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Canon-Strike IV: X-Men

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    Canon-Strike IV: X-Men

    The death of a universe will occur this year as the Fox led X-Men saga comes to an end, by the sounds of things a fairly painful whimper of one rather than one on a note of success. The timeline of the X-Men franchise has been often discussed, now it looks to be becoming complete for the most part with only questions surrounding the Deadpool movies remaining as these have an almost self-contained continuity and may yet find themselves rolled across into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.


    Looking back across the films we largely have two timelines, ignoring a lack of attention to detail the filmmakers had. A loose line up is:



    The original timeline of events is:

    First Class > Origins > X-Men > X-Men 2 > X-Men 3 > Wolverine > Days of Future Past


    The events of that final film creating a second timeline which rolled together with the predating movie gives us:

    First Class > Days of Future Past > Apocalypse > Dark Phoenix > The New Mutants > Logan

    The largest continuity error seems to be that of Apocalypse. The films events involve the devastating return of Apocalypse but that return not depending on any of the actions of the movie canon, this means that by all accounts he should have emerged and revealed the existence of mutants in the original timeline too, this creates one of the criticisms the film received after Days had worked to reset the canon in the previous movie.

    Given two, reportedly awful, movies are coming out this year and will likely bring Fox's X-Men saga to an end:

    1 - Did you give up on the continuity of the X-Men franchise?
    2 - Given the strong focus on the character, does it hold up for you as a viewer if taken from purely Logan's continuity, especially as he is the one character to exist throughout almost the entire arcing narrative continuously?
    3 - Did Fox deliver on the X-Men premise?

    #2
    Originally posted by Superman Falls View Post
    ignoring a lack of attention to detail the filmmakers had
    This is a huge thing to ignore because the X-Men films have been so loose and inconsistent with their continuity as to render a discussion on canon pretty much redundant. Characters and details have changed or been ignored along the way but even the really big picture stuff is hard to reconcile, like how new the mutants felt to the world of X-Men doesn't exactly follow the world of First Class and so on. I don't feel there is enough continuity to grasp in any meaningful way. It's all broken.

    So yeah, 1 - I gave up on the continuity but the filmmakers did very early on too. 2 - No, no continuity holds up regardless of who we focus on. 4 - Kind of... it could have been a lot better and they never really nailed the team dynamic (First Class came close). There is a much better X-Men film yet to be made.

    Still, it gave us Logan and that was great. Deadpool we got very much in spite of the X-Men series rather than because of it but that's cool too and gave us a much better version of Colossus and better X-Men costumes than the main series gave us.

    Comment


      #3
      I think with the X series I find myself automatically hanging onto Wolverine as the lynch pin of the series. First Class holds together well despite his absence but outside of that he was the core of it and even in the weaker ones such as X-3 he's the main focal point and only really likeable character and arc going.

      Despite the canon being a mess, Days of Future Past was such a key film as it seemed to work hard to reset the problem as best it could only for Apocalypse to utterly destroy it in one swoop. There's some good stuff in there but it's very much a series I think I'm ready to see rebooted.

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        #4
        I gave up at X3.

        I liked the first one. It probably doesn't stand up now, but it came out in such a different time for both super-hero movies and what I guess we today call "geek properties". People made a genuine effort with it, and they didn't have a contemporary wave of super-hero movie culture to crib from, so it must have been difficult. They still did a decent job; Patrick Stewart as Xavier was just wonderful and McKellen was a great Magneto. The first film's story wasn't amazing but they had to introduce the characters, which isn't easy for the X-Men as there are so many, with wildly divergent powers and personalities.

        Personally, I really loved X2. I saw it on release; I remember seeing people in cosplay in the queue, and as it didn't have to tell an origin story, it had great pacing. Given, it started the series' lean towards Wolverine, but it was still a great romp.

        Then X3 was among the worst movies I've ever seen. I was just done after that. Nothing could reconcile it; it was like spilt milk. I kept hoping they would scrap it all and start again; I thought First Class was this until I heard it was set in the same timeline, so I didn't go to see it.

