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Dark Phoenix
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From best to worst. In the second part of this double-feature, Greg Dunn is back to discuss the last of Fox's main X-Men films—2019's Dark Phoenix. They discuss the issues with the FoX-Men films and why both attempts at adapting The Dark Phoenix Saga were such spectacular failures.
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Transcript
Why are adults not reading books?
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey, fellow superhero cenophiles. Did you know that almost 30% of adults say they haven't read a book in the past year? Primary reason why is a lack of time.
How can Audible fill the superhero content gap?
00:00:08
Speaker
Well, Audible's here to help with the gift of found time. Thanks to Audible, you can listen to audiobooks like Marvel Comics, The Untold Story, or Slugfest inside the epic 50-year battle between Marvel and DC.
00:00:19
Speaker
Read up on the history of superheroes in comics and movies with Grant Morrison's Supergods. You can also check out Vanguard, my original superhero novel series, or try The Vrilagenda or The Adventures of Fortune McCall, both of which were written by our duly departed host emeritus, Derek Ferguson.
00:00:35
Speaker
Whatever you're looking for, Audible has thousands of titles that you can consume while commuting, exercising, cooking, or just relaxing at home. And not only audiobooks, an Audible membership also gives you access to tons of content like podcasts, theatrical performances, and exclusive Audible originals that you won't find anywhere else.
What benefits come with an Audible membership?
00:00:52
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To give you a taste of what you can get, Audible is partnered with this show to provide listeners with a free 30-day trial.
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All you have to do is go to audibletrial.com slash SuperCinemapod and with your free trial you get one free audiobook and two free Audible Originals. In fact, you get to keep those titles even if you cancel before the trial is over. So what are you waiting for? Head on over to audibletrial.com slash SuperCinemapod and start your free trial today.
The cosmic force and Jean's evolution
00:01:35
Speaker
This is what you wanted to show me? No. This is what I want to show you. What entered you in space was not a solar flare.
00:02:04
Speaker
And it was not an accident. It was drawn to you. What was it? A pure and unimaginably powerful cosmic force. We saw it enter you in space. We were there, Jean. Following that force. Why? Because it's the spark that gave life to the universe. And the flame that consumed my world.
00:02:37
Speaker
What remains of my people searched the stars for that power, to control it. But it destroyed everything it ever came into contact with. Until you. Why me? Because you're stronger than you know. Because you're special, Jean.
00:03:02
Speaker
With my help, you could control what's inside you. Harness that power to create whole new worlds. Turn dust into water. Water into life. It's your destiny, Jean, to become something greater. To evolve into the greatest force in the galaxy.
Introduction to Superhero Cinephiles podcast
00:03:42
Speaker
understand you and what they don't understand they fear and what they fear they seek to destroy.
What went wrong with the 2019 X-Men Dark Phoenix movie?
00:03:55
Speaker
Welcome to the Superhero Cinephiles podcast. I'm your host Perry Constantine and uh here with uh part two of our our Dark Phoenix episode and with that in mind I'm welcoming back Greg Dunn. Greg how you doing? Not bad Perry thanks for having me back.
00:04:11
Speaker
Yeah, so for everybody else, it's been about a week or two. For us, it's only been about five minutes. So not really much more to talk about in regards to greetings and whatnot. But today, we're going to jump right into talking about the 2019 X-Men Dark Phoenix movie, which was Fox's second attempt at doing a live action adaptation of the Dark Phoenix saga.
00:04:39
Speaker
I've got some thoughts on this one. I can feel your thoughts like emanating as an aura around you. I just feel like they're boiling and bubbling out and you're probably like most people.
00:04:55
Speaker
Well, because here's the thing, with this show, I try to, and ever since, you know, back when Derek was still on the show as well, one of the things that we always try to do is we try to focus on the things we like, right? We don't wanna sit here and just rant for an hour about things we don't like because, you know, that's no fun for anybody. We wanna focus on the things that we actually enjoy. So even with movies that I don't like, I try to find something good to say about them.
00:05:26
Speaker
I honestly cannot find a lot of good to say about this movie. That's okay. I will do my best to be your counterpoint. I have some issues with this movie too, but I'll admit right off the bat,
00:05:44
Speaker
that I know a lot of super die-hard X-Men fans or people who grew up with the comics have issues with the Fox movie franchise and I do too if I really think about it but there's something that happens to me when I watch these movies where in the moment I just ride the wave and I'm like,
00:06:11
Speaker
Holy crap, I'm seeing these characters adapted live on screen and they're moving and it looks as real as it's going to look. I'll admit afterwards, when I first see a movie and I start breaking it down or I'm thinking about it, I'm thinking about it.
00:06:33
Speaker
as I'm driving home after I've left the theater, I'm like, wait, that was terrible. Hold on, this thing didn't work and that kind of thing. So, you know, feel free to just hear this movie a new one and I'll try to be your counterpoint. No, because I'm glad you mentioned that. Because I'm not a purist about these movies, right? As much of a diehard X-Men fan I am, I'm not one of these people who
00:06:57
Speaker
Who's like jeans hair is not the right shade of red or anything like that ridiculous. I don't mind the leather costumes. I don't mind, you know, changing things up as much as they did, you know, some of the changes seem kind of ridiculous but it's not stuff that's a deal breaker for me. And, you know, I, I enjoy the first movie for what it is. I love x two.
00:07:20
Speaker
I love Logan. The Deadpool movies are amazing. Days of Future Pass, I enjoy a lot. First Class, I like half of it. And the other half, I'm, you know, and The Last Stand and, you know, X-Men, The Wolverine, I love The Wolverine. I've got a soft spot for that because I live in Japan. So it's really cool seeing a superhero movie set in Japan.
00:07:45
Speaker
But the other ones like X-Men Origins, even X-Men Origins, like I know everybody hated Gambit in that. I didn't have a problem with him. I had other problems with that movie beyond him. And then when you get to like Last Stand, there are things I like about the Last Stand. There's a lot I don't like. Apocalypse I didn't like.
00:08:06
Speaker
And this movie, I just absolutely hated.
How did production issues impact Dark Phoenix?
00:08:10
Speaker
So yeah, so in general, I do enjoy more of the movies than I don't. And I don't get to be, I'm not a purist about them, but this movie, it just failed on every single level possible for me. But before we jump into that,
00:08:32
Speaker
Let's talk a little bit about the history of this because this had gone through some, some interesting changes, because this happened around the time that Fox was in the process of buying out Disney originally Bryan Singer was supposed to direct this but then he
00:08:51
Speaker
and then he got fired basically because of his, well at first, I'm not sure if it was exact, I think, I'm not sure if it was exactly because of his sexual misconduct or if that came later, but I know that's eventually why he got removed completely as a producer, but originally I think he was supposed to direct eventually, I think maybe it was because of Bohemian Rhapsody at the same time that he ended up being replaced by Simon Kinberg.
Impact of Disney's buyout on Dark Phoenix
00:09:15
Speaker
Well, if I remember right,
00:09:19
Speaker
He was halfway done shooting Bohemian Rhapsody and then the sexual assault stuff came out. Okay. Full force. And then they pulled him and they had somebody else basically finished the movie, even though it was like two thirds of the way shot. Right. I think I'm remembering it right, but I feel like that's what happened.
00:09:45
Speaker
Yeah, go ahead. No, go ahead. Keep going. Oh, no. Yeah. There was the Bryan Singer stuff.
00:09:53
Speaker
and the buyout, the Disney buyout, right? Right. Yeah. That happened in the middle. I think it happened during post-production, if I'm not mistaken, because the original plan
Casting and character portrayal critique
00:10:03
Speaker
was this was actually going to be two movies. It was going to be the first movie was basically like the Phoenix Saga part of it. And then the second part was going to be the Dark Phoenix Saga. I remember Chris Claremont had had and was involved in the production in some way. And he had mentioned this. And he was like he was like involved in a consulting role. He also had a cameo when Xavier accepts the medal.
00:10:23
Speaker
at the beginning of the movie. He's in the audience. So he had some involvement in it. He had some consulting stuff in it. But yeah, at some point, all right, I've got the development stuff here, so. Yeah, I must have missed the Claremont cameo in the middle scene. Yeah, it was like a blink and you miss it type of thing. Oh, yeah. Because I feel like his last cameo
00:10:50
Speaker
Um, there was cameo in days of future past. It was a lot more know the sport. Doesn't he have a line in, in the, cause with, um, with the trash scene with the, like the Senate or the congressional committee, I feel like they gave Claremont a line. Maybe they didn't. I don't remember that. Um, wait, was that, was that maybe that was Claremont. Uh, I know he also had a cameo in the last stand. He was the neighbor who's, um,
00:11:17
Speaker
mowing lawnmower gets loaded, starts floating. Yeah. So I'm trying to look. Yeah, so he was removed completely. Yeah, Singer was removed completely following the sexual misconduct allegations. And
00:11:39
Speaker
Now,
Are period settings necessary in X-Men films?
