posted
I do think the otherness of the mutants in X-Men is deliberately a metaphor for being gay.
I do not, however, think that the otherness of Harry Potter and the non-Muggles in a Muggle world is a metaphor for being gay, and I have seen that argument made.
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I think the otherness is a deliberate metaphor for being gay. I don't think that's the only metaphor, though. It also applies to anything that separates you from the majority - personality, tastes, interests, abilities - and is one of the reasons the X-Men has lasted this long. Most of us can understand what it's like to be outcast, if not actively legislated against.
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I saw the movie last night with my wife. I was moderately entertained, but not astounded. We spent a lot more time afterward talking about inplausibilities and flaws than about good things.
It reminded me a bit of The Phantom Menace: if you just go to see Jedi do Cool Jedi Things(tm), you'll probably be modestly entertained. If you expect solid characters making choices built around their personalities rather than swayed by the demands of the plot, you'll be disappointed. (Insert "mutant" in the place of "jedi" in the first sentence.)
Kelsey Grammer made a fine Beast. Magneto's defense of Xavier to Pyro was a good moment. The special effects were good (particularly those associated with Phoenix- she was convincingly scary); as ridiculous as the whole Golden Gate Bridge segment was, in a theater with a good sound system, it was impressive. *BOOM* <rattle rattle rattle rattle> Jackman, for all that they didn't use him all that well, is still fun to watch as Wolverine. Ditto Romjim and Mystique. Stewart and McKellan are always fun to watch, though for the first time they seemed wasted on the material they were given.
I miss Nightcrawler. Alan Cumming did a fantastic job, and N's always been my favorite. Apparently X-Men: The Game of the Movie (what a title, jeesh!) provides some backstory as to why Nightcrawler isn't in this one. (I don't want to know. If they killed him off, I'll be pissed.)
More, I miss Bryan Singer. This movie killed off characters left and right, left others offscreen for long stretches, and still couldn't get as much character development from the remaining ones' time as Singer got from that one shot in X-Men II of Pyro looking at Bobby's family photos.
They could probably have done better if they'd spent more time on the characters, but instead we get special effects and Wolverine fighting. I love Wolverine as much as the next geek, but we know he's a good fighter, we've seen two movies that make that point quite eloquently, and for the sake of getting to watch him fight we leave characters like Colossus absolutely void of development.
And Rogue- Argh! I love Paquin's Rogue. I know my friends who are more deeply invested in the comic than I don't, but I think the vulnerability she's given the character is terrific. And the "choice" she made, which they barely give any time to, is stupid.
Girl, what are you gonna do with yourself when Bobby leaves you anyway?!
(excuse me. channeling my inner black woman.)
Holloway would have made a fantastic Gambit. I would have loved to see that, but not in this movie. This movie wasted enough characters as it was.
My wife's theory regarding the Wolverine/Phoenix ending is that when Phoenix gets in that state, everything around her just goes kablooie without any particular focus on any single thing; thus, Wolverine was able to approach. I don't know if I buy it, but if it was more selective, she sure as hell ought to have been able to push Wolvie away from her as easily as Magneto, rather than trying the slow disintegrate thing.
With all respect to lovers of the comic, the strength of the movies (up to this one) was the extent to which it shied away from some comic book conventions in an attempt to put these characters into something resembling the real world, or at least treat them with more subtlety. I particularly enjoyed the comment about yellow spandex in the first movie, and the constant interruptions in the second of Wagner's attempts to dramatically announce his nickname. These aren't the X-Men who do regular forays into space and get buffeted by cosmic anomalies and face universe-destroying demigods. This movie tended more towards comic-book levels of overkill, and I think it suffered for it.
Okay, that's all my venting for the moment.
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And is it only me who doesn’t care that Prof. X is coming back if Patrick Stewart isn’t? Okay, I do care, but I care less.
I’m a little disappointed. But most of the rest of it was alright. I just hope this doesn't bode badly for 'Pirates of the Caribbean' because if both the blockbusters I've been looking forward to end up lame, I really will cry.
I don't care if Prof X is coming back if Patrick Stewart isn't. Patrick Stewart made him cool.
The Pirates of the Caribbean trailer was before X-Men. I haven't really been looking forward to it, but it the first few minutes I got really hopeful and thought it might actually be worth seeing. But then the trailer didn't end. It just kept going, introducing more and more plot points. By the end I was back to not wanting to see it again.
