X3: Let's Hope This is Really the Last Stand

While I generally agree with the majority of Michael's sentiments about X3, my final grade comes in a bit lower: C-. As Michael suggested, the movie was entertaining summer blockbuster fare. However, I couldn't get past some of the significant changes to X-canon. My inner geek wouldn't stop saying, "That's not how it's supposed to happen." The changes in X1 & X2, all handled much more deftly, didn't set off the geek red alert; the klaxon blared all the way through X3. Here are a few of the changes that REALLY irritated me.

First, how many freakin X-plotlines do writers need to mash together? Do we really need to see the Dark Phoenix Saga, the Mutant Massacre, the mutant cure, Days of Future Past, and I don't know how many freakin other plots rolled into one movie? Smashing all these plots stuck in my craw more than anything else. The Dark Phoenix Saga is one of my favorite comic book stories of all time. This movie totally blew it. Jean kills Scott seconds after her rebirth? WTF? The final moment between Scott and Jean in Uncanny Xmen 137 is one of the only times I've shed a tear while reading a comic. Pathetic execution. Don't even get me started on the death of Professor X. What was the point with that scene?

Second, why was there NO mention of the Phoenix Force whatsoever? Dark Phoenix was not Darth Jean; Dark Phoenix was an interstellar cosmic lifeforce doppelganger of Jean Grey pushed to the brink of insanity by the villanous mutant, Mastermind (part of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants and the Hellfire Club, I believe). Jean's psychic imprint, fused with the Phoenix Force, battled the cosmic entity for control of the doppelganger.* Why couldn't this have been the main focus of this film? Call me a comic book geek, but I think this version of the Dark Phoenix story would have been far more compelling than the crapfest showing on the big screen. Tweak the plot a bit, have Jean using her newfound powers in some ethically questionable ways (do the ends justify the means kind of thing), a clash or two with Magneto & the Brotherhood, the X-men are ultimately forced to confront Jean (a battle with Xavier in the psionic realm, a physical confrontation with the others, etc). Scott lives, Xavier lives, and all the X-men must deal with Jean's eventual suicide (sorry if I spoiled the basic plot to Uncanny X-men 137). This could have been a beautiful film about ethics, the means by which we should address hatred, self-sacrifice, etc. Instead, we get multiple personality Jean joining forces with Magneto and the Brotherhood of Whimpy Mutants. A similar rewrite of the Mutant Massacre plotline could also result in an engaging film. Pick one plot and develop it, please. I like stories and characters with depth.

Third, the lameness that was the Juggernaut: "I'm the Juggernaut, bitch?" Dave Chappel does the X-men? Ugh. Juggernaut's powers were the result of magic, not the mutant x-gene. Save him for a future movie or don't use him at all. While I liked the race between Kitty and Juggernaut, I couldn't stand the way she stopped him.

Fourth, have I mentioned the lame demise of Cyclops? How about Professor X? Senseless. Senseless. Senseless. When characters die just to enhance the threat factor of the big bad, you have a case of bad writing (or two cases of bad writing). Deaths should be meaningful, not meaningless.

Fifth, what was with the combined Callisto/Caliban/Quicksilver character?

I could go on and on with the little things about this film that irked me (how about that lame Sentinal sequence, eh?), but I'll stop here. Although I disliked all the unecessary deviations from canon, the film was an entertaining way to spend a Wednesday afternoon.

*At the time, none of us knew the reborn Jean Grey was a duplicate. We all assumed the Phoenix Force possessed Jean's orginal body.

X3

Warning!
This post contains spoilers about X-Men: The Last Stand. If you haven't seen X3 yet, don't read this post!
(Of course, if you haven't seen X3 yet, it's a wonder you're reading this blog at all....)

Yes, I was one of the millions who saw X-Men: The Last Stand over the weekend. Although I didn't like it quite as well as the first two movies, it was generally satisfactory. Here are my impressions.

The Good
* The Iceman/Pyro fight. The effects here were decent, and it was great to see Bobby all iced up. The closing dialogue was great, too. Pyro: "You should have stayed in the school." Iceman: [after taking Pyro out with a head-butt] "You never should have left."
* Beast. When I first heard they were casting Kelsey Grammer in the roll, I had my doubts. I was wrong. He was perfect. The voice, the attitude, the intonation, the "Oh my stars and garters" were all perfect. Whenever I read X-Men from now on, I'll probably hear Frasier's voice for Beast.
* Mystique's revenge. After being Magneto's right-hand woman (and lover?), he casts her away when she loses her powers. Big mistake. This woman is not someone to have as an enemy, no matter who you are.
* Kitty. I love the way she took out Juggernaut. Classic.
* The Fastball Special. "Hey, Tin Man, how's your throwing arm?"
* Magneto. For the first time, we really see him as a villain. Yes, he's been annoying and arrogant before, but here we get to see him for what he really is: a racist and a ruthless b@stard.

The Bad
* The effects. Too much of the CGI looked like CGI: the bouncing blue Beast, Jean's vaporization effect (especially in the big fight), and so on. Per a conversation in the gaming group last week, there's no excuse for poor CGI in a big-budget movie anymore.
* The death of Charles Xavier. Sure, his "I want you to take over the school someday" speech to Storm was a fair bit of foreshadowing. But to have him die so early in the movie felt anticlimactic. I suppose the plot required his early demise, but I'd have liked to see more of him.
* The death of Scott Summers. Leader of the X-Men, Charles Xavier's prize pupil and chosen successor, he doesn't even rate an on-screen death. At least it's consistent with the comics: nobody gets screwed by his writers quite like Cyclops.
* Jean's descent into madness. We didn't get to see enough of what made her evil: the battle within between her humanity and her lust for power. A few moments inside Jean's mind and/or a well-placed mental flashback or two would have made a world of difference.

