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It’s a giant-sized episode as Perry and Derrick talk about 2000’s X-Men, the movie that launched the superhero revolution! We both defend and deconstruct different parts of this film. Plus: Derrick talks about his problems with the civil rights metaphor for mutants and Perry gives some ideas about how mutants could be introduced into the MCU.
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Transcript
Introduction to Logan and the School for Gifted Mutants
00:00:20
Speaker
Logan, I'd like you to meet Aurora Monroe, also called Storm. This is Scott Summers, also called Cyclops. They saved your life. I believe you've already met Dr. Jean Grey. You're in my school for the gifted, for mutants. You'll be safe here from Magneto. What's a Magneto? A very powerful mutant who believes that a war is brewing between mutants and the rest of humanity. I've been following his activities for some time. The man who attacked you is an associate of his called Sabretooth.
00:00:50
Speaker
Sabre tooth. Storm. What do they call you? Wheels? This is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Cyclops, right?
00:01:13
Speaker
Logan, it's been almost 15 years, hasn't it? Living from day to day, moving from place to place, with no memory of who or what you are. Shut up. Give me a chance. I may be able to help you find some answers. How do you know? You're not the only one with gifts. Where's he going? He's over there. What are you doing over here?
Podcast Introduction and Hosts Discussion
00:01:45
Speaker
What is this place? Welcome to the Superhero Cinephiles podcast. I'm one of your hosts, Perry Constantine. And I am the other host, Derek Ferguson. How you doing today, Derek? I'm doing quite well. Thank you very much. And how are you doing, my friend? I'm doing pretty good. I actually just finished watching the Doom Patrol series on DC Universe. Oh, OK.
00:02:11
Speaker
So how'd you like it? I thought it was pretty good. You know much more about Doom Patrol than I do, but I read the Morrison run and I read some of Gerard Way's recent run. I think I read three issues of that, but mostly I only know them from the Morrison run and it took a lot of stuff from the Morrison thing. In fact, it made me want to go back and
00:02:34
Speaker
reread the Morrison comics, which I'm doing now. And I'm seeing like I'm reremembering all the things that they brought in from the comics and put in the show. Yeah, I I've only like I think I mentioned this to you, like I've only like watched the first four or five episodes. And actually what I'm just planning on doing anyway, is either I'm just going to because I see that they have the first season out or Blu-ray. And I'm either either going to just get that
00:03:01
Speaker
or either just subscribe to DC Universe so I could watch it. Because you know what? I can't get used to watching. You know what? I'm a TV guy. If I'm watching something, I'm not like your younger generation people. Y'all watch everything on your computer. You know, I can't do it. I have to watch a TV show on a TV. So I figured that's the only way I'm going to finish watching it. But to get back to your point, yes, from the episodes I saw, I would say about like a good
00:03:30
Speaker
50 to 60 percent of everything is taken from Morrison. Yeah. Yeah. Although I'm the same as you, actually. Like I've got I use the streaming services and everything, but I use them all through Apple TV. So I watch everything on the on the big screen. I don't watch anything on my device, really. Yeah. Yeah. Like I know people that, you know, they watch the movies and they watch TV shows on. And I say, you know what? I can't do it because my computer is where I work.
00:03:58
Speaker
Exactly. And my TV is where I play, you know, that's where I play with my Xbox and watch my movies and everything like that. So it's compartmentalized, you know, like in my brain, I don't associate sitting at my computer and watching a movie as doing what I'm supposed to be doing, you know.
00:04:17
Speaker
I feel the same way. In fact, that's why I insisted on getting a desktop and having like a set location for my computer. Cause I know when I sit at that desk, that's time to work, not time to play. Exactly. That's why I have a desktop and I'm always going to have a desktop. Now I do have a laptop cause and my wife had been after me for years. Oh, you ought to get your laptop. No, I don't want a laptop. So I got one and you know what? This past summer I actually did enjoy
00:04:45
Speaker
going outside and sitting out back on the deck and doing some writing back there i did enjoy however i
00:04:54
Speaker
like a desktop and I'm always going to have a desktop because I associate that with actually working. I use my laptop mostly because, you know, I use it in in my lectures for PowerPoint presentations, for showing videos, that kind of stuff. I don't use it that much for writing, but every now and then, like there's a coffee shop near here. I might take it there and do some plotting work or try to come up with some brainstorming or that kind of thing. Not really hardcore writing, though.