Why can't directors realize that to make a really good movie they only need one cool idea?
Posts: 4655 | Registered: Jan 2002
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quote:Originally posted by Chris Bridges: I think the otherness is a deliberate metaphor for being gay. I don't think that's the only metaphor, though. It also applies to anything that separates you from the majority - personality, tastes, interests, abilities - and is one of the reasons the X-Men has lasted this long. Most of us can understand what it's like to be outcast, if not actively legislated against.
Originally (Stan Lee originally) it was a metaphor for racial discrimination.
There's almost no way all the questions and phrases in the movie were used without being conscious allusions to things said to or by gay people.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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I agree with Dagonee. But on a less blatantly obvious level, it also works for fat people who are happy with themselves, or people who consider their disabilities to be an important part of who they are. I read a story in my local paper this weekend about a blind girl who has decided to turn down an operation to restore her sight because she's hoping to qualify for the disabled Olympics.
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Somebody said that storm got stupid Fighting Callipso, or whatever her name was... the super fast chick.
Anyway, Storm's powers take time and concentration, and they leave her open to attack, especially from a super fast chick.
Posts: 438 | Registered: May 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Shanna: Bingo Lalo! I couldn't agree more.
Even villians need motivation, and I just didn't feel it in this one like I did in the others.
Um, at the end of the last movie, he tried to kill every single human being on the planet. I think his motivation was well-established here.
Not really. Think back to the last movie -- the government struck first, trying to destroy every mutant alive. Magneto said as much before he re-aimed Xavier -- paraphrased, "it looks like they're not playing by your rules. Maybe it's time we played by theirs."
He was noble, the defining characteristic of his personality, his mission, and his goals. He wants to save mutantkind, not destroy humankind -- unfortunately, the only way he sees to protect his people is to fight back against those he sees bent on destroying them. This is crucial, this understanding that Magneto's a savior, not a demon. A misguided saint, not a diabolical villain. He should be able to present a case you know in your heart of hearts is wrong, but offered with such overwhelming proof of our evils that you wonder, well, maybe humankind should be destroyed. How else will mutants ever live in peace and safety?
Ratner destroyed that. Rothman destroyed that. Even Singer screwed it up in the first movie, to a lesser degree. I don't see why it's so damnably hard for directors to understand that, to make a good movie, you don't have a villain.
The same goes for this upcoming crap with Singer. I have faith in him for the X-movies, but it looks like he's derived too much from the previous Superman films -- designing Luthor after Gene Hackman?! Superman could be a great story, but not if Singer makes it something as trite and boring as good-guy-stops-bad-guy. And from the trailer, it looks like that's exactly what the plot will be.
posted
Lalo, you remind me of an actor quote, I'm pretty sure it was Gary Oldman. An interview asked something about playing a good guy for a change since he's well known for his villains. He answered:
"There's no difference, really. Everyone thinks they're righteous."
Which is a great insight into why he plays such compelling "villains."
posted
Werd. Nobody ever twiddles their greased mustache in delight at the thought of a virgin being crushed by a freight train -- and to make a movie of it smacks of Republican propaganda.
What people seem to keep forgetting is that Eric Lensherr suffered through the Holocaust. He's fighting for the Jews; not becoming a Nazi. That makes all the difference.
Posts: 3293 | Registered: Jul 2002
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quote:Originally posted by katharina: I do think the otherness of the mutants in X-Men is deliberately a metaphor for being gay.
I do not, however, think that the otherness of Harry Potter and the non-Muggles in a Muggle world is a metaphor for being gay, and I have seen that argument made.
I agree with you. I don't see that at all.
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posted
Jews wouldn't be willing to kill every non-Jew in the world, the way Lensherr was willing to kill every non-mutant. He may have started out the way you suggest, but he's gone far beyond that.
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In Magneto's own words, mutants are the cure, not the disease, Eddie. Which is a mirror image of the evil portions of humanity's thinking in the film as well. He thought that before humanity (well, only a small segment acting on its own) attempted to obliterate all mutants, and he thought it afterwards.
In fact he almost certainly thought it all the way back to his childhood in the Holocaust, when the horrors of Nazi brutality more or less ruined him as a good person.
Just because he is not a mustache-twirling black tophat wearing caricature does not mean he isn't a villain. Just because, as Gary Oldman says, everyone thinks they're righteous does not mean everyone possesses righteousness to a substantial degree.
