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“Gumburculese? I love that guy!”
2003-05-18 23:17:04
Oh my GOD Keanu Reeves cannot act.
I mean, I’ve known that in theory for a while now, but actual demonstration in practice involves giving him an opportunity to act, which Hollywood in the past has been mercifully remiss in exposing us to.
Eh, but more on that later. I’m currently procrastinating doing some stuff for work, so I’ll give y’all the general update. It’s pouring out right now, which has managed to dissuade any lingering desire of mine to stop by the Renaissance festival this weekend. I was invited to go with a group of my gamer friends, but I was rather apathetic towards the idea. First off, because I never seem to find the time during the weekend to do the little things that I’d like to, such as these entries, or getting some reading done other than my weekly comics, or making another assault on mount DVD. Second of all...I’m really not much of a Renaissance-faire kinda guy. I could throw in with the ‘haters who decry it as a sad day out for the fans of high fantasy, and a exercise in unintentional self-parody on par with a Trek convention, but the truth of the matter is I don’t habitually hate the fairs either. At best, they’re a fairly entertaining waste of a day, and an opportunity for acting out by a bunch of aspiring thesbians and extroverts when they really should know better. At worst, it’s an open-air shopping mall of desperate or despairing shop-keeps selling clothing and jewelry that interest me not in the least (clothing that can’t be worn anywhere else, and I am personally incapable of wearing jewelry or I’ll fidgit with it until it falls apart...hence my pocket-watch). Hope for the former, fear the latter (I hate shopping...especially in a fairly-structured fandom that doesn’t interest me). Rain ruins everything, though, especially the snitty, cold, dreary stuff we’re getting at the moment. The third reason, though, is the real one. The only attraction that I really, really wanted to see got canceled. The big cat show. A sort of zoo-style display of a number of large cats that they ran each year, not really a circus-style “tricks” or “running through the paces” style show, but just bringing the cats out to walk around. Thing is, the show took place not six feet from the front row of the audience, with no bars or restraints beyond the trainer keeping a hand enmeshed in the leash-chain. (Before the show, the trainers came out and made sure there was no one under five in the first four rows, since they’re about the size of the bigger cat’s standard prey. Also made a little girl tuck back her hair ribbons, lest one of them go after her head like a cat-toy.) If memory serves they had a Jaguar, Mountain Lion, Serval cat, and an Ocelot. I had to duck out the one time I saw them, and missed the Snow Leopard.
Anyway, so why was the show cancelled?
PETA.
God damn them.
They basically just objected to the show itself, not to any conditions the cats were under, and threatened to picket. The faire, being a family show, couldn’t afford the negative publicity, so they caved.
I do feel like something of a heel about standing my friends up at the faire, though. I’ll still have to pay for the discount ticket, so I might as well have gone, if it wasn’t for all the fidgety little things I need to do this weekend. If for no other reason than a $5 turkey leg will take you an entire DAY to eat, they have Guinness on tap, and it’s the only place I know of where you can get candied ginger. (The ginger and the Guinness waged a pitched battle in my mouth to determine which flavor would linger longer.)
In other “condemnation by self righteous groups of wankers” news, there’s an organization called the “American Family Association” which has apparently set itself up to make sure that the donations to the Make-a-Wish Foundation (the one that takes kids dying of incurable diseases on trips, meetings with celebrities, etc) aren’t used for “immoral purposes.” Now I might, maybe, possibly see where they might have a leg to stand on if the organization was hiring prostitutes for underage kids who just want to get laid before they died, but that’s not the case. Instead, the AFA decided to come down on....
Wait for it...
...the Pittsburgh Comic Con.
http://www.post-gazette.com/localnews/20030509wishreg7p4.asp
There just aren’t the words to describe the level of haughty, self-absorbed imbecility of these people. Niel Gamian, however, is pleased by the attack. He marks the success of his Sandman comic to the day when he was notified that the AFA had started boycotting it. He says (via lj) that he fully expects the Pittsburgh Comic Con to skyrocket in attendance next year.
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The following is an interlude of self pity. If you’ve been reading for a while, you already know about these.
I actually haven’t been doing very well as of late. I’ve been possessed quite frequently of an urge to just get up and run. Non in the manner of exercise, but to just get away from this place. I really feckin’ hate it here. Not right now, which accounts for the somewhat lukewarm ire; during the weekends and when I’m gathered up with my friends it fades quite a bit, but when I’m alone, or late at night during an experiment, I’m possessed with this urge to be anywhere but where I am right now. Not just physically, but in every respect. Cut ties, leave school, drive outta the state. I get this inexorable feeling that there are things happening out there in the world, things of great interest and import, and I sit here sequestered away from them all, stuck in a tiny apartment in a boring city with a collection of items to distract me from the fact that life is rushing past me at a hundred miles an hour and I’m missing out on all of it. I look back on myself as I was five years ago, and I wish that I’d done more...that I hadn’t been caught so firmly in the grip of the Emory apathy, content to sit inside on a sunny day and read books, or –oh the excitement- take a trip down to the local comics shop on new comic day, or spend a couple of hours sitting in the dark playing video games or watching anime with friends. For God’s sake, I twiddled my thumbs through my formative college years. Sure, there was the time we broke into the national park for a late-night tour, the crashed parties, the coffee-house sessions that lasted ‘till dawn, and the slew of almost-was-es, but for the most part, my college life has been a pretty big waste. Partly it’s the city’s fault. Atlanta isn’t a city where things really happen to people. Things other than muggings, that is. The local “scene”, insofar as I can observe it, consists mostly of the kids from Georgia State colliding in Buckhead and drinking themselves into upheaval while sprawled on the tiled floor of their dorm bathrooms. The riotous clamor of 2,000 kids with nothing better to do cheering their favored team to, once again, put the air-filled rubber bladder through the geometric figures built of hollowed iron. (Is there anything more mind-numbingly dull than the life-achievement-by-proxy that is professional sports? I’ve nothing against the athletes, they’ve discovered how to exploit millions in cash from the viewing public by playing a children’s game. Bully for them. The viewers, though, don’t get off for being exploited so easily, they should know better. The same goes for actors. Except for the ones that then complain when their exploitations bear no fruit, and go on to complain that their work is just too artistic for the viewing public. They’re just assholes.) The occasional music event featuring either people you’ve never heard of, or people you never want to hear again, sponsored by radio stations who have a quota of one new song a month to fulfill. But other than that, Atlanta is just a big empty field of a social scene. Most of the time, the panicked desperation I feel directs me, quite specifically, to get the hell out of Atlanta. After waking up on Friday at 5:00 in the afternoon (another 26-hour day for experiments on Thursday) I was about three steps from throwing some stuff into a suitcase and driving down to JACON. Just to get the hell outta the state. Couldn’t, though. Responsibilities. Most of my gamer friends live on the outskirts of town, and driving the 40 minutes out there, into quickly increasing segments of forested rural homes allows me an opportunity to fantasize about just continuing. Driving and not stopping until I’m too exhausted to keep my eyes open. (Knowing me, that could take quite a while.) To quote a local hit, “I am driving on / [I-]85 in the / kind of morning that / lasts all afternoon. / Just stuck inside the gloom. / Four more exits till / my apartment but / I am tempted to / keep the car and drive..../ just leave it all behind” I’ve no idea where I want to go, but, to quote a soon-to-be graduate from my wing (who’d also been up all night Thursday with paperwork and thus took me to breakfast) “anywhere other than here. I just want to get the hell away.”
The most infuriating thing is I’m almost certain that I’d feel the same anywhere else, only worse because I wouldn’t know anyone, and I don’t make new friends all that easily. (Those friends muttering “bullshit” under their breath right now should note my incredible ability to quietly disappear in social settings where I’m not entirely comfortable.) My aesthetic penchant for out-of-the-way places and quiet, sequestered lifestyles pretty much plants me alone in the middle of my own problems.