00:11:40
Speaker
one of the things I, so that was one of the things that threw it off. And then the, originally they wanted to use scrolls in this for some reason instead of the debari, which is another thing that seems very, a really weird choice. I don't, because aside from the one representative of the scroll empire in the fight with the imperial guard, the scrolls don't make any sense in this movie at all. It just kind of felt like Fox wanted to use the scrolls because they had them.
00:12:08
Speaker
I that's got to be it. Right. I mean, it must be a rights thing to where they, they would have had the rights to the scrolls via the connection to the Fantastic Four. Yeah. But, but
00:12:24
Speaker
other than, I mean, maybe they thought the Imperial Garden, the Shi'ar was just too out there. I mean, or, you know, and they can get away with scrolls because the scrolls could then just like shapeshift into, you know, kind of do what they did with the Dabari and
00:12:41
Speaker
They just, you know, have them in regular costumes. Yeah, yeah. And, which
Is Magneto's role redundant?
00:12:47
Speaker
is weird because, you know, after Gene Kill's Mystique, they never wear the costumes again. They just kind of like, they just wear street clothes for the rest of the movie. Yeah.
00:12:58
Speaker
which is, and one of the interesting things I've read in the trivia is that apparently Jessica Chastain hates superhero movies and she's turned down offers to be in a lot of them, but she accepted this one, which really kind of tells you how much of a superhero movie this is in reality. But another thing too is when Disney finally bought out Fox and they were still gonna go ahead with the release of this movie, but they had apparently wanted to change the ending because the original ending was,
00:13:25
Speaker
reportedly too similar to Captain Marvel. So they had changed it because of that. Yeah, I remember hearing that too. Yeah, that it was going to be like basically Gene like tearing through a bunch of spaceships.
Why does the X-Men franchise lack emotional depth?
00:13:43
Speaker
Just kind of like how Captain Marvel clears out the crew of three spaceships. And yeah, I get it. You know, honestly,
00:13:53
Speaker
I I I wonder if the train scene was still going to be in it the train fight scene because that to me that Is is why i'm willing to defend the movie on certain levels so Okay the Because I think the one thing that the movie does get right and it takes them what how I mean What number of movie is this in the line like 12 11 12?
00:14:21
Speaker
if you count the Deadpool movies and the Wolverine movies, is that I think the action and the fighting with their powers is the most believable, I guess, or the best executed, especially in previous movies, a character like Cyclops is
00:14:47
Speaker
you know, he would blast like two or three times the whole movie, like a real like full force blast. But here he's, he's, you know, he's like a sharpshooter with certain things and, you know, um, hitting smaller targets. And I felt like storm fighting close quarters kind of look cool with the lightning and using ice against some of the alien people. Um, I just, I felt like they finally got, um, the, the combat right with some of the X-Men and how they use their powers.
00:15:17
Speaker
That's
Action scenes vs. character development in Dark Phoenix
00:15:18
Speaker
a good point. Yeah, I think you make a good point with that. And you're right, especially Storm as well. Like I remember in the first movie, she didn't do a whole lot, right? There's the awkward flying up the elevator and then using lightning on Toad. And then she doesn't really do a whole lot of fighting in the second movie either. And then in the third movie, she does the weird spinning thing to not stop.
00:15:44
Speaker
Other than in X2 when she's like flying the jet. Right, exactly, yes. Down the tornadoes, but that's not like, I don't know, it's like in this movie, there's the equivalent of what they would do hand to hand. Like she's bringing down lightning bolts against the DiBari and that kind of thing. I just, I feel like it works better this time around than it did before. That's a good point. Yeah, I can definitely agree with that.
00:16:15
Speaker
One of the things too I liked is when they're in the shuttle at the beginning and like when you were talking about Scott being a sharpshooter, that I did like the use of his powers, that they've got this way that for him to serve as like the ship's gun, basically. I thought that was a cool use of his powers. Yeah, no, that was, and I think that builds into the whole idea in the movie where they're like, they're trying to be superheroes and
00:16:46
Speaker
And the world accepts them and they got to be prepared. I mean, so I mean, one would assume in this world, there's no Avengers. There's no fantastic force. So you know, they're walking this line of, you know, trying to be the world superheroes and that kind of thing. And they got to be prepared for crazy situations and that kind of thing.
00:17:06
Speaker
One of the things I think that this movie, and I can't fault this movie too much for it because this trend started before, and that's that this idea that every X-Men movie has to be a period beast now.
Fox vs. Marvel: Differences in X-Men adaptations
00:17:18
Speaker
Right? It made sense for first-class. It made sense for days of future past. But after that, there's no reason that Apocalypse has to be set in the 1980s. There's no reason that this movie has to be set in the 1990s. Like there's nothing about either, even like there's nothing about the 90s in this movie at all. Like nothing at all. At least Captain Marvel at least, you know, had some 90s feel to it. But this movie has nothing.
00:17:47
Speaker
apocalypse, even like they had, you know, some of the fashion, but other than that, and then going to see Return of the Jedi, there was again, no reason for any of that in there either. And it was also a bit of a cell phone for Bryan Singer, when he had that line of them coming out of Return of the Jedi saying the third movie is always the worst. And this is the third movie in the in the in the first class trilogy, and it was the worst one at that point. Yeah, yeah. And
00:18:16
Speaker
And I will concede like at this point, you know, because if you're trying to stick with the period pieces and, and that kind of thing, and, and really the age of the actors and the timeline is really like, I mean, cause how old is, are, are most of the experts like Cyclops, Jean, Nightcrawler.
00:18:38
Speaker
I mean, are supposed to be what like mid 20s like at the very least mid 20s because it's been 10 years and you have these actors who are these characters who are supposed to have aged.
00:18:53
Speaker
10 years since the last movie. And really with like, I mean, Beast is in theory, if he's like 18 in first class, how old would he be then? Right. In Dark Phoenix, he would be like what in his 40s or something like that? Well, it's also funny when you think about X-Men Origins Wolverine, because they had Professor X appear at the end of that. Oh, yeah.
00:19:17
Speaker
And that was supposed to be in what, like 1979, I think, because that was based on. Yeah. What because the whole thing with Stryker's Island is supposed to be Three Mile Island. Yeah. Three Mile Island. Yeah. And then also, you know, that's Patrick Stewart at the end there. And then in the beginning of the last stand, which is I think that beginning scene is set in the 1980s.
00:19:38
Speaker
and you've got Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart there, but here you've got in 1990s, James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender. Well, it's okay because in Days of Future Past, they rewrite the timeline. Yeah, I guess the minimum one. Yeah, I mean, even the fact that
00:20:02
Speaker
Yeah, timeline's totally thrown off. Who cares? Don't worry about it. Yeah, yeah. It was the same thing too with like, you know, Alex being, you know, Havoc being what in his 20s in 1963. And then, and I guess his parents didn't have another kid until 10 years later. Yeah. Well, you know, there's nothing wrong with
00:20:30
Speaker
Having a kid later in life, I guess. I guess so, yeah. Which, yeah, that that threw off a whole it was that was just I think that was just what it's it's kind of indicative of Fox's approach to these movies, which is that nobody seems to care enough to really rewatch these movies before they start working on a new one.
00:20:55
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know that it's that other than they expect whatever movie that they're working on at the moment to be the last one and they don't worry about
00:21:06
Speaker
things like, you know, like, you know, we'll, we'll cross that bridge if we ever get to it. Well, I mean, but even, even when it comes to thinking about stuff that it came before, like even that, they don't seem to pay much attention. So there's a very, that's one of the biggest problems I have with the, with the X-Men movies, right? It's not a, it's not a matter of it not being exactly like the comics, right? Like that. It's, it's a lack of earnestness, right? I don't feel like the people who are making these movies are as invested in them,
00:21:35
Speaker
as people who were making like the MCU movies, for example. Yeah, I agree with you there. Yeah, go ahead. And even with, and like, and there are exceptions, right? Obviously, you know, Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Ryan Reynolds, those guys are obviously very invested in doing it and doing it right. But I feel when it came to like these core X-Men movies, like the producers and the directors, they didn't really care enough, is really kind of a feeling I got.