Magneto was a racist, pure and simple. His race was superior, and the other race-humanity-was inferior, and individual humans were just as culpable for the crimes of the worst humans as were those human criminals or evil bastards themselves.
You can be provoked and still be evil. He was not noble, he was arrogant, prideful, uncompromising. It was his vision, or death. Or at best, submission and slavery. Just because he took pride in that does not make him noble, or a saint of any stripe.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote:Originally posted by starLisa: Jews wouldn't be willing to kill every non-Jew in the world, the way Lensherr was willing to kill every non-mutant. He may have started out the way you suggest, but he's gone far beyond that.
Except he's not killing every non-Jew -- he's killing every Nazi, to maintain the analogy. Humans hate and murder mutants, just as Nazis did Jews. This is where the philosophies of Xavier and Lensherr come into play: Magneto believes humankind is irredeemable, and doomed to forever persecute the weak or helpless they have in their power. Xavier's more of a Christlike figure, and believes there is grace in humanity, the ability to accept the strange and love the different. This is a fight we've witnessed for how many centuries between how many philosophers -- and I would love for anyone to prove most of history wrong and challenge Magneto's views.
Magneto doesn't see his fight so much as a war as a struggle for survival, forever hounded and attacked as he tries to rescue the less powerful of his people from the same extermination Jews suffered during the Holocaust -- the same extermination he sees repeating itself with mutantkind. He's a hero, or probably better called an antihero. No man who'd sacrifice everything in his ongoing battle to save an entire race from persecution, suffering neverending betrayals, losses, and pain, could be called anything else.
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quote:Except he's not killing every non-Jew -- he's killing every Nazi, to maintain the analogy. Humans hate and murder mutants, just as Nazis did Jews.
Not all humans do.
quote:He's a hero, or probably better called an antihero. No man who'd sacrifice everything in his ongoing battle to save an entire race from persecution, suffering neverending betrayals, losses, and pain, could be called anything else.
Any man who tries to kill 6 billion people because some of those people persecute his people is not a hero.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: In Magneto's own words, mutants are the cure, not the disease, Eddie. Which is a mirror image of the evil portions of humanity's thinking in the film as well. He thought that before humanity (well, only a small segment acting on its own) attempted to obliterate all mutants, and he thought it afterwards.
In fact he almost certainly thought it all the way back to his childhood in the Holocaust, when the horrors of Nazi brutality more or less ruined him as a good person.
Just because he is not a mustache-twirling black tophat wearing caricature does not mean he isn't a villain. Just because, as Gary Oldman says, everyone thinks they're righteous does not mean everyone possesses righteousness to a substantial degree.
Magneto was a racist, pure and simple. His race was superior, and the other race-humanity-was inferior, and individual humans were just as culpable for the crimes of the worst humans as were those human criminals or evil bastards themselves.
You can be provoked and still be evil.
And this is why I'm upset. Ratner's screwed up majestically -- as did Singer, in large part, but he's definitely come the closest to portraying Magneto as the antihero he truly is.
You're right, but only because Hollywood's wrong. But at least you can finally brag to all your friends that you were right about something! Lord knows the law of averages was on your side...
Posts: 3293 | Registered: Jul 2002
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quote:Except he's not killing every non-Jew -- he's killing every Nazi, to maintain the analogy. Humans hate and murder mutants, just as Nazis did Jews.
Not all humans do.
quote:He's a hero, or probably better called an antihero. No man who'd sacrifice everything in his ongoing battle to save an entire race from persecution, suffering neverending betrayals, losses, and pain, could be called anything else.
Any man who tries to kill 6 billion people because some of those people persecute his people is not a hero.
And there's his tragic flaw. Magneto believes (as have most Western philosophies) that cruelty and persecution are fundamental traits of human nature -- no, not all people are currently harassing, kidnapping, and murdering mutants; but most would if it were in their power. And if they wanted to escape responsibility for the crimes of their representatives, they would fight within their own governments to effect change that would stop the persecution of mutantkind.
It's worth noting that Osama bin Laden's offered the same justification, if with notably less reasoning for his case.
But the film version of Magneto is exaggerated, in any case. You said it yourself, Rob -- Magneto matures, and moves from wanting to fight humankind to wanting to save his people. Hence, for example, Asteroid M. Magneto's means are many, but his goals have always been the same -- to protect mutantkind, and let them live in peace and safety. Nothing less. He is a hero, and my personal favorite in the X-saga.
