X-MEN: Origins.

[Blindgroping]

I did not relize it, but the movie is premiering in a theater in my town tonight.
With all the stars.
I won't be going, but still, that's pretty cool.

http://www.azcentral.com/community/tempe/articles/2009/04/27/20090427wolverine0427goody.html

 

[Aquehonga]

What are your expectations for this X-Men picture?

 

[The Dork Lord]

Why wouldn't you go?

I'd be all over that!

I'll be going tomorrow...

 

[Marquis De Sade]

Just came back from the cinema.

Even by genre standards, this movie sucks. You'll leave the theater unsatisfied.

It's just too incoherent to be digested. The story is so rushed it's almost non existent. Moreover, no character besides Wolverine, Sabretooth, and the annoying other villain get more than 5 minutes of screen time, LITERALLY.

When I watched the trailer, I was like : A movie with such a collection of badarses cannot go wrong. Yet sadly it did. There's a myriad of underdeveloped characters that are parachuted in the movie for the sake of it.

Before I went, I read Roger Ebert's 1 and a half star review and thought : what a pompous cocksucker. I was definitely wrong.

Do not spend 7 dollars to watch this shite.

 

[Tisiphone]

I've read an equal mixture of both good & bad reviews, but I'm too much of a fan NOT to go see this. So, it gets my money. Sorry.

 

[Blindgroping]

the local review in the New Times ripped it open.
bad plot, "cameos" of tons of other characters (no real screen time)

If they would have made it a coherent story instead of a wasted leadin to Other Origin stories, it would have worked.

Sadly, as a comic fan, I'll see it anyway. Which is all they care about.
I wish movie makers would have higher expectations.

 

[Big Dick McGee]

Just came back from the cinema.

Even by genre standards, this movie sucks. You'll leave the theater unsatisfied.

It's just too incoherent to be digested. The story is so rushed it's almost non existent. Moreover, no character besides Wolverine, Sabretooth, and the annoying other villain get more than 5 minutes of screen time, LITERALLY.

When I watched the trailer, I was like : A movie with such a collection of badarses cannot go wrong. Yet sadly it did. There's a myriad of underdeveloped characters that are parachuted in the movie for the sake of it.

Before I went, I read Roger Ebert's 1 and a half star review and thought : what a pompous cocksucker. I was definitely wrong.

Do not spend 7 dollars to watch this shite.

I've already spent $12 to watch this shite later tonight. Why did I buy my ticket at lunch today???

 

[Blindgroping]

$12 well spent in learning the lessons of life.

 

[Tisiphone]

I only spent five dollars, and I liked it.

 

[Conchaga]

First of all, you need to pay attention to who is writing, directing, and producing this bullshit.

It starts with the Producer. Richard Donner is the executive producer. The rest of them are superfluous. The executive producer is generally the one who provides the most money for the production of the film. He also has the most say-so when it comes to how that money is spent. This means that the film is going to be dominated by their artistic tastes. Judging from Mr. Donner's artistic tastes, it already looks grim.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001149/#producer

Next, we look at the writer. This is the guy who molds the movie and the story (or lack thereof in most x-film cases). For this movie, they had two writers: David Benioff and Skip Woods. Benioff wrote Troy. So, that shows me he knows how to take a good long story and rewrite it to something shorter. Problem is, Troy kinda sucked. It was a great action movie, but the dialogue sucked balls. Woods wrote Swordfish and Hitman. This shows he can write dialogue (Swordfish) and knows how to write a semi-good hero movie (Hitman). Problem with both of them is that they're mediocre writers at best. That's the second clue that this film isn't going to be amazing.

Last, let's look at the director: Gavin Hood. Look at this guy's IMDB director filmography. Can anyone tell me they've actually seen any of those movies? No. Even clicking on those films I can't say they were top-grossing or critically-acclaimed films. Yes, Tsotsi won the Oscar for the best foreign language film of 2005, but since when did the Academy pick good movies? The fact that this director is only well-known in South Africa is your final clue that X-men Origins: Wolverine is going to be a mediocre pile of crap.

Don't even get me started on the casting directors, cinematographer, or production designer.

The only thing I can see that this film did right by looking at the IMDB page is that they hired Amalgamated Dynamics (Spiderman 1-3, AvP, AvP2, Evolution, and Starship Troopers) to do the special effects.

So, it's gonna look good (kinda). That's it. My bet is that you could probably turn off the sound and enjoy the visual alone and that would make it better.

I'm a pretty big x-men fan (as Tisiphone can tell you), so I'm not even gonna go into how horribly they raped Deadpool's awesomeness or that I'm sure Gambit's been either completely nerfed or overdone like Storm was in X1-3.

My opinion: this movie is only worth the bandwidth it would take to download it and (as Marquis said) it's really not worth your cash.

/rant.

 

[The Dork Lord]

When I watched the trailer, I was like : A movie with such a collection of badarses cannot go wrong. Yet sadly it did. There's a myriad of underdeveloped characters that are parachuted in the movie for the sake of it.

the local review in the New Times ripped it open.
bad plot, "cameos" of tons of other characters (no real screen time)

I belive the name of the movie is X-Men Orgins: WOLVERINE, not X-Men Orgins:Wolverine/Deadpool/Gambit/Cyclops/Blob/Wraith/White Queen/etc.

Yeah, this movie was far from perfect, and I'm mystified at some of the changes they made, but overall, I'm satisfied with my movie going experience, and don't feel as if I wasted my time OR money.