So instead, I’m stuck in my rapidly deteriorating life, pursuing fantasy worlds in my free time. I can’t get up the energy or impetus to fix my life, or leave it behind. I hate this.
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One of the comics I read regularly is ending, or rather, has just suddenly ended, by a somewhat unique technique. I’d been picking up “Automatic Kafka” (Wildstorm) out of curiosity for a bit now, as the abstract style and odd story-telling technique hinted at great things to come, but never really succeeded in getting anywhere original. It was about a machine-man ex-superhero trying to work through life after the spotlight. I was frankly considering dropping it, but in this last episode, the two authors (writer and artist) stepped down into their little world and showed the confused Automatic Kafka around the inside of a comic shop, introducing him to “the entire universe”. Then they calmly and sympathetically explained to him that they’d been told the book didn’t have enough audience appeal, and the comic was cancelled. Having said so, rather than leave him around to be picked up for crossovers or otherwise warped years down the line (though, frankly, I can’t see why anyone would want him, despite continued references to “The Authority” their other, highly successful book), they thought him out of existence, thanked the audience, and left.
Huh. Not sure what to make of that.
One last bit. A recent poll was taken in England of the “100 favorite books that people actually read”. A good smattering of classics and surprises were found in the list (the order hasn’t been released yet) including four by Charles Dickens and four by Roald Dahl. The big surprise for me, though was about twelve down the alphabetical list, where Gormenghast made an appearance. A major favorite of mine, but one that’s practically unheard of in the states.
Now on to the real issues. As I’m sure you all know, there is only one major issue of any import these days. One which could potentially tear the country apart, setting brother against brother and child against parent. One that endangers the sanctity of our way of life. And that issue is...whether the new Matrix flick sucks or not.
Well, fear not, for I will brave this no-man’s land of movie debate and act as a moderator, bridging our differences and instilling peace once again between nerd and flake. Well....no, not really. I’ve no illusions that my opinions are any more legitimate than anyone else’s. This is also among the more pointless reviews I’ve done, since everyone is gonna go see the flick no matter what I say and come to their own conclusions. So, for those aren’t about to slog through one of my long pieces, here’s the summary: A) Was it a great movie? No. B) Was it a cool movie? Yes. C) Was it a good movie? Eh.
To explain: A) will this be a film that shapes filmmaking to come for the better, influencing the genre, introducing concepts, ideals and formative guiding principles of what makes good science fiction for generations? More specifically, does it add in any of these capacities beyond what was done in the first film? No. No it does not. Is this a deal breaker? Of course not, actual great films only come along very rarely, and are hardly ever the middle film in a series. (The only one I can think of is Silence of the Lambs.)
B) Does this film feature great special effects, characters acting all badass, extended sequences of ass-kicking such as have never been seen before, and a scene that lets me use the phrase “attack of the clones” in a positive way? Yes, yes it does.
C) Will you enjoy this film? Hell if I know. Did I enjoy this film? Yeah, pretty much. Will you enjoy this film for the same reasons that I did? Probably not.
To get the major points out of the way, yes I did like the first Matrix film. I liked it more than I liked this sequel. So you haven’t that excuse to explain my unreasonable ambivalence before the unmitigated genius of the Wachowski bros. The problem is, I felt the original Matrix could be evenly divided up into three segments. The first segment was when all the weird stuff was going on, and we observers had no real idea what was going on. The agents were horrifying, the contacts all seemed to be from some obscure fetish club, and Keanu pulls off the confused look fairly well. The second segment was a rough analogy of that section in all Kung-Fu flicks where the ancient master explains to the aspiring young head-kicker what “chi” is. The third segment was one long fight scene. The part I loved was the first bit. The mystery, the intrigue, the unexplainable incidents, the clever allusions. That bit has been entirely excised from the second movie.
We already know everything when we start the film. We know about the Matrix, the purpose, the struggle for freedom, and, most importantly, that Neo and Trinity have been snoggin’ it non-stop since we left them in the last film due to a change in character that could be less called a “development” as a “lightswitch.” This assumed foreknowledge of the plot I complimented in X2 just one entry ago, but I actually think it hurts us a bit here. What I would’ve liked would’ve been a brief re-introduction of the audience into the Matrix and the principles therein. Nothing too elaborate, but something to feed the action-hounds in the audience for the interminable wait that fronts the story. Something like Neo on an end-run to wake up another target. Him yanking some random raver-skazz off the street, engaging in a bit of Agent-avoidance, then offering the blue and red pills would’ve acted nicely to show how far Neo had come. It would also tell us in advance that the Agents were still looking for him. (The student, now the master, etc.) Instead, we get a brief action scene (that just previews a later scene) and Neo waking up next to Trinity on the Nebuchadnezzar. Also there is Morpheus and Agustus Hill from “Oz.” There’s a Matrix-connect meeting of the Nebuchadnezzar with some other ships while Morpheus spells out a brief plan, followed by a mysterious package drop (the package was rather clever, and to some degree acted similarly to my suggestion as a “reminder” of what was coming....as well as foreshadowing of our favorite character) followed by an Agent attack that gives us our first look at Neo fighting of the film. And it’s ....pretty much how he fought in the last film. Only more toned down. I dunno. I was kinda hoping for more of the blurr-motion, the quantum-dodging the Agents pull off when they’re getting shot at. (They do that once in this film.) Eh, plenty of movie left for that.
Then they’re coming into Zion, the mysterious city mentioned but never seen in the previous film. (Uh oh, that would make them all Zionists...which means they support an independent Israel...expect harsh condemnation from the Palestinian front.)
Zion is....kinda cool. It’s weird, I’m not sure exactly what I expected Zion to be like, but I’m sure I didn’t expect it to look like that. It’s sort of a cross between the loading bays of the Nostromo or other Alien-mech (right down to the kick-ass exos similar to the Aliens armament loader) and a Star-Wars starport. I was especially surprised to find that the docking and security mechanisms were operated by people embedded in a mini-Matrix. Why? Wouldn’t running an AI subroutine providing a VR room to push buttons in consume more power than just having some guys sitting at desks with TV screens push the buttons manually? Eh, nit-picky stuff like that doesn’t bother me much. The real problem is that Zion has been populated with mediocre actors. (Which means their worship of Keanu makes sense.) While in Zion, everyone is in speech-giver mode. Paced, measured lines of address, little of the natural cadence of conversation. Ig. Anyway, we discover that Zion is ruled by a council of elders, and get a brief introduction to the politics of the situation through a commander violently opposed to Morpheus’s efforts within the Matrix. All this political stuff is brand new to the film world, and, I feel, not better off for it. It needlessly complicates the story and drives us into new, and ultimately pointless (thus far...this may prove to be significant in the third film) character interactions. An ex-lover of Morpheus’s, Niobe (daughter of Tantalus in Greek legend, turned to stone for offenses against the gods), is introduced out of the blue for the sake of the video game (well...that’s a bit harsh. She is an important character later on, but her introduction was somewhat stilted).
Fortunately, someone smuggled a bootleg copy of “the Animatrix” down to Zion before the official release date, and thus everyone knows about the drilling project the machines have instituted in the Alaskan wilderness (in blatant violation of the EPA) hoping that, if they drill down far enough, they might hit a deposit of people. This discovery leads to the most talked-about scene in the film:
The infamous orgy-rave scene. Everyone’s heard about it by now. So I won’t detail it. Personally, I just gave it a big “whatever,” but Morpheus’s speech that triggers everyone’s libido is just weird. He gets almost biblical up there. Dude, the speech ain’t THAT good... His shouted speech (what, you set up a mini-matrix to run the docking webs and you can’t manage to put up a PA system in your main address hall?) and stance made me expect a sudden outburst of “PHAROH! LET MY PEOPLE GO!” Instead, he tells the people to dance in defiance of the approaching drill.
Yeah, that’ll show ‘em.
