X Communication

I caught the new X-Men movie tonight, and I ended up liking it far better than I expected. I'd rate it a B-. I know I usually pontificate first and grade last, but in this case, a lot of my pontification goes into explaining my point of view coming into this movie. So here goes...

I am not a fan of the X-Men comic book series(es). I read some of the recent series written by Joss Whedon because, duh, it was written by Joss Whedon. But not even he could pull me all the way through his full 12-issue cycle. Comics in general just don't do it for me. I don't get that into looking at the pictures, and I feel like the slim page count of a single issue doesn't give enough time to get engaged in the story unless you read huge numbers of issues all in one sitting. (Now I know there are plenty out there who find my statements heretical. Please understand, I'm not saying those who do like comics shouldn't. I'm saying this is a Coke/Pepsi kind of thing. You either like them or you don't, and I think either way is fine.)

I was neutral about the first X-Men movie. I've seen it only the one time, when it was originally in theaters, and my recollection of it is pretty thin. But from what I remember now, I think I'd rate it about a C+. It had some big fun action that worked well, but I thought it was bogged down with far too many characters. I realize that's what the X-Men are all about, but seriously... did they really need all those characters? Hell, The Lord of the Rings didn't have this many characters! Could they not have left just a few out? If they had, maybe they would have had room to actually make me understand, sympathize, or care about the ones who were there.

On the basis of rather liking the action of movie one, I took a chance and saw movie two, again when it was in theaters. And here comes another heretical statement for all the comic lovers, because I hated it. We're talking D- here. The fun action I had at least been hoping to see just felt dumb to me. And the thin characterizations in the first film were even worse here. Comic fans told me I was wrong; that so many characters had been so perfectly captured in this movie. Captured, maybe -- that I'll take their word on. Actually built on screen, within the movie -- not a bit. I found the second film utterly impenetrable to anyone who wasn't steeped in the comics. Sitting in that theater was like being stuck in a room for 2 hours and 15 minutes trying to follow a conversation in Swahili.

So... you might ask... what on earth propelled me to see movie three? Well, put simply, the advance word coming from the comic fans. Over the last few weeks, some reviews had trickled out, and the word seemed to generally range from disappointment to disgust. My opinions had basically been running opposite to theirs all along, so I figured I'd take the plunge.

And I wasn't disappointed. This movie was focused. Where the first two felt like a mish-mash of plots going every which way, this film seemed to have a very specific plot actually comprehensible to a non-comic fan like myself. The action was engaging. And there were actually lots of character beats throughout.

It did still fall down in a few places. There were a couple of clearly Momentous Events in the film that should have carried some emotional weight to them, even to an "outsider" to me. After all, we're talking about a cast consisting of actors who have won an Oscar (Halle Berry), an Emmy (Kelsey Grammer), and a Tony (Hugh Jackman). They didn't quite get there. (Though as he did with The Da Vinci Code, Ian McKellen manages to be the best thing about the film, delivering a performance far better than anyone else in it.)

And, as with the previous films, there were a few mutants too many in places, that left me with a little confusion about just what some of them were supposed to do:

Beast was basically a main character in this movie, but I'm still not sure I know what his power is -- other than Conspicuousness, obviously. Yeah, I'm clear on the whole "Sasquatch Smurf" thing he's got going on.

Does anyone actually take that porcupine-faced guy seriously as a bad guy? Boy, don't cross him, or he'll... make faces at you. If you've got a gun, or hell, even a baseball bat, I'd say you've got nothing to fear.

And does that one evil mutant with the power to make sonic shock waves have a secondary power of androgyny? Because I'm serious not sure if it was a man or a woman.

If you do go to see "The Last Stand," stay until after the credits for one more good scene, that resonates well with a conversation earlier in the film (that at the time just appeared to be a throwaway). And unlike the Phoenix tease that ended X2, you don't actually have to know anything about the comics to get it.