Harry spills another 2500 words about the X-MEN and why it works!

Hey there folks, Harry here. It has been about 8 hours since I posted my review of X-MEN by Bryan Singer. I’ve sat down and gone through all the talkbacks beneath my review, and I figured... well, I’m going to answer some of the questions, expand on thoughts that I initially just barely touched upon.

First up, why I would consider you an asshole for ragging on X-MEN and why the review starts off defensive.

Immediately upon the end of the film, a group of friends came down to where I was sitting and we held an instant little discussion group.

The first to speak was El Cosmico and I. We looked at each other dead in the eye and mutually stated that we loved that movie. That it was the perfect introduction to the X-MEN characters.

Then Robogeek, RoRo, Father Geek and Geek #2 all began chiming in. Now it should be stated that they all liked the film, but all they could talk about were these insignificant fucking fanboy retard bullshit problems. And I was fucking pissed as was El Cosmico, because these friends of ours just never let go. They were fighting with the film.... like fanboys sometimes do.

Their problems were: The score could have been better. Didn’t you think the film was a little uneven? The wire work just didn’t look real.

And that was fucking IT! No complaints about the costumes... they work in context to the film. No complaints about Magneto’s plan. But all they could do was concentrate on these things. Let me address them individually like I did there.

“The score could have been better”

Indeed. But ya know what, you never even notice the score. It never inspires you, but it never repels you. At no point does the score get your adrenaline pumping, but at the same time.... the score never overpowers the film. What was going on onscreen captured my attention. In this film the score isn’t there. It is a saline solution. Doesn’t harm or hurt the film. It’s just there. Packing material. This is a MINOR detail. It would be like this.... Imagine, you get to fuck Elizabeth Hurley, but she left a scratch mark on your back. Yeah, you have a scratch mark.... but DUDE... YOU FUCKING SHAGGED MS KENSINGTON! What the hell are you doing complaining about a scratch.... That’s your badge of fucking honor!

“Didn’t you feel it was a bit uneven?”

Ummmm... NO. This film is only 95 minutes or so. It doesn’t have time to be uneven. It just moves. You ever read the comics? You ever read a stand alone issue? Hey... you ever read X-MEN #1 written by Stan Lee in 1963? In terms of dramatic storytelling and dialogue.... this movie kicks the shit out of the comic. It flows quickly. Giving you information and moving on. Uneven? Yeah.... the movie is not ONE NOTE. One Note would be... a even film.... like BLADE. This film was doing lots of different things. It had compelling villains and heroes. Action scenes and character moments. This is a complete film.

“The wire work just didn’t look real.”

My father said that, and I turned to him and said... “Don’t be a fucking asshole! For crissakes, did you believe that those optic blasts were real, or that the tongue was real.... This is a fantasy. A comic book. The fighting is stylized and hyper real. It is comic bookish, and shitloads better than any of the terrible fight choreography in BATMAN flicks. This looks graceful and flowing, BATMAN was static and uncomfortable with locked down cameras and was shot with a blind eye to excitement. That fight between Mystique and Wolverine ruled the earth.... It was fast and unreal. Much like the fights in CHINESE GHOST STORY!”

Then, in the car ride back I challenged Father Geek to name a single comic adaptation that even approached being this good and faithful.

He named BATMAN MASK OF THE PHANTASM, to which I said... name a live action film. I completely agree, BATMAN: MASK OF THE PHANTASM is by and far the best feature length comic book anything, but it is animated. The perfect and cheapest medium to tell comic book stories.

Father Geek then realized that this one is it. There are GIGANTIC MACK TRUCK SIZED FLAWS with every other comic book adaptation.

I love SUPERMAN and SUPERMAN 2, but... Lex, Otis and Tessmaucher suck like hell. I hate them. Turning Lex into a buffoon. Some sort of conman, a land shark? FUCK THAT, he’s the greatest criminal mind of our time. They have him pontificate about that, but where’s his giant robot? Where are his inventions? Why does he have an incompetent assistant? Why is there that retarded “CAN YOU READ MY MIND” scene? I HATE THAT FUCKING SCENE! SUPERMAN 2.... I prefer. I love the film all the way up till they fuck it in the ass at the end. What the hell was that teleporting, multiple images of Superman crap? What was that fucking white ray coming out of his finger tip? What was that telekinesis crap? BULLSHIT! I mean, in the fight in downtown Metropolis... the movie is PERFECT.... giving up his powers to live with Lois... great.... Lois and Clark/Superman are perfect. Zod and Ursa rule.... Non... sucks. Again, Lex Luthor is a JOKE along with his inbred crime-mates.... Tessmaucher and Otis. BUT... Other than these problems... which are MAJOR problems.... I love these two movies.