Fortunately, there’s a backup plan, with Neo and Trinity screwing in defiance of the approaching drill. (heh) Honestly, I think the whole segment was supposed to act as a violent outburst at the sort of lives they were forced into living down deep in the earth. A celebration of life in defiance of the death approaching. A last gasp of humanity. Unfortunately, it didn’t come out that way. There wasn’t sufficient, or sufficiently thorough setup of the society for me to even be certain that that was the cinematic intent. In fact, the previous scenes where supplicants bring Neo offerings kinda works against this interpretation. (What with the pious aspects standing in opposition to the riotous explosion of sexuality in the caves, it gave us a view only of the extremes of the society...hell, I would’ve appreciated some explanation as to why the main assembly hall was in a cave while the rest of Zion was iron girders and enormous rivets.) Instead it was just phenomenally out of place. A set of random scenes that did little beyond boosting the flick up into an “R” rating.
Then there’s the long awkward scene with the councilman. Boy, what the hell was the point of that? Well, it’s a flavor of all the faux philosophizing to come. Boy o boy there’s a lot of grade-school philosophy in this film.
Zion, all in all, was a near complete loss. The more I watched of Zion, the more I felt I was trapped in a Star Wars movie, Queen Amadalah in full makeup sitting on one end of the councilmen’s chambers. I started looking for the Wookie delegation to pipe up. What is it with Sci-Fi these days and taking everything to the council? Does everyone else find the bickering of council politics that fascinating?
Oh yeah, and Trinity. Is anyone else dismayed by the utter and total reversal of her character now that she and Neo are an item? I mean, I like character development, and I’d naturally expect her to be affectionate towards Keanu since he’s pretty much her bread-ticket to the profits from this film, but she went from PVC-clad superbitch to comforting lover and jealous girlfriend between the movies. I could interpret this as further commentary on the personas we go into when we go online, but I’d be inserting commentary that the film didn’t think was worth the time to elaborate on. Eh. I suppose that’s more of a personal disappointment based on her character in the previous film. I always thought their love story in Matrix was rather contrived.
Fortunately, the Nebuchadnezzar eventually gets the hell out of Zion, hitting only a few plotholes on the way out. See, they’ve gotten word that the Oracle has turned up again, and wants to talk to Neo. The council, almost immediately, sends two MORE ships out after him, for reasons I’m not entirely clear on.
Here, the film starts getting better. Or more fun anyway. No...make that better. Most of the better and cooler actors start showing up.
But the philosophy is just dumb. We get fifteen minutes of the Oracle explaining predestination to Neo, and Keanu doing his best to look like he’s following it. (Really, this was the low point for Keanu’s acting ability.) There were a few bits relevant to the plot in there, but the vast majority was just indecipherable nonsense or grade-school philosophy told-really-slowly. I confess that I didn’t really like the Oracle in the first film, and here she grates on my nerves even more.
Not as much as the guest lecturer, though. The “French” “Merovingian,” (name of a Frankish dynasty, for the curious) is targeted by our cool-guys lineup (Trinity, Neo and Morpheus), but he calmly and self-assuredly invites them into his restaurant, has them seated at his table, and then lectures them for fifteen minutes on causality while causing a woman at another table to remote-orgasm in wireframe (THAT’LL keep the audience awake). Through the whole speech, our three heroes just sit there, emotions concealed behind opaque shades, entirely motionless. I was half expecting Keanu to lean over to Morpheus:
N: Psssst. What’s going on?
M: I have no idea.
N: Is there gonna be a test on this?
M: I hope not. I was only watching when he lit off that girl.
N: Yeah, she was hot, wasn’t she?
M: I bet I could get Niobe back with a piece of that cake.
[...]
N: Can I just TRY punching him in the head?
M: Take that causality!
Someone over at Mac Hall defined the whole movie as “My dinner with Andre on the Hindenburg.” Overly harsh, but frankly appropriate because the Merovingian is the second most memorable character in the flick, mostly because he’s a joke, one of the few jokes in the film. Strings of profanity and the fight with his wife provide some of the only funny.
Oh yes, his wife. “Persephone.” You know, I think I’ve unraveled the elaborate hidden symbology of the teams in the Matrix. People in leather, PVC, or latex fetish gear are the good guys. She wasn’t so much _falling_ out of that white latex dress as _exploding_. (Oh, and the guards in the Merovingian’s mansion weren’t “werewolves.” Putting aside the fact that the Oracle only said that stories of supernatural beasties are interpreted by the mundanes as explanations for the abilities of the rouge programs, and not that the rouge programs actually looked anything like vampires or werewolves, the guards would fall into the “vampire” category...’cause they were watching “The Brides of Dracula” when Persephone walked in on them. (An old Peter Cushing flick.))
The last bit of philosophizing is courtesy of the Architect (played by Colonel Sanders), who appears at the very end of the film and doesn’t so much “redefine” the Matrix as completely explode our concept of it up to this point, and only sketch in a few new details for us to build up from. I mean, what are we to make of the whole “Zion has been destroyed six times before now”? I confess most of what he said I couldn’t resolve with the previous storyline without introducing a “thirteenth floor” phenomenon, which, I’ve been assured, is not the case in this film. So, I’m betting I just missed most of the point in this segment. Gathering from what I did follow, it was the best of the “three philosophical texts of the Matrix”, though.
So, I’ve spent the last five pages tearing the Matrix apart. I must hate the film, right? No, actually I enjoyed it. Why? Two words.
Agent Smith. Or really, all the fight scenes. But mostly Agent Smith. He’s just cool. All of him. Every line, every action, the odd little grin he gets when he calls out to “Mr. Anderson.” He just kicked a phenomenal amount of ass in this film. (Although...wait, wasn’t he punching sections out of concrete support beams before? Where’s that strength now?) Ol’ Elrond mixing it up. The attack of multiple Smiths was the high point in the film for me. Well...actually, the first fight got in a rut after about thirty seconds. Block, block, punch, kick, block, block, kick, punch, pick up a Smith and hurl him into his friends. Repeat four times. Really got cool when Neo picked up the pipe, though. Even Smith’s motivation is a step or two above everyone else’s. Neo’s destruction of him freed him from his standard programming, he finds himself liberated...which he never knew he wanted...into a prison that he never knew was there... and he wants revenge for this opening of his eyes. Someone else predicted that the third movie will climax with the Smiths switching sides and fighting for Neo. I hope that’s what happens. That would be cool as hell. (“You and what army?” “Him”) Although it looks unlikely from the preview at the end of the flick.
Also cool were the albino twins. Only two lines, but still fun, especially the taunting swing of the knife through the car as it drives through one of them. Although, as others have pointed out, there’s more cool stuff they could have done with their ethereal-ness.
Even the Keymaster was pretty neat, albeit in his own special “wizend crazy-man saves the team” way.
Most of the story, once they left Zion, was fairly good, but was something of a scavenger hunt. “You must find the oracle, to learn about the Merovingian, to find the Keymaster, to meet the Architect, to get to the source. On the other hand, the fight scene with Seraph was just pointless and rather anticlimactic. I mean, Morpheus might’ve been able to pass that test, it didn’t really require any of the super-rule-bending-techniques that Neo is supposed to have mastered but never uses (except flying and bullet-stopping). I mean, really, does Kung Fu even make sense for Neo to use any more after seeing what he could do at the end of the first film? If he can will the bullets to stop, can’t he will them to return?
The fight on the freeway was fun, and actually got a cheer or two outta the crowd. (Especially the demonstration that “The Karate Kid” was also a pluggable option in the Matrix.) My only disappointment there was I was expecting the twin’s car to fall apart after Morpheus’s slice. Hell, James Bond once cut a car in half with a laser. They’re in a fictional world where they can bend the rules any which way they want. I wanna see the katana swing and a wheel go flying! Maybe next film.