00:22:05
Speaker
Yeah, it definitely comes off that way. I think you can tell in the DVD extras of those earlier movies, because really when those movies are coming out, DVDs are becoming a thing and then
00:22:24
Speaker
you know, DVD extras are becoming a thing and it's so much easier to watch all the extra stuff and watch interviews from these people who are making the movies. And yeah, you do get the sense, like, and Brian Singer is the perfect example because he, you know, he just wants to walk away, he's willing to walk away and go do Superman return. Even though, you know, I think even you had mentioned in one of your earlier shows,
00:22:52
Speaker
that there was some talk that he wanted to walk away and come back, but Fox didn't want him to really want that movie at that moment. Yeah, exactly. So Singer's an asshole. That's out of the way right from the start. He's a monster. But the last stand was not his fault because he was asking Fox, when do you want to do the third one? When do you want to do the third one? And Fox wouldn't give him an answer on even if they would do a third.
00:23:23
Speaker
They wouldn't even commit to doing a third movie at that point. So when he got the chance to do Superman Returns, he jumped at it. And then when they found out about it, Fox got pissy. And then they said, oh, we're going to do X-Men 3 now. And we're going to make it come out at the same time as Superman Returns. So Fox had decided to be really petty about doing The Last Stand. And basically everything they did in that movie was a big fuck you to Bryan Singer.
00:23:51
Speaker
So much so that they rushed the movie through, which is why they had Matthew Vaughn at first, but when Matthew Vaughn couldn't do it, instead of pushing the schedule back, they just bring in Brett Ratner to rush through everything. Yeah. And I think, honestly, I feel the weight of the Bryan Singer stuff and him getting fired. I feel like it weighs on this movie because
00:24:20
Speaker
there's like a visual tone that he set through all the movies that he did, that they continued through the movies that he wasn't directly involved with that just sits on this movie. And I think it does taint really the whole series, the fact that he's like this just vile person doing these things to these actors. That they're really, that are,
00:24:48
Speaker
these young men who end up in cameo roles in the movies, right? Like, one of his early, one of his early accusers plays Pyro in the very first movie. That's right. And then, and all that stuff. You know, because he's not in the apocalypse, press tour, they pulled him from that because you would you I think that that young man came forward. But then you look at the
00:25:13
Speaker
the actor that they got to do the play Apocalypse and the cameo in Days of Future Past that's a young actor that's probably right around 18 and like man you gotta wonder what you know did he fall under his sway and
00:25:29
Speaker
And there's even with Dark Phoenix, Jennifer, I feel like I watched an interview with Jennifer Lawrence where she's like, I didn't want to come back for this one. But when I heard Brian Singer wasn't involved in Simon Kinberg was going to be driving the drive in the car, you know, I was more willing to do it. Yeah. And it just makes you wonder, like, how much of a mess was the production process and all of the movies were
00:25:58
Speaker
in all the other movies, basically. Oh, there's some horror stories about his unprofessionalism, even going beyond just the sexual abuse stuff. He was an absentee director a lot of the time. He wouldn't show up on set and they'd have to have second unit directors doing a lot of the work. So yeah, even beyond just him being a total monster, he was just an unprofessional dick to begin with.
00:26:29
Speaker
Yeah, that's just, I mean, it's almost like really when that news drops and the buyout is looming, you know, you got to wonder, I'm sure Fox is just like, yeah, let's just get this thing done and maybe we'll release it. I mean, because didn't they delay it twice? Yeah, yeah.
00:26:55
Speaker
I think I'm not, yeah, so part of the delay, I think had, I know at least one of the delays was because of the buyout. I'm not sure what another, another delay might've been because of reshoots or something. I'm not sure. I mean, it didn't have as many delays as New Mutants did. I remember that movie. People were wondering if that would ever going to come out. Yeah.
00:27:19
Speaker
Another thing is, I don't understand some of the choices that Kinberg made. Like, for example, they had those costumes at the end of Apocalypse, which I know everybody goes, I know everybody in the X-Men fan community went apeshit over those costumes. I wasn't that impressed with them. I thought they were okay. But I did think it was weird that they give them these individual costumes at the end of that movie. And then- And they don't use them in the movie. And they don't use them at all. And they just give them these really boring looking unitards, basically.
00:27:47
Speaker
Yeah. And, you know, using those costumes, it would have been a good idea for the sake of like, you wanted to acknowledge that this was the 90s and like, Oh, look, these are, these are sort of comics, accurate costumes that, that, you know, they were the worn in the 90s. Exactly. Yeah. It was the 90s costumes too. That was the weird thing about it. Yeah. And, and they had this,
00:28:12
Speaker
They had this Frank Quietly vibe. They look like those Grant Morrison era costumes. Yeah, they were supposed to be influenced by the Quietly costumes, but they did a really shit job of adapting those costumes because they look more like Cyclops' outfit from X-Men Evolution than anything else.
00:28:31
Speaker
Well, I never understood why there isn't an X on both sides because there's, there's a shot. Um, there's a shot when, when they go back to Jean's house and they're confronting Phoenix and from the back, they almost look like Star Trek uniforms. Like I, like, you know, are they, I don't know. I just don't know why they wouldn't.
00:28:55
Speaker
at least do like a wraparound kind of thing. Yeah, that was another weird decision. So that right from the start was kind of was off. Also, I will say there is one thing I like about this movie and it's that they killed off Mystique because now I like Jennifer Lawrence as an actress. She's been in a lot of good movies, but she is terrible as Mystique. Like she is not that character at all. And it feels like
00:29:23
Speaker
After first class, when she got big with the Hunger Games, Fox felt that she was the perfect anchor for this franchise to be their new Wolverine. And it just doesn't work. No, it doesn't. And I think half of that is that it is so, she is
00:29:44
Speaker
the characters written is so far away from the mystique we're all used to from the comics and from even the animated series. I think the main
00:30:02
Speaker
idea I think or the main problem I think a lot of people have and I do too really with the fox franchise is that it's like it's almost as if they're they're just cutting aspects of certain characters and pasting them onto the movie characters and and so a lot of the secondary like unless you're the professor wolverine
00:30:25
Speaker
Or Magneto, you as a character in the X-Men Fox in the movie verse, you are in danger of having aspects from other comics characters just like glued on to you, like, and I think Mystique is a perfect
00:30:42
Speaker
example of that, especially the fact in this movie, she's the leader, she's like the field leader of the team. Yeah. Yeah, especially even though I think the spatial sequence is kind of cool how she's calling shots, but that's not in the seat. Exactly. Yeah.
00:30:57
Speaker
And also like the whole speech she's given to Jean when, you know, you know, I'm your family and all that. Like, it's just like, I'm watching that scene and it feels as out of character as in the last stand when Wolverine gives that speech about, you know, that, you know, that rousing speech about how we're X-Men, right? It doesn't fit either character. No.
00:31:18
Speaker
No, it doesn't. I mean, the weird thing, though, is that you have two characters who would serve Mystique's role perfectly in Scott and Storm, right? Like calling out the shots at the space shuttle scene. That should be Scott's scene. He should be the one doing that.
00:31:34
Speaker
He's not even flying the ship. He's not even flying the damn ship. Giving that heartfelt speech to Jean, that should be Storm's thing, right? These are two aspects of those characters who are otherwise completely underused, especially in the case of Storm. And there's no reason for a mistake to be in this movie at all, especially because it's been 10 years. She doesn't need to be there anymore. These kids have grown up over the course of 10 years. They have this be their movie, have them take over the team and being the ones in charge.
00:32:05
Speaker
Yeah, and I think they make the mistake with this movie of trying to do, of trying to continue the through line that they establish in first class and just use the Phoenix saga from the comics as a framing mechanism. Because as soon as Magneto comes in like an hour into the movie out of nowhere, oh, here's Magneto.
00:32:32
Speaker
then it shifts and definitely I feel like becomes, you know, an indirect first, like it becomes the framing movie to finish up all the stuff they established in first class. Yeah.
00:32:48
Speaker
Yeah, they keep recycling the same idea of bringing Magneto back in halfway into the movie for him to mess shit up again. It's the exact same thing that happens. They do that in Days of Future Past. They do that in Apocalypse. And they do that again here in this movie. And it's especially such a waste of Fassbender's talent because he's such a good actor. And
00:33:12
Speaker
He's, you know, he does such a good job as Magneto, but he is just so wasted in this movie. There is no reason for him to be here at all. Well, it I think it's because the it's like they force him to regress every time. Like he never unlike, you know, with the comics where he, you know, you got a sterilized monthly comic. So he's allowed to grow in and like writers like Claremont or even in the current stuff with
00:33:40
Speaker
uh hickman with the hickman led uh writer's room uh you know he he gets new stuff to do where where he doesn't have to always just fall back on i i kill people because like because even that conversation with jean it's it's like she's trying to draw something the same magneto that we saw killing the nazis way back in first class right yeah yeah so it yeah it it it's almost because they
00:34:10
Speaker
I guess they just need him to be the bad guy again for like a couple scenes before he, you know, joins the fight against the aliens. Well, yeah, I mean, Fox's seems terrified to have an X-Men movie where Magneto is not fighting the X-Men, right? They seem to have that perpetual fear throughout all these movies. I mean, even in
00:34:31
Speaker
you know, The Last Stand. There's no reason for Magneto to be the antagonist of that movie. It's supposed to be the Dark Phoenix movie. Gene is supposed to be the antagonist behind that. And- Well, I would disagree with you there because I feel like it's the other way around. I feel like that, again, it's, well,
00:34:51
Speaker
With The Last Stand, I feel like the Dark Phoenix stuff was just stapled on to a movie where Magneto is the bad guy. And where I would, where I think that movie really goes off the rails is by killing the professor where they do and have it all shift towards Wolverines taking over.
