X-Men (7.14.2000)

Director: Bryan Singer
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellan
Co-Starring: Halle Berry, Famke Jansen, James Marsden, Rebecca Romijn, Anna Paquin
Watch for: Ray Park, Stan Lee
Editor(s): Steven Rosenblum, Kevin Stitt, John Wright
<--The version I own.

I decided that I'm just going to go ahead and review X-Men first. I get three DVDs from Netflix at a time, and I haven't watched any of of my current ones yet. It'll be at least 3-4 days before I could get Blade here. I'll review it, but this one'll have to be out of order.

I'm also feeling lazy. My plan was to watch each of these again and then write a review after, but I'm gonna put X-Men in right now and type while I'm watching. I've seen this thing so many times, I already have a good idea of what I'd like to talk about.

This is one of the few Marvel films I did not manage to catch in the theaters (the others being Blade and Elektra). I wanted to, believe you me, but at the time I was not yet old enough to drive myself to the theater. This would not happen for another couple of years.

Anyway. I love how this film opens up. I read the novelization before I saw the film, so I was actually surprised to already find a couple of my favorite scenes missing. We see Magneto (McKellen) and Rogue's (Paquin) first time using their mutant abilities, but in the novelization we also see Storm (Berry) and Cyclops' (Marsden) first, and if you ask me, equally if not even more dramatic experiences.
Cyclops' is a little goofy. He was at a school dance, and his woman was being dramatic about him hugging some girl in front of her the day before.
High school girls.
Pssh. I could go on a rant about that one, but I won't.
So anyway, she's hiding in the girl's bathroom, and pre-Cyclops is about to chase in after her when a chaperone says something wise like "They all have to come out sometime". So Cyke goes into the men's room for some reason, when one of his classmates notes how red his eyes are. Soon after this, his power goes into effect and he blasts a hole through the wall between the boys and girls room, prompting his g/f, among others, to scream.
Nice.

Storm was born in Africa, and her origin revolves around a children's game. A rather brutal one I can't say I understand, and Storm winds up in the middle of a group of children, curled up on the ground as they beat her with sticks and other things. She has her eyes shut and crying, and soon hears the patter of hail landing all around her. Soon, the hail overtakes the other children, knocking them all unconscious, and I have an image in my head of Storm standing in the middle, and no hail has fallen in a small area just around her. I don't know if that was the book or my imagination, though. It'd still be awesome to see.

Anyway. Actual movie.
Singer's got style in the first film. The first discussion between Xavier and Magneto still sends chills down my spine. No music, just two old guys talking.
"We are the future Charles, not them! They no longer matter!"

Then, there's the continuation of Rogue's plotline, moving into Canada where she meets Wolverine. There's a sort of smoggy atmosphere in the film, just one of those cloudy days that won't end. It feels this way inside the buildings, outside, wherever.
I don't recall if Wolverine's punch sound effects are kept constant for the rest of the films, or if they're merely accentuating it in the first scene to clue us in as to why this guy's special. If they have you hear the metal skeleton, then when the main group is talking about it later you don't have to think back "Oh, that's how he beat the big guy down so quickly". You already understand this, and the film can move forward.
Good plan.

Hugh Jackman may be tall, but he's the perfect Wolverine.
Well, for a while. He starts getting mushy later, and while Wolverine did have some of these moments in the comics I read, sometimes it's a little too far.

I'd swear I've seen this bartender somewhere before. Whatever.
Anyway, I'm not going to sit here and discuss the whole film step-by-step. However, this is the strong section for me. Canada. This is the aesthetic I like, and probably a style I'll dive into at some point. Not a lot of music, dim setting, interesting shots... the whole sequence is just excellent. Highlight of the whole trilogy for me. After this, the dip more into the sci-fi action/drama. That's nice too, it it's own way, and somewhat necessary considering the characters they introduce later, but if they could've brought this back later somehow that would've been nice.

"Ah saved yer life."
"No you didn't."

Yeah. I love this part of the movie. It's the best.
I think it's the mood in this film that helped set the realistic approach to most of the latest Marvel films, in the same way people talk about how the 1989 Batman helped start a trend of darker heroes. They don't wear spandex (we all know that line), and when they're not in the basement of the mansion or hanging off the Statue of Liberty, you can almost believe these people might actually exist someday.

Ahh, here it is.
Enter Cyclops & Storm = Exit the dramatic film, enter the sci-fi/action movie.
It's okay, I still like that one too, but it loses a lot of that real world feel pretty quick. Compare Wolverine's first scene in the Mansion to his dialogue with Rogue. There's music, there's voices, there's random automatic doors... it gets very weird. Still excellently done, but it's just an interesting change to witness.
It also seems to be the side of the film people (reviewers) tend to fixate on. We do get elements of the dramatic style later, like when Jean shows Logan his room or IceMan (Mystique, rather) tells Rogue she should run away from the school.
A scene from the novelization I also wish they included would be with Jean coming to bed, with Cyclops already laying there. It was described with Cyclops having a visor on, and Jean looked at him and could see a red light in the visor flash on and off, which simply is him blinking.
I mean, come on. That's cool.

So. Do I give the film 3 stars? 4?
I don't think I'm gonna do the rating thing. There's too many variables. I've done those all over the place on my Netflix, but then I see some later with higher ratings than better films... meh. It's a silly system.

I enjoyed X-Men the first time I saw it, still enjoy it today. It's just a quality movie that firmly helped pave a road for a ridiculous streak of comic adaptations for years to come.
Still, I thank them for that.

Next time: Spider-Man.
Sorry, Blade fans. I know I've skipped right over the release date of Blade 1 & 2, chronologically, but the first won't even arrive until at least Monday. Blame Netflix (or me, for being too cheap to go rent it locally).
I'll get to it. Wesley'll just have to be out of order.

