Marvel Media (Spoiler Thread)

Fox took thirteen swings at the X-Men franchise and got, what, four good films? The odds were never good for The New Mutants.

Eh, I'd say four "good" and another 3-4 "entertaining if you turn off your brain hard enough," so there was maybe some hope for the latter.

I'd say X-Men 2, Logan, Deadpool, and Deadpool 2 were genuinely good; there was a lot to like about the first X-Men, First Class, and DoFP, and The Wolverine at least embraced the goofiness of comics enough to be hilarious and entertaining.

Last Stand, Origins: Wolverine, Apocalypse, Dark Phoenix, and New Mutants are all genuinely terrible. I mean, I haven't actually seen the latter two, but I kind of feel confident in putting them in that slot.

MilkmanDanimal wrote:

I'd say X-Men 2, Logan, Deadpool, and Deadpool 2 were genuinely good; there was a lot to like about the first X-Men, First Class, and DoFP, and The Wolverine at least embraced the goofiness of comics enough to be hilarious and entertaining.

Last Stand, Origins: Wolverine, Apocalypse, Dark Phoenix, and New Mutants are all genuinely terrible. I mean, I haven't actually seen the latter two, but I kind of feel confident in putting them in that slot.

They also made some good games regardless of movie quality. The Origins and X2 games were really fun.

MilkmanDanimal wrote:

I'd say X-Men 2, Logan, Deadpool, and Deadpool 2 were genuinely good; there was a lot to like about the first X-Men, First Class, and DoFP, and The Wolverine at least embraced the goofiness of comics enough to be hilarious and entertaining.

Last Stand, Origins: Wolverine, Apocalypse, Dark Phoenix, and New Mutants are all genuinely terrible. I mean, I haven't actually seen the latter two, but I kind of feel confident in putting them in that slot.

I remember really liking the Wolverine and particularly some of the fight sequences. Not high cinema exactly, but pretty fun.

I don't think that first X-men movie gets enough credit for kicking off the current comic book craze. People like to talk about Sam Raimi and Spider-man, or Iron Man, but X-men was the first movie that showed that you could do superhero tights action without it looking completely ridiculous. It also captured a lot of the weirdness and darkness of the 70's and 80's X-men in a way that few comic book movies have been able to replicate with source material. That train station sequence is still a great scene, IMO.

X-Men made me believe that Hollywood could turn a comic book into a movie without completely messing it up.

BadKen wrote:

X-Men made me believe that Hollywood could turn a comic book into a movie without completely messing it up.

And then they made Apocalypse.

But that opening Nightcrawler scene in X2 is still the best action sequence of any of those movies. They peaked in 2002.

kazooka wrote:

I remember really liking the Wolverine and particularly some of the fight sequences. Not high cinema exactly, but pretty fun.

I just like watching Hugh Jackman be an asshole for two hours.

kazooka wrote:
MilkmanDanimal wrote:

I'd say X-Men 2, Logan, Deadpool, and Deadpool 2 were genuinely good; there was a lot to like about the first X-Men, First Class, and DoFP, and The Wolverine at least embraced the goofiness of comics enough to be hilarious and entertaining.

Last Stand, Origins: Wolverine, Apocalypse, Dark Phoenix, and New Mutants are all genuinely terrible. I mean, I haven't actually seen the latter two, but I kind of feel confident in putting them in that slot.

I remember really liking the Wolverine and particularly some of the fight sequences. Not high cinema exactly, but pretty fun.

I don't think that first X-men movie gets enough credit for kicking off the current comic book craze. People like to talk about Sam Raimi and Spider-man, or Iron Man, but X-men was the first movie that showed that you could do superhero tights action without it looking completely ridiculous. It also captured a lot of the weirdness and darkness of the 70's and 80's X-men in a way that few comic book movies have been able to replicate with source material. That train station sequence is still a great scene, IMO.

What about Blade? Bullet time before The Matrix and everything.

How long has it been since you watched Blade?

First Class was my favorite. I remember thinking, This movie is actually good. And not just “good for a comic book movie.” They had good dialogue, and a sensible plot progression.

I was shaking my head during ABC Chadwick tribute Sun night. First they said Black Panther was the first superhero movie with a leading black actor. Then later they said it was the first comic franchise with a leading black actor.