00:05:22
Speaker
Right. No, I don't do any like hardcore riding on there, but like if I and occasionally I'll, you know, just be upstairs and I'll be hanging out with my wife and I'll just open up the laptop and I'll just be messing around on there, you know, but but like for like the serious stuff that I do, I go to my desktop and I do that. And that's what I associated with so that when I sit down at my desk, I know I'm here to work. You know, it's not, you know.
00:05:46
Speaker
No for volatility. So I don't watch TV on it. I don't play games. I don't, which is why I guess that my computers last as long as it has. Cause people tell me all this stuff that they do on their computer and I say, wow, I don't do, I don't do half of that crap. I mean, I would say, seriously, there's about a good 75% of the programs that's on my computer. I've never even opened.
00:06:10
Speaker
Seriously, because I had no use for it. Well, I was going through my computer because I got one of those cleaning programs to like sweep through stuff. And I went and I looked through the applications and it showed me like all these applications and support applications that I haven't used in about 10 years or something. So I'm just going through and it's like, how is that even still there? I didn't even know that was still, I still had that. I don't remember what that was for.
00:06:33
Speaker
It's the same way with me. I look and I'm looking. I said, wait a minute. OK, well, what's this? And I open it up and I realize that this is a program I've never opened up. Yeah. I have no use for it. And I'm like, if I have no use for it, I don't mess with it. But if it ever comes to time that I do need that program, well, then I don't know how to use it.
00:06:54
Speaker
And I'm with you on the, on the people watching stuff on their devices. I got some of my coworker, one of my coworkers, he was talking about how he watches stuff on his iPhone or, or something like that. And I can't do it. It's too small. I want the big screen experience. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, yeah, I mean, I know people that now, okay. I understand. Let's say if you work on a boring job at night and you know, you have your tablet and you, you know, you want to watch, okay, listen, that I understand, you know, but
00:07:24
Speaker
If you're home and you have a big screen TV that's a few feet away, why would you squint your eyes trying to watch something on a TV, you know, like a telephone or, I don't know, I just don't get it. Like I said, that's for the younger generation. You saw Joker, didn't you?
In-depth Analysis of the Joker Film
00:07:44
Speaker
Yes, I did. So just like really briefly, because we're going to be talking about X-Men today, obviously, but what did you think of Joker?
00:07:52
Speaker
I liked it. I thought it was a good movie. Of course, I don't think it's the greatest movie ever made, which it seems like every time a superhero-based movie comes out,
00:08:08
Speaker
that automatically gets to be the greatest superhero comic book movie ever made. And actually, it's really not that much of a comic book movie. It really isn't. No, it's not. It's more Scorsese's greatest hits type of thing. Yeah, because I don't believe that this guy
00:08:26
Speaker
that we're introduced to and who we follow through this movie. I think by the time he gets into the movie, I don't wanna spoil if anybody who hasn't seen it, but I think the movie does make its point that this isn't Batman's archenemy. Yeah, yeah, I feel the same way. I mean, it's nice as a Elseworlds type take, but it's not the Joker.
00:08:46
Speaker
Which is how I took it and reach out if you read my review and anybody wants to read my review, Joker, you can go to Ferguson Theater and you can read it. That's what I said, too, in my review. I said, I took this as an Elseworld, you know, thing. And on that basis, it works. And yeah, this is like, you know, Martin Scorsese Light.
00:09:10
Speaker
Yeah, it really is. His DNA is all in this movie. Oh, yeah, everywhere, even getting De Niro in the movie, too. Yeah, yeah. I mean, as a matter of fact, again, in my review, I recommend people, if you haven't seen it yet, sit down and watch King of Comedy first. You know, because this is almost like a sideways version of King of Comedy.
00:09:34
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, you know, listen, I enjoyed it for what it was. I didn't expect it to change my life.
