Wowee! Watching dis movie like eating an Oreo after a steady diet of Grover’s moms “half de sugar” shortbread cookies (taste like dry sadness). Finally, a superhero film made by people not embarrassed to be making a superhero film. X-Men is true to de comic book, respektful of source material, and touch on adult themes of isolation, discrimination, and cage fighting.
Movie focus on teen runaway, Rogue, who can’t touch anyone witout really f’ing dem up. One touch and dey go into convulsions – like me did after watching Superman III and Superman IV back to back. She meet up wit rough and tumble swarthy fellow who go by name, Wolverine, because he have retraktable claws. Dey head off on road trip but, before you can call “Shotgun!”, dey attacked by bunch of costumed weirdoes. Den, saved by another bunch of costumed weirdoes.
Wolverine recover at Hogwart’s School for Gifted Mutant where he meet Professor Jean-Luc Xavier. Professor X lead camp of mutants dat believe dey can co-exist peacefully wit humans. Opposing him be Magneto, leader of Brotherhood of Evil Mutants who believe mutants need to fight back against human bullies (And, frankly, he have a point. I know me not like it when people point and yell: “Hey, you furry blue monster! Stop pooping in de jacoozi!”. It very hurtful). It be a war pitting humans vs. Magneto vs. Professor X – and Wolverine end up caught in de middle.
Senator kidnapped by evil shapeshifting smurfette and mutated into giant walking water balloon – dat eventually burst, tipping X-Men off dat Magneto mebbe up to someting.
Meanwhile, Rogue run away from school. Professor X try to use mind-machine Cerebro to track her down but it be sabotage and he end up in temporary coma.
Jean use Cerebro and find Rogue, den X-Men head off to find her. BUT Magneto get to her first. He kidnap Rogue and plan to use her to trigger wave dat will turn humans into mutants. Wolverine and de X-Men try to stop him. Big fight on top of Statue of Liberty. X-Men save de dey! Dey stop Magneto and prove justness of deir cause, value of team work, and dat Cyclops’ powers really really lame.
Movie conclude wit Professor X playing chess wit his old nemesis Magneto. X-Men have won dis battle, but de war be far from over…
X-Men be a smart, tightly paced movie wit some great performances and a strong message (“Always wear your seatbelt!”). But it far from perfekt. Dis movie could have been called X-Man becuz, aside from Wolverine, not much time spent fleshing out rest of team. Cyclops be blander den unsalted saltines while Hallie Berry give de performance of her Paris Hilton’s career. At times, movie feel like giant set-up – which it is, being first film of de franchise.
Still, X-Men be a nice change of pace from supercrap monster have been subjected to so far for dis movie club so me appreciate de small victories.
Verdikt: Movie not service all de charakters but still do a good job of presenting intelligent, easy-to-follow story wit real-world parallels.
Rating: 8 out of 10 chocolate chippee cookies.
Hopefully dis a sign of good tings to come.
Den again, mebbe not.
Hey, a movie I actually liked. Cool! We’re big X-Men people here. I agree with your verdict, Cookie!
x-men was pretty good, even if it was kind of “the wolverine show.” it’s probably because wolverine is one of the most popular, if not the most popular, characters.
cyclops is pretty bland in everything (mostly the animated series) i’ve seen him in. unless he’s clashing with wolverine over jean or the fact wolverine’s not a team player.
Oreo’s…milk…X-MEN…sounds like a perfect family “must do”!
I agree with almost everything you said. I prefer the black to yellow…but Wolverine is short and quite built…but Hugh makes a great replacement…even if not true to the comics. 🙂
My son David and I did this as a double feature last weekend (Mystery Men followed by X-Men). What a juxtaposition! Disco bad guys followed by Magneto!
It was a nice change of pace…I’m not sure about the next one though!
I liked X-Men only because Sir Patrick was in it. He my namesake – even though he born before me…heh heh.
So, how did the Beef Wellington turn out? It was cooked a tad bloody for me. But, I think I will give it a go when the weather cools a bit. Alberta is not exactly in the middle of a heat wave by anyone’s definition, but a roast just seems better on a fall day with leaves changing colour and that crispness in the air.
Where I live, our spring and fall are so short that the leaves literally spring out of the tree limbs in May and in September/October, they just go “whomp” onto the ground. Don’t be standing under the wrong tree on the wrong day up here.
