This is a very special edition of Moviews, since it’s not really one at all. Usually I like to look back and try to find some new way of approaching a film that I might not have really cared about before. Something that I feel is a new way for me to view it, and maybe appreciate it more than I ever had. This isn’t that. This is going to be a few mini-reviews condensed from a rewatch marathon I did of the currently out-of-theaters entries in the X-Men film franchise. It was started a week or two ago, so there’ll be references that I hadn’t anticipated, but it’s all leading up to a full review of Dark Phoenix that I will be doing on the Unsourced Wall Podcast. In essence, I just wanted to see how the rest of the series stacked up, and maybe why or how if there was time. 11 movies watched over 11 days. Let’s get right down to it.
X-Men –
What is there to say about this original movie and how it’s held up that hasn’t been said time and time again? Overall, that’s what it has done – it’s held up. Sure, there are tonal conflicts through-out the movie, shifts that are very jarringly close together most of the time – but it’s a testament to the movie itself that none of them, in solitary, collapse. In fact, quite the opposite, each singular part – especially in the first half – buttresses the whole. It’s impressively pragmatic about how it lays everything out, with an opening that, while bleak and serious in the face of everything else the movie has to offer, directly tethers the themes and high concept nature of the subject matter to the ground, and two following scenes that serve to show an immediacy in the present day. It’s done with a lot of care and attention to substance, and it’s small wonder why this was thought of as the inciting movie of this modern era of cape comic films. It laid the groundwork for how to approach some of the more zanier and ludicrous ideas, and while there is some fervent debate on whether this was a bad thing or a good thing – for the time at least it worked. It somehow still does. Despite a really fatty final act, which slows everything to a crawl for the sake of some spectacle, the film is tight, succinct, and remains a decent afternoon watch.
X2 –
Commonly thought of as the best of the series, I can’t say that it doesn’t have the highest peaks of the franchise. It’s also much more compact in its themes, and more consistent in its storytelling, than the original. Nothing feels out of place or weirdly dissonant with the content it’s handling. So, there is a lot of merit to the praise and acclaim it’s gotten from fans over the years. The real issue lies with how unforgivably long it is. It’s one of the longest of the series and it is relentless. This is a trend that would plague other entries, but it originated here. It’s not even that it’s overstuffed, or that it’s juggling unnecessary content, it’s actually pretty nicely rounded with every beat feeding into the main conflict and the varied scope of the world it’s trying to build thematically. Almost every facet of the mutant experience, as it can be discerned from the characters, is touched upon here. Social, familial, political. It’s a lot to go over, and the only thing that keeps it from falling to pieces is the multi-pronged approach to the plot- oddly reminiscent of Infinity War – and actual good writing. New cast members such as Brian Cox and Alan Cumming knock it out of the park and, along with others, continue to give the series the needed gravitas. That’s important to keep in mind, gravitas. It doesn’t pull punches with its drama and you need that bond to keep films like this down to Earth, and it makes all the difference.