00:35:16
Speaker
You're right. From the standpoint of the movie as it was presented, it is supposed to be Magneto as the bad guy. I'm talking more about from where it was conceptually supposed to go originally, which was it was conceptually was originally supposed to be Dark Phoenix and the Hellfire Club. And it was supposed to be something different from the Magneto stuff. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, they yeah, they definitely pivot.
00:35:42
Speaker
away from that. And well, I think this movie has the same Dark Phoenix has the same problems and you know, probably because it lives. It's later on down the line after first class where you had these tentpole aspects of the comics Dark Phoenix of saga like like the Hellfire Club. And you already killed off Shabastian Shaw and White Queen and
00:36:11
Speaker
And so what are you gonna do? But yeah, no, it's like they're trying to shoehorn in like the plot lines from First Class and Days of Future passed back into this movie rather than, like you said a little bit ago, just letting the younger actors or the younger characters just have the movie and let them drive the ship.
00:36:41
Speaker
storm fill that role and, or, and, and I guess, I guess just, they should have just had, rode the wave of the professor, you know, making mistakes when, when Jean's a kid. Yeah. Yeah. And then moving on from that. So Nicholas Holt is beast. I,
00:37:08
Speaker
There's one performance I hate more than Jennifer Lawrence's Mystique, it's Nicholas Holt's Beast. Like he's just, this is like one of the biggest miscasts in the history of superhero movies in my mind. Like, is this guy is not the beast at all? Like, you know, Hank is, he's intelligent, yeah, but he's not this, you know, insecure, you know, little bilk sock who's scared of his own shadow, like Nicholas Holt is, right?
00:37:36
Speaker
He's confident. He's intelligent. He's witty. And we get none of that from Nicholas Holt. No, we don't. Yeah. And, and this, you know, again, they have to continue things that they established in previous movies. So he's like, he's like, he's kind of like the Hulk. He just turns into beast whenever he needs to turn into beast. And he's not.
00:38:01
Speaker
You know what, I never made that connection, but you're exactly right. He is exactly the Hulk. He's Bruce Banner in the Hulk. That's all he is. He's nothing else. Yeah. But without the fear of, you know, the Hulk is, you know, or the Hulk is like a, you know, might lose control and like take down the entire city. There's no stakes to it. Plus I, gosh, I feel like the makeup with Beast just got worse and worse as the first class series went on. Yeah.
00:38:30
Speaker
You know, and it's like, so when people ask me if I like this, which do I like better? Cause the last stand or dark Phoenix, I go with the last stand because at least there, Kelsey Grammer got, got a chance to play beast as the character is supposed to be. Yeah. Um, uh, he does, you know, Kelsey Grammer, I feel like is the best part of.
00:38:54
Speaker
Oh, without a doubt, without a doubt. Yeah. And it's almost I wonder, too, if it's almost like they're trying to
00:39:05
Speaker
mirror what's going on in the comics, because I feel like with Beast since the mid-90s, Beast has gotten further and further away from the Beast that he was in the animated series, the witty doctor guy who's also quoting poetry in the middle of a fight. He's become more brooding and conflicted, and my world is
00:39:32
Speaker
you know collapsing around me or or he he he's also he's like a self-hating mutant too right yeah yeah and that and that definitely shows in these later you know post first class and on that i feel like that definitely shows and they they kind of they just glam onto it the other thing is a
00:39:55
Speaker
Nicholas Holt is just way too skinny for that part. You would think, right? I mean, I just feel like even without being blue and furry, Beast should probably still look like a linebacker. Yeah. I mean, that was the whole thing. That was his original mutation, is that he's basically got this simian-like physique. So yeah, you're right. He should be a much bigger guy to begin with, even in his human form.
00:40:20
Speaker
I mean, he's just, you know, and there's so much forced drama in this movie. Like some of this dialogue, it feels almost like community theater dialogue, watching them try to read these lines. It's just so bad. Like the scene with
00:40:42
Speaker
the scene with Raven and Jean really stood out to me as just being like so unbelievably forced. And just like, you can tell neither one of these actresses wants to be here. Yeah. Yeah. I think that really does show too with and the scene in the bar when
00:41:05
Speaker
Jessica Chastain's character catches up with books or whatever her name is. Yeah. I mean, such an unmemorable, not the white queen. Yeah. Such an unmemorable character that I can't have trouble remembering her name. She's supposed to be the villain. Yeah.
00:41:25
Speaker
Yeah, it is. It is really stilted. And what I think makes it worse is the music and I love Hans Zimmer, but the way they mix the music in along with the dialogue, it just oozes with like, oh, woe is me. Nothing has ever gone right and everything is falling apart around me.
00:42:00
Speaker
You're right about the community theater thing, but I feel like it's like actors that are trying to make things more realistic with the lines, but it just, yeah, it just doesn't hit. Yeah, not at all. And you're right about the music too, because again, if you're gonna do a 90s period piece,
00:42:24
Speaker
Use 90s music. It's such an obvious thing, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Date it in the... Date it in the era, you know, with stuff going on. And even Dazzler's... I mean, even Black Widow did that in the opening scene, right? They've got Nirvana playing over the opening credits, which worked perfectly, right?
00:42:52
Speaker
Um, but you think it smells like teen spirit could have improved. Yeah. That cover was, I mean, well that cover in that, in that first movie was amazed in that, in black widow was amazing. That opening credits. I mean, I, that was one of the best Marvel openings ever. Um, they couldn't even get that one little simple aspect, right. Um, but, um,
00:43:15
Speaker
I'll concede that, I mean. Well, also the whole, the Genosha thing too, it also just kind of felt like, this is kind of like, you know, going back to what you said about how Fox, they'll take aspects of different characters. It feels like they just kind of, they write the script and then they say, okay, now we need to throw in some references to the comics. So then they do a quick search and they do a fine and replace in the script. That's really what it feels like a lot of the time.
00:43:43
Speaker
Yeah. Especially with Celine. It was exactly what I was going to mention. Yeah. Yeah. Because they're like, oh, we could really use a villain who has some telepathic abilities. Oh, yeah. Here's one in the old Marvel book. Here's, yeah. Celine, yeah. Yeah, that'll be Celine. There you go.
00:44:10
Speaker
which is weird because you have Tessa could have served that role very easily. Yeah. Well, yeah, that would have worked better. Yeah. Or Emma, because she was supposed to have run off with Magneto at the end of first class, which was a plot line that just got completely abandoned.
00:44:32
Speaker
Um, the other like, and there's the, uh, the guy with the braids, which is a real deep cut from the comics, right? Like red Lotus or something. He was originally supposed to be red Lotus. Yeah. That's who he was originally cast at. And then they, which was, I remember that. I remember I just, I recently read the extreme expense stuff and.
00:44:54
Speaker
That was, that was not a good series. Um, but I remember that the, the force princess bride reference that Claremont tried to put in when he introduced that character. Yeah. That the Fox, the Fox movies really do really do latch on to just, just stapling people, you know, rich characters from the comics that, you know, we'll just throw them in there.