00:09:43
Speaker
or to be a spiritually uplifting experience, which is what I think most people expect. Every movie that they see is supposed to be. As pure entertainment, it was enjoyable. The acting, I liked the acting, although everybody kind of pale in comparison to Joaquin Phoenix because he's like on screen through 90% of the movie. I mean, the movie is his. I mean, this is just like for him to do his thing.
00:10:08
Speaker
Oh, there are several scenes where I think they just the director just set up the camera and he's like, all right, Joaquin, do whatever you want to do. That's what I think, too. I think sometimes he just, you know, just let him riff and go ahead and do exactly what he want. I know that some people have issues with the whole mental health
00:10:30
Speaker
aspect of the movie. You know, I don't know much about that. I'm not going to speak upon that. But I do think that the movie did succeed in showing how an individual with emotional and psychological issues can fall through the cracks of society if society does not pay attention to these individuals. And this is the result. This is
00:10:59
Speaker
This movie is like showing how you get a personality that can walk into a church, a school, or a synagogue and just shoot people with no remorse. You know, I pretty much agree with you. It's an entertaining movie. I don't think it's as great as everybody says, or I don't think it's, you know, this mark of the downfall of civilization that other people say it is. Yeah. And actually, also,
00:11:25
Speaker
Here's another thing. I think maybe that the reason why they say, okay, well, we're going to call this Joker and we're going to set this in, you know, the DC universe. And then they did this just about like a regular guy. It might've hit a little bit too close a home in our current climate. Well, also it may not have gotten made at all because Todd Phillips and Joaquin Phoenix, like his whole proposal for this movie to Phoenix was let's use the studio to make an independent movie.
00:11:51
Speaker
Yeah. OK. And that's basically what they did. And they just said, well, let's just slap the Joker name on it. Well, that's what I think. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's what I figured because this does remind me of a movie that would have been made back in the heyday of independent film. Right. You know, I'm talking about the 70s and the 80s when independent film actually was independent film.
00:12:12
Speaker
Yeah. If this wasn't the Joker, I could have easily seen Netflix or Hulu or something back in it. Oh, absolutely. As a matter of fact, there's a scene that's at the end of the movie and you know what I'm talking about because it's very familiar in Batman.
00:12:30
Speaker
You know in the development of that character But there's a scene that set in that I kind of feel was tacked on actually definitely yeah You know what we got to stick this in here just to remind people that this is you know Because Thomas what you know what Thomas Wayne didn't even he Thomas Wayne didn't even actually have to be Thomas Wayne No, no, not at all. They only did that and he's Nothing at all like Thomas Wayne and any other incarnation of Batman
00:13:00
Speaker
Well, you know what? Some people have said that he could be the flashpoint. You know, that would work. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Although that's what Thomas Wayne was also only like that because of seeing Bruce and Bruce die. Although let me say that the Alfred Pennyworth I know
00:13:25
Speaker
If anybody had grabbed the Alfred Pennyworth, I know like that he'd have broken both his arms right then and there. Oh yeah. Like if you look at some of the other recent, uh, Alfred's like Sean Pertwee from Gotham or Jeremy Irons, like they wouldn't have, they wouldn't have stood for that shit. They all knew. I said, listen.
00:13:44
Speaker
I'm glad they didn't give him a name. I mean, I know that's supposed to be Alfred, but see, I'm just going to imagine in my head that that's just some random servant that, you know, maybe that was the nanny's husband or something like that. Yeah, that one now. Yeah. When the took Alfred wouldn't took that shit.
00:14:03
Speaker
All right, but today we're going with My Pick, which was really kind of the birth of the modern superhero
Impact of the X-Men Movie on the Superhero Genre
00:14:10
Speaker
film. I mean, we had Superman in 78 and then Batman in 89, but it kind of died after Batman and Robin.
