BEFORE: My wife is joining me tonight for a rare joint screening - like me, she's been looking forward to this one, since she's seen all the other X-Men films with me. I've been very curious about this take on the early days of the X-Men - hey, if your franchise is stuck and can't move forward, you can always go back to the past, right? Linking from "Superman IV", Jim Broadbent had a small role there, and he was in "Arthur Christmas" with James McAvoy, last seen in "Wanted", I think.
Ah, another lost opportunity - I could have transitioned to more alien films after the Superman series. It's easy to forget sometimes that Superman is an alien, because he's such an American symbol. Like many Americans, he's also an immigrant...
THE PLOT: In 1962, the United States government enlists the help of Mutants with superhuman abilities to stop a malicious dictator who is determined to start World War III.
AFTER: I'm comfortable with the connections after all, since some of the plot deals with the threat of nuclear war. Geez, it's almost like I planned it that way...
The first few scenes here were something of a repeat of the opening of the first "X-Men" film, with the young Erik Lehnsherr in a Nazi concentration camp. But it then diverged from there, and showed new footage of him as a young man, learning to use his powers to hunt down various Nazis who survived the war. The dialogue in these scenes was in German, French, and Spanish, with no subtitles. Fortunately I understood most of the German and French, but why alienate the American movie-goers who don't speak those languages?
It's very shrewd to set the origins of the X-Men at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the shagadelic 1960's. That's right about the time of the first X-Men comics, which I think were published in 1963. I'm not sure that it works, however, if you expect the characters to age like normal humans. If Magneto was 10 in 1945, he'd be 27 in 1962. That works, but then he'd be 77 today. Even if we assume that Prof. Xavier was a little younger, getting his masters degree in his early 20's, which is ambitious, he'd still be in his early 70's today.
Fortunately, comic-book characters don't age like normal humans do - they even state here that some of the characters with energy-based powers use this energy to stay young. And Mystique (shape-shifting powers) and Wolverine (super-healing powers) could be as old as the story needs them to be. But still, when you suddenly tag these characters to a specific year, it leads to potential story problems. Used to be that Tony Stark supplied arms to the Vietnam War before becoming Iron Man, and the latest take places his origin in Afghanistan, I think.
They borrowed from the so-far unused X-Men characters, past and present, for this film - which was quite creative, but also created a few continuity problems. If Havok is Cyclops' big brother (not his little brother, as in the comics), then he must be quite a bit older. And considering their shared origin, that's hard to reconcile. The use of Banshee and Darwin jibes with the comic books, but the age of Hank McCoy/Beast just doesn't (plus he seems to be even more of a genius at age 18 or 20 than Prof. X was).
But, they did use this opportunity to suggest some interesting connections in the past between certain characters, like Prof. X and Mystique growing up together, romantic possibilities between Mystique & Beast, Mystique & Magneto, that sort of thing. Some characters seem to be new, like Azazel, and I have my own theories about what purpose they'll ultimately serve in the story. (Hint: he can teleport)
Ultimately, it's a very exciting, very entertaining film. No real nitpick points tonight, except for the changes to comic-book continuity and the problematic references to specific dates.
Also starring Michael Fassbender (last seen in "Inglourious Basterds"), Jennifer Lawrence, Kevin Bacon (last seen in "Super"), Rose Byrne, January Jones (last seen in "Anger Management"), Nicholas Hoult (last seen in "Clash of the Titans"), Jason Flemyng (ditto), Zoe Kravitz, Oliver Platt (last seen in "2012"), Caleb Landry Jones, Lucas Till, with cameos from James Remar, Ray Wise, Michael Ironside, and a couple I don't want to spoil...
RATING: 9 out of 10 submarines
No comments:
Post a Comment