Director: Bryan Singer
Cast: Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Anna Paquin, Halle Berry, Famke Janssen, Rebecca Romijn, James Marsden, Shawn Ashmore
Released: July 14, 2000
X2: X-Men United
Director: Bryan Singer
Cast: Same people plus Brian Cox and Alan Cumming
Released: May 2, 2003
Viewed in theaters: May 26, 2003
X-Men 3: The Last Stand
Director: Brett Ratner
Cast: Same people plus Ellen Page and Kelsey Grammar
Released: May 26, 2006
My knowledge of comic book lore hovers around "none" and "barely any" so please forgive me if it seems like I may not know what I'm talking about, because, chances are, I don't! After all, I thought Thor was created for Adventure in Baby-Sitting and didn't realize he was actually from a real comic until a few months before the movie was released in 2011. I'm not kidding; that's a true story.
When I saw first saw these movies, I enjoyed them for the most part, but after re-watching them recently, they didn't hold up that well, but honestly I think that's because they suck in comparison to First Class and Days of Future Past, the films' prequels. Wait, are those prequels or reboots? See, I really have no idea!
The X-Men are called mutants and they all have some kind of power. There are differing levels of powers as some are pretty impressive and others, not so much. There was one young boy in the second movie who could change the channel on the TV by blinking his eyes. Ooh, big deal! Sure, I suppose it would be convenient if you've lost your remote and perhaps there's more to his power, but they didn't show it. Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) runs a school for young mutants (and there are other grown up mutants who teach classes...it's just like Hogwarts!) and he must be a bit of an ego maniac because the X-Men are obviously named after him and he has X's on his wheelchair's, uh, wheels and there's a big X on the vault that leads to Cerebro which is this huge room with a bottomless pit where he can track any mutant at any time...IDK....just go with me! But he seems like a pretty humble and down to earth guy for having a bunch of his initials everywhere. Besides being able to find any mutant, he can also read and control minds.
The first movie focuses mostly on Logan aka Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) and Rogue (Anna Paquin). Rogue is from Mississippi and has run away to Alaska because whenever she touches people she ends up hurting them. She hitchhikes a ride from Logan. They are ambushed by bad mutants, but are saved by Xavier's crew of Storm (Halle Berry) and Scott aka Cyclops (James Marsden). They bring them back to the school where Jean Grey (Famke Jannssen) does a medical exam on Logan. Apparently he doesn't age so he may be even older than Xavier! She even says this to Xavier's face and I'm thinking, Wow, that's really rude to imply your boss is really old! Besides having retractable claws, Wolverine's power is that he can heal. Rogue's other power besides being unable to have sex is that she absorbs other mutants' powers. For instance, she sees Logan is having a nightmare and goes over to wake him. Um, if someone has five inch long sharp nails, DON'T startle them! Because this is exactly what happens and Wolverine drives his claws into her stomach, but after she touches him, she absorbs his powers and heals herself.
Storm's power is that she can manipulate the weather, which, I won't lie, I wouldn't mind having that power! If I did, everyday would be a nice and balmy 72 degrees and it would only snow at Christmas and maybe a nice thunderstorm every now and then. In the first movie, a pre-Oscar winner Halle Berry barely has any lines or scenes. But perhaps this is a good thing because she has the weirdest accent...I heard it was suppose to be South African? And she has possibly what is being touted as the worst line in cinematic history: "You know what happens to a toad when it gets struck by lighting?" (Strikes a bad mutant with toad-like qualities with lightning and he get electrocuted). "The same thing as everything else." So. Stupid! By the second movie she has miraculously (and thankfully!) lost her accent (and Berry is by then an Oscar winner) and gets to fly the cool jet and by the third movie she is rocking a cute shag cut and is doing twirls in the air to simulate tornados and has a lot more scenes thanks to other people getting killed off!Scott and Jean are a couple and they are so boring together. Scott's power is that he has laser eyes. He has to wear these tacky sunglasses that make him stand out in public (but I suppose there are mutants who are worse off in the ways they stand out!) otherwise his laser eyes will destroy anything in front of him. Like Professor X, Jean can read minds, but her true powers and what she is really capable of is not revealed until the third movie. She can also move objects with her mind. Logan has the hots for her but she tells him, "I love Scott and his dorky eyewear!" Did nobody tell her that Wolverine is the star of these movies and Cyclops barely has anything to do in any of the movies?