00:14:23
Speaker
Some of the other ones that came out in the meantime, there was Blade, which was not at all marketed like a superhero movie. But then this one, X-Men in 2000, was the one that really kind of reinvigorated the genre. Yeah, because, and I know I'm gonna catch heat from this from a lot of people, but as I've said before,
00:14:45
Speaker
People say well, it wasn't for Blade. There wouldn't be any Marvel movies and I don't know I I really don't see it that way because as I've said before that we keep on saying The Blade movies was marketed more as Wesley Snipes action movies. They were not marketed as superhero movies or I
00:15:02
Speaker
Marvel movies or whatever, you know, but X-Men was blatantly and market. Okay. This is a Marvel movie. This has got Marvel superheroes. They got costumes and, and superpowers and all that other stuff that come along with superheroes. So folks, this is the real deal. Yeah. I mean, in the eyes of Hollywood, you know, blade would have got them to start paying more attention and think, Oh, maybe we should take another look at this stuff. But
00:15:29
Speaker
Blade did not embrace the superhero aesthetic or the concept, really, and so much so that they didn't even put Marvel's name on the in the credits. No, no. And as I've said before, most people, most of my friends and family, I mean, you know, they went to see it. And when I told them that, you know, well, blame this character that's been running around comedy books since the 1970s, they said, what? You know, they didn't know because, yeah. I mean, you know, the character was not presented that way. Not that people cared.
00:15:59
Speaker
Not that people care because, as I said, they wouldn't see because it was Wesley Snipes. Right, right. Killing vampires. And who wouldn't want to see that? And the Blade comics were never successful either. I mean, he was a supporting character for most of his publication run at first. Then he was part of an ensemble group, which only lasted... Nightstalkers, I think, only lasted 20 issues or something.
00:16:23
Speaker
It wasn't until after the success of the Blade movies that Marvel decided, OK, well, this is the A-list guy now, so we're going to, you know, promote him that way and we're going to handle him that way. Well, they tried before the movie. They gave him a solo series, which I think it barely made it to 10 issues. Then it got canceled. And then after the movie came out, they did a few things. They tried a few miniseries. They tried an ongoing series that got downgraded to 12 issues and then downgraded to six. And
00:16:53
Speaker
They made a few attempts. They tried when they did the the Max line, when they're having the mature readers line, they tried a Blade series there, didn't get any traction. And they even had Howard Shakin do a run on it and he couldn't even get get numbers up on it. And it was still that was canceled after like 12 issues. And in addition, something a lot of people either didn't know was there or they forgot, there was a Blade TV series.
00:17:20
Speaker
Yeah, with sticky fingers. Sticky fingers, that's right. Yeah, plain blade. It was on TNT, which is now the Paramount Network. No, it was on Spike, that short-lived Spike network. It was on Spike? Yeah. OK.
00:17:37
Speaker
Yeah it was on Spike because I remember Spike had it on there and it actually was doing pretty well. It got decent enough ratings to justify a second season. Except what happened was it was just too expensive to produce. So that's why it got cancelled.
00:17:54
Speaker
Yeah, they had like a big cast and you know, you could tell from the locations and the sets and the stuff like that that they spent money on this. The only problem I had with the series was that they basically made Blade a supporting character in his own series.
00:18:10
Speaker
Yeah, and that's one of the tough things about Blade is because he doesn't have a whole lot of depth as a character. He's basically just there to kill vampires and grunt a lot. So it's kind of hard to build a series out of a character like that. Yeah, because in the series, the main character actually was this policewoman. She was a detective that Blade was using to infiltrate the vampire cult.
00:18:37
Speaker
Right. Right. Because he had moved to Detroit or Chicago or someplace like that. And actually, that's who the series was. That was the main character, this policewoman that was infiltrating, you know, this. And there was like a whole bunch of different clans, you know, vampire clans that were fighting each other and stuff like that. So he was using her to infiltrate.
