I don't know about the bolded part, but if that's how you're wired, fair enough I guess. I never had a problem keeping them straight or anything, so what do I know?
Spider-Man: Homecoming' anticipation thread
- Thread starter Turtletrekker
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I don't know about the bolded part, but if that's how you're wired, fair enough I guess. I never had a problem keeping them straight or anything, so what do I know?
Frankly, I found the X-Men to be doing the usual lazy thing by making the movies be really about the villains instead of properly focusing on the heroes. MCU does this, and if you have interesting protagonists with plenty of character flaws and internal conflict then the villain doesn't have to be more than an obstacle for the hero.
IE, an X-Men movie without Magneto with some other villain and the real conflict being the X-Men divided on the issue of going public with the school and make more of a proactive difference in the world instead of merely being reactive.
Eh, I'd say they have actors that make up for it.
I found most of the X-Movies repetitive and just using the same plot over and over since X1.
The X-Movies have never done very well with the Mutant Prejudice storyline. But then again, the comics haven't dealt with it very well either.
Characterization isn't a zero-sum choice. The best stories have well-developed heroes and villains, and anyone who thinks you have to pick one and ignore the other is just lazy. Saying that it's okay to have superficial villains if you have well-done heroes is like saying it's okay for a car to have lousy tires as long as it has good brakes. They're both components of the same machine, and it's bad for the whole if either part is weak.
But that isn't what the X-Men movies have done. They just make the villains the real stars of the show while the X-Men as a whole are merely reactive foils to the villains who are the only ones being proactive.
Why not have a film with the X-Men being the pro-active ones trying to change the status quo and the villains acting to stop them?
Example: Xavier is taken out early into the movie, so he's in a coma for most of the it. The rest of the plot revolves around the X-Men arguing over how leadership should fall since Xavier never set up a proper chain of command, and then stuff like Scott thinking they should go public with the School and let the world know of them so they can start making a difference while others want to stay hidden.
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I don't know where you got that impression. The X-Men themselves get much more character development than most of the villains aside from Magneto. And proactivity or reactivity has nothing to do with it. Most works of heroic or law-enforcement fiction are about the good guys reacting to the bad guys' actions. That's a completely unrelated matter to how much focus or character development each side gets.
How much did we learn about Scott in the original trilogy, compared to Magneto and Stryker?
In a series like X-Men, being proactive should be their M O. As it is, they really don't live up to anything about advancing status for Mutants because they DON'T DO ANYTHING.
He wasn't the lead. Wolverine clearly was. You might as well say how much did we learn about Toad if you're going to take that tactic. At least he died on screen.
With so many characters, some aren't going to get the spotlight. Wolverine, Rogue and Professor X moreso, Storm and Cyclops less.
Similar to the villains.
Did anyone really get character development past the first movie?
In any case. Spider-man: Homecoming is a "Marvel movie" because it is part of the MCU. Sony is putting up the money and Sony is raking in the profits, but on a very essential level it is being developed and orchestrated by the people at Marvel to fit in with the rest of that universe and their long term plans.
In any case. Spider-man: Homecoming is a "Marvel movie" because it is part of the MCU. Sony is putting up the money and Sony is raking in the profits, but on a very essential level it is being developed and orchestrated by the people at Marvel to fit in with the rest of that universe and their long term plans.
Guardians of the Galaxy did a decent job giving the team focus instead of just making it all about Star-Lord.
That was a different movie with different motivations. And if we're being honest, less characters. Even the addition of 2 or 3 characters means sacrificing time somewhere else to develop them more. So decisions have to be made where the focus is.
Which, to bring it back to Spider-Man, is nice about him not being part of a team for his movies. We seem to always get great character work with him. Whether we like what they've done with the character is a different story, but it's definitely there.
If you make a movie that's supposed to be about a team and focus really only on one or two people, you're better off hiring someone who can write a team movie.
Who says the only or best way to write about a team is to give every member equal exposure?
That's an especially amusing assumption on a Star Trek board.
Actually no. (Now, I haven't had a chance to see Apocalypse yet, so I can't speak for that one.):
X1 is thematically about the differences between Professor X and Magneto and their viewpoints (peaceful coexistence or domination). X2 also goes into this, but the main character story of those is Wolverine (a hero) trying to piece together who he is (which is resolved in the second movie). X3 does present both the heroes and villains reactions to the mutant "cure," but does seem slightly slated to the heroes (the X-Men are the ones who struggle with which side their on, Rogue has a small role where she needs to decide what her fate will be, after being mostly a bystander or a MacGuffin in the past stories).
