Amph X-Men Movies & TV - Discussion

I know you know what a metaphor is.

 

sure thing dude thanks for the advise but I will stick to enjoying movies not ripping them a new one. and this is to everyone on here, my "T" and "G" Button don't work on my laptop keyboard some other buttons to my nephew uses my laptop with sticky digits and gets it all gummed up. so say I write "T" or "G" sometimes it wont show up in what I am writing and I don't notice it till after my edit window is over. hopefully that explains that.

 

It tells the story in a manner that people are not accustomed to, but yeah, there isn't much left that's unexplained. The Shadow King even mentioned Xavier pretty explicitly.

I have a feeling it's also the particular type of audience-- those who expect the very conventional, simple style of the MCU or (most of) the X-Men films.

 

Totally, but at the same time it's not exactly Waiting for Godot either. There's this subset of viewership for this show and others that seem incapable of recognizing faces, patterns, or basic metaphors, and they all flock to read recaps to tell them how they should have interpreted something. And yet you can't spoil something because they want to be a blank slate when they experience the thing they need to have explained to them...

I'm not bitter or anything.

 

We've all had conversations with Strilo.

 

I am glad they are beginning to work with other mutants.

Speaking of Wolverine...link to a recent interview with the original screen Sabertooth (Tyler Mane). Think the Hollywood Reporter could have afforded a clearer picture for the header though.

 

Logan is one of the best superhero films ever made, IMO, along with The Dark Knight. The way Logan, Charles, and Laura were handled in the film was outstanding. Also, the antagonists are believable. I could believe that those guys would be running around. Overall, Logan is a tragedy, of course. I teared up when Laura was calling Logan "daddy" at the end.

As for the timeline, I don't think it's confusing. There are different ways to view this picture. I think Patrick Stewart's poignant performance as Charles is based on his prior performances and that of James McAvoy. Charles's dementia is heartrending, and I feel Logan's loss when Charles is taken away. But Charles's dream lives on through Logan, Laura, and the kids. Maybe these new mutants will prefer to avoid killing due to that legacy. Sure looks like it at the end.

 

I think it's the best movie in the franchise, measured as just a movie. It may not be the best X-Men film, if you're measuring by it hitting all the X-Men buttons, but it's the best of the films that happen to be set in that universe IMO.

 

Days of Future Past: Rogue Cut is definitely my favourite version of the movie and quite possibly my favourite X-Men movie, until the one that just came out. But the thing I love about DoFP is how Charles is handled in both ends of the spectrum, and his crazier younger version actually adds more resonance once you've seen Logan, and I love the cross cutting across the timelines in the finale.

Logan I think is a straight-up masterpiece of moviemaking. It has a slower burn than any of the X-Men flicks, even The Wolverine, but it helps add to the sense of isolation and when it kicks in, it's bloody brilliant. Even the smaller moments I loved, especially Logan's abbreviated "eulogy" that he can only get 4 words out. While I think it would be awesome if it got some awards tin, seems unlikely for the most part but Mad Max: Fury Road did win a hellova lot. But I will say, I think Patrick Stewart may actually have a legit shot at supporting actor, mostly because the Academy kind of loves acknowledging elder statesmen actors and he's playing someone living with a disease, which they also love. The horrifyingly awesome bit is when the world's more powerful telepath has a degenerative brain disease, it could be bad for everybody.

I recommend giving the Empire podcast Spoiler Special with James Mangold a listen, it's pretty in-depth and he does point out that while the continuity between Logan and the other X-flicks might be a bit ... fluid but he does point out that continuity in the comics themselves can be a bit fluid and it's more about what's best for the piece than exactly sticking in between the lines. I think it works brilliantly in Logan anyway.

Gave Apocalypse a rewatch (mostly because I got it at a going out of business sale on DVD for 7 bucks brand new) and I still do like the movie, if mostly for the cool moments than the actual plot. Jean unleashing in the finale may be in my top 3 X-Men scenes ever, the Quicksilver mansion escape is also awesome. I just think it's pretty lazy in the first hour or so, kind of disconnected so Mags "Who the %$^ are you?" actually kind of fits perfectly. And while I'm not a huge fan of the brawl with the horsemen (Angel dying in a situation he could fly away from is ... odd) I do think the Apocalypse brawl itself is pretty grand.