And I'm over here talking to my TV...
IMAGE(https://media1.tenor.com/images/8deb6e905de68b026edec95a96b86e24/tenor.gif?itemid=7931865)

BadKen wrote:

X-Men made me believe that Hollywood could turn a comic book into a movie without completely messing it up.

I go back and forth on this. On the one hand, I liked X-Men a lot at the time, and I want to give it credit for that. On the other hand, re-watching it recently, I was struck by how often it goes completely out of its way to distance itself from comic books and to in some ways talk down to the source material. The yellow spandex snark seems hilariously out of place in 2020 when the Marvel films have tried to faithfully replicate classic comic book costumes.

The only recent-ish super hero films I can think of that have had the same condescending view of their source material were Nolan's Batman films and the recent Joker. Even the darkest and most dour DCU movies have embraced their comic book origins.

Yeah, it's been a long time since I watched the original. Giving it another spin should prove interesting.

For me, it had been like, since the 1970s when heavyweights Mario Puzo and Richard Donner made a Superman movie that I felt like a comic sourced movie was more than schlock. I could probably count on one hand the number of movies made between 1978 and 2000 that were quality fare.

(Hmm, let's see... Howard the Duck, Stallone's Judge Dredd, The Crow 2...)

No, seriously, though, um, Burton's first Batman (Danny DeVito's Penguin is just too icky for me to consider the ONLY OTHER BATMAN MOVIE MADE BEFORE 2000)... and um... well, there's uh... help me out here. Does Robocop count?

BadKen wrote:

No, seriously, though, um, Burton's first Batman (Danny DeVito's Penguin is just too icky for me to consider the ONLY OTHER BATMAN MOVIE MADE BEFORE 2000)... and um... well, there's uh... help me out here. Does Robocop count?

Umm... the Rocketeer?

Sorry, that’s the best I can offer.

Stele wrote:

I was shaking my head during ABC Chadwick tribute Sun night. First they said Black Panther was the first superhero movie with a leading black actor. Then later they said it was the first comic franchise with a leading black actor.

And I'm over here talking to my TV...
IMAGE(https://media1.tenor.com/images/8deb6e905de68b026edec95a96b86e24/tenor.gif?itemid=7931865)

Blade is great,

manta173 wrote:
kazooka wrote:
MilkmanDanimal wrote:

I'd say X-Men 2, Logan, Deadpool, and Deadpool 2 were genuinely good; there was a lot to like about the first X-Men, First Class, and DoFP, and The Wolverine at least embraced the goofiness of comics enough to be hilarious and entertaining.

Last Stand, Origins: Wolverine, Apocalypse, Dark Phoenix, and New Mutants are all genuinely terrible. I mean, I haven't actually seen the latter two, but I kind of feel confident in putting them in that slot.

I remember really liking the Wolverine and particularly some of the fight sequences. Not high cinema exactly, but pretty fun.

I don't think that first X-men movie gets enough credit for kicking off the current comic book craze. People like to talk about Sam Raimi and Spider-man, or Iron Man, but X-men was the first movie that showed that you could do superhero tights action without it looking completely ridiculous. It also captured a lot of the weirdness and darkness of the 70's and 80's X-men in a way that few comic book movies have been able to replicate with source material. That train station sequence is still a great scene, IMO.

What about Blade? Bullet time before The Matrix and everything.

Blade was great but there's nothing that makes it explicitly a comic book movie other than the source material. I think it lives in a weird nether-realm of action horror, with the Resident Evil and Underworld movies. I don't think a lot of people knew that Blade was a comic book character at the time, and wouldn't necessarily have been prompted to think any differently at any point in the three movies. Whereas in X-men, I don't think you're getting away from that no matter how much you tone down the uniforms.

ClockworkHouse wrote:
BadKen wrote:

X-Men made me believe that Hollywood could turn a comic book into a movie without completely messing it up.

I go back and forth on this. On the one hand, I liked X-Men a lot at the time, and I want to give it credit for that. On the other hand, re-watching it recently, I was struck by how often it goes completely out of its way to distance itself from comic books and to in some ways talk down to the source material. The yellow spandex snark seems hilariously out of place in 2020 when the Marvel films have tried to faithfully replicate classic comic book costumes.

