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What a perfect duo of summer movie thrills.
Both films have critics on both sides. The hype surrounding the Da Vinci Code has been, at times, unbearable. On one side you have religious zealots decrying the sacrilege. On the other, you have the slew of critics panning the film for poor acting, pacing, and for just being a bad film. X3 has seen surprisingly little hype, but was greatly anticipated nonetheless. The film is also decried by comic book zealots, peeved that it tries too hard to fill each geek fantasy without succeeding, or that there is too much going on in the film, or that it isn't as good as the previous film in the series (supposedly attributable to the loss of director Bryan Singer).
The reality is that X3 is great entertainment and a worthy successor to X2.
X-Men is not, nor has it ever claimed to be, high art. That is not to say that it cannot have a message. The message of inclusion to those on the margin of society is a message that resonates in every fanboy's enlarged heart. Critics are now reading into this film all sorts of messages: on gay rights, on abortion (the mutants line up at a clinic which is firebombed). X-Men is open to this sort of interpretation. But the bottom line is that this film was captivating.
This movie is full of surprises and plot twists. Aside from a few key points, it is almost wholly unpredictable. And let's face it: this film is stocked to the brim with notable actors: Ian McKellon, Patrick Stewert, and Kelsey Grammar top the list - but are certainly not the sum of it.
Thinking back to other franchises - the third film is generally where the franchises turn south: Superman III is where that series jumped the shark. And while there is a following for Batman Forever, Joel Shumacker's poor skills became evident despite Jim Carry's presence. The first two Batman films are more a vision of Tim Burton - a product that should be enjoyed in that light.
X3 is better than the original but slightly worse, if not just different from X2. It was great fun and highly entertaining.
I actually liked the Da Vinci Code even more.
Tom Hanks was actually the greatest dissapointment in this film. He wasn't particularly convincing as a Harvard professor - he had no sharp edges, no great wit, and seemed entirely too "everyman" for the part. The rest of the cast ranged from good to great (see McKellon). A fun film, but I'm honestly not sure what most people will get out of this film if they have not read the book. This movie is more of a companion to the book than entertainment in its own right.
X3: ***
Da Vinci Code: ***
June 2 2006, 15:10:16 UTC 5 years ago
June 2 2006, 15:19:43 UTC 5 years ago
Are you sure you saw the right movie?
The X3 I saw blew chunks.The direction was terrible... Brett Ratner went for a lot of cheap exploitative shots on the women that Bryan Singer never would have dreamed of. All of the female roles were almost completely marginalized... Storm was presumably supposed to lead the X-Men once Professor X was gone, but it was really Wolverine who was running things. Even Jean turned out to be portrayed as a "typical emotional female". Ratner has always had a major problem with putting forth strong female characters.
The best shot in the film (Wolverine and Storm in Jean Grey's house after the events there) wasn't left on screen long enough to make the impact it should have.
The "gotcha" after the credits turned what may have been the single most momentous event in any of the 3 films and turned it into a fucking joke. It was a twist for the sake of having a twist. I was half-expecting the puppet of M. Night Shyamalan from Robot Chicken to pop up and say "What a twist!"
It was so bad I actually shouted "LAME!" in the theater and got laughs from all 7 or 8 people that had stayed that long.
I actively felt BETRAYED by this film because of that scene. That's not a good feeling to have walking out of a movie.
What really pisses me off about this installment is that the whole "mutant cure" storyline was written by Joss Whedon, who could have easily written a screenplay orders of magnitude better than this.
As for the whole gay rights thing... X-Men was never really a metaphor for gay rights. It was always a metaphor for the civil rights movement in the U.S. Compare Professor X to MLK and Magneto to Malcom X and the similarities are obvious.
Quite frankly I don't see how this film even remotely compares to the two X-Men films Singer directed.
June 2 2006, 16:16:20 UTC 5 years ago
Re: Are you sure you saw the right movie?
A feeling of betrayal presumes a level of trust to begin with.To me, these films are nothing but big, stupid, holly wood action films. If you feel betrayed, I think you should be looking at yourself, not Brett Ratner. You should never have put trust into a movie of this sort.
I have one question: did the film hold your attention? In other words, did you want to know what was going to happen next?
if the answer is yes, then it was worth it. Any intellection objection to this film, imo, is misplaced. This is not a film made with a point in mind.