The two Wolverine movies are centered squarely on Logan, no contest. First Class is the origin story for Professor X and Magneto, who get equal time. While Days of Future Past does give Mystique a lot of attention, development, and her decision is what saves the future, the main character focus is arguably young Professor X; he's the one to needs to break out of his depression and find hope again to become the character we know from the future movies.
So, of the seven original movies, the majority are solely hero-focused and the ones where the villains have more screen time are always in balance with the amount of story the heroes get.
That may be, but a weak villain is still a flaw in the movie. A hero can only be as good as the villain and the challenges they present. The MCU has plenty of weak villains and in many cases have hurt the movie (e.g. Thor: The Dark World).
Would a story like that work well as a movie. (That sounds better suited for serialized storytelling, IMHO.)
Yeah, good casts overall, but not quite the same playing field.
The original trilogy was variations on the struggles between mutants and normal humans. However, First Class is primarily about how Professor X and Magneto became the people we know them as. Origins: Wolverine is just Wolverine's backstory, the Second Wolverine movie has nothing to do with the human/mutant "war" and is about Wolverine finding purpose in life again, and Days of Future Past's themes are summed up in two of its lines: "Are we destined down this path, destined to destroy ourselves like so many species before us? Or can we evolve fast enough to change ourselves, change our fate? Is the future truly set?" and "Just because someone stumbles and loses their path, doesn't mean they're lost forever."
So, no, there are different plots used in the series.
Matter of opinion. Bear in mind, some of the movies are set before mutants became widely known and some don't even deal with the issue at all (e.g. Wolverine's solo movies).
See my previous comments about how the villains only have equal time, at best, with the heroes and are not the focus in several of the movies.
They did; it was called Days of Future Past.
Maybe.
We may not have learned much about him, but Xavier, Wolverine, Beast, and Rogue were all given plenty of development or had notable story arcs. While older Nightcrawler was only in one movie, he was given substantial characterization. Even Ice Man and Kitty Pryde made themselves memorable for the few movies they were in.
Let's see, each movie that features the team is about them trying to deal with some kind of threat. The howl point of the school is to be a safe place for mutants to learn what they can do and control their abilities so they can be productive members to society. The X-Men team is just a side offshoot of that.
X1 has Jean Grey speaking to Congress and arguing against the registration act. X3 establishes that Beast is working with the government in regards to mutant affairs. The fights may get the focus, but the X-Men are hardly sitting on their hands in peace time.
Professor X, Magneto, Wolverine, and Mystique did, off the top of my head.
Guardians had a smaller team. The X-Men casts are too large to give everyone the spotlight. Those movies did have to make choices who would get the limelight.
Save yourself the trouble: It stunk.
It might've worked out better if they hadn't made it such a black and white issue. Xavier continually dodges the fact that humans aren't wrong to be afraid and really doesn't much proactively to make things better. He and Magneto both act like Humans have no right to be afraid when that just isn't true.
Also all the other team members get shafted for his and Magneto's little game.
Friggin Stryker gets more focus than the team.
X-Men is about more than Wolverine.
Why just the two of them? Why not anyone else?
Again, shafting everyone else. It's not just about Xavier and Logan on the "Good" side.
I'm sorry, but that empty phrase is tossed around too often. I've been plenty of good movies where the protagonist was interesting enough that the villain didn't have to steal the show.
I think so, yes.
Anthony Hopkins, Sam Jackson, Michael Douglas, etc. MCU just is more willing to give other actors something to work with rather than shaft them for "name" actors.
In a rather one-sided way. But then again the comics are this too.
Originally, it was a Magneto Origin movie. Which explains why everyone else gets shafted as usual. I mean, after their CIA pal gets killed they forget he existed!
They had a chance to do something unexpected with DOFP: Have it turn out that the future war was started by mutants and the Sentinels were a last ditch move by desperate humans, and both sides were equally responsible for the destruction of Earth. Instead they wussed out.
All variations of the same plot in X1, though.
I explained how that could've been done with more nuance.
It would require them to care about anyone who wasn't Xavier or Magneto or Logan.
Bare Bones.
Like I said, have a story where Xavier is incapacitated and the real story is about the internal conflict with some proactive X-Men wanting the school to go public and for them to try and make real change in the world while the more conservative ones want to stay hidden.
If Xavier is to truly be compared to Martin Luther King Jr, he needs to be willing to go out into the world and willing to put himself in danger to proactively change things for mutants and accept that he has to meet humans halfway. Instead he's practically a cult leader humans are right to be suspicious of.
[quote]X1 has Jean Grey speaking to Congress and arguing against the registration act.[/quote]
Craptastically. And this is only in REACTION to the Registration Act, instead of proactively trying to do something without it having to be a response to any Act.
Step in the right direction, but not enough.
Too little.
Still better than X-Men.
Sorry to hear that. (Still planning to see it, though.)