I think the entirety of this film review was me discovering, much to my surprise, that I stand outside this particular fandom. To me, the characters are supposed to be cool, and thus I expect them to earn that status through their parts. To the more avid fans of the first film, the characters are now, by default, cool, and would have to do something really dumb to loose that status. They are pieces of cool to be moved around on the board in the same way that the X-Men are, by default, cool for me. Wolverine is neat-o until they fuck up his character. Nightcrawler is great so long as they don’t deviate extremely from what I know. Within the fandom, the Matrix characters remained cool and awe-inspiring during the first confrontation with the Merovingian, whereas for me, the whole scene struck me as absurdly silly. This leaves me, ironically, requiring a better performance and having higher expectations for the film than the people who really loved the first one.
So, the final verdict is, I liked the film, but it wasn’t nearly as well crafted as the first, and they kept all the parts I disliked while getting rid of some of those I liked. Watch it for the fights, bring a book to occupy time during the philosophizing, and get ready to cover junior’s eyes during the sex. Frankly, I kinda wish I’d gone to see Identity instead. It’s not like Matrix is gonna be out of the theaters by next week.
On the other hand, I’m apparently missing a massive something-or-other considering how much the fans really love this flick. Anyone who wants to point out the errors in my analysis, feel free to comment. (AMV.org users, just e-mail me at gte106k@prism.gatech.edu) The disparity between those who absolutely adored the film and those who hated it is so large that I’m trying to figure out what lies at its core.
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No, I didn't fucking get to see the new Matrix movie yet.
2003-05-15 00:53:44
So I couldn’t possibly have more to say about the latest X-men movie, right? Guess again. Hsien mentioned in the comments last post that a friend of his told him most of the plot for X2 came from the comic story “God Loves, Man Kills.” I’d never read that particular story, but, by a remarkable coincidence, I’d picked up the reprint earlier in the week. I’d noticed the standard comic format on the new releases wall and wondered why such an old story was being republished. Unfortunately, there’s a #1 on the cover, so apparently I haven’t read the whole story yet, but it appears that I’ve read all the relevant bits having to do with the film, so I thought y’all might like a bit of a fill-in on my increasingly inaccurate review the first time ‘round.
The comic was apparently originally published in 1982 (or so says the first copyright date) as “Marvel X-Men graphic novel #5.” Normally, this would pull it out of the standard continuity, placing it in that nebulous “well maybe it took place between issue #___ somewhere....but I’m not sure” range. However, a quick glance at the hero’s lineup brings us a surprise: “Ariel”. “Ariel” was Kitty Pride’s code name for a total of about three minutes sometime back in the 1980’s. She started out as “Sprite” with a truly hideous roller-skate-clad “uniform,” switched to “Ariel” just long enough to realize that no one got the reference to Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” (a problem revisited with the morlock “Caliban”....wait, he fell in love with Kitty....OOoooohhhhhh.) and finally settled on “Shadowcat.” This would nail down the storyline to within one or two comics....if I was actually bored enough to find an online index of these sorts of things.
(Hokay, I lied....I tried but lost interest: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/comics/xbooks/main-faq/part7/)
The rest of the team is Cyclops, Wolverine, Storm, Nightcrawler, and Colossus....which strikes me as weird, but, again, I’m not bored enough to figure out why. The cover also features Jean Grey and Banshee (?) and Illyana Rasputin shows up in the story as well, although only in a bit part. (The intersect of Illyana and “Ariel” probably focuses us down to a handful of panels in standard continuity at this point.) The story itself is one of Chris Clairmont’s works, a writer widely celebrated by long-time fans (and something of a personal favorite).
Reading through the comic, I’m actually fairly impressed with how well they meshed everything into the film, given that they worked in Wolverine’s “true origin” (*snerk*), Pheonix’s introduction, the (Sentinel-less) inception of a government force for control of the “mutant problem” and given where we ended the previous film. The comic’s story involves the confrontation of three major forces in a lot of Clairmont’s work, the humans who hate mutants, the mutant who hates humans (Magneto) and the X-men stuck in-between. The villain in this picture is William Stryker, who is not a military commander, but an ardent inflammatory televangelist-preacher. In a nice tie-in to the film, however, Stryker was previously a Master Sergeant with the US Army Rangers, so the film stands even more as an alternate universe, ‘what if?’ concept. If Stryker’s car hadn’t crashed in the desert, inducing his wife into labor, if they had made it to a hospital, and the young mutant had been born where William Stryker hadn’t had the liberty to go with his first impulse and kill off the mutant child the moment he was born, perhaps he would have risen in the ranks and the story would have proceeded as it did in the film, with Stryker eventually having his son transformed into a sort of crippled processing plant.
As it is, however, Stryker kills his son there in the desert, breaks his wife’s neck, and tries to commit suicide. Unfortunately, he fails, and, in the interim, finds God. What does God tell him to do? Why, kill all mutants, of course. In an overtly-literal interpretation of the Bible, he infers that man is build in God’s image, so that mutants, who are of a different image, must therefore be constructs of the devil. He spreads this word via televangelism, his loyal followers; the “Stryker Crusade”, and a group of ruthless executioners called “the purifiers” who, covertly, kill families and children if they detect as mutants.
And we wonder why they didn’t keep Stryker as a minister in the film...
So the X-Men move on this? Nope, they’re either unaware of the extent, or unable to act on something with such fervent supporters. So who does act?
Magneto.
Coming upon the corpses of two young children killed by the Purifiers enrages the elderly mutant (and he honestly does look old here...looks a hell of a lot like Ian McKellan, actually, although a little fuller in the face) who swears vengeance on the killers. Magneto really comes out of this particular story as an idealist, if not smelling exactly like a rose. At the end of the comic, Kitty even pleads with him to stay and join the X-men.
The rest of the story you can somewhat guess from the film. Xavier is captured, although here it’s via a faked assassination attempt that takes Scot, Ororo, and Charles, and leaves three burned-beyond recognition corpses behind. The remaining X-ers investigate, are attacked, rescued by Magneto (as is Kitty when she gets caught trying to tail the Purifiers after they kidnap Illyana from the school) who even goes out of his way to drop a wounded police officer off at the hospital, and the assembled forces move to confront Stryker. Mastering Xavier this time around wasn’t nearly as pleasant an experience as in the film. He’s basically tortured in a drug-induced delirium for several days to reach the point where he’ll operate Stryker’s cerebro device. The final sequence, however, is rather more powerful than the film version. The X-men end up calmly confronting Stryker, standing before him and an enormous assembled audience and all the television cameras, where they refute his unmitigated gall to speak for God’s will in the condemnation of people based on their birth. Infuriated, Stryker pulls a gun and prepares to shoot Kitty Pride (Yeah, she was in no danger, but he didn’t know that.), but is himself shot down by one of the guards who wasn’t about to let the Reverend gun down a teenage girl on national television. Whattaya know. An on-duty cop to the rescue. Name the last film that happened in. (And it doesn’t count if he was fighting other, corrupt cops.)
All things considered, a good X-men story, but it’s so fully a Chris Clairmont story in words and plot that it could act as a microcosm of much of the X-books over ten or twelve years. It’s practically iconic in its subject and delivery, and to that it might be considered a bit rough going or dry as a stand-alone. Not a relaxing word to be found, nor a reassuring joke anywhere to break up the oppressive mood. The religion angle is actually treated fairly well, and it doesn’t roll out the standard platitudes pro or con that typify most comic treatment of the subject these days. Clairmont does go out of his way many times to show that, while there are fervent followers of Stryker’s, there are many among all sectors, religious and political, who realize the danger of his ideas, and the danger that his power over “Stryker’s Crusade” is based on idealogical momentum, and not actual faith or belief.