00:19:00
Speaker
And that's what the series was about and I watched it But like I said, you know what if you're gonna give me a series called blade then that too I want to be the main character. Yeah, it was alright I was enjoyable for what it was but it wasn't as good as at least was this it was better than the third movie I'll give it that Well, I think everybody agree anything
00:19:24
Speaker
but today um so x-men what were your experiences with this movie or with these characters going in first of all i have to go back and i gotta explain to you people perry you've heard this before and a bunch of you other folks that are hearing this you've heard me go go on and on about this before but for the benefit of you that don't
00:19:44
Speaker
I've been X-Men because I've been reading comics ever since the early 1970s I go back to when comics were 15 cents So I've been X-Men for a long time even before they became popular. I like the X-Men now for the reasons that you think which I will go into later on but Okay, so I like the characters now I
00:20:10
Speaker
In the movies, I like the movie version of X-Men better than the comic version, and I will tell you why. Because to me, the whole, the X-Men concept does not work for me when they are set in a universe where there's a half million other super beings. Okay? In the movie version, it's just mutants and humans. And to me, okay, now I understand
00:20:36
Speaker
why humans hate and fear mutants and why they're such an animosity because now it's a battle for the planet, it's survival of the fittest. Who's gonna rule the planet? Okay, you got me at that one. Now, here's where I'm gonna piss off a few people because anytime I say this now,
00:20:58
Speaker
I would get well-meaning people who would tell me, well, you must not understand the correlation between that and the civil rights. And that's when I have to stop them to tell you, do realize I'm black, right? Hey, you do understand I'm black before you go into this trying to explain to me about civil rights. Okay.
00:21:19
Speaker
The reason why I don't like that thing, and that's the thing everybody says. And also for you, because you grew up close to that era, so it was much more fresh for you growing up than it was for other people now. Yeah, I mean, I grew up, I've seen things, I've had things done to me, so that's why this whole, oh, the X-Men are just a stand-in for the civil rights and everything like that. Well, not for me, because
00:21:49
Speaker
Those people back in the 60s and 70s who went on those marches and protests and everything like that, they didn't have superpowers to protect them from dogs and fire hoses and being beat with nice sticks and being lynched. Mutants have superpowers to defend themselves, okay? Second of all, 90% of mutants are good-looking white people. They are. They're very handsome. They're very good. Let me ask you something. Jean Grey.
00:22:19
Speaker
She's a psychic, right? Yeah. So she can read minds. So she can tell if a guy's lying to her. Who wouldn't want to have a daughter who could protect herself like that from potential rapers and, you know, guys that want to do her dirty. Yeah. And she looks like the fashion model. Right. Right. OK. So, you know, mutants in the Marvel universe, they got it pretty good. So.
00:22:45
Speaker
Like I said, in the comic books, I don't like this whole thing about, well, they, you know, well, we hate mutants and we hate you. Well, and they hate mutants only until they become an Avenger. Then as soon as they become a, okay, they're a good guy.
00:22:59
Speaker
Now I'm gonna push back on you a little bit on this. I get what you're saying about the civil rights comparison. And I think that's one of the things that the movie series did well is that they kind of took it from being mostly about comparison in the civil rights movement and made it more about LGBTQ pursuits for equalities.
00:23:24
Speaker
It makes more sense, because you've got the whole things like, you know, being in the closet, passing as normal, and it fits the mutant aspect a lot better, I think. Okay.
00:23:36
Speaker
So yeah, I think that's something they did really well in this. Like, especially in the second movie when Iceman's mother says to him, you know, have you tried not being a mutant? Right, have you not been right? Yeah. And like you said, I think that, yeah, that correlation, that works a lot better, at least for me. But like I said, the movie version of X-Men works much better for me because it's just them and humans. It's not like Iron Man. And that's why I am really not
00:24:06
Speaker
I know everybody is all hot and lather to see the X-Men in the MCU, but I'm not. I really think that they work best when they're set on their own. And you know what? We got enough mutants that, yeah, they can be in their own universe. Now, I'm going to come back to that in a minute, because I'm going to push back on you on that as well. But to take it.
