Blog Archives
Dark Phoenix
Dark Phoenix 2019
This is apparently the swan song for the Fox version of the X-Men that really started the modern era of superhero movies and re-started with 2010’s First Class, and is now lumped into the Disney conglomerate so future cinematic X-Men will likely be tied into the MCU. It’s also one of the few 2019 releases that I wasn’t able to make it out to see in theaters even though this was a generally lighter year for superhero and comic book movies, or at least the year was heavily front loaded with several releases in the early months of the year. In general, I’ve been a fan of nearly all of the X-Men movies aside from the ones everyone hates. But I’ve also generally enjoyed the more recent ones that have been pretty middling to most audiences. I don’t think they handled every character very well, but they did do a few things right in this movie and I enjoyed more than I disliked. And while this is still a relatively new release, I will be discussing the plot in its entirety so there may be spoilers.
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FTMN Quickie: X-Men: Days of Future Past: The Rogue Cut
X-Men: Days of Future Past: The Rogue Cut 2015
While I haven’t made the time to watch the extended version of Batman vs Superman, I did manage to snag a copy of the Rogue Cut of Days of Future Past that I’ve been curious about ever since it was announced almost two years ago. Rogue has always been one of my favorite characters and I really enjoyed Days of Future Past so I was curious how much of an impact this change would have to the movie. I will say that ultimately it doesn’t make a significant impact in the overall story, there are a few scenes here and there and a couple extra jokes laced with some profanity that would have pushed the theatrical version just over the PG-13 limit, they don’t make a difference in the overall narrative, but it does answer just a few extra questions.
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What’s Wrong With This Picture? It’s All About ConteXt-Men
There’s been a mini-controversy rolling around the past couple of weeks. Technically, since it’s the internet age it was a controversy for a couple days and then most people moved onto the next thing, but it’s kept popping up into my view and certain things about how it was presented to me irritated me so much that I wanted to say something about it on the only real platform I have. Now, to start things off, I’m as much of a feminist as a middle-aged white male can be. And what really brought me to action here was when I did the one thing that you should never do: I read the comments.
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X-Men: Apocalypse
X-Men: Apocalypse 2016
We are starting to get deep into the summer movie season as we kick into the latest comic book movie with superheroes fighting superheroes, but at least in this case every movie has been about mutants fighting mutants. And very similar to the last two theatrical releases this year, I enjoyed this movie as well, but thought that overall it had some notable issues with it. There were definitely moments where I had a nice fanboy grin plastered on my face, and there weren’t really any parts during the film where I thought it was dragging, but after it was all over and I started thinking about it a bit more thoroughly, there were just too many questions that kept dragging through my head. And as is often the case with theatrically released movies, there may be spoilers ahead so read on only if you’ve seen the film or don’t care about knowing what’s to come.
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Filmwhys #56 Goodfellas and X-Men
Episode #56 of the Why Haven’t You Seen This Film Podcast where my guest is Nick Rehak from French Toast Sunday who asks me why I hadn’t seen Goodfellas, the quintessential Martin Scorsese film that makes the life of a gangster look almost glamorous. And in return, I ask him why he hadn’t seen the superhero film that really kicked off the modern era of superhero movies, Bryan Singer’s very first X-Men from 2000.
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100 Essential Superhero Movies – Borrowed Marvel
I decided that I wanted to make a list of 100 superhero movies that I thought were the essentials, the ones that everyone needs to see at one point in time if they want to be a fully fledged superhero movie afficionado, and while I am having guest bloggers this month help me fill out the list, there are many much more obvious choices that were easy to make and I’m here to share some of those with you. Marvel has put out a lot of movies throughout the years and I’ve already taken a look back at the early days of Marvel movies as well as the current state of the Marvel Disney Cinematic Universe, but there is one final category of Marvel movies that I have yet to talk about, and that is what I’m calling the borrowed Marvel movies, the ones that I’m sure Marvel would love to get their hands back on, but they are currently in the hands of either Sony or Fox until the rights finally pass back to Marvel however many years down the line that might be.