I’d actually heard about this particular book for a long while, but always avoided picking it up. It’s separation from the main storyline meant it didn’t contain anything necessary for following all the old comics, and the cover just screamed “moralistic preaching inside.” There is some, but somehow it manages to speak on an idealistic level that doesn’t feel as heavy-handed as most political or moral ranting these days. On the other hand, it may just be the benefit of distance. The after word included with this edition tells us it was written during the explosion in fundamentalist televangelism of the Regan years.
One last thing. I mentioned a while back how the “Image-Manga” influence had reduced the number of panels on a page while reducing the page count of your standard comic giving more room for the art at the expense of the story. Well, let me count this reprint.....62 pages, average panel count at 9.5, minimum 4 (one page, Magneto’s confrontation of Stryker) maximum of 16 (twice) for a total of 592 panels in the comic.
I’ll let someone else do the math for a manga book.
-
"This IS a school...."
2003-05-11 19:45:08
Well, saw X-Men 2 again today, as my mother wanted to see it for mother's day, and I promised that I would post corrections if there were any. Here we go.
The big one is to take all of my minor little objections, and tone them down even further. The only point where I felt the acting slipped a little was right at the very end. Cyclops especially is trying to emote around that visor and it just doesn't come off that well, although just about everyone slips a little there. I think that scene just left a little bit of a bad taste in my mouth the first time 'round and colored my memories of acting in the rest of the film, 'cause when I watched it again from the very beginning, Jean and Scott are actually pretty good. Again, about a half step below my favorites, but that's just the difference between very, very good, and near-perfect. I still think Bobby is sort of a non-character, though. Anna Paquin actually feels a little younger too, although that's likely because some of the time she's actually enjoying herself instead of being the dour runaway she was in the first film.
Completely missed that the kid with the tongue is Artie. Makes me wonder where leech ran off too. They kept Artie mute, though, so, again, they've got the characters down pretty good, if not following the storylines.
(This one's good) Watch Mystique when she slides out of the spillway doors as they close behind her, leaving all the army guys inside. She's flipping them off as she leaves. :)
2 Slip-ups. The Dr. Pepper Wolverine gets from the cupboard looses about 5 fl ounces from the neck between the time he opens it and when he hands it to Bobby. Stagehand musta' been thirsty. (Just a silly little thing I noticed.) Second, a little more serious, the kids ask why they don't get uniforms, and they're told that they'll get them in "a few years." However, when they visit the President, everyone but Nightcrawler's got one. Hmmmm...
Whoop. My bad. Scott DOES wear his signature red shades in the Museum.
Completely fucked up the ordering too. I didn't realize how much the story jumped around. It's actually fairly complex, such that you've forgotten about major parts when you suddenly jump back to them.
The "kid who doesn't sleep" is apparently supposed to be a subtile dig at Harry Potter...and the kid does look a bit like him.
Lastly, something I don't understand. Magneo early in the film is reading (and Prof. X mentions at the very end) a book called "The Once and Future King." Now, in Magneto's case, the title could just be a subtile reference to Magneto, as he escapes to once again become the "future king". However, there's probably something more going on here, and I just can't figure out what it could be. See, I've read "The Once and Future King" by T.H.White. Basically, it's the story of King Arthur. (King Arthur is said to sleep/be entombed eternally at Avalon, and he will someday return to the land he ruled, thus the once and future King.) What T.H.White did was collect all the disparate stories (like many legends which were only passed down by word of mouth for a long time, the stories diverge, get strange new chapters stuck in, battles and triumphs got grander, and new knights kept showing up to expand the diameter of the round table) and skillfully stitched them all together to form one, quite long, coherent story. He added characterization, development, and some depth to the knights in the process. His is probably the best known version of the tale in the US. Remarkably, it's also written at a fairly reasonable reading level. Grade schoolers usually get assigned it when they're in the more advanced English classes. Now, I can't figure this out. Magneto, I would have thought, would've been reading Neitzsche, not accessable fairy tales. The obvious reason, then, would be of a perpetuation of the Arthurian legend in the movie or among the characters. Xavier is hardly an Arthur, there's no real Guenivier/Lancelot/Arthur parallel, nor is there any great final battle with a "Mordred" or a "Morgana." Perhaps a Merlin theme? No.... Hmm. This really has me puzzled.
Ah well, there's my corrections. Sorry for the missed points. -
Upside the head with an issue of Animerica
2003-05-10 01:14:17
So I forgot to mention during my political spiel last time that, although Dave Merrill doesn’t SEEM to take any offense to our little verbal jousts online, and we never discuss these things in person, he did completely clock me upside the head with a free comic at the last staff meeting. Hmmm...perhaps not as ambivalent as I thought... I also think he’s been going to pitching practice. (That fecking’ HURT) I think he was disappointed at AWA 7 & 8 because all of the chandeliers in the con were wrought-iron instead of glass or plastic beads. During opening ceremonies he always pitches candy out to the crowd. (dating back to AWA I when the con heads were disposing of leftover Halloween candy by peppering the audience with jolly ranchers and those weird peanut-butter-taffy things you always got as a kid. You know, no maker’s label or anything, just black and orange wax paper.) I swear, every year except the last two, he managed to get over-exuberant and nail one of the chandeliers, dropping little plastic beads onto the audience. It was almost as much an institution as the burning of the magic cards.
So if Texas is wondering where all that rain they’ve been expecting for a few weeks is, I’d just like to tell them to send a truck over and pick it up. It’s lying all over the streets here. (Yeah, I know some of it got through.)
The weather out here in Georgia has been either dangerous or miserable for the past three days. First it was humidity of the most oppressive sort, the kind that seeps into every fiber of your clothing and keeps it at just the right level of damp that you can’t sit still anywhere for very long or you start sweating like there’s no tomorrow. I turned on my AC in the car, and it literally started blowing fog in my face. Doesn’t help that my work is FREEZING because we’re a three story building with an enormous atrium, so all the air conditioning falls through the atrium and gathers on the first floor. As a result, I’ve caught another cold, dammit.
Anyway, yesterday I had a dental appointment for a regular checkup. (Look ma! The dentist gave me a pin for no cavities!) No trouble getting there, although I kept hearing tornado warnings and watches as I pulled into his parking lot. On the way out I slid into my car, turned on the radio, and just then they announced a tornado warning for the county I was in. Pulled onto the street, turned onto the highway, and a lone, big, fat drop splatted onto the windshield. Up ahead, the way back to school, was under a shadow. I started speeding up and the rain came down.
And how.
Practical deluge pouring down on me. Windshield wipers were going full speed and visibility was still impaired from the river pouring over the windshield. Every window immediately started fogging up. (Had to keep the defogger going full blast the whole trip, which left me sweltering.)
Then the hail started. (Just a bit, it was gone quickly enough.) The only point that actually scared me was when, straight ahead, I could see the darkened clouds moving rapidly east. That wasn’t the scary part. The scary part was when I noticed the low-lying fog on the road. It was moving rapidly west. Fortunately, nothing twisty came of it, at least, not while I was there.
The really spectacular thing was the lightening. It was striking next to the road, only about 100-200 yards off either side. There were over a dozen strikes in about six minutes, including cloud-to-cloud strikes. The rain was something else too. By the time I finally got back to school, the curbside lane was flooded about half the time, occasionally with foot-high standing waves on the downhill side. I ended up parking with one wheel about a quarter inch from submerging the wheelwell in the flow.
In other news, I just finished watching the fourth animatrix segment. I actually found this one the least appealing of the bunch (although I did watch it on lowest size, ‘cause I didn’t want to wait). It was especially disappointing as a sequel to the first. The first was interesting and somewhat thought-provoking, even if not entirely original. Variety, depth, scope. This one was just war, over and over. AND they did it AGAIN. The human body does not work as a perpetual motion machine. Yes it processes sugars more efficiently than any presently known mechanism....but that energy isn’t devoted to production of heat or the biomagnetic fields. That’s a sign of its INEFFICENCY. If you wanted to drive a mechanism with the heat from grain, you’d be better off BURNING THE GRAIN. What the hell are the machines feeding their charges, and why wouldn’t just BURNING THE FOOD be more efficient? I only bring this up, because the short referred to humans as an “infinitely renewable resource.” Blerg. Try again. With no sun, where’s the primary input of energy for life coming from?
