Amph X-Men Movies & TV - Discussion

That's her point. The large majority of the audience isn't going to care how accurately this is done and since the majority audience is who pays the bills that's who they will cater to...meaning they don't need to be slaves to the source material.

 

I'm one of those 90% that never read the comics. I like the concept of the X-Men though. I read that they were still filming and that could cause problems.

I understand why the fans of the comics want to keep it the same original storyline, but they have to fit so much into one movie.

I never liked comics in the first place because I couldn't stand the writing. UGH!!! Ahhhh!. That style of writing was to choppy for me to read. My roomate has tons of X-Men comics and he still likes the movies. He will compare the movie story line to the comics and let me know more info if I ask him. I don't think he gets too critical about the movies though.

 

QFT

Exactly. Let's say for example that in the Lord of the Rings movies the powers-that-be decided they didn't want Gimli in the movie. Then they changed Legolas' backstory so that he was an Elf who was raised by Dwarves so he could have knowledge of the inside of Moria. All because some studio exec thought that Dwarves wouldn't market well. Remember, they're not making this movie for LOTR fans, they're making it for everyone else. Obviously, it's ridiculous and would never happen but this is essentially what has happened in EVERY X-Men movie.

 

Of all the changes made to LOTR you have to make one up to prove your point??

 

They didn't have to go with the "Wolverine had bone claws before the adimantium" special ability thing in the origins movie, but they chose to do so because that was in the comic. They could simply have gone with him being able to heal and happened to get claws once his skeleton was altered.

 

Yes, because that's the level of insanity some of the X-Men changes are.

 

Like what?

 

Like Deadpool?

 

Meh, he's an over-rated character anyways so that's never bothered me. I will grant you that its certainly an unnecessary change but its not enough to make me get all up in arms about this movie, especially when all I've seen are a handful of pics and one two minute trailer.

 

You seem to be missing your own point.

 

1) I was agreeing with you.
2) It was never my point to begin with, I was clarifying slimy's misread of sj's point. I just find it ridiculous to get this upset about things, without even having seen the movie or how they handle the material.

 

And Callisto and Rogue and Madrox and Psylocke and Quill and Pyro...

 

Like combining the characters of Rogue and Kitty Pryde. Actually, that's pretty much what he was saying with the Legolas/Gimli thing. We want to adapt the comic by having that Kitty/Wolverine relationship, and have them both be introduced to the X-Men, in the beginning, making them the narrative characters we are introduced to the movie through, and see their relationship, just like in the comics.
But wait! Why would Magneto want to use Kitty Pryde? Well, I guess the kind of powers we're going for here would be Rogue's powers. But we still want to tell the Kitty/Wolverine story. So let's just give Kitty Rogue's powers and call her Rogue. Then let's make Iceman a teenager and make up a love story between them.

Slimy!

 

And if we're being quite frank, the vast majority of X-Men characters (especially the B-and-C-stringers we're getting to these days) started out as cool new powers with bare-bones characteristics/nationalities attached, and took years (decades/never, in some cases) to develop into three-dimensional people.

So in most of these cases, I really have no problem with the filmmakers taking a similar approach.

Movie-Rogue is a Kitty/Jubilee hybrid with comic-Rogue's powers and birthplace. That didn't bother me. What bothered me was that she was a mopey charisma vacuum that dragged down the movies (with not one iota of the spunk that all three of those comic characters had in spades, incidentally).

 

And Callisto and Rogue and Madrox and Psylocke and Quill and Pyro...

Quill and Psylocke were hardly in the movie. I must have missed where they radically changes Pyro and Madrox. Callisto and Rogue needed both to serve several story telling functions.

Rogue's backstory wouldn't have worked for the series (they needed a sympathetic proxy, not a reformed villain). Kitty wouldn't have worked as she is either as they needed her to serve several functions:
1) be an audience proxy and introduce us to how frightening a mutation can be. Rogues powers better lend to her being afraid of them and feeling like an outcast (one of the central themes of the films).
2) be a tool for Magneto's scheme, that would put her in an immense amount of danger and be the breaking point for Wolverine to choose a side. In order to do that there would have to be a bond between them so they borrowed Kitty's story.

I would have loved for Kitty to be a central character, but they still need to tell their story so liberties need to be taken, and none of these examples are extreme or arbitrary.

 

1. Michael Fassbender will own this movie.
2. CONTINUITY? Hank McCoy transforms into Beast here...yet in his cameo in the first X-Men he is unchanged. What, does he change back and forth ala The Wolfman?
3. LOVE the classic yellow/blue costumes.

