Blog Archives
X2: X-Men United
X2: X-Men United 2003
I’ve almost finished revisiting all of the X-Men movies and tonight I watched what many consider the strongest out of all of them. It has more characters, a bigger conflict, and the whole enemy of my enemy is my friend plotline. And not only are there more characters, most of the characters are stronger than in the first X-Men and there are fewer weak characters. Where X-Men was the movie that made everyone take notice of the superhero movie again, X2 was the movie that made everyone take superhero movies seriously. At least for a little while. I do have to mention that for whatever reason, the movie didn’t fully hold my interest for the duration. I felt the need to pause it a couple times to check on other things. It’s not a huge negative against the movie because I can be easily distracted, but it is a slight negative. There is still a lot of great things in this movie.
X-Men
X-Men 2000
While it seemed like a good idea at the time to watch all five of the X-Men movies back to back, coming around to watching the first one made me realize that they’re better suited as being treated as separate entities. When you watch them close together, the continuity changes are quite glaring. Aside from that, this movie generally holds up and I can totally see how this one movie really paved the way for the previous generation of superhero movies. I say previous in the hope that the recent Avengers movie, prequels and sequels, as well as Nolan’s Batman movies, lead into the current generation of superhero movies. But X-Men still stands as a landmark in superhero movies.
FTMN Poll: Who’s your favorite X-Men villain?
Last week I asked what your favorite X-Men was, this time around I’m asking who your favorite villain is? One great thing about the X-Men is that the villains are often just as interesting and complex as the X-Men themselves. Many times even becoming allies during different periods of time. Rather than just being evil for evil’s sake, though there are a few of those in there too, it’s their different ideologies that put them at odds with the X-Men. I pulled this list together mostly from my memory of the 90’s cartoon and the movies, if I left any biggies out please leave a comment telling me about them. Which one is your favorite? The all-powerful Apocalypse? The mysterious Mystique? Or one of the many government officials working to pass laws and public favor against mutants in general? Vote! Leave a comment! You know the drill. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
X-Men Origins: Wolverine 2009
I continue on my trek through the X-Men movies in a possibly unorthodox manner moving on to what I believe would actually be the next chronological movie. Even though it starts well before First Class, the main portion of the movie takes place sometime before the X-Men trilogy but after First Class, the intention was probably to have it be around 1979 due to the finale being set in Three Mile Island, though it’s fairly vague in its time period, without any obvious 80’s or 90’s fashions. I have had it on bluray for a while now, though I haven’t watched it since I bought it over a couple years ago. I think this is generally the least liked X-Men film alongside the Last Stand. And while I could see a few general annoyances, I still enjoyed the movie a lot.
Superhero Shorts: How It Should Have Ended
Superhero Shorts: How it Should Have Ended
Welcome to this week’s edition of Superhero Shorts where I take a look at a different superhero themed short film and get the creator of the film to answer a few interview questions. This week I get the chance to feature my first animated short rather than a live action one, and since I’ve just started watching the X-Men movies, I thought it would be perfect to feature How X-Men: First Class Should Have Ended, which you can watch right below, or on their website, along with tons of other parodies of recent and classic movies.
X-Men: First Class
X-Men: First Class 2011
X-Men: First Class is an interesting idea for a movie. It’s not exactly a prequel since it eschews several elements of the sequels that came before it, but it’s not exactly an entire reboot either because it pulls several parts of its history and future directly from the other movies. It was another late movie for me, something I need to stop doing so much. It’s also one of the rare instances that I actually rented the movie on bluray. I love getting the chance to bust out the bluray player, but I tend to watch most movies either streaming or on the computer’s DVD player, it’s all hooked up to the same monitor though. First Class looked fantastic, even though it did have a few slight hiccoughs due to it being a rental. I guess blurays are scratch resistant, but not completely scratch-proof. It’s a great place to jump into the current continuity of X-Men.
My top 5 X-Men
I’m getting ready to watch X-Men: First Class for the first time, went out and rented it on bluray today. I was never big into the X-Men comic books, but right at the same time as I started watching Batman: The Animated series, there was the X-Men animated series. I watched both of them every time they came on. They were very different from each other, but they both treated subject matter in a very adult manner. It made complicated issues understandable without being too childish. It’s where I learned about all of these mutants before I ever thought of someone playing a mutant on the big screen. But I haven’t actually gone back and re-watched any of the cartoons so the live action movies are much clearer in my memory. While many of the characters are very different from each other, there are a lot of great characters to choose from. I’ve said before that I’m not very keen on making lists, but I thought this was a list I could handle.
Generation X
Generation X 1996
I was all set to watch X-Men First Class to kick off my X-Men reviews, but as I was expanding my big list of movies to include home video and TV movie releases I realize that I had forgotten all about a 90’s made for TV movie called Generation X. And on top of that, what better movie to bridge the gap between old cheesy movies and the much better modern movies? So with that in mind, as well as coming off of Fantastic Four, I looked up Generation X and watched what is easily the worst X-Men movie even considering some people’s dislike of The Last Stand and Wolverine. The other thing that is pretty funny is that someone who looks back on it now makes it look like just a cheap rip off of the X-Men, although Emma Frost is a little more high profile nowadays.
Fantastic Four
Fantastic Four 1994
It’s time for yet another classic cheesy movie goodness, and while this is the newest of these movies that I’ve seen, being from the 90’s, the fact that the budget was so low that it looks and feels at least five years older than what it actually is. If there’s one piece of trivia that any superhero movie fan knows it’s this Fantastic Four movie directed by Roger Corman. It was never intended to be released in theaters or even on home video, the studio decided that it was worth the small budget that they gave the movie in order to retain the rights to the Fantastic Four so they could make a better version of the movie in the near future. This is the exact same reason why all of the recent non-Marvel studio movies are being rebooted and churned out so quickly. If they didn’t make these movies then Fox, Sony, and whatever other studio would lose the rights to make another movie using those characters. But while it was never intended to be released, no one that actually worked on the movie knew that fact so they all put their full effort into it, just at a dirt cheap salary.
Superhero Shorts: Uncanny X-Men
Superhero Shorts: Uncanny X-Men
Welcome to this week’s edition of Superhero Shorts where I take a look at a different superhero themed short film and get the creator of the film to answer a few interview questions. This week I’m getting ready to start watching the X-Men movies by watching a fan made series based on the Phoenix Saga. Below you can watch the first episode “Birth”, or you can visit their YouTube channel at ThrowbackStudioz.
Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 