Ehhh. I don’t really care. Hell, I already ordered a copy of Animatrix, and I feel I got my money just for the Detective Story. That one’s goooood....
Believe it or not, I’ve actually completed another video. Not a full bore one, but rather one for the 3DR project. It’s a simple, silly little thing that I got together in record time, about 2.5 weeks. I’m not entirely happy with it, but I realized I wouldn’t be able to make it any better by fussing at it, so I went ahead, filled in the last few slots, and tossed it to the complier. I’m hoping for “nice” and not “suckiest one on the project.” There’s practically no effects in it, as I’m still sussing out this newest version of Ulead, and haven’t mastered the after effects controls yet, but there’s one or two bits I consider fairly clever. The only thing I hate was actually integrated into the song. The “V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N” didn’t bother me when I first picked the track as an option, but that was before I realized it was repeated about eight times in the song. Tried for something a little different each time.
The real accomplishment of doing a video is in throwing off the “VAT Curse.” Jingoro always held that there was some kind of curse about the director’s position of the VAT that prevented the title holder from ever getting another project done. Writer’s block, computer troubles, whatever. It just wasn’t possible for the VAT director to actually participate in this hobby. The curse looked to be holding water for the first year, as that was the first time I ever went a year without making a video, but the creation of this one means I’ve thrown it off for now. Gotta keep my momentum up, though, lest it consume me again. A few plans for AMVs ahead. Too bad so much of the social AMV scene has turned into such dreck. Good work, pestered by absolute assholes. I rarely browse the forums any more, but even I notice the overabundance of jackasses. Here’s hoping that this year’s AWA can provide enough of a social mixer to bring people to their senses.
In other news, I’m whoring out my bodily fluids for $24 a pop. (heh) Actually just got paid for that study I participated in a month ago. $24 for 240 milliliters of blood.
Alright, enough of this malarkey. I know what you people really want. (snf) You want to see my review of the second X-Men movie, X-Men: United. (Whooo....already told you something you didn’t know? Yeah, X2 isn’t actually the film title. Someone in marketing musta figured out that the film sold itself just by being unutterably cool, and decided to cut back on the couple of film posters that actually had the full title on it.)
Well, here we go, but be warned, I’m right on the verge of a writer’s block here. The previous parts of this entry were written over about five days of lackluster inspiration, so I’m gonna try to force this review out, kicking and screaming. May be a little more contrived and straining at the seams than usual, though. On the other hand, this is the first film in quite a while where I should be able to get through it without descending into lurid descriptions of female leads rapidly loosing clothing or ghoulish delight at the splatter effects of cheap horror. That is, if you consider it an improvement... : )
X-Men 2 marks the first time someone has actually asked me what the paper and pen are for.
Him: You’re gonna take notes on the movie?
Me: I write movie reviews for a little website.
Him: Isn’t it gonna be kind of dark to write? (I think he was worried that I was gonna haul out a flashlight.)
Me: I’m an expert at reading horrible handwriting.
However, after a few initial notes, I just put the scrap of paper away and enjoyed the flick. Most of the time, action is predictable enough to glance down and scratch a few words, but I didn’t want to miss anything on this film. Then I lost the notes that I had. So, this review might be a little out-of-sequence. I’ll post corrections on Sunday. My mom wants me to take her to see it for Mother’s day, and I’ll keep an eye for screwups.
X-Men 2 starts off with a bang. Or rather, a Bamf! (Buh-heee....there, gotten my generico-movie reviewer writing outta the system.) Actually, we start out in the frozen north. We left Wolverine at the end of the first movie leaving to check out the remains of a laboratory located on Alkali lake, Canada. There he finds a big fat nothing.
Then we are taken to the real start, the White House, where a certain German immigrant has fallen behind the tour. Kurt Wagner, the Nightcrawler, makes his debut by KICKING THE ASS OF EVERYONE (and I mean everyone) WITHIN RANGE FOR A FULL FIVE MINUTES. Damn but that scene was cool. I will readily admit that, as a long-ago X-Men fan, I was absolutely certain that they were going to fuck Nightcrawler up. Why? ‘Cause he’s German, religious, fun-loving, but probably the most outcast of any of the X-Men. If you’re a long-time fan like I am, and you’re nearly certain that you’re going to see Nightcrawler, you’re favorite character, pressed into some Hollywood mold, this intro scene is both spectacular and terrifying. Spectacular because it’s so cool. Terrifying, because it’s so wrong.
Let me get the big one out of the way. Those of you who don’t want to ruin the story for yourself (all six X-Men fans who haven’t seen it yet), just go into the film with this reassurance: Kurt isn’t really doing that. There’s more to this than there appears. They DIDN’T fuck him up. Now, stop reading here, and go watch the movie. With this little reassurance in mind, you can watch without the crushing disappointment of apparently reducing Nightcrawler to a thug.
For everyone else, the reason the scene is so wrong is simply Kurt’s personality. Kurt Wagner, back in the original run of the first team, was probably the kindest soul in the group. His personality (and devout Catholicism) was designed to directly conflict with his appearance, giving us the image of a “praying devil.” The idea that he would run an assassination attempt on the president, and spout apparently inflammatory political rhetoric, is so totally antithetical to his character that, as I watched, I was despairing for the character development. “Oh Kurt, how far you’ve fallen.” What I didn’t realize then, was that the movie actually counted on the outside knowledge of X-fans, instead of merely ignoring them. Non-comic fans would watch the scene, and figure it was some not-yet-introduced member of the Brotherhood of (evil) Mutants. Or possibly someone working alone. The comics fans would see Nightcrawler, see what he was doing, and figure something was up. (I did flash for a second....”maybe it’s in the danger room...Please?”) This lets the comics fans jump ahead of everyone else...start down the list of possible mind-controllers, shape-shifters, power-stealers and the like who might be forcing/imitating Nightcrawler into doing this. I, however, was too much of a pessimist to hope for that.
Oh, there’s the nit-picky stuff I could point out. A) Nightcrawler’s teleportation is physically exhausting for him...the comics version, especially at his introduction, could never teleport that many times in such a short period. B) Nightcrawler’s teleportation is nigh-instantaneous, so the moment he disappears he should reappear elsewhere. A couple of times in the fight he disappears to avoid a bullet, pauses for a second or two, and then returns. (He spends something like a few microseconds in a parallel dimension before passing back into this one elsewhere...an idea used for a couple other Marvel teleporters...Magik had to step to Limbo before she could go anywhere else.) C) Nightcrawler is “fuzzy.” He has short fur over his entire body. To be honest, though, they practically never drew it in the comics. He was always just a solid blue. I’m willing to bet that the SFX people tried the fur a couple of ways, and it just didn’t work. Blunted his features, a hassle to put on or CGI, and likely just ends up looking dumb. So they went for blue skin (which makes him look a bit more like the comic version). In later scenes, during close-ups, look closely at his hairline. In order for the makeup to mesh properly with the scalp, they either had to work it in over his entire scalp and then grease up his short hair into individual curls, or that’s a damn effective meshing of a wig with the makeup. It looks OK at a distance, but up close, it does appear a bit weird.
All of this really is just nit-picking, though. Nightcrawler is done to a “T” here, from the sound effect for his teleportation (the irreplaceable “Bampf”), to the twitching tail (which, unless I missed it, didn’t get a lot of screen time). If anything, he is played a bit further towards the pacifist than he ever was in the comics.
See, Kurt was set up. Mind-controlled into the attack for the access his unique (not so unique in the larger mutant world, but unique of those introduced thus far) ability affords him and his frightful appearance (three-fingered, two toed, pointed ears, blue skin, dagger teeth, and a long, prehensile devil-barbed tail), Nightcrawler’s attack is meant to stir up fear in official circles for the promotion of capture, registration, and “curing” of mutants.