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quote:Except he's not killing every non-Jew -- he's killing every Nazi, to maintain the analogy. Humans hate and murder mutants, just as Nazis did Jews.
Your analogy is flawed, because it does not include a group which has something in common with Nazis without actually being Nazis. To be accurate, you could say he's not killing every non-Jew, he's killing every Germanic people on the face of the Earth. Or trying to, at any rate. Not even just Germans either, who in my opinion bear some responsibility for the Holocaust.
quote:Magneto believes humankind is irredeemable, and doomed to forever persecute the weak or helpless they have in their power.
The trouble is that if he believed this and still wanted to be an honorable person, he could try and destroy humanity's power without utterly destroying humanity. As the Mutant Master of Magnetism versus the world as led by industrialized nations, he would be uniquely suited to such an effort. But in the films at least, he never tries it.
In the first film, he could still be called honorable...or at least stopping short of genocide. His willingness to slaughter a mutant child to achieve his goals when he could do it himself is proof of Magneto's true nature.
In the second film, that goes out the window. The machine which would destroy all mutants is useless without both Xavier and the wheelchair cyborg mutant whose name I forget. Magneto could have killed either or both and destroyed the machine, and the sword over the heads of all mutants would be gone.
quote:Magneto doesn't see his fight so much as a war as a struggle for survival, forever hounded and attacked as he tries to rescue the less powerful of his people from the same extermination Jews suffered during the Holocaust -- the same extermination he sees repeating itself with mutantkind.
Maybe it started that way (we can assume that for a child of the Holocaust there's a good chance it did), but it certainly didn't end that way. What started as a defensive war (maybe) became a war of conquest. "I say we are the cure," sums it up, again.
quote:No man who'd sacrifice everything in his ongoing battle to save an entire race from persecution, suffering neverending betrayals, losses, and pain, could be called anything else.
Who betrays Magneto that he doesn't betray first? Who hurts Magneto without being first hurt by them? The suffering he endures, he largely brings on himself. Especially concerning his kids and his 'friend' Xavier.
He did his stint on Asteroid M for awhile, but it didn't stick, remember? Soon enough he was back to efforts to conquer and annihilate. He eventually left for Genosha, where *gasp* he was set up as a god-king sort of person.
A hero is someone who endures great personal suffering and/or danger in an effort to achieve a worthy, honorable goal. Without doing evil along the way, in my opinion. Magneto's suffering is largely self-wrough, the danger he endures is usually minimal when fighting his chosen enemy, and he does gads and gads of evil along the way.
Oh, and if you ever get mutation, ask for incredibly sharp wits. For better insults. Because that one about bragging was definitely mere homo sapiens quality, bordering on neanderthal, flatscan:p
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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I saw the movie on momorial day and for a movie that people saw to see things get blown up and killing, it was good. But as for plot it was very poorly written.
I didn't read all of the articles descussed already so if i repeat anything i apologize. i heard someone say that Juggernaut was Prof. X's then they would be right acourding to one of the comic book series. as for the others i don't know.
I didn't get the joke about "I'm the Juggernaut bitch" but i suppose it was a big deal. the joke that got the biggest response in the theater i was in was when mystique spilt here guts about magnetos hideout.
And something i thought was funny was when Prof. X. said something about Jean surviving under the river, a girl in the back said "What" in that blonde voice. it just hit me funny.
As for a fourth movie. the only way i can see that they could is if Magneto regained his powers totaly and started to lead the X-men and finish Prof. X's. mission. and the bad guy would have to be Apocalypse (pardon the spelling i'm not so good at english). However if they were going to have a fourth with Apocalypse then Angel would have gotton the cure. then (as in the comics) Apocalypse would restore him to Arcangel. but they ruined that by having him keep his powers.
One of my favorite seens in the movie is when Kitty tricket Juggernaut into running into the wall. on the issue of Juggernaut, i heard he wasn't even a mutant that he found a crystal of some sort that gave him powers. also they did him no justice in the movies. in the comics he would go toe-to-toe with the hulk and tie or win every time. Posts: 4 | Registered: Jun 2006
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Since when does Professor X get all huffy and defensive? "I don't have to justify myself to you"?
And isn't the appropriate response to "What have you done" "I touched her face, you twit. Which was apparently enough to let out the alternate personality that *you* created."
Posts: 3826 | Registered: May 2005
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quote:Originally posted by TrapperKeeper: star, I think you're just seeing things in the movie and relating them to your personal experience. The writers did not set out to metaphorically compare the mutants to gays.
