The X-Men Cinematic Universe (General Discussion)

[The Mighty Monkey of Mim]

No denial, I just don't see the point of people attempting back-flips in an attempt to force Origins to still fit in, even vaguely.
Most of the other movies at least have the basic narrative make sense from one movie to another, even if the *background* stuff is all over the place with careless cameos and inattention to inconsequential details. Origins doesn't even have that. It's a mess from top to bottom. Literally the only takeaways from that movie seems to be "Logan's first name is James" and "had bone claws", neither of which are terribly important and both of which actually originated from the source material.

There's a big difference between "don't sweat the details" and "don't sweat the plot, the narrative, the characters or anything. Now fuck it, just put Nuclear Man in there already!"

So what are you arguing in favour for exactly? That none of the continuity matters regardless, or that Origins is the greatest movie since 'Howard the Duck'?

OK, hoping not to be seen as pressing too aggressively here, but the problem with trying to "argue" anything with you on this is that you just keep repeating the above while pointedly refusing to give actual examples of how the "basic narrative" doesn't fit (beyond the character issues discussed regarding Wade and Emma, the former of which has been tacitly if not explicitly given an explanation by the filmmakers and the latter of which doesn't really require one, and also seems to fall under your "careless cameo" exemption.) You said you just couldn't bear to think about it, which is fair enough, but then you keep coming back to slag it off by saying "it doesn't fit" and "it's terrible" over and over again.

It's far from being my favorite in the series (which would be by far DOFP, but I say that having yet seen neither Deadpool—which just looked really tedious to me from the trailers—nor Apocalypse) but I think the portrayal of James and Victor as brothers is very well done, with the prologue and opening credits montage being fantastic, that Schreiber is particularly excellent in his role, that Huston serves commendably in his as well, and in general I don't really have many complaints apart from not liking or caring about Wade or Gambit at all and some of the truly dreadful CGI. (His adamantium claws looked cartoonish compared to the other films and what ON EARTH were they thinking with that Xavier bit?!)

I mean, it's not a movie I have much if any emotional attachment to, but neither are most of the others in the series to be honest, and as mystified as you seem to be at anyone saying anything remotely resembling a kind word for it, I am equally so with respect to the animus I've so often seen directed towards it, as exemplified before me at the moment by your comments. I certainly would call it better than The Last Stand, that's for damn sure. To me, that was a huge mess from top to bottom. I certainly wouldn't have argued that it "didn't count" before being overwritten in DOFP along with everything but First Class (including Origins beyond the opening credits) on that basis, tough.

Agree to disagree, I guess.

(Oh, and while inane, Howard the Duck isn't quite so bad a film as it's been made out to be by some, either. )

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

Objectively you're probably right, but I don't care because Deadpool is such a better movie and uplifts the rest of the franchise by it's mere existence.

Seriously though, I find it surprising just how attached some people are to Origins. Certainly more attached than anyone actually involved in the thing. It's amazing what some people will tolerate in the interests of being continuity completists. Probably the worse case of mass denial I've seen since the Highlander franchise. Really, there's nothing there of value there worth holding onto.

OK, Highlander is a hot mess that is clearly not meant to fit together. As far as continuity problems go, no one has worse problems than Highlander. I once tried, on a lark, to see if I could come up with some kind of unified theory for Highlander continuity. It involved time travel and "temporal radiation mutating people's DNA so that there would be more immortals." It was so convoluted & stupid, even I didn't understand it half the time. And it still didn't fix some of the dialogue problems between the first 2 movies.

But I liked a lot of X-Men Origins: Wolverine. I'll just let The Mighty Monkey of Mim explain why...

It's far from being my favorite in the series (which would be by far DOFP, but I say that having yet seen neither Deadpool—which just looked really tedious to me from the trailers—nor Apocalypse) but I think the portrayal of James and Victor as brothers is very well done, with the prologue and opening credits montage being fantastic, that Schreiber is particularly excellent in his role, that Huston serves commendably in his as well, and in general I don't really have many complaints apart from not liking or caring about Wade or Gambit at all and some of the truly dreadful CGI.

I pretty much agree with all that, although Taylor Kitsch's portrayal of Gambit has grown on me on subsequent viewings. (I certainly don't expect Channing Tatum to do any better.)

