree with him in some way. Kevin Bacon is fun but not an overly memorable villain with an rather strange power and a oddly disappearing German accent. The supporting cast are just okay, Jennifer Lawerence is great, Nicolas Hoult is good but I feel he’s miscast, Beast should be a beast and gentle on the inside, as for the rest of the cast, I’m not really surprised we’re not seeing them again in Days of Future Past, they’re not bad, they’re just not that interesting or engaging.
The movie feels like it’s going at 100mph but it still has too much going and ends up having to fit in montages and rushes it’s ending with some rather odd moral choices and dodgy special effects. Not my favourite but there’s a lot to like about it.
And then we get to the shit fest of the XMen movies,beginning with XMen. The Last Stand, quite possibly one of the biggest let downs in movie franchise history. After the brilliant, complex, detailed, layered, emotional X2, we get a lazy, dumb, bland, uninspired mess given to us by one of the most unlikeable directors in Hollywood (and that’s saying something) Brett Ratner.After everything that Singer had worked so hard to develop, characters, relationships, politics that made (mostly) logical sense, Ratner comes in and completely changes the relationship between Rouge and Iceman for no reason other than to write in the character of Shadowcat who serves nothing for the plot, she comes in, her and Iceman have a scene together, Iceman and Rouge break up, they join the final battle together and then Iceman and Rouge are back together by the end. Mystique loses her powers and Magneto leaves her behind, I don’t believe for a second that he would do that to this character who he clearly cares about who just saved him.
Another point, when you’re going to kill off a popular character it’s a tricky thing to do without getting the internet despising you forever, Joss Whedon likes to give his characters either a heroic final moment or a tragic silent passing, either way the death of each of his characters effects the rest of the characters and the story itself. Brett Ratner kills two major characters in this film and each death is handled in the worst way possible, Scott’s death is sudden, unspectacular and no one seems to care, Professor X does a little better getting something of a heroic scene but ultimately fails in his task, his final words are ignored by Phoenix making his sacrifice worthless. The Phoenix itself is also terribly mishandled, she’s meant to be all powerful and can destroy anything in her way, she could destroy entire cities if she wanted, in this movie she destroys a suburban house and a small Island, huh. I don’t think we need to say anything about how pointless Angel is in the movie, why does he wear the suit in the poster if he never wears it in the film?! Oh yeh, remember that Colossus was in this movie, I keep forgetting, did he even get a line?I won’t comment on Juggernaut because, what is there to say that hasn’t been said, he’s just crap.
Ratner completely misses the point of what could have made this story interesting, the relationship between Scott, Wolverine and Jean, Scott doesn’t know that Wolverine really does love Jean, and that final scene when Wolverine is forced to kill her would have been so much more interesting if Scott was forced to accept Jean was gone and allow Wolverine to end the fight.
The other thing that would have made this a more unique and interesting movie would be if Wolverine was not the main character, as much as I love and enjoy Wolverine he’s been the poster boy for four of the five movies that have come out, he has another solo film and will lead Days of Future Past, a break from him would have been good. I would have like to have seen Wolverine treated in a similar way to how Joss Whedon handled the Hulk in Avengers, giving him only two scenes but building them up and making them the best two scenes in the movie. Scott is the one put in the real interesting position at the beginning of the film, trying to carry on and be a rolemodel to the students despite the fact he’s lost his true love, Ratner clearly didn’t like the character and makes him a whiney brat who does nothing but be a dick and then die.
Even the final climax is a disappointment, Ratner is given a massive budget, gives Magneto an army of mutants who the XMen must fight off, and he still mucks it up, I think we saw maybe four powers used by Magneto’s army of about one hundred mutants, whats the point in having lots of mutants if not of them seem to have any powers, watching our heroes just punch these guys one after another gets very boring very quickly.
I will say there are a few things I like about this movie however, Kelsey Grammer as Beast is just perfect, 100% perfect, although how he’s managed to get a job in the White House could have done with a little more of an explanation. Seeing Iceman turning into ice while fight Pyro was pretty cool, the special effects are great, erm, Wolverine still looks cool. No I’m done those are my only good points.
Well after that rant you might think there couldn’t be a movie I think is worse, but let’s face it, there is nothing what so ever right about XMen Origins. Wolverine. Nothing is done right, nothing is done well, no character is interesting, all the characters are idiots, the fight scenes are disappointing, the drama is lame, the comedy is embarrassing, the plot is rushed, the side characters are pointless. This movie very nearly killed the Xmen movies for good, the only reason it didn’t is because we can pretend we’re Wolverine and forget all about it.
Let’s start with the story, I’ll sum up, Wolverine joins a team of assassins, lead by a now American William Stryker, but leaves because being an assassin means killing, he falls in love with a girl but his brother Victor kills her, he teams up with Styker to go after him and Stryker gives him his Adamantium skeleton, he waits until Wolverine is indestructible and decides to kill him, Wolverine escapes and meets up with other characters, fights them, wins, rinse and repeat until he finds Stryker and Victor, turns out his girlfriend is alive and was part of a plan and only pretended to love Wolverine, but she really does love him and Wolverine believes her despite she could very easily be lying again, Wolverine kills a hate fuelling depiction of Deadpool and is shot in the head by Stryker and loses his memory. Oh and his girlfriend dies again. This plot is lazy, dumb, lacking in any kind of focus and all around shite.
My issues with this movie, Wolverine is not interesting, this was our chance to see another side of Wolverine, the man with a memory, with relationships, instead we get the exact same character we’ve seen in the other movies, but slightly dumber.
Stryker is played as a villain, I’m going to come back to this but in X2 Stryker was the bad guy but you understood where he was coming from, Brain Cox played it brilliantly and there did seem to be a genuine care and interest in Wolverine, maybe more about him being a weapon but he really did want him on his side, in this movie Stryker stabs a guy with a sword, evil for the sake of evil is not interesting.
The filler, halfway through the film Wolverine gets his proper claws and is on his own for a good chunk of the movie, so he goes to a new mutant we met earlier, engages in a boring fight, wins, learns he needs to talk to another mutant, fights him, wins, learns where Stryker is, this is boring. At least when he fights Victor there is drama and passion behind it, when he fights the Blob you’re just waiting for the fight to be over so we can get back to the story.
Deadpool… What the hell… Ryan Reynolds was great, easily the best part of the film, but when Deadpool reappears in the finale it is just insulting, fans have waited to see the Merc with a Mouth for so long, so why shut the mouth?! Why does he shoot lasers from his eyes? Why can he teleport? Why would he have swords put into his arms, what was wrong with carrying them?
Now I’m going to talk about how I think this movie could have been better, These are just a few ideas I had which I think would have made for a more structured and interesting movie.
My first changes would go to Stryker, it does bother me that he’s gone from British Brain Cox to American Danny Huston, who really plays this as a one dimensional bad guy general, he’s a great actor but clearly he just didn’t care here. So I’m going to recast the role, I would have liked to have seen John Simm as Stryker, you may know Simm from Doctor Who where he played the Master, the reason I choose him is not only because he’s British, but he would add a similar charm with underlying rage which worked so well in X2. This relationship between Logan and Stryker is interesting, a father figure to a lost soul like Wolverine. I would have liked to see Stryker given a real arc, at the start of the film he could honestly want to help Wolverine and mutants and over the course of the film meets more and more powerful mutants which scare him, one of the mutants swears he’ll kill Stryker (Sabretooth?) and Stryker forces Wolverine into the WeaponX programme which damages Logan’s brain erasing his memory, Wolverine escapes and in his berserker rage beats up Stryker. This creates Stryker’s hatred for all mutants.