The Fox X-Men Trilogy: Exploring the Legacy of Singer's Mutants

Long before the MCU dominated pop culture, Fox's original X-Men trilogy revolutionized superhero cinema by treating comic book material with unprecedented seriousness and emotional depth. This deep-dive conversation explores how Bryan Singer's first two X-Men films established a template for grounded superhero storytelling that continues to influence filmmakers today.

The discussion begins with a comprehensive look at the X-Men's comic book origins, tracing how Chris Claremont's legendary 17-year run transformed the series from a canceled also-ran into Marvel's flagship title. We explore how the first film successfully distilled decades of complex continuity into an accessible entry point for mainstream audiences while maintaining the core themes of prejudice and alienation that defined the source material.

X2: X-Men United emerges as the trilogy's crown jewel – a perfectly calibrated sequel that expanded the universe while delivering unforgettable set pieces like Nightcrawler's White House attack and Wolverine's berserker defense of the mansion. Beyond spectacular action, X2's themes of government overreach and military-industrial complex machinations took on unexpected resonance in a post-9/11 world.

The conversation doesn't shy away from X-Men: The Last Stand's shortcomings, analyzing how Brett Ratner's direction and the competing Dark Phoenix/mutant cure storylines undermined what could have been a satisfying trilogy conclusion. Yet even this disappointment highlights what made the first two films special: Singer's careful character development, practical effects craftsmanship, and emotional investment in the mutant struggle.

Whether you're a longtime fan or newcomer curious about superhero cinema's evolution, this examination of Fox's X-Men trilogy reveals why these films remain influential touchstones in a genre they helped legitimize.

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:10

hey, why do you think we decided to talk about fox's x-men? Is is x-men, or the original trilogy of x-men, or at least the first two? Is this coming back into public consciousness? Is this something people are grasping for, since, uh, superhero films have gotten so overblown and ridiculous that, like, people are kind of returning to the, to the og. Is is x-men back in the zeitgeist. Are people thinking about it, or is this just us?

Speaker 2 0:33

so two, two answers to that. The first part, I'd say no, um, in terms of the resurgence of popularity of the original film trilogy, I don't. I don't really see any evidence of that. I could be wrong, but x X-Men itself is back in the spotlight and that's because of the X-Men 97 cartoon series on Disney+. There you go, which has been talked about all over and mostly gotten a very positive reception. Personally, I wasn't all too impressed by it and maybe that's a hot take, but it didn't. It didn't really do anything for me.

Speaker 1 1:07

Okay.

Speaker 2 1:08

Did you have a chance to watch it or not? You, you toyed with the idea of watching it.

Speaker 1 1:12

I toyed with the idea of watching it. I don't. I don't. I remember watching the original animated show as a kid. I know you like it very much, but I haven't revisited it since, like I was in junior high watching I'm the juggernaut bitch videos on YouTube or whatever. Remember that.

Speaker 2 1:25

Yeah, I remember that now and I got an extra level of cringe from rewatching X-Men the last stand which not to jump the gun, but I have no desire to ever rewatch that in my life after, after after X-Men three hey, well, don't spoil all of our discussion but that was very that was a new thing.

Speaker 1 1:50

Remember that was kind of happening at the time where that was the beginning of like sort of franchise filmmaking or stuff based on existing properties, sort of, uh, like, throwing a bone out to the fan base, right, like, hey, we watched the I'm a juggernaut bitch video too. Remember that, like you know, we're in on the joke. Uh, we're hip, we're looking at the message boards to see what you guys are into, right, true. But you know, I've noticed, like a huge reappraisal, reappreciation for Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy A lot of people talking about that. But, yeah, no love for Ang Lee's Hulk or Bryan Singer's X-Men duology and subsequent failed third film.

Speaker 2 2:23

I would challenge that. I don't think that's I would. I would challenge that. I don't think that um, the original trilogy, sans the last stand, ever really had a bad reputation or was looked down on. Um the first one, kind of people started ragging on it for for a little bit, but they were not. They're not criticizing it as a bad movie, they were just. Mostly the conversation seemed to be that x2 was a superior film, which is true, but it doesn't mean that the first one is bad by any means now I do agree about the the raimi spider-man trilogy.

Speaker 2 2:52

For a while people were uh like putting that move, putting that series down, and and I never understood that because those movies were great. Yes, spider-man 3 has a few problems, but, man, that's still a great movie. And then I think we've seen in recent years how the Andrew Garfield duology I don't think that holds up at all and I don't think the honestly, I don't think the Marvel Studios films sends no Way Home will really hold up that well either.

Speaker 1 3:25

Uh, long term well, it might all be cyclical, but I remember when you had avengers coming out I was just like dude, fuck x man. You know, I mean I'm like this is like they were trying to make a movie for normies. Like you know, they were trying to make a movie that appealed to a mainstream audience. That was like a real movie that happened to be based on a superhero comic, whereas now we are getting getting catered to like we're getting a full course meal, like we're getting the real comic book stuff. But now that we've had our fill of the real comic book extended universe, it's sort of refreshing to go back and watch these older incarnations of the characters that made a real attempt to try to be a four quadrant, and not in a bad way, not like they were selling out, but just something that would appeal to a mainstream audience, and I think subsequently they maybe had more of a cultural impact in that way.

Speaker 2 4:09

Yeah. And I think it's even more refreshing if I can, just if I can say I think, it's even more refreshing now, because of the climate that we live in right now with superhero movies, that they are so bad. They are not targeting the comic book aficionado as a, as a as an audience anymore.

Speaker 2 4:28

They've gone so far the other way, towards I don't want to call it mainstream appreciation, but like, uh, low, low information, consumer, um, you know, audience well, I disagree because I think that, like we've gone the opposite way entirely and these movies are very refreshing because they are mainstream entertainment for normal people, but they they put the appropriate wink and nod and love of the source material in there.

Speaker 1 4:53

Yeah, I think you're right. I think that they do enough for the fans. But you know, I think that once you got into like serious Marvel territory like 2014, and you had a lot of people jumping on the bandwagon, you had a series of movies that was asking a lot out of its audience and it coincided with the rise of streaming, so it was easy for people to catch up on all the movies. But you had lots of people saying, oh, I need to watch all eight other movies and I will do it because I want to be caught up. So they were asking a lot of the audience. I guess the audience was willing to go along and we got. We got 13 people in the audience. That's pretty good.

Speaker 2 5:23

But the quality. The quality did not maintain with that level of expectation. The expectation was we're going to keep getting movies like Captain America, the winter soldier or um you know Avengers and movies like that, and we ended up getting you know Captain Marvel and, uh, dr Strange in the multiverse of madness and junk like that.

Speaker 1 5:43

And certainly it didn't help that there's no competition.

Speaker 2 5:46

The competition in the marketplace was totally evaporated.

Speaker 2 5:50

And I think the Fox X-Men series was part of that, the part that they were competing on another level with Marvel Studios for a while, making their own X-Men series, and it helped. You know know, a rising tide lifts all ships, not to use a cliched expression, but it does matter. It did help that. You know, they were like coming out with x-men days of future past while they were coming out with the latest captain america movie and everybody was like, oh, which one's better? Oh, the fox x-men series is hitting new highs. You know a decent doing some decent stuff for a while and then now it's all just disney, walmart style, uh branded film like shang chi, which is absolute drivel in my opinion did not see, the shang chi did not see it.

Speaker 1 6:36

But, um, what was I going to say about x-men? Um, wow, 21 people watching. If you're watching right now and you're wondering why I'm doing like, going like this, because I got a fucking splinter in my hand right before we started and I should be paying attention to my notes and, like normally, I'd be doing all sorts of like, throwing up clips and things on these shows to try to keep entertaining, you know. But I mean, I would recommend, I would hope people do more listening to this show than they maybe do watching. I mean, we have a nice little visual element here. I mean the x thing. That worked out pretty well Right Right down the middle dude, that's perfect. That doesn't always work out that way, but we're not going to have that many clips for you guys.

Speaker 1 7:10

This show, I'm assuming our audience everyone's seen these movies Right, and I think by hearing us talk about them they'll sort of remember, even if it's been years since they've seen it, which it was years for me, since I had seen X-Men 1. But before we jump into the movies, I think you want to do a little comic book history talk. You want to talk Because I think that's a good way to understand the films is to kind of talk about basically what the movies are pulling from, primarily in terms of X-Men history, because it's not the Jack Kirby, stan Lee, early 60s run at all. But go ahead, sir, you want to do a little? I'll jump in here, I know you know this quote.

Speaker 2 7:43

I'm just going to go off the top of my head here.

Speaker 1 7:45

Yeah, you know this.

Speaker 2 7:47

If I recall correctly, dexman premiered in 1963, obviously created by Stanley and Jack Kirby, and that original run was not very well celebrated at all. All the basic fundamental building blocks were there for something great, but it didn't quite't quite. You know light, fire and the series was not not very successful. It kind of meandered around for a little bit and then it was canceled very early on in its existence.

Speaker 2 8:15

Um, you know, part of that was 69 if I possibly, but I think this is the um. The series had been in reprints for a while. Even at that point, by the time it was canceled. They weren't producing original content.

Speaker 1 8:26

Well, that's right, I mean. I basically mean they suspended new stories in like the late 60s and were running reprints until 1974.

The Comic Book Origins

Speaker 2 8:32

Yeah, and there's some pretty crazy stuff there. At the end of its original run, where other creators came on, I think Neil Adams did a couple of issues here and there and they were coming up with pretty bizarre and, uh, you know, interesting concepts that didn't quite match into the? Uh, the ethos of what an x-men story we think about now. I mean, that's when you come up with characters like sauron, the uh where pterodactyl, who absorbs mutant powers, and you know, weird, just totally out of the box stuff. Um, also, I think, just visually, I've never been a big fan of the Kirby blue and yellow jumpsuits.

Speaker 1 9:08

I don't know about yourself but that was part of it. Yeah, cause I was going to ask you you know what? What do you think didn't resonate about it? I mean, was it? Yeah, oh, there was a Stranko issue. Yeah, I bet that was awesome. Yeah, uh, yeah, guys join in the chat. That's a big part of the show. Yeah, I mean, I think it's. The team lineup didn't work. I think that you had a lot of characters that weren't well realized and would go on to be better fleshed out Marvel girl, jean Grey, a poor character. Beast obviously didn't become the iconic blue furry guy until an issue. He took over Marvel tales for a while where it was like seven stories where beast was the lead in that and he turned himself.

Speaker 2 9:49

He joined the avengers for an extended period in the 70s. So he was, he was on there yeah, that's right.

Speaker 1 9:55

But yeah, angel never been a compelling character in my opinion.

Speaker 2 9:58

Uh, yeah, he's okay, he's cool as a guest, guest star or a supporting player. But yeah, when you talk about those original five members, I mean they're not other than cyclops and gene gray and beast, you know here and there um I'm personally like ice man. I think he's a I was gonna say a cool character. Sorry pun, but um, they've kind of destroyed him in recent years.

Speaker 1 10:23

I haven't been around for that.

Speaker 2 10:25

Yeah, they've destroyed the character, but I always liked him because he was one of the three main characters on Spider-Man's Amazing Friends and that was a huge part of my introduction to a lot of characters and stuff like that. So, yes, that's a great anthology right there.

Speaker 1 10:40

Correct. So basically why I held this up, this is Marvel Masterworks collected version of basically what would be the reboot of x-men. You can chalk that up to len wine ween, len, ween, len, ween. I guess it was his idea. It probably came top down from management like reboot the x-men, let's get this thing going again. But like, throw a new team in there, right. And they basically acknowledge the idea that they're, that they're throwing, tossing out the old team, because within the story they all leave the mansion and say we've grown up, we're not kids anymore, we were teenagers. We're going to go out and face the wide world. Cyclops is the only one that doesn't want to leave, which I think was a good choice to keep him around.

Speaker 2 11:16

Yes, but they do a nice story about showing them they have to save the original team first. The new team has to come in and save.

Speaker 1 11:26

That's right.

Speaker 1 11:27

They've been krakatoa, the giant living island, or something, yeah living island of krakatoa or krakowa, whatever but the great thing about go ahead I was just going to say the great thing about this, this first issue especially, and why it's so iconic and why it's so expensive, is because you have an artist in here like dave cockrum, who's just like an absolute pro and I believe you know right out the gate, we have five like basically five brand new iconic characters with excellent, you know, costumes, just like right out the gate all at once and from what I heard, these were. Cockrum was just like a. He was an amazing costume designer and he would just draw characters just out of his imagination that he had no context for who they were, what they would do, what their powers were, and I think that nightcrawler and stormer originally, or cyclops were colossus, I mean, were originally, uh, legion of superheroes ideas yes, nightcrawler yes, for sure, I remember reading that, yeah, he had been designing characters for legion of superheroes and never ultimately used them.

Speaker 2 12:24

and he had these kind of in his, in his back pocket and so they came up. They used them for here, but Giant Size X-Men, I mean, that's, it's a, it's a landmark, key issue, super important Revitalize the entire concept of dead concept. Brought it back to life and made it you know.

Speaker 1 12:41

made it, you know, was the starting point for someone else to take over Chris Claremont and ride the X-Men to unparalleled heights in comic history, and I think Chris Claremont is the person that is owed the most when it comes to these X-Men films. Right, I mean, they have this little Stan Lee cameo in number one where he's eating a hot dog or whatever. But they really should have been Chris Claremont. I'm not sure if they ever did work him into the series.

Speaker 2 13:06

Yes, they did, yes, they did. He is an X-Men. The last stand.

Speaker 1 13:09

Oh, that's right, he's like at a lawnmower or something. He's like he's in the neighborhood. Okay, and Stanley are the neighbors that get their good, because he deserves it.

Speaker 1 13:27

I mean, he was the guy, basically him, and and dave cockram, who would pop in occasionally throughout the 80s and john burn, john burn and, and, um uh, barry windsor smith, I mean these were the guys that they took a, a comic book that was in reruns not 10 years prior, and turned it into the number one marvel comic in the entire lineup. By the mid eighties it was the number one with a bullet, yeah, and it became even bigger in the nineties.

Speaker 2 13:46

And then even bigger. Claremont rode the wave at the at the beginning of the nineties with that X-Men number one, but that was that was Jim Lee. I mean people were buying it for, for the Jim Lee art for the art yeah.

Speaker 2 13:59

I mean you had artists of the late 80s, early 90s working on those books. At the time, mark sylvestri, jim lee, will support asio. I mean these are, these were big stars. These were comic creators who became like superstars, which is, you know, partially due to the x-men, but also a huge part because of their own, their own, you know, talents and and uh, the novelty they brought to the characters and revitalizing them.

Speaker 1 14:26

I just want to say we have 33 people watching. It's gotta be a record.

Speaker 2 14:28

Wow, that's a record for us.

Speaker 1 14:30

We're coming up baby and sometimes we get 33 views on these things.

Speaker 2 14:34

Certainly better than the Madam Web.

Speaker 1 14:37

Yeah, the Madam Web, yeah, nobody cared. But you know, um, x-men comics, like they're, I think they're fairly coveted. I know comic prices are down, but x-men comics from like the late 70s, early 80s are always some of the hardest to find. This is like my collection of old x-men books here, um, and I've got some good ones, but they're they're tough to. They're tough to find a lot of them because they were just firing on all cylinders all the time. There's barely any filler issues throughout the 80s. They're always introducing a new character shadow cat rogue. There's always some amazing storyline dark phoenix saga, um, god loves man kill, which you know. Uh, days of future, past, the brood, the morlocks, like there's. There's just they're firing one after another.

Speaker 2 15:15

There's always something new and then taking it to new heights with adding in that cosmic level with the Phoenix saga and then the dark Phoenix saga. I mean you're introducing the she are so many other concepts that that don't you know. You look back in retrospect and they're, they're kind of grandfathered in because they're they're part of the X-Men history but like it makes no sense for those to be part of what we traditionally think of X-Men, which is mutants trying to coexist with humans in a in a world that fears and hates them.

Speaker 2 15:44

What's all this cosmic stuff doing here? But it's great, I love it.

Speaker 1 15:48

I mean it's fantastic, tons of spectacular cosmic stuff. I have here X-Men 154, which was a return of Dave Cockrum I think Byrne got mad and left a few times, but it's all about, I mean, like Cyclops' dad was an intergalactic pirate guy who was fighting the shiar, because, right, I mean just like crazy stuff and that's all been sort of like whitewashed out of their history, this cosmic element and also the sort of fantasy element too. I mean, we see, um, there's the issue that everyone talks about with, with, uh, with um, kitty pride telling a night, a bedtime story, where a nightcrawler is like in the middle, mid-eight, middle ages and she has a little dragon pet. That's sort of like a fantasy character yeah, but that's that's that actually.