That plot thread is largely meant to be an allegory for prejudice. I'm sure there are places where that breaks down a little.
The game has been a key piece to the franchise, if I understand correctly. It's also the whole human/mutant conflict in a microcosm.
He has also appeared in more movies than many of the characters (X-2, Origins: Wolverine, Days of Future Past), and was the lead villain in half of them.
True, he was only a cameo in First Class and a supporting character in Days of Future Past. He's apparently getting one more movie before being retired and there are plenty of movies slated for future release that don't appear to include him. I think we're okay here.
Maybe because their among the few characters to have major roles in the "future" stories? Maybe because they were the lead characters? (It's also worth noting that Mystique gets more backstory and development in that movie too, as does Hank McCoy.)
Beast played a pretty big role in the "prequels." Jean was important (although a boring character, IMHO). Nightcrawler was only in one movie (before the reboot), but played a pretty important role, as did Yukio.
Okay, then. Suffice to say that, while some of the hero characters were not focused on, X-Men villains did not dominate the screen (IMHO).
Fair enough.
Yeah, both series have had good casts. Maybe we should leave it at that?
Then I don't see the problem.
Not really. Xavier held a decent chunk of the story, Mystique was given more characterization, Beast was given his share of scenes, McTaggert was a consistent ally. I will concede that, outside of Shaw, the Hellfire Club wasn't given a lot to do and some of the supporting X-Men were not as well developed, but A.) Magneto was a lead and B.) shared that pretty equally with Xavier, and C.) the movie also gave other characters origin stories as well.
Huh. Not sure of the relevance.
That wouldn't have worked that well with the time travel story, though.
That's kind of the point.
I thought the movie was pretty good as it was. It's also worth noting we don't know the exact circumstances that originally lead to the Sentinels being unleashed in the future scenes.
Considering other characters have gotten their share of screen time, a lot of spin-offs are in the works, and they made a Deadpool film, there's a good bet they do care about other characters.
Some of those casts got pretty big. Not everyone can have the spotlight.
Good subplot, but there needs to be some kind of external conflict, maybe a problem by some entity and the disagreement factors into how to combat it?
The first movie made a point that outed mutants tended to be not treated well and sometimes even attacked. Xavier's school was specifically designed as a safety zone. Outing the school would ruin that. We also saw his attempts to work in a less secretive manner in First Class; it didn't go well.
Craptastically. And this is only in REACTION to the Registration Act, instead of proactively trying to do something without it having to be a response to any Act.[/quote]
Not really sure what else they could do peacefully. Also, while Kelly does have a few fair points (how do you protect people from criminal mutants), I think he has the worst arguments, he's just more forceful in saying them.
What would be enough, do you think?
Whatever.
As a movie, I did enjoy it more than many of the X-Men movies (Days of Future Past is probably the only exception in that regard). However, they're very different movies, so comparisons don't really work.
I tend to think of any movie with based on a concept from Marvel Comics as a "Marvel movie" and the MCU movies as "Avengers movies" since they all kind of lead into the Avengers movies in some form, whether Avengers is actually in the title or not.
Maybe this could be part of the rebooted Phoenix story they seem to be setting up with the young Jean. They could have a big part of the movie be a conflict between her friends who want to find a way to end the threat of the Phoenix without killing her, while other characters who aren't as attached to her just want to kill her.
In the second film mind-controlled Nightcrawler was clearly dangerous and in the third Xavier was revealed to have long thought Jean could be dangerous (and even Magneto came to regret that he encouraged her to overcome Xavier's restraints).
As an allegory, it falls apart because here the "Wrong" side aren't really in the wrong to be afraid. This isn't skin color prejudice, mutants really are dangerous to defenseless Humans.
It's not, because Humans aren't allowed to be important voices in this series. Xavier presumes to speak for them when he should just ask them what they want.
Thanks to lazy writing.
X-Men is about more than them.
Bare bones, once again.
The movies had the chance to address the problems the comics ignored...and didn't.
He gave them their first base, their vehicles and equipment and assembled the team. No one cared.
Why not? Because Mutants are no longer all innocent victims for once?
That the repetitiveness is lazy?
As usual, the story blames Humanity for everything.
But they hardly even try, that's the point.
Fine, but the internal conflict should be the real focus.
And outing them would be a shake up in the status quo they could do good stories with and actually advance the premise for once.
Unveil the school, make sure it gets tons of cover from the press, have it turn out Xavier has allies in the Government who have Mutant children or mutant family members and have been working to shut down Kelly, have the X-Men be more willing to work with the Government to work out solutions and integrate better.
The X-Men have historically been terrible with PR, which the movies could focus on and resolve.
Forming X-Factor and stuff. ADVANCING the premise.
What are you even talking about?
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