00:45:24
Speaker
and see if they stick and it's almost like like if you're I don't know like like watching a musical about like something and you just have a character pop in and have a one like it's like the equivalent of you know
00:45:41
Speaker
a character popping in with a one-liner, having a laugh and then disappearing. That's pretty much exactly what Quicksilver does in this movie, right? Because he's there in the beginning, he gets injured, and then he never shows up again until the end. Well, because he would ruin the vibe of the movie because, like you mentioned in some of your earlier episodes, it's not really Quicksilver. It's more of
00:46:07
Speaker
a flash character it's like impulse yeah yeah exactly yeah he's way too upbeat for this movie so you got to get him out of there you give him one cool action scene you know with the space shuttle and then you got to get him out of there because yeah and they still never reference the they still never pick up on the fact that he's magneto's son right you know never learned that fact oh yeah they just keep hinting at it they're never going to do anything with it
00:46:32
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, just lost opportunities. Yeah, especially when, you know, Storm's another example of, you know, just like with, with Halle Berry, I think it was kind of a mercy because she was just also very miscast as Storm to begin with. But, you know, Alexandra's ship gets shit to do in this movie, just like in the last movie. And
00:46:57
Speaker
I feel like in the brief shots we get of her, there could have been something that they could have done with her character. And she may have been able to do a decent job if like they had gotten rid of Mystique and just had her give that speech to Jean instead. Yeah, that would have changed things. But then you don't have the weight of like, then who does Jean,
00:47:26
Speaker
kill to make. Well, I mean, I wouldn't even have the killing scene because the only reason for her killing Mystique is to have to give a reason for Magneto to come in the movie. That's really the only purpose that it serves. And we don't we don't even need Magneto in this movie.
00:47:44
Speaker
So I would say like get rid of that whole aspect of it completely. And I mean, this movie just from top to bottom needs a complete and total rewrite. I mean, there's no aspect of this film that does not need to be rewritten.
00:48:03
Speaker
You did mention the train scene, and the action is good. I will give you that, but there's something that happened to that train scene that pissed me off the most, and it's how they show Nightcrawler in that scene.
00:48:18
Speaker
No, if you listened to the last episode that I was in when I teased the idea of this is the darkest timeline. And yeah, the train scene is where it happens. And it goes back to the sanctity of life and nightcrawl. And it's a very
00:48:41
Speaker
huge departure, I feel like, because comics Nightcrawler believes in the sanctity of life and movie Nightcrawler should, but this, well, and maybe this version of Nightcrawler does, but when he snaps the neck of that, of the alien with his tail and that just, I don't know, it really bugs me. I felt sick watching that scene.
00:49:10
Speaker
I mean, I felt physically sick watching that scene just because that is, it was not since Batman V Superman have I seen such a drastic misinterpretation of a character.
00:49:23
Speaker
I, you know, you mentioned, uh, uh, you know, maybe Zack Snyder just like, you know, was driving by the studio and he's like, Oh, you're off to live for the day. Oh, you got a micro policy. I know exactly what to do. Yeah. I know what this scene needs. He needs to snap the alien's neck with his tail. Yeah. Uh, I, I think that's, I feel like they were, um,
00:49:50
Speaker
that somebody misinterpreted the whole thing that it's okay for them to just kill the aliens willy-nilly. Like without any kind of, oh, if we just make them faceless aliens, you know, when they're not, when they don't appear human, it's okay for them to just like totally wipe them out. And so go nuts with the action. And while the action with their powers is
00:50:16
Speaker
Is kind of, you know, it looks cool. It does have that weird
00:50:23
Speaker
wait a minute, this is the X-Men. Like we, and they totally go darkest timeline with it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It feels like that was supposed to, it feels like someone was writing the script and they put Wolverine in this scene and they realized, oh wait, we don't have Wolverine. And we already killed Mystique so we can't have her do it. So let's just have Nightcrawler do it. Yeah.
00:50:51
Speaker
There is like, like an instant where I feel like there's a look on his face where he's like, where he just realized that he did it. And he's maybe surprised at himself, but, but, you know, yeah, then they never go back to it. But, um,
00:51:11
Speaker
Yeah, it, it's almost, it's almost so throw away, I guess, you know, just does it so quickly. And, and really all of all of the the debari like foot soldier aliens, they're, you know, they're just cannon father. Yeah, I think that's where, you know, the
00:51:30
Speaker
I mean, that really is a huge misstep in my opinion. Well, it feels like, too, that they didn't want to go full on and make Gene the villain of the movie, which is what the Dark Phoenix saga is supposed to be. Right. So instead, they have to have this weird thing with the debug because they can't use the Hellfire Club. They already fucked themselves over with that. So and so then they put in this weird alien invasion plot. And it's just it. It just doesn't work at all. Like none of this stuff fits together.
00:52:01
Speaker
Well, and you know, just sitting here with you like hashing it out. Yeah, all the alien stuff just, it doesn't fit. We'll see if you look back and I was listening to another episode of the podcast where you and Derek talk about Christopher Nolan and the Batman movies for a moment.
00:52:31
Speaker
the thing about the first couple x-men movies uh you know x-men x2 is is that they're so grounded in reality uh or they're as real as as x-men could probably possibly ever be instilled by x-men and then you know in the you know 2005 2008 chris nolan um
00:52:57
Speaker
does that his Batman trilogy. And again, that's where, you know, as real as Batman could possibly be in a movie, nobody has superpowers, all that kind of stuff. Right. The Joker doesn't have the he's not his skin isn't chemically dyed or anything. Yeah, just it's just actual makeup and all that stuff. Yeah. A lot.
00:53:22
Speaker
A lot of the X-Men movies like latched on to that reality. And there's no mention of aliens before or ever. The most suspension of disbelief you ever really have is the fact that people have superpowers until you get to this movie where it's like, oh, here's a cosmic force and here's the broccoli people or the debari.
00:53:52
Speaker
Yeah, it just you're right. I never I never really thought about that. But that is that is it is such a complete departure and which was and I thought the last stand did it did a smart thing with it where they made the Phoenix just be this alternate personality of Jean and like her powers growing exponentially.
00:54:13
Speaker
that is a perfect way to work it and ground it in this world. And you're right, after all this time of all this stuff that they try so hard to ground it in the real world to suddenly bring in cosmic alien forces and broccoli people, it feels so disconnected from everything else.
00:54:34
Speaker
Well, you know, I'll tell you what, when they first announced this movie, I thought to myself, because, you know, it would have been after apocalypse came out, but at the same time, it would have been after Guardians of the Galaxy came out. Right. And, and especially hearing, you know, all the stuff with Bryan Singer, and there was a rumor floating around that they were using a production title of supernovas. Yes. And I thought to myself,
00:55:02
Speaker
maybe this is the one where they where they finally take the x-men off the rails and they latch on to all the crazy stuff in the comics that they wouldn't ever touch before because especially after guardians of the galaxy i'm thinking to myself what are the odds that that fox wants to compete and get some star jammers in here you know like have it be a fun light crazy movie and the bad guys you know uh
00:55:32
Speaker
you know, Emperor Da Ken from the comics rather than, and they do, you know, the original Phoenix saga, not the Dark Phoenix saga. We'll worry about that later. Just send them into space and do some crazy stuff, you know, Guardians of the Galaxy style, and they sure didn't do that, did they? No, definitely not.
00:55:55
Speaker
One of the things I wanted to touch on too is because we haven't really talked about, you know, the two basically principal actors in this and that's, you know, Ty Sheridan and Sophie Turner. First off, with Sheridan,
00:56:12
Speaker
I don't like this guy as Cyclops. He doesn't really do much for me either way. I mean, one of the things too, it kind of shows a lack of real commitment or interest because he didn't even want to work out. He just wore a muscle suit under his clothes. Oh, really? Yeah. And you know what? I think it's weird because
00:56:35
Speaker
I feel so bad for James Marsden because he really got done dirty in these movies because there's subtle things in his performances in those first three X-Men movies and that he does a really good job of giving you hints of who Cyclops is, but he's just never given a lot of space to work with. I mean, the deleted scenes in the first X-Men movie and
00:57:01
Speaker
He's played as like this guy who is completely cool under pressure no matter what. Like you see Wolverine always trying to rattle him and it just never affects him, right? And like he's just, and like that, one of my favorite scenes is when, you know, when Wolverine wakes up in the mansion and he sees Cyclops and he grabs him by the shirt and he says, you want to get him? And then Cyclops just kind of looks at him. Then he looks around at Charles and this look is kind of like, listen, you're going to tell this guy to back up or I'm going to bust him up.
00:57:32
Speaker
Well, yeah, no, um, I think half of that is James Marsden figured out how to act with a pair of sunglasses on and Ty Sharon and didn't. Yeah. Um, and, and the other thing, especially with Ty Sharon and, and, uh, Alexandra, um, ship is that they're, they're trying to, uh, just copy, I think,
00:58:00
Speaker
James Marsden and Halle Berry. I don't think there's a whole lot of intentional depth there other than, you know, maybe they watched the first three movies and that's where they're going with it. Well, I mean, in Last Stand, you know, Marsden has what, like five minutes of total screen time? That five minutes is a better performance than Ty Sheridan gave in two movies.
00:58:26
Speaker
Yeah, it well, it's just an impression. I feel like he's just trying to just copy James Marsden, I think, but I also get I get no sense of chemistry between him and Sophie Turner either. Like there's just it just I don't buy that relationship at all.
