Harry Potter and the Anti-Mutant Gene Therapy

So, I went to the latest X-men movie and a Harry Potter flick broke out. Spoilers for the movie after the jump.

I saw the movie with my kid sister. She's a big Harry Potter fan, so maybe I was just pre-disposed to notice this stuff, but all the stuff at the beginning with them recruiting Jean ten years in the past, and then the messianic overtones, plus the wonders of the school was just a bit too, too Hogwarts for me. Re-inforcing this was the stuff about will they or won't they close the school due to death. We know they aren't going to close the school, so don't waste the screen time on it. Sheesh.

Okay, "X-Men: The Last Stand." Bret Ratner is a good, nice solid director, but I've never felt that he puts his artistic stamp on a project. He somehow never rises above his source material. "Red Dragon" has every chance to be a better movie than "Manhunter" which was a great story with lousy production values, but Ratner turned in a workman-like project. The "Rush Hour" movies feel like an example of the director getting a talented cast in Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan, and then getting out of their way.

This movie is no different. This was not an X-men movie so much as a movie about the X-Men comics characters. The plot, such as there was bordered on the simplistic. Yes, we get that a cure is not necessarily the gift to all mutants that the people in the movie expect. However, in the movie, it is lilttle more than an excuse to have fight scenes. The cure is a true McGuffin. I don't mind extended action sequeneces in a movie called "X-Men" but if you hire several award-winning actors, for Pete's sake, let tham act a little. The emotional impact of Halle Berry and Hugh Jackman's controntations would have been fine in a comic book where we expect a bit of shorthand, but in a two hour movie, perhaps an Oscar winner and a Tony winner can discuss matters seriously for as much as two or three minutes. We got a couple touches of that with the Logan/Jean scene, and the Rogue and Logan scene (see, I told you an Oscar winner and a Tony winner could have a conversation.) But not enough for my tastes. This is a movie based on a comic book, or at least, that's what I was hoping for. What I got was a movie structured like a comic book. Also, the dialogue was too comic booky.

In comics you can get away with a certain hackneyed, trite dialogue and people saying and doing things that don't make sense. In the movie it does not work. Not because movies are better than comics. They are not better. In comics we have, in part, grown used to a certain style of discourse. The medium has grown in that direction. The space considerations alone make it necessary. Also, long speechs and melodrama work better in your head and on the pages of a four-color drawing. But, more importantly, the reason they don't work that great on film is that the actors -- as in real human beings pretending to be these characters -- actually have to say these lines and sound credible, and if you pick up your average superhero, especially your average Claremont-written superhero, comic book, and read it out loud, you will find, I think, a certain lack of credibility to the dialogue when actually spoken by human beings. People don't talk like that, and making actors talk like that is a mistake, and there was too much of that in this movie.

Why was I hoping for a more cinematic X-Men movie? Because the last two times, that's what I got.

It's unfair to compare a director to Bryan Singer, because Singer does put a stamp on his movies."The Usual Suspects" and "Apt Pupil" show an ability to get more out of a story than perhaps really exists in the source material. Face it, without the camera play and performances, "The Usual Suspects" is really just a gimmick movie.

The first two X-Men movies were cinematic enterprises. The racism factor was front and center both times. Yes, there were fight scenes, but they grew more naturally out of the plot. Magneto wasn't after Wolverine, he was after Rogue and Wolvy just happened to be there. In this movie, Wolvy comes after Jean, and Magneto tracks him down to intercede. Why? Because Logan might convince Jean to come back? No, she's there by choice. Apparently Magneto just wanted to whup his sorry butt. It sets up the final confrontation, but it requires a somewhat odd confrontation at the midpoint of the movie. The plots in the first two movies were always given plenty of screen time and discourse. Everything in the movies served the plot and grew naturally out of them. We had both extended action scenes and extended character moments. In Last Battle, the parts never quite come together to make a whole.

On the plus side there were some cool moments, and some great lines, and the fights were pretty awesome.

ANd to be honest, I really enjoyed the movie, and my sister liked it too, but in writing this post I find that the more critical thoughts are the ones that are coming to midn most easily.

Also, Sir Ian has apparently decided to play Mags as gay, because no straight man leaves the naked Rebecca Romijn behind.

I didn't like the remaking of Juggernaut as a mutant. I would have prefered that he actually be Charles' brother. Maybe get Jonathan Frakes or Bill Shatner to play him.

If they have the cure, why didn't they just inject Mystique, Juggy and Madrox as soon as they had them in custody? Apparently the X-Men government has some respect for civil rights.

I got my hopes up for a Days of Futre Past story in the first scenes, and they faked me out.

And speaking of behinds, Famke Janssen...

The crowd I saw the movie with has apparently never seen a movie before, because they all left after the Mags scene, whereas I knew we were going to have the final endcap.

So, we never actually saw Scott die. We don't know the limits of Jean's power so who knows if the claws were enough to finish her and we saw Prof. X come back. So, basically, they Marvel Mutants ride again.

With "Wolverine" scheduled for release next year, I think it's safe to say we haven't seen the end of the Mutants.

Posted by Mike Chary at May 26, 2006 10:52 PM | TrackBack