        I've since seen all of them on Netflix etc. and while I enjoyed Days of Future Past, I really wish it had remained a Kitty Pryde-focused movie and not been rewritten to be another movie about Wolverine. First Class had some good moments, but again, it needed to be a wipe-the-slate-clean reboot.

        That being said, I loved Logan. Huge surprise, that one.

        So in summary, I like to think there are three X-Men movies - 1, 2 and Logan. Prefer not to think about anything else. I've actively avoided going to see others at the cinema because I want the franchise to go back to Marvel.

        EDIT: Wow, I forgot about Deadpool. Loved those two movies, though I kinda see them as distinct.

        Comment


          #5
          This isn't a weekly thread so it'll likely be a while till the next one but I think timeline related canon threads should be broken from now, time to have a think about a different approach for C-S5

          Comment


            #6
            So, two and a half years later and this is now the last of the existing entries in this series where we haven't looked at each film one by one. It's also a stand out in that its universe has come to an end so we're able to recontextualise our views by seeing each film in final place against the next. With that:


            Movie 01: X-Men
            The original film and if everyone is truly honest with themselves by excluding genre films from the few years before its release, the true originator of the modern era of Superhero movies dominance in movie media. As much as Avengers would later receive a lot of praise for handling having a group of heroes in one film, this film has the unenviable job of introducing them all from scratch, setting up its premise and plot and balancing it all. There are some sacrifices in terms of characters being fleshed out but what the film establishes has become a template for two decades to come even if it comes from an era where studios felt less emboldened to embrace the excesses of the genre.




            Has the original X-Men film aged well and did it do a good job of setting up the premise of the X-Men franchise?
            If not, what were its faults?

            Comment


              #7
              I feel like I have probably talked a lot about this movie over the years but, yes, I think it’s fair to say it kicked off the modern era of superhero movies. And I think the movie isn’t bad, although I don’t think it’s particularly great either. It’s entertaining and that probably is the main thing it needed to achieve. The action is a mixed bag with some of it looking pretty good and then other bits looking cheap and weird. I think my main criticisms would be, first, that it doesn’t really work as an ensemble piece and that’s what the X-Men should be - I get little sense of the team and some main characters have little to no personality. And the second and possibly biggest is that, while yes it did kick off an superhero movies and leaned into stuff other movies hadn’t, it always felt a little embarrassed by it. It always felt like it was holding back a little. Like it wanted to go full force into comics but felt like it was too ridiculous and the audience wouldn’t buy it.

              Comment


                #8
                For the most part the film is a good showcase in the importance of casting, beyond McKellen the villains are mostly the biggest let down as he carries that side of things. Considering previous films were always one character focused efforts it's interesting that Fox even took the gamble on it which I guess is also largely where the downplay of the comics wilder elements comes into play, I can imagine the studio had a lot to say on how the project should go in efforts not to put audiences off so it's impressive it's as cohesive as it is. It's definitely aged to an extent but I guess it depends on which way you swing the clock. If you look just a small number of years after it then films like Spider-Man 2 and Iron Man are much stronger but swing the clock the other way and it looks insanely impressive when stacked against the likes of Batman & Robin and Spawn.

                Comment


                  #9
                  Originally posted by Dogg Thang View Post
                  I feel like I have probably talked a lot about this movie over the years but, yes, I think it’s fair to say it kicked off the modern era of superhero movies. And I think the movie isn’t bad, although I don’t think it’s particularly great either. It’s entertaining and that probably is the main thing it needed to achieve. The action is a mixed bag with some of it looking pretty good and then other bits looking cheap and weird. I think my main criticisms would be, first, that it doesn’t really work as an ensemble piece and that’s what the X-Men should be - I get little sense of the team and some main characters have little to no personality. And the second and possibly biggest is that, while yes it did kick off an superhero movies and leaned into stuff other movies hadn’t, it always felt a little embarrassed by it. It always felt like it was holding back a little. Like it wanted to go full force into comics but felt like it was too ridiculous and the audience wouldn’t buy it.
                  Yeah, what DT says.

                  I was going to just say "it wasn't utter ****, and that was honestly enough". Personally I give some credit to Blade, too, but X-Men definitely played a huge role in kicking off the modern MCU boom.