00:58:43
Speaker
No, and they never really flesh out a scene other than, you know, the party scene or the rave in the woods where they, I mean, you're just supposed to accept that, you know, they like each other and they're really into one another. It's all based on what happened in the last movie. Yeah, yeah. It's just, they're together because the movie says they have to be together. You never buy the relationship at all. And also, and Sophie Turner, like,
00:59:13
Speaker
I don't know, she's, I think she tries as best as she can with what she's given, but it's just, I never really quite.
00:59:22
Speaker
The whole thing about, and I thought Fampka Jansen did a really good job with this and what she was given is that you buy the fact that she is being driven insane by this power and that she's got these two different aspects. You buy that whole desire aspect of her, of the dark Phoenix that's consuming her in a lot of the scenes, except for the scenes where she becomes like basically just stands there in the background and does nothing for half the movie. But before that, like in the beginning scenes,
00:59:47
Speaker
Like when they find her, when she wakes up in the mansion, all of that Jansen really sells very well. And I don't really feel like we get much of that from Sophie Turner at all. I never really buy the fact that this power is consuming her. Yeah. I think there's a big disconnect there of
01:00:13
Speaker
And they lose a lot of it by making the Phoenix a cosmic entity. And so it's almost, it becomes not her fault. And it's almost like she's being drug along by the Phoenix, you know, so the conflict is more, you know, I don't want to do this rather than, you know, she comes across more as a victim rather than the aggressor. Yeah.
01:00:43
Speaker
And yeah, that probably didn't, I mean, that doesn't play as well, I don't think is, you know, some of the other adaptations of the story. Well, also too, I mean, just overall, this feels, I mean, this is the weird thing this movie does, right? I mean, it's, you've got a cosmic force. You've got space aliens invading the world.
01:01:03
Speaker
but it still feels like such a small movie, right? It feels so much smaller scale, even comparison to today's a future past or to the last stand. Like it feels so, even to the first X-Men movie, it feels smaller than the first X-Men movie. Yeah. And I wonder if that's because they cut out, you know, the Phoenix destroying a bunch of starships, you know, they replace it with,
01:01:33
Speaker
the train scene. I mean, the train scene, fight scene when the train is, is that's it. You know, at the end, she like, you know, fries a couple of aliens, but yeah, it doesn't, it doesn't have the big finale you expect a lot of the superhero movies to have. And I, and I wonder too, if that's
01:01:55
Speaker
they were trying to fight superhero movie fatigue. Cause I feel like that's, that's a huge problem with a lot of superhero movies or, or as we, as we get farther down the line, you know, with the MCU being on movie, what 23, 24, um, you, you ha you almost have to start experimenting and dialing back and not having a gigantic
01:02:21
Speaker
massive fight scene or, you know, spend all your special effects money on the, on the climax. I mean, I think. Which is, which is fine, but you want to have an appropriate movie to do that with like. Yeah. When you've got a movie about, you know, space aliens and, and, you know, cosmic omnipotence, you don't dial it back in that movie.
01:02:45
Speaker
Right. I mean, if you do, if you want to do something small, again, God, those man kills. That's the perfect story to do something small scale with. Yeah. So I don't, I don't know. What do you, what do you end this movie with? It's
01:03:06
Speaker
Well, I mean, first off, I don't think you jump from apocalypse to Dark Phoenix. You have to have more buildup. Like we have to, the only reason Dark Phoenix, the reason that Dark Phoenix saga is so emotional is because we're invested in Jean as a character and Jean and Scott as a couple. Like you said, you know, the original Phoenix saga happened in what, the early hundreds. And then it's like, you know, 30 ish, a year later we get Dark Phoenix saga.
01:03:35
Speaker
Yeah, so we get like a whole, you know, or two years later, I mean, I should say, right, you know, two or three, two or almost three years later, we get all of this in all of this stuff with you. Yeah, 30 issues. So almost almost three years, you get all these issues with Jean, getting these new powers, learning how to live with them, learning how they're growing. And her relationship with Scott blossoming at the same time, and then both kind of like, coming to terms and all that
01:04:05
Speaker
and then you pull the rug out from under them in the Dark Phoenix saga. And this is one of the things I've always said is that the best way to do the X-Men in live action is not to do it as movies, but to do it as, you know, like do it as a Disney plus series, ongoing series, right? You have like, you know, six episodes per season, you build it up and you do the Phoenix saga, the Dark Phoenix saga in like season five.
01:04:33
Speaker
And that's how you have to do it because if you do it, because the strength of the X-Men has always been that serial storytelling aspect. Avengers, Superman, all other types of characters, they work really well in these big, big budget set pieces thing because they're these self-contained stories that work really well that way. The X-Men works best as a serial storytelling thing because you've got all that
01:04:59
Speaker
interpersonal character drama that builds up over the course of several consecutive issues. And that's what made Claremont's run so successful in the first place. All the soap opera. Exactly. It was a soap opera. It was the soap opera with superheroes. So every month you had a new installment. That's really how I think you got to do the X-Men in live action. It's not going to happen. That's how I think it should be done. Yeah, no, this movie suffers from not
01:05:29
Speaker
um well any dark phoenix saga adaptation suffers from not being uh the not being able to have a slow burn right for a long time i mean that yeah that that's that's the meat of it is that and even uh really what i feel like works in the comics is is like all that stuff with with mastermind seducing gene is just it
01:05:59
Speaker
It's, it's a minor subplot that, you know, for a lot of issues where she, you know, it's like a page for an issue. And then, you know, it's another page, maybe two or three issues later. And yeah, you're right. It only works in a serialized kind of format. Like we don't, we don't get any of the, the interpersonal relationship, I guess. I mean, we,
01:06:27
Speaker
You know, because in the last movie, even if you are going to use Mystique as the, the tentpole of, you know, she dies and, and now everybody's wrecked is, is because even in the last movie, she, she's like the, she's kind of stapled on there is reluctantly joins the team by the end of the movie when apocalypse becomes a huge threat. We never see her other than the spatial scene as, as the field leader caretaker of these kids.
01:06:56
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, in both apocalypse and in this movie, I never buy Mystique as this mutant idol that they're trying to build her up to be. It just never works at all. Again, it's like the Scott and Jean romance in this. It's in the movie because the movie says it has to be there, but the movie never sells it. Yeah. Yeah.
01:07:24
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's just, yeah, it's just, it's such a disappointing end to this franchise because, I mean, really, these movies should have ended with Days of Future Past, because I think that was- Oh yeah, for sure. I mean, that was the perfect endpoint on it. And then, you know, just the past is open-ended, the future is open-ended, and then we get Logan as like a sign off to Hugh Jackman. But this is just,
01:07:54
Speaker
you know, after apocalypse, and then this, it's just, it was such a letdown. And I never thought, when I saw The Last Stand, I never thought that they could do a worse job adapting Dark Phoenix on. And they did it. God bless them, Fox, you proved me wrong. Yeah, well, I never saw The Last Stand as
01:08:23
Speaker
as a dark Phoenix movie. I just saw it as, as the end to that trilogy, but you hear they, you know, let's, let's staple in some stuff about dark Phoenix, you know, just because, and they, and again, I think we don't know if we're going to have a fourth movie. That was the whole reason. Yeah. And that's a silly thing. They, they should have known that somebody was going to greenlight a fourth movie, considering like all the money they were going to make. I mean,
01:08:51
Speaker
Yeah, they were thinking too confined in the confines of a trilogy. They should have never considered that, oh, it'll just be a trilogy. It's like they just figured in the shadow of Star Wars, everything has to be a trilogy. Right. Well, so I think another part of it is I think nobody at Fox ever really had confidence in the X-Men property. I think that's a big thing about it.
01:09:17
Speaker
You look at the MCU, or even the DCEU, which I made my feelings on Zack Snyder's stuff very clear, but I will say this about Snyder's films, he's confident in that. He's got confidence that he can see this stuff through. The MCU, Kevin Feige's got confidence in these properties. There's no sense of confidence in the X-Men movies. They always feel like, well, maybe we'll get another one, but maybe not. So there's this lack of confidence in,
01:09:45
Speaker
and their ability to actually keep this going. And that hurts the franchise all throughout these movies, I think. Yeah. And I wonder if, you know, in the early 2000s, a lot of that was just like that because the X-Men were kind of the first temple superhero movies outside of, you know, the original Batman and Superman. And now, you know, in the mid
01:10:12
Speaker
you know, in the 2010s, now you're competing with a well established Marvel student, you're competing with, you know, with sort of, you know, it's just so incestuous and weird how you're competing with Marvel Studios, who, at the same time in the comic book universe wants these characters to get along and interact with one another, but you can't have them interact and
01:10:36
Speaker
And you're still sending the parent company a check, I'm sure, for the rights for these characters. But the other company doesn't want your stuff to work out because they want the rights back and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, it's really weird. But also, I think you make a good point, too, that it is, I think, a big part of it early on is definitely that thing that there's a lack of confidence in the idea of superheroes in general.
