Wednesday 27 June 2012

STUPID FAT HOBBIT, YOU RUINED IT: Revisiting X-MEN: FIRST CLASS

This piece was originally posted to the now-closed Castle Co-op on January 19, 2012.

I remember seeing Bryan Singer’s X-Men at a preview screening before its wide release in July of 2000. Not only had Australia managed to secure a release of the film one day ahead of the U.S. – generally unheard of at the time – 20th Century Fox had graced us with said preview screening.

The lights went down and I still distinctly remember the film’s brief pre-title sequence taking place in that cinema, despite many home-video watchings since. The commanding voice of Patrick Stewart explaining very basically a leap in genetic evolution occurring in human beings while some fizzy-looking sparkly computer-generated things that I can only assume are meant to be nucleotides begin to move against a frame of dense black.

Films before it had shown comic-book superheroes being taken seriously in a cinematic context, but X-Men kick-started a wave of comic-book-inspired movies that twelve years later has yet to recede, and may only now, with The Dark Knight Rises and The Avengers just around the corner, be breaking after its pinnacle.

It made a shit-tonne of money for 20th Century Fox, making ~$296-million from a $75-million-dollar budget.

So it was surprising then, despite Fox’s reputation as a studio that interferes with the creative aspects of its valuable properties, when the film’s sequel, X2, was better than the first.

I harbour a strong suspicion that this was mainly due to Bryan Singer’s ability to manage the expectations of and justify his creative decisions to the studio, as well as his understanding of and unwillingness to compromise on story.

After X2 made ~$408-million from a $110-million-dollar budget, an X3 was inevitable. The X-Men and Women had proven themselves a powerful franchise that had connected with audiences.

Singer has begun work with X2 screenwriters Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris plotting the story for “X3,” which included among other things, Jean Grey/Phoenix evolving by film’s end into a cosmic being not unlike Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick’s Star Child from the 2001: A Space Odyssey book and film. But Singer chose to leave the production for the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to helm Superman Begins, and took his screenwriters with him.

Michael Vaughan, who would one day direct X-Men: First Class, replaced Singer for a short while, but in a move that could have irreparably damaged his career, chose to leave the film, citing a need to be with his family. Although, he later admitted to The Daily Telegraph that the strict release date imposed by the studio meant he would not be able to make the film he wanted and therefore left rather than be “accused of making a bad X-Men movie.”

So who would step in to be accused of making a bad X-Men movie?

Screenwriters Simon Kinberg and Zak Penn had been hired separately to write a script for the film before Vaughan was even hired and had worked with him for a few months during his time on it. Fox refused to move their strict release date. A director was needed to jump in with two months of prep time remaining on a film that clearly wasn’t working at the script stage and just do the thing.

Enter Mr Brett Ratner.

Recently, with a spark of nostalgia and enticed by an incredibly low price for the Blu-ray Disc, I decided to sit down in the comfort of my lounge room and revisit X-Men: The Last Stand.

Would it still be the steaming shit-pile I had been so offended by in 2006? Would the years have tempered my expectations?

No, it’s still a steaming shit-pile.

I remember my anger at Ratner those nearly six years ago, and although there is a certain lack of heart that can only be attributed to the direction, I wonder now after my re-watch whether X3 could have been a serviceable sequel with Ratner in the chair had the script not been so awful.

The man came along when another director had already abandoned the project because they knew it wasn’t going to work, and with two months before filming, hardly any time at all for a big-budget action movie with all manner of expectations.

So while Ratner is most certainly a giant douchebag – Google it – I’m tempted to give him a pass on The Last Stand now that I’ve found other poor souls at which to aim my scorn.

X-Men: The Last Stand is a mess of poorly-constructed narrative, laziness, contrivance, and disrespect to the characters.

Professor Xavier, with Wolverine and Storm having found Jean Grey at Alkali Lake, recites to Logan in a scene of utterly heartless and lazy exposition that Jean Grey had two personalities as a child, that he actively suppressed that personality, it’s way bad, and now god help them all.

XAVIER
(...)
Logan, listen to me. I know I’ve always seemed like I was the moral backbone of these films, but you see, when I first met Jean, I decided to completely suppress an aspect of her personality.

LOGAN
(just angry, not at all shocked by
Xavier’s out-of-character behaviour)
But aren’t you always trying to help mutants understand and control their powers? Even if it’s as dangerous as you are stating matter-of-factly and without emotion, why would you--

XAVIER
(...)
Dammit, Logan, don’t you see! M*A*S*H was on -- that was an amazing show -- and I was like, I don’t have hours of my life to dedicate to helping this girl!
(beat)
And see, now we don’t have to spend an entire act of this movie earning her full transformation into the Phoenix!

LOGAN
(still just angry)
But taking the time to earn that transformation will allow the audience to invest in--

XAVIER
(...)
Logan, please, we have to get on with it. We’ve been told to keep the running time to a solid 100 minutes to allow more sessions during the day, and that means more money!

LOGAN
I hope you die in, like, ten minutes from now.

Rogue, spurred by Bobby’s affection for Kitty Pryde, takes the cure in order to give him the sexytimes he’s so clearly after. It would be a shame if the primary thematic element of the X-Men stories was acceptance and even empowerment, wouldn’t it? If that was the case, Rogue taking the cure would be random and infuriating to an audience that has gotten to know the world of the X-Men through her point-of-view since the first film.

And so on.

Kinberg and Penn, with years to work, couldn’t see their script’s most glaring problems, and showed disregard for characters and themes they, as self-described X-Men geeks, supposedly cherish.

So just for fun, let’s look at their track record:

Kinberg has written XXX: State of the Union, Mr and Mrs Smith, Jumper and Sherlock Holmes (2009).

Penn has written, among other things, Inspector Gadget, Behind Enemy Lines, and, swear to god, Elektra.

Writers like Kinberg and Penn have their place in the movie industry. The movies they write, they make money. But when you have an established franchise that has enjoyed both critical and monetary success, why do you hire them? Why risk turning the fanbase away?

When you’re 20th Century Fox, and you want control. ‘Cause you love the money you’re making, but you don’t trust or understand what this X-Men thing really is, but these guys seem like fans, so surely they’ll just give the other fans what they want in between us telling them to change that thing we don’t like about it.

The franchise is seeing a bit of resurgence with X-Men: First Class, produced by the returning Bryan Singer and directed under strict time restraint, funnily enough, by Matthew Vaughan, telling the story of how the X-Men came to be in the 60’s. But I for one would appreciate a fine continuation of the original films. A retcon might not be out of order either.

In parting, I’ve decided to scare you a little.

Zak Penn wrote The Avengers.

...

It’s okay, Joss Whedon re-wrote it.

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