Oh, please. They consciously put in things that carried that metaphor. "Have you tried not being a mutant" is clearly a reference to all the parents who've asked the same thing of their gay children.
I'm not reading anything into it. The fact that you don't see it only indicates that it's not something you've ever had to deal with. Live and learn.
You seem to think that YOUR view is the only right one, but a lot of the time a lot of people see things different.
Then you get all pissy.
You can see it however you like, but if your world view was the only correct one the world would be a far poorer place.
And I am not talking just about a stupid X-Men move, sL. Every person who disagrees with you is met with scorn and disdain, and I for one am getting a little sick of reading it.
God forbid ANYONE even IMPLY that your own experiences MIGHT color your perceptions.
I am not saying I didn't see some of the same issues, but I don't consider myself an actual mind reader so I don't know for sure what they meant.
Lots of other situations fit that bill as well. The X-Men comics have been filled with metaphors of violence and bigotry for years, far longer than the recent huff over gay marriage.
One way or another, you sure seem full of anger and self-righteousness, and that makes pleasant conversation hard to come by for all of us.
quote:Since when does Professor X get all huffy and defensive? "I don't have to justify myself to you"?
A lot, actually. For example, when he sucked Magneto's mind out. When he kept the sentient being enslaved within the danger room. He's constantly making choices like that and expecting people to just deal with them.
I get the impression that people complaining about how a character is represented simply have a fixed point in the continuity on which their impressions are based.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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Wait a minute, Juggernaut actually won against the Hulk in a one-on-one fight? If it happened, that's total damn BS.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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To be fair, though, those two developments are pretty recent in X-Men 'history' Dagonee. If you're thinking about the Ultimate X-Men's version of Xavier's 'handling' of Magneto after he was thought to be dead, and Astonishing X-Men's handling of him being exposed as an artificial-life mutant enslaver.
I definitely like the newer approach to Xavier. He is less a white knight on a white stallion (wheelchair).
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote:Wait a minute, Juggernaut actually won against the Hulk in a one-on-one fight? If it happened, that's total damn BS.
He did beat Hulk in a 1 v 1 fight once when it was him versus the merged Hulk during Peter David's run. The merged Hulk's powers were somewhat different than the stupid Hulk most people are familiar with. He starts out even stronger than the regular Hulk, but is less quick to anger. He also was a straight up "good guy", and so was much more likely to hold back.
And it wasn't exactly a straight up fight, as the Juggernaut wore normal street clothes so that Hulk wouldn't recognize him, which made Banner hold back a ton. He wasn't sure how hard he could hit without killing the guy, and so was fighting defensively. Banner never got mad, because he was so confused as to how his opponent didn't seem phased by his punches. Without Hulk getting even a little bit mad, Juggernaut was able to beat him pretty easily.
It was a cheap trick, but it still counts. Funny thing Juggs outsmarting an opponent .
Later in David's run, after Hulk was enhanced by Apocalypse into "War", Hulk completely mopped the floor with Juggs, and was about to kill him when Absorbing man saved his life by distracting Hulk. I'm not sure if that quite counts, since Hulk was enhanced.
Hulk and Juggs has always been a close match. Hulk is far stronger (its not even close), but Juggernaut is far more resilient (its not even close). Hulk usually gets the best hits in, but because Juggs is truly invulnerable, it doesn't do any serious damage, no matter how hard he is hit. It pretty much always comes down to a draw, since niether can do much more than temporarily daze the other.
As the fight between them goes on, and Hulk gets madder and madder, it becomes far more lop-sided. But even if Hulk beats Juggs into the pavement, Juggs just gets back up, so its a draw. The one time Juggs won (that I know of) it was because he tricked Hulk into not getting mad before he was incapacitated.
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
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I should have specified 'straight-up fight', because lots of people have beaten the Hulk, even puny humans, with trickery or science or somethiing. Thanks for the info:) My nerdly powers are growing.
Is Juggernaut more resilient, though? I haven't read as much Hulk as you have (I can tell just by your descriptions of the fights), but it seems to me that although the Hulk does get wounded while in Hulk form, it simply serves to make him even angrier and thus tougher and moore powerful, and harder to further injure. Unless he fought someone whose power increased at a rate greater than Hulk's anger let HIS power increase, can he truly be considered vulnerable?
