soooo i have been watching all of the x-men movies (except last stand and the dumb wolverine ones because i donât hate myself that much) because I realized I hadnât seen any of them since their initial theatrical releases, and I realized the first two are probably underrated (by me)
before rewatching them, I would have said first class was the best, followed by x-2 and dofp, and then x-men 2000 at the bottom, but i was surprised by how well the first two hold up. i mean there are definitely some corny lines in the first one, but it works surprisingly well and i feel like it should probably get more credit for inspiring 21st century superhero movies than batman begins, in that it is a âfirst in the seriesâ that is willing to be more than just a stereotypical origin story.
the other big surprise was that first class really doesnât hold up well at all, tonally it is just all over the place. i think it has some of my favorite scenes in the series, but all of that is padded out with really awkward stuff. they really should have just made a movie about magneto hunting nazis in south america, it would have been great.
dofp was also a lot better than i remember it being, but maybe it just benefitted from the goodwill the rest of the series had earned up to that point. they wisely ditch the x people who didnât really work in the first one (though it is weird that banshee just⊠disappears, never to be seen again), and in my opinion mystique is written well enough to justify her arbitrarily becoming a main character thanks to the fame of jennifer lawrence. though it does feel like her particular talents are wasted on that character.
anyway i also just got back from seeing apocalypse leading up to this, and since it isnât out in the rest of the world yet i wonât spoil too much other than my main first impression is: it is probably the closest thing to a live action version of the 90âs cartoon that theyâve done yet, for better or for worse. there is a lot more corniness and too-serious-to-be-camp discussion of like⊠power levels and stuff, but it actually works pretty well. it also does the lamest, laziest narrative trick to get magneto to go back to being sort-of evil that theyâve tried yet that is telegraphed from a million miles away, but whatever fassbender is great so who cares.
oscar isaac totally disappears behind a wall of prosthetics and makeup and a weird ominous whisper voice, i donât know if that means it is a good performance or what but if i didnât know it was him i would have had no idea it was him. weird decision, but bold to do that with such a hot actor in this, the reality in which spiderman and iron man both always have to take their masks off to deliver important lines.
anyway as is normal these days thereâs some shit at the end of the movie that apparently has to do with another wolverine (both another wolverine movie and a whole other wolverine, as in, a clone or some dumb crap). itâs whatever, but iâm always more interested in the ensemble movies than the solo ones, even if deadpool was pretty good.