As for your other two points, I must scoff:
1) portrayal of women.
Have you ever seen an X-Men comic book printed since 1985? I could hardly imagine a great objectification of women. X-Men paved the way for skimpy and highly over-sexed portrayal of women in comic books. This films have never really had great female characterization. This film was merely status quo in that regard. Hell, these films have never really had great character development, period. The best we get is character (actor) interaction, like the to and fro between Stewert and McKellon.
2) The meaning of the film
X-Men never really had meaning to begin with. The X-men comic debuted in 1964? Or 63 and was a Kirby/lee production for several years before it was cancelled. Neal Adams picked up the art and then the series ran in reprints until it was relaunched in the mid-70s. It never originally intended to comment on the MLK v. Malcom X debate since both men were long dead by the time X-Men actually relaunched in the late 70s. What made X-men famous was the John Byrne Chris Claremont run from the last seventies to early eighties. By that time, the civil rights debate had shifted dramatically. The whole use of X-men as a metaphor for the civil rights debate wasn’t even an idea that germinated until the 1980s, in other words.
June 2 2006, 16:48:22 UTC 5 years ago
Re: Are you sure you saw the right movie?
Presenting events onscreen intended to evoke a reaction from the audience, and then saying, in essence, "ha ha, that didn't really happen", is shoddy filmmaking. Would the movie have made any less sense had the "gotcha" NOT been included? No, it would have been OK without it.It's evoking a reaction from the audience by lying to them and then revealing the truth, when the truth just cheapens the events.
Contrast this to "The Usual Suspects" (another Bryan Singer movie, no less) where lying to the audience about certain events and their true nature is integral to the story.
As for "intelligent objection being misplaced.... Hollywood has seen a legitimate renaissance in the field of comic book adaptations over the last five or so years, between the X-Men films, the restart of the Batman franchise, the Superman franchise which has been effectively restarted on TV, Sin City... I simply refuse to believe that the "big dumb comic book movie that doesn't have any point" is really an acceptable standard anymore.
Not even taking the comic books into consideration for a minute, Singer was able to do two entire films with these female characters that weren't exploitative. The first film had some pretty solid character development for Rogue... in fact one could argue she was actually the "main character" as the film very much centered around her discovery of her powers, her attempts to understand them, and Magneto's plans to exploit them to his own ends. If Singer could pull something like that out of the comics, why couldn't Ratner?
And I can't recall Singer ONCE stooping to some of the blatant tit shots we got on Jean Grey in this film... and he had two direct two films full of a basically naked Mystique, whereas Brett Ratner only had to have her on-screen for all of what, 90 seconds?
As for your question, did I want to know what was going to happen next... I have to honestly say that the writing and filmmaking was so distractingly bad that by about the time of the bridge scene, I actually didn't really give a crap what happened next. So in that sense, no, it really wasn't worth it.
And the scene after the credits REALLY wasn't worth it. In retrospect, I actually think my opinion of the movie would have been higher had I walked out as soon as the credits started.
June 2 2006, 17:36:42 UTC 5 years ago
Re: Are you sure you saw the right movie?
To be fair, I did walk out after the credits.I guess we should be making a distinction between super hero comic movies and others. Superhero comic movies have occassionally garnered critical acclaim: Spiderman 2, Sin City, and Superman 1 come to mind.
However, by and large these movies are in the same genre as other action films: the Mission Impossibles, the James Bonds - that isn't to say that they are stupid, but they are, first and foremost, entertainment, not social commentary and not art (although I consider the Burton Batman films great pop art).
I have never cared about Rogue. I concede that the second film did develop her a bit, but it was all very boring to me. It just slowed the film down for me.
What I want to see in Superhero films is grand opera - dramatic action, shakespearan speeches (see Magneto, etc), and conflict. Spiderman is different because it focuses on character tension. The X-Men films, with the rogue exception, I suppose, have never tried to focus on character development that much. The characters we met in X1 were the same as they were in X2 pretty much.
The bottom line, for me, was that I found this movie immensely entertaining - captivating. You did not. The acting was solid, the plot was very surprise/suspense driven for me, and the effects were fantastic. Sure the dialogue was pretty terrible. I didn't expect much better.
Leave those little personal moments to movies like Spiderman, which pretend to be a little more realistic.
