X-men 3: The Last Stand – Ah yes, another example of a bad
movie ruining a franchise. Unlike Spider-Man 3 however, I really don’t like
this movie. It was screwed from day one. Bryan Singer, who directed the first
two, left to direct the next movie on this list and took with him James Marsden
(the actor who played Cyclops). So you got about 5 minutes of Cyclops being emo
over Jean Grey’s death and then she comes back from the dead just long enough
to kill him. And right away, one of the founding members of the X-men is
unceremoniously written out of the franchise… and the movie really just goes downhill
from there. You had the introduction of Angel, utilizing great special effects,
but ultimately do next to nothing with him. Seriously, he could have been
edited out of the movie and nobody would have noticed. Plus, they squandered
the perfect opportunity to appease generations of fanboys. X-Men 3 was the
first of the movies to feature all 5 of the original X-Men (for those playing
at home that was Cyclops, Marvel Girl aka Jean Grey, Beast, Angel and Iceman).
It would have been awesome to have a moment where all 5 were on screen together
at the same time, like a shout out to the comic savvy audience members… but no.
For some reason Jean Grey, as her Phoenix
persona, kills Professor X. I suspect part of this was to appease the diva-like
complaints of Halle Berry, who felt she was underutilized as Storm, thus
thrusting her character into a leadership position. (And with great lines like “Do you know what happens to a toad when it
is struck by lightning? The same thing that happens to everything else!”
how could you not make her the star?) They built up this great end battle that,
like the entire movie, was ultimately marred by massive errors and
disappointments. They weren’t Morlocks, they were ‘Omegas.’ Okay, I can let
that go just like I let go that Dark Phoenix was Jean Grey’s split personality.
(Honestly it would have been a bigger train wreck to try to do the entire space
saga anyway.) But why introduce a fan favorite like Psylocke and completely
screw up her powers? Why couldn’t we have spent more time getting to know some
of these Omegas, after all they were only Magneto’s army of mutants! Why didn’t
they include some of the actual Brotherhood of Evil Mutants like Avalanche, Mastermind,
Vanisher, Blob, Unus or maybe even Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch… you know,
Magneto’s children? Why would
Juggernaut, while having his powers neutralized by Leech, get knocked out by
hitting a wall with his head when he is wearing a damn helmet? (By the way,
after Jonny Prophet and I saw Hard Candy
and Juno we both concluded that the
film-makers terribly underutilized the very talented Ellen Page.) I will say
that there were a few things that X-Men 3 got right. Kelsey Grammer played
Beast exceptionally. Vinnie Jones was pretty entertaining as Juggernaut. I
liked how they portrayed Multiple Man and how Pyro had come into his own as a
villain. However, by the end of the movie, after killing off Cyclops, Jean Grey
and seemingly doing the same with Xavier, I kind of looked at it as the final
film… partly because I really didn’t want to see the franchise limp through
another sequel after effectively maiming the series. (But I really wanted to
see the brain-dead black guy from Muir
Island with the voice of
Patrick Stewart in action!)
Superman Returns – Ah yes, the weird sequel that nobody
demanded to a franchise over twenty years old whose main actor is dead. Oh, and
it’s only the sequel to the first two movies, not the two I already included on
the list. (I didn’t know you could pick and choose what sequels you wanted to
observe in continuity!) Anyway, Bryan
Singer’s decision to leave X-Men 3 to direct Superman Returns truly cursed us
to 2 bad movies; a shitty X-men movie and a boring and ridiculous Superman
movie. Now the film itself looks good, it is shot beautifully and the acting is
great. Brandon Routh made a wonderful stand-in to Christopher Reeves and Kevin
Spacey as Lex Luthor stole the show. The problem I have is with the story. It
sucks. It is boring, pretentious, self-serving, and a little disturbing. Why is
it boring? Superman doesn’t actually fight anyone… unless you count a mountain of Kryptonite. Everybody loved Superman II
because he fought General Zod and his crew of Kryptonian criminals! It had
massive battles and destruction! But for some reason the writers thought a big mountain of Kryptonite was a worthy foe to the Man
of Steel. I mean, Lex shanks him but all Superman did was leave him and Parker
Posey on a deserted island… which seems more than a little irresponsible.
Rather than bring Luthor to justice over the massive damage and deaths he
caused, Superman says “Nope, I’m gonna leave him on a desert island.” Why is it
pretentious? Superman is over glorified as a modern day deity, like a flying
Jesus in tights. Why is it self-serving? It delves heavily into how Superman
views his duality as Clark Kent
and his never-ending quest for justice and saving people; in other words it
creates its own drama. Kevin Smith really put it best by saying ‘Superman
Returns is the art-house Superman.’ Now why is it disturbing? Oh, I don’t know…
how about Superman is a creepy stalker? He seriously floats around outside of Lois Lane’s house
using his x-ray vision to watch her and his super hearing to listen in on her
conversations with her new man James Marsden. (By the way, you ditch a major
role as Cyclops for the much smaller role of Lois Lane’s boyfriend? What the
fuck?) If Supes weren’t pretty much unstoppable, he would be in jail! Plus,
Superman’s a deadbeat dad? Okay, not really, but who really thought making him
a father was a good idea and wouldn’t completely screw up the franchise? Plus,
he pulls a breaking and entering into Lois’ home so he can sit by his sleeping
son, stroke his hair and say “You will be different.” I know it was supposed to
be really sweet, but holy crap was that creepy. Imagine waking up to find
Brandon Routh stroking your hair and telling you “You will be different.” You
may never be able to sleep again! Oh, and before I move on I must point out
that Jonny Prophet was very angry that Kumar (Kal Penn) was in the movie and
didn’t even have a line! He could have at least asked Lex if he wanted anything
from White Castle!
