Monday, May 29, 2006
X-Men III: What They Left Out
X-Men III may be a confusing film, but it's not half as complex as all the storylines, relationships, and subtexts that filled the monthly issues of The Uncanny X-Men and other spin-off series for decades. For the many non-comic geeks who found the film bewildering, a little knowledge of the four-color series may help clarify some of X3's head-scratching moments (though I still don't know why it was subtitled "The Last Stand). [Warning: Spoilers galore]
--Regarding that big robot in the beginning: The Sentinels are a group of enormous robots created by Bolivar Trask (played by Bill Duke in the movie) and programmed to round up all mutants. In the "Days of Future Past" storyline which introduced an alternate future, the Sentinels take over the U.S., kill all of Kitty Pride's and Colossus' children, and generally behave awfully. Note: In the future, Kitty ends up with Colossus. Sorry, Iceman.
--Why all the blue mutants? In the case of Mystique and Nightcrawler, she is his mother. Maybe Hank McCoy is in the family as well.
--As for the "death" of Cyclops: My theory is that, just before Jean gets a chance to disintegrate him, Scott is abducted by aliens led by none other than his own dad, the interstellar hero Corsair. Yes, Summers senior was made part of an alien slave gang while his sons (Cyclops and Havok) were still young, but he led a successful rebellion and rejoined the X-Men continuity as the head of the Starjammers.
--Incidentally, as we all know from X-Factor #1, Jean Grey is still at the bottom of that lake. The woman who emerged--Phoenix--is in fact a clone. The real Jean, nicer and less powerful, eventually emerges from the lake decades after her doppelganger and restarts her strange, troubled romance with Scott. According to the "Days of Future Past" storyline, Jean and Scott eventually have a superpowered daughter, Rachel Summers, who travels back in time and joins the X-Men as... Phoenix. This is after the "Dark Phoenix" storyline.
--Which one of the hot scientists is Xavier's girlfriend? Moira MacTaggart (played in the film by Olivia Williams)? Kavita Rao (Shohreh Aghdashloo)? In fact, while Charles sired several little mutants with various wives and lovers in his younger days, he found a real soulmate in an alien princess, Lilandra.
--Is Charles dead? I vaguely remember Xavier getting killed then reassembled/reincarnated/reborn/cloned several times, along with the rest of the X-Men characters. He's fine.
--The Juggernaut is not really a mutant. Cain Marko is Charles Xavier's abusive stepbrother, who gained his powers from a gem found in the Asian temple of Cyttorak. The Juggernaut is also extremely foul-mouthed.
--About the tattoo on Magneto's arm: In the comics, as in the movies, Magneto is a survivor of the Holocaust. However, while he seems to have a Jewish background, his wife was a Gypsy and occasionally Magneto himself was identified as a Gypsy. Magneto would later express his distaste for National Socialism by kidnapping and torturing Captain America's fascist nemesis the Red Skull.
Hope this clarifies everything--let me know if you have any more questions, X-fans.
X-Men III may be a confusing film, but it's not half as complex as all the storylines, relationships, and subtexts that filled the monthly issues of The Uncanny X-Men and other spin-off series for decades. For the many non-comic geeks who found the film bewildering, a little knowledge of the four-color series may help clarify some of X3's head-scratching moments (though I still don't know why it was subtitled "The Last Stand). [Warning: Spoilers galore]
--Regarding that big robot in the beginning: The Sentinels are a group of enormous robots created by Bolivar Trask (played by Bill Duke in the movie) and programmed to round up all mutants. In the "Days of Future Past" storyline which introduced an alternate future, the Sentinels take over the U.S., kill all of Kitty Pride's and Colossus' children, and generally behave awfully. Note: In the future, Kitty ends up with Colossus. Sorry, Iceman.
--Why all the blue mutants? In the case of Mystique and Nightcrawler, she is his mother. Maybe Hank McCoy is in the family as well.
--As for the "death" of Cyclops: My theory is that, just before Jean gets a chance to disintegrate him, Scott is abducted by aliens led by none other than his own dad, the interstellar hero Corsair. Yes, Summers senior was made part of an alien slave gang while his sons (Cyclops and Havok) were still young, but he led a successful rebellion and rejoined the X-Men continuity as the head of the Starjammers.