Meanwhile, I kinda don't get the massive success of Deadpool. I get what the movie is trying to do but it's just not nearly as clever as it seems to think it is. I liked some of the character bits with the blind lady & the cab driver but most of Deadpool's one-liners felt juvenile & obvious. It seems like the movie expects credit just for being irreverent. Like, "Oooh! He's making jokes in the middle of an action sequence!" Which might have felt fresh & revolutionary 20 years ago in the days before Joss Whedon (who managed to be both irreverent AND clever). On the "crazy" scale, Deadpool barely moves the needle when put next to movies like Crank: High Voltage & Gremlins 2. And once you take away the dumb humor, all you're left with is a pretty mundane revenge story.

Oh, and while inane, Howard the Duck isn't quite so bad a film as it's been made out to be by some, either.

I need to rewatch that movie. I don't remember it real well but I also don't remember it being as bad as its reputation suggests. I don't remember it being very good either, although I liked some of the stuff with Jeffrey Jones possessed by an alien.

 

[The Mighty Monkey of Mim]

I need to rewatch that movie. I don't remember it real well but I also don't remember it being as bad as its reputation suggests. I don't remember it being very good either, although I liked some of the stuff with Jeffrey Jones possessed by an alien.

Yep, that tallies with my experience of it as well, although I'm not sure I'd say I feel a need to rewatch it! Once was perfectly sufficient, but it most certainly didn't have me going "ye gods, this is terrible" as it clearly did some. It was disposably entertaining (in a non-MST3K sense).

 

[DigificWriter]

With the release of the Logan trailer today, I figured I'd "bump" this thread so people have a 'centralized' place to talk about it.

I really like what the teaser showed us, and the concept of Logan, Xavier, and that girl on a "road trip" of sorts opens up all kinds of neat narrative possibilities.

I've seen some people complaining about the idea that the film undoes the conclusion of Days of Future Past, but as I pointed out somewhere else, it's pretty obvious that there's a large gap of time between said ending and the events of this movie (I can't see said gap being anything fewer than 10 years, to be honest), meaning that they've left themselves plenty of narrative space in which to tell further stories with the original X-cast sans Jackman in the future should they choose to do so.

Superhero Hype seems to be convinced that the villains of this movie are going to be Mister Sinister and his Essex Corp, but I was under the impression that said notion had been disproven. I guess we'll see what comes out between now and March, though.

All in all, I'm really looking forward to this movie, and am psyched that 2017 is going to open up with two really cool takes on the "Science Fiction Western"/"Western Fantasy" trope less than a month apart (The Dark Tower on February 17 and this movie on March 3).

 

[Trekker4747]

This trailer was awesome. I really look forward to this movie because that trailer blew me away. It doesn't seem to completely be an adaptation of "OId Man Logan" but it still looks great.

 

[DigificWriter]

^ It's probably about as close to "Old Man Logan" as they were ever going to be able to get, and I'd rather they just take the general 'gist' of that storyline and apply it to their own mythos anyway, so I'm glad they didn't take the 'easy' route and just 'find and replace' elements from OML with stuff they had access to, but instead seem to be weaving their own original storyline that uses OML as inspiration.

 

[Trekker4747]

Yeah, there's a lot of elements in OML they couldn't have adapted to movie format, and that's before talking about the characters they don't have control over.

 

[DigificWriter]

I said above that it would surprise me if there were fewer than 10 years that had passed between the "future" ending of DoFP and this movie, but I've just seen a synopsis for/description of the movie that dates it to 2024, which is one year after the events of that ending, meaning that something has to have happened to the world to make it so that "all the mutants are gone".

 

[Grendelsbayne]

The trailer looks better than I was necessarily expecting. This could be a really cool movie, and maybe a very different one from anything else in the X-men franchise.

I'm still kind of surprised, though, at the timeline choices they've made. Sure, Wolverine isn't coming back, but going so far out they also shut the door on using any of the other characters here in the main movies (especially a surprise in terms of X-23, who probably isn't even old enough to have been alive at the time of Deadpool). And a world with no more mutants pretty much shuts down the possibility of taking any of these characters forward, either. I mean unless they want x-23 solo movies with just her against the world.