X-Men: The Last Stand –
This was just painful. No matter what you think about Apocalypse or whatever predictions you have about Dark Phoenix’s quality – there’s very little chance they are deserved in comparison to The Last Stand. Not only is it boring, not only is its plot a complete mess, but it’s just downright embarrassing. I actually started to feel bad for the actors. They are given nothing to work with in terms of depth, or characterization, or even a charming bluntness. All they are given, especially for Stewart and McKellen, is a grab bag of cliche platitudes and ridiculously tired and worn out one-liners. It’s such a waste of the actors. I’m not going to say that the first two movies were high art, the ghost of Alec Guiness would haunt me forever if I claimed that, but they aspired to be more. They wanted to be movies first. This settles into a kind of laziness that presumes silliness, spectacle, and mindless comic-bookiness is all that matters in making this genre watchable. When it doesn’t. It makes it unwatchable. It’s kind of incredible that this is actually one of the shorter films in the franchise, a shade over 90 minutes, and it feels 10 times longer than X2 did. If there was anything of value within this entry I would have to say it was that Kelsey Grammer’s Beast is depicted with enough of that old gravitas and credibility, and that the dynamic between Wolverine and Rogue remains the core thread this initial trilogy was centered around. And it plays it for the last bit of impact it can, despite being sidelined wholesale. Overall, just insanely dire and it earns every bit of derision it has accumulated over the years. If I had to condense this movie into a single moment, it would be the second prologue it has, with a flashback to Angel’s powers emerging as a young child. It’s almost heartbreakingly well-done…and then segues into some cheesy theme music and montage. It’s hysterical and as inept as the rest.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine –
This is just boring and silly. It’s a weird mixture. There are moments that will bring you to tears by how dull and pointless there are, and then there are these insane and almost maddeningly goofy set-pieces…that will also still impress upon you how achingly bland and uninspired they are. The movie has no core. Its only drive is to be a prequel. The only motivation is to be cool. To be heartfelt. To be dramatic. But there’s no rhyme or reason for any of those. It only knows what it wants to be. Not how to get there. Not how to earn it. Things continually shift throughout the movie, nothing ever settling in, and nothing leaving any impact. In the end I have only a few thoughts about it, since there’s really nothing within it that has left any discernible impact. The first is that the over the top set-pieces and action scenes make me believe that this movie would have been much better off as a self-aware comedy. Like, go for it. Yet it continues to try and be some drama and that tone stifles most of it. The second is that the only good scene in the entire movie is the Deadpool fight. Say what you will about what the movie did to his character, but that fight is genuinely enjoyable and is the only bright light in what is otherwise an aggressively dull experience. Even Liev Schreiber doing his best as Sabretooth couldn’t make any of his scenes as entertaining. Lastly, CGI Patrick Stewart is horrifying. Overall, better than The Last Stand, but only barely. My reasoning being that while it’s embarrassing, at least everyone and everything was embarrassing along with it.
X-Men: First Class –
I go back and forth on whether or not this one is even barely better than the previous two entries, or just as bad. On one hand, it definitely tells a decently constructed and mindful story. There’s a point it wants to get across and everything feeds back into it. On the other hand, it’s as deeply unbearable as Origins could be at its lowest. Much like the previous film there’s this overriding sense and need to be cool. To put on a flashy face. But it just comes off as superficial and as a way to fill in gaps and cracks in a story that doesn’t have the substance to carry its own weight. It’s relentless at trying to ape a super-cool vision of the 60’s, but feels like a tired checklist of every conceivable cliche. It doesn’t have an identity outside of mashing that very, very, loose “spy” sensibility with the X-Men, and it’s barely enough of a gimmick. That said, the actors do try their best, and Fassbender and McAvoy get their start on the franchise here, but First Class shows them at their weakest. Barely giving them even a little to do and at times seemingly working against their talents. The series obvious has flaws, and has had some big ones from the start, but in a movie that could almost get it right – that’s where they show the most clearly. One huge instance of this is a re-use of the prologue to the first movie, which it extends and makes unimaginably worse and just frighteningly unwatchable. Props to the introduction of the series’ first yellow costume designs. They’re pretty great designs stuck in a near-disaster.
The Wolverine (Extended Edition) –
This is pretty much everything that the last two films tried, but done right. It’s also kind of astounding that a movie that is a sequel to both The Last Stand and X-Men Origins could be this good, but somehow it made it. There’s the sense of wanting to be as over the top and radical as possible, but rather than just juttering in without rhyme or reason, or just to fill up time, it all feeds into very defined set-pieces. The way these scenes are even shot, it goes beyond the overly slick and resignedly flashy thuds that its predecessors went. They are given momentum, weight, and complete impact in the moment. There’s stylization there, of course, but it all seems to come from the environment or the subtext of the characters themselves. Creating more engaging sequences than the first Wolverine spin-off could ever have hoped. It’s also insanely silly. There’s a self-aware playfulness that emanates throughout the movie, and it has this uncanny ability to balance that out pretty well with the more dramatic and somber beats it desperately wants to land. It’s not perfect. Sometimes it can be a bit too conflicting, but the movie has a confidence about itself. It’s never talking down, but it’s also not overwhelmingly self-assured. It knows what it can do, and wants to do, and aims for it. And it hits that target about 90% of the time. First Class might get the credit for breathing new life into the franchise, but The Wolverine deserves that distinction hand over fist.