Again, exceptions for thinks like adamantium needles, tricky science, magic, etc. You know, since Juggernaut is magic based I'm surprised Dr. Strange hasn't simply taken care of him a long time ago. Juggernaut regularly tangles with people who're buddy-buddy with the good Dr, after all.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote:To be fair, though, those two developments are pretty recent in X-Men 'history' Dagonee. If you're thinking about the Ultimate X-Men's version of Xavier's 'handling' of Magneto after he was thought to be dead, and Astonishing X-Men's handling of him being exposed as an artificial-life mutant enslaver. I definitely like the newer approach to Xavier. He is less a white knight on a white stallion (wheelchair).
The sucking out Magneto's mind was early 90s - over a decade ago.
On the Magneto as a hero front, remember that prior to Dark Phoenix - in other words, 20+ years ago - Magneto captured the X-Men and was going to keep them imprisoned permanently regressed to children as revenge. He wasn't fighting them to achieve his goal of protecting mutants, merely seeking revenge on Xavier.
I think people who see Magneto merely as a misguided champion of mutant rights miss the true complexity of him as a villain. He's got some good motivations. He's also a vengeful, selfish, controlling, racist, and a megalomaniac who lets his hate get in the way of achieving whatever noble goals he happens to possess.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote:Is Juggernaut more resilient, though? I haven't read as much Hulk as you have (I can tell just by your descriptions of the fights), but it seems to me that although the Hulk does get wounded while in Hulk form, it simply serves to make him even angrier and thus tougher and moore powerful, and harder to further injure. Unless he fought someone whose power increased at a rate greater than Hulk's anger let HIS power increase, can he truly be considered vulnerable?
I would say that yes, Juggs is the more invulnerable (as much as someone could be more invulnerable ).
Hulk is nearly invulnerable, but not quite. Hulk can be cut. His bones can be broken. He needs to breathe oxygen (he can drown or asphyxiate). Lazers can penetrate his skin.
None of these are true of Juggs. He can be knocked out, but that's about it. Though I think his power has decreased recently. In the New Excaliber, it was mentioned that he can drown now. Not sure how that came to be.
But like I said, Hulk is far stronger. They start out about the same, but Hulk's strength is completely limitless. There's no feat of strength he can't accomplish if he gets mad enough. Even something as impossible as, say, ripping Juggernaut's arms off. Hulk's irresistable force has overcome many immovable objects in the 30+ years he's been around.
If I was to bet on one of the two for a straight up fight to the death, it would be on Hulk all the way.
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
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posted
Maybe this was asked and answered before...but just after Magneto ripped the GG Bridge off its moorings and landed it on Alcatraz (I love how he levitates himself above the roadway so he doesn't get hurt when it crashes, but everyone else--mutant warriors included--seems to survive it anyhow, even the cars not really budging from their pre-crash positions)...but I digress.
Where did the sun go? How did we do from a beautiful sunrise (or was it a sunset), to a sunny afternoon, to...late at night (that last transition taking all of 21 seconds or so)?
And why didn't Wolverine just take a "Cure" needle and jab Jean/Phoenix with it. Boy is HE going to feel stupid in a few days for missing that opportunity!
Posts: 1862 | Registered: Mar 2000
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quote:The dude with boobs-I mean, androgynous chick was Arclight!
My son and I both thought it was "Prince". I asked him (he had seen it before), "What are her powers? What does she do, bring down a strong, Purple Rain?"
And we loved the "Juggernaut, Bitch" line. Who'd a thought, a multimillion dollar movie borrowing lines from a cheap ebaumsworld video dub!
Posts: 1862 | Registered: Mar 2000
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quote:Where did the sun go? How did we do from a beautiful sunrise (or was it a sunset), to a sunny afternoon, to...late at night (that last transition taking all of 21 seconds or so)?
One of the mutants has the power to invoke appropriate dramatic lighting for any event.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote:This was actually one of my gripes when his "friends" recently blasted him off the planet.
I haven't been reading Hulk for a while now, what were the circumstances of that? (and is that how he got to the "Planet Hulk"?)
Not knowing the circumstances, I will point out that it has been established that Hulk has tremendous lung capacity. Whether that affects the plausibility of what you are talking about, I can't say.
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
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quote:Where did the sun go? How did we do from a beautiful sunrise (or was it a sunset), to a sunny afternoon, to...late at night (that last transition taking all of 21 seconds or so)?
One of the mutants has the power to invoke appropriate dramatic lighting for any event.
