The X-Men Film Series

[Faith Akiyama]

^ My friend, who saw the film with me and sat in the next seat, hit me so many times during the movie because she could see me moaning and groaning out of the corner of her eye

I know exactly what you mean about the character developments - being able to see the powers and the true diversity of the mutant population was very fascinating, but the introduction of everyone at once made each individual appear more shallow than they could've been. This even applied to the ones we were already familiar with...

Haha! And you should definitely write more X-Men fanfic...that's what fandom is for, right? To fulfill our personal hungers and to peacefully retaliate against what is distasteful in our eyes!

 

[eternitygoddess]

I haven't watched it yet but I hear they didn't show the full Phoenix. How disappointing since that was suppose to be the really really good part of the storyline.

 

[Anastasia]

I haven't watched it yet but I hear they didn't show the full Phoenix. How disappointing since that was suppose to be the really really good part of the storyline.

I'm a HUGE Phoenix fan. Like obsessively so. Like, have thought about getting a small tattoo of the phoenix symbol somewhere (a stylized, delicate, scrolly looking one, but still - I want to permanently mark my body with a reminder of the character And they don't show the firebird/full Phoenix...but you know, I really didn't care. I actually think it would have distracted me from the story if they had...it would have looked out of place. Too cartoony I don't quite know how to describe it. I'm glad they did it the way they did. There is fire, she uses her powers quite terrifyingly - even at the climax she looks as though she's just warming up - and there is one scene where between Famke's expressions and body language, and the special effects, she actually manages to remind you of a bird of prey. It was chilling.

Faith, I think I will give it a try

 

[pinnie]

i just watched it .
for me, it's pretty well but not so impressive,

 

[Mary-Anne]

Hello everyone,
I just watched this movie last night...

I did enjoy the movie, but my only main complaint is that it seemed at times like some of the story lines (that were very interesting) weren't developped as much as they could have been.

For example, the angel-guy and his father... he seemed like a really interesting character and there was quite a decent amount of build up to a story line involving him... but at the end, nothing really happened.

Besides that, Scott's death wasen't take that seriously it seemed... or what happened to Mystique.. or even to the child who was the ''cure''...

I feel like there was more potential for this film to be greater than it was.. the storylines were great but maybe it just wasen't edited right, or edited just too much...

However, for all the fans... this movie still remains pretty decent in my opinion with some very funny and exciting moments.

PS: did anyone wait until after the credits and see the last scene?

 

[Faith Akiyama]

^I did It was a great moment (Especially for comic book fans, I imagine )!

Highlight to see:
Moira is Professor X's ex-fiancee in the comics...

 

[Anastasia]

I saw the last scene Out of about 150-200 people in the theater, only 8 of us stayed

My mom urged me to go back today, even though we're going tomorrow as a family. It was very odd, since she usually discourages my X-Men habit. I liked it more the second time - pacing was much better, plot was tighter, though there were still a couple gaping holes, I noticed a lot more detail, especially with Famke's acting choices (her face is so expressive!). The only things that seemed worse were the young Jean flashback - the kid from the Omen trailer has nothing on that bitchy little psycho, which would be fun, except it implies that Jean and Phoenix are not two halves of a whole, but that Jean is just a neutered Phoenix - and some of the dialogue. Oh, Faith, you ruined it for me

 

[Mary-Anne]

Oouhh Thanks Faith!! I diden't know that....

I know, me too there were only a few people who stayed..
I heard that there was going to be a Logan and Jean spin-off movies... do you think this is true?

 

[masquerade]

can someone summarize what happenedafter the credits?

the movie was so miserable and bad, i didnt bother staying

 

[Anastasia]

can someone summarize what happenedafter the credits?

It was a nice bookend to the first scene, where Xavier tells Magneto how he "feels about the misuse of power" - well, after the credits you see Moira with the man in the bed we saw in the video (that Charles was discussing, asking if it would be ethical to place another person's consciousness in his body) and the main says, "Hello, Moira" in Patrick Stewart's voice, and she gasps "Charles!" because apparently he's misused his power and transferred his consciousness into the "empty" body.

Updated thoughts (and some from my parents) after seeing it a 2nd and 3rd time. Mostly Jean, Erik, and Charles thoughts, if anyone is interested

http://neitherbeastnorgod.blogspot.com/2006/05/believe-it-or-not-sequoia-reviews-x3.html

 

[Juliet]

Oh I have found my people (great thread Anastasia!) I LOVE X-men I love anything to do with superheroes they just really appeal to me.. I like all comics and heroes almost. My least fave is probably Spiderman.

Ok Wolverine was especially hot in this one so i was very very happy But like u all said there was something just not right in this one.. I was never one to throw out the emotional real plot of a movie for extra special effects! I adore Phoenix, she is an excellent superhero and her history and developments are really interesting. I do hope she will be in the Wolverine spin-off, I liked her relationship with Logan more than with Scott.
I thought her part in the movie was what saved it for me, other than that I wasn't extremely impressed, they pretty much rushed through all the other characters.. And where was Night Crawler??
I could talk about this movie for hours.. I can't wait to see it again. At the end of the day I loved it, but it felt like it could've been really much better..