First Post: Call Me Vapes.

BLOGGING.Honestly, I never really thought I'd have an official, public-access, 'thoughts on pixels' (Thank you, Morgan Freeman) blog. Sure, I have a LiveJournal. I even used to occasionally update with a message on MySpace, back when that was still considered cool. Never a blog, though. What am I supposed to do now? Oh, get to the point. That helps. The reason I created this blog is because my LJ, MySpace, and even TheForce.net's Fanfilm Forums (hi, guys) are an inadequate space for me to post my everyday thoughts in a place where it can just be about what I'm saying, without focusing on any of my particular cliques of friends. People on my LJ usually won't care about what I would talk about on TFn, and vice-versa. Anyone who knows me prolly will tell you the thing I think, reference and care most strongly about (other than certain living people/creatures) is movies. Film, cinema, movies, picture shows, whatever you want to call 'em. I love 'em. I live by 'em. Maybe someday I'll be professionally making 'em. Okay, about me. Back during high school, when I was getting into LAN parties and various other forms of gaming, my friends were telling me I needed a handle (hey Dash, Apheleon & Zaff). You know who came up with mine, though? My mother. Shut up, she's cool. When she's not being motherly. Then she's a mom, and we all know what they're like. Anyway, this is back when I had aspirations of running through the Air Force RotC (a medicated chemical imbalance will quickly shoot that one down), so while we were sitting at the drive-thru of a Rally's, she looked up and saw a plane in the sky, with the white contrails flying off behind it. "What about Vapor Trail?" mom says. "Fuck yeah!" I replied. Pfft, of course I didn't say that. You don't swear in front of your mother. Anyway, I don't remember what I said. However, it stuck. At some point I combined those into one word (looked better in Quake3, I think), and eventually one of the TFn'ers (I always forget which, I have such a bad memory) chopped that down to Vapes, hence the title of this post which I just paused in the middle of this sentence to write in. Made my LAN buddies make less fun of me for being "the guy with the long-ass handle", too. Well, I like to think it did. The power of editing. Oh! I have a degree in "Broadcast & Cable Productions" (aka a Bachelor of Arts through Western Michigan University). However, that's just what they called it during my last semester cuz of some technicality. Prior to this, it was "Film, Video & Media Studies". I minored in Writing, but let's face it. No one cares what you minored in. So what this means for you is that I have studied film theory, from concept to storywriting, all the way through the production phases to release and reception. I know what I'm talking about, so you absolutely, positively have to listen to me, and agree with what I say. Beyond any reasonable doubt, I am right. Okay, I'm not that much of an ass. You're free to your own opinions (I just hope one of them is that I'm not an ass). I want to use that degree to become a film editor for features. Being a film critic would be another way to go, but that's what this is for. Anyway. A friend of mine (hey, Ben) recently opened his own blog to review films, but he's going in the opposite direction. It's a very clean-0cut, professional read. It lets you know what he thought about the film without really telling you what happens, just in case you haven't seen it and want an opinion before you decide. Tell you what. Watch the trailer, then decide. I love my friend here, don't think it's about that, but one thing I will never do is read someone's online review to allow me to make a decision to whether or not I should see a film. They can tell me something I didn't know, remind me of interest, but odds are I'll see it or not. I'll want to see it or not, or maybe I'll be forced into it or manage to escape through the basement window. Regardless, if you are unsure about a movie, watch the trailer. Decide if there's something better you should be doing tonight. Ask yourself the last time you talked to someone of the opposite sex (about something other than your grocery total). Then decide if you want to go see it. I'm really a nice person, I swear. So what I thought would be kind of fun is to have a place where I can write as much as I want, spoilers, plot points, twists and all, about any movie that tickles my fancy. We'll probably get a lot of old mixed in with the new here. Possibly some non-movie related posts like this in-between. I'll try and warn you early on which I'm going for. I really haven't decided on a style of presentation yet. The layout's still in a default format at this moment, I'll play with that soon. When I'm writing though, I'll probably just cut loose and write what I'm thinking. There may be references you don't get, or jokes that won't seem funny. Just roll with it, it's normal. I might try to explain some of it, we'll see. If you're wondering why I said "Thank you, Morgan Freeman", one of his lines that stood out in Se7en was "His thoughts on paper", regarding Kevin Spacey's thousand notebooks. This place'll prolly be something like that. So. Seen a movie, but still excited about it? Hated it so much you just gotta find a place to rip it apart? Mildly curious about some backstories or plot-points? You've come to the right place. To start off, I'm gonna do something kind of fun. I just saw Iron Man last week, and of course I loved it. (I'm a Marvel kid. Been reading comics forever). So, for the first run of reviews I think I'll be starting with the earliest of the Marvel trend, X-Men, and working my way through chronologically to Iron Man. I know what some of you are thinking: "But Vapes, Blade started the comic film trend. It came out in 1997, and X-Men wasn't released until 2000." Well, if you ask me, it was X-Men we have to thank for this. I don't think Blade was high-profile enough, with a wide reception outside of comic fans, vampire nuts and those weird kids in high school that always wore black. Then again, I didn't really like it, even back before my film education. Maybe I'll have Netflix send it and I'll watch those too. Some of the TFn socialites have been razzin' on me for not liking those, whilst I am very fond of films such as Daredevil and Ang Lee's Hulk. (They're ART!), so maybe I should give 'em one more try, and actually see Trinity. We'll see. With a little luck, I'll finish just in time for The Incredible Hulk, and then I can start talking about, like, normal movies. Welcome to The Spenceley Spoileriffic. This oughta be fun.