--Incidentally, as we all know from X-Factor #1, Jean Grey is still at the bottom of that lake. The woman who emerged--Phoenix--is in fact a clone. The real Jean, nicer and less powerful, eventually emerges from the lake decades after her doppelganger and restarts her strange, troubled romance with Scott. According to the "Days of Future Past" storyline, Jean and Scott eventually have a superpowered daughter, Rachel Summers, who travels back in time and joins the X-Men as... Phoenix. This is after the "Dark Phoenix" storyline.
--Which one of the hot scientists is Xavier's girlfriend? Moira MacTaggart (played in the film by Olivia Williams)? Kavita Rao (Shohreh Aghdashloo)? In fact, while Charles sired several little mutants with various wives and lovers in his younger days, he found a real soulmate in an alien princess, Lilandra.
--Is Charles dead? I vaguely remember Xavier getting killed then reassembled/reincarnated/reborn/cloned several times, along with the rest of the X-Men characters. He's fine.
--The Juggernaut is not really a mutant. Cain Marko is Charles Xavier's abusive stepbrother, who gained his powers from a gem found in the Asian temple of Cyttorak. The Juggernaut is also extremely foul-mouthed.
--About the tattoo on Magneto's arm: In the comics, as in the movies, Magneto is a survivor of the Holocaust. However, while he seems to have a Jewish background, his wife was a Gypsy and occasionally Magneto himself was identified as a Gypsy. Magneto would later express his distaste for National Socialism by kidnapping and torturing Captain America's fascist nemesis the Red Skull.
Hope this clarifies everything--let me know if you have any more questions, X-fans.
# posted by toner_low @ 10:25 PM 
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I thought it was okay; there's a LOT of stuff that makes no sense whatsoever--why does Magneto hijack a bridge when he could have just levitated a ferry? Why does Jean do nothing at the initial part of the Alcatraz invasion? Why does anyone need Leech, especially if Worthington Labs has the recipe for a drug with his powers? Why does Jean, who can do anything, beg Logan to kill her, when she can easily do it herself--which she does, in the comic. There are plenty of cliches ("No,dad--it's what YOU want."), and screenwriter-keeps-things-moving bits (hijacking the prison truck so Pyro can helpfully run down the list of colorful new members of Magneto's Brotherhood). X2 did a stellar job of easing up on the comic book spectacle to spend time with the characters, and there seemed to be less of that here, partly because there were so many damn characters, with new ones constantly being thrown onto the heap. Yet, I had heard so many bad things in advance that I was expecting a train wreck, and the movie wasn't all that bad. It's shocking the way they winnow away key characters, pretty good acting all around, even from Halle Berry (and definitely from Stewart and McKellen), exciting action, comforting message of tolerance, likeable teen romance, really good special effects--I enjoyed the eerie way Jean's powers always seem to cause nearby water to flow upwards. So it wasn't a Daredevil-like mess, but it wasn't a Spider-Man II either--somewhere around the Fantastic Four level.
hector--you liked "fantastic 4"? i didn't see it. i stayed away in droves b/c of the many bad reviews (ebert & roeper, onion, et al).
# posted by 
: 2:19 PM
: 2:19 PM
I too stayed away from FF and wasn't planning to see it, until one day when I was two hours early to an appointment and passed a theater where it was playing. I thought the movie had a decent sense of humor and was an okay origin story. Jessica Alba was, surprisingly, pretty good, though Ioan Gryffud (however you spell his name) was quite bad as Reed Richards. The whole conflict with Dr. Doom was a snooze, but the smaller conflicts within the team made for good superhero drama. The world is never threatened, there's not much brooding except for the Thing, Johnny Storm chases chicks as if he had showed up from an 80's teen sex comedy, and the whole thing is just not serious enough to hate. Worth the matinee price I paid, though the full ten bucks would have been pushing it.
Clearly, I liked X3 a LOT more than the FF movie. The FF movie really needed to root itself in the mythos before deviating. If X3 deviated, it was only after two films established a good baseline to satisfy fans.
The FF are, IMHO, THE Marvel icons, alongside Spider-Man. There are a few simple steps that would lead to a better movie than we were given.
