Wolverine is a Marvel mascot, like Hulk, Spiderman & Capt. America. So of course they're going to feature him more than the other characters. He represents Marvel. Even in the X-Men comics it's not truely an ensemble, Wolverine has always gotten more attention than many of the other X-Men. When has Ice-Man or Forge ever been given equal focus to that of Wolverine or even Cyclops?
X-MEN: FIRST CLASS (Casting, Rumors, Pics till release)
- Thread starter Obiwanshinobi
- Start date
True story: when I wrote my X-MEN trilogy years ago, I was told I could use any six X-Men--but Wolverine had to be one of them.
Not that I'm complaining. I wanted the books to sell, too!
-Wolverine
-Deadpool
-Spider-Man
Those three seem to be Marvel's most popular characters right now. Maybe not in that order but pretty close.
Greg you have any idea if "X-Men: First Class" is going to get a novelization? I have a feeling it won't
-Deadpool
-Spider-Man
Those three seem to be Marvel's most popular characters right now. Maybe not in that order but pretty close.
Greg you have any idea if "X-Men: First Class" is going to get a novelization? I have a feeling it won't
I don't think Spiderman was ever NOT popular.-Wolverine
-Deadpool
-Spider-Man
Those three seem to be Marvel's most popular characters right now. Maybe not in that order but pretty close.
Greg you have any idea if "X-Men: First Class" is going to get a novelization? I have a feeling it won't
I remember him even being on the "Electric Company" back on the 70's.
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Greg you have any idea if "X-Men: First Class" is going to get a novelization? I have a feeling it won't
I haven't heard anything.
It's actually driving me nuts that there are all these cool superhero movies coming out--and nobody has hired me to novelize any of them.
(I would love to write GREEN LANTERN or THOR.)
It's still possible to make Wolverine a main character - the lead even - without pushing everybody else into the background. Again, the cartoons (Wolverine and the X-Men aside) did this very well.
Eh, I've heard that argument before, but it seems like such a minor thing. Wolverines are known more for their ferocity and their unending tenacity than for their size, and that definitely describes Logan. Besides, maybe the person that gave him that name was a Michigan grad.
Wolverine became a Marvel mascot due to the ridiculous push they gave him to be in everything over the last 10 years. Nobody's saying he's not a hugely important part of the X-Men - but it's also silly to say it's not truly an ensemble team in the comics. You torpedo your own point when you say "many" of the other X-Men, not all. Iceman or Forge might not have gotten equal focus, no. But Cyclops, Jean Grey, Storm, Rogue, Beast - they all have.
I think your overstating the films' merits, but to each his own. I suppose it's true that the X-films did contribute to the current crop of superhero films by not being cheesy and being generally respectable overall, but I don't think that alone makes a film exceptional as a film. It just means that audiences had come to expect schlok like Batman and Robin from the genre.
If you take away what makes a film exceptional, then nothing exceptional remains, obviously. And I agree that much of Iron Man was fairly standard fare, but certain key elements rose above the formula.
To a degree, I think Batman himself has always been a problem for Batman movies. It's apparently quite difficult to capture on film what makes the character so awesome in the comics, since I don't think even The Dark Knight succeeds in doing that until the final sequence. The weakest link in that whole movie is Bale as Batman, just as Keaton as Batman is often cited as a weakness of the Burton film. In both cases, it's the Joker and the overall canvas that stand out, despite the obvious chasm that separates the two films in so many important respects.
The success of "X-Men" arguably set into the motion the current comic book movie genre. I remember there was a line of dialogue in "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back" where Ben Affleck's character explains to Jay (when the latter finds out that they're making a Bluntman and Chronic movie) that after X-Men's success hollywood studios immediately started buying rights to various comic books seeing the inevitable money tree. If "X-Men" had been a bomb...it'd be interesting to see the current state of the genre. I doubt that we would have got the barrage of films since then.
That's a good point. I need to remember that.
After all, if you take away the brilliant dialogue and amazing star power from CASABLANCA, it's just a routine wartime melodrama.
But those exceptional qualities make all the difference.
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Wouldn't have mattered. Spiderman opened the next year and people would just be using that as a point of reference for the "explosion of comic films". If Spidey hadn't already been in production then an X-Men failure would've been interesting from an impact perspective.
I'll always recall that Spidey teaser we got summer '00 of Spidey webbing up some bank robbers between the Twin Towers.
The teaser was in summer 2001 and Spider-Man was released in summer 2002, two years after X-Men. But I agree that Spider-Man would have been made regardless of whether X-Men bombed or not, so that would have fueled the wave of superhero movies anyway. The wave just would have started a bit later.Wouldn't have mattered. Spiderman opened the next year and people would just be using that as a point of reference for the "explosion of comic films". If Spidey hadn't already been in production then an X-Men failure would've been interesting from an impact perspective.
