X-MEN

First was getting the team together in the swinging 60s, had no continuity boondoggles, and there was the possibility the other films would be brushed under the rug

Then Singer came back in, had a weird nonspecific future setting, and directly linked it with the earlier films with the ending acting as a reboot of the prior films.

Also a lot of 70s paranoia, far better used than the 80s this time.

Saw this last night. It was okay. If it had come out prior to the advent of the MCU, people would've been hailing it as Superheroes Done Right (such were the low standards back in the day). I didn't really give a shit about anyone in it or anything that happened, but it was decent portentous action with superpowers. I'll admit that I probably wouldn't give it even half a break if it didn't feature characters I'm invested in on a broader level. So much more could've been done with Apocalypse but I don't know if Fox has rights to the Celestials or any of that.

Just now realized that like Psylocke and Apocalypse were the only major characters making their cinematic debut. Which is pretty inexcusable when you have a comics cast of hundreds to choose from. Gonna be so miffed if Maggot isn't in the next one.

Lockheed or bust

Psylocke has previously been in either x2 or x3, I forget which

This had a couple of affecting Magneto moments, and I actually liked the kid actors this time around (Nightcrawler in a Thriller was adorable), but way too busy and, at times, incomprehensible (why are they fighting in a dream sequence at the same time as they're fighting in real life? what the fuck actually happened at the end there?). Butt-ugly FX too, but I'm getting used to that.

*Thriller jacket

this was ok, but I watched something like 5 x men movies in the past two weeks and it was one of my least favorite. It's the worst of the second trilogy for certain (first class is great, days of future passed is pretty good too); and it's much worse than the 2nd Wolverine movie, which is probably the best plotted of any of these films.

Fassbender should have worn an undershirt for entire movie imo

he was emulating this look:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4FtrKfZ0Lo

hoping for my friends who love Fassbender cheesecake scenes that this Assasin's Creed film pays off

Walter Chaw praised the film for spending an abnormal amount of time on casualties, notably Fassbender's family and the factory workers. I appreciate this up to the point that the film starts engaging in the usual tasteless disaster porn. I do agree with his point that a standalone Magneto film would be the way to go the next time out, though.

yeah he's the most interesting character of this batch.

also i wouldn't mind it if they returned to the original cast and explained wtf happened after X3 and why Charles Xavier is alive in Days of Future Passed.

they pretended X3 didn't happen, then they did a hard reboot so it definitely didn't happen

only Wolverine remembers that timeline

except Jean died, that happened

Which reminds me, the in-joke diss of X3 in the new one was tacky.

this movie is also a third entry so I figured it was a reference to itself.

anyway if they just made movies about wolverine that were as good as that wolverine in japan movie I'd be happy.

but that wolverine in japan movie was terrible!

Maybe it would be better to ask this in one of the threads on the comics in particular, but what latter-day X books (like, written after the Morrison and Whedon runs) are worth reading?

no, the wolverine in japan movie was cool

I think the first wolverine movie is supposed to suck, dunno, didn't bother

xpost Remender's Uncanny X-Force is highly recommended as a follow-up to those two runs. I really like Marjorie Liu's Astonishing run. Some of the only Claremont-ian relationshippy X-books of recent years. Paul Cornell's Wolverine stuff is good. Uhhh...trying to think of stuff that isn't mired in X-lore.

wolverine in japan succeeded in having the structure of an actual movie and plot/character development, but felt kind of flat and hindered by the jean flashbacks/dreams

Thanks, OL; I'll probably check out the Liu run first.

Her run comprises like four or five trades that you should be able to find fairly cheap at this point. They're also in the process of reprinting her NYX and X-23 stuff. She's not showy but I really dig her emphasis on the relationships between characters.

she's an excellent comics writer. Monstress is amazing

I've been curious about that since she kinda snuck up on my radar.

Cool; I think my library has most of the Liu trades, and I always tended to read the X series with more interest in character interaction/development than in continuity puzzles, so I'll start there.

If you're looking for BIG X-Men that isn't necessarily new reader friendly, I'd recommend Brubaker's Rise and Fall of the Shi'ar Empire, Mike Carey's run on X-Men/X-Men Legacy (he did some great stuff with developing Rogue), Victor Gischler's Curse of the Mutants (yes, the vampire thing, which I was pre-emptively super dismissive towards but which won me over)...uhhhhh...most of the big crossovers from recent years have been good. Messiah Complex and Manifest Destiny were solid.

Liu is Junot Díaz's girlfriend

Yeah, I just recently found that out.

Peter David's X-Factor is also good on character development but it's also pretty much one ten-year-long story.

Oh, Swierczynski's Cable is one of my favorites from the past decade. Big, crazy action and good character development.

Saw this today and surprised how much I enjoyed it on a big dumb action movie level. There were plenty of plot holes but nothing so egregious that it took me out of the story -- curious to know what Roger Mexico thought was so crazy about it! Like I could've used way more action!

The Horsemen were underused, but I was ridiculously giddy at watching Jean go nuclear.

I liked the Bendis run on X-Men but it's best if you just stop halfway through and pretend he died or something

good christ apocalypse was terrible - easily up there with wolverine origins and last stand as the most risible x-men movies

i was particularly annoyed by the fact that the final, world-shattering battle all took place on about 20 feet of set standing in for a single intersection in cairo, the least inspiring backdrop for a finale i can remember. at least the end of the first avengers film alleviated the obviousnessness of its overpass set with some airborne action!

Any X-Men movie that would cut out its scenes of mutants hanging out at the mall fundamentally misunderstands its source material.

this movie should've been set on fire

20 feet of set comment is... oh god, it's so right

No doubt they used green screen and CGI for those 20 feet, too.

first class wasn't a great film, but it had characters more interesting than anything that'd been done in the franchise for a very long time

it's as if bryan singer saw that the franchise could have some life, threw it in the bathtub with days of future past (the near-future scenes were a boring dirge that approached the lifelessness of his last film, and the past scenes with the younger actors started out fine but quickly devolved into character in-fighting that ended with the barely-understandable final action piece), and then tried to drown it in the bathtub with this one

Any X-Men movie that would cut out its scenes of mutants hanging out at the mall fundamentally misunderstands its source material.

there was maybe five minutes of 'normal life at the mansion' scenes which recalled the spirit of claremont but they got dumped double-quick in favour of poor oscar isaac joylessly teleporting around the world and giving people haircuts which turned them evil

what I got out of this movie is that mutants have powers, and they fight a lot

Bryan Singer does not get the appeal of the X-Men. But his movies make money so this is probably as good as cinematic X-Men are going to get.

(TBF, though, half the people who write X-Men comics don't seem to get the appeal of the X-Men either.)

there are a few angles of appeal and somehow singer made at least two films without finding any of them

A general rule with films like these is if that if I have to have someone explaining to me what is happening on screen with some variation of "in the comics, it is explained that..." which was the case with this film, then the movie can fuck off.

imo additional context makes this one worse

there's so much terribly delivered exposition in this

Rose Byrne gets saddled with some particularly horrifying dialogue

I just remembered that Havok's death was so unclearly depicted that the movie was almost over by the time I realized that he'd actually died.

Is anyone still reading Krakoa X-Men or have we all tapped out