Speaker 1 16:29

You know, lockheed, the dragon's like a real lockheed the dragon yeah yeah, real dragon, that uh accompanies her at some point but they had such a terrific rogues gallery, such an amazing breadth of stories, because lots of times they would take time throughout the comic to say, hey, this issue is going to focus on um colossus and kitty pride.

Speaker 1 16:47

Right, this, you know, they did a lot of subplots and a lot of um. I think one thing too that that claremont did, which the movies owe a great debt to, is his idea of saying, okay, ostensibly in lean kirby's, in you know incarnation of this story, it was about teenagers who were at a school being taught by a professor. That sort of gets lost in the 70s where it just becomes, I mean, they're basically a superhero team, they hang out at a big house together. But I think Claremont was the guy that really brought that idea back of having sort of a multi-generational cast where we had teenagers, kids, adults and the elder statesmen. And that, I think, is the main appeal of the movies is that you hit, you get the teen drama, you've got the, you know it's. It's like a soap opera with all these characters.

Speaker 2 17:29

Yeah, you, you beat me to that part. The Claremont introduced the soap operatic elements to it. That made it a much more viable long-term commodity where you're not just invested in the action adventure stuff with the characters, which is all very high concept, thrilling stuff like that, you also have all the interpersonal relationships that go along with it. And part of that's going to be the cyclops, jean gray, wolverine, love triangle, which they really went to town with, they're obsessed with in the movies, which it's fine to a certain extent you gotta play that angle, dude.

Speaker 2 18:02

my only problem is they didn't follow up with it enough, because Hugh Jackman became such a star from the movie franchise, I mean they had to get him and Bambi Jansen together.

Speaker 1 18:13

We'll get to that.

Speaker 2 18:14

And really get that in the next and last stand, which is like it's kind of annoying to a certain level.

Speaker 1 18:18

A lot of things that are annoying to a certain level about that movie, but we'll get yes but, um I was gonna say what else um I was gonna talk about the journey to the first movie.

Speaker 1 18:33

I mean, obviously, x-men we talked about this became the giant biggest hit of the 80s and 90s. Number one selling comic book of all time. X-men number one, volume two right, I mean they, they were the shit. They got a cartoon. You can't flip through an old comic book without seeing uh, x-men, spaghettios, they licensed the. They licensed it all over the place. Everybody's played the arcade game, the stand-up four-top arcade game where you play as character. That's such a blast. I had it in my old dumpy movie theater as a kid and we played it every time. Love that and that's such great stuff to get you into the characters. Because then when I did get into comics later I was like I recognize him from the game. Right, these guys, so great stuff.

Speaker 2 19:08

But uh, the thought of iconic costumes from the claremont burn era. I mean, right, that's the cyclops with the blue skull cap. Well, we'll with the tan costume, which is awesome. I mean awesome depends most people. Most people will admit that that's the cooler costume than the yellow, which is fine. Nothing wrong with the yellow and blue but the tan costume is like pretty awesome.

Speaker 2 19:30

It's a storm. Who's changed her costume many times over the years? Um, but that's a. That's an iconic one. Right there, colossus, nightcrawler and then dazzler is just randomly there from. They based it off the pride of the x-men cartoon and pilot so I'll tell you this.

Speaker 1 19:44

I mean, I'm I'm sure I know the fantastic four was doing a lot of great things in the 80s because you had burn there, but I I can't think of any other comics. Spider-man had a lot going on in the 80s every superman was bit.

Speaker 2 19:54

Superman had his heyday.

Speaker 1 19:55

Another heyday in the 80s when burn came over for that but you think about some of the other marvel titles, like captain america. What did he have going on in the 80s Next to nothing.

Speaker 2 20:02

Mark Greenwald and stuff I think was going on at that point.

Speaker 1 20:05

I've read a lot of that. There was that great guy who was going around killing all the supervillains. That's a great run of an extended story. But Claremont did such a great job. He would set things up and then pay them off four years later in his books.

Speaker 2 20:29

He would do incredible long-form storytelling stuff, stuff, and the guy wrote the book for 15 years, which is almost unprecedented, you know. I mean, it's unbelievable. So we got a nice comment here. Those 90s x-men figures um, yes, I, I had all those. They're not here where I live right now. I wish I'd been able to get them for this, for this, but I had literally every single one of them that you can imagine characters that I had no idea who they were at the time, because they were making.

Speaker 2 20:45

Not only were they making all the main characters, but they were making oh, here we go extraordinary, exceptional, x-men yep, had that entire wave right there which you believe you could also get in a box that had all five of them or six of them or whatever. But besides this, they were making x-force an entire, an entire X-Force line of figures. I mean, I read a few issues of that but I had no idea who these people were like.

Speaker 1 21:12

Gideon and.

Speaker 2 21:12

Shatterstar and Richter and characters like that. And then they had Generation X, I think, had a figure line and X-Men 2099 had a figure line. Oh, 2099, that was cool. It was one of the most awesome toy lines I'd line and I had all of them. It was one of the most awesome toy lines.

Speaker 1 21:27

I'd say next to like star trek the next generation from that era of like just okay okay, I I don't think I had any of those x-men toys.

Speaker 2 21:33

They must have been a little before my time, so they had the little ones which were in that video and then they also had big ones too, that were like giant size that they reproduced the same molds, but just reproduced on a massive scale, yeah well, I mean we had talked about this.

Speaker 1 21:47

I watched the cartoon, but it was a little. I was at the tail end of it. I was like an x-men evolution guy, which is sort of the tie-in that they use to like promote the movies great show, though that that also is a great show.

Speaker 2 21:56

that came into its own um started off okay was was like a average cartoon show, and then, by the second year and then into the third year, that show earned its place as a valid adaptation of the X-Men, in my opinion, and I think it's really fun to rewatch it actually.

Speaker 1 22:14

I might do that. I was going to bring in some movie history here. They'd been talking about making an X-Men movie since the 80s. Now Carl Coe and Cannon had bought up a lot of the rights to marvel. Um didn't do a whole lot with him, but that was like. You know. Stanley's big dream when they moved him out to los angeles was to get movies made. It was just too early. They didn't have the technology, they didn't have the the will. But james cameron and katherine bigelow were actually attempting on uh to do the x-men in the late 80s. But he jumped ship for Spider-Man, which ultimately never happened. With canon there was a 20th Century Fox ended up being interested in the rights after the cartoon proved to be a big hit. And did you ever see the Generation X TV show pilot?

Speaker 2 22:59

No, I have not. I've heard of that, though I've never gotten around to watching that.

Speaker 1 23:03

Was that one that never got aired?

Speaker 2 23:10

I want to say yes, but it's. It's one of those ones you've always seen floated around at comic conventions like uh, so it's probably horrible.

Speaker 1 23:14

I was gonna say though at that point.

Speaker 2 23:17

Um, you know the x-men cartoon in the 90s was was so massively successful and popular but it took a lot to get that going and get that off the ground. They had been trying in the eighties for years, and years, attempt after attempt, to get the X-Men a cartoon series and it never worked. No one would pick it up and that's why you would see them guest star on Spider-Man is amazing friends. They had a backdoor pilot which was called the X-Men adventure, the nominal episode One of my favorites of that of that show, um, and it didn't, didn't materialize.

Speaker 2 23:48

They tried again with um pride of the x-men, which they financed themselves, marvel financed themselves. Wonderful, wonderful cartoon half hour adventure. It's a very simple, you know, kind of kiddie cartoon. It doesn't take in a lot of the nuance, but I would have loved to see that show. And then finally, the executive who took over fox kids was someone who was very affiliated with marvel and knew, knew the people in there, and she was like we're getting this show on the air and she finally got it on and it was, you know, taken off.

Speaker 1 24:19

I took off after that sure, it just seems like a no-brainer I think was her name. How do you look at that colorful cast of all these amazing characters and think, yeah, you know, we, this would not be a good cartoon. I mean, come on and just this. I think, x-men, you know, out of any comic book, it suits itself specifically terrifically to a television format. Right, I mean, I know we have to do movies and everything's got to be done in three movies, but I, it would be a terrific television series.

Speaker 2 24:45

But that's true of almost all superhero ideas and concepts. I mean they work much better as episodic, because comic books themselves are episodic adventures.

X-Men's Journey to the Big Screen

Speaker 1 24:55

Yeah, I mean I get what you're saying, you know. I mean I tend to think if I were to pick two that would work best it would be Daredevil and X-Men, and two that would work best it would be daredevil and x-men. And, by the way, the daredevil show didn't do what I I thought they should do with the daredevil show, which is um more villains of the week tied into like an episode about a certain case. You know, like hit that lawyer show thing. I mean that's the biggest thing on television.

Speaker 2 25:16

You got a lawyer superhero because the nature of television in our current era is we're doing a nine hour movie yeah, it's ridiculous.

Speaker 1 25:25

Which is ridiculous?

Speaker 2 25:26

why the cw shows, at least for a while, when they were, when they were of higher quality, they were doing just as you described. If you watch those early seasons of arrow in the flash, they're doing villain of the week, villain of the week, but it's. There's also an overarching story about what's going on long term with one, with one story, but we break it up and we break the monotony up there.

Speaker 1 25:46

So well, you know, with daredevil I think it uniquely works because it's not stretching credulity like with with something like smallville or flash and I'm not a huge fan of these shows, I don't know enough, but it just seems like to have a new crazy, giant, freak monster show up every week is a little bit of a stretch. But with daredevil you can do it like these are some kingpin goons, uh, ninjas. It's all fairly like low level and believable right that there would be problems. I mean he can have, you know, like he has such a great cast of characters they could pop up. You know wesley or uh, you know the guy that's always in trouble, uh, in in fucking daredevil, who's like his um underworld contact guy, like you know he. I mean just wonderful characters like that. But um and x I think would be good because you could focus on specific heroes Like this is Wolverine's episode, everyone else is off doing something else, right, but anyway they finally-.

Speaker 2 26:32

I don't know if you looked into this, but how did they choose this property, specifically out of all the Marvel properties, to turn into a movie first out of all the options that you have, because it seems like a? Rather daunting task for something in production in 1999, 2000.

Speaker 1 26:48

You know what I mean especially since the only thing you had to go off was blade worked. But blade, you could walk into that not know it was a comic book. You have no problem, right? I don't even think they have the marvel flipping comics before that, blade probably. But, um, you know, I think, maybe if you're, if you, you. So the Donners bought the rights to it Richard Donner and his wife, right, lauren Schuller Donner and they have been part of the X-Men story for 20 years, right, this was a great investment on their part and a very smart and shrewd move, like they knew this would be a success.

Speaker 1 27:18

And I think, if you're looking at it on paper, you want to do a comic book. What's the most popular one? Well, the X-Men is the most popular. What's the top selling comic ever X-Men? What's the biggest cartoon show? X -Men. It's already in the minds of kids. It's clearly a popular concept. So I think that's, I guess, and especially if you pitch it like look, we'll keep the powers relatively grounded. They'll all wear black, cool matrix looking suits. Know, you got a guy with just claws. You know he's like the coolest guy in the book that everyone likes. That's easy. We could do this right, and I think that for the most part they did pull it off. I mean, they started like I know a lot of stuff is jammed into the hour and 45 minutes of brian singer's first x-men film. It's a pretty brisk movie. Yeah, you know it doesn't overstay its welcome. I wish there was a little more in it. I think sometimes they focus on the wrong things. I think there's a lot of senator kelly that we don't necessarily need um or could have been that's.

Speaker 1 28:13

I think that that's vitally important to the movie well, I agree, but like give me 20 more minutes of other, of cyclops, gene, gray, storm stuff, right, you know if something's got to go, you know um we're juggling.

Speaker 2 28:26

We're juggling like what? 11 characters in this movie and that that's. That is an impressive skill in and of itself that they're able to make that happen, which most movies that have very few since then have tried. But uh, this one really nailed down how to do it, how to have just enough of each character that you're like. Okay, got it, Understand who they are.

Speaker 1 28:50

It's really terrific in that way. I mean they do a wonderful job with little character bits Terrific. And Michael Chabon, I know he wrote a first draft. He's a noted comic book fan, helped write a pass on Spider-Man 2, wrote the Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay if you ever read that novel, which is like a, like a thinly veiled story about uh, stanley, jack kirby, jerry schuster, seagull, but, um, in his first treatment there were no villains, it was just a setup of the heroes. That was the whole show. Um, and then we had interesting people, you know, optioned as uh the leads, glenn, danzig. You know, there's something I'm going to try to dig up here. I found there was an old uh wizards of the wizard magazine, hypothetical uh casting from like the early 90s, right, yeah oh man, I wonder if I remember those I remember when they used to see those.

Speaker 2 29:37

All the time they would be like what if we do our own casting call for the uh batman movie?

Speaker 1 29:44

oh man, and for whatever reason, gl Glenn Danzig from like Pantera or some band See Trembling Colors, is going to hop into the chat and be like he was in Megadeth or whatever the hell band he's in. I'm not a big metal guy, but like what do we get here? I mean, this is great, this is 1995 speculative casting and I'll try to pull this up for the audience if I can do it.

Speaker 2 30:08

But um, we've got patrick stewart as professor x right. That seemed like a no-brainer. He was born to play that role. I mean, that is, that is pitch perfect casting, and the fact that they were actually able to get him or that makes this, makes this franchise and the series just all the better, especially for me as a huge star trek fan oh, yeah, well, and I think the donner used the old superman trick that he used in 78, which was hire.

Speaker 1 30:30

You know two guys like ian mckellen and patrick stewart who've got some gravitas, and you convince everybody instantly this is not some dumb, cheapo thing, uh. So here's what they've got michael bean as cyclops not terrible, I mean, I could see it. Dolph lundgren as colossus. Jean-claude van damme as gambit um, this is actually one, I think, is really uh, good, hold on. Who do we got? Uh, uh, oh, the guy who played roy batty from blade runner as magneto. God damn it, you know I'm talking about I don't know get it.

Speaker 1 31:07

Come on, uh, rudger howard. Rudger howard is magneto. I think that'd be terrific, that would have been a good choice, um, but uh, yeah, I think the cast that we ended up with is is good pretty damn good.

Speaker 2 31:21

I mean these people feel. When I saw the movie for the first time I was like these people look perfect, they're they're very in tune with the roles. They look like the characters I was. I was perfectly satisfied.

Speaker 1 31:35

Yeah, I think the casting is good. Uh, let's jump right into Brian Singer's X-Men then I guess you know, uh, what, what your thoughts? You just rewatched it recently, and I was inspired to do so after you did.

Speaker 2 31:45

Yeah, it had been quite a few years since I saw that one, although I've watched this one probably more than any of the others, because I always had a place for this one in my heart. I do remember going to see this opening night in 2000 with my family. It was like a magical experience for me. I was a huge X-Men fan at that time, riding high, high off the cartoon, the comics, the action figures, the trading cards, all that, all that stuff had everything and I I saw this movie and it was like it blew me away.

Speaker 2 32:15

blew me away and I don't want to say that it's just like rose-colored glasses and nostalgia. That's, that's conforming this decision because, like I've watched it many times since then and I always come away impressed with this by by, you know how much they were able to accomplish in this one movie. They set up all of these characters, both the heroes and the villains. There's a great amount of just. I mean obviously because digital effects were still in a relatively infancy at this time. So they do a lot of practical effects stuff that you would be like today this would be 100 cg, like there would just be a green screen and and everything everything would be cg, which is boring.

Speaker 2 32:54

But you watch the people load in on wires and you watch the people, like you know, go through walls and dance around and stuff like that, and it's like it's very impressive. Uh, the story is tight. It's a very comic booky story, you know what I mean. Like it's not, it's not a very serious.

Speaker 1 33:10

We're going to turn everybody into mutants with a giant doomsday machine.

Speaker 2 33:13

That's. The only complaint that I have with the movie is that that is a little wonky. I think it works. I think it works for the overall simplicity of the story into and to show how the dynamic between mutants and humans are. They're playing that up. That magneto wants to turn everybody into mutants, which doesn't make any sense. But but like I get it, I get it and we can just kind of let that go. But otherwise you hit all the high notes. The characters are introduced at a like kind of a brick neck pace, but you get a sense of who they are with very limited information. I think if you know who they are going in beforehand, you're at an extra advantage and you see all the little clues that they're weaving and leaving here and there. But I think if you're a general audience member who's never heard of any of these people, you can get a sense of who they are from that. So I'll let you take over from there. You can get a sense of who they are from from that.

Speaker 1 34:07

So I'll let you, let you take over from there. I remember a lot of vetching at the time from fans and even from myself as a kid who became more familiar with the comics before the third one came out. The second one was the first one I saw, and I think I saw it on television back when FX used to do that TV DVD on TV. Right, it was kind of trying to convince people to buy a DVD player because you get all these extras. But it was like they would. It would be like a three and a half hour long extravaganza of this movie because they would stop and show all this behind the scenes stuff which I just thought was fascinating. But you have I'm of two minds about the Wolverine influence in this film and I think it works fine for the first two gets a little overwrought in the third one.