The actual Kurt Wagner lives in an abandoned church, shy, reclusive, and intensely religious. But we’ll come back to him. (Oh, who is this new actor? He’s Alan Cumming. You might remember him as the Devil in the failed cartoon “God, the Devil, and Bob.” Or, Gazoo in the second Flintstones movie. Or, more likely, as the insane children’s TV show host from the Spy Kids films. The less said about Spice World, the better. Oh, and he’s not German. He’s Scots. Any fumbling of the accent, however, was somewhat muffled by the prosthetic teeth...which actually seemed to be less of a problem when he was speaking German.)
Back at the farm, the President is a little less than happy about the apparent attempt on his life. Fortunately, he’s got someone on staff who knows just what to do about Mutants. And that man is....
Dr. Hannibal Lechter.
Sort of. General William Stryker is played by Brian Cox, who was Hannibal Lechter in Manhunter...the movie that was eventually remade as “Red Dragon” (see previous review) when Anthony Hopkins went and made the character all famous. The last time he died, however, was rather ignoble, as it was during one of the more random Americanizations implanted in the US version of “The Ring.” (A horse bit and a car battery? Ug.)
Whoa. Wandered off there.
Remarkably enough, Stryker’s plan for Mutantkind does not entail “eating their livers with fava beans and a nice Chianti,” but, instead, involves a military (non-lethal, at the insistence of the president) strike on what he considers a likely base of operations...the Xavier Institute. Senator Kelly, who’s had a change of heart since his death in the previous film, attempts to dissuade the good General, to no avail. (Kelly would press the issue, but his secret life as a famous fashion model, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, places him/her in an awkward position.) This was actually one of the better indications of the film’s quality. Instead of spelling everything out for us, the flick just assumes that we’ve seen the first film, and doesn’t pander to the idiots in the audience who can’t keep up and remember that Mystique took Senator Kelly’s place after his death. Intrigue starts running rampant as Mystique is pitted briefly against a new character, Yuriko Oyama.
Meanwhile we get a class field trip from Xavier’s to the Museum of Natural History. Fairly typical New-Mutants side-story stuff here, nothing much to speak of, other than to see why Pyro took that particular code name. It appears that he and Bobby Drake (Iceman) are vying over Anna Paquin. (Who wouldn’t?)
Actually, I just realized that this particular scene gathered together all the fussy little things I didn’t like about the film into one area. I don’t really care for the actress behind Jean Grey. I guessed right off what was coming, but I don’t care for her as an actress that much. No active hate here, but just not up to par with everyone else in the film. Little chemistry. Much vagary. Whoo...what a movie reviewer I am. I had much the same problem with Iceman, and especially Cyclops, although Cyc was really hampered by that visor of his. A lot of character subtlety is bound up in the eyes, so he really only seems to have emotions or engagement in a scene when he’s at the extremes....tears, screaming, etc. There’s no reason Scott couldn’t have been wearing his usual red-tinted sunglasses, they were part of the character practically from the very beginning, and it woulda’ opened up the character a little. Bobby Drake is just...well...a young actor, with very little screen presence. I kept forgetting he was with the team in later scenes. Anna Paquin I gots no problems with. ‘cept she wasn’t in nearly as much of the film this time. Too bad, I actually thought she got the character down really well in the first film.
Once the mutants notice the news broadcast, they decide to check it out. In classic “we don’t realize we’re at the start of a dark foreboding storyline” style, they split up the team, Storm and Marvel Girl (have they said what code-name Jean Grey is going by at this point?) head to track down Nightcrawler while Cyclops and Prof. X go to interview Magneto and see what he knows of the assassination attempt. Fortunately, Wolverine, having seen the same reports, motors on down for a visit, just in time to get caught with babysitting duty. You can imagine how thrilled he is. Cyc and X get ambushed and trapped, respectively, with Yuriko Oyama demonstrating more than a little skill in bouncing main characters off the walls. Meanwhile Ororo Munro and Jean Grey track down Kurt Wagner. (Hey, my German speaking compatriots...what was Nightcrawler shouting about when he tried to scare the girls off? Something like “Go away, this is the Devil’s house?” I couldn’t catch enough of it to translate it all.) THEIR mission goes just FINE. They essentially recruit Kurt and pile into the X-jet (the “Blackbird”) and prepare to fly back home. Ororo is given a lot more lines this time around, and, surprisingly, does rather well with them. (The same could be said about Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, who’s demonstrating something of a talent for acting...although if she keeps taking roles that place her onscreen in less than a bathing-suit worth of material, no one may ever notice.)
Home, however, has already been involved in a lengthy fight scene. The government’s troops have moved in during the night and try to take the institute.
This makes Wolverine angry.
Angry enough, in fact, to go on a killing spree. And I don’t mean that figuratively. I lost count pretty quick, but I think he mortally wounded more than a dozen faceless minions. It was a nice wakeup call from the previous film, where he only dished it out to those who could take it, and kept the kid gloves on for everyone else. Hell, even in the comics he’s usually trashing some robot or alien or or daemon or rough equivalent lest he become a bad role-model for the kiddies.
He’s not entirely alone, either. Syrin shows up. Kitty slips away. (Anyone know who the kid “who doesn’t sleep” is supposed to be? Suggestions for Taki, but that’s pretty left-field.) Pitor Rasputin armors up and enters a room with a couple of the soldiers. The soldiers exit. Via the wall.
Ahhh hell. What am I doing? I’m not gonna tell you the whole story. If you haven’t seen it already, you’re going to. I’ll just talk around the story now.
The scene with Mystique and Nightcrawler was particularly ironic, considering that Mystique is his mother. (They did settle on that, right? They danced around the frigging topic for YEARS in the comics.)
Magneto’s escape was appropriately spectacular, and I hearby hold that it WOULD work, if the metal was injected while in a chelate solution, and thus effectively inert in the body. If it wasn’t, the guy woulda keeled over from blood poisoning, liver failure, kidney failure, or had a seizure right there. You’d have to ignore relative quantities, though, or the amount injected would’ve had to be around 40g.
The only real problem with the film, and the one that originates all the fiddly little bits I mentioned earlier, is the obvious one. Character dilution. With the increasingly growing cast, characters are in real danger of falling into a rut, or, if they don’t have a rut convenient, fall straight outta the picture. Let me explain this by where it didn’t happen. It didn’t happen with Wolverine. Why? Well, hell, the whole plot was practically about him. The whole “finally revealing his past” (a brave move for Marvel, considering the DECADES they spent milking that particular story for all it was worth) meant plenty of opportunities for character establishment and development, which, to one extent or another, did happen. It didn’t happen with Nightcrawler. Why? Because it was his introduction, and the fact that he was well written enough, with a versatile enough actor, that he made his speaking bits memorable. He packed a lot of character just into that look and “Bitte schoen” when Rouge thanked him for the mid-air rescue. Several people I know found the verse recitation rather annoying, and that’s part of what I was referring to by them making Nightcrawler “more Nightcrawler-ish than he’d been in the comics.” Ah, Magneto. Must’ve happened there, right? After all, his presence was kind of ancillary to the main thrust of the plot, he didn’t get as much screen time, and his character didn’t get any introduction ‘cause it was all covered in the previous movie. And yet it didn’t happen. Why? ‘Cause Ian McKellan is a VERY good actor who pulled off the character with enough aplomb to make it feel new and fresh and cool as hell, even when uttering lines like “That Dorky helmet...” Now let’s look where it did happen. Bobby Drake. Just not much there. The clown of the original X-men has trouble in this admittedly darker version of the Marvel world, but mostly he just doesn’t have the screen presence to carry off his fairly uninteresting character. Compare him with Pyro. Kid’s a little better actor, with a little more interesting character, and he turns a fairly minor role in the film into one you’ll remember. I hate to say it, but Rouge has slipped into a rut as well, her character only seeing a little development since the last film. Now look at Jean Grey and Cyclops. Plenty of screen time, interesting characters, complete rut. Hell, there were scenes between Jean and Wolverine, Cyclops and Wolverine, and Jean and Cyclops, and there was the least chemistry in the last pair. (Heck, there was a whole lot more chemistry and development (both with and without “”) in the scene with Wolverine and Mystique) Scott loves Jean, Jean loves Scott. That’s all there is to their characters, and we knew that LAST FILM. Storm fared a little better, mostly due to the fact she had more lines, and fewer “comic book lines” than last time. That’s really more of a “greater than zero” improvement, though.