The Ugly
* Jean's appearance. Granted, the makeup people did a good job of making Jean look creepy. But the Phoenix is supposed to be a creature of great passion - great joy and great rage. But she didn't look passionate in most of her scenes. She looked constipated.

Overall, I give this movie a B-. The plot wasn't as deep and the dialogue seemed forced much of the time, but there were also a lot of bits in there that kept the movie true to the franchise. In general, it was entertaining. I'll undoubtedly buy it, probably later this year when the three-movie box set comes out.

The Turning Point

Dear Diary,

The past few days have been the hardest I've had since my parents died.

The year I spent in the foster home was unpleasant, but it was nothing like this. As much as I hated the place, I knew I was never in danger there. Even as messed up as I was, I knew I could handle anything that happened there. It was like a shelter from the real world. I knew that as long as I was there, I didn't have to face the nightmare that put me there.

These past few days, I've had to face the nightmare again.

I met the New Champions while I was still in the home. They were good to me, and Jeopardy told me to contact them when I turned 18 and got my life straightened out. So I did. I cleaned up my act, and by the time I turned 18, I'd done a lot of growing up. I got in touch with them again, and they seemed happy to see me. (Especially Terminal Velocity. The boy's a shameless flirt, but he's got a good heart.) They invited me to join, even gave me a radio and a costume. So I've spent the last few months as a superhero, fighting crime and busting VIPER a couple of times.

But I never had to face Genocide until now.

Things started out pretty normal. I got a call from Jeopardy saying they needed my help. I showed up in the warehouse district, and they asked me to run recon for them. I noticed a 'suspicious vehicle'. (I always wondered what that phrase meant on TV. Now I know.) T.V. went to deal with them. Then Jeopardy radioed me and asked me to see how much dry ice I could get hold of. She didn't say what for, but there was something really scary in her voice. She hasn't told me what was going on, and I haven't dared ask yet. I feel a special connection with her, but there's something about here that still scares me a little.

From there we rendezvoused with Blindside and Deadboy. Deadboy is friends with this rock band that's also publicly known as mutants. Someone had found out about a plot to attack the band at their concert the next evening. We started investigating, and the trail led to Genocide. They had stolen a blimp, and from the sound of it, equipped it with a cloaking device. We told Defender II about it, and he passed it on to the local authorities. But we knew they wouldn't be able to do anything about it.

So took up places at the stadium for the concert. Deadboy was on stage with the band. He fit right in with all that gothic stuff he usually wears. (I worry about him a little sometimes.) Blindside was in the crowd, and Jeopardy was outside the stadium in the parking lot. T.V. was running around all over the place like he normally does. Since I'm really the only flier in the group, I was on top of the skyboxes on the west side.

We were about half an hour into the concert when everything happened all at once. We got a reading on the blimp. T.V. ran up to where I was, and we took off. Meanwhile, a series of foam grenades went off and sealed all the stadium exits. And a truck crashed in the parking lot, and some sort of robot climbed out of the wreckage. So T.V. and I were going after the blimp, Jeopardy started fighting the robot, Blindside tried to clear the exits, and Deadboy was trying to keep the crowd from knowing that anything was even wrong.

At this point, I really only know what I was involved in. We managed to find the blimp, but not before I got hit with some kind of energy ray. I don't know what it was, but it made it a lot harder for me to fly. Still, I got us onto the blimp, but not before they started spraying napalm. We weren't quite over the stadium, so none of it fell onto the crowd. T.V. knocked one of the agents out of the blimp, then started working on closing the valves from the fuel tanks. I fought the other agent for a minute, but he jumped out and activated his jetpack. I don't know how I forgot they had those. It was those damn jetpacks that helped me identify Genocide as the people who killed my parents.

Anyway, as T.V. got the valves closed, the two agents started shooting at the storage tanks. If they punctured those tanks, they'd explode and rain napalm down on the city. So I shot at one of the agents and knocked him unconscious. As he started to fall, I realized he'd never survive a fall from that height, even with his armor. Before I could go after him, though, the other one got off a lucky shot and blew the tanks. T.V. got out just before the explosion, and I went after him. I caught him and got him safely to the ground. The agent who blew up the tanks got away. I never found out what happened to the other one.

Those agents meant to kill everyone in that stadium, just because the band on stage was made up of mutants. Thousands of people, most of them normal people, would have died if we hadn't been there. If that's not pure evil, then I don't know what is.

I've spent most of the last two years beating myself up over my parents' deaths. That stops today. It's time to start beating up the people who were really responsible.

I've told myself that if I hadn't snuck out that night, my parents wouldn't have been out looking for me and Genocide would never have found them. But I was only a couple of blocks from home when it happened. Those agents were in my own neighborhood. I don't know who they were looking for, but they would have found my family that night one way or another if that's why they were there. The only thing that would have been different is that I would have died with them. But Genocide didn't kill me that night, and that was their mistake.

I'm going to spend the rest of my life making them pay for that mistake.

(From the diary of Morningstar)