That would be Moodlight. Her twin sister Incidentia provides the appropriate music for whatever circumstance the mutants find themselves in.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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quote:Where did the sun go? How did we do from a beautiful sunrise (or was it a sunset), to a sunny afternoon, to...late at night (that last transition taking all of 21 seconds or so)?
One of the mutants has the power to invoke appropriate dramatic lighting for any event.
I'm guessing that the missing scene will turn up on the DVD.
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On the note to the Xmen movies tipping the hat to the gay rights issue, remember Ian McKellen has for a long time been an advocate of Gay rights. Maybe its just me but the scene at the Grays house where Jeans parents mention something being wrong with her Ian says VERY emphatically "You think something is WRONG with her?" I do not think Ian misses the correlation between the Xmen universe and the one we live in. But hey thats my speculation.
I am sad I missed the scene at the end of the credits, but I did notice the standard Stan Lee cameo at the beginning of the movie. He is holding a hose I believe when jean lifts all those cars and makes the water flow up and he has the standard look of shock on his face.
I agree with Dag's review of the Magneto character, I really do not think the writers want us to think of Magneto as a complex hero, but certainly not a pure evil villain.
Was it just me or did anybody else think when Jean/Phoenix carves her nails into wolverine and he growls as he heals that that was kinda hot?
I had a question though about characters. Who is the guy that can make multiple copies of himself? And exactly how many can he make? Was it really possible for him to make almost 100 of himself and have them all doing seperate things at once? I mean they say he was caught robbing 7 banks at once, and then we have him impersonating a camp full of people. Whats stopping him from using his 100 copies or possibly more to attack the military team sent to the brotherhoods camp?
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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He's dead, I think...I never followed his character much, but I think he was one of the characters to die from the Legacy virus.
quote:Whats stopping him from using his 100 copies or possibly more to attack the military team sent to the brotherhoods camp?
Each of his copies (as I understand it) comes from a particular part of Jamie Madrox's psyce. One comes from his anger, one from love, etc. They all have normal, athletic-human strength.
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
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Madrox the Multiple Man - he was a guest on X-Men and then appeared regularly in the first revamp of X-Factor. I'm not sure of his limit, but it gets pretty high, and depends on what each of them are doing.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote:I had a question though about characters. Who is the guy that can make multiple copies of himself? And exactly how many can he make? Was it really possible for him to make almost 100 of himself and have them all doing seperate things at once?
Multiple Man. He was an X-Factor dude, if I recall correctly.
Posts: 4313 | Registered: Sep 2004
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Ooh, this post pointed out another problem I can't believe I missed: apparently New York is now close enough to San Francisco that the X-Men can get there almost immediately, and Angel can fly there almost as fast.
Fixed the link.
[ June 09, 2006, 04:24 PM: Message edited by: Chris Bridges ]
Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
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I don't remember Angel getting there "immediately." There were at least two night scenes after his jump out the window, weren't there?
From comic continuity, he can fly from Egypt to NY in something like 12 hours. Plus, he might have just taken a plane.
Per the X-Men, if this plane is based on the SR-71, then it would take less than two hours to get to San Francisco.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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From the perspective of Hollywood, the only thing between New York and San Francisco is a single heartwarming farming community. So that's probably about right.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:Since when does Professor X get all huffy and defensive? "I don't have to justify myself to you"?
A lot, actually. For example, when he sucked Magneto's mind out. When he kept the sentient being enslaved within the danger room. He's constantly making choices like that and expecting people to just deal with them.
I get the impression that people complaining about how a character is represented simply have a fixed point in the continuity on which their impressions are based.
Where in the movies did either of these events occur?
And where in the movies has he ever felt a need to defend his actions before?
Posts: 3826 | Registered: May 2005
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quote:Where in the movies did either of these events occur?
And where in the movies has he ever felt a need to defend his actions before?
No where. Of course, there's nowhere in the movies where Cyclops or Professor X died before, either. Or where Rogue tried to have her powers removed. Or where Mystique betrayed Eric, or Eric Mystique.
I was referring to the comics, with 40+ years of issues and probably 10 or more years of actual story time, not the movies which, taken together, show us about two weeks' worth of time.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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Just saw it. I want to play the X-Men movie fan fiction game too.
The wonderful thing about super-hero movies is they're the new mythology. I mean, in a Campbellian (Joseph not Bruce) sense. They've got underlying themes built right into them.