The only recent-ish super hero films I can think of that have had the same condescending view of their source material were Nolan's Batman films and the recent Joker. Even the darkest and most dour DCU movies have embraced their comic book origins.

Those uniforms weren't too far off from the leather-clad X-men of the time. I don't think anyone's deployed a yellow-uniformed comic book character onscreen without switching out the costume to something less...intense. (I guess Kid Flash on CW Flash.) I dunno, I remember thinking that it was a huge deal in terms of pulling from the source material. Like, we find Wolverine fighting Sabretooth in Canada, Cerebro is exactly like it is in the comic books, they didn't change Mystique or Storm at all--even though it would have been very easy to not have one of them be a woman with weird blue skin, or to give Halle Berry something a little less extravagant than control of the weather.

It's the first comic book movie I can think of that actually says, "Why yes, we did read the comics", and though it deviates from the material, it keeps a lot of stuff in as more than just easter eggs or reference art.

The one thing I do dislike about it is that Bryan Singer is apparently a real piece of sh*t, and not in a way that is easy to ignore.

RawkGWJ wrote:

First Class was my favorite.

Same here. I mean, I loved X-Men 2 when it came out. It was incredible (especially that opening sequence). But over the years, my tastes changed (not saying improved, but certainly changed), and ultimately I have found that out of the core X-Men films First Class takes the cake for me.

They all pale next to Logan though.

kazooka wrote:

Blade is great,

manta173 wrote:
kazooka wrote:
MilkmanDanimal wrote:

I'd say X-Men 2, Logan, Deadpool, and Deadpool 2 were genuinely good; there was a lot to like about the first X-Men, First Class, and DoFP, and The Wolverine at least embraced the goofiness of comics enough to be hilarious and entertaining.

Last Stand, Origins: Wolverine, Apocalypse, Dark Phoenix, and New Mutants are all genuinely terrible. I mean, I haven't actually seen the latter two, but I kind of feel confident in putting them in that slot.

I remember really liking the Wolverine and particularly some of the fight sequences. Not high cinema exactly, but pretty fun.

I don't think that first X-men movie gets enough credit for kicking off the current comic book craze. People like to talk about Sam Raimi and Spider-man, or Iron Man, but X-men was the first movie that showed that you could do superhero tights action without it looking completely ridiculous. It also captured a lot of the weirdness and darkness of the 70's and 80's X-men in a way that few comic book movies have been able to replicate with source material. That train station sequence is still a great scene, IMO.

What about Blade? Bullet time before The Matrix and everything.

Blade was great but there's nothing that makes it explicitly a comic book movie other than the source material. I think it lives in a weird nether-realm of action horror, with the Resident Evil and Underworld movies. I don't think a lot of people knew that Blade was a comic book character at the time, and wouldn't necessarily have been prompted to think any differently at any point in the three movies. Whereas in X-men, I don't think you're getting away from that no matter how much you tone down the uniforms.

Except Blade was very faithful to the source comics in the first movie.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

The yellow spandex snark seems hilariously out of place in 2020 when the Marvel films have tried to faithfully replicate classic comic book costumes.

This pissed me off. It was one more example of the cool kids trying to stake a claim on nerd culture. Really, Hollywood is to blame. Yellow, then blue spandex was cool enough for the source material to steal the hearts of super hero loving comic book readers, but Hollywood figured the jocks wouldn’t go for it, so the X-Men had to be leather clad ninjas.

ranalin wrote:

Except Blade was very faithful to the source comics in the first movie.

I guess I think of it in the same way that the Punisher movies aren't really superhero movies, but more akin to Chuck Norris/Charles Bronson action movies. I don't disagree with what you're saying, but comic book Blade wasn't a very traditional superhero in the first place. Without Spider-man dropping in to lend a hand, it's mostly just a cool vampire story. This is not a knock on Blade, which is a movie I can watch at any time, anywhere (one of my more annoying habits is extolling Wesley Snipes' as one of recent memory's more underrated actors). I just don't think it was a gateway for three-color superheroes in the same way that X-men or Tim Burton's Batman were.

kazooka wrote:
ranalin wrote:

Except Blade was very faithful to the source comics in the first movie.