And, holy heck, how good has Legion been? It's so good! The last 3 episodes all had some fantastic stuff, I loved when David met the guy in the ice cube and he's just grooving on jazz records "Far out, man!", the scene of the aftermath of David plowing through the military guys was insane, and the "in the hospital" episode had some truly nuts stuff happening (Lenny doing her full on evil dance of joy was amazing). There was a moment when I thought they were going to uninspired rip off the Quicksilver scene from DoFP with Syd being frozen in time with a bullet coming after her but it's actually a nifty twisty inverse that they can't affect the outcome and can't move the people or the bullet. So it looks like David is holding them in place and doesn't want Syd to die. Hell, I don't want Syd to die either because I think the actress is great so hopefully they can find a way out of it. Only 2 episodes left and this is turning out to be some of my favourite X-stuff ever. And season 2 just got renewed, huzzah!

 

As for a few pgs back, re. Wolverine being picked up by Stryker / no wait, Mystique in Days of Future Past, that to me always seemed like some post-production trickery VFX as all we see is Styker's eyes turn into Mystique. It seemed a decision they made late in the game because the movie ending with Logan being picked up by Stryker is kind of depressing sense of inevitability, and by tweaking it into Mystique it's a tad happier, considering the movie is about literally changing time to accomplish the impossible. Also it sort of sells that the new timeline that anything could happen. (and, well, as we saw later in Apocalypse, it didn't and went the way we thought it would.)

The Apocalypse stinger with Essex Corp grabbing Logan's DNA and it not being in Logan, well, the corporation Alaki Lake spin off, I'm sure at this point in the future there's a lot of corporations buying DNA and creating clones. One of my favourite lines in the movie is when Donald goes off and says something like "We can't have publicly owned property going around chopping people up, it's bad for business!"

Not much mention of Stephen Merchant Caliban in Logan, he disappears (well, explodes) about halfway through the movie and I thought he was grand, very tragic, 3rd wheel with some good funny bitterness at the start and he has a nice arc (if very dark) where they're using him as an overglorifed bloodhound to find the mutants, which is sort of how the corporation is using mutants just as tools in the future.

Speaking of depressing inevitability, I personally think this works as a canon-capper to the X-Men story. While if you stare long enough, there are some tricksy moments, Caliban in Logan is a tad different from the Caliban in Apocalypse but you can think he's worn down to become the guy we see from the first-person referencing mogul in Apocalypse. Logan going by "James Howlett" is a bit of a stretch since he had those memories wiped but I'm sure he found out about his Howlett origins at some point down the line, hell, Jean gave him back some of his memory in Apocalypse so maybe it was then. There's also Charles saying they "found Logan as a cage fighter" but if this is the post DoFP timeline then Jean, Scott and Nightcrawler found him but, hey, Charles read the original Logan's mind in the 70s so there's wiggle room there. And it is kind of depressing the X-Men end in "Charles went buggy and they all died." But it does fit with the Logan being tricked to kill the X-Men in Old Man Logan comic, although this is more something they couldn't fight against (and provides a hell of a reason that Charles needs to be taken care of). And in none of the various timelines does the story for the X-Men end particularly well. So, yes, everybody dies but Charles' dream is kept alive in the new (genetically manufactured) mutants going to Eden. And Laura laying the cross down to form an X is a nice way to say goodbye to them all. Also, how great is Laura repeating the "Shane" speech as Logan's eulogy? X-24 I think is a particularly effective villain, not that Evil Clones is overplayed in comics / sci-fi (which it kind of is) but that an Evil Feral Clone of Logan actually works realllly well in the context of the movie and his overall story.

As for Laura's future? Well, it could be interesting if every 5 years or so, James Mangold comes back to the "Logan" story to watch her grow up into her own person. But if they wanted to get wild with it, have Cable in a Deadpool movie pick her up in time travel shenanigans and then, boom, we got X-23 to sub in for Wolverine the the flicks. that is a very comic-book-y wacky retcon style idea, though, and not sure if it fits the more subtle tone of Laura's story in this flick.

 

Yeah, DOFP clearly states that Logan (and only him) will remember the timeline as it originally went when he wakes up from time travel. So not only could some events still have happened like before in the new timeline, but references can also be to the old timeline, as he will still know about them.

(A slightly sad consequence is that if new timeline James Howlett actually lead a better life than old timeline Logan, those memories will still be erased on 'wake up day'® as the memories and personality from the old timeline overwrites his new timeline mind.)

