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Superhero Shorts: A New Mutant
Superhero Shorts: A New Mutant
Welcome to another edition of Superhero Shorts where I share a superhero short film and ask a few questions of its creators. This time I’m talking with a group of students who created their own short for their college film class led by Eric Limarenko. They adapted a comic story written by Brian Michael Bendis called A New Mutant, as usual, you can watch it below.
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X-Men: The Last Stand
X-Men: The Last Stand 2006
It feels like I’ve been watching X-Men movies for a long time now, there’s been some pretty great movies, and some fairly mediocre movies, but I’m glad I’m done with them and am ready to move onto something different. It makes me glad that I’m not going to try to cram all eight Batman movies back to back to back. After two great X-Men movies by Bryan Singer, he dropped out for the chance to make Superman Returns while the helm was passed on to Brett Ratner. The movie promised a lot of things, some popular X-Men that hadn’t made it to the movies yet, and it centered around the mutant “cure” which could have brought in all sorts of layers of meaning to this movie. But instead, it’s a lot of empty action with little real depth to it all. It’s still a fun watch, but compared to the previous two X-Men movies and even First Class, it felt fairly empty.
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.
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.
FTMN Poll: Who’s your favorite member of the X-Men?
Now that I’m getting around to watching the X-Men movies, I’d like to know who your favorite member of the X-Men is. One of the popular ones such as Wolverine, or one of the lesser known ones such as Havok or Jubilee. I’ve tried to include most of the major members from the movies and the 90’s cartoon that I’m familiar with, but I’m sure I’ve left some out. If your favorite’s not on the list, be sure to leave a comment telling me why I should have included him/her.
Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 