X-Men: The Last Stand (spoilers)

[kate_nepveu]

I know, I know, you're all waiting for more Lord of the Rings, but we saw X-Men: The Last Stand this afternoon and I might as well talk briefly about that while it's fresh.

Short version: starts out better than I expected, but the more I think about it, the less I like it.

There are a great many structural things wrong with this movie, almost all of which could have been fixed if it had been not one movie but two. The cure and Angel would fill one movie very nicely, and Phoenix another. The latter gets ridiculously short shrift here: she kills Scott and the Professor, and then . . . stands around a lot, until she flips out at the end and gets killed. (I have the vague impression that there is a great deal of controversy over the feminist implications of Phoenix in the comic; in the movie, it seems to me it's one of those fake-feminist things, create a very powerful woman—who is ruled by emotion only, is used by others, and then is stopped by a heroic man penetrating her [*]. Whee!)

[*] In a scene straight out of a bad romance novel cover. Seriously, didn't anyone else think that? The guy's naked chest, the swoon backwards, the flowing dress . . .

As that suggests, the thing that would not have been fixed by making it two movies is Jean's death. I admit that the pyrotechnics were effective enough at clouding my brain that it wasn't until I was walking the dog after the movie that I thought, "Wait, are you expecting me to believe that the four shots of the cure that they used on Magneto were the only whole ones left lying around?"

Once started on this train of thought, of course, one can construct entirely plausible ways of stopping Phoenix without killing Jean (that, say, involved teamwork, as they'd made a point of not five minutes earlier?). Or of making her death meaningful and interesting rather than passive. But alas, that's not the movie we got.

Also, the Professor's exposition about the Phoenix was muddled and incomprehesible even for this genre, which is saying something. Seriously, did anyone (who's not familiar with the comic) understand that?

Other random things:

• In the comics, when did the Professor lose the use of his legs? Did it have to do with his falling-out with Magneto?

  Dear Hollywood: I would love a prequel that's about the two of them and that backstory. If and only if Bryan Singer would come back. Very truly yours,

• The whole Angel thing was practically a cameo rather than a reasonable subplot—granted it would have been a little "what, another father-son issue?", but still. And did he stow away on the jet, or did he actually fly from Weschester County to San Francisco? (Chad: "he took a commercial flight.")
• Dear Magneto, you couldn't find, say, several big pieces of sheet metal to float your mutant army across? I gotta think that would have been a lot less work. Love and kisses,
• So, did Leech cure himself? That was him at the end hugging Storm, wasn't it? If not, if his power still exists, then what's to stop fanatics from kidnapping him and getting the cure going again? (The eventual knowledge that the cure isn't permanent, as the last scene before the credits suggests?)
• I did like, in the not-very-subtext area, that the new henchpeople that Magneto picks up in the church are all non-white, and that one (the one with the shock waves) appeared to be transgendered (I could be wrong, but that was my distinct impression).

  [Edit: apparently I am wrong. See comments.]

I'm not sorry I saw it, but I am sorry that it wasted two perfectly good storylines to the benefit of neither.

Also, the trailers were dire. We got the Superman Returns trailer, which was almost as incomprehensible as the exposition in the movie that followed; The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, a.k.a. another "white American goes to Asia, kicks all the Asian people's butts in competition, and screws their women too" movie; Ghost Rider, in which yet another actor takes a role that doesn't show his face (a flaming skeleton on a motorbike? Seriously?); My Super Ex-Girlfriend, which packed an amazing amount of offense to feminist sensibilities into a very short time; and The Omen remake, to which I can only say, "Why?"

And now, I will go read the Le Guin essay on Tolkien's pacing that rushthatspeaks recommended.

Comments

[kate_nepveu]

I don't have the know-how to distinguish between directorial and script failures, but I was tentatively pinning blame on the script for even _trying_ to do both plots at once. Though the running time was pretty short, and I suppose another half-hour or so might've done justice to at least one of the two plots. Maybe.