Even more, unless the main X-Men continuity ceases to exist in the next few years, it's pretty much inevitable that Logan will wind up outside continuity, because they can't just kill everyone off.

 

[DigificWriter]

The trailer looks better than I was necessarily expecting. This could be a really cool movie, and maybe a very different one from anything else in the X-men franchise.

I'm still kind of surprised, though, at the timeline choices they've made. Sure, Wolverine isn't coming back, but going so far out they also shut the door on using any of the other characters here in the main movies (especially a surprise in terms of X-23, who probably isn't even old enough to have been alive at the time of Deadpool). And a world with no more mutants pretty much shuts down the possibility of taking any of these characters forward, either. I mean unless they want x-23 solo movies with just her against the world.

Even more, unless the main X-Men continuity ceases to exist in the next few years, it's pretty much inevitable that Logan will wind up outside continuity, because they can't just kill everyone off.

Why not?

If the movie is in fact set in 2024, there are more than 4 decades of open narrative space in which to tell stories involving the X-Men, and they don't actually need Hugh Jackman to come back in order to have Wolverine appear in any of said subsequent movies given the level of technology that exists now and the ability to 'superimpose' CGI onto things.

 

[Grendelsbayne]

Why not?

If the movie is in fact set in 2024, there are more than 4 decades of open narrative space in which to tell stories involving the X-Men, and they don't actually need Hugh Jackman to come back in order to have Wolverine appear in any of said subsequent movies given the level of technology that exists now and the ability to 'superimpose' CGI onto things.

I'll believe it's set only months after DoFP when I see something official, as that seems really strange.

But I'm not entirely sure which part of my post you're asking about, honestly.

Why won't they be able to use the other characters in future movies? Because they're in the future (unless it really does take place in 2024, in which case adult characters could at least be used in the Deadpool movies if they wanted).

Why will Logan inevitably wind up outside of continuity? Because Deadpool takes place in 2016 and it's sequels are going to move forward, not backward, and they certainly aren't going to take place in a world without mutants. Also, I highly doubt the X-men movies themselves are really going to stay in the past indefinitely. That was a good gimmick for First Class and DoFP, but it really fell apart in Apocalypse. Most likely, the next main movie will take place in the 90s or 2000s establishing the new cast as the 'modern' x-men and the rest of the spin-offs will be set in the present day, unless they have a very good reason not to be.

As for using cgi to replace Hugh Jackman... I don't think Fox is dumb enough to try replacing him, except in a total reboot situation, and I certainly don't believe CGI would provide an even remotely reasonable substitute.

 

[DigificWriter]

If you were going to bring Wolverine into future X-Men movies that are set before the events of Logan (which they would inevitably need to be, even if they were set in our present day), the easiest way to do it would be to hire somebody new to play the role and the 'supplement'/'alter' his appearance so that he bears a physical resemblance to Jackman using CGI.

They could do the same thing with the rest of the original X-Men cast as well, although in that case it would be using CGI to 'de-age' them somewhat depending on the setting of any movie(s) involving them.

 

[Grendelsbayne]

If you were going to bring Wolverine into future X-Men movies that are set before the events of Logan (which they would inevitably need to be, even if they were set in our present day), the easiest way to do it would be to hire somebody new to play the role and the 'supplement'/'alter' his appearance so that he bears a physical resemblance to Jackman using CGI.

They could do the same thing with the rest of the original X-Men cast as well, although in that case it would be using CGI to 'de-age' them somewhat depending on the setting of any movie(s) involving them.

No, the easiest way to do it would simply be to recast Wolverine (like they've already done for several other characters - McAvoy is not going to look more and more like Patrick Stewart as time moves forward, but he is Xavier nonetheless). Even so, Hugh Jackman's portrayal was a cut above in terms of popularity and Wolverine's all encompassing presence was one of the biggest complaints non-Jackman fans had about the series. So since a non-Jackman Wolverine of any description is no guaranteed hit, Fox will take the easy road and just not use him. Especially now that they have a huge success in Deadpool.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

I'll believe it's set only months after DoFP when I see something official, as that seems really strange.

Yeah, seems like that isn't enough time for Xavier and Logan to look that old seeing as Logan was only starting to go grey around the 2020s.