There are no bullshit, “Hey, they can’t do that” moments. There is no, “That character wouldn’t do that!” moments in X-MEN.

2 days ago I watched BATMAN, BATMAN RETURNS and BATMAN: MASK OF THE PHANTASM on dvd. Is there one moment after the Joker kills Grissom where he doesn’t SUCK ASS? Not for me there isn’t. His whole, punching TVs, dancing to terrible PRINCE music.... WRONG! Jack Nicholson was too old, too fat and too egotistically self-serving to play the JOKER. Smilex rules. Mass murder.... good plan. But Nicholson set the template for terrible overacting self-centered masturbatory showboating villains in Comic Book Adaptations. All of the, “Ooooh, aren’t I Eeeviiiiillllllllll!!!!????!!!!” bullshit we’ve had to put up with has spawned from this performance! Mark Hamill’s JOKER from the animated series does laps around Nicholson’s. Far far far far far far better. Ooooh, and then there was the fact that these morons KILLED THE JOKER! What the hell is that? I love Tim Burton, but he and Jon Peters and Nicholson and Basinger.... They spent all their time so involved in their own little things. Burton with Anton Furst creating Gotham City (which I loved), but as a result his film became more about design than storytelling. The film became stillborn. Jon Peters, I generally just hold him responsible for everything. Nicholson, because he forced script rewrites to turn the Joker from being... the Joker as Sam Hamm had written him, to a fucking babbling idiot with a Gallagher like destruction fetish! BATMAN was not all it was cracked up to be. It’s marketing campaign was perfect, the look of the film was perfect.... the movie was sloppy and self-indulgent to an extreme.

BATMAN RETURNS? I love this film. However, I don’t like DeVito’s PENGUIN at all. I didn’t like Walken’s character, at all. But, in BATMAN RETURNS, Michelle Pfeiffer created the best comic book character on film ever. Catwoman is perfection. Michelle elevated her game so far above everyone else’s that I was completely uninterested in any of the Penguin’s plans or Max Schrek’s.... Everytime the film concerned itself with them, I resented the time spent away from Batman and Catwoman.

BLADE? Well, had they had a villain worth a shit... had Blade been anything more than just one note. Had the film been more than a music video of hardcore slice-fu... It might’ve been great. But at best, BLADE was just ok. Pretty good.

FLASH GORDON? I dig the shit out of this movie, but why the hell is it so damn campy. Sam Jones is horrible. God those wings are terrible. QUEEN rules the universe. Max Von Sydow was great. Timothy Dalton and Brian Blessed... perfect. Ming’s daughter? Scrumdiddlyumptious! But Dale, Zarkoff and Flash all suck. That FOOTBALL fight scene at the beginning..... FUCKING EMBARRASSING BULLSHIT!

There is NOTHING like those problems with X-MEN. NONE.

Do you know what the common fanboy complaints about the film are going to be? I know this, because I heard friends of mine saying them after the screening this morning.

“I wanted more”

Comic books to me have always been Chinese Food for the mind. 30 minutes after consuming, you want more. It’s crack... you’ve never read enough.

This is an introductory first issue. We join relationships in progress... the story isn’t finished. Wolverine wants to find out what happened to him. Scott and Jean haven’t had that moment on the moon, Dark Phoenix isn’t here yet. Storm has never led the X-MEN yet. There are other mutants out and about. Wolverine hasn’t scuttled about in the sewers covered in human feces to rescue the X-MEN from the Hellfire Club yet.

This kicks the living shit out of say... the first Star Trek film or the first Next Generation film. But it hasn’t pulled it’s Wrath of Khan or Empire Strikes Back yet.

SPOILERS!!!! BEWARE!!!! SPOILERS!!!!!!! I’m going to discuss something about the END OF THE MOVIE!!! RUN!!! SCATTER!!!! HIDE IN THE HILLS!!!!!