Speaker 1 34:40

But I know Wolverine is sort of a side character with a lot going on In the movie. Though I mean, come on, if you're looking at this from a scriptwriting perspective, wolverine is the most mysterious character. He's the coolest. He grounds the movie because he's the outsider that maybe hasn't drank the Kool-Aid like everybody else. Obviously, hugh Jackman is channeling a sort of Clint Eastwood. I mean, I can't imagine that's not the direction he was given. Is that play dirty Harry? Right? And actually it was interesting. I was reading through some of these old X-Men comics the other night and I've got this one X-Men one 33. Oh, just amazing cover, and it was one that was.

Speaker 2 35:17

That's where X two really takes that concept and and does it on screen in a different way.

Speaker 1 35:19

But that's Wolverine going berserk in the hellfire club which they use sort of in the mansion for x2, but absolutely, and it's a tremendous, it's a tremendous moment, but I mean there's even this going back to the clint eastwood influence um, you've got a scene where wolverine is standing off with one of the hellfire club's goons, right, and he says hey, bub, I know what you're thinking, he's hurt and he's five meters away from me and I got a full clip of ammo in my rifle. Question is is can I kill Wolverine before he can reach me and cut me into a shish kebab with those freaky claws of his? Well, bub, wolverine is virtually unkillable. So it's basically the Dirty Harry monologue, right? So you can see an influence from the very beginning on Wolverine, which I thought was fun when I read that.

Speaker 2 36:04

I was going to say. You notice how I feel like, other than in the Deadpool movie which is coming out later this year, which is R rated, and they're going to go to town with everything. But for this movie and X2, I mean, wolverine is not a nice guy, he's not a nice character. He. He's a little softer on the edges here and there, but like he doesn't care, care, doesn't care about any of this stuff. He sees it, sees it in his own self-interest and then, yes, he's gradually kind of like, learns to love them, which is fine.

Speaker 1 36:31

But he's also smoking cigars, he's drinking booze, he's killing people, it's not exactly whitewashed or sanitized version of the character which, if they're making a disney movie later, I'm expect it to be a little bit more toned down yeah, what I'm guessing that in in wolverine, logan or the deadpool one, they're doing is that it's just going to be john wick style, him killing people with just blood all over the place, and while I think they could have gone a little further in some of these movies, the fact that it's it's toned down. I think they do a nice job hinting at the brutality, especially in part two.

Speaker 2 37:04

But but like I mean, that's all you need.

Speaker 1 37:07

That's all you need, but I liked that they. It was very smart choice to have him and rogue be sort of dual leads, right, and then to have them have a special connection, and I think I could have used a little more of them together before they find the X-Men. You know what I'm saying and I'm saying extra three minutes here and there. Singer's really good at little character bits, but that he sticks with the team at the end to help Rogue. That's who he cares about. Yes, right.

Speaker 2 37:32

That's very smart. He's always on the soft spot for these types of characters and you see that in the comics where he has a relationship with Kitty Pryde or Jubilee or whoever it is at the time the young kind of ingenue female character who's very naive, and he takes them in as like there's like a father daughter relationship there going on which seems out of character for someone like him, but he, he, does have a soft spot inside, and that's where his, his arc is always in play.

Speaker 2 38:04

Is that? Here's this wild animal that becomes not tamed, but civilized to a certain extent and learns to have a home and a family, and all that.

Speaker 1 38:14

Absolutely, and I thought in the film, as far as the team working together, I mean, they do such wonderful work too. I'm thinking of one example of just like amazing character work that singer does. That tells you everything you need to know and it takes 10 seconds. There's a moment, next man too, when they go back to bobby's house and they cut it's. The whole thrust of the scene is that there's a little makeout session uh, will they, won't they, with rogue and bobby, as she's changing in his room right. And then they cut to pyro and they go downstairs to Pyro and you see him looking at the family photos of Bobby and his family. It's eight seconds. You see him reflected in the photograph and it tells you everything you need to know. He doesn't have a family, he's jealous, he's got no grounding, he's been left out alone in the world, he's got a problem.

Speaker 2 39:03

He's a bad seed.

Speaker 1 39:05

Done, that's it, no dialogue, been left out alone in the world. He's got a problem. He's a bad seed done, you know, I mean that's it. No dialogue, nothing. And when he goes with magneto at the end of the movie, you don't question it at all, right, yeah, obviously his demeanor, he's sort of a hard ass, but like that's all you need eight seconds and he sells it. I mean it's just terrific, especially with all these characters, it's unbelievable um, what do you think about?

Speaker 2 39:22

let's? We should really talk about the selection of characters that were used for the first movie, and how do you feel about that?

Speaker 1 39:30

um, I don't think I would have picked anybody different. Um, I think these are the stable characters. I know fans like gambit. I always thought gambit was a stupid character. Um, I think he's. Well, I mean he's cool.

Speaker 1 39:43

It wouldn't have worked in this movie though no, because it's like you try to explain what his powers are and it's like he's a. He's a totally character designed character, you know. I mean it's like, oh, wouldn't it be cool if there was like a guy that, like you know, threw cards? I mean that would be cool. It's kind of visually exciting. Let's make that an x-men. What's his power? I don't know. He like fucking supercharges shit and throws it Like you know what I mean. It's like kind of dumb, you know, but Storm is cool. The only issues I have with like this is nitpicky nerd stuff. But it's like I can fully understand you as a mutant having powers with that are within your own biology. Right, like, oh, I can grow things out of my body or I can turn invisible, but when it comes to like I can control the weather, I'm like, how does a human being mutate to be able to control the?

Speaker 2 40:32

I mean, do you know?

Speaker 1 40:32

I'm saying well, I guess, how do you, how do you also?

Speaker 2 40:34

grow to control magnetic fields and and anyway, I mean no, it's a, it's a, I agree. Um, the selection, you know, would you? You can always find one, or there's always everyone's going to have their fan favorite character that, um, you could substitute. And trembling color says I wish rogue was favorite character that you could substitute. And Trembling Color says I wish Rogue was Kitty Pryde and you could have easily substituted in Kitty Pryde or Jubilee in that role and it wouldn't have made a difference. But they wisely used the for the wonky story that they came up with. They actually made it work with Rogue because she's going to steal Magneto's, going to use her powers to power his machine.

Speaker 1 41:06

So it all worked out. I'm going to tell Trembling Colors something, because he's sitting in the boardroom at Fox in 1998 and he's like it should be Kitty Pryde and I'm saying, okay, we wrote the script, we made Rogue Kitty Pryde essentially right. She's a little forlorn, lost girl. There's no dragon. And also walking through walls is a cool power. There's no dragon. And also walking through walls is a cool power, touching people you love and sucking their life essence out of them and not being able to be with your boyfriend because if you're together he'll die. I'm trying to hit the teen demo here. Dude, that's brilliant. Yes, right.

Speaker 2 41:37

Great stuff. It makes you a tortured character, the alienation aspect of it. I'm a mutant, I can't touch anyone. I can't have a relationship. I might kill you. I can't even be with my own family perfect as an outcast. It makes her perfect, yet she's. She's a beautiful young woman should have everything yeah yeah, and the only one that understands me and anna packland was was a, you know, a hot commodity at the time an Oscar-winning actress. So you have that too.

Speaker 1 42:11

Yeah, exactly, I think that Rogue was the right choice and I know it's not the comic book Rogue where she stole Ms Marvel's powers and shared half of her identity or something and was evil and then got brought into the team.

Speaker 2 42:23

I get that, but I think to refashion her as a kid that confused me at the time, because I was not familiar with the, the, that original version of where she only has the power to absorb people's uh abilities, because I only known her from, from, you know, the contemporary stuff where she has the miss marvel power side, so exactly and that's only because claremont wrote with miss marvel too, and I believe that Mystique actually first appeared in Ms Marvel and didn't really appear consistently in the X-Men until like the late eighties.

Speaker 1 42:52

She was actually I'm like I was looking this up she was in like more issues of ROM, space Knight than she was in the X-Men for a while. You know, yeah, trembling Colors, I'm not, I'm not going after you, brother, I'm just I'm making an example of you. Yeah, trembling Colors, I'm not going after you, brother, I'm just making an example of you.

Speaker 2 43:07

Yeah, no, kitty Pryde's a great character too and deserved to be in the movie. But yeah, I mean, you just have so much. You have so many characters in such a small time and space to work with that you can't have everybody. And luckily the sequels, did you know? Here and there add a new character.

Speaker 1 43:30

And we got to see nightcrawler in part two, we got to see beast in part three and they're done very well.

Speaker 2 43:32

I agree every time they bring in somebody to accept angel. That's like it works. You know what I mean. Like it was worthless in part three. And everything in part three starts to be where it got to the part of um, all of these movies, all these types of comic book movies where they're throwing in characters just to like, like, uh, like a base impulse of saying, oh, there's angel, there's this person, there's that person, and they bear no recollection or similarity to anything in the comics that came before them.

Speaker 2 43:56

They serve no purpose in the movie and it's there just to like say they were in the movie. Like x-men origin, wolverine did this a lot and they're like, oh, it's gambit and it's like, well, he didn't do anything in the movie so what's the? Point like why am I?

Speaker 1 44:09

why am?

Speaker 1 44:10

I excited that gambit's going to be in this movie where he doesn't do jack well, trembling colors had a great point and I was going to bring this up too. I guess the heroes are terrific. I think famke jansen is obviously terrific as jean gray helly berry good as storm when she's in a supporting role. Um, james marsden terrific as cyclops, terrific, right, perfect, um, with the villains they had. They had a golden lineup of villains in this first movie saber-tooth, toad mystique, and the real shame is that the screenwriters looked at it almost like as they're, like we'll take that guy, we'll take that guy and that guy, and they didn't consider that they could have had a great future in the series of having saber tooth, like you know, continue on, like, why not? Why not bring him back from the third movie? He didn't what.

Speaker 1 44:52

He fell in a boat, he's dead. Come on. You know what I mean Bring him back. He's got a lot of potential, you know, especially, especially in a movie at the end where we have a third act of X-Men three where Wolverine is looking for somebody to fight and we have a cavalcade of just well, we'll get to X-Men three Like, yeah, I think they just used up all their. Yeah, toad's a great villain with unique powers, you know I mean. But I think the movie classic.

Speaker 2 45:17

These are characters. When you think of X-Men villains and you think you're you know you have to limit yourself to the Brotherhood-type villains for this instance, because we're not going to have Apocalypse or Mr Sinister or any of that. We have Magneto as the villain, so we need to have his group of people with him. And, like you said, sabretooth Toad Mystique, who kind of had her own Brotherhood, really wasn't super in with Magneto for a while at least, as far as. I remember.

Speaker 1 45:45

They worked great together in the movie.

Speaker 2 45:47

Oh, they work great together and they work so good in X2. I love the mystique Magneto stuff in X2.

Speaker 1 45:54

We love what you've done with your hair.

Speaker 2 45:56

Yes.

Speaker 1 45:57

And they just clearly have, they clearly have something going on.

Speaker 2 46:00

They tease that there's something going on between the two of them and it's implied but it's never explicit. I don't think so, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think there's something. Yeah, I get what you're saying. There's definitely a relationship there well beyond, uh, work for hire, and it's never explicitly stated but it's heavily implied with the body language and the dialogue you know I was gonna.

Speaker 1 46:22

I wish I would have found this clip, but I watched, uh, the featurette of the making of X-Men 1. And they cut out a lot of this movie and I'm surprised. No one is really clamoring for like more.

Speaker 2 46:32

Oh an extended clip.

Speaker 1 46:34

Exactly, they cut like 20 minutes out of it and I know that they made it X-Men 1.5, but it's really just extended scenes that are already in there. But there's a monologue that magneto delivers to senator kelly when he has him chained up in his secret lair. That's just excellent and it's not in the final movie and, um, if we go back and edit this to put in clips for a wider audience, I might throw that in there, just because it's just terrific and it's unfortunate. I wish they would have gone back and done an extended version. I think the movie works as a tight little action picture right, but, um, yeah, anything else on x-men 1. Any other questions on x-men 1?

Speaker 2 47:08

uh, you want to talk about the, the general themes of the movie, because it's going to contrast with what they do in x2 x. X-men 3 doesn't really have any themes or anything relevant. It just is no gut junk. But x-men 1, I think, really taps into. We already talked about the alienation of, you know, being a teenager or being an outcast or something like that. So that's all very obvious. That's very standard x-men stuff. I think they also really tie into the um mccarthyism, uh oh yeah, and that's a huge part of x-men lore that's a list of mutants right here?

Speaker 2 47:41

yes, senator kelly. We begin the movie with a us senate scene where gene gray is, where Jean Grey is giving testimony on mutants and they're not all bad, but we have to be tolerant and understanding, and Senator Kelly makes very valid points about how dangerous these people can be, and I have a list of names. We need to know who they are and what they can do. We need to register them. And is that? Is that a violation of of their civil liberties as american citizens? And obviously the answer is yes, but what are the concerns of security versus, um, you know, freedom? So there's a lot of that going on. We tie that into magneto's origin, which some people have said that it's in very poor taste, and I disagree. I think it works extremely well for for how, how it's presented in the movie. It's not done out of, you know, in any in any malice or bad taste to show the beginning of the movie have um magneto at auschwitz, um.

Speaker 2 48:37

But some people were offended like oh, how could they do that in a comic book movie? And it's like shut up, were they?

Speaker 1 48:42

offended at the time? Yes, I believe so, and it's like shut up, were they offended?

Speaker 2 48:44

at the time? Yes, I believe so.

Speaker 1 48:46

Okay, because I could see that this would pass 15, 20 years ago. No, this would pass now.

Speaker 2 48:50

In X-Men First Class, they go well beyond.

Speaker 1 48:54

Oh yeah, I mean. But now we live in a world where people have sort of dug the Nazis up and they're prevalent again because their legacy is being used to tar at people's current political enemies. Sure so it being used to tar people's current political enemies? Sure so that's very serious.

Speaker 2 49:11

like steven, spielberg is like, oh, I would never make nazis bad guys in indiana jones again, because I mean, come on, but he said that. But it's super relevant, because a magneto being a holocaust survivor informs his worldview um in all the wrong ways, in all the wrong ways, for instance, and that he but he. But it's understandable about how he feels and why he never again will I, be me, or my, my kind, will be subjected to persecution and extermination, and it informs his worldview and it's it's.

Speaker 1 49:36

It's very poignant and compelling, and especially when he shows the tattoo all the time to remind yeah, exactly, I will never be marked again, you know, and as as as an actor, wouldn't if the, if I told you that, like hey, this comic book character you're playing, this is his backstory, You'd be like, oh, that's okay, I can, I can work with that, that's cool. That's given me a lot Right evil enterprise and secret base by beating Hydra to a hidden stash of Nazi gold which he then stole and used to fund his whole operation, which is kind of interesting.

Speaker 2 50:12

But and then my other favorite do you ever read acts of vengeance where they build a villain's team up and they swap heroes and then Magneto ends up somehow with the red skull? And then he realizes like how, what, who he actually is and he like just starts oh really trash it like just beats the crap out of them I.

Speaker 1 50:31

You know the world war ii is a huge part of, like the basis of modern comic books and superheroes. So to like that they keep continually calling world war ii back and integrating it into the fictional mythology of these books I have no problem with and I think works um I think people had a had an issue because of the you know the holocaust aspect of it I could.

Speaker 1 50:52

I could sympathize with that. You know where you're like. Okay, you're introducing these you know magnetic superpowers into something that was very you know obviously it's not in appropriate taste, in my opinion, and I agree with you I don't especially.

Speaker 2 51:06

The trauma of him being separated from his parents activates his mutant powers for the first time. Um, and every time you know who he is every time he grandstands.

Speaker 1 51:17

You know about, you know the uh slippery slope of mutant registration or whatever. I mean it's all rooted in that sort of idea and you get his motivation. You know, if he was just speaking off the cuff, like you know, I mean, it wouldn't have as much power.

X2: Raising the Stakes

Speaker 2 51:29

I do have a problem with the way they handle. You mentioned Senator Kelly earlier and I think it all works fine, but I generally have a problem that they killed him in the movie because that's such an important X-Men character.

Speaker 1 52:00

That's such an important X-Men character in terms of having an ally in the US government who becomes the president and helps them establish Xavier's dream of peaceful coexistence and is working with them. Exactly, they bring him back for X2 in disguise as mystique, but like that could have just been his character after having been changed by the events of the first movie. So why has him die exactly?

Speaker 2 52:12

well, they wanted to show him as a jerk and that he gets his comeuppance. But the whole point of his character arc in in other media is that he learns his lesson by being saved by the x-men, that all not all mutants are bad.

Speaker 1 52:26

And that you can prove that Xavier's model works.

Speaker 2 52:29

Yes, and that's the whole point of. Kelly yeah, so that's what I.