 

[curiousa2z]

Agreed. I just came back from watching it. Very entertaining.
And I'm with you, Tisi: Hugh Jackman as Wolverine: had to go see!

 

[Tisiphone]

Look, I'm not denying that some of the things about the movie were less than desirable, and Gambit (despite having a Texan accent) was well done.

But it's not the shit that was X3, which Conchaga will tell you I still have not seen all the way through to this very day because it was fucked up.

 

[The Dork Lord]

But it's not the shit that was X3, which Conchaga will tell you I still have not seen all the way through to this very day because it was fucked up.

I still don’t get what people have against X3. And don’t you’re a “true fan” and I’m not. I’ve been reading X-Men comics off and on for almost 20 years now. I have almost the entire Grant Morrison run, and most of the first volume by Whedon and Cassaday. I even went back and got as many of the old Claremont issues from the 80’s as I could find/afford. So let’s break it down by the numbers eh? Please feel free to add anything I missed.

The Bad:

1. No Bryan Singer
2. Cyclops dies
3. Jean dies again
4. Professor X dies and switches bodies
5. Rogue gives up her powers
6. Juggernaut is a mutant, British,
and not Prof X’s stepbrother

The Good:

1. Sentinels!
2. Danger room
3. Dark Phoenix!
4. “The Cure” storyline
5. ALL FIVE ORIGINAL X-MEN
6. Kelsey Grammer!
7. No stupid “Mutant Machine”
like in first movie
8. No stupid “Using Cerebro to kill
all the mutants/humans plot device”
like in the second movie
9. “I’m the Juggernaut, bitch!” >
“Do you know what happens to a toad
when it gets struck by lightening?”
10. More Colossus, Kitty, etc.
11. Showdown between Ice Man and Pyro
12. See Storm and Logan move into leadership roles
13. Classic “Logan must kill Jean” scene
14. Most the people who died, die in the
comic at one time or another, anyway.

So by my count, the good FAR outweighs the bad, and while it wasn’t as good as the second movie, it was miles better than the first IMO. So what am I missing?

 

[Conchaga]

The Bad:

1. No Bryan Singer

Yeah, but they kept Zack Penn which = failure as well

2. Cyclops dies
3. Jean dies again
4. Professor X dies and switches bodies
5. Rogue gives up her powers
6. Juggernaut is a mutant, British,
and not Prof X’s stepbrother

Yeah, all of those things were bad.

The Good:

1. Sentinels!
2. Danger room
3. Dark Phoenix!

Yes, but from here on in I've got a lot to dispute.

4. “The Cure” storyline

Total crap. Especially when a lot of the main x-men started thinking it was a good idea.

5. ALL FIVE ORIGINAL X-MEN

They totally nerfed Beast, which brings me to your next point.

6. Kelsey Grammer!

Alcoholic, self-important, pedophillic, mediocre actor at best. So, just no.

7. No stupid “Mutant Machine”
like in first movie

At least it was creative.

8. No stupid “Using Cerebro to kill
all the mutants/humans plot device”
like in the second movie

See last comment.

9. “I’m the Juggernaut, bitch!” >

How in the FUCK can you think that's a good thing!? That was a silly internet meme at best, not comic cannon. That line is actually what sold me on the idea that X3 was a giant pile of rubbish.

“Do you know what happens to a toad
when it gets struck by lightening?”

Great, let's make it more of the Halle Berry Show by giving her some more catchy one-liners. Doesn't fix the fact that she basically had 50% more screen time than any other mutant in the movie.

10. More Colossus, Kitty, etc.

Colossus wasn't russian and Kitty barely got any good screen time.

11. Showdown between Ice Man and Pyro

Fair enough. I'll give you that.

12. See Storm and Logan move into leadership roles

WHY!? I mean, why!? Again with the Halle Berry Show.

13. Classic “Logan must kill Jean” scene

Ghey...

14. Most the people who died, die in the
comic at one time or another, anyway.

Yeah, but most of those had unique deaths, not some massive slaughter. What were the directors/writers thinking!? "Oh, it's cool, they die in the books anyway, let's just annihilate all of them without any significant reason, the viewers will buy it." Fuck that.

So by my count, the good FAR outweighs the bad, and while it wasn’t as good as the second movie, it was miles better than the first IMO. So what am I missing?

The first was reminiscent of the cartoon show, which did a fairly good job at being honest to the genre. Granted, it was flashy and the dialogue/casting/directing/special effects could all have been better, but it was "miles better" than the sugar-coated turd that they tired to spoon feed us with X3. I wholeheartedly disagree. X3 was trash.

 

[J&L Massacres]

squeeze the base conchaga...

 

[Tisiphone]

What Conchaga said.

 

[Tisiphone]

And being a "true X-fan" actually does give me the right to call X3 shit when I see it, but that doesn't mean that you can't like it and be a true fan. I just didn't.

 

[The Dork Lord]

So the mutant machine and using cerebro to magically kill either millions or billions of people is "creative", while using a plot point (albiet altered) from one of the most popular and acclaimed writers since Claremont is "total crap"?

k

And I think you missed my point about #9. the > indicated that I liked the "Jugernuat bitch" line a lot better than the "toad struck by lightening" one.

you forgot no nightcrawler

Yeah, what was up with those tattoos or brands or whatever?

I never got that.

 

[CaptainWacky]

Only good thing about X3 was the casting of Kelsey Grammar as Beast and Ellen Page as Kitty, and they hardly got anything to do anyway.