Joe, you’d love it. I’ll check the trees for readiness and stand you under one. Then we will do the official countdown to “fall”. 🙂
Have a good day.
Patricia
Will get to the movie later, but for now check this out, Joe. Someone came up with how the sadomasochistic dude from 50 Shades of Gray would look like. Is it just me, or does he look like Joe Flanigan?:
http://marclombardi.wordpress.com/2012/07/11/this-is-why-we-cant-have-nice-things/#comment-123
You may also enjoy reading his blog – he’s not that unlike you (and he’s Italian, too!). Marc is a buddy from Philly (we met on the Benbo, and later met in person at Wizard World Philly), and a fellow cat lover. He also hates Michael Vick, so you two have a lot in common. 😉
das
I loved it. I haven’t seen it in a while, though.
Just saw david deluise in a kfc commercial.
Brian J Smith was on Warehouse 13 tonight. Great to see him in something again.
Wow Cookie, those are high marks. I liked this movie, but I wasn’t crazy about it. Can’t wait to see what you have to say about Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy.
I had never even heard about the next movie, The Specials. Although, looking in the credits, it’s a James Gunn movie? His stuff is usually entertaining, and sometimes hit or miss, but are usually good for a few great laughs. Does this mean that you’ll also have to watch “Super” with Rainn Wilson?
-Mike A.
Joe… MORE Stargate!!!!! =)
Now I have an explanation for the smelly blue fur in my jacuzzi.
Huh. Was going to expound in X-Men NAND give the greatest movie review ever, but Cookie Monster beat me to it. Yes, I would have loved to have seen more of the other X Men, but I was willing to forgive that, given time constraints. The biggest highlight was the groundwork set up for a human/mutant war. It makes sense “normal”humans would fear their powered cousins. And differing agendas play into it. Sincere concern for one group or another, power plays, lots of direr ring and conflicting motives hinted at. All in all, 8 or 8.5 from me.
Well, time to find the Specials. Thanks to Cookie Monster for his weekly appearance. Now, if Baron Destructor would be kind enough to drop in some it e? It is always refreshing to hear form an unrepentant baddie…
Das: I don’t blame you one bit for keeping the little guy. I’m sure Boo will bring you many hours of entertainment. Has he climbed the curtains or your pant leg yet?
Rating: 8 out of 10 chocolate chippee cookies. Wow! Isn’t that the highest rating Cookie’s EVER given to date? I’ll agree with 8 out of 10! I’ve seen X-Men about 8-9 times.
After all the crap we’ve had to sit through X-Men makes for such a breath of fresh air. A movie that takes itself just seriously enough that it’s not too hard to suspend disbelief and enjoy the ride but can still laugh at the implausibility of the whole superhero concept.
As I’ve said before, I’m not a comic book reader so I knew absolutely nothing about the movie or the X-Men story when I went to see this while I was living in Wellington, New Zealand. So I went in with an open mind. We were in the middle of filming The Lord Of The Rings so it was interesting to see Ian McKellen in something else, particularly playing a baddie.
What I like about X-Men is that there isn’t a simple black and white division between the goodies and the baddies. The interesting things are always to be found in the grey areas. Wolverine is a hard nosed loner with a soft spot for teenage girls and Magneto wants to make sure mutants have their rightful place in society . . . by turning normals into mutants. If you were to meet Wolverine in person you would probably take an instant dislike to him. Whereas Magneto would be very charming.
I can’t find much to fault with the movie. In fact, watching it the other night as the final credits started to roll I was thinking to myself, “Hey! How can it be finished already?” I suspect I’d probably mentally merged some of the sequel into the first movie. So I guess one negative thing I could say was that it wasn’t long enough! I can’t complain about the other X-Men not getting enough screen time because they all seem quite dull and boring. Wolverine is definitely the coolest character which is why he got his own spin-off movie. Cyclops is very lame and a bit of a dick. I enjoyed the banter between him and Wolverine. Storm, oooh, she can make it windy and make lightning! Big deal! Jean Grey, telekinesis and telepathy . . . yawn. Wolverine has a metal skeleton, is invincible and has freaking metal blades that extend out of his hands!!!!!!!!! And Magneto’s choice of henchmen leaves a lot to be desired. Sabretooth was very ineffectual. Mystique was interesting but I couldn’t take my eyes off her boobs (but that could be my fault!). Toad was well done but someone needs a physics lesson before they start throwing heavy objects around with prehensile tongues.