X-Men: Days of Future Past (The Rogue Cut) –
This is a movie that really only had one card to play, and it played it extremely well. Yet, with the return of Singer to the franchise – so returned the problems his films in the series have always had. They’re extremely long with a sense of approaching complete collapse at any second. The positives remain the same as well, at the very least. This movie brings back a sense of gravitas and depthy dramatic cores to the mainline films. In their first film back, in proper roles this time, McKellen and Stewart shine – and in the extended “Rogue Cut” are given the chance to play off their younger counterparts wonderfully. In McKellen’s case there is this delightful intercutting between Fassbender’s Magneto storming a CIA storage house and his own raiding of a Sentinel-occupied X-Mansion. Is there some deeper connection between the two scenes? Maybe. Maybe not. Yet the movie deftly moves between the emotions of each, finding a unified whole. It takes a while for the movie to get to that point though, the first act saddled with exposition and set-up, but once it gets going it becomes as taut, as goofy, and as engaging as any of these films have ever been. Is it the best as everyone says? No, I wouldn’t say that at all. But it’s a comfortable reassurance that the franchise, outside of the spin-offs, could aim for the fences. There’s a magical quality in the way it uses the full extent and length of franchise to shoulder itself onto. It’s an act that I don’t think any other long running superhero movie franchise has been able to pull quite as elegantly.
Deadpool –
The second spin-off/sequel to X-Men Origins, and continuing the bizarrely good legacy that movie somehow made for itself. Just going to get it out of the way here – I prefer the second one in pretty much every way possible. That said, this is still pretty solid. Everything underwhelming or threadbare about it, which are many, is really the result of things that were well out of the hands of the filmmakers. So, it does drag. It does feel dull. And at times it does feel like it’s stalling for time to fill out and be a movie. It doesn’t exactly give off the best impression – but what keeps it all afloat is the commitment to the character and to making this movie, however much they can, feel like a full experience and something they can say they did the most with bringing to the screen. That’s where Ryan Reynolds does the best job, in being the physical extension of that sentiment. Bridging together all of the iconic facets of the character together, good and bad, and making it an extremely engaging experience to see develop and to follow throughout. Sure, some of the jokes don’t land quite as well anymore, and some never landed for me, but the smaller, quieter, beats and cynically laced gags provide evidence of a higher skill being put into the production. It’s not perfect – but it knows that this might be its only outing and does as much as it can with whatever it can. Even up to using a character they don’t even have any feasible rights to – just because it might be the only Deadpool movie ever made and it knows it would have lost something without it. It’s thrilling, and continues to be, so yeah…pretty good.
X-Men: Apocalypse –
I’ll just be outright with this – I kinda actually really love this one. I admit, it’s also a huge mess that could have been done way more effectively and engagingly. Yet, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t any of either in it at all. People like to call this the worst one or, at the very least, the worst of the prequel trilogy. Which is insanely laughable. Not when First Class exists. Apocalypse, while a chaotic heap of plot threads and character beats, at least goes for it. It has an ambition to itself, and the characters are given so many chances to shine and to highlight why they are so memorable. Magneto gets multiple amazing scenes, and one that might be a contender for best in the whole series. It’s a scene that perfectly bridges the entire prequel trilogy together, and even manages to make the unbearably goofy prologue of First Class seem poignant and meaningful. It’s kinda brilliant. Oscar Isaac kills it as Apocalypse as well, playing it with just the right amount of over-the-top silliness but also adhering to the whatever grace and dignity the role commands. He does a fantastic job. The movie is this madcap rollercoaster ride of ideas, threads, themes, tones and it’s just overwhelmingly enjoyable at times. It’s just so frazzled that it kinda strikes a balance for me. It’s definitely nowhere near the best, but in terms of actually trying to make an enjoyable movie and hitting the mark – it’s nowhere near the worst either. One thing I also should mention is that everyone always gives Mystique’s character shit for being the face of the prequel trilogy, but – honestly – she’s only ever been misused in First Class, where her subplot is so irritatingly badly written. She’s actually been on an upward trend throughout DOFP and Apocalypse, and it was nice to see that come to a head as well. The movie ends on a good “full circle” tone, yet distinctly different, that I would have been reasonably been satisfied with it as the end of the mainline series.