 

[Trekker4747]

Look, the entire X-Men movie franchise has a mess of a time-line despite how much they've tried to blur and adapt it.

 

[M'rk son of Mogh]

To me, the timeline is almost the most comicbook thing about these movies. You have characters that barely age from the 60's to now, and it's almost like what they're doing with the movies. Just picking an era and telling the story they want to tell. What year does Logan take place? Who cares, all that matters is it's the future. Just like the comics, years stop mattering, you just need to know "this story takes place in the past", "this story takes place in the present" and "this story takes place in the future".

 

[Mr. Adventure]

Yeah, it seems to me the comics were always a mess themselves with continuity and timelines. Is Wolverine in Madripoor or in NY with the X-Men or off in the Savage Land? When Claremont was writing pretty much everything they did their best but after a while it would get off and you just kind of accepted whatever was happening in the time and place of the title you were reading and it was OK as long as they did right by the characters.

 

[DigificWriter]

Just as an FYI for anybody who's looking for info on "Logan": don't pay attention to what Superhero Hype is saying about the movie, because they're currently reporting inaccurate information, such as the insistence that Richard E. Grant is playing Nathaniel Essex/Mr. Sinister (he's not, having been confirmed to be playing Dr. Zander Rice), that Sinister and Essex Corp are involved in the movie (there's no evidence of that in what's been released thus far), and that Sienna Novikov is playing Laura/The Girl (she's not, as it's been confirmed that the role is in fact being played by Dafne Keen).

 

[JD]

I said above that it would surprise me if there were fewer than 10 years that had passed between the "future" ending of DoFP and this movie, but I've just seen a synopsis for/description of the movie that dates it to 2024, which is one year after the events of that ending, meaning that something has to have happened to the world to make it so that "all the mutants are gone".

The trailer looks better than I was necessarily expecting. This could be a really cool movie, and maybe a very different one from anything else in the X-men franchise.

I'm still kind of surprised, though, at the timeline choices they've made. Sure, Wolverine isn't coming back, but going so far out they also shut the door on using any of the other characters here in the main movies (especially a surprise in terms of X-23, who probably isn't even old enough to have been alive at the time of Deadpool). And a world with no more mutants pretty much shuts down the possibility of taking any of these characters forward, either. I mean unless they want x-23 solo movies with just her against the world.

Even more, unless the main X-Men continuity ceases to exist in the next few years, it's pretty much inevitable that Logan will wind up outside continuity, because they can't just kill everyone off.

Yeah, it does seem strange that they would place this so close to now, and so close to the end of DoFP. Even if they don't have immediate plans to go back to those versions of the characters you'd think they'd want to leave their fates open just in case. It's also only 8 years away, and that's pretty close to now if they plan on continuing to do present day stories. To me the smart thing would be to set any future story that isn't specifically presented as an alternate timeline at least 15-20 from now.

If you were going to bring Wolverine into future X-Men movies that are set before the events of Logan (which they would inevitably need to be, even if they were set in our present day), the easiest way to do it would be to hire somebody new to play the role and the 'supplement'/'alter' his appearance so that he bears a physical resemblance to Jackman using CGI.

They could do the same thing with the rest of the original X-Men cast as well, although in that case it would be using CGI to 'de-age' them somewhat depending on the setting of any movie(s) involving them.

I don't really see that being a real possibility for anything more than a cameo. Doing that for a character with a significant role would probably take up a lot of the effects budget that could probably be used in a lot of other places, especially in a series that has a lot of other big effects sequences. If it came down to a big battle with powers being thrown around like the beginning of DOFP or an actor having his face replaced with Hugh Jackman's, I'd rather get the battle.

 

[Set Harth]

that Sinister and Essex Corp are involved in the movie (there's no evidence of that in what's been released thus far)

For whatever it's worth, this is the text blurb attached to the Logan trailer on my cable system:

Spoiler

Logan and Professor Charles Xavier deal with the loss of the X-Men when Nathaniel Essex' corporation is out to destroy the world.

and that Sienna Novikov is playing Laura/The Girl (she's not, as it's been confirmed that the role is in fact being played by Dafne Keen).

If the girl is who she appears to be ( "She's like you. Very much like you"), the end of Apocalypse implies that her existence alone is a connection to Sinister/Essex.