I'll always recall that Spidey teaser we got summer '00 of Spidey webbing up some bank robbers between the Twin Towers.
^ But I suspect if X-Men had bombed, Sony would have gone with a more commercial director like Chris Columbus, or others on their shortlist, than someone like Sam Raimi, who, like Singer, was not associated with big-budget fare.
Interesting. I wasn't told I had to use Wolverine in my X-Men novel. I used him because I found the character intriguing as he was portrayed in Claremont's comics and the '90s animated series (not necessarily in that order).
No, it's the other way around. Wolverine has been a popular, standout character since the '80s. I believe he was the first X-Man to get a self-titled spinoff in the comics. Yes, it's true that the emphasis on the character has been greatly increased in the past decade due to his high profile in the movies, but his high profile in the movies was due to his already-high profile in the comics.
As for why Wolverine became such a dominant character in the movies, I think that's all due to Jackman. However revisionist I feel the take on "Wolverine as leading man" is, the fact is that Jackman makes a very effective leading man, audiences responded to that, and the filmmakers gave the audience what they wanted. You can never predict or control which actors will become the breakout stars of something. Gene Roddenberry had no idea that Spock would become hugely more popular than Kirk. Garry Marshall had no idea that Fonzie would overshadow the rest of the Happy Days cast. And let's not even think about Urkel. Breakout characters can come from unexpected directions, and it's because of the appeal of the actors who play them, the unpredictable alchemy they bring to their roles. If Hugh Jackman had been cast as Cyclops, then Cyclops would've been the star of the trilogy and the one getting solo spinoffs.
I do find X-Men to be a flawed film in a number of ways; it's improved by the restoration of most of the deleted scenes. But I think it's a good movie overall, one of the better entries in the genre. And while X2 has its weaknesses (mainly, why the hell did Jean have to leave the Blackbird at the climax at all?), I think that overall it's one of the best of the Marvel superhero movies, surpassed only by the first two Spidey films.
But were they really key elements? That's what I'm saying. It had exceptional style, but no exceptional substance. So while I had fun while I was watching it, I felt unsatisfied and empty almost immediately thereafter. That's not the mark of a genuinely great film, merely of an entertaining piece of fluff.
My problem with Burton's Batman isn't just Keaton, it's the whole conception of the character, particularly his casualness about blowing up the bad guys. Basically Burton and Sam Hamm went back to the earliest 1939 Batman stories and built on that in their own direction, ignoring all subsequent character development in the comics, such as Batman's reverence for life. And so it was practically a completely different character.
And the Joker was not in Burton's movie. The villain in that movie was Jack Nicholson in whiteface. Outside of A Few Good Men, I've never seen Jack Nicholson play any character other than Jack Nicholson, and I've never understood the appeal of that.
Maybe, but maybe not.
Not necessarily. A breakout performance is usually a combination of the right actor playing the right role at the right time. Any number of actors have plugged away without getting much attention until they get the right role which is then a breakout for them. Hugh Jackman's decidedly mixed box office appeal since becoming a star suggests the audience won't follow him in any role, but they responded to him very favorably in the role of Wolverine, something that wouldn't be a given if he had played another character.
^ Thankfully, we'll never know now!
A fair point. Either way, the point is that it depends on casting as much as writing, so you can't predict which characters will work better than others. If Dougray Scott had been kept as Wolverine, the character probably wouldn't have become so dominant. And if somebody more engaging than James Marsden had been cast as Cyclops, maybe that character would've been more popular.
^^^
Yeah, I agree with you there.
Yeah, I agree with you there.
I have no idea what you're talking about.
Wolverine has been a Marvel mascot for way, way more than 10 years. Try more like over 30.
That's before any "push" was given to him. He was already considered a comic icon in the early 80's way back when his costume was brown. It was during that period Marvel elevated him to mascot which I also believe was due to Frank Miller's one shot story.
I could sworn their are more X-Men than just 5.
So you've supported my point in how they focus on specific ones over others. That's not an ensemble. An ensemble is when all are represented equally in harmony.
A cartoon is nothing like doing a movie.
The cartoon had 26 episodes spread out over a year to do this, a movie has 2 hours or less.
They're also scripted differently.
As Broccoli was correct in pointing out, with a movie you go by what the audience wants.
They wanted more Jackman as Wolverine, it was one of the main factors in him getting his own film(s).
Folks asking for less Wolvie are in the minority.
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It's interesting to think how things might have gone with the various alternative names in the mix. Scott as Wolverine and Jim Cavaziel as Cyclops are the most obvious one, but IIRC, the likes of Mel Gibson, Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce and Gary Sinise were contenders for Logan, while Ed Norton and Vince Vaughn were also said to be up for Scott.
Gary Sinise wouldn't have been a bad choice either.