LOGAN –
And speaking of endings, LOGAN is yet another. This time a peek into a possible future, that is meant to end the standalone Wolverine Trilogy and to be an extended epilogue to the franchise as a whole. Concerning those two ideals, those two goals, the movie is pretty damn near perfect. When it reaches the moments of emotional catharsis and closure for Wolverine, and thus the franchise as a whole, it brings the weight of the series along with it. It makes you feel it. It’s such a masterful movie for being able to create such tangibility for a series that has been as fractured and as varied as this. That it pulls such a move off makes it one of the best. Other than that, personally, it’s just around as good as The Wolverine. Which, well, is still around the best of the best, if we’re being clear here. LOGAN is the perfect companion and successor to The Wolverine, doing much of what made that movie great – but with a different style and sensibility. While The Wolverine plays around with the pop cultural ideas and fantasies of Japan, LOGAN substitutes that for classic westerns. Well, mainly Shane. It all comes down to personal taste at that point, really, and in my case The Wolverine wins out overall because the frenzied and colorful world/plot balances out with the more dreary and somber tone in a way that grips me more than most of LOGAN was able to do. Still, this movie – as a grand finale – is another that would have been a satisfying way to see the franchise draw to a close. It’s kinda beautiful, if corny at times. What’s more emblematic to this series than that?
Deadpool 2 –
This stands as one of my favorite X-Men films of all time. Is it perfect? Almost. What hinders it is pretty much what hinders X2, and what makes it work is what makes LOGAN or Days of Future Past work. All said and done, it’s in pretty damn good company. It’s just, well, a bit overstuffed and the storyline goes on for a bit too long. Yet, like X2, it’s less that there’s too much going on, but that it’s showing a lot of the very tight narrative. It’s rounded out, the characters are great, the plot beats are fantastic, and the themes are played with and developed all the way through and done with due seriousness and emotional weight. It’s so damn good, and it rounds out the way the previous two films tried to close out the franchise. Apocalypse is a messy farewell to the prequel trilogy, LOGAN focuses on the hope for the future the original trilogy espoused, and Deadpool 2 is a loving tribute to all on the fringes. Sure, it centers around Deadpool specifically – but it edges around and closes off what it can for things like X-Men Origins, and even with the inclusion of Cable you get the long-form implication that mutantkind does survive in some way. The bow on top is how it uses the bigger, higher budget, experience to tell a more fully formed, and confident, Deadpool story. Taking even more classic elements to craft a wonderful film that has its cake and eats it too – wrapping everything about Deadpool up in a single movie. It’s like it knew the writing was on the wall. Deadpool 2 was a great send-off for the franchise, and for the character, and I don’t think we need a Deadpool 3, like some are saying.
Did we need a Dark Phoenix either? I say no. I am willing to give it a chance though. I won’t have seen it by the time this Moviews goes up, but I hope it the best. It had the long journey of going from a trilogy, and ending on a cliffhanger, to having to shoulder the burden of being the grand finale to a franchise that already have three consecutive finales. I don’t envy it. And the less said about the tragic position New Mutants is in, the better. Overall though, I enjoyed this franchise. Warts and All. It had some really dire points, but it was just so fun, so heartbreaking, and so engaging when it hit. And boy did it hit. It’s been a wild ride revisiting these, and I’m glad that it at least got to end. It got to end about 4-5 different times. Not many series can claim that.
Overall Estimation: 8/10.
Unsourced Wall 