 

[dorien]

it was ok. not really worth the money, but few movies really are.
5/10

 

[igotgoodjeans]

i gotta say i'm a big fan of the X-Men movie franchise!! i mean, it's not gonna win any awards or anything, but this was exactly the type of summer blockbuster movie i was expecting and hoping for (and we all know many movies fail to meet this goal). though i also have to agree with the angel storyline - he had so much potential to be an interesting character but was kind of ignored. room for X-Men 4??

 

[Juliet]

Well I'm not sure about angel because all he can do is fly.. at the end of the day.. I don't think he was that big a deal in the comics either if I recall correctly

 

[eternitygoddess]

I'm watching it tomorrow! After 3 years of waiting!!! Although I know what happens already...still...

 

[Anastasia]

Well I'm not sure about angel because all he can do is fly.. at the end of the day.. I don't think he was that big a deal in the comics either if I recall correctly

Angel also has hollow, super strong bones that allow him to fly very fast (I think 150mph) and high and he can easily carry approx 500lbs...his feathered wings are powerful enough to kill a man if he hits with them, but he never does, because this is Marvel - Kitty doesn't go around sticking her hands in people's chests, disrupting the electrical impulses to the heart, either His eyes are adapted to great speeds and he has some kind of sheath in his lungs that allow him to extract more oxygen from the air at high altitude. He has essentially no body fat and lots and lots of muscle. Then there was his stint as Arcangel, but I like to forget about that, if only because of the color scheme.

Warren was a big deal in the comics in that he's been around since the beginning. He was one of the founding members (along with Hank, Bobby, Scott, and Jean). He remained with the team consistently until Giant Sized, when he flirted with Storm but couldn't stomach Wolverine and his animal ways and his hitting on Jean, so he left to go live in New Mexico with Candy Southern, who I always thought was pretty hot, despite her porny name.

He reappeared in time for the Dark Phoenix Saga, where he had one of his deepest and most interesting moments - in the comics, DP had killed an entire world, 5 billion Asparagus People - she wasn't supposed to, Claremont wrote the planet uninhabited, sent it off to Byrne, who is a mysogynist pig - I know people in the industry who worked with him closely for years, and they add anti-semitic bigot to that - and hated Jean powerful...remember, at the time, Jean and Phoenix were one and the same, like in X3...anyway, Byrne decides to draw the world populated by "mistake", and there's no time to correct the art before publication, so Jean is now a mass murderer and editor Jim Shooter declares she has to die, because it's a bad example. Previously, the original ending was that she had her powers taken away in #137, and in #150, she'd be kidnapped by Magneto and offered the return of her powers for her loyalty, and she'd accept.

Anyway, Jean was completely insane, but guilty of genocide, and the Shi'ar were going to put her to death. And bunches of the X-Men were going to fight for her life, and Angel had a rather remarkable panel where he was all torn up inside and confessing to Nightcrawler that even though he loved her, he didn't know if he could fight for her because of what she'd done. He wound up fighting anyway, but it was a nice piece of character insight, even if kind of moot since Jean started shifting back and forth between the Phoenix and Dark Phoenix personas, and tricked her friends into beating her down enough to where she could successfully kill herself right in front of Cyke. Poor guy never really got over it.

Back to Angel - he then went over to the Defenders, with Beast, and then they started X-Factor , destroyed Scott and Jean's history, characters, and personalities entirely so that they could "resurrect" her and and have the "Original Five Shockingly Together Again!". And it wasn't even well written. Kurt Busiek was actually the one to come up with the insultingly moronic "Phoenix Entity" garbage, but I don't blame him, he was a kid. Byrne and Shooter, on the other hand...my outrage is endless.

So Angel was with X-Factor....got changed by Apocalypse into Arcangel (don't ask, he was a metallic pink and blue smurf with a deathwish)...rejoined the X-Men when they went to Blue & Gold teams. Unconvincingly romanced Psylocke for awhile. Then I stopped reading the books, but I heard he had a thing with the barely legal Paige Guthrie, so I'm glad I quit them when I did

I've never been the biggest fan of Warren, but had a friend who was positively obsessed with the man, and learned to love to hate a lot of things about him. He was a very interesting character, and an integral part of the team history and dynamics, if not always the roster, since 1963. I really didn't like him in the movie though, perhaps because he didn't remind me at all, in body or mind or personality, of Warren Worthington III. He was just some kid with wings...outside of the name and the wings, I couldn't see anything in common with his comic counterpart.