1. No Jessica Alba. For me, Sue Storm's WASP-iness is as visually important as Steve Rogers'. Sue Storm is not a Latina with a dye job. You know what? Fine. Cast Jessica Alba. And leave her hair alone. I felt like they were trying to have it both ways. As a loyal FF fan, I want to sit down and say, "Oh, look. There's Sue Storm," not, "Oh, look. There'a a Latina with a bad dye job playing Sue Storm." By and large, the Marvel films have done a good job of casting. But not here. Reese Witherspoon was a perfectly good choice. I am tired of ethnicity being sacred everywhere in casting except with WASPs, in which case, anything goes. I now await the PC police to knock down my door and take me to sensitivity training.
2. Both Ben AND Reed are clearly in their 40's in the comics. To me, that's as cool and off-beat as having Puny Parker be a teenager with teenaged problems. Part of Reed's coolness is that he's a GI-era Russell Johnson. He's the cool college professor who lands the hot undergrad because he's brilliant and quietly, unintentionally sexy and because she has a streak on opeminded non-conformity. It's not May/December, but it might be May/September. I see a streak of LOST IN TRANSLATION action going on.
3. Relating to that, Reed and Ben have to be in their 40's because Doom went to college with them, and I have a hard time buying Doom as being younger that 45.
4. Yeah. Doom. Where do I start? Why throw out everything so iconic about Marvel's greatest villain? There's nothing that needs fixing! Doom is the leader of an Eastern European dictatorship who melds black magic and science. And he, like the Cylons, HAS A PLAN. In this "movie," no one has any plan. He just wants to wipe out the FF.
And the movie wasn't awful. It was just very unnecessarily NOT the Fantastic Four, nor was it replaced with any kind of improvement.
The FF are, IMHO, THE Marvel icons, alongside Spider-Man. There are a few simple steps that would lead to a better movie than we were given.
1. No Jessica Alba. For me, Sue Storm's WASP-iness is as visually important as Steve Rogers'. Sue Storm is not a Latina with a dye job. You know what? Fine. Cast Jessica Alba. And leave her hair alone. I felt like they were trying to have it both ways. As a loyal FF fan, I want to sit down and say, "Oh, look. There's Sue Storm," not, "Oh, look. There'a a Latina with a bad dye job playing Sue Storm." By and large, the Marvel films have done a good job of casting. But not here. Reese Witherspoon was a perfectly good choice. I am tired of ethnicity being sacred everywhere in casting except with WASPs, in which case, anything goes. I now await the PC police to knock down my door and take me to sensitivity training.
2. Both Ben AND Reed are clearly in their 40's in the comics. To me, that's as cool and off-beat as having Puny Parker be a teenager with teenaged problems. Part of Reed's coolness is that he's a GI-era Russell Johnson. He's the cool college professor who lands the hot undergrad because he's brilliant and quietly, unintentionally sexy and because she has a streak on opeminded non-conformity. It's not May/December, but it might be May/September. I see a streak of LOST IN TRANSLATION action going on.
3. Relating to that, Reed and Ben have to be in their 40's because Doom went to college with them, and I have a hard time buying Doom as being younger that 45.
4. Yeah. Doom. Where do I start? Why throw out everything so iconic about Marvel's greatest villain? There's nothing that needs fixing! Doom is the leader of an Eastern European dictatorship who melds black magic and science. And he, like the Cylons, HAS A PLAN. In this "movie," no one has any plan. He just wants to wipe out the FF.
And the movie wasn't awful. It was just very unnecessarily NOT the Fantastic Four, nor was it replaced with any kind of improvement.
I confess, I don't know the FF well from the comics; I know them more from the cartoons, although I did immerse myself in Thing-ology through my brother's Marvel Two-in-One's. I guess the film got a pass from me because my expectations were rock-bottom, after the early reviews. Regarding Doom, I thought the guy who played him was an alright actor, but yeah, why on earth did they make him a Western CEO? They didn't want to offend Latvians? (Actually, I should point out that Eastern-European Doom is re-cast as a WASP in the movie, and there are hints that the same goes for Ben Grimm--in the comics, he was from Delancy Street (renamed "Yancy St."), Jack Kirby's old Jewish neighborhood in Manhattan--now a Hispanic neighborhood but you can still see the synagogues; in the movie, a point is made about him being from Brooklyn, and I'm assuming from the scenes in the film that it's Brooklyn Heights). All right, I don't want to defend this film anymore. If I examine it too closely, it'll collapse.
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