Ang Lee’s Hulk – Okay, this should tell you how bad Hulk
was. When I go to the movies, I never leave the theater except in the case of
an urgent bathroom situation. During Hulk, I went to get a refill on my drink…
and I took my time about it. I walked around the lobby, even stopped to look at
those quarter vending machines. When I got back, I asked my friend if I had
missed anything. He said ‘no.’ Another friend told me that he uses the DVD like
Ambien; he has never made it through
the whole movie without falling asleep. Of course, everyone else can define the
failure of Ang Lee’s Hulk with two words… Hulk Dogs. I especially bring up the
poodle Hulk Dog. Ugh… Hulk has many villains, why did they have to create
something so terrible? And Nick Nolte’s insane driveling speech at the end of
the movie is reminiscent of the Python’s paranoid psychotic rant at the end of Stan Lee’s Light Speed (perhaps a future
Guilty Pleasure review?). In the same vein of Kevin Smith’s assessment that
Superman Returns was the “art house Superman film” then Ang Lee’s Hulk is
definitely the art house version of the jade giant. The acting wasn’t bad, the
special effects were good (though on Hulk itself, I would rate them as only
‘okay’) and the cinematography was as good as what you would expect from the
director of Brokeback Mountain and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. But when
people see a Hulk movie they don’t want a story of childhood trauma and
disconnection between a father and son; they don’t want a soul searching
journey to deal with repressed anger before it explodes into an unstoppable
force of pure rage. Moviegoers want Hulk to smash stuff and fight monsters and
stuff like that. In the end, I wouldn’t call Ang Lee’s Hulk a terrible movie…
just really, really boring.
X-men Origins: Wolverine – I will start by saying that this
movie isn’t god-awful. It was decently entertaining and featured a lot of great
characters for the first time on screen. But when this movie was bad… oh sweet
Lord it was abysmal. First off I will say Liev Schreiber was excellent as
Sabretooth. Taylor Kitsch made a great Gambit. Ryan Reynolds was awesome as Wade
Wilson. (Note that I didn’t say Deadpool… oh I can feel the anger building!)
Now that we got that out of the way we move onto what sucked. Some of the
special effects were really lacking. For instance when Logan is examining his claws in the bathroom
of the elderly couple’s farmhouse, they looked really fake. That’s not the
biggest problem to me. The biggest failing of X-Men Origins: Wolverine is how
it tries to cover every possible base while cramming in random mutant character
cameos along the way. It feels a lot to me like Star Wars: Episode I in that
the plot seems forced; everything that happens is to literally get from point A
to point B regardless of plausibility and at the sacrifice of character
development. They had to reveal how
Wolverine got his adamantium skeleton, they had
to explain his connection to and hatred of Sabretooth, they had to establish his past with William
Stryker, they had to include Gambit,
Deadpool (argh), Blob, Cyclops, Xavier, and some other random mutants along the
way, they had to explain Logan’s
inability to recall his past, they even had
to explain how a bullet entered his head in X-Men 2… and what you get is a
script that is a mess chock full of random, if not pointless cameos and
senseless fighting. The plot itself is a gigantic fuck around to… I guess…
trick Wolverine into being a super soldier? I am really not sure what the point
was, but in the process they ruined a fan favorite character in Deadpool by
making him a bizarre mess of eyebeams, teleportation and swords popping out of
his wrists with a healing factor (might I add the only thing they got right
about his powers) as well as some others I am choosing to forget. We got a
ridiculous plot device that the only way to penetrate adamantium is with an
adamantium bullet? Since when do metals with the same molecular density pierce
one another? I know this is just a comic book movie and not to nit-pick, but
that was not just insulting to the fans, it was insulting to the overall
audience’s intelligence! It could have been a vibranium bullet and I would have
said ‘okay.’ But no, we had to explain Logan’s
memory loss in the stupidest, most ‘Midi-chlorian’ way possible. (Seriously,
the comics had his healing factor “heal” his traumatic memories. What was so
wrong about that?) But now we can explain how a bullet penetrated Wolverine in
the second movie… except I didn’t care. It never occurred to me that the bullet
even went into his skull. I figured the bullet hitting his forehead knocked him
out and his regenerative powers pushed out the slug as it healed him. Oh, and
Silverfox was in on the whole plan? That’s just stupid! And if Stryker had so
much faith in Sabretooth doing his dirty work and giving Logan the motivation
to partake in the Weapon X treatment, why the hell didn’t he just give
Sabretooth the adamantium? Why wouldn’t Stryker have thought Sabretooth would
survive? Victor Creed survived the firing squad alongside Logan! Like I said before, this movie wasn’t the
worst thing ever but it was an absolute mess.
Be sure to anxiously await the third installment which will be up whenever the hell I get around to finishing this list. In the meantime, stay strange!
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