And that's more than you ever wanted to know about Angel

 

[Juliet]

Thank u tons for that explanation!! Obviously I didn't know that much about Angel He does seem complex and interesting in the comics so ya they didn't do such a good job of him in the film.. that's too bad

 

[Anastasia]

Thank u tons for that explanation!! Obviously I didn't know that much about Angel He does seem complex and interesting in the comics so ya they didn't do such a good job of him in the film.. that's too bad

No problem I forgot to mention what is his most dramatic moment (probably because of the later connection to Apocalypse) - in the 80's there were a large group of low level mutants living in an abandoned sewer system underneath the city, and led by Callisto (Storm's foe in the movie, though she's pretty different in the comics). Hundreds of them, quite like the masses that Magneto got together as his army. Pretty much minding their own business, except when they had a "fight to the death" for Kitty's freedom, because Callisto wanted her to marry Leech or something. And Callisto herself was hot for Angel.

Anyway, there was a storyline called the Mutant Massacre. The reasons and people behind it weren't explained until much later, and all you knew was that some VERY bad people, like Sabretooth, Arclight, Vertigo, Harpoon, etc, calling themselves the Marauders, went into the tunnels and started slaughtering the innocent Morlocks indescriminately. It was quite scary. The X-Men responded and wound up taking quite a few casualities themselves, with Kitty, Nightcrawler, and Colossus having to leave the team to recover on Muir Island with Moira MacTaggert (they later founded Excalibur when they thought the X-Men had perished during Fall of the Mutants). Magneto was left in charge of the school and students. And Angel had some particularly gruesome and haunting scenes where he was crucified by the Marauders, almost died, and wound up losing his wings.

I don't expect the movie to be the same as the comics, it's an alternate universe, and I enjoy that. But I really like for there to be core, basic, personality traits in common with the comic versions. So you know who they are without being told They did a good job with Xavier, Magneto, Nightcrawler, Kitty, Jean, Logan, etc, but really fell down with Warren, and I think Rogue as well. Rogue has had a couple of distinct incarnations...the most well known is what she was like in the 90's books and cartoon, all cleavage and mopey and punchy and mooning over Gambit at the expense of everything. In the 80's, when she joined the team (as a villain! Mystique is her mother, and she was part of the Brotherhood, and left not because of moral issues but because she wanted Xavier to help her control her powers...he gave that about as much attention as he gave helping Jean with hers - he was too busy running off with his bitchy girlfriend Lilandra to help Jean until it was way too late) she was kickass and firey, a little sulky and whiny at times, but a strong, independent tomboy who stood up for herself and always did things the hard way. I see none of that in Paquin's Rogue.

 

[Juliet]

WARNING SPOILER
please don't read this if u haven't seen the film!!

Anastasia: Ah I see.. Ya that sounds pretty scary!! I didn't know how he lost his wings so thanks for telling me all about that.

Was Rogue Mystique's daughter in the newer comics? Coz in the ones I read she wasn't she was in the comics before Mystique was! So maybe ur talking about different comics? I know all about Rogue's history , how she was, and her whole love affair with Gambit, and I used to love love that character in the comics and was so pumped to see her come to life in the movies.. I was quite happy with her relationship with Wolverine in the first movie and kinda in the second but the third one she seemed so weak and the thing she did for Bobby most of my friends said that she just wanted to be able to love and it's not something you can blame her for but just knowing how she was in the comics as the way you described her I wouldn't think she'd do that for those reasons at all. And she was also so much more bombshellish in the comics I was really disappointed with rogue as I used to love her but I ended up disliking her story the most in the X3 Don't u think they could've used that more to their advantage, like they could've shown how she was strong and said Bobby is not worth it and not gone and done that by learning that a guy thing isn't a reason to throw ur powers away, and then hey if she wanted to make it a bit more complex and reasonable than that!! U know what I mean? it was too superficial and rash in my opinion

 

[Anastasia]

WARNING SPOILER
Was Rogue Mystique's daughter in the newer comics? Coz in the ones I read she wasn't she was in the comics before Mystique was! So maybe ur talking about different comics?

I'm talking about 616 universe (main continuity, not Ultimate) Uncanny X-Men issues, which came out in the early 1980's Rogue and Mystique both existed in the Marvel Universe before showing up in X-Men - I know they were in Avengers, as villains, that's where Rogue and Carol Danvers had their life-altering encounter - and I believe Rogue's first appearance in X-Men is #158. She joins the team in #171. And she's definitely Mystiques (foster, but treated as natural, calls her mama, etc) daughter I will scan some pages for you this coming week, including Mystique's first appearance in X-Men, which was around #141 if I'm remembering correctly

I ended up disliking her story the most in the X3 Don't u think they could've used that more to their advantage, like they could've shown how she was strong and said Bobby is not worth it and not gone and done that by learning that a guy thing isn't a reason to throw ur powers away, and then hey if she wanted to make it a bit more complex and reasonable than that!! U know what I mean? it was too superficial and rash in my opinion

I agree very much! It didn't bother me that she took the cure so much as the way she did it, and how it wasn't explored enough. I see it setting up big, big problems for them down the road, since he seemed ready to move on even before she did it. And she's never going to be able to live with herself (or she'll kill him if she feels like she did it for nothing.