The absolute most perfect moment of the film is near the climax of the movie.

Magneto has all of the X-MEN imprisoned inside the head of the Statue of Liberty, metal holding them against the interior of her head. He pins Wolverine’s arms so that if he opens them, they will impale through his chest. He removes Cyclops’ visor, but pins him and Jean Grey facing one another so that... if he opens his eyes, he kills her. And Storm.... if she tries to call down lightening... well... everyone would fry.

Magneto has them.... He’s got Rogue strapped into this machine, he’s going to give her his powers to charge the machine up to do what it’s going to do, but it means killing Rogue. McKellen is trying to convince the X-MEN that his is the righteous way.... by transforming the leaders of the world into mutants, then their causes... mutant kind.... become the causes of the Leaders of the world. There will be no deaths or internment camps or lists. It is a proactive step... for the betterment of mutant kind.

McKellen is completely enthralling in his performance. And Wolverine looks at him and says something to the effect of, “You hypocritical piece of shit, if you believe that, then you should be in that machine yourself!”

And in McKellen’s eyes... in the reaction to Wolverine... You can tell... the statement rings true. He believes in the cause, but not at the expense of his own life. So long as he lives, then it’s ok. And this is when he rises up and out of the statue of liberty’s head and begins the plan.

It is MAGNIFICENT! I loved it. Absolutely dead on.

And at the end of the game.... Ya know... noone is necessarily dead or out of the picture. Sabertooth landed in the water, as did Toad... you don’t see their bodies. You get the idea that Mystique is still around. And ya know what?

THAT is great.

Literally... this movie is exactly what it needs to be to begin to turn around the damage that the BATMAN franchise has inflicted upon us.

Could it have been better? Yeah.... FOX could have fully financed the film, not forced the removal of the DANGER ROOM and BEAST and COLOSSUS. The film SHOULD have been given the post time necessary to hire a new composer upon hearing the Michael Kamen score, which I know for a fact the folks behind X-MEN hate. But FOX took 6 months away from Bryan Singer. Nearly reduced the budget to half. Bryan fought for every single thing he got, and DeSanto fought right by his side. If he had been allowed to shoot for the holiday season.... he would not have lost Ottman to URBAN LEGENDS 2.... And this movie with an Ottman score... dear lord... it would have ruled the earth completely.

I am a hardcore comic book freak. I live... surrounded by the stuff. The girls I date must love this stuff or to hell with them... and ya know what... there are tons of wonderful ladies out there that LOVE the X-MEN... that wanted to grow up to be Rogue or Storm or Jean Grey. Guys wanted to grow up to be Cyclops or Wolverine or Colossus or Nightcrawler.... and ya know what... this movie doesn’t fuck em up!

There they are, right there on that fucking movie screen. They aren’t dancing or singing or acting like fucking retards.... they are acting like the goddamn X-MEN! And if ya don’t like that, well to hell with ya, cause I do.

I’ve been running this site for coming up on 5 years now.... I’ve been promised great Superman and Fantastic Four and Hulk and Batman and Spawn and Hellboy and Iron Man and Green Lantern and X-Men movies, by the development business land of Hollywood. So far... THIS IS IT!

Throughout production of X-MEN... it’s been a fight. This is Hollywood’s best attempt yet.... it isn’t perfect, but damn it’s close enough. It’s a start in the absolute right fucking direction! And if this movie makes money, and it moves forward.... then... ya know what... we might never see another fucking BATMAN AND ROBIN embarrassment.

Perhaps Hollywood will realize that you CAN invest more than a $100 million in this type of film and make something great beyond all belief.

There was a little kid behind me, he was enthralled. As for me.... I’ll see this film again.... and again and again. I will buy this dvd, and dear lord I want Bryan to do a special edition as he would’ve cut it.... had he been allowed to test screen the film... Had he been able to leave additional 20 to 30 minutes in.

I’ve been critical all alongside production of this film. WHY? Because I care. I love these characters and this genre of filmmaking. Bryan Singer and Tom DeSanto should be worshipped for not fucking this up! They did it. They delivered the best superhero film they were allowed to make.

And just like Chinese Food.... it leaves you wanting more!