Speaker 1 52:34

I just had a problem with that. So why kill him? In this sort of weird CGI I blow up and turn into like it doesn't make any sense. Really, it's a whole sequence that I'm like didn't need it.

Speaker 2 52:47

That's the only real bit of cgi that really looks dated and and poor. In my opinion.

Speaker 1 52:50

The rest of the stuff is not.

Speaker 2 52:51

It looks, looks fine to me, yeah, yeah I, uh, I uh.

Speaker 1 52:54

You know what the first movie and the second movie do really well is that when you have all these people together that all have these amazing, fantastic, terrific powers, if they really were to get into a fight with each other it would just look like mayhem, right. So like what you have to do with the x-men, especially in 2000, when your technology is limited, is you have to, they have to be separated. They have to be in sort of a labyrinthine battle arena where maybe someone gets stuck. You know, it's rock paper scissors with powers. My pants powers cancel out yours, but you know, I'm saying that's so. When you have them all just lined up in a fight at the end of the third one and they're just running at each other and punching, it's like, yeah, like we have a situation where, ah well, I can magnetize you, oh well, I can use my weather powers on you, but not in here, because I'm trapped in a small area. That's, that's how you have to write this stuff, especially if you're trying to keep it on a low budget, should we?

Speaker 2 53:45

address the stupidest line in the movie.

Speaker 1 53:49

What happens to you when you get hit with lightning? What happens to a toad when it?

Speaker 2 53:54

gets struck. Do you know what happens to a toad when it gets struck by lightning? The same thing that happens to everything else, I don't know. Do they think that was funny?

Speaker 1 54:03

I think Joss Whedon wrote that line and he's defended it in the past and said they delivered it wrong. Yeah. But it doesn't even even his delivery, which was it was supposed to be. Do you know what happens when a toad gets struck by lightning? Forgive me for this, it was supposed to be same thing. That happens to everything else. Boom Right, yeah, but that's not funny.

Speaker 2 54:27

Even if you delivered it the way he's wanted it. Some of the other like little quips and jokes are, I think are fine. It doesn't take away from the seriousness. This is a very serious movie overall. Uh does have some fun little moments to break the tension here and there and I think that's fine. There's nothing that's egregious or off-putting like we have in our current uh marvel movies of the dad-style humor. I think it's fine when he says what do they call you wheels? That's funny. And Wolverine's a flippant irreverent character, so that's okay.

Speaker 1 54:56

Or whatever it gives regular people.

Speaker 2 54:59

Yellow spandex.

Speaker 1 55:01

Yes, and I like their suits, for one, I think they look cool, I think they look fine. There's a video out there of them trying to move in them, um, and I like them. I like the action sequences in the first two a lot too. To some extent to the third, because there's an excessive um, I don't mean to say excessive, but there's a lot of dependence on wire work. Yes, very matrix, very kung fu. Everyone's always flying around, flipping, you know, and like, uh, it looks it looks, it's there, it's it's exaggerated.

Speaker 1 55:31

Yeah, it's physically happening. It looks cool like in x-men 2 when you've got guys flipping on. You know, in the white house, in the oval office, it's like terrific. You know it's not.

Speaker 2 55:40

Yeah everything looks so fake nowadays when they just it that crawler would be 100 cg creation in a new movie like doing it. That crawler would be a hundred percent CG creation in an in a new movie like doing all the stunts. That would be a hundred percent CG there would be no actor doing anything.

Speaker 1 55:53

You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 55:54

Yes, and that's and that's what makes that sequence so good, like fascinating, to watch is because it's it's mostly real. We hit a great sweet spot in the early 2000s where we were hitting practical a little bit of cgi, to enhance it a little bit, because that's what that's what computers are for is to augment, not to replace everything you had lord of the rings, you had this, you had star wars, prequels, you know to until now that we perfected digital eyelash, rendering, movies will be greater, more, greater than ever, you know have we perfected that Finally?

Speaker 1 56:24

Thank you.

Speaker 2 56:25

It's from the Simpsons where they talk to George Lucas Stanton.

Speaker 1 56:28

Oh, is that right? And like Lord of the Rings as well, Ebert didn't like this movie. He didn't like part two either. He was batting zero.

Speaker 2 56:41

Richard Roper liked this movie, though, if I recall, how could you?

Speaker 1 56:44

not Even if you had no idea anything, anything about the x-men, how could you not be like, wow, this is like they're exciting, fun, cool characters in this. This is a fun idea. You know um great little science fiction movie, right, and it's cool, it's good. Um, I like the scenes when, just like I talk about the rock paper scissors bit like magneto, charles is in Magneto's head but he's got guns pointed at all the police officers, right, they have to like Trump, each other with powers.

Speaker 2 57:11

It's, it's, it's fun and creative, so yeah, so many great moments and so many just allusions to the history behind it without, without going too far and just kind of hinting and putting in little lines and references. That shows you there's there's more here than than than we know about.

Speaker 1 57:31

Uh, and you're interested to learn more about these characters too yeah, and I think hugh jackman, I'm just thinking about that scene in the bar. He's fierce, his claws are scary, you know, oh, I cut your gun. I mean like they did, they did it perfect.

Speaker 2 57:44

You know, I mean it really oh yeah, it's really solid and I think it was taken to the next level with part two yes, I just want to say before we jump to that the um, this was probably the last movie that I can recall uh, at least when I was a child is like of having a phenomenal toy line associated with it. Spider-man had a okay one, but this movie had one one of the best toy tie-ins I've ever seen. All the characters were made into action figures. They all had beautiful sculpts, accessories, all that play sets. It was just great to collect that entire line and they looked great.

Speaker 1 58:24

I'd like to say about Mystique too. I think that the she became somewhat of an iconic character in the early 2000s as, like a very enigmatic image that was like used to market these movies and that people recognized and thought about that idea.

Speaker 2 58:35

To make her fully naked, which was, I mean, that's, that's fairly interesting, right, that's a different oh yeah, that was a very big deviation from the source material, and I like mystique's outfit in the comics. It's a very iconic look too. But this was this was this was brilliant, a brilliant decision.

Speaker 1 58:51

You have someone as beautiful as rebecca romaine, stainless at the time, um, but uh, unfortunately she doesn't get a lot to do um, she was always lamenting that every time she had a scene it was always like heard by herself doing some sort of like subterfuge, so she would never around the other characters.

Speaker 2 59:09

Really, she got a little bit more in part two, which was, which was good, but it's sad because, well, I mean again, you have so many characters. Mystique was not a hot, hot character at the time. Certainly, when they shoehorned her into the sequel, the prequel trilogy, and then lawrence took off as a huge star, they had to make mystique like the focus of the movies, which was, which was kind of off-putting, um, but uh yeah, and then by the fourth, one of those new x-men.

Speaker 1 59:39

She was like I ain't doing that makeup anymore and she just had like kind of like a body suit on. It was like it was her face.

Speaker 2 59:45

But you know, she she was like Jennifer Lawrence more often and I'm surprised that they did not have mystique morph into Rebecca Romaine for a part of the movie, cause sometimes, a lot of times, these actors don't don't like the makeup they want to show their face, and they didn't. They didn't do that with her at all.

Speaker 1 1:00:00

She didn't have enough clout to say give her a scene where you can see what she actually looks like. Yeah, do you know what I'm saying? Yeah, um, they don't, they don't. And then you know, the one thing I thought was weird is that they had wolverine stab her. Yeah, and then you, I mean that she'd be dead, right, but then, like she's gone, I have to think that they intended to kill her and then did a reshoot where like, oh, she's gone, you know, we don't know where she went. And then the third film in the second film you can see she has the three claw scars. But like, why even have him stab her to begin with? Have her throw out, throw him out our window or something, and she disappears.

Speaker 2 1:00:32

You know, right, I mean yeah, I'm not sure behind that decision, but because she wouldn't have survived that depends on where she was stabbed, you know, but it was a off to the side, no way.

Speaker 1 1:00:44

No major organs were were uh, you know oh yeah, exactly a little. John mcclain bullet wound. Oh, it just got me in the arms, no problem, right? Um, okay, part two even better than the first one of the best superhero movies ever made. I had a wonderful time re-watching this movie.

Speaker 2 1:00:59

It's terrific yes, very much your thoughts oh, loved it, loved it I was very eagerly anticipating this one when it first came out.

Speaker 2 1:01:07

It was a huge deal at the time and it it just it took everything good about. So you'd already. Now you've established the world, you've established the characters. Now you're going to run wild with it, so there's no more. X-men 1 is a very exposition heavy movie, but not in a bad way. I enjoy all of the expository details that they put forth in the movie. It's done compellingly. It's done well. X-2 is like we're now. We're taking the offense. They're in a defensive position. Someone is now attacking them. Part one is Magneto has a plan. We need to figure out what the plan is and stop him. They're taking that approach. Has a plan. We need to figure out what the plan is and stop him. They're taking that approach. Part two is old enemies from the past who Professor Xavier and Magneto know are now taking the fight to them for personal and professional reasons, and it threatens their entire existence, and so it's a very different type of movie.

Speaker 1 1:02:02

Well, I'll give the filmmakers credit for this, because it's something that seems like a no brainer and is the obvious way to go, but might not have been, might not have occurred to filmmakers at the time. If we look at, you know, the track record of superhero films like Batman and Spider-Man, they don't just like get rid of Magneto. They understood that he's an integral character and that, like, he can still be around. You know, that's my favorite thing in comics is that you have these villains, that they they pop in, they pop out, that you know they. Sometimes they're an ally, sometimes they're not. That's such a terrific thing to do and that they didn't just say, okay, uh, magnina was a villain in the first one. He's gone. Who's the new villain? No, they keep him in the. He's very important it's.

Speaker 2 1:02:37

It's the lex luther approach from superman 2, is it not?

Speaker 1 1:02:41

give him exactly. It's like which is donner right, but yeah, give him, don't just throw him away and okay, uh, joker's dead, no more joker. Not that I have an issue with that, but you know I'm saying right, but it works well, because magneto is a more sophisticated villain than some luther.

Speaker 2 1:02:56

You can do it because he plays that role as well. Joker you could not do this with, because magneto can play both sides of the fence, which he does in this, this movie. You're doing it as he's. He's pushed to the back, but he was going to team up with them. So that's a new angle there, and not a lot of villains. You can get away with this. A lot of DC villains you can like. If you had Sinestro for a green Lantern thing, you could do it. Luther, to a certain extent Batman villains.

Speaker 1 1:03:23

You can to a certain extent.

Speaker 2 1:03:23

Batman villains, you can't do this, batman villains. No, that's not going to work?

Speaker 1 1:03:26

Batman and Spider-Man villains? Probably not. Yeah, they've got to be gone. Yeah, they're defeated and done, but it's nice.

Speaker 2 1:03:32

We have a new villain, we have William Stryker, and this movie really, really plays off of the X-Men. God Loves, man Kills. Graphic novel Takes a lot of inspiration from that. Um uh, in terms of it's. It's, you know ideas about uh, um, uh. How do you want to say it?

Speaker 2 1:03:55

Like um, mutant prejudice mutant prejudice, uh, also trying to exterminate the species. That's a, that's a huge part of that too, how they're gonna use One of their own, they're gonna use Xavier to kill off the entire mutant race. I Was, I was chatting with you beforehand and I was mentioning, as I was watching, this is getting a lot. I don't know how much of this is intentional on the filmmakers and the writers or not, but it's getting a lot of contemporary, like war on terror vibes from this movie in terms of the scenes you have.

Speaker 2 1:04:30

You know, obviously, an attack on American soil by an outside force. You have the White House is attacked in the opening scenes of the movie by a mutant. This triggers all sorts of panic in the country. What are we going to do with the mutant threat? What are we going to do? The mutant threat? What are we going to do? The president authorizes an off-the-books raid on a civilian target, basically to take out these mutants who then they use this character, striker, who's kind of like an emblematic figure of the military-industrial complex to a certain extent, right?

Speaker 1 1:05:05

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2 1:05:06

Kind of has that emblematic figure of the military industrial complex to a certain extent right. Um kind of has that uh they used.

Speaker 1 1:05:08

I was doing secret operations in vietnam, you know right?

Speaker 2 1:05:12

yeah, yeah yeah, he runs this uh scientific research lab and military uh experiments and he kind of has I don't want to say he has like dick cheney vibes, but he kind of does a little bit. It's kind of that Dick Cheney, dick Cheney Halliburton stuff going on there. Exactly, they're doing enhanced interrogation techniques on these prisoners, especially Magneto, which is akin to waterboarding.

Speaker 1 1:05:39

Did they have time, though, to react? When was I know right? I don't think it's possible.

Speaker 2 1:05:44

I don't think, in the context of the times, that we knew about all this stuff at that time.

Speaker 1 1:05:49

This is like 2003.

Speaker 2 1:05:50

This is summer 2003.

Speaker 1 1:05:51

this movie came out right Memorial Day, so they had to be making it for the year I don't remember exactly it probably is.

Speaker 2 1:05:59

Before all that it's probably coincidental, but man it's pretty amazing. It's probably coincidental, but man, it's pretty amazing.

Speaker 1 1:06:04

Yeah, it tapped into some kind of zeitgeist that was going on there. Lucas did the same thing at the same time. Oh, I'm staging a false flag attack so I can build up an army and steal civil liberties. I mean, like you know, this was just in the ether right. People were just feeling this right. Something cataclysmic had happened, you know, to our country, and it was never the same again and we could feel like you know, you know what I'm saying. It was in the, it was in the night we're on edge as a nation.

Speaker 2 1:06:31

We don't know what's going on. Things are changing rapidly. How do we react? Do we overreact and do we cause more problems and cause more damage, or do we look for a solution that actually makes sense?

Speaker 1 1:06:44

or what the president does. Because he doesn, because he just gives it to Stryker and he runs with it. The civilian president, scared, doesn't know what to do, hands it over to the military or the military's type. You know what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 1:06:55

Private contractor even worse right.

Speaker 1 1:06:57

You take care of it for me. I don't want to deal with this, right, just do secret stuff. And his off. The books research facility is where it's out of the country. It's in canada, alkali lake.

Speaker 2 1:07:09

It is in canada. Yeah, it nicely. It nicely ties in because they're, they're and I feel like that's coincidental using that because, um, the wolverine origin stuff should be in canada because that's where he's from. But it it works very nicely I think so too, it you're.

Speaker 1 1:07:24

That's a really great point. It never occurred to me. It never occurred to me either.

Speaker 2 1:07:29

until I was re -watching it last night and I was like wow there's something else going on here.

Speaker 1 1:07:34

This movie is just the way it raises the stakes. It's a Swiss watch man, I mean. The first act is so good. We're reintroduced to all the characters we love. See them in new positions, right, how it builds tension to. You know the I mean it's. I'm like this is a master class. I'm riveted. We've got professor x walking into a trap.

Speaker 1 1:07:56

That sequence where it's that build-up when he goes, what happened to you? When he starts to realize, oh, I'm, I've just gotten myself into a lot of trouble. They take out Scott. You're like, oh, they took out Cyclops. This chick's a total badass. Magneto, screaming, you should have killed me when you had the chance, like it always works right. And you're like, oh, he's out. Then, oh, my God, they're going to attack the mansion and everyone is scattered to the winds. During this terrific action sequence, when we really see wolverine go hog wild. Yes, that scene when he's with bobby, first of all, great character moment. You got any beer in this house? No, this is a school. I grab a pop. Hey, freeze this up for me. Terrific stuff, right, it's just so perfect.

Speaker 1 1:08:41

That guy comes in. You've got the girl screaming with her supersonic scream. He's shooting bullets everywhere and he turns them into the fridge and just just guts him. And you see Bobby's reaction of like oh wow, this guy really is a fucking freak Badass, right it got real, real, real fast.

Speaker 2 1:09:00

Right, you know, we're not playing around.

Speaker 1 1:09:02

You've sent Jean and storm off on their own little mission to find nightcrawler, which is terrific. Right, a little pre-bechtel test passing here before that was even a thing and uh, they're great together and it's a wonderful moment where we get to meet nightcrawler and understand his world and we get those dissolved shots of where he lives in this church and his old circus posters and it's care and time put into establishing characters that we do not get in x-men 3 and you just see what an incompetent rube brett ratner is compared to a guy like singer who actually knows what he's doing. I've talked too much, go ahead no, no, no.

Speaker 2 1:09:36

Um. So new characters nightcrawler, who they established very well and they play into his, his history of his catholicism being a huge part of his character, and it's done very poignantly, very well. Pyro is new for the movie. I love the little touches you mentioned already about his emotional state and his feeling of not belonging in the X-Men family, but I just love that they took the time to talk about him, him and his powers. That I can only control the fire. I can't create it. I always found that just fascinating that they bothered to include that and talk about that. It's like why, why would you do that? It's just, it's great. I love it, but like anyone, like we'd be like, like no, forget about that, that's worthless. Like he just shoots fire, just like Spider-Man shoots webs out of his wrist. We don't need web shooter.