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X-Men: Days of Future Past
X-Men: Days of Future Past 2014
Many people would say that the last good X-Men movie that we got was way back in 2003 with X-2: X-Men United which also happens to be the last film of the franchise directed by Bryan Singer. There was also the franchise re-boot with First Class directed by Matthew Vaughn which also got quite a bit of critical praise, and now we have this movie. Bryan Singer has come back to direct and Matthew Vaughn contributed to the script to bring the worlds of First Class and the original trilogy back together, even though the Last Stand is treated pretty much as if it never actually happened aside from a few memories in Wolverine’s head about what happens to Jean. Not only that, but this storyline is one of the most iconic and revered within the continuity of the X-Men comic, though I only know what was pulled from it for the 90’s cartoon series. Honestly, I loved where they went with this story and thought it was handled masterfully. There are still some holes here and there, but overall it was a fantastic way to tie together the rest of the movies into a slightly more cohesive continuity. There is a lot to cover in this movie, and as usual I’m not going to tread lightly on spoilers so be forewarned.
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Is Marvel’s strategy a bad thing for superhero films?
The other day I came across an article whose argument was basically that the Avengers have ruined the Hollywood concept of a superhero movie. Essentially, the fact that all of the lead up movies to the Avengers were all connected-yet-separate and then there’s this big movie that tied them all together which became a huge thing. And now it’s happening everywhere. DC is doing it by bringing in Batman, Wonder Woman, and who knows who else in the second Man of Steel movie, Sony is doing it with Spider-man with two more sequels in the works and they just announced that their two spin off movies are about Venom and the Sinister Six. Even Fox is getting on board with The Wolverine teasing Days of Future Past which connects the First Class franchise to the first trilogy and have already announced Age of Apocalypse in 2016, not to mention the fact that they’re also supposedly tying the Fantastic Four into that universe somehow. The question is basically asking if the days of the stand-alone superhero movie are gone and these movies are becoming more like comic books, only a part of a much bigger whole that will only end when the money stops. Not only that, but it’s becoming the only model, and that’s a bad thing. Personally, I think it’s a good thing and for more reasons than just getting more superhero movies, which I’m all for too.
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The Wolverine
The Wolverine 2013
I’m one step closer to watching all of the 2013 superhero and comic book movies of 2013 and this is one that I’m really disappointed that I missed out on in theaters since I’m a big X-Men and Wolverine fan though I’m not about to do any sort of X-Men marathon again any time soon. This is Hugh Jackman’s sixth turn at playing Wolverine, at least if you count his brief cameo in First Class and at least three more on the way with Days of Future Past coming out next year, Apocalypse announced for 2016, and another solo Wolverine movie very likely it seems that Hugh Jackman will be playing Wolverine until he is too old to pull off the mostly ageless mutant. This time around he’s put in Japan which is part of his origin story though this movie has it take place after the events of The Last Stand. He is brought there so a business tycoon named Yashida who used to be a soldier and was saved by Logan at Nagasaki during the atomic bombing. He is now dying and offers Logan an opportunity to relinquish his healing abilities and die a natural death. Things expectedly go sideways and Logan is left to protect Yashida’s granddaughter named Mariko while his healing abilities have been taken from him. Reminding me a bit of 2 Guns, there’s some good character interactions but it’s mixed with a heavily convoluted plotline. And I’d also like to note that I did watch the unrated extended edition for this review.
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Comic Strip Double Dip Blogathon: James Marsden
James Marsden Double Dip
Cyclops / Richard White
There’s still a couple more weeks left in this blogathon before I call it to a close and I’d say it was pretty good for my first one. If you haven’t done your article yet, be sure to get it in. There were another two entries these past couple weeks so head over to the blogathon main page to go see them. For my third entry in this blogathon I chose another member of the X-Men who followed Byran Singer to his other superhero project and played both Cyclops and Richard White. I’m talking about James Marsden.
Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 