What would you articulate as the difference between a superhero movie and an action movie?

[leighdb.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm not saying the un-Ratnered script was Pulitzer Prize material, either. If the script had truly been stellar even Joel Fucking Schumacher probably wouldn't have fucked it up too badly.

No, I think in this case it was merely mediocre-to-decent writing, which can often be fixed if you've got a good director (and which is what I think Bryan Singer did with the first X-Men movie). Unfortunately, they lost Singer and got Ratner, who in my opinion makes Michael Bay look like Steven goddamn Spielberg.

And yeah, they did try to put too much in there. A good director would have made them cut that shit out. You have to understand, the reason I always hesitate to blame the writers before the director is because in the film world, writers are scum, and the director reigns supreme. (This is the polar opposite of how it works in television, BTW. Somewhere there's an article where Joss Whedon talks about his horrendous experiences as a film writer (coincidentally including the first X-Men) and the relative bliss of working in television. But I digress.)

What would you articulate as the difference between a superhero movie and an action movie?

...The best way to explain it, I guess, is to consider what the movie is for. Action movies are for, well, action. You go to see them for thrills and excitement; for chase scenes and death-defyment and, of course, Shit Blowing Up. The plot of an action movie, while hopefully a good plausible one, is only there to give the action an excuse to happen. Rush Hour (the movie that put Ratner on the map) is a perfect example of this.

Superhero movies are different in that they contain most or all of these action things, but the action things are not what the movie is for. The action things are supposed to be in service to the characters and their story, not the other way around. It's supposed to be... ABOUT superheroes, about who they are and why they are, and why they're, well, heroes.

And... I dunno, superheroes are supposed to save people. When in X3 did you see any of the X-Men actually save anyone, except at the very end (and then badly?) What is it about them in this movie that would make me, the hypothetical Ordinary Citizen, glad they're around?

The ONLY genuinely superhero-y moment that happened in X3, in my opinion, was the showdown during the final battle scene between Iceman and Pyro, and Bobby does the whole covering-himself-in-ice thing for the first time and smacks Pyro down. That, to me, was really cool (no pun intended), because the FX and the fight itself were secondary to what the whole scene meant, which was Bobby coming into his own, both with his powers and with his identity as a Good Guy. THAT'S what this shit is supposed to be about.

[kate_nepveu]

Huh. Interesting stuff; this is probably why I'm not that interested in the Superman movie, because I've never really found Superman that interesting as a character.

Thanks.

[leighdb.livejournal.com]

this is probably why I'm not that interested in the Superman movie, because I've never really found Superman that interesting as a character.

I have to admit, he's not one of my favorites either. It's really hard to make someone who's such a near-omnipotent Boy Scout interesting. And yet, I'm still wildly curious to see the new film... Maybe it's because I'm hoping against hope that if Bryan Singer had to ruin one superhero franchise for us (by leaving it), then maybe we'll at least get another good one out of it.

My favorite superhero character is, of course, Spider-Man. And was even before the movies came along, which is probably why I was so deliriously happy over them (especially the second one) - it was probably more relief than anything else, that they hadn't fucked it up.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

My personal feeling about Superman is that the interesting stories to tell about him tend to be in contrast to something, be that the Morrison run on JLA's "OMG I've grown up in a world that has Superman and Batman in it and now I'm sharing an office with them" attitude, or the Infinite Crisis-associated "1930s Superman thinks current version is a pathetic failure, current version thinks 1930s version is a tyrant who sees everything in overly simplistic black and white" story, or a number of excellent Superman-Batman stories. The reason I am so strongly attached to Red Son and use this icon so much is that for two and a half of the three issues it was a solid and convincing examination of what it would mean for someone with superhuman powers, integrity, intelligence and compassion to be brought up as Stalin's heir, and to genuinely believe in Communist ideals and be able to implement them. [ The second half of the last issue wimps out on this, but like everything else that has or will happen in the DC Universe ever, this can now be blamed on Superboy Prime punching the timeline. ]