X-Men 3, take two:
May. 27th, 2006 11:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ingvildAllright, let's try this again, with better wording. Extremely spoilery.
When word came that Cyclops would barely be in the third X-Men movie, a lot of fans protested. The second movie laid the ground for the Phoenix Saga, which every comic fan knows you can't have without Cyclops. So they didn't.
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waterfall8484 and I tried to catalogue all the storylines in that movie. We identified Days of Future Past (as a Danger Room scenario), the "cure" storyline from Astonishing, Morlochs and Marauders and romantic elements from Ultimate (the Rogue/Bobby/Kitty triangle). Oh, and some Phoenix Saga.
Three minutes in, Jean/Phoenix kills Cyclops. This is mentioned once later, when Wolverine asks Jean where Scott is. It has no impact, not on the students and teachers, and not on the viewer either, because Scott gets too little screen time before he's offed. Hell, it doesn't seem like Logan and Storm care. They found his glasses, and then Jean. Why didn't Storm fly back with Jean, while Logan stayed to look for Scott?
Scott's death is cheapened further because not long after, Phoenix kills Xavier. This has an emotional impact, and serves to show how far gone she is. It also seems like a punishment because Xavier had tried to control Jean. As the story unfolds, however, it seems like he was right in doing so. She obviously can't control her power. I find this offensive, sorry. In the original Phoenix saga, she became Dark Phoenix because Mastermind fucked with her mind, she thought she was God, and that she could shape the world to be how she wanted it. Here, she was a slave to her own alternate personality.
There were cool moments, but the movie as a whole left me with a bad taste in my mouth. Too much action, too few character moments, a convoluted storyline with too many plotholes. Why, exactly, did they have to stab Magneto with *three* cure darts? Couldn't Logan have stabbed Jean with some of them? After all, he got close enough to stab her with his claws.
That there was a dual Jean/Phoenix personality didn't fit her character from the other movies. It would have been better if her powers had been further evolving from the machine Magneto used in the first movie. But that wouldn't have left us with morally ambiguous Xavier, and we can't have that . Magneto knew about it, too. Wouldn't he have hinted when they met in the other two movies? That would have fit his character. Speaking of which, his little "What have I done?" didn't.
Oh, yeah, and this cure? Perfect set-up for showing that Hank actually is a bio-genetist. That they ignored this opportunity, seems to indicate that they didn't care enough about the source material.
While we're talking about that: what was with those new Brotherhood characters? Psylocke was supposed to be there, but I didn't recognise her. Callisto had nothing more in common with her comic self than an animosity with Storm.
And, yeah, just for the record? The end promised lighter times for mutants and humans, but the logical, sociopolitical effects of the events in this movie would have led to the exact opposite.
And finally, can someone explain to me the point of a cure if it's not going to work, and Magneto is just going to get his powers back? Why wasn't he in prison, anyway?
When word came that Cyclops would barely be in the third X-Men movie, a lot of fans protested. The second movie laid the ground for the Phoenix Saga, which every comic fan knows you can't have without Cyclops. So they didn't.
waterfall8484 and I tried to catalogue all the storylines in that movie. We identified Days of Future Past (as a Danger Room scenario), the "cure" storyline from Astonishing, Morlochs and Marauders and romantic elements from Ultimate (the Rogue/Bobby/Kitty triangle). Oh, and some Phoenix Saga. Three minutes in, Jean/Phoenix kills Cyclops. This is mentioned once later, when Wolverine asks Jean where Scott is. It has no impact, not on the students and teachers, and not on the viewer either, because Scott gets too little screen time before he's offed. Hell, it doesn't seem like Logan and Storm care. They found his glasses, and then Jean. Why didn't Storm fly back with Jean, while Logan stayed to look for Scott?
Scott's death is cheapened further because not long after, Phoenix kills Xavier. This has an emotional impact, and serves to show how far gone she is. It also seems like a punishment because Xavier had tried to control Jean. As the story unfolds, however, it seems like he was right in doing so. She obviously can't control her power. I find this offensive, sorry. In the original Phoenix saga, she became Dark Phoenix because Mastermind fucked with her mind, she thought she was God, and that she could shape the world to be how she wanted it. Here, she was a slave to her own alternate personality.
There were cool moments, but the movie as a whole left me with a bad taste in my mouth. Too much action, too few character moments, a convoluted storyline with too many plotholes. Why, exactly, did they have to stab Magneto with *three* cure darts? Couldn't Logan have stabbed Jean with some of them? After all, he got close enough to stab her with his claws.
That there was a dual Jean/Phoenix personality didn't fit her character from the other movies. It would have been better if her powers had been further evolving from the machine Magneto used in the first movie. But that wouldn't have left us with morally ambiguous Xavier, and we can't have that . Magneto knew about it, too. Wouldn't he have hinted when they met in the other two movies? That would have fit his character. Speaking of which, his little "What have I done?" didn't.
Oh, yeah, and this cure? Perfect set-up for showing that Hank actually is a bio-genetist. That they ignored this opportunity, seems to indicate that they didn't care enough about the source material.
While we're talking about that: what was with those new Brotherhood characters? Psylocke was supposed to be there, but I didn't recognise her. Callisto had nothing more in common with her comic self than an animosity with Storm.
And, yeah, just for the record? The end promised lighter times for mutants and humans, but the logical, sociopolitical effects of the events in this movie would have led to the exact opposite.
And finally, can someone explain to me the point of a cure if it's not going to work, and Magneto is just going to get his powers back? Why wasn't he in prison, anyway?
