Right, right, and right. A girl in junior high school who knew I was way into Star Wars complained to me about Empire ending on a cliffhanger. She also complained about it cutting back and forth a lot between Luke and Han and gang. I personally didn't feel short-changed by the cliffhanger, but I guess someone who doesn't love Star Wars might have felt ripped off.
Precisely. The Matrix works in the same way. The film is a great stand alone and if you never see the sequels, you're not at a disadvantage, you've still seen a complete film (in fact, it's almost better if you don't watch The Matrix Sequels). Yes, room is left for a sequel in a way that doesn't feel contrived, but that's not the same as leaving the story unresolved.
...or someone who just isn't down with the idea of a cliffhanger in a film series. She must have hated The Matrix Reloaded. I don't even want to think about what must have happened at the end of The Fellowship of the Ring.
heh, I remember all the compaints about how stupid it was the movie didn't even have an ending. I don't remember any Internet Kerfluffle, but, definitely real life folks complained.
Well, keep in mind this was a girl I knew over 30 years ago, since that's when Empire came out and this convo took place. This was pre-Internet days too; TV cable was just getting strung in our town! Gasp! In all fairness, I wasn't too thrilled with The Matrix Reloaded either, but not because it was a cliffhanger. In fact, as far as I can tell, TESB was what brought the idea of movie cliffhangers back into the mainstream. Too true.
Just finished rewatching this. Been a few years since I sat down and watched it. While X2 is my favorite, I felt I couldn't watch that one without refreshing myself on the original. Still good film, I did see it in theaters three times after all. Though I do have to agree with others in saying that it really does feel like a set up for a bigger sequel (which, looking back now, it kind of is). Shame X3 is so bad (again, imo) because the universe set up in this film is so vast and rich it could have endured a few more sequels (not prequels, or reboots).
I feel just the opposite, really: The X-Men Universe was shortchanged in the translation to screen and came off as minimalistic and bland.
It's the ending of the film that feels like a set up for a sequel because that is precisely how it was constructed to be. Just as X2 was designed to be a set up for X3.
Last month in this thread, TremblingBluStar and I had a lively and interesting debate about whether Magneto's plan in the X-Men film made sense: if he had succeeded in turning the world's political leaders into mutants (or rather, mutates), would that have resulted in their removal from office, or would it have had no effect on their legal eligibility? I thought this would be an interesting topic for the folks at the excellent Law and the Multiverse blog, which examines legal questions in superhero fiction. And I'm pleased to report that they agreed, and their post on the topic is now up. They suggest four possible ways a sitting president could be removed from office. The first is impeachment, and they have this to say: Second is invoking the 25th Amendment, and this one's rather interesting and a bit alarming: This basically means the vice president can effectively stage a coup, providing he or she has the support of the majority of Congress and the Cabinet. The L&tM folks add: The third method is passing a law to add a new qualification for the presidency, e.g. that you have to be human and free of the mutant X gene. This is the most unlikely option, because: The fourth option is a Constitutional amendment banning mutants from being POTUS, but that would require overwhelming popular support for anti-mutant policies, since an amendment requires a 2/3 supermajority in Congress before it's even put to the states, and a 75% "super super majority" of the states in order to be ratified. And I imagine that would be a very lengthy and contentious process. So it sounds like the answer is somewhere between TBS's position and mine. Removal of the President for being a mutant/mutate is could theoretically be done, but it would be far from easy to achieve it, and certainly not automatic or inevitable. The law and the Constitution make it quite difficult, but if there were really, really strong support in the government and the public for the removal of a mutated president, and if the president were unable to rally enough support to counter it, then it could happen. The most likely route would probably be impeachment on some other, trumped-up charge (like, say, lying under oath about an affair), so the president wouldn't technically be removed for being mutated, but that would be the underlying motive. The 25th Amendment route would be the second-most likely, I'd say. Normally the Cabinet would be unlikely to turn on the president who appointed them, but if enough of them were anti-mutant, they might abandon him/her after such a transformation. So I guess it ultimately comes down to how powerful the anti-mutant sentiment is among the people and the government -- and probably somewhat to the specific nature of the president's mutation. If it were something physically frightening or disturbing, or overtly dangerous, that would increase the odds of the POTUS's removal. But if it were a subtler, more inward mutation, that probably wouldn't scare off enough people to pass the very high threshold for removal. (And of course it could always be a mutation that made the POTUS even more appealing, like pheromones or a hypnotic voice or something. Then it would be easy for the president to hold onto the office.)
Knowing what we knew ultimately happened to Senator Kelly, it's quite fortunate that Magneto's plan did NOT succeed.
Well, yeah, but since Magneto's plan was to mutate the world leaders in a way that left them alive, that's what we mean when we talk about his plan succeeding -- not just succeeding in irradiating the world leaders, but having the radiation do what he wanted it to do rather than what it actually did to Kelly.
After seeing something like that, I was expecting a recap of events, although this is kinda true, addressing your "lively debate" with a wall of text a good month after the last post in this thread does not seem logical.
^Well, it took that long for the folks on Law and the Multiverse to craft and post their response to my question (since they presumably had to research and ponder the legal issues first), and my intent was to direct folks here to their analysis, and just to their blog in general, which is really interesting.