 

Fair enough, I'm just saying that they could have found an effective way of telling the story with Kitty actually ebign Kitty instead of Rogue. Still, I don't hate the movies, hell, I saw THEM long ago before I started reading comics. The first X-Men movie is what got me into comics.

Also, I believe when Joss Whedon was called in to rewrite the script, he made Kitty Pryde a main character, before his rewrite was thrown out.

BTW, you don't see how they radically changed Madrox? They took a hero and made him a villain.

Slimy!

 

I think the "human Hank" cameo was thrown out the window in X-Men 3, when furry Hank showed up and was referred to as one of Xavier's first students. That doesn't really work with the cameo, as even in his more human form, Beast had oversized extremities. It would be weird if he was one of the original X-Men before his mutations manifested.

And from a practical standpoint, they're using a younger actor, so it would be too confusing for most of the audience to get that a non-furry guy with big hands and feet who doesn't look like Kelsey Grammer is supposed to be the same guy from X3.

 

That's debatable. He was a criminal, but no necessarily a villain. What's the most villainous thing he did?? Rob several banks? Fool the military?

And in his first appearance he was an opponent to the Fantastic Four.

Not to mention, the Ultimate version of Multiple Man was indeed a villain, so what's to say they weren't borrowing from there.

 

Just saw the trailer. Didn't particularly care for it. I like James McAvoy but am skeptical about him pulling of Xavier. I know nothing about the dude playing Magneto either, but I do like seeing Magneto in action...so maybe I'll see it anyway.

Also, Magneto's helmet looks awesome.

 

Yes. Fool the military so that Magneto's forces could land on Alcatraz island and raise hell. Dude, he was amember of the Brotherhood. The bad guys. I didn't know the Ultimate version was a bad guy, so I suppose that's an excuse. But how the fact that he was a villain in the film at all debatable?

Slimy!

 

Dear SJ,

I've barely read X-Men comics. The majority of my exposure to these characters came from television and the previous movies. And I imagine that applies to 90% of the general audience and especially to kids.

Do you know who Darwin, Angel and Azazel are? You might know of Banshee and Havoc. And more than likely you know Beast and Mystique. But honestly, if you didn't know he was playing Xavier, would you be able to tell he's Professor X? I guarantee if I showed this to a friend or a family member, they'd ask me who the red guy was, why Xavier has hair, who the bug girl was and why Cyclops' power comes from his chest not his eyes. And someone would likely ask where Wolverine was too.

The general audience knows the real first class. Cyclops, Jean Grey and Beast have been present in media since the 90s cartoon. X-Men Evolution, the movies and Wolverine and the X-Men increased Angel and Iceman's profile. Wolverine didn't really have to work too hard for the audience to recognize Gambit. And Storm, Nightcrawler and Logan easily stick out.
So kids and parents know these characters. Not as many could tell you Cyclops has a brother. Even fewer know who Nightcrawler's father is (I certainly didn't know). And even fewer than that will have any idea who Angel and Darwin are.

Aside from the numerous errors within the film's own continuity, the biggest issue this film faces is with the general audience. Not the comic fans. The comic fans will at least have heard of the obscure characters. But kids and their parents? Doubtful. Then again, with the outfit Emma wears and Angel's scene in the trailer, parents may not want to take their kids to this anyway. But the Hellfire club is a bit obscure compared to other potential villians (Sentinels, Apocalypse, Mr. Sinister all have been in television media multiple times since the nineties) Not only that, but they normally tie into Phoenix and there is no Jean Grey and no Phoenix.

I would have much preferred that they would have just pulled a reboot. But they insist on this somehow tying into the other films. And that just isn't feasible. So they've basically limited themselves, changed character's backstory to fit the film and still can't make it work within their own films. That and the fact they rushed out production and plan to push for a June release are what have me leaning heavily toward waiting for a DVD release. The last time fox rushed a film, Wolverine came out. Poor effects, poor story. Poor film. Last Stand couldn't wait for Singer. So they got Ratner and they rushed that out as well. Fantastic Four 2 was also pushed out quickly, had low promotion and was terrible. When it comes to Fox and rushing comic films, the quality speaks for itself.

 

It's the British agent from Inglorious Basterds!!!

The one who did three fingers wrong. The film expert.

 

Sigh. I'm not really going to have to make an absurdly massive post about the pointlessness of continuity, the absurdity of unflinching fidelity in adaptation, and the role of adaptation as a form of critical thought, am I?

 

DLB: Yes.
Slimy: His actions were passive and non-violent and only served as a distraction. That's hardly what I would call villainous.