Professor X's archenemies is Magneto aka Gandalf (just kidding! He's played by Ian McKellen). Magneto can control stuff made out of metal which comes in quite handy for him. He has other mutants working for him, including the "toad" that Storm fries, but his second in command is Mystique (played by a very brave Rebecca Romijn who wears body paint...but she has the physique to pull it off! (Heh, Mystique has the physique!)) While most mutants are lucky enough to blend in with other normal human beings, Mystique sticks out quite a bit because she has bright red hair and blue skin and doesn't wear clothes. However, she has what I consider has to be the most impressive ability: she is a shapeshifter so she can transfer into anybody and mimic their voice and attributes. This come in very handy for a villain who is trying to fool the good guys...and they do get fooled. There is a scene in the first movie where she is fighting Wolverine....as Wolverine. I don't know about you, but if I were an X-(wo)man, I would want to be Mystique. I wouldn't be crazy about the blue skin, but who cares if you can look like anybody. I would disguise myself as Julia Roberts and go shopping on Rodeo Drive and get free champagne and clothes! Mystique only disguises herself as other people (mostly men) when she's trying to fool her adversaries. There's a scene in the second movie where Romijn looks like herself when Mystique is seducing a man to get something.In the first movie, Rogue runs away when Bobby, the boy she has a crush on (Shawn Ashmore), tells her that nobody likes her because she just makes things worse and it would be best if she just left. Of course, it wasn't really Bobby who told her this, but Mystique disguised as Bobby. So she runs away and Magneto kidnaps her and Wolverine and the others have to save her. They also have to deal with a senator who wants to enable an act where a mutant would have to reveal their abilities and the fact that they are mutants. I would not want to live in a world with mutants! You could have somebody breaking into your place just by walking through your walls or somebody could mind control you or Mystique could try to pretend to be someone you know to mess with you.
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| The cold never bothered him anyway! |
There's a scene where a cat startles Wolverine and when the cat meowed, my cat was looking at the screen in confusion. There's a lot of dicing and slicing in this movie with Wolverine taking out the claws (literally!). Alan Cumming plays Nightcrawler, a mutant who is manipulated into killing the POTUS, but doesn't. He can teleport anywhere which is very helpful when he and the other X-Men are in a jet but when it is shot down and crashing to the ground (before Magneto stops it by holding it up), Rogue, who doesn't have her seatbelt on, flies out of the plane when the back half rips open and Nightcrawler is able to teleport to her and bring her back.
The movie ends with Jean Grey sacrificing herself so the others can escape a massive flood (they were near a dam) and builds a wall to shield the water from them. Everyone is really sad she's dead especially Scott and Logan because they both loved her.
But wait! She isn't dead! As we will find out in the third movie! Scott asks her how this happens to which she replies, "I don't know." Yeah, that's the movie's way of being lazy and they just needed to find a way to bring Jean back but they can't think of a way to explain it! Scott is killed off immediately by Jean's now superstrong powers, mostly because James Marsden had a scheduling conflict. Patrick Stewart must also have had scheduling conflicts because Professor X is killed off by Jean who is now known as the Phoenix and has joined forces with Magneto. Oh, and Rebecca Romijn also must have had other plans because she is only in a few scenes at the beginning. While trying to protect Magneto from being shot with a vaccine that makes mutants into regular humans, she gets it instead and becomes a normal (but pretty hot - so good for her!) woman. Magneto has no more need for her as she is just a civilian. I thought he was going to kill her, but he doesn't.
Magneto wants to stop this vaccine from getting out. Meanwhile, Rogue, who is still a couple with Bobby, but is getting jealous of his friendship with Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page), the mutant who can run through walls, decides to get the vaccine so she can have sex with her boyfriend. I understand that this is what she wants and it must be difficult to not be able to touch people at all, but the fact that she's doing this for a boy is so stupid. The vaccine is actually taken from a young mutant who takes away other mutants' powers....he ends up coming back to the mutant school founded by Professor X, so how Storm and the other grown up mutant teachers can teach, I have no idea. I guess they will have to keep Leech (the young boy) locked up in a padded room. But if Rogue and Bobby wanted to get it on, they could just have him sit with his back turned! She didn't need to get rid of her powers. And now that she did, does that mean she can't attend the school anymore?
I was so confused because, from what I could tell, the third movie takes place perhaps only a few months after the second one ended. Kitty Pryde is in the second movie, but she is played by a different actress....one that looks like she is no more than seven or eight years old. In the third movie, she is a teenager. Uh....? I thought it was weird that if she touched people, objects could go through her and through that person. For instance, she and the other students were doing a simulation where they had to fight giant robots and meteors and things like that and she sees a flaming rock hurtling towards Bobby so she grabs him and it goes through her and him. I have no idea how this is possible...why would his body be able to enable the rock to go through it? But maybe since it was a simulation, the rock was just a hallucination? I am so confused! But there's a scene where she and Bobby jump off a roof and they go through the ground because she's holding on to him. So by this logic does that mean if Mystique touches somebody, they also have the ability to transfer into anybody? Kitty Pryde has to use her ability to get to Leech before the big dude that can also walk through walls, but he has to knock them down first before he can walk through them!Of course we have a duel between Pyro and Iceman, fire v. ice. I'm pretty sure fire always trumps ice, but in this scenario, Iceman defeats Pyro.
There's this scene where Magneto needs to get to Alcatraz because that's where Leech is kept, so instead of summoning a boat, he moves the Golden Gate Bridge. Sure, it's a cool scene, but it just seems like so much work when going over on a boat would be a lot easier!
Oh, and one more thing....does this mean that these movies never happened since they went (back!) to the future in Days of Future Past, but I don't know exactly when in the future the young Charles Xavier went to see his other self (I guess it was before the third movie since he died in that one)....Oh, God, I'm confusing myself now! I need a timeline....someone get me a timeline for these movies, stat! I am so confused!!
I want to know how many fanboys out there have cats named Kitty Pryde!
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