Post-9/11 Themes in X2

Speaker 1 1:10:33

I would have to surmise it's because Bryan Singer knew that an actor would want to have a little thing to fidget with like his lighter you know what I'm saying which is a little. It's almost like remember this is one of the greatest in boogie nights with paul thomas anderson, where you have the scene where they're trying to sell the fake cocaine and there's just a guy in the background like blowing up fireworks the entire time. It just sets you on edge. This is a very like minimal thing, but it's something that you hear that click. It's a sound associated with his character and he's always doing it, you know, in the background.

Speaker 2 1:10:58

It's a great little piece of character work I think it also ties into the, the idea that he, despite having this amazing power, he still feels inferior to a certain extent, that he cannot create the fire, he can only control it, and it makes him resent it even more. I'm an outcast, yet I can do this, but I can't even do this part. I can't start it.

Speaker 1 1:11:22

I need this little, this thing, and I love this. Yeah, you get the sense that Magneto is like well, let me show you how to. Yeah, you know I can. I can release you from this little crutch. You have right.

Speaker 2 1:11:32

Yes, that's the promise and and what's your name? Oh, john, no, no, john, what's, what's your real name?

Speaker 1 1:11:38

what's your real name? Yeah, totally, I, I think that's. And then a trembling color says a little glimpse of Colossus. Is the one that really made me. Absolutely I can help you, you know, help them right.

Speaker 2 1:11:51

I mean, just that is. The only unsatisfying moment of the movie is when they'd send him away when he's gone.

Speaker 1 1:12:00

One more fight. One more thing punches a guy through a wall right had him and Wolverine taking those guys down together.

Speaker 2 1:12:07

But it's Hugh Jackman's movie and he has to do this.

Speaker 1 1:12:10

I'll tell you this, though, the reason I think the action sequence works if this movie was made in 2012, you know exactly what we would get. Not that this would be bad, it would be very cool but it would be different. You would have an extended, long shot, cgi assisted take of like Cyclops punches a guy through a wall, follow that guy, then Wolverine's tearing up three people. It's like you know what I'm saying it would be. Now, this is filmed like a very kinetic action sequence. You know what I mean.

Speaker 1 1:12:33

It's filmed like a you know what I'm saying Like a real movie but not a video game, Right, and all the stuff with Wolverine. There's just so many great little bits. I love when he he grabs bobby by his shirt the way your dad might when you're a kid. He like shows him up against the wall and you see him like as he's about to release his claws and he like makes a little fist out of his hands, like like he's getting hyped up, like he's like like he's grabbing for a gun, like you know what I mean. I just think it's just perfect, it's just terrific. And all the stuff with the military guys and we just show the mounting.

Speaker 2 1:13:04

But I mean the way the movie ratchets and ratchets and ratchets, like the, the stakes, I think is just terrific, especially in that first act yes, um, culminating with the, the, the final moments and not the final moments, but the end of the climax of the movie where they're gonna go um rescue x Xavier at the facility in Canada, or the dam is going to burst and all that, but the thing they have to stop is another very, very powerful mutant who is Stryker's son. So now we have a little bit even more depth to this character who you think oh, he's a, he's a, you know, or he's hates mutants or you know, for whatever stupid reason.

Speaker 2 1:13:46

He's just, he's just a hateful person. No, he really really resents it because he has a personal beef with Xavier. Xavier, he, he, his son, is a mutant, very, very powerful mutant. They turned him into basically mastermind and um he um creates illusions with his, with his mind. They dropped him off with Xavier when he was a kid, thinking that he would cure him. Xavier's role is to not. There's no such thing as a cure for mutants. It's to control the powers or whatever.

Speaker 2 1:14:16

So, for whatever reason. They went home and this kid created an illusion that caused Stryker's wife, the kid's mother, to commit suicide and drill a hole into her brain with a power saw power drill so striker is obviously super resentful. He hates his own child. He hates probably hates himself for having, you know, spawned a mutant child, um, and I think that I think they made it now.

Speaker 1 1:14:40

He would just be a hater, he would just be a. I'm just oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, and this would be a random character that they just found to do it.

Speaker 2 1:14:46

It wouldn't be, uh, his son or anything like that, it would just kind of like the the cure kid in the third one.

Speaker 1 1:14:52

Oh, there's this new guy here. This is him.

Speaker 2 1:14:53

No connection, anybody which is a real character, though that exists. So I mean that's legit.

Speaker 1 1:14:58

You know what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 1:14:59

Okay, um, but like, like, it'd be like death strike in this movie. Death strike is just there as a cool vehicle, just a cool character. That's there. He's brainwashing her.

Speaker 1 1:15:08

They looked through the comics and they were like, oh, this person has Wolverine-like fingernails. That'd be great. Have her be a henchman.

Speaker 2 1:15:13

But that's sad because that would have been a movie itself. She could have been a villain for a movie.

Speaker 1 1:15:19

But I remember as a kid very, very cool, very cool, you know, very cool. And but what I was going to say about striker, is that his best line or not his best line? Because Brian Cox is just chewing it up? He's terrific in the movie but, like the thing that's defining about him is when professor X goes you know, a mutation is not a disease and he goes you're lying, it is right, because from his perspective, what happened to him his child's power is hellish. It's not cool, it was a maddening experience.

Speaker 2 1:15:48

It's a curse for him. It's a shame.

Speaker 1 1:15:53

Totally. But yeah, I think that Professor X gets a little bit short shrift in this movie. I mean to see the scenes of mano-a-mano brain power wars not my favorite. And also I think we've talked about this and this is a critique I think everybody has is that cyclops really gets to shaft in this movie. Yes, I mean you couldn't cut back to him once you know what, like I'm, I'm imprisoned and brian cox says something mean to him. I mean I was just thinking what you do with them. Have him get thrown in with the kids and the kids are really scared and have him give the kids a pep talk or something or have him break the kids out.

Speaker 2 1:16:28

You know something? Like that he escapes, but he gets brainwashed. They have him attack gene, which is kind of silly um yeah, it's okay, it's not what's also fascinating about this and I didn't never picked up on this until the rewatch is that this is a very, very gene gray focused movie. I mean she is almost the other central focal point besides wolverine. I mean she is on top of this movie uh she's, she's taking command, she's leading.

Speaker 2 1:16:55

Not only does she go with storm to find nightcrawler, but those scenes at the end she takes control of the movie.

Speaker 1 1:17:00

It's just kind of interesting yeah, she's great, I mean she's terrific, and I think everybody is used. I mean they, they're able to do so much other than cyclops other than cyclops, which is yeah, and trembling colors agrees. Um, I think at one way it ratchets up the stakes, because if you take out cyclops and he's like gone, you're like, oh god, did he die like you know? Wow, there's a lot going on in this movie. You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 2 1:17:23

it's sort of a rogue doesn't have much to do in the movie, though, either, other than to support Ike's man, who gets a lot. I was actually quite pleased that they included him a lot more. He was, in the first movie, the minor bit. They really ratcheted him up as a big character here, which was awesome.

Speaker 1 1:17:43

And his scene with his family are good. You know here which was, which was awesome, and the history with his family are are good. You know, there's only a few times, like when logan says you know, the mother says, uh, you know this mutant problem, and wolverine goes what mutant problem? Yeah, I'm like I don't think wolverine would say that seems a little out of character for him that's a little um, I mean I think pyro would say that you know he's not as out of character as he is in part three.

Speaker 1 1:18:06

I'll give you that loring I still think that his state of mind and you know it's an interesting move to try to get him back to the mansion you know, I think that the reason he comes back to the x-men is not because he is all in on their like you know, yeah thing he's proud to be. I mean, I don't get the. I don't get the sense in the first two that Wolverine is a guy that sees being a mutant as really a big part of his identity.

Speaker 2 1:18:30

No, not at all. Not at all.

Speaker 1 1:18:31

Do you know what I'm saying?

Speaker 2 1:18:33

He comes back, for his own self-interest, to ask Xavier about what he found in Canada, which he didn't find anything.

Speaker 1 1:18:40

And he wants to take care of Rogue and he gets ripped into being a superhero. He enjoys coming to see her, but but he and he's in love with gene gray, oh yeah, yeah, right, which you don't like, but I do. You've got to have a two hot guys. I don't I don't dislike that.

Speaker 2 1:18:55

He's good television, obviously, that he obviously loves gene gray and he's fine with that part. I don't like that the movie indulges it because hugh jackman is a big star and you know as attractive as he is, and they don't want to. They don't want to have that Cyclops Jean Grey stuff, they want to have the Jean Grey Wolverine romance.

Speaker 1 1:19:15

Well, was Hugh Jackman a big star as much as I think Wolverine was a big star, right.

Speaker 2 1:19:21

I by by two those. By this movie, hugh Jackman was now a star.

Speaker 1 1:19:24

Oh yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 1:19:26

By 2003.

Speaker 1 1:19:27

Because Wolverine was so dope.

Speaker 2 1:19:28

Because of X-Men 1. But that's the thing is that you have Hugh Jackman in the movie and you're going to play up the romance between him and Jean Grey. You should be playing up the love triangle which this movie does. This movie actually does it properly. This movie does this movie actually does it properly. X-men 3 just throws it all out and says they're basically it's this unbridled love between gene and logan which is ridiculous yeah, it's a little much yeah, it's.

Speaker 2 1:19:55

It's just, they just didn't care because brett brett rounder didn't care. You know, brian singer was like, yeah, we probably probably need to do this because, because people want to see this, but we have to, you know, cut it back a little.

Speaker 1 1:20:06

We have to actually stay true to the roots of the characters clearly, uh, brian singer is a good director, someone with, uh, allegedly a myriad of issues um, I don't know if I want to comment on all of them as much as I'd like to comment on. There's been a lot of people that say that he was like incredibly erratic director to be around, right, uh, oh, yeah, there's, there's been a lot of reports from alan cumming, from hallie berry, from you know, but I don't know if I totally believe it, because james marsden obviously liked him, you know he followed him over to superman returns, um, but that he would be late to set, not show up. I mean, this is why he got kicked off, bohemian rhapsody, similar stuff. They say he's got real bad back pain and he's got some pill issues or something, but like I mean, and that he could be a real dick and like scream at people and stuff, which is sometimes I'll defend that as something you need to do to get shit done.

Speaker 1 1:20:54

I mean, look at James Cameron. That's a guy that you know made a career of screaming at people, right, but like he does a terrific job, whereas you see a movie like X-Men 1, it had to be a budget restraint, but this one he's firing on all cylinders as far as his style goes. People talk about Raimi, but look at a sequence like the opening bit where they zoom in through the keyhole. It's a CGI augmented shot, but it's terrific. The fight between Lady Deathstrike and Wolverine is incredible. I watched that a million times as a kid, on repeat Stabbing him in the back with her claws.

Speaker 2 1:21:28

I agree. I agree because it's there's a tangible quality to it and it's boosted by the graphics. The CGI is there as a tool to make things better, make the power sets look real, fix up any mistakes that can't be done in real life. And there you have it, as opposed to now, where they create the action scenes before the script is even written for these movies and it's totally worthless. It's a hundred percent computer, it's a, it's like watching a cartoon.

Speaker 1 1:21:56

It's like watching a cartoon. It's just pointless, yeah, which is dumb. I wanted to see X-Men in live action.

Speaker 2 1:22:03

Yes.

Speaker 1 1:22:03

What wolverine look like in live action.

Speaker 2 1:22:06

It looks like I'll watch the cartoon. I don't. If I want to watch a movie with real people, then show me it yeah, exactly, you know they do a good job, you're gonna show spider-man swinging around the city, then okay, it needs to be cg, but like other scenes, you need to have a real person, like augmenting with augmenting with computer effects.

Speaker 1 1:22:27

But you know well and and I think that too, this one does a great job, like the first one, where it's like, if they're all going to be in this big compound and battle place, it can't be that there's a wide open space where all the x-men can just shoot at each other. You go over here, you go over here, wolverine, stuck here, you know. I mean so that way they, you know, I'm saying yeah, well, it also helps you focus.

Speaker 2 1:22:46

It helps you focus on the making those scenes uh relevant and uh impactful and meaningful, that you're not just sensory overload, um, you know being what do I even focus on or what's going on.

Speaker 1 1:22:56

You know you have a one-on-one fight, you know, or whatever you have clever uses of powers here where it's like, um, okay, rogue gets thrown out of the jet, okay, nightcrawler teleports out there, grabs her, throws her back in the jet right. But in a situation like that, wolverine and iceman are kind of like useless. Actually, you know, I don't know, iceman maybe could have repaired the jet with ice okay, I was thinking the exact same thing.

Speaker 2 1:23:17

When, when before, magneto uses his powers to close the hole, iceman could have definitely put up a shield to, like restabilize the air pressure Could he have, though, or would he have just crashed into a big piece of ice and died, you know? What I mean. He didn't know how to do that.

Speaker 1 1:23:31

I don't know, we don't see him really do a lot of ice powers in this movie. He just kind of touches shit and turns it cold or like you know.

Speaker 2 1:23:40

Yeah.

Speaker 1 1:23:42

I mean, maybe he's just learning, which, which is cool, cause they put all the characters in a position Like we've set up that Jean gray is a little wonky, so her powers which are like the best powers you could do Anything, yeah, aren't really working Right, um, so I don't know, man. So it's a terrific movie, it's bad-ass.

Speaker 2 1:23:58

And and if you're going to, this is how you do it, you do it in the most heroic way possible, saving everyone. Saving the day Okay, sound is fine.

Speaker 1 1:24:10

Saving the day they make a spectacle out of it. Everyone's yelling, gee, no, come back. Like it's a huge, huge deal, it's a sacrifice that saves the entire team and it, like it, ends the movie in a way where you're like you know, really feel a gut punch when they start killing everyone. In X-Men three, it's just like they die in an action scene. Oh, I can't believe they died. Crazy, right? Yeah, well, they go out like chumps most of them.

Speaker 2 1:24:39

I mean, they go out. They all go out like chumps. They're not. The ultimate example of going out like a chump is han solo, in force awakens. That's the worst death scene ever for any heroic character, the most worthless, pointless death scene, in my opinion. Standing on the ledge okay killed by the character and fall off.

Speaker 2 1:24:56

That's it and just die and then you don't impact the plot at all with your death, other than to be kind of like an ob1, like catalyst for the other characters yes, for a heroic, iconic character to do that too, uh no, no, thank you, I was done with the movie at that point, but yeah, he should have gone down fighting.

Speaker 1 1:25:12

Yes, not just like let me try to save my kid, saving or saving someone else from his son, or something like that.

Speaker 2 1:25:19

You know? And then have him make, make his son kill him in order to save. I don't remember. Maybe he did just to get the help. The other people get away, but but you know you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 1:25:28

not really stupid.

Speaker 2 1:25:29

It was stupid um, but anyway, so this movie yeah, perfect, perfect movie for me, perfect superhero movie. If we got anything even remotely close to this level of quality for a movie today, I'd be ecstatic.

Speaker 1 1:25:42

Well, and something else that kind of does put X-Men 3 in a bind is that they really do tie up Wolverine's story in this right. Yes, wolverine's a very mysterious character. We don't need to have a prequel movie explaining everything about him. Little flashes of him being experimented on and freaking out with his claws. It's terrific stuff. It's all you need. Keeps it mysterious and enigmatic, right? Yes, but he basically makes his decision. He's like my big albatross across my neck was that I didn't understand who I was and what happened to me. Now I know. Now I know that this adoptive father of mineker, um, I can let him go and I'm gonna go back with my family, which is the x-men, who I've decided to join, not out of my own, you know, um self-interest, but as, like you know, they need me and I'm part of the team now right?

Speaker 2 1:26:27

so then I guess, when you yeah I'm cool that you know.

Speaker 1 1:26:30

When you do get to a part three though, it's like what do you do with wolverine? And they're kind of in a rock and a hard place. He's in a very han solo. Return to the jedi situation where it's like what do you do with him? You know he can't have that edge anymore.

Speaker 2 1:26:43

He shouldn't be warm and cuddly for sure, which you can. You can debate how how much he actually is in this movie, but he's a much more establishment character in x-men 3 which is it's kind of just. It doesn't feel right Him giving kind of motivational speeches and rallying the team and all that. He's not a leader. He's not meant to be a leader. He's there as the renegade he said he'll play, he'll play along well with others, but he's not meant to lead the team.

Speaker 1 1:27:13

Well, if that was what had to happen, that he had to lead the team. I need to see him struggling with that more. Yeah, right, and all we have is like, storm should be leading the team.

Speaker 2 1:27:24

If Cyclops is dead, then storm needs to be in command and he needs to be like respecting her authority and challenging her and and and saying like here's what we need to do.

