![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
omg, I love summer. Screw sunny days and the lack of needing a coat; it's finally worth going to the movies again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I love a good winter Oscar Bait film, but especially now that I can't see a movie in the theatres for less than $11, I'm back to using the rules for going to see movies that I had in high school: seeing it on the big screen has to really add something to the viewing experience (I also have a college-age addendum: if Johnny Depp is in it, it's worth the price of admission, even if shit isn't blowing up).
So that means I'm mostly seeing "popcorn" flicks now - because seeing Wolverine take out a helicopter (it's in the trailer, so it's not a spoiler) just wouldn't be the same in my living room. And since those don't tend to be released after Labor Day, I've been starving for some quality films. With the release of the explosion-tastic X-Men Origins: Wolverine, it's time to start watching movies again :-)
I'm weird about comic book movies: I've read about three comic books in my entire life, but I love these super hero movies (I was going to make that four comic books today, since it was Free Comic Book day, but at 9:30 the line at the store I was going to was half a block long and the store hadn't even opened yet. I have too much shit to do on weekends to wait in line with 16 year old boys). So I really know next to nothing about the comic version of Wolverine - everything I know I've gleaned from the first three movies, distant memories of the 90s cartoon, and talking to the comic geeks I've seen the movies with. For example, I knew that Wolverine originally had bone claws because I saw the first X-Men movie with my cousin who probably learned to read by flipping through X-Men comics and he told me about it.
So I knew that Wolverine is pretty old, got an Adamantium skeleton at some point, and also lost his memory. So long as the movie hit those points, I wasn't going to know if they got anything else right or wrong. And they succeeded, so...good job, movie.
Everything in between those important bits I was 95% fine with. Billy and I can't agree on whether Sabretooth is a ret-con or if after the end of this movie he just goes feral so he ends up like how we saw him in the first X-Men (my vote is for ret-con). The special effects were a little off in several places (explosions were fine, but whenever they did green screen work it stuck out like a sore thumb), but otherwise okay. Gambit didn't feel like he totally fit into the story (I think he would have worked better as a cameo) and I'm pretty sure the Gambit in the cartoons when I was a kid couldn't run up walls, with or without a cane.
Is this the best super hero/comic book movie ever? Not by a long shot (Iron Man and Spiderman 2 are at the top of my list). But I had fun. Not to mention, this movie is constricted a bit because it's a prequel to a recent set of movies - movies that are recent enough to have kickstarted our superhero movie obsession, but old enough that the genre has gone through some fundamental changes (see: Dark Knight). So this movie is pretty much incapable of going deep like Batman, Spiderman and even Iron Man do - because the first X-Men movie set a much lighter tone for the franchise that the sequels have to stick to if they want to feel like they're actually connected.
But here might be my biggest quibble: WHAT THE FUCK DID THEY DO TO PATRICK STEWART?!?!?!?! I can't figure out if they did a TERRIBLE job on his makeup or a TERRIBLE job at creating a CGI rendering of him. Not to mention his scene is a prime example of the terrible greenscreen work they did: it looked like the filmed the escaping mutants one day, Patrick Stewart another, the helicopter on a third day, and then at some point grabbed the forest background. YOU ARE BETTER THAN THIS. If they plan on using the same effect on Ian McKellan as they did on Patrick Stewart for the proposed Magneto origins film, please please PLEASE don't do it, Marvel, because I think I would scratch out my eyes before watching two hours of that.
Aside from the sloppy CGI work, I really did enjoy the film. I felt it was perhaps weighted a little heavily in the recent past (since Logan's history from 1845 through the Vietnam war was covered in the credit sequence I never really got a feel for just how fucking old he has to feel, and how much he has lived through), but it was still a solidly entertaining story.
Also? Hugh Jackman is fucking hot. My list of men who I am attracted to may have just increased to three. Apparently I like brunette men who often look at least slightly disheveled.
I love a good winter Oscar Bait film, but especially now that I can't see a movie in the theatres for less than $11, I'm back to using the rules for going to see movies that I had in high school: seeing it on the big screen has to really add something to the viewing experience (I also have a college-age addendum: if Johnny Depp is in it, it's worth the price of admission, even if shit isn't blowing up).
So that means I'm mostly seeing "popcorn" flicks now - because seeing Wolverine take out a helicopter (it's in the trailer, so it's not a spoiler) just wouldn't be the same in my living room. And since those don't tend to be released after Labor Day, I've been starving for some quality films. With the release of the explosion-tastic X-Men Origins: Wolverine, it's time to start watching movies again :-)
I'm weird about comic book movies: I've read about three comic books in my entire life, but I love these super hero movies (I was going to make that four comic books today, since it was Free Comic Book day, but at 9:30 the line at the store I was going to was half a block long and the store hadn't even opened yet. I have too much shit to do on weekends to wait in line with 16 year old boys). So I really know next to nothing about the comic version of Wolverine - everything I know I've gleaned from the first three movies, distant memories of the 90s cartoon, and talking to the comic geeks I've seen the movies with. For example, I knew that Wolverine originally had bone claws because I saw the first X-Men movie with my cousin who probably learned to read by flipping through X-Men comics and he told me about it.
So I knew that Wolverine is pretty old, got an Adamantium skeleton at some point, and also lost his memory. So long as the movie hit those points, I wasn't going to know if they got anything else right or wrong. And they succeeded, so...good job, movie.
Everything in between those important bits I was 95% fine with. Billy and I can't agree on whether Sabretooth is a ret-con or if after the end of this movie he just goes feral so he ends up like how we saw him in the first X-Men (my vote is for ret-con). The special effects were a little off in several places (explosions were fine, but whenever they did green screen work it stuck out like a sore thumb), but otherwise okay. Gambit didn't feel like he totally fit into the story (I think he would have worked better as a cameo) and I'm pretty sure the Gambit in the cartoons when I was a kid couldn't run up walls, with or without a cane.
Is this the best super hero/comic book movie ever? Not by a long shot (Iron Man and Spiderman 2 are at the top of my list). But I had fun. Not to mention, this movie is constricted a bit because it's a prequel to a recent set of movies - movies that are recent enough to have kickstarted our superhero movie obsession, but old enough that the genre has gone through some fundamental changes (see: Dark Knight). So this movie is pretty much incapable of going deep like Batman, Spiderman and even Iron Man do - because the first X-Men movie set a much lighter tone for the franchise that the sequels have to stick to if they want to feel like they're actually connected.
But here might be my biggest quibble: WHAT THE FUCK DID THEY DO TO PATRICK STEWART?!?!?!?! I can't figure out if they did a TERRIBLE job on his makeup or a TERRIBLE job at creating a CGI rendering of him. Not to mention his scene is a prime example of the terrible greenscreen work they did: it looked like the filmed the escaping mutants one day, Patrick Stewart another, the helicopter on a third day, and then at some point grabbed the forest background. YOU ARE BETTER THAN THIS. If they plan on using the same effect on Ian McKellan as they did on Patrick Stewart for the proposed Magneto origins film, please please PLEASE don't do it, Marvel, because I think I would scratch out my eyes before watching two hours of that.
Aside from the sloppy CGI work, I really did enjoy the film. I felt it was perhaps weighted a little heavily in the recent past (since Logan's history from 1845 through the Vietnam war was covered in the credit sequence I never really got a feel for just how fucking old he has to feel, and how much he has lived through), but it was still a solidly entertaining story.
Also? Hugh Jackman is fucking hot. My list of men who I am attracted to may have just increased to three. Apparently I like brunette men who often look at least slightly disheveled.