 

I'm not sure if Stewart will get nominated. He is long overdue, but since he didn't get a supporting nod for Green Room, its fairly tough to say if he will for this.

 

Except things are different. Scott was brought into the mansion by Alex, not by Charles. Hank probably went with Charles to find Jean, rather than it being Erik. Raven hasn't killed anyone and returned to the team. Logan did get his Adamantium from Stryker, but the circumstances are different. So there are enough ripples to change things.

Caliban makes reference to the fact that there was another guy with the same name.

True, but it might be that they found records that Stryker had that weren't lost, originally.

There's a difference between the three of them finding Logan in 1983 and having no idea who he was, and Charles finding Logan circa 2005. He might be referring to reading his memories in 73, but it might also be that Charles decided to actively go looking for Logan because Erik went back to his evil ways and as before, figured that Logan was the reason and not Rogue.

 

Yeah, I just realized even if in the DoFP timeline, Jean gave back the piece of Logan's memory that he was James Howlett in Apocalypse, in the DoFP coda wake up day, Logan Prime would have lost those memories anyway. But there is quite a lot of wiggle room that someone, sometime, Logan or Charles found out about his James Howlett background. Or it could just be an astonishing coincidence.

Also the Adamantium bullet in XMOW does blow out Jimmy's memories but not kill him but in Logan it takes a chunk of X-24's head off (and Logan was hanging onto it for apparently suicidal purposes) but, to paraphrase what Mangold said, there is continuity and there is slavish adherence to continuity that gets in the way of storytelling. It just makes sense that Logan would have an adamantium bullet as the only thing (he thinks) could kill him. So let's just say the adamantium bullet in Logan packed considerably more punch than what Stryker unloaded in Jimmy's head in Origins.

I believe in was in the Empire spoiler special that a really dark interpretation is that Logan isn't dead, his healing factor just takes a good long while to kick in so he's alive under the pile of rocks, ahhhhh!!! (and they also cracked a joke that Logan and X-24 both wake up and start a new life at the farmhouse of the family that got killed).

Speaking of which, I know that having Logan actually die is a bit of a thing to accept, since he freakin' heals from everything, but I think they established enough roadblocks to his healing factor - it was futzed when the movie first starts, he's dying from adamantium poisoning anyway, and he took some incredibly instantly killing injuries in the finale that he managed to hang on, and he took the entire dose of Green Stuff (that you aren't supposed to take). So it was a pretty stacked deck against his healing factor ....

.... but there is a little part of me that agrees, ahhh! Logan is buried alive!!! Such hell!

Stewart is great in Green Room (to restate, Stewart is great in anything) but I'd put a bit more odds on a nomination for Logan if, at the very least, the academy seems to love it when an elder actor plays someone suffering from a mental degenerative disease. And they love tossing tin at someone who has been working for awhile. so, maybe, that may pull against the seeming comic book genre bias.

 

One thing to keep in mind about the Adamantium bullet is that Logan wasn't healing as quickly; that would have increased the chances of the bullet killing him in Logan vs Origins.

 

Oh for those who missed this, in Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, (fantastic movie, go watch), here's Hugh Jackman reprising Wolverine for about 30 seconds

 

The latest episode of Legion is the definitely a payoff, as it explains away everything and moves the narrative very much forward. I wish this was series was released all at once like a Netflix series as it would play very well for binge watching. The true identity of the yellow eyed demon was revealed and the references to David's father were bits of joy.

I needed this episode after the slogfest that was Iron Fist. Legion is so well written, so well developed and so well delivered. The bizarre and creative narrative, settings and story telling is what I expected from Doctor Strange. I mean, the astral plane depicted in Legion is an amazing piece of the story telling; much like "The Matrix" is to The Matrix film and Wonderland is to Alice. It's only one episode left. I definitely recommend binge watching Legion over Iron Fist.

 

Holy crap, I've just seen episode 7 of Legion. Now that was something!

Visually great, as always (didn't expect animated chalk drawings, but anything goes in this show). And I love Oliver.

Hawley is on fire. Can only hope the final episode is satisfying.

 

er . . . does it ? I'm still absolutely baffled , will give #7 another go tonight .

 

I thought so, in terms of villains, venue, characters and plot. What did you still have questions about?

 

I don't even know what the questions are lol!

but I appreciate the offer , will get back to you after my re-watch