Speaker 1 1:27:37

You can say I don't agree with that, that's, that's wrong or whatever, and and they can they can have at it, but like this kind of attitude they have with each other is not appropriate well, I mean they try to give him some edge at the beginning of x-men 3, which I guess we'll say with x-men 3. I mean, like they were going to make the movie, brian singer, for whatever reason, didn't want to do it. He wanted to do his superman love letter movie.

Speaker 2 1:27:54

Um, whatever I mean love superman returns, love it, love it, love it.

Speaker 1 1:27:59

I like the first half, but uh, uh, and I think brandon ralph was miscast but like, uh, there's a problem, but it's yeah, he can't carry it. He can't carry a movie, but, um, not as superman anyway, but like you. So everyone packed up and left. James Marsden decided hey, you fucked me on the X-Men 2 script. I was one of the main dudes and you gave me nothing to do. And I might go over here and actually have a part where I get some lines, but like, clearly, I think that even though he did leave, they didn't want him, they didn't nothing, they wanted it to be the Wolverine show.

Speaker 2 1:28:31

They want Wolverine and they want Jean Grey together.

Speaker 1 1:28:34

And Halle Berry was hot. So it's like we increased Halle Berry's role. She can't have a comic book accurate long hair anymore. Give her like a hip hairdo, I guess. Yeah, but hairstyles change.

Speaker 2 1:28:44

It's like Jean Grey's hairstyle changed from one to two to three. You know it's fine. I have no problem with Halle Berry's hairdo in X3. That's like the least.

Speaker 1 1:28:56

That was the thing, something I'd never even that was your least problem, but yeah, but like you have at the beginning of x-men 3, where they do in a danger room scenario, which is a famous thing in the comics they go practice fighting in the danger room and you have wolverine being like a flippant asshole the whole time and just being like this is stupid, like oh, this is dumb and then I'm like then why are you here?

Speaker 1 1:29:12

yeah, do you know what I mean? Like they're trying to reset his character and make him like. It's kind of like iron man too. Oh, we got to make tony, you know, just like he was in the first one, even though he changed. But you know, everyone liked that. So but like he's, and I'm like, why are you here? Then, if this is so stupid and dumb, right, and and then storm gives him a whole rigmarole of like, if you're going to be a leader, you have to actually be a leader, or whatever. They should not be co-leaders. She should be the fucking leader. You know he should have some other subplot thing going on.

Speaker 2 1:29:38

Yes, right, I mean you need to have a wolverine yes, you do need to have a wolverine subplot, just like x2 neatly tied in the striker. The striker thing fit everything right. It fit the general x-men thing. It had ties to x. It had ties to Xavier. It had ties to Magneto, it had ties to Wolverine.

Speaker 2 1:29:56

And you mash it all together and it's perfect. Okay, so X-Men 3, it becomes an issue because they're trying to do too much in one movie. They're doing two movies in one. They're doing the Mutant Cure and they're doing the Dark Phoenix Saga all in one, which is stupid. Why. Why are you doing this? Why do you feel compelled to do the phoenix in this movie, unless you just needed to get? You thought this was the last movie and you needed to get famke jansen back in the movie. So you're like okay, we're going to resurrect her as the phoenix and make her a villain which is dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb. Okay, the mutant cure thing would have been sufficient enough, but you needed another villain. Using Magneto as the villain again makes this movie kind of also unmemorable, in that you should have had either you're going to do the mutant cure or you would have done something like Apocalypse or Mr Sinister and had Magneto on the chessboard with them.

Speaker 1 1:30:52

Yes, I disagree with you. I don't think you can do a character like in this universe of three-story movies. I know they went on to do that kind of stuff with Apocalypse. That was a horrible disaster and stupid. I don't like that movie so bad, why would they make Oscar Isaac dress up in all that goofy shit? It was ridiculous.

Speaker 2 1:31:08

And why did Oscar Isaac have to do it and why was the makeup so bad?

Speaker 1 1:31:12

Right. Why wasn't it like Apocalypse, bad right? Well, I was not a character.

Speaker 2 1:31:14

It looked like ivan who's from power yeah and plus.

Speaker 1 1:31:16

Yeah, it looked ridiculous.

The Failings of X-Men: The Last Stand

Speaker 1 1:31:17

Plus oscar isaac is like five foot four supposed to be like blue yeah, it was a dumb, it was a really bad idea, but like, but you know I would. I am totally fine with them in this series, which is much more of a grounded series, right, not doing a super villain, but do something like. The second one is very much like the events of the second one happened because of the events of the first movie, right, oh, we had our first big mutant blob thing. Now the government's getting really freaked out about mutants calling brian cox, right, it's very much like a therefore kind of thing, whereas this one I don't like the mutant cure subplot because it's just like uh, I don't like that plot, I don't find it very interesting, I don't that's a good plot, but it's not strong enough to carry.

Speaker 2 1:32:00

No, because it's just like, oh, this happened.

Speaker 1 1:32:04

I think what you would have to do you you start the movie out with there being some villain, right, something's happening with some bad guy that can be almost like a striker style thing, and then the Phoenix happens and that's sort of like they convalesce together, Right.

Speaker 2 1:32:23

I, just I have a fundamental problem.

Speaker 1 1:32:24

What would you have done for the third one, your plot?

Speaker 2 1:32:28

I would not have done the cure plot. I would have done what I just said, which was have sinisterocalypse or some other villain I can't think of it off the top of my head, but those are the two big ones that I would use and have them present a problem whereby, yes, again, either Xavier's team and the X-Men and Magneto have to work together to stop this villain, or Magneto teams up with somebody else to cause a threat that they all need to stop, or you just do the Phoenix Saga.

Speaker 1 1:32:58

I agree. I think that's the way to go, but not skip to the Dark Phoenix Saga.

Speaker 2 1:33:03

They never do this in the movie, and then they did it again when they made that horrible Dark Phoenix movie.

Speaker 1 1:33:06

I know, but that's the hook, though. It's like if you just bring back Jean Grey and she's like I'm back and I'm better than ever, baby, when do you go with that? It's gotta be that she turns evil If you made a fourth one you have to do all the cosmic stuff first.

Speaker 2 1:33:20

You have to, you have to earn it right. You have to show what is all this, what is the Phoenix, and they never want to do that. They want to show that the Phoenix is a sub personality, a buried personality of Jean Gray. She's got like a multiple personality disorder or dissociative identity thing and it's her evil persona that's manifested and blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 1 1:33:39

I like that. That's cool and it makes Charles Xavier a little like, but I don't think they handled it well in this movie.

Speaker 2 1:33:47

Jean is a great, wonderful person. She is possessed by this entity, that is, a spiritual, cosmic entity.

Speaker 1 1:33:56

That's too much for people to handle. Dude, you can't be like. This is a space demon that took over it. It's got to be the explanation. They did a good job where they're like she's got a dark part of her psyche. She's so powerful I had to close it off. It would not work. That's dumb. It's like in spider-man 3 when, like the symbiote, first of all, they established that there's a guy in spider-man 3 who's an astronaut, he could have brought it back with him from space, right, but like, instead they just have it like oh, it just landed on Earth.

Speaker 2 1:34:20

Well, no, you have to have the X-Men go into outer space, right next to Spider-Man. You have to have them go into outer space, and then she gets possessed by the Phoenix.

Speaker 1 1:34:29

You cannot do that. And you do all that. This is 2005. You want to do all that shit with the Shi'ar? No, you're not going to fucking do that.

Speaker 2 1:34:35

Yes, I would love it.

Speaker 1 1:34:36

You're not, dude. You're going to do that now if you're Kevin Feige, but you're not going to do that in 2005 when they're thinking about this. You're not going to fucking do that. No, I think that Trembling Colors had a good idea, but you can't call him Mr Sinister and he can't have like a fucking vampire face, like you know what I mean. That's stupid. Mr Sinister is dumb like no, it's not.

Speaker 2 1:35:01

He's not dumb. He's one of the best X-Men villains of all time.

Speaker 1 1:35:04

I get that he's cool, but it's like you tell a regular guy like I'm Mr Sinister, it's like come on, dude no, they did it well in the cartoon.

Speaker 2 1:35:12

They can do it in live action. They have that voice. My name is sinister mister, sinister um, but yes, I agree, you could have had him say that he's making the cure, but it's actually doing something else and and mutating the people even more to make them sinister slaves, or something like that or you do sentinels as the villain and trask. You need a strong central villain, in my opinion, to have these kind of nebulous.

Speaker 1 1:35:40

So I think the right move was to bring Magneto back as the main bad guy. I think that's fine. You can't do I'm the half bad guy twice.

Speaker 2 1:35:49

Well, then don't have him in the movie, then we don't need to have him in every single movie.

Speaker 1 1:35:55

I think you're right.

Speaker 2 1:35:57

That's why I like yeah, and they did a great one with a story with mr sinister where um he kidnaps xavier and magneto, takes them to the savage land and again they have to team up with the x-men and fight them and stop them.

Speaker 1 1:36:12

But like oh, how about hellfire club?

Speaker 2 1:36:13

that'd be a good villain that would be, and they, they did shaw later on and you could have, and then you could do.

Speaker 1 1:36:20

You could do exactly what you wanted to do in this movie is have a bunch of people like you have a bunch of stormtroopers for them to fight, yep, and show off their cool powers. But you have, like, first of all, visually it would be way more exciting to this movie which takes place at, uh, in the forest and then like at a fucking laboratory on a beach, like you know, it's not very exciting visually at all, but but you do the mutant cure thing.

Speaker 2 1:36:43

I I think it is a valid plot to have in the movie because it ties into the the whole idea of the theme mutants and?

Speaker 2 1:36:49

and what does it mean to be a mutant? And is there something wrong with us that needs to be cured? Um, is it going to be forced on the population, or? Um, is it going to be forced on the population or not? Is it going to be voluntary? And I think it's a much more relevant theme in this day and age than it is, uh, 20 years ago, almost at this point yeah, I think that's true uh, covid, issues that we we went through but like about, should people be forced to take a medicine against their will?

Speaker 1 1:37:16

you know or not, but but you know, that's never even a question. Everything is so superficial.

Speaker 2 1:37:21

in this movie they were like oh, that's a cool idea. Mutant cure oh, the dark Phoenix that's a cool idea. Wolverine and Jean Grey together oh yeah yeah, that's real sexy. Let's put that together. You know what?

Speaker 1 1:37:31

would have been sexier. You know, what would have been way sexier Hellfire Club, emma Frost With Jean Grey and a little fucking Emma Frost. Hell, yeah, dude, because here's what you have to do with Emma Frost. You don't kill Cyclops, you introduce. You get a Love Square going oh. Even better Right.

Speaker 2 1:37:50

Okay, if you had done, mr Sinister, you could have had Fke jansen reappear as jean gray. And oh, it's actually the clone.

Speaker 1 1:37:57

it's madeline pryor you cannot have a fucking clone in this shit. Dude, come on, I'm a big hollywood mogul. Here you're the writer coming into my room and I'm saying you cannot have a fucking clone in this.

Speaker 2 1:38:08

Yeah, so you have madeline pryor now in the movie. So there you go.

Speaker 1 1:38:12

We're getting days of our lives level here, yeah, but no, I think that, like first of all, my problem with this movie is that it's ugly and drab yes right.

Speaker 1 1:38:21

Um, there's no visual excitement or style in it. Uh, it looks like everyone's posing for like a entertainment weekly magazine photo shoot. Every time anything happens, it's it's just, it's just boring. I mean, I think about the lighting in x-men 2 when they're in the car racing from boston. It's really a beautifully shot little car sequence, cramped, tight rain coming down like shadowy. There's lights flashing by everybody's face. You don't get a single thing like that in this movie. Everything is just throw a fucking light on them. Let's get this shit done, cgi. Right, it's terrible it's very bad.

Speaker 2 1:38:52

The only good thing about this movie Kelsey Grammer as Beast.

Speaker 1 1:38:57

Love it Done. He's terrific.

Speaker 2 1:38:58

Perfect casting.

Speaker 1 1:39:00

Perfect.

Speaker 2 1:39:00

Amazing Uh makeup effects, A great, great performance Kind of wasted.

Speaker 1 1:39:05

You can tell he's having fun.

Speaker 2 1:39:07

Oh, go ahead.

Speaker 1 1:39:08

You can tell he's having a lot of fun, cause he doesn't normally get to do shit like this. You know what I mean.

Speaker 2 1:39:12

It's great, it's great, it's, it's wonderful. And you were like, oh man, couldn't you have been in a better movie?

Speaker 1 1:39:16

than this and he's always talked about that in interviews like I'd do it again in a heartbeat. I'd do it again and he did he did.

Speaker 2 1:39:23

It's in the post-credit scene for the marvels. Oh, now they're.

Speaker 1 1:39:26

Now they're in, oh what oh, I didn't know that he was in the marvels too yeah, some lame thing.

Speaker 2 1:39:33

We're in the post-redits scenes of the Marvels. Somebody wakes up on an exam table and Kelsey Grammer is there dressed as Beast.

Speaker 1 1:39:41

Really no dude. You know what you could have had with this if the studio was just a little greedier. Make it a two-part movie, be like. The finale for X-Men is just so big it's going to be two parts. We're filming it all at the same time. That was a lot of things all at the time.

Speaker 1 1:39:57

I would do it like Godfather 2 and be like half the movie's going to be. There's going to be a lot of flashbacks to the 60s of Magneto and it's going to inform the story. That way, wolverine's only filming one movie's worth of material spread over two. You do Hellfire.

Speaker 2 1:40:16

Club, you have a little Love Square, you have. I mean, it'd be terrific, It'd be so good. We were still living in a world where three movies was considered. That's it. That was the max three movies.

Speaker 1 1:40:23

Right, who was the first guy to do the? It's going to be part one and two. Was it Harry Potter or Twilight?

Speaker 2 1:40:28

Yeah, I was going to say Harry Potter, harry Potter the finale, and then Twilight did it.

Speaker 1 1:40:39

And then Hunger Games did it, and then Mission Impossible just tried to do it and didn't work out so great. Well, that was such a scam with, like, harry Potter and Twilight, because they're like the book is just so big, there's so much stuff, it's got to be two. You know what I mean. And that's a total lie. I saw those last two fucking Harry Potter movies and it was like nothing happened in the first movie. Right, it was so boring. I've never been a Harry Potter enjoyer, but like, oh yeah, me neither. I don't understand it at all. Oh my God, it was such a shit. Though at the time when it came out I went with a bunch of friends to see part nine, part one or whatever, and like nothing happened in that first movie. And then nothing happened in the second movie. Like yeah, it was a total scam.

Speaker 2 1:41:16

The other thing really, really disappointing about this movie is we alluded to it earlier was the inclusion of characters, just for the sake of inclusion, that make no difference to the story. Beast is actually relevant to the story, is done well and he's the only one that does not fit into this criticism, but every other character is totally worthless. Angel that we mentioned what role does he serve in the movie? Fit into this criticism, but every other character is totally worthless. Angel, who we mentioned what role does he?

Speaker 1 1:41:40

serve in the movie None, nothing, none, nothing at all. You could cut him out of the movie, you wouldn't miss him.

Speaker 2 1:41:43

At least visually, he's interesting and appealing and they have that shot. The shots of him flying around are cool, but that's it. Magneto's henchmen are the absolute worst Abysmal Abysmal characters. They look terrible and they um they basically they were like we want people that can make things come out of their body and shoot for projectiles I mean everybody that is like one of magneto's.

Speaker 1 1:42:09

Hench people are like very gooey sticky powers like oh, I can climb my stuff or agree, grow oh, what's the grossest thing we can come up with? They're all gross. They all look like this is a great comment. The Fast and the Furious movies are doing a three-part finale. The absolute hubris of that meathead. I know, I know, but I'm thinking. Everybody that was Magneto's henchman looks like people in the first three Fast and the Furious movies who are watching the race. Do you know what I mean? They're just homeless bum hot topic.

Speaker 2 1:42:38

Yeah, I was going to say they're not goth, but they're dressed in all this black leather.

Speaker 1 1:42:43

They're all racially ethnic, everyone's Mexican or Chinese. You know what I'm saying. You know what I mean? I was kind of surprised.

Speaker 2 1:42:57

I was like, wow, like, and they're so. Um, you know, if you look back to the first movie, obviously saber tooth, mystique toad, they're not. They're not nice people, they're not. You know. They don't have any redeeming good qualities of them, but you like them. They're cool, they do their job, they're charming. Um, these movies, these, these characters, you're like get out of here, get by, I can't stand you.

Speaker 1 1:43:16

Forky Pine guy, he sucks.

Speaker 2 1:43:18

Yeah, I hate that guy.

Speaker 1 1:43:19

Fuck that guy. And then the shockwave.

Speaker 2 1:43:22

She's so annoying, she's so obnoxious.

Speaker 1 1:43:25

What did they do? Yeah, they're terrible, like yo. What's up, these are our powers. You got a tattoo. Where's your mark, man?