On the other hand, there’s character truncation done properly. Lady Deathstrike doesn’t get much in this film. Like Mystique in the last film, she’s just there to look pretty and fight Wolverine. Her background is hinted at, but honestly, the way it’s framed, any history for her is unnecessary, and would have crowded the plot further. Lady Deathstrike was the daughter of the man who developed the process for bonding adamantium to bone. Believing that Wolverine had something to do with the theft of the process, she had herself made into a lethal cyborg, one of Donald Price’s “Reavers.” The comics have her permenantly bonded into a comic-Japanese armor suit with circuitry patterning running over parts of her skin. Oh, and it’s actually her fingers that come to 13” points, not her fingernails. Here? Just a hypnotized super-warrior ordered to kill Wolverine. Thrill for the comic-fans who recognize her (since they never say her code name) and fun action for everyone else without all the clutter.
“What about the overall story? The one with Cerebro? Wasn’t that stupid?” Well....not really. In one of the first X-Men retcons ever (a retcon is where the writers suddenly realize that they’ve done something stupid....killed off a favorite character, screwed up a plotline, etc. ...and they just re-write history to fix it) Prof. X gets killed. But, they decided, months later, not really. The one who was killed was the obscure villain from a few issues prior, a shapeshifter called “Chameleon” (better known now as Morph) who had mended his ways and come to help Xavier. Chameleon had been impersonating Xavier to maintain the status quo while the Prof was away on important business... namely defeating an ENTIRE ALIEN RACE who was trying to invade Earth using HIS MIND ALONE. That’s about the same scale as what he’s doing here. (Oh, and did anyone else think that Jonathan Stryker should’ve been named Jonathan Wyngard? It’s pretty obvious that it was Mastermind’s powers at work here....except for the mongrel eyes. I keep thinking I know that from somewhere.)
And then, of course, the end. Don’t read this bit if you haven’t seen the film.
Jean dies.
This immediately sent up a wave of hurrahs from the comic fans, because they all knew what that meant. Watch the water in the final panning scene. Yeah.
Pheonix.
I haven’t the energy or time to go through that story now. Let’s just say that it’s one of the greatest stories they ever told in the X-Men comic. That is, until they retconned it out of existence. An incredibly popular character went out in a blaze of glory by sacrificing herself before her impulses and powers swung out of control and destroyed the earth. Heroic, noble, well told. The repercussions of this event shattered the X-Men (into several books), with Cyclops quitting the team.
Then, months later, the Avengers dig her up in an energy cocoon from the New York sound. Guess what! It wasn’t her at all! It was just something that looked, talked, and acted just like her! AHHHHHHHHHHHH.!!!
My big worry about X3 is the pure scale of what they’re attempting. If they wanted to endear the comics world to them for life, Jean will go through the Pheonix/Dark Pheonix saga, and then STAY DEAD. But even to do that, they’ll have to introduce the Hellfire Club, the Guardians, the Starjammers (think Han Solo), and the entire intergalactic Shi’ar Empire. (With Queen Lillandra, the Prof’s sweetie.) Which means, of course, that the whole story has to be rewritten to exclude most of them. (You think there’s character dilution now?) So they have to re-write one of the most beloved X-Men stories ever, satisfy the fans, and not slam the door on the newcomers to the scene. Calling it a tall order would be an understatement.
“Ohhh ohhhh but it wouldn’t be cannon! They wouldn’t be telling the story right! It wouldn’t follow the comics!”
Tough noogies. I’ve got news for you, they aren’t following it now. For one thing, there’s no “cosmic radiation” pouring into the cockpit of a space shuttle to start things off. The cataract of the broken dam, well...it looked neat, but it’s plainly evident that they’re gonna have to entirely reinterpret what the Pheonix is if it starts off like that.
I’ve found that the best way to view the movies is as an “alternate universe” to the comics. Where things happened a little differently, timelines skewed a bit, people are different ages, made different choices, but are still the same basic characters. View it as one big “What If?” issue. Works well for both cartoon series too. And for sections of the comics you don’t like. To tell the proper story would’ve pulled a lot of the best moments out of the film. No “Wolverine meets the X-Men for the first time” story, considering that he joined on, sight unseen, at the same time the rest of the multi-national team was pulled in to rescue the original X-men from “Krakoa! The living Island!” Yup, him, Nightcrawler, Storm, Banshee, Colossus, Thunderbird, and (briefly) Sunfire. Let’s see...Rouge was a villan first, having been basically raised by Mystique, and was super strong and invulnerable by the time she defected over to the X-men’s team, after trapping Carol Danvers (Mrs. Marvel) in a coma. Well, you get the idea. They don’t tell things the way they are in the comics because they CAN’T. They’re too integrated into the rest of the Marvel universe. I’m happy that they seem to at least be getting the characters right. Perhaps epitomized by the “You’re a dick” from the first flick.
Finally, the most striking bit of the film, for me, came at one of the quietest moments. When Nightcrawler is first recruited by Storm and Jean and they’re hunting for the rest of their missing compatriots, the camera pans back to Kurt sitting alone in the back of the plane, saying a rosary, complete with rosary beads. Now, I’m not Catholic, so this may have just been a larger contrast for me, but it struck me that of all the scenes in the film, this one seemed the most alien. And I’m not talking about “religion amongst the technology” or “devil at prayer” or “Catholicism in a film that fantasizes evolution.” Those would be rather trite, politically motivated interpretations. No, I’m just talking about the simple, calm, highly personal observance of faith. Not shouting from the mountaintops, not as a source of conviction or justification, not used as a mechanism to make some vaunted point, just one man of deep religious faith, at prayers. Compare that to, say, the Daredevil flick. Opening scene, Daredevil, bleeding profusely, draped over the cross at the top of a church. Powerful? Yes. Overblown? Definitely. Compare to Kurt’s character, who, rather than brandish Bibles and pose dramatically before the altar, lights one candle and says his rosary. The dramatization of Religon (Christian religion in this case...but I wonder what kind of response you’d get asking a Shino or Buddist Priest about modern portrayals of their religions) is reducing it in the film world to hollow symbolism. In the fictional world of film where every hero acts with the will of God, and every villain is under the influence of the Devil, where is the place for quiet reverence? Religon in film these days is really more a device of convenience than an aspect of a character. Despite the fact that religion, or a disavowal of it, is a central part of many people’s lives, it is practically never mentioned on TV or film in the capacity in which the faithful experience it. Religon as a topic or a character-defining aspect, is never present unless it is center stage. If memory serves, it happened much that way in the comics as well. Nightcrawler’s faith never really came up unless it was time to make an issue of it. Kitty’s Jewish family were only mentioned when some reference to the Holocaust came up. And for Rahne, her religion defined her character so severely it was practically her only characteristic for a long time.
Overall? Really fun flick. Detractions due to the caveats (disliking the actors, mostly) are completely minor, while the better parts make up for it in spades. Few sub-par bits near the very end, though.
- Duh... 2003-05-05 11:35:35 BBT: Wait, just figured out what part you were talking about. Not sure WHO you're talking about, though.
JOURNAL: MCWagner (Matthew Wagner)
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