X-Men General Movie Thread

At least they won't use Magneto like he is freaking Fox's Tony Stark.

I just realized that if the MCU is going to incorporate Magneto into their films, they're going to find a way to work around his Holocaust backstory. By the time the X-Men are brought in, most Holocaust survivors will have either died off or be extremely old. If Erik was five during the last years of the war, he would be 75 by the time Phase Four starts. Sadly, there aren't that many actors who can accomplish the stunts required for a huge supervillain like that.

So, there's a few options that can be done in this case.

A) Have Magneto have slowed aging as one of his superpowers so he could be played by a younger actor. I think this is what the comics went with to explain how he's still so fit after all these years.

B) Pull a Captain America and have Magneto be a man out-of-time. Maybe he's been frozen or trapped in another dimension, but this still allows the character to be played a younger actor.

C) Remove or ignore the Holocaust backstory. This would be the most controversial option. Whether they would have Erik be a victim of a more recent genocide (real or fictional) or simply write a new backstory for him, I wouldn't know. But this is an option I could see happening.

Edited by chasemaddigan on Nov 18th 2018 at 12:40:38 PM

I brought up a similar argument in the X-men thread. There are people from that time who're still alive, but still, the point that Eric would be incredibly old is still on point.

I am curious as to how they are gonna address it. X-Men: Evolution revealed that he used the rebirth chamber that created Captain America to slow his aging....which is actually a trick they could pull again.

In that series, it was deadly to normal humans so Cap had to be put on ice, but mutants could safely use it. They could drop the former part since Steve is obviously not suffering any after affects. So they actually already have the tools to explain Eric still being so spry.

I wonder what actors they'll use for them?

Elle Fanning as Jean Grey.

Edited by TargetmasterJoe on Nov 19th 2018 at 8:49:30 AM

You jest, but I can see it.

Anything other than Xavier mind wipe or crossover of the universes can work for me.

From the mouth of Hugh Jackman himself, Bryan Singer apparently banned anyone from reading X-Men comics on the set. As a result, Hugh had to have his fill of reading material on the down-low via Kevin Feige.

Evidently, Bryan wanted the characters to be three dimensional for those who didn’t follow comics. Yeah. Fine. But then again, he’s been recently disgraced due to misconduct, sexual and otherwise, so forget what he thinks, right?

(I'd ask what is it with some filmmakers and not wanting to follow comics, but I guess the answer boils down to “they think the comics are too ridiculous and they’ll do fine without reading them” smh.)

Why did they hire him if he wasn't going to have the comics be an influence?

I think because back then it was thought that not adhering too much to the comics was a good thing.

and it was a stupid idea

Edited by Drakon69 on Nov 22nd 2018 at 10:44:27 PM

Times have changed obviously and let it be known that "no reading comics" rule was also used in Fant4tic & we all know how that turned out.

Because they trusted his creative vision and felt that hiring a fan would bind them too much to the source material's flaws that the movie would be more niche then broad enough for a general audience. And considering the success of the first X-Man film kicked off an entire franchise I'd say that, at the time at any rate, they made a good call there.

Nothing wrong with using/respecting the source but there's no point to being an utter slave to it either in my view.

Completely banning comics isn't what I'd call respecting the source-material though.

Rather helps explain why several of the characters could be rather bland.

Edited by slimcoder on Nov 22nd 2018 at 2:44:26 AM

Obviously this is not the norm in 2018, but the 2000's had Power Ranger Green Goblin so..

Well, the first X-Men movie started production two years after the release of Batman & Robin. It's easy to understand why Singer didn't want to adapt the more colorful parts of the comics.

It was a different time, and the original X-Men's greyish, oppressive "realism" was innovative for that time. Back then, a lot of actors — good actors, like Willem Dafoe or Tommy Lee Jones — took "comic book movie" as an excuse to ham it up. I suppose banning comic books from the set was a way of saying "No, play this like any other dramatic action movie." And it worked, to some extent. Not every performance, and it comes across as fairly dry now, but it established a different bar, thanks to your Hugh Jackmans, your Ian Mc Kellens and Patrick Stewarts, who brought a lot of texture to what could have been a pretty sombre bunch of talking heads.

Bryan Singer's early career, X-Men included, seems to show he was good at the '90s suspense thing, paranoia, tense silence, static shots. He wasn't particularly good at directing action, or apparently at being much fun, and that seemingly hadn't changed as of Apocalypse. I guess he was too busy abusing the power of his position for that.

Edited by Unsung on Nov 22nd 2018 at 10:55:21 AM

But Singer forgets that X-Men is an ensemble comic, it's not one main character but several. As a result, the movies suffer because so many of the elements found in the comics have been left out in the name of being more mature or less nostalgia blind.

I agree, yeah. People even at the time noticed that the movies were all about Wolverine, and this Wolverine wasn't even that much like the comics' Wolverine. But they were willing to forgive the movies because they were pretty good, and close enough, and if that was what it took for wider audiences to watch a comic book movie without dismissing it out of hand, maybe that was a pill that wasn't too bitter to swallow. And it did lead us to where we are now, so maybe it was just a part of the learning process. Growing pains.

Edited by Unsung on Nov 23rd 2018 at 6:47:13 AM

It was okay at the time but now we expect more after all.

Agreed.

I guess we can thank Singer for that.

...of course, all gratitude is pissed away once Sexual Harassment comes into the picture, so good going ruining your career jackass.

But at least now we can enjoy Comic Book movies that are actually like comic books.

X3 Him and Magneto who took up way too much screen time in this series.

Well let's read it exactly as stated, Jackman said the comics were banned on the set. The implication is that Singer didn't want people holding up the comics screaming that they are getting something wrong. The comics were still valued reads, and even at its worst it's hard to say that the X-Men series hated its own source material (every film was based directly on one or two storylines from the comics).

One fundamental struggle is that while the comics had a large cast, a certain number of characters always came to the forefront. A film series requires an attachment to not just the character but the actor playing them, and not everyone can hold their own movie in a spin-off. That's why the movies favored Wolverine, Xavier and Magneto. It's hard to imagine the movie versions of Cyclops, Storm or Rogue being able to carry a standalone. Talk of a Mystique standalone was purely because of Jennifer Lawrence Star power rather than the character itself.

I will said that X men movies are better the fewer chararter they got, the more chararter they have the more bland and filleish they fill.

The X-Men storylines are often not ensemble stories. Examples: Dark Phoenix has Jean Grey as the main character. The Horsemen of the Apocalypse has Angel as the main character, God Loves Man Kill had Kitty Pryde as the main character.

Edited by ManOfSin on Nov 23rd 2018 at 10:38:04 AM

I've read God Loves Man Kills, or at least seen parts of it on Scans Daily.

Kitty continues her habit of using the N-Word (often as a way of calling out black men who badmouth mutants), and calls out Stryker on insulting Nightcrawler with a pretty good speech, but I'd definitely call it an Ensemble work.