You've got two characters, one throws fire, the other throws ice. There's like three things you get for free right off the bat.
You take a scene with Pyro going all out with his powers and Magneto egging him on. He really pushes it and his fire kicks up to a noticably higher level and he promptly passes out. Magneto levitates him up and over to him. Pyro comes to - he's got blood dripping out his nose - and says something like "That's the real power. They'd never let me do that at that school." Maybe Magneto makes a comment about Pyro graduating or something.
A later scene, say at the truck prison break, Pyro and Iceman face off, shooting their respective beams at each other like they did at the end. Pyro's fire is more powerful and overcomes the ice. Iceman is in real danger, but someone (maybe Shadowcat) comes to his rescue.
Possibly Rogue gets burnt, but Wolverine's right there and they do the healing swap trick. Logan says something like, "I'll always be there to fix you up."
Back at the school, Bobby is ranting to Rogue (and Kitty's around too). He and Pyro used to go at it at school and Bobby always came out on top. He's being held back by their constraints and their training on focusing and controlling his powers, while Pyro's just getting stronger. He was too weak. He could have gotten her killed. Rogue watches him, wanting desperately to hold him and comfort him, but just can't. She starts to defend the teachers, maybe talking about the combined tactics they showed in the battleroom sequence, and Bobby stalks away, putting up a wall of ice to keep her from following. Kitty goes through the wall after him. The ice is translucent, so you can just make out her catching up to him and touching him somehow.
It's getting long, but if you can throw a scene in with Prof X or one of the other teachers talking and demonstrating to Bobby about smart use of power winning out over brute strength and also about the dangers of losing control or burning yourself out when you push too hard, it'd help.
Then you do the scene at the end, with the Pyro/Iceman face off, pretty much the same way. Pyro's extremely confident, as he's beaten him before. He engulfs him in flame, gives the "You should have stayed in school." Iceman emerges from the flame, encased in the ice armor and lays him right out. "You shouldn't have left."
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I love Chris's Cyclops/Wolverine fight scene. I especially love the idea of Wolverine, lying there with his wounds from the energy beam beating he took rapidly healing, with Scott, maybe limping a little from a shot Logan got in, saying "Some of us don't heal as quickly as you."
Instead of leaving for Akalai Lake though, I'd have Scott go to his room and bring up a video of Jean teaching. She's teaching mythology, perhaps even Campbell's The Hero's Journey. Anyway, they're talking about the dying/rebirth motif (stage 11 in THJ), and Jean mentions who her favorite myth was always that of the Phoenix, who's age and weaknesses were purged away by the fire, leading to the emergence of a young, strong creature. Perhaps there is also some mention how many cultures looked on death/rebirth type experiences as a way that doubts were given up and the person emerged on the other side firm and pure in purpose.
Cut to Akalai Lake. Lake in the background and in the foreground, a memorial stone to Jean Grey. As we watch, a patch on the surface of the lake starts bubbling. The heat increases and it starts steaming. A great gout of flame shoots out from the lake and Jean rises up out of it. The maelstrom that accompanies her rises causes a fair bit of destruction, including picking up the memorial stone and smashing it to pieces against something.
I haven't really worked out the rest of the Cyclops/Jean/Wolverine thing right now. I would have liked to have seen a struggle between the animalistic and ordered, going in both directions. So Logan brings out the beast in Jean and her awakened feral nature charges up his animal side too. This main conflict plays off of the themes established in the Pyro/Iceman conflict. Also, Phoenix's influence on Wolverine pulls him away from the Rogue and the rest of the family he found.
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Storm's "There's nothing wrong with any of us." scene should go soon after Rogue being cut off by the ice wall. Rogue should listen to this, somehow keeping control, and then ask, while peeling off her glove "There's nothing wrong with me, right? So take my hand. Go ahead. Take it!" "It's so easy for you to say that. You've got cool powers. Me, the only power I have is to suck the life out of anyone I touch. My whole life, there's always going to be this wall between me and everyone else. And it's so lonely. So lonely and so cold."
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: You've got two characters, one throws fire, the other throws ice. There's like three things you get for free right off the bat.
Ummm.... was I the only one in the theatre looking for the blinking light at the bottom of the frame that reads: "Pay attention to the symbolic relationship between good and evil?"
This scene was so obvious that I saw it coming in the first scene of the second movie. Talk about predictable and boring.
By the way, its not free. It cost me 6.50 for a matinee ticket. 4 for the soda.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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