00:24:28
Speaker
Because I'm the big X-Men fan around here, so I'm definitely going to be pushing back on some of this stuff here. And I like them, too. I mean, you know, Cyclops, I love Cyclops, and that's my favorite. I absolutely detest what Marvel has done to that character, because I love him, you know? So they... Now, the civil rights thing, a lot of people
00:24:48
Speaker
you know they think that it was Stan Lee who introduced that concept but really when Stan Lee created the X-Men you know he was being kind of lazy you know he was just kind of throwing stuff together at that point and because he he said in interviews that
00:25:03
Speaker
He said the hardest thing about writing superhero comics was thinking up an origin story. He's like, you can't have every character bathed in cosmic rays or bitten by a radioactive spider. So he's like, so when I got to the X-Men, I was trying to think what should I do? And they said, you know what? Then I just thought to me, fuck it. They're born that way. Yeah.
00:25:26
Speaker
And then he created the X-Men off of that. And the whole idea of Magneto being this kind of tragic character and the whole Martin Luther King Malcolm X similarities, which also going in that route kind of does a disservice to Malcolm X and what he actually stood for, I think.
Exploring X-Men Themes: Civil Rights and LGBTQ
00:25:44
Speaker
Because in this movie, if you remember,
00:25:48
Speaker
At the end, that's what Magneto says to Charles Xavier, that famous line of Malcolm X, by enemies necessary. He even says it, which I had completely forgotten until I saw the movie. That's, oh, shit. I say, yeah, OK. But then again, seeing this movie brought back a lot of things for me that I had totally forgotten that happened.
00:26:11
Speaker
Right. And everyone thinks that that stuff is was baked into the original comics that, you know, you had Professor X and Magneto who were both kind of sympathetic characters. But really, Magneto was just a straight up supervillain in the early days. He didn't have this kind of nuance or anything like that. I don't think they ever established until Claremont came along that Xavier and Magneto were friends.
00:26:36
Speaker
Right. All that all that stuff came later on, like you said, when, you know, the X-Men was brought back. And for a lot of people, I mean, I don't know how familiar our audience is. I mean, you know what the X-Men, but for much of their comic book life, they struggled. Yeah. Yeah. You know, the book never was like a big seller and they were never like, you know, like these major characters in the Marvel universe, not like the Fantastic Four and the Avengers, you know.
00:27:03
Speaker
And there's a certain point where they stopped doing new stories and they just did reprints of the early issues. I mean, they even brought in Roy Thomas and Neil Adams who were superstars at the time and they couldn't get sales up on the damn thing. Yeah, because it was the lowest selling book and they brought them on and you know, they gave them like a certain number of issues. I mean, you know, like to turn it around. Now, if even Roy Thomas and Neil Adams can't sell a book,
00:27:29
Speaker
And they did all kinds of gimmicks. They killed all Professor X. They brought back Professor X. They tried putting the X-Men in plain clothes. They tried breaking them up, and they would have issues where they would go on their solo adventures, like, what issue would be Cyclops, and what issue would be the Eastern Iceman? They did all kind of, and none of it worked. And like you said, then they say, well, you know what? We're just going to make an oil reprint.
00:27:52
Speaker
Yeah. And then eventually the book just got canceled completely. And then it was, Len Wien and Dave Cockrum came in with a giant size X-Men and they, and you know, it's funny, everyone's talking now about, you know, the comics gate people and they're complaining about force diversity in comics. Giant size X-Men number one was, would be considered force diversity by those same people today because they brought in this international cast. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they had, uh,
00:28:20
Speaker
Storm, who was African. Everybody, you know, I mean, yeah, she was African. What was it got? Thunderbird was a Native American. Yeah, Apache, I believe. Yeah. Banshee was Irish. Sunfire was Japanese. Japanese Colossus. Colossus. And then German Nightcrawler and Canadian Wolverine. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, talk about your diversity. There it is. International cast.
00:28:51
Speaker
Yes, and they brought them in, and then they were going to do the regular series, but I think Wien had some scheduling conflicts or something he had to drop out, so then they brought in this young guy named Chris Claremont, who nobody knew anything about, and in the very first issue, he kills off one of the characters, which is something they did not do in comics at the time. Yeah, yeah. This was still during the time when death was a surprise.