01:11:05
Speaker
you have Superman and then not really until Sam Raimi's Spider-Man, do you really get a movie that completely embraces the superhero concept? Like even the Burton Batman movies didn't really embrace it that much. So there's this definite lack of confidence in the idea of superheroes. And that makes sense for those movies. But after Avengers,
01:11:31
Speaker
for that attitude not to change feels like you're just being stubborn at that point because now you've seen what can be done. It's time to reevaluate the way you're doing it. Like that's one of the things I said about Days of Future Past was if it was made, if it came out in a world before Avengers had come out, I think it would have been one of the greatest superhero movies ever. But because it came out in a post Avengers world, it feels very,
01:12:01
Speaker
anachronistic in a way. Yeah, you know, I have some I, I really like days of future past, but and I, I think that they missed a golden opportunity with the end of that movie by giving it the happy ending they gave it. I really think they should have shot two endings to that movie and
01:12:27
Speaker
Uh, kill young Xavier at the end of the movie so they could set up an age of apocalypse movie versus the movie we got. That's actually what I thought they were going to do that because they had announced that apocalypse was going to be next. And that I thought they were going to go that route. So yeah, I, that would have been amazing. That's exact. They should have done that. I agree with you. And you bring back the old cast.
01:12:50
Speaker
for the majority of the movie as those different age of apocalypse. James Marsden, he's only got the one eye and all that kind of stuff. And you could actually do rogue with and just not explain how she can fly and has super strength or stuff like that and just really go off the wall with it. And then- And then you could have Wolverine in the Bishop role from the age of apocalypse. Yeah, that would have been amazing. That would have been amazing.
01:13:20
Speaker
And, you know, again, it was it was me, the the comic book nerd comic book geek within me like hoping
01:13:30
Speaker
Just like with this movie, hearing that it's been green lit, like maybe they'll just latch on to the Star Jammer stuff and we'll get to see Gladiator and the Imperial Guard and just go, you know, especially in a world where Guardians of the Galaxy exists and people buy the idea of, you know, Rocket Raccoon. Well, why can't they buy the idea of, you know, the Star Jammers and Hepzibah, you know? Like, why not?
01:13:59
Speaker
And yeah, and I'm sure that the Disney buyout has a lot to do with, well, let's just get this movie out. Let's just finish what we have. And as somebody who, in my previous life and working in television, I was a cog in that Disney buyout wheel.
01:14:26
Speaker
I was working in the station at a TV station that was being thrown around as like, well, the company that owned my station might sell stations to Fox, you know, as they were breaking apart. It's just like, I'm sure there were people at the top with Disney and Fox who were just, you know, just cutting minor checks to the production of this movie just thinking like, well,
01:14:57
Speaker
you know, if it makes a little bit of money, that's fine, you know, but whatever we don't, you know, where they're just they're just ready to get the deal done. And this movie and then New Mutants, obviously, too, is a product of, you know, just people at the top. Well, I mean, even I mean, yeah, even even before the buyout. I mean, one of the things I read about this movie is that because Apocalypse had underperformed, they had slashed the budget on this movie considerably.
01:15:27
Speaker
And not only that, but they even debated whether or not this would be released theatrically at all, even before the Disney buyout. Like they contemplated just releasing it straight to streaming, which if you're gonna cut the budget so much on one of the biggest X-Men stories ever, you should just change your plan and do a different X-Men movie and do something small scale. I mean, it's, there's a, there's a,
01:15:55
Speaker
And again, it goes back to this idea that there's a lack of confidence in these characters and in the story. And yeah, it's such a letdown because the X-Men movies have been a mixed bag.
01:16:10
Speaker
But even still, it would have been nice if they went out on a strong note instead of just ending on a whimper. But it's just like, you know, the first trilogy ended on a whimper, right? You had X-Men, which was good. You had an X-2, which was amazing. And then it just kind of shit the bed with the last stand. And then it's the same thing here with this one, right?
01:16:34
Speaker
they kind of shouldn't have been with apocalypse but then he just even did it even and they did it again with this movie so yeah it's just overall it's just a big let down um anyway sorry go ahead oh no i just wonder like how
01:16:49
Speaker
Do you think you could take the same structure of some of this movie and swap out Dark Phoenix with Proteus and get a better movie? Oh, I think that would definitely make it a better movie. Yeah. Like you have the smaller scale.
01:17:05
Speaker
And in almost, I feel like maybe the whole metaphor that the professor is too controlling and making the mistakes makes a lot more sense with his own kid and Moira. Or Legion instead. Yeah, that would work as well. Yeah, you do like the ultimate comics and you have the Proteus character be like a hybrid of the original Proteus and Legion. Yeah, yeah. Either of those would have worked much better, I think. And we're also given Moira something else to do as well.
01:17:34
Speaker
Yeah, I know you could have brought Rose Byrne back. All right. Well, anyway, that's pretty much the end of the Fox Men series. I mean, at least now, the saving grace is that at least this franchise ends
01:17:55
Speaker
with Marvel getting the rights back. And I don't know what we're going to see when Feige finally gets around to introducing mutants into the MCU. I've got ideas on how I'd like to see it happen, but I'm really excited to see what they do with it. One thing I've learned is that Kevin Feige knows what he's doing, so I completely trust him to see where things go from here.
01:18:21
Speaker
Yeah, I, I have high hopes too, but I wonder, uh, you know, I, I just think it's going to be so drastically different. And, um, I, you know, like you mentioned, like, you know, it could be a really great Disney plus cereal, but I wonder too, like to me, in my opinion, the, what's really cool about the MCU now is that, uh,
01:18:48
Speaker
is that there's no such thing as a solo movie anymore. Is that all of these characters are intermixing, you know, like Hulk is a strong supporting character in the Thor movie. Iron Man towards the end there was popping up in almost everything. So really, I just wonder,
01:19:14
Speaker
Is that how we're going to see mutants as secondary characters until we're ready to give them their own movie again? That's a good way to end this on. How would you introduce the mutants into the MC? I think I would try to do it that way with this current phase. I know some people aren't crazy about the storm of Black Panther,
01:19:42
Speaker
marriage and who knows what's going to happen with black panther without abbott bozeman but i mean maybe that's the best way to introduce some of these characters is that find the ones and with established um uh relationships in the comics you know like uh storm and black panther rogue with captain marvel that's that's one uh if you can somehow get a whole solo movie wouldn't it be awesome if or could you pull it off where wolverine is
01:20:12
Speaker
is basically a secondary character and now Wolverine and Alpha Flight versus the Hulk. And it's a Hulk movie. But honestly, if I were to do a movie because Fox has done all of this stuff before and your casual movie going, Marvel movie going fan who doesn't like dive into the comics, I think we got to give them something they've never seen before. And I wonder if the House of Exps
01:20:41
Speaker
era is is the the perfect thing to adapt now I think I would I would use House of X as a springboard myself and I would because you know here's what I would do first.
01:20:55
Speaker
Wanda and Pietro got their powers from the infinity stones. So what I would do is I would say that the infinity stones are able to actually exist. It's been around, but mutants have been in such a small portion of the population that Xavier and Magneto all this time, they've been gathering, you know, whatever mutants they can find
01:21:18
Speaker
and they've been putting them on Krakow. And because Krakow is a sentient island, it can just come and disappear. So nobody knows where it is. It just keeps vanishing whenever someone gets a lock on it or something. So it's just, it's this thing that's out there. Nobody knows about it. Maybe Nick Fury has been helping them out, but so they've got this, they've got this thing going. And then, um, but the infinity stones, they've got this ability to kind of jumpstart evolution. So,
01:21:45
Speaker
If you remember an endgame rocket says that when Thanos snapped his fingers, Earth became ground zero for this incredible surge of energy that nothing had ever been seen before. So you've now had three of those snaps happen on Earth. So just all that energy, all that cosmic energy infusing is just, so instead of mutants becoming, the mutant population exploding a hundred years from now, they're exploding now. So that way you can have
01:22:14
Speaker
Xavier and Magneto already established. You can have ancient mutants like Apocalypse, but it still works with this thing where you're bringing in all these mutants suddenly, as opposed to just doing the, which I think is kind of the lazy way of just having everybody come in from another reality. Yeah, I agree with you there. What I think would be really cool is
01:22:34
Speaker
Well, we're also at the point in the MCU where we really don't have Avengers. I mean, you know, they tend to do this with the Avengers movies anyway. They go their own separate ways in between movies. Well, you know, I would steal that speech from House of X where Xavier is transmitting his big speech to the whole world. But then tacking on at the end that he offers up the X-Men to the world as a replacement
01:23:04
Speaker
to the Avengers. That's a good idea too. Uh, so you have like, he has like a team of five or six mutants ready and, and they're gonna, I don't know, fight, you know, fight somebody, but, um, but, and, and also, you know, I know there's a lot of debate of like, well, do you, do you race, bend, uh, Xavier and Magneto and.