I think, frankly, the Spiderman and Batman films start to fail when they go for big action. I enjoyed the first half of Batman begins far more than the second half. Xmen is a franchise that thrives on being more Wagner than Puccini.
June 2 2006, 17:58:26 UTC 5 years ago
Re: Are you sure you saw the right movie?
Honestly, I probably wouldn't be as hard on this movie as I am if it weren't for the legacy it had to live up to. After the craptacular Batman and Robin, the whole idea of comic book movies being good had become a joke in Hollywood... much like movies based on video games STILL are. (Uwe Boll sure isn't helping).The first X-Men film is a movie that very much turned that around, in my opinion, in large part due to the responsible handling of the characters of Magneto, Professor X, and Rogue.
In other words, if this movie had been made 10 years ago, I'd probably see it as a damn sight better than all the other comic book stuff which was coming out at the time. And to be fair, it's still better than Joel Schumacher's hamhanded destruction of the Batman franchise, whose only redeeming quality was that it forced them to reboot.
I just really feel like the climate re: comic book films has changed since then, and when this franchise is really the one to thank for that, anything less than what we'd already been given is just going to be a huge disappointment.
I have good expectations for Superman Returns, although I'm a little apprehensive about what I've seen from Spacey's portrayal of Lex. It's definitely going to be very different from the way Gene Hackman (or even Michael Rosenbaum for that matter) has approached the character.
June 3 2006, 02:25:32 UTC 5 years ago
Re: Are you sure you saw the right movie?
You're attacking arguments that weren't made. If something is tasteless or offensive, it's not that one necessarilly expected a deliberately egalitarian social commentary piece. If something is decried as tasteless or offensive, the only change needed to improve the item is to take the tasteless part and make it tasteful ie neutral on the spectrum between tasteless and thoughful social commentary. Therefore, while one dislikes the use of womens bodies to attract the attention of the viewer, that same person doesn't necessarilly expect Jean Grey to make insightful, touching remarks about the role of women or minorities in general in the world. I for one object to this technique in film not just because it helps marginalize women, but also because it's bad technique. It's not entertaining and it's not skillful. If it doesn't help develop the characters or the story, it doesn't belong in the shot.It was also never argued that the point xmen always addressed was the civil rights movement, nor do your arguments refute those claims in any way. The premise of the comic books has not changed in any of its iterations, nor even in its move to Saturday mornings or the silver screen. Our heroes are a repressed minority that seeks acceptance and battles another group of the same minority to keep that group from killing people. As you yourself have noted (and which I wouldn't know unless you had noted it) the comic debuted in or around '63, the year of the "I Have a Dream" Speech. Since the premise has not changed, and it was inspired at least in part by the events that surrounded its genesis, its more than reasonable to argue that the premise of the movies (since its the same premise) has to do with the ideas of the civil rights movement. At least, it has more to do with the civil rights movement than it does to do with homosexual rights, which was actually the original argument.
Just because these are pulp entertainment pieces doesn't mean that the viewer has no right to expect something good. Binary's point is that the first two movies had in fact earned a certain level of trust, and that this film betrayed that trust. When you start saying that we have no right to expect good movies, you become the source of terrible movies. What we need is more people to be strongly pissed off by bad movies. That way, even the "bid dumb action film" can be good on other levels as well. Shakespeare was loved by all levels of society and he is still a juggernaut in the Literature Academy. Four hundred years of learning later we have no right to expect that level of versatility in our entertainment? That sounds like something to fertilize my lawn with....
June 2 2006, 17:37:26 UTC 5 years ago
correction
i meant to say, I walked out BEFORE the credits.June 3 2006, 14:09:20 UTC 5 years ago
As for the whole gay rights thing... X-Men was never really a metaphor for gay rights. It was always a metaphor for the civil rights movement in the U.S. Compare Professor X to MLK and Magneto to Malcom X and the similarities are obvious.
It's been both, actually, depending on when the stories were and who was featured. The Legacy Virus storyline from the early 90's is explicitly about gay rights. Another good example of this is with regards to passing. Characters like Angel or Beast are related to the racial forms of passing (because there is a visual aspect to their difference), while the characters that look normal like Professor X or Magneto have a more gay subtext to their passing.
Also, Bryan Singer, Ian Mckellen, and Alan Cumming have all pointed out the gay themes in the X-Men movies.
I personally love X-Men because of its racial/gay subtext.