00:29:14
Speaker
the the
00:29:34
Speaker
He had attitude. And then the only thing he had going for him was his powers, which were his strength. And then you had Colossus who could turn into metal. So he was, you know, overshadowed in that area, too. Right. And he had the speed. But even still, you had other characters that could fly. And, you know, so, yeah, I mean, it wasn't like his speed was flash speed or anything like that. You could just run at like peak, like just above peak human speed or something like that.
00:29:59
Speaker
Yeah, he ran very fast, but not, you know, so, yeah. So there wasn't anything that he could do that another team that another team member couldn't do better. So they said, well, he's kind of redundant. But also in a way that heightened the interest in the book, because they said, oh, shit, well, they just introduced this guy and they kill him. Who are they going to kill off next? So, of course, you come back to find out how they deal with it. Yeah.
00:30:26
Speaker
Well, that was something Josh Whedon wanted to do in the first episode of Buffy, because I'm not sure if you remember in the first episode, but Xander and Willow, they had another friend in the first episode, and he was originally supposed to... Whedon wanted to put him in the credits, the opening credits, but they didn't have the money to do it, so they had to scrap it. But he wanted to introduce this guy in the opening credits and then kill him off in the first episode.
00:30:51
Speaker
Claremont took over and then John Byrne joined him on his artist and co-plotter and then the book just skyrocketed after that. And the X-Men went from being the redheaded stepchildren of the Marvel Universe to being the premier super team.
00:31:10
Speaker
Yeah. And that's when they had that's when they introduced the the civil rights metaphors, the Xavier Magneto friendship and Magneto's backstory as a Holocaust survivor. Like none of that stuff was from Stan Lee. It was all from Claremont and Bern. None of that stuff was from Stan Lee. Nah. All that all that came later on, like you said, during the Claremont
00:31:40
Speaker
I do think, though, for some reason, it's tickling at the back of my mind that I do think during the Stanley thing that there was mention that Xavier and Magneto had been friends or had some kind of relationship. I'm not sure, though. Don't hold me to that. But I think that might be the only thing from the Stanley era. But everything else, right? Yeah, you're right.
00:32:03
Speaker
And so taking it back, it is kind of funny when you're talking about the civil rights metaphors and how it doesn't really fit together in hindsight. And then when you think about it, well, you know, that was introduced by two middle aged white guys. So it kind of makes sense why it doesn't quite fit. Well, you know what? I refuse to get all stressed out about it. But however, I do think that it's a lazy
00:32:32
Speaker
to make people relate to these characters by by saying, OK, well, this whole mutant struggle is just like the civil rights struggle. And I don't know. To me, I'm sorry. That just like cheapens the whole seriousness of the actual civil rights movement and, you know, the sacrifices that was made and everything like that. Maybe I'm reading too much into it. I don't know. It does stop me from enjoying the comics and the movies mind.
00:33:02
Speaker
But, you know, that's just how I feel about it. When it comes to the comic books, you know who I really consider, you've heard me say it before, you know who I really consider more of a danger than any mutant? Reed Richards. Reed Richards, yeah. This is a guy who has the nerve to have his own private gateway to a hostile dimension in the middle of Manhattan.
00:33:27
Speaker
Where did you get the ball? And I'm supposed to take your word for it. Well, I'm Mr. Fantastic. I got under control. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And you call yourself Mr. Fantastic. What's the ego, too? Mind you, this is the guy who named himself. Exactly. Yeah. I remember the first issue of Fantastic Four. Yeah. Ben Grimm's like, I'll beat the thing. And then he then reads like, and I'll call myself Mr. Fantastic. I can just picture like.
00:33:51
Speaker
Ben just going like, oh yeah, what the fuck is wrong with you? Yeah, yeah, thank you. Everybody should have turned and looked at him right there to say, really? Seriously? But nobody called him on his shit, which is what Reed Richard's problem is, which is why I love Ben Grimm so much, because he's like the only one that will ever call Reed on his shit.
00:34:10
Speaker
But yeah, but the guy's got a price, you know, and we're supposed to take his word for it that, uh, listen, I got it under control. I got, no, no, no, man. You take that shit and you go put it someplace else. Go to New Jersey, put that New Jersey. Which again, the X-Men have the common decency to put their headquarters where? In a remote part of Westchester, where if the Sentinels come after them, the only one that's going to get hurt is them.