01:23:30
Speaker
I don't know that I would take Magneto's Jewish heritage away from him, but you could ground him in the past or and Xavier in the past and just really explain the age gap away with resurrection, the fact that they can come back. Yeah, you could do that. I would probably make Magneto someone who had been
01:23:54
Speaker
I would make someone from Eastern Europe and have been involved in the Yugoslavian genocide and those types of things. I think I would update that aspect of it because the whole thing about Magneto's origin is
01:24:09
Speaker
And you can still keep the Jewish aspect of it that way, right? Because you obviously have a lot of Jewish people in Eastern Europe. But the whole thing is that it's not so much tied to him being Jewish. Because again, there was this whole debate for a while over, are we going to make him Jewish or are we going to make him Romani in the early 90s? So there's nothing about his origin that specifically has to be Jewish. It's just more of the fact that it has to be about him experiencing this great loss and seeing
01:24:36
Speaker
the depths humanity is capable of sinking to. That's really the key of it. And that's where the Fox X-Men movies have really, I mean, they were really, I mean, it was the movie, the first movie that kind of, that solidly puts him right in the middle of the Holocaust, isn't it? Isn't that something they retconned in later after? No, no, the Holocaust was,
01:25:02
Speaker
I mean, it was hinted at. No, no, Claremont firmly established it is the Holocaust. The discrepancy came in to whether or not he was he was Jewish or if he was Ramani. That was the thing that was. That was the Max Eisenhart, Eric Lencher thing. Yeah, that came. That was when they firmly established he was Jewish, because in the early 90s,
01:25:24
Speaker
I think it was some editors at Marvel got nervous about the fact that, well, wait, we've got Magneto. He's a supervillain. He's trying to kill people on a rape. He's Jewish. That's not good, that we can't have him be Jewish. So they got nervous about that. Then that's where the whole Eric Lencher thing came about because it was a Romani name. It had Romani roots. So that's where the Lencher identity came from.
01:25:50
Speaker
And then what happened was Jewish groups actually complained saying that, wait, all this time we thought Magneto was Jewish. We thought it was an excellent representation of the Holocaust and all this. And so they complained about the fact that Magneto was no longer Jewish. So then they had retconned that and they got rid of, and they established in the mid-90s that the Eric Lencher identity was a forgery. And then it wasn't until
01:26:18
Speaker
you know, what was like maybe 10 years ago or so when they did the Magneto Testament series. And that's when they firmly established the Max Eisner identity. Yeah. But yeah, the Holocaust stuff was done by Claremont and Claremont's original because Claremont's of Jewish descent and his original intent was for Magneto to be Jewish. Yeah, I just I don't. Yeah, I think there's. I think there's there's such a weight to the what the two
01:26:48
Speaker
the two really great scenes that those uh fox x-men movies do it are uh are magneto in the concentration camp and and i i feel like you have to keep that aspect if you were to go forward in the mcu i mean i understand that argument i just think with the the timeline aspect it becomes it's difficult it becomes problematic especially when you're
01:27:13
Speaker
Like with Captain America, it's easier because you establish that he's frozen ice. But with X-Men, you got to establish the resurrection protocols and that throws another thorn into it because then what if you want to do Dark Phoenix Saga? Well, we can always just bring Jean back then. It has a lot of wrinkles in it that way if you do that. Like the resurrection stuff, I mean, I understand the argument. It's just, I think that's why I think I would move it to Eastern Europe or if you were going to race Benton,
01:27:43
Speaker
Rwanda or something like that. That would also be a really good way to do it as well. Or even what's happening now in Syria, like that whole thing as well. That can be done that way too. So there are a lot of, unfortunately, there's no shortage of human atrocities you can pick from. But I think that the
01:28:11
Speaker
I think that people latch onto the Holocaust too much as, and where I think that it's, Magneto doesn't have to be tied to the Holocaust, he just has to be tied to human atrocity more than anything else. I don't know, that's just my, that's my take on it. But anyway, that about wraps it up for this episode. Greg, any final thoughts you wanted to say before we close up? Well, at the beginning of this episode, I was,
01:28:40
Speaker
I was more willing to defend Dark Phoenix, but as you brought up more employees, I think it kind of fell apart. As I was, again, like, see, I'm the type of person that I can lose myself in the movie for a second and just relish in the fact that these characters that I never thought would make it on screen. And this really goes
Are Marvel movies still enjoyable despite flaws?
01:29:08
Speaker
for,
01:29:08
Speaker
any Marvel property. I never thought it was ever possible. And here they are. Maybe it's not that great all the time, but I can enjoy it in the moment as a popcorn flick or just enjoy it for a second. Because yeah, just as a kid,
01:29:37
Speaker
I lived in a world where comics were something that... I don't know. Part of me was almost ashamed that I was reading them. Yeah, I know exactly what you mean.
How have comics transitioned from shameful to mainstream?
01:29:52
Speaker
Yeah, I was just surrounding myself. It was hard for me to find other people to talk about comics. And now in this day and age and the fact that these movies have made these stories mainstream and popular and it's okay.
01:30:06
Speaker
It's still, there's a little part of me that still wants to hide. And it's hard for me to break out of that shell sometimes. And these movies give me solace and let me just...
01:30:22
Speaker
just be 10 years old again, I think. Yeah, that great movie. No, no, you make that's and I'm generally the same way. Like, I can overlook a lot of flaws in a lot of these movies. And I do most of the time, but sometimes a movie comes along that just takes you so much out of it. And I think that's what this movie did for me.
Changing opinions on Spider-Man movies
01:30:42
Speaker
And it's funny you said that I kind of had you changing your opinion as you were talking because we had done an episode which just came out recently about the amazing Spider-Man movies and the host there he had the opposite thing like he came in ready to bash those movies then he ended up kind of liking them at the end. So it's an interesting reversal here. Yeah and I think it's just
01:31:09
Speaker
Yeah, it's that same feeling I get when I leave the theater and I start diving into it and you're like, okay, this wasn't great. This went wrong. They were holding onto this too much and they should have let it go. And yeah, this actor didn't have that great of a performance. But I think too, I'm also handicapped by the idea that I know the,
01:31:37
Speaker
the how many years it like 60 plus years of backstory uh from the comics so i'm just i'm like subconsciously uh filling in the plot holes with some weird off the wall comic book exploration yeah that is halfway formulated from a couple of panels years and years and years ago so
01:32:00
Speaker
Oh, well, but yeah, yeah, no, I totally get that.
Superhero Cinephiles podcast contact information
01:32:04
Speaker
Alright, Greg, thanks so much for coming on. Do you want to tell people where they can find you? Yeah, I'm on most social media at never done right. That's never D U N N R I G H T. Yeah, I'm on on a number of X men Facebook groups. Feel free that you know, shoot me a message or maybe you'll see me.
01:32:28
Speaker
make my weird opinion. I pop into hashtag X Twitter a lot and kind of lurk and comment on that kind of stuff. But yeah, I just love these comics and I do like the movies. Good. Well, thanks so much for coming on. Maybe we can come on again at another time in the future, talk about another movie. All right. Yeah, that sounds great, Perry. I appreciate it.
01:32:53
Speaker
Thank you. All right, that does it for this episode of Superhero Cinephiles. Thanks so much for watching. Thanks so much for listening. Superherocinephiles.com is our website, and you can find us on Instagram and Twitter at Supercinemapod. Also got a Facebook group, Superhero Cinephiles. Just do a search for that, pop right up. If you want to help out support the show, you can give us a donation through SuperheroCinephiles.com or leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or anywhere else you get your podcasts. Thanks so much for watching. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next time.
01:33:23
Speaker
You have been listening to the Superhero Cinephiles podcast. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram at SuperCinemapod. Join our Facebook group by searching for Superhero Cinephiles, where you can interact with us and other superhero fans. If you'd like to support the show, you can become a regular supporter at Patreon or make a one-time donation through PayPal, both of which can be found at our website, SuperheroCinephiles.com.
01:33:46
Speaker
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01:34:16
Speaker
Good night. Good evening. God bless.