I guess I think of it in the same way that the Punisher movies aren't really superhero movies, but more akin to Chuck Norris/Charles Bronson action movies. I don't disagree with what you're saying, but comic book Blade wasn't a very traditional superhero in the first place. Without Spider-man dropping in to lend a hand, it's mostly just a cool vampire story. This is not a knock on Blade, which is a movie I can watch at any time, anywhere (one of my more annoying habits is extolling Wesley Snipes' as one of recent memory's more underrated actors). I just don't think it was a gateway for three-color superheroes in the same way that X-men or Tim Burton's Batman were.

I knew he was from the Spiderman cartoon series in the 90s...

X-Men was a decent start. X-Men 2 used to be good, until X-Men 3 came along and was so disappointing that it tainted all that came before it.

That isn't me being hyperbolic. A lot of what I liked about the first two was the potential they showed. When X3 squandered that potential...

First Class is remarkable in that it was so good that it overcame the shadow cast by X3. It's easily my favorite, though Logan is probably the better film.

The others don't really stick with me. I haven't seen them all, but I'd be hard pressed to tell you which ones I missed and which ones I caught.

X2 really just had a number of good scenes barely tied together by standard story garbage.
Scenes in X2:
Nightcrawler opening (duh)
Colossus running tank of DOOM
Wolvie stalking soldiers (ok same scene as previous)

Since some of the movies are good is there a “Machete” style order where skipping certain movies could give you a decent story?

DSGamer wrote:

Since some of the movies are good is there a “Machete” style order where skipping certain movies could give you a decent story?

There is a weird continuity running through them, and it tends to ignore the bad movies.

X-men
X-men 2
(NEVER X-men 3)
The Wolverine
X-men: First Class
X-men: Days of Future Past
Logan

I don't know anything about Dark Phoenix or X-men: Apocalypse. I'm not sure I've ever met anyone who watched Dark Phoenix.

This is what I was thinking too. I'm fairly fond of First Class and Days of Future Past.

My wife and I have been enjoying running through long-running movie series while we're cooped up. So far we've watched all the Harry Potter movies, Hunger Games, all the MCU, so maybe this would do the same thing. At the very least many of the main actors in the original and new casts are decent in those films.

Would you really skip 3, though? Doesn't that make the ending of Days of Future Past a little less sweet?

DSGamer wrote:

Would you really skip 3, though?

3 has some things going for it. I really liked how they had Cyclops grow into his role as a leader and finally get everyone to work together and fight as a team; I just don't know why they gave him metal claws and cast Hugh Jackman in the role.

X3 is a fair sequel to the first two films but it's a horrible adaptation of the X-Men. Whether or not I would recommend skipping it depends on how much that's an issue for you personally. My X-Men knowledge largely comes from the old cartoon and scattered single issues of the comic and I found it to be a fatal flaw. Someone who had only seen the films would probably have a much more favorable opinion.

I watched Dark Phoenix, but only because I am a Jessica Chastain fanboy.

Well, I say "watched," I mean, I sat in one place for two plus hours while the movie poured in my eyeballs and ear holes. About all that can be said about it is that it is not the worst X-Men movie. It's not even the worst X-Men movie of the second generation of movies. However, that is a bar set so low by X3 and Apocalypse that I don't think even Futurama's Hermes could limbo under it.


I liked Days of Future Past more than First Class for a couple reasons. Most importantly, it gave Oscar winning actress Jennifer Lawrence an opportunity to demonstrate WHY she won an Oscar, rather than just dressing her in a skin-tight suit (I guess mostly makeup and appliance in First Class) and having her run around kicking ass. Even though there was plenty of that, too.

Secondly, the Quicksilver Kitchen scene. Almost beats the Nightcrawler scene in X2. Maybe it does. In my mind, it's a toss-up. I mean, "Time in a Bottle" by Jim Croce? Perfection. Sure, Mozart's "Dies Irae" from Requiem suits Nightcrawler's character, but it's not quite on the same level. Plus "Time in a Bottle" is the only thing you hear during Quicksilver's run. Smart sound editing.

Q.E.D. (please view full screen):

I had forgotten the wedgie. Nightcrawler doesn't give anyone a wedgie!