Speaker 2 1:43:37

Horrible, I heard you like that's, yeah, where's your mark? Where's your mark, man, horrible. And then like they do have a guy that created a mutant cure.

Speaker 1 1:43:41

Oh, you know, like, yeah, like and like, okay. Second, like, there's many myriad ways to fix this movie. One of them would be to like make the mutant cure a villainous plot, instead of just like this innocuous thing that it is right?

Speaker 2 1:43:52

well, that's what we were saying about in the comments about having mr sinister devise the cure have it be a villainous plot, right, not just like a conundrum. You know, I mean because it's just kind of like here is actually not a cure. The cure is going to kill the mutants. Basically, how about that?

Speaker 1 1:44:06

how about that?

Speaker 2 1:44:07

and then you can have magneto doing his version of stopping it, which is to, you know, take over the thing and get rid of the people.

Speaker 1 1:44:15

And well you could have it like the government is duped, like they think this is actually a good cure. They don't realize that it's like being spearheaded by evil you know, what I mean.

Speaker 1 1:44:24

Yes, um, but I was gonna say that there's so many ways it's so much easier to talk about a bad movie than it is a good movie, which is why we're poor critics and we're gonna just go off on x3, but, like I think about the opening sequence to establish it, we, we, we really, uh, went out of our way to talk about x1 and x2, all the great things about it.

Speaker 2 1:44:39

We barely criticized it.

Speaker 1 1:44:41

So this is the inner, this is what people have been waiting for, and you can tell they're all like, oh yeah, let's go this is the good stuff rip into x3 but like 64 viewers can we talk about the juggernaut for a second, about how bad that is it's. I don't think he's horrible.

Speaker 2 1:44:57

Why is he Australian?

Speaker 1 1:44:59

Because Matthew Vaughn was going to direct it and he used that guy in all of his shit and he wanted him in the movie. So he was cast before when Vaughn was there as the director. He's not Australian, he's a Cockney English guy. Go ahead.

Speaker 2 1:45:12

Sorry, my apologies. The costume is abysmal yeah, the costume is abysmal the entire, like okay I think it looks hideous okay in my opinion um, his attitude is absurd. And uh, why are you throwing away a great character like the juggernaut? Or how about you were talking about? Who else can you make as a villain for the movie? How about the juggernaut as the villain for the movie, coming back to kill his stepbrother? For all that, that could have been a movie there who's just isn't magneto's brother charles xavier is his stepbrother aha, that would have been a great angle.

Speaker 1 1:45:47

You know what I gotta tell you, dude, that works in comics if you set it up, but when, in the third movie, when you start saying I have a secret brother that gets a little, that's a little much, a little hard to swallow. Brother, I have a secret brother who's evil, he's back.

Speaker 2 1:45:59

You know I get what you're saying I can't stand this is such a nitpicky thing. But sorry, I just. It always bothers me that stop making the juggernaut a mutant. He's not. He's not a mutant his powers are magical, okay, and it's just one of those things that Bryan Singer would have probably made a blip about. Come on, dude, he gets his powers from the magical ruby of Sittarak.

Speaker 1 1:46:25

I remember that from X-Men number 10. He was a Jack Kirby lead creator.

Speaker 2 1:46:30

He's like a treasure hunter.

Speaker 1 1:46:32

He goes and he finds this magical ruby which gives him the powers of the juggernaut I think you've sold people on the idea that the mutants are the thing right the minute you start saying that, okay, also, you can get powers by doing other things. That gets to be a little much for people to swallow. Well, mutant, mutant, mutant, mutant, mutant. That's what you got to stick with mutant they don't have.

Speaker 2 1:46:52

They don't have to have the magical ruby, but they could have just hinted.

Speaker 1 1:46:56

They would have hinted at it are you the guy that's sitting in spider-man 3 and you're like he should have gotten his costume from a tournament of superhero battles with the fight in space, like he shouldn't have got it from meteorite, like uh because, because they and you know not to go off on a tangent but spider-man 3, like you said, why did they not just adapt the animated series version of the alien costume?

Speaker 2 1:47:16

they had everything mapped out for them about how to do the rocket ship crashing, spider-man saving the astronaut you've established the astronaut guy in the second movie.

Speaker 1 1:47:23

You establish that there's an astronaut that they know but that's how you do it is.

Speaker 2 1:47:27

You have the spaceship crash down, spider-man rescues the astronaut.

Speaker 1 1:47:31

He ends up with the, the symbiote um on his suit and that's how he gets it Makes sense, but instead they were just like oh this, instead they were like the suit just lands on earth and just lands right next to Spider-Man. Very convenient, yeah, but I don't get it Exactly. What can you do? What can you do?

Speaker 2 1:47:49

Overall. I mean, I would say, you know, I rewatched x-men, the last stand, I want to say like 10 years ago or so, and when I first saw it for the first time in theater, um, I I didn't, didn't like it. I thought it was. It was unsatisfied, not just because of the characters dying, you know, killing off xavier cyclops, jean gray and on all the stuff we just discussed. I was just like this is a bad movie. And then I watched it like 10 years ago and I was like you know, it's not as bad as I thought it was and I kind of liked it. And then I watched it last night and I'm like, oh man, never again, I'm never watching this. I'm never watching this again, I'm not wasting my time.

Speaker 1 1:48:26

It's bad, I you know, I thought it was fun, I thought it was okay multiple man do anything in the movie that's another problem. There's a good multiplicity guy, or whatever the fuck his name is, and he can multiply himself. All they do with him is he's just a decoy.

Speaker 2 1:48:53

They're like oh, here's all the mutants, and then, and then he gets lets himself get captured yeah, it would be literally impossible to catch multiple guy and yet we have calisto and quill running around taking all the limelight, and they're beyond magneto.

Speaker 1 1:49:07

It just becomes stupid at the end, like I get, everyone was real high on the I lift up the brooklyn bridge and make it into a brit.

Speaker 2 1:49:12

That's kind of cool that was like the centerpiece of the movie. Basically, before the movie was even written, or or or made, somebody said, okay, climax of the movie, magneto's gonna take the golden gate bridge and, uh, move it to albatross figure out a wrong emmerich idea. Yeah, figure out how to make that, make that movie how does that happen?

Speaker 1 1:49:30

the brooklyn bridge market research shows that when you, oh, the golden gate bridge market market research shows that when we have our national monument in it, that gets destroyed. That's huge. I mean, you brought the white house. We sold a whole fucking alien movie on that. Um, you know, I'm saying a statue of liberty underwater, huge roland emmerich, he's hot right now.

Speaker 2 1:49:48

Let's you know what I'm saying I did love magneto ian mckellen's reaction shot when he gets stabbed with the cure at the end of the movie and he's just hamming it up oh man, dude, he's that was the best okay, I don't know I but multiple guys like that should be a guy in a battle at the end.

Speaker 2 1:50:09

That is like awesome, like that looks like perfect, but like he's just like I got captured and we also talked about how how weird it is and you may not know this because you don't follow Star Trek, but so Patrick Stewart dies in this movie as Xavier and at the post credit scene. I don't know if you watched that or saw that, for I remember he gets his consciousness transferred into a another body.

Speaker 2 1:50:32

There's some guy that was like not born with a soul or some weird thing like that. Yeah, in star trek, picard, they do the exact same thing, like 20 years later they're like, uh, let's kill picard, and then we're gonna put him in a like a synthetic body oh, I've watched the red letter media. I was like a dumb. This was a dumb decision to kill picard at the end of the season.

Speaker 1 1:50:57

We can't do any more, so let's put him in a fake body and have like nothing happened well, I was gonna say back, we've had so many hit, so many things like okay, I was gonna say on angel, the opening scene of the movie is very good, you know. I mean it's sort of like a very much like a puberty scare moment.

Speaker 2 1:51:12

It's very relatable you know the first movie about having those opening codas about, um, you know, magneto's origin, rogues origin. Now we have, we have a nice one for angel. It's a, it's a great, yeah, it's a great moment.

Speaker 1 1:51:23

You know it's something that that that brian singer had said is that like obviously um x-men maps on to like sort of gay experience?

Speaker 2 1:51:31

very well, right yes, and x2 hits that home, doesn't overdo it right it's there prominently the bobby scene is like a total. It's like the coming out, yeah, yeah, 100 but like and then.

Speaker 1 1:51:45

But you also have. He had also said, like you know, the appeal is not just to minority groups. It's like every kid, comic book age, blockbuster age, watching reading, kids all feel awkward in some way and like the fact that mutant powers manifest at puberty. I think is maybe it makes sense. X-men has always been a very sexual, biological story, you know. I mean that like, I think appeals on those levels. You've got this kid. I'm locked in the bathroom. Oh, so my body is changing. He's sawing off his angel wings very kind of graphic and scary. The kid is a fucking phenomenal actor, yeah, and then then we set up angel to, uh, do nothing because, because, also it's.

Speaker 2 1:52:23

What does it imply? The dad is coming pounding on the bathroom door saying what are you doing in there? You've been in there an hour are you doing? It's like looking at emma frost comics nothing, nothing, uh, beyond the second, and he's fumbling it's, it's.

Speaker 1 1:52:35

There's a lot of other subtext sort of masturbation, like it's like yeah, do you have the emma frost comics in there with you right now in the bathroom? You know I'm saying like I mean uh, but you know, you know I'm saying and it's like a real great setup. Thematically it fits in perfectly with the x-men story. But then they said that their character is nothing. He like stops by the x-man and is like what's up, doesn't get suited up into a suit, he just is like there and then like saves his dad yeah and we don't even get the scene where the dad is like son, you are great, you know what I mean like you're perfect, just the way you are.

Speaker 1 1:53:04

You don't even get that. He's just gone for the movie. Yeah, it's really terrible, it's really stupid, it's awful. How did this get past this movie?

Speaker 2 1:53:10

is is the only one to actually feature all five of the original x-men, of course, because psych-up dies at the beginning of the movie. We never see them all on screen together at one time satisfying and it's kind of silly.

Speaker 1 1:53:23

What a waste for his character. Like he doesn't die like in a going out in style way, he goes out like a jump in the whole movie. It's like professor x is uh, he's too much of a loser now to be the leader anymore.

The Legacy of the Original Trilogy

Speaker 2 1:53:35

He sucks now and then he dies, you know, I mean it's like horrible I mean, I always get why you want to take xavier out and they do it in the first two movies.

Speaker 1 1:53:43

To and they do the first one, and I don't even know what the hell happened there. He had a stroke. What the hell happened to him in the first?

Speaker 2 1:53:47

one remember mystique infiltrated cerebro and put the poison into the, uh, the liquid or whatever that feeds his cerebro head.

Speaker 1 1:53:56

Okay, all right Okay.

Speaker 2 1:53:57

Incapacitated.

Speaker 1 1:53:59

Okay.

Speaker 2 1:54:00

It totally makes sense about you want to take him out but you don't want to kill him because you want to have him back. But you need to take out the father figure so that the kids can assume you know, can get into their own and save the day that they don't. They don't need him, but you, you do need him. You know what I mean.

Speaker 1 1:54:19

Like I wouldn't have minded seeing a like wolverine stormer, incapacitated and have to do. They're doing something else and and like bobby and colossus and kitty have to step. You know what I'm saying um oh, and kitty pride?

Speaker 2 1:54:30

uh, they do okay, but like it's also, it's also hard because you're putting Colossus and Kitty into the movie, you've not established them really at all and they don't do anything to establish them here further, and so it's kind of like they could.

Speaker 1 1:54:47

They had runway to give Colossus a few more lines. You know, they've got him at the. I mean, he's just an action figure, like give him something to do, you know.

Speaker 2 1:54:55

Kitty is only there to further the minor subplot of rogue. I mean like this is so wait, wait, wait. Rogue's whole thing is she wants the cure, which is fine, but Kitty's only there so that Bobby can flirt with her and ice skate with her. So that robe feels even worse, so that she needs to go and get the cure I hated that.

Speaker 1 1:55:19

Yeah, I hated that. That she had to go get the cure to like get bobby. That sucks and that that's the conclusion to her tortured story is terrible. Oh I gotta. I got medicine. Now I'm good, because that, like is reinforcing the idea that she had the. It's so obvious. It's so obvious what you have to do in this movie. She learns to control her powers and at the end she's able to not kill you but take your powers, and then she becomes super cool, and then she has ice and then she has storm. You know, you know I'm saying what the fuck? That's the obvious thing to do, that she goes. Actually, I controlled my powers. Just like professor xavier said now I'm awesome and now bobby, you and I can be together and we're both dope yes, but xavier taught me some new meditation technique.

Speaker 2 1:56:03

Where I can? I can balance these things out.

Speaker 1 1:56:06

That's the end of her story is that she gets a fucking shot and then she's a normal person. So she could. So she can appeal to her boyfriend. Come on, man, I mean that sucks, you know what I mean I, I agree I agree. Her power in the comics is that she could take people's power, and she never does that what?

Speaker 2 1:56:25

um? Well, she, in this movie she didn't do anything. In x2 she does it a couple times. I mean, at least once she. She takes pyro's power away to stop Right, um, anytime else.

Speaker 1 1:56:38

No, and then my other problem, too, is that we just come up with this uh, oh, we found a kid whose power is he takes your power away, right, and it's like okay, but like rogue is kind of that too, so like, no, you could have had it it's.

Speaker 2 1:56:59

It's different.

Speaker 1 1:56:59

So leech takes away mutant powers entirely like by being, he can take away your power, he diverts it or subverts it or whatever.

Speaker 2 1:57:03

Yes, rogue steals your power.

Speaker 1 1:57:05

It's different but if I'm a script writer I'm saying I don't give a shit comic nerd. We have a character here who can take away your power. If I go ask mom at target and say what's rogue's power, oh, she can take your power away. Boom. So like the villain should have been like kidnapped rogue and used her to make the cures we already did that.

Speaker 2 1:57:26

It's called x-men one where yeah, yeah that trick?

Speaker 1 1:57:32

yes poor rogue. Such a great story in part one and part two with her, and then for her to just be like I'm gone, I'm gonna go get the cure, and then she comes back at the end and is like I have the cure.

Speaker 2 1:57:42

By the way, the ending is terrible, but yeah what I don't understand in the comics and other things is that they've shown, um, there's always been things that they have, like dampening collars or whatever, to take away mutant powers temporarily when they're like imprisoned or whatever. Oh, I broke, just never got one of those.

Speaker 2 1:57:57

And just she could have, you know, intimacy or a relationship with some guy she puts on like a power condom yeah, basically, yeah, they have those in the cartoon, at least they used to have them all the time where, um, they'd be captured by somebody and they put a collar on that deactivates their mutant power I love that though they have.

Speaker 1 1:58:15

they share the little kiss in the second movie and she blows out a little cold air. Yeah, movie did great. You know, appealing to that, that Dawson's Creek crowd, you know as well. I mean it hit everybody. It was like we got bad-ass Wolverine who kicks ass. We've got a little teen romance.

Speaker 2 1:58:39

We who were like the elder statesman of the movie. I mean they did great. And this third one.

Speaker 1 1:58:41

I just, they, just, they just threw it all away and made it the wolverine and rogue show and uh story show, oh, and jean gray too. And then at the end we all get in a line and we go hold this line and like a bunch of guys with no powers show up and get their ass kicked and then like, even though they just had a mutant the whole time, they could just do shockwave and kill everybody. Oh my god, because the blocking. You cannot have a bunch of x-men all together, because it would just be an explosion non-stop. Like I'm watching certain scenes where wolverine's fighting and I'm like where's ice man? Shouldn't he be? Like flying around in the background somewhere?

Speaker 1 1:59:08

but he's just apparently hiding behind a rock until he needs to come out he never did the ice sled correct no no, it just turns he turns into a ice guy oh, it looked hard, it looked terrible and he was like he should have stayed in school yeah but like my, and then obviously gene gray is so powerful and only wolverine can get up to her to stab her and kill her, and he's getting his, his skin ripped off, which you know was, I guess, cool like but also it's like super inconsistent with why.

Speaker 2 1:59:38

Why is she? Uh, what? You know? What is? What are actually the, the limits or what are the parameters by which this phoenix entity, what, what is it? It's her, her dark personality. Why is it manifesting like this? What? Why is it? Why her power set so radically different than everything else? You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 1:59:56

like that was something else that gets introduced in this movie is this why is it? Why are power sets so radically different than everything else? You know what I mean. Like that was something else that gets introduced in this movie is this unwelcome idea of like well, he's a class four mutant, I'm a class two mutant, or whatever. You know what I mean.

Speaker 2 2:00:05

Like that was just like they do have that in the comics. Yeah, they, they call them. It's a little different that they call Omega level mutants, which are like the most powerful ones. Gene is one Iceman is one Franklin Richards. Yeah, Franklin Richards is an Omega-level mutant, but Iceman also.