It’s also a movie where a lot of actors aren’t acting with their normal accents!
Hugh Jackman is an Australian putting on an American accent.
Anna Paquin is a New Zealander practising her Southern accent for her later role in True Blood.
Famke Janssen is Dutch although you’d never know it.
Ian McKellen is English but I think he was trying for an American accent even though he is supposed to be Polish.
Patrick Stewart stuck with his well known English accent.
And Halle Berry was doing something very weird. I can’t quite figure out where she was supposed to be from. West Indies?
Anyway, a good movie that I own on DVD and probably watch once a year or so. Coincidentally, it was on TV here in the UK on the weekend so I started watching it there until the first ads started and then put my DVD in to watch the rest.
I saw this movie probably 8 times in theatres when it first came out. I have never been an active reader of X-Men comics mostly because with all the different sub-series I couldn’t keep track of it all. I did love Storm and collected most of her origin comics so I was no little devastated by the way she was re-written in the X-Men movies. I’m not asking for 100% faithfulness when the canon is so huge — and sometimes contradictory. I think that X-Men was an entertaining movie but that it could have been so much more if they had allowed the female characters to be stronger. This goes for the decision to replace Jubilee with Rogue in the movie, even including Jubilee as a peer in the movie!
Wolverine is a good character and Hugh Jackman turned out a good performance but I can’t help wondering how much better the movie could’ve been with a stronger ensemble. Overall the actors involved really made the first movie the draw that got me into the theatre for X-Men 3 which I have subsequently blanked from my memory. All that is in the future for Cookie Monster however so I’ll savor these cookies with memories of going to the theatre and rehashing and debating and rewatching with friends.
Joe, sorry I didn’t get in a timely comment on this movie. This was the movie that got me into comics, and into Wolverine. I never saw this (or the second) when it first came out. Hubby wanted me to go, tried to explain to me who these X-Men were, and who Wolverine was, but I thought it had something to do with the X-Files meets Freddy Krueger – just not interested, at all.
Years passed and the third movie was about to come out. We were at a friend’s house, and we wanted to watch a movie. I was all for watching POTC: Curse of the Black Pearl for the 15th bazillionth time. But it was the eve of X-Men 3‘s release and the guys were eager to see it, so they convinced me to at least give the first movie a try. So reluctantly, I did.
And it was okay. Rogue intrigued me right from the beginning, which is unusual since I’m a bit misogynistic when it comes to fictional characters. But Rogue managed to make the beginning of the movie not only bearable, but intriguing, especially since I knew absolutely nothing about mutants and X-Men and all of that.
Now, enter the cage fight/bar scene. So this is the Freddy Krueger dude, eh? Yeah…not sold. Sure, he was all badass, and sure, he was easy on the eyes, but I’ve never been one to fall for a character based on looks alone. I need substance.
So, what was the turning point? Well, I’ll tell ya…it was in the truck. There was this moment when Rogue asked Logan if the claws hurt when they came out, and he replied, ‘Every time’.
Sold. Absofrigginlutely sold.
It’s not just because I love a ‘tortured’ hero (emotionally and/or physically), but much had to do with Jackman’s delivery of that single line. I didn’t know who this actor was so I had no feeling one way or the other about him, but somehow he managed in that instant to turn those two words into an epic novel in my head, just by his delivery. Now I just had to know what this guy was all about (the character of Logan, not Jackman), and my brain started racing with all sorts of ideas and questions and curiosities, and because of those two words I went right out the following week and bought my very first comic book – Wolverine Origins #1.
I read so much that first year – old and new – and really feel in love with this hairy little fireplug. I wish the more recent Wolverine comics still treated the character as he was in the beginning, and as he was portrayed in this first X-Men movie, but they’ve moved him away from the beer-guzzling loner with no memories of his past and a continuous struggle with his inner beast to a more grounded team player. In the comics Wolverine’s been neutered, but at least in this movie he still had balls. 🙂
das
*fell in love. No excuse…I did proofread. Maybe I can blame it on the hour, poor eyesight, or that glass of wine I was drinking at the time. 😉
das
Wow. Never heard of The Specials. Wow. Poor Cookie Monster.
I do love the original X-Men movies, but you’re absolutely right, Cookie; Wolverine is pretty much the main character.