00:34:35
Speaker
And now in the current X-Men comics, they're not even in the States. They're off on Krakoa. They got their own island now. You see what I mean? They put their headquarters where if the enemies come to get them, nobody else is going to get hurt. Not the Fantastic Four and the Avengers. They put their headquarters right in the middle of midtown Manhattan. And then they got the nerve to complain that they got to pay for the property damage and the hospital bills when people get murdered, maimed, and killed when Galactus comes to eat the planet again. Yeah. Yeah.
00:35:05
Speaker
Although I did want to push back on you and the whole mutants in the Marvel Universe thing because the way I look at it is You've got the Avengers the Fantastic Four They get their powers through other means right they get their powers through science through Technology, they're not born with them so it's like they're there it's a step removed and I
00:35:30
Speaker
And then when you have mutants who join the Avengers and then get accepted, like Scarlet Witch, like the Beast, that, to me, that's kind of like how, you know how in the 90s you had actors and actresses starting to come out of the closet and admit to being gay? And people were okay with it. But if you find out your next door neighbor was gay or that your kid's teacher was gay, then you started to have a different reaction to it.
00:35:59
Speaker
So I kind of look at it in that way, is that the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, the other superheroes, they're removed a little bit. So it's kind of like they're the celebrities. So it's okay for them to be a little bit different, a little bit weird. Okay, now let me throw some back at you. Okay. You look at me, what do you see? See an old part of my- You can see it, it's okay.
00:36:28
Speaker
See a guy I've known for years, a big black guy. A black guy? Let's see a black guy get over with. OK. Stop mumbling. You see a black guy, right? Yeah. OK, I'm black. You see me? That's the first thing you see. OK, well, he's black. OK, I can't hide that. There's nothing I can do to change that. OK, you run into Cyclops. Well, Cyclops, how do you fire those laser beams? Oh, this? Well, this is a device that was invented by Professor X, so I got it from Tony Stark.
00:36:57
Speaker
He doesn't have to say, well, I'm a mutant. You see what I mean? Well, yeah, I'm not saying that they can't pass as that, but I'm saying that that's the mentality of people because prejudice, it's not logical. So I can understand why it would work because it's one thing to see
00:37:18
Speaker
Reed Richards, who got his powers from going into space, or Captain America, who got his powers from a government experiment. And it's another thing to find out that your next door neighbor can spit fire. He'd be here near barbecues.
00:37:36
Speaker
But I'm saying I can understand why there is that disconnect. Because the superheroes, they didn't get their power. They weren't born with their powers. They're not here to replace us. Whereas mutants, they're the next stage in evolution. They're here to replace us. But most mutants, if they never tell anybody that they're mutants, nobody would ever know.
00:37:56
Speaker
No, that's true. But I'm saying that it has to go hand in hand with the idea of people know that mutants are the next stage in evolution. Which is why, to me, again, it works best when it's just humans and X-Men. It don't work for me when it's, you know, because, OK, why do we got OK, OK, there's Iron Man. How do we know he's not a mutant?
00:38:18
Speaker
He tells us, well, this is a suit of armor, but how do we know? Now, I've actually got a way that that could work in the MCU, but we'll talk about that at the end of the episode, because I want to focus on the movie right now. Ooh, kidoki. What was your memories going into this movie? Like the, um, the lead up to it and seeing it in the theater for the first time and all that kind of stuff? Um, again, I have to say I was pleasantly surprised as I usually am when I go, because again,
00:38:48
Speaker
I think the key to this movie is the performances of Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Hugh Jackman and Anna Paquin. Am I saying it right? Yeah. Yeah. OK. Who, despite whatever you may want to think or whatever you want to say, those are actually the main characters of this movie.
00:39:06
Speaker
Brother, everybody else, Cyclops, Storm, even Jenga. They're all supporting characters. Right. Which is a weakness of the movie. Yeah. Matter of fact, I've always said this movie should actually be called Wolverine and the X-Men. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Because we introduced.
00:39:23
Speaker
to the X-Men through