Speaker 1 2:00:21

Really.

Speaker 2 2:00:22

Yeah.

Speaker 1 2:00:23

Why.

Speaker 2 2:00:24

I believe, so yeah, but anyway, yeah, terrible movie.

Speaker 1 2:00:28

You can solve global warming. Terrible movie. And also one more thing at the end. I'm watching the end and Logan has just been like a total loser throughout the entire movie. You know, every once in a while he gets a good quip, like you know, grow those back when he kicks the guy in the balls, which got a big laugh, as I remember, in the theater.

Speaker 1 2:00:45

But like you had your perfect ending with Wolverine, right, what do you do with him? Well, how they ended is he just is on the mansion. After all this horrible shit has happened. Everyone died. Professor X died, cyclops died, jean gray died, magneto has no powers. Everyone's over. Rogue's got no power. She's done like, and they make it like it's a happy ending. And Wolverine is like standing on the balcony and they just do like a helicopter, pull out of him. And I'm like no dude, no dude. You have your ending for wolverine and it's that everyone's at the mansion hugging and kissing, you know, doing their thing. And wolverine stands at the door and then turns around and walks out like john wayne and the searchers yeah, that's your ending.

Speaker 2 2:01:25

And leaves right but he's a hero, george, you don't understand he. He's a.

Speaker 1 2:01:31

He's a woman fuzzy hero now well, because they end the movie with magneto being like oh, maybe magneto has a little magneto power left and it's like then what the was this whole movie about? It's just a bunch of loud noises for two hours until you know, I mean yes, that's it garbage garbage.

Speaker 2 2:01:51

It's horrible I, you know, I try, I try not to think like that or say things like that because, like you know, it's trash. There's, there's some, there's some redeeming qualities here and there, but I, other than other than kelsey grammar, I don't know what else is redeeming about this movie at this point.

Speaker 1 2:02:05

And he's, he's the best part boring it was boring I was.

Speaker 2 2:02:09

I watched these back to back. I watched these back to back last night. Okay. X2 was like glued to my to my seat, okay absolutely. I can't I can't turn away, I can't look at the phone, can't do anything. I'm like I need to focus on all this, all the details, everything there I'm like amazing.

Speaker 2 2:02:26

Uh, pop in. X-men 3 starts out okay, I'm like, okay, I'm super bored. Uh, talking fight scenes are boring. People are acting out of character. Music is not as good. Just editing poor. Everything is just poor. Everything is just a step down.

Speaker 1 2:02:43

Did Michael Kamen do the score for this one?

Speaker 2 2:02:45

It was really good X-Men 2 being like. Then we dropped down to basement level.

Speaker 1 2:02:51

I was going to say I don't remember much of the theme in X-Men 3 either.

Speaker 2 2:02:55

No.

Speaker 1 2:03:01

They changed the theme in x-men 3 either. No, they do it a lot. They changed the theme in x-men 3, I believe, like it's not the same.

Speaker 2 2:03:04

It's not the same. That theme is really really good it's really good.

Speaker 1 2:03:08

I can't explain it somehow.

Speaker 2 2:03:09

Evocative of the cartoon, but also not different, but different do you, you know what I mean, yep, I remember thinking when I was a kid I'm like, why didn't they just take the cartoon theme song and adapt that? And it's like, but you know what? They came up with something else. It's, it's also stands the test of time. I think it's. I think it's pretty good, I think it stands it stands out. Remember if you heard that, you would know what it is the leitmotif too yeah anything nowadays in a movie? Would you recognize the theme song from most movies?

Speaker 1 2:03:42

no, like what was the avengers? I don't remember, you know what I mean. Like they haven't come up with a good superhero theme and no only wonder woman, that would be the only one.

Speaker 2 2:03:50

And I don't think it's that great, it's just. It is memorable though dark knight, probably the last one but wonder woman's after that, yeah but I don't remember the wonder woman theme no, oh god, you, if you, if you played it you'll, you'll know it's so I remember the captain america, one actually really I don't remember that.

Speaker 1 2:04:06

I think I remember the captain america 70s the captain america 70s isn't that the one from the captain america deaf too soon theme no, I don't not remember what the hell the theme was for that. Was it like? What was it? I don't remember that show.

Speaker 2 2:04:23

Here's a question Would you rather watch Captain America 1979 or X-Men the Last Stand?

Speaker 1 2:04:27

1979 Captain America. Yeah, same, Wait the first one or the second one?

Speaker 2 2:04:33

I don't know, death Too, soon, how about that one? I would rather watch x-men 3 again than the first captain america but the second one, the first one's so good with him describing the neutron bomb on the truck with um. The guy um len is there len burman or whatever.

Speaker 1 2:04:50

yeah, len, yeah, uh, your dad was a real mover and shaker. He shook the tree and got all the bad guys out. Wow, right on.

Speaker 2 2:05:03

So you did not watch X-Men 97, correct?

Speaker 1 2:05:06

I did not no.

Speaker 2 2:05:07

Okay, I only watched the first two episodes. First one didn't do much for me. It was a Sentinels kind of retread, kind of reintroducing everything, and I was like it's fine. The second episode was quite good. I will say that.

Speaker 1 2:05:21

It's like a trial of.

Speaker 2 2:05:22

Magneto story. It's not too preachy, but it's sophisticated enough. Episode three I tried to watch it and I just got super bored and turned it off, so I have no plans to watch. It's sad you just didn't yeah I'm actually interested in.

Speaker 1 2:05:41

I'm trying to go through the old comics because they're all really good. You know what I mean. Like they're great. The art is just unbelievable. It rivals any it. It rivals the a lot of the contemporary stuff that was going on at Marvel at the time and the storylines are much more complex and ongoing and I'm really interested in really hammering in and getting into the comics. I will probably check out the cartoon too, but this whole X-Men renaissance that we've personally had between each other here for the past two weeks or whatever, has been very exciting for me.

Speaker 2 2:06:12

I really enjoyed it. That's great.

Speaker 1 2:06:16

But yeah it it really too bad. I mean, it's just the. The shame is that of x-men 3 is that there was such great setup and all these wonderful characters and so much potential. And then you know, obviously the payoff to everyone is either they die or nothing happened. You know, just like I don't see how professor x's arc should be, that he this gets obliterated and exploded by, by, you know, jean gray, evil Right.

Speaker 2 2:06:37

And you have to wonder did the people not want to do the role for another movie? If, let's say, they decided to make X-Men four? Did Patrick Stewart really not want to make another movie?

Speaker 1 2:06:45

They all came back anyway.

Speaker 2 2:06:47

Well, that was like almost you know they, they, they made the sequel, the sequel, prequel trilogy. They're fine. I just don't feel the same connection to them as I do with these movies.

Speaker 1 2:07:02

I remember thinking First Class was really good.

Speaker 2 2:07:06

It is, but at the same time, I don't like prequel stuff. In general, I'm not super into the idea of knowing, having to know everything about the history of the people in order to understand them. That's why I like the first x-men movie, so much is that you hit us. In the present things are, the x-men team is already established. Now we have wolverine, who's in rogue, who are new to the experience, and we see that we, we learn as they learn about what's going on, and I think that that is sufficient enough to figure things out rather than knowing. How did xavier and magneto meet? Uh, how did they form the x-men? How are the first students? How do they meet cyclops? How do they meet gene? It's like who cares?

Speaker 1 2:07:51

like I, I don't need that I did really enjoy days of future past. I really liked that.

Speaker 2 2:07:56

That's the best one.

Speaker 1 2:07:57

Yeah, I thought that was very, very good. If you were to sit down and watch one, two and three, the Wolverine first class and days of future past, you would come away saying this a pretty decent series of movies, that that hits some pretty high highs. You know what I mean.

Speaker 2 2:08:15

Let's factor in all the movies. I would not. Don't include Deadpool. That doesn't count. Okay, it doesn't count. I'm sorry, and I don't know if you want to include the new mutants on there too or not.

Speaker 1 2:08:26

Oh, I didn't see it.

Speaker 2 2:08:28

It doesn't really count, it's tangential. So if you want to include the three originals, the three prequels and the three Wolverine movies, so it's nine movies, right? Which ones are bad? The Last Stand, x-men Origins, wolverine Horrible. And I wouldn't even say Apocalypse is a bad movie. I think it's. I would I think it's much better than X-Men the Last Stand.

Speaker 1 2:08:55

I would say Apocalypse is bad and Dark Phoenix is bad.

Speaker 2 2:08:58

Oh, I forgot about Dark Phoenix. Oh man.

Speaker 1 2:08:59

See.

Speaker 2 2:09:00

Okay, you know I fell asleep during that one in the theater.

Speaker 1 2:09:03

I could believe it. Yeah, yeah, fell asleep Very terrible the problem I think with so that's 10 movies.

Speaker 2 2:09:09

That's 10 movies.

Comparing to Modern Superhero Films

Speaker 1 2:09:17

How many did we say were bad, bad?

Speaker 2 2:09:18

let's, if you want to include apocalypse. So that's half. Four movies are bad. 60.

Speaker 1 2:09:22

We didn't talk about old man logan, so. But let's say, people love that movie, I don't. I'm okay, that's okay, I didn't blow me away. I know people that think that's just the fucking best movie ever, but you're talking about?

Speaker 2 2:09:29

you're talking about a 60 to 70 percent good to bad ratio here but when they're bad they're really bad, like wolverine origins is a distinct origin wolverine is one of the pieces I've ever seen.

Speaker 1 2:09:41

It's so bad dark. Phoenix is up there. It's one of the worst I remember dark phoenix being like head slap, moronic, like ridiculous. I remember it just being kind of like it went out with a whimper. You know I mean and that was the problem with apocalypse was they were were like okay, we got some juice, we're going again, let's just keep going. When Days of Future Past was really like that was the highest high you could hit.

Speaker 2 2:10:03

That was the watermark yeah.

Speaker 1 2:10:05

You're just diminishing returns after that.

Speaker 2 2:10:10

Well, because they didn't do it right. Right, I mean, they didn't do apocalypse appropriately. It looked goofy, it was kind of all over the place.

Speaker 1 2:10:23

Yeah, he looked. He looked terrible. I cannot believe they made oscar isaac put all that on. Yeah, they could have just hired like clancy brown or something olivia munn is psylocke great in that movie oh right.

Speaker 2 2:10:34

Yeah, one of the most comic, accurate costumes, I think, of all time.

Speaker 1 2:10:39

Let me look that up. I remember her being attractive in it. You know kind of had like a cosplay thing going.

Speaker 2 2:10:45

What year are we talking about? Is that 2016? Yeah, but you know what.

Speaker 1 2:10:47

I hate that because all the nerds were like, oh, you should make her be, she's hot, she should be a good girl. And it's like, yeah, yeah, it's true, comic, accurate, I guess. But like, what did her character do in the movie?

Speaker 2 2:10:58

I don't know, she fought at some point something she just fought at the end yeah, so what yeah, I guess you're right what do you want?

Speaker 1 2:11:05

you know it's just like you have this thing in the x-men, where I look at like a character like psylocke and it's like that is just such a 90s creation of like what is is cool. Hot girls with swords are cool. Make her a mutant. She's got sword powers. You know it's just like stupid. You know what I'm saying? Oh, she can like make her sword be a light up sword, so she's a you know, a mutant.

Speaker 2 2:11:25

now she creates psychic energy weapons. Oh really, that's cool, that's why the things are purple or pink.

Speaker 1 2:11:33

That's very much like a gambit thing. It's like somebody drew a dude throwing a flaming card and they're like that looks sick, like yeah, how about he be an x-man? The thing is if you did gambit you.

Speaker 2 2:11:41

when you do gambit you have to have rogue there too, and rogues too young. In the movie they put her with ice man, so if you wanted to do that you could have had the like a thing with uh, a gambit rogue, kitty and Iceman and have that kind of play all together about. Kitty, kitty and Iceman are now a thing, so rogues off her own. She meets this new guy Gambit's here.

Speaker 1 2:12:03

He's kind of Colossus, is he good?

Speaker 2 2:12:05

or is he not good yeah?

Speaker 1 2:12:07

Yes, yes. Have we beaten up the X-Men enough? Do we think the people got what they wanted? We had 72 people watching this thing right now. That's pretty good. That's pretty good for us. That's huge. That's correct. That's what I'm seeing.

Speaker 2 2:12:22

Well, that's fantastic. In the chat we have our friend, our friend Trembling Colors.

Speaker 1 2:12:28

He's on today. Thanks for tuning in.

Speaker 2 2:12:30

I don't think anyone else has posted anything. I don't know.

Speaker 1 2:12:39

Anything else you want to?

Speaker 2 2:12:40

discuss. That's all I got. Dude, I gotta do some yard work. You, you really should check out the uh the 90s series. It's, it's fantastic, it's. Uh, it adapts. It adapts everything that you would want from the claremont era and puts it in with the roster from the 90s jim lee era. So you have all those wonderful Jim Lee costumes that he redesigned.

Speaker 1 2:13:00

That's the combination you want, right?

Speaker 2 2:13:01

Yes, and so you're taking all of those classic 70s and 80s Claremont concepts and ideas and direct stories and you're adapting them. Yes, you're making them child-friendly and all that, but it's sophisticated enough making them child friendly and all that, but it's it's sophisticated enough. I mean the fact that they did a five-part phoenix saga miniseries and adapted even the most extraneous details into this, into this cartoon. Whereas you're watching this as a kid, you're like why are they doing all this?

Speaker 2 2:13:28

it's like you don't need to do all this and and they, and now you can you look back after you read the comics and you, you know, study it a little bit more and you're like, wow, the people who made this they love this, they love this stuff. And they were like I want to do this that was something we've talked to.

Speaker 1 2:13:42

I talked about before with each other. That was singularly appealing to me about comic book storylines was that you would open up issue 70 or whatever, or watch episode 40 of the cartoon and you could tell there were things that, like, had happened before that you didn't know about, or characters that you're expected to know that show up. And it wasn't daunting. It would just encourage you to be like wow, I really want to figure out what's going on here. Who are these people? Why are they acting this way? You know what's this guy's relationship to this guy? Is this guy bad or good? You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 2 2:14:12

But that that mindset and that mentality has been lost.

Speaker 1 2:14:15

The thought is dumb it down, make sure it's accessible on day one for everybody.

Speaker 2 2:14:20

you know, and I miss that- so people also have this thing that they they need to start at number one. I need to start reading it at the beginning. I need to start watching it at episode one. I don't know. I mean I used to watch Star Trek stuff. I would jump into it in random episodes, like I wasn't watching DS nine from episode one I just jumped in in the middle and I had no idea who the characters were or whatever, and I learned that I watched episodes in reruns later. You know I used to read. You jumped onto Batman and detective comics. They were issue number 600 and something you know, I'm not going to start at detective Comics number one and read on 600 issues before I can buy the new issue.

Speaker 1 2:14:56

That's madness, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 2:14:59

But now people think I got to start at number one. I got to watch it from the beginning and it's like no, you don't Just go.

Speaker 1 2:15:09

X -Men Watch the cartoon.

Speaker 1 2:15:13

Oh, actually I had one more thing for you I wanted to show you here. Okay, I'm sorry, sorry, let's see what we got. Let's see what we got here. Here we go. I want you to check this out. I just want your opinion. Oh, it's not gonna work, I'll just have to have you watch it on your own time. Oh well, I guess it wasn't enough to be, I don't know. It says my video doesn't have a video track. Why would that be? Oh, this is bad radio. I'm sorry, everybody, it would have been great. Maybe we'll watch it some other time.

Speaker 2 2:15:49

Completely disappointed.

Speaker 1 2:15:51

I'm sorry. Well, I guess that's a perfect place to end.

Speaker 2 2:15:55

Okay, well, this was a wonderful discussion.

Speaker 1 2:15:58

I agree, thank you.

Speaker 2 2:16:00

Yeah, no, of course, my pleasure. I'm glad I got you to re-watch some of these movies.

Speaker 1 2:16:05

Yeah, and you know what? I had a great time.

Speaker 2 2:16:07

Yeah, me too.

Speaker 1 2:16:08

All right, it was a good trip down memory lane. Until next time we'll come up with a good, uh we never did that.

Speaker 2 2:16:22

Uh, never did that. Johnny quest and I.

Speaker 1 2:16:23

I bought a bunch of the books too. I got that. Uh, yeah, what I know, I know, you know, you know what I oh, alex, yes, alex, tote book, which is just amazing. But speaking of um going goodbye, I, you know, one of the jokes I forgot about next two is when they flip on the radio and it's backstreet boys, yes, and everyone's like, oh it sucks. Those guys, those poor guys, were getting clowned on right when they came out. Like you know what I mean, like it's a dated joke, but I could see how that would have really played back in the day. So, all right, brother, great talking to you, as always. Thanks for tuning in, guys.

Speaker 2 2:16:48

All right, thanks everybody, see you next.