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Movie 02: X-Men 2
                    Because I refuse to use the utterly naff United subtitle the film carried. The second film was a continuation and refinement on the set up of the previous film, following the positive response to Jackman as Wolverine this entry doubles down the focus in exploring his origins as the rest of the X-Men and mutants tackle the threat of Stryker. There's tease for the Dark Phoenix storyline later on too giving us our first hint of a proper real arc thread. The action was also bigger in scale and tighter as well with scenes such as the white house opening with Nightcrawler going down well with audiences.




                    For a long time the second X-Men film was held up as a bar to be met, did it deserve this accolade and is it still worthy of it?

                    Comment


                      #11
                      I need to watch it, as I haven't in ~10 years. I assume it's on D+ so I'll pop it on shortly.

                      I went to see X2 at the cinema, which had a massive queue of people, many of whom were in cosplay. It was a very exciting release, and I still think it set a really high bar that would be more celebrated today if the franchise hadn't crashed and burned with X3 (... though maybe by 2021, the stories about Bryan Singer would've run a ramrod through the whole thing if that hadn't happened).

                      I know it went through some development hell; I think it was meant to feature Sentinels in some capacity, but didn't? But regardless, I really enjoyed it at the time and thought super-hero movies could only get better.

                      Comment


                        #12
                        On a fairly recent rewatch, X2 very much came out as one of the best of the bunch. That said, it feels a bit better than the first one rather than any kind of huge leap and it very much follows on from it, just building on what was there in the first one. The feel is the same, the approach is the same. It's just a bit better. And when we get to the third, you'll see I feel similar about that one - yeah, it's worse but worse in a narrow band of sameness. The way the films are talked about, you'd think X2 was an entirely different film so many times better than the first and the third is a terrible train wreck not remotely like the first two. Whereas they all blend together a bit and their degrees of better or worse seem to be pretty small.

                        But overall X2 is a good one, if still only hitting the bar that many X-Men films hit: oh, that wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Originally posted by Dogg Thang View Post
                          On a fairly recent rewatch, X2 very much came out as one of the best of the bunch. That said, it feels a bit better than the first one rather than any kind of huge leap and it very much follows on from it, just building on what was there in the first one. The feel is the same, the approach is the same. It's just a bit better. And when we get to the third, you'll see I feel similar about that one - yeah, it's worse but worse in a narrow band of sameness. The way the films are talked about, you'd think X2 was an entirely different film so many times better than the first and the third is a terrible train wreck not remotely like the first two. Whereas they all blend together a bit and their degrees of better or worse seem to be pretty small.
                          Funnily enough this is exactly how I feel. I absolutely loved X2, at the time it was my favourite movie I'd seen in a long time. I think I saw it at the cinema twice and I bought it on DVD the moment it came out.

                          X3, for me, utterly killed the franchise to the degree where I didn't want there to be any more. Expectations played a role there; like knowing Kelsey Grammer would play Beast. I wanted it to be dead, gone, and for them to start again To this day, I kinda pretend it's a trilogy, X-Men, X2 and Logan, and that's all.

                          Comment


                            #14
                            We''ll be taking a break before continuing with the XCU as I want to shift to another franchise so let's address this one whilst it rounds out the initial trilogy and covers what we're leaning into:

                            Movie 03 - X-Men 3: The Last Stand
                            Putting a final statement in a film title is always a mistake in an industry of sequels. Here the final film barring the dozen that followed culminates the Phoenix arc (for now) and aims to raise the stakes. Singer ditched the trilogy to pursue Superman leaving a chain of directors to come and go until the equally problematic Rattner was put in charge to bring in a last minute filming schedule to screen as closely emulated to Singers style as possible. The result is a disliked closer.



                            Is the film deserving of its reputation or is it better than its legacy has it?

                            Comment


                              #15
                              I guess I've already covered it but I think it's not a great movie and inferior to 1 and 2 but only by a little. It feels very similar. If I hadn't known otherwise, I'd have little reason to suspect it wasn't made by Singer - almost everything bad about this movie feels like it just builds on what he set up. After the reaction to it though, it's mad to think it's not the worst X-Men movie. Not even close. They would sink so much lower.

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