Films

[williamjm]

I went to see the new Wolverine film at the cinema today. It has had some pretty bad reviews so I wasn't expecting much, I wouldn't say it was necessarily as bad as some of the reviews are saying, but it still wasn't particularly good. Hugh Jackman and Liev Schriber are good in the two lead roles, but I thought some of the supporting acting was a little bit weak - in particular, the actor playing Stryker couldn't really live up to Brian Cox's portrayal of the character in X2. The plot was OK for a run-of-the-mill superhero story, but the whole thing did feel slightly pointless since it didn't add much to what we already knew about Wolverine's past, from X-Men 2 we already knew about Wolverine's powers, how he got the adamantium skeleton and Stryker's involvement so the only new thing we learn is why he had amnesia. Overall, not a bad film, but a mediocre one, which at least makes it significantly better than the awful mess that was X-Men 3.

In last week's post about the cinema I was complaining about Let The Right One In not being on at any Cambridge cinema any more despite them still showing a trailer for it. It seems that it will be on for a single showing tomorrow at about 2, so I might go and see that, since it has had significantly better reviews than Wolverine.

I went to the cinema as a passenger in my friend's new Smart Car that he's just bought. It is quite an unusual experience at first compare to a normal car, you do seem to notice the quality of the road surface much more (particularly the number of potholes) and driving over speed-bumps at anything over about 15 mph in it can be a slightly alarming experience, which is annoying considering there are five of them just to get to the end of Chesterton High Street (the road I live next to).

Comments

[the-corbie.livejournal.com]

I liked X-Men 3 and I don't care what anyone else says. :p

But Wolverine I will probably save for watching on DVD. I have no interest in Deadpool or Gambit, and the reviews of the film I've seen don't enthuse me at all.

[peadarog.livejournal.com]

Looking forward to your take on "Let the Right One in". The book was pretty interesting.

[catrionamacnair.livejournal.com]

I wasn't particularly impressed by the Wolverine film. I was particularly particularly unimpressed by what they did with the surgery - I have heard much better ideas of how they did it. (Also, how on earth do you get the metal between the flesh and the bone by simple needle injection? And how do you acchieve a complete effect? I am reminded of Achilles' Heel and Siegfried's leaf-on-the-shoulder). /medical rant.
Gambit was pretty cool though, and Deadpool scary. *shrugs* Mediocre is a well-chosen word, I believe.

[williamjm.livejournal.com]

Yes, the surgery didn't really seem to make any sense, not that that is a surprise in a superhero story. From X-Men 2 I had the impression that the surgery had been a much more complicated procedure rather than the seemingly simple injections they used in Wolverine. I'm also confused why he had to be in a tank full of water during the surgery, I can't see what purpose that had.

[fenryng.livejournal.com]

I agree with you about Brian Cox; over the decades he has become a character actor worth watching.

However, with the caveat that I have only seen the third X-Men movie once, I really do not understand why it seems to cause such pain.

I can understand, to an extent, among the comic book fans, as people died who were not supposed to, or to my knowledge, ever have, in comic book lore. However, I was under the impression that people who have never followed the comics were okay with it.

For my own part, I thought it was a pretty gutsy move to have the people dying who did. But I am biased; given a choice between Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart dying, I will take Ian any day.

[williamjm.livejournal.com]

I've never read the comics - which is probably why I'm not annoyed with the Wolverine movie, my friend who I went to see it with was very annoyed that they apparently did the character of Deadpool very badly, but since I have no idea who Deadpool is meant to be, I don't care.

So, my objection to X-Men 3 is not based on faithfulness to the comic, it's more that I think it is a weak and unsatisfactory conclusion to a trilogy whose first two instalments I really liked. There are a few major flaws in it, IMO, the first is that there is just too much plot packed into the film with the result that neither Magneto's attempted uprising, the Phoenix storyline surrounding Dr Jean Grey or the 'mutant cure' storyline really seemed to get the attention they deserved. They could each have been the main plot of a film, but all three in a single film is a bit too much. The Phoenix storyline works particularly badly, the set-up is good and the scenes with Professor X and her are probably the high-point of the film, but for the rest of the movie she just seems to hang around with Magneto's bunch, not doing very much. Similarly, there are too many characters meaning that even previously major characters like Rogue barely get any screentime, even though she has a potentially very interesting plotline as she gets to decide whether to take the mutant cure or not. I think there were other problems as well, but it has been a few years since I've seen it so I don't remember them all.

I think, if I hadn't seen and liked the first two films and hadn't been really looking forward to X-Men 3 I wouldn't mind it so much. If it had been, say, a Fantastic Four movie that had similar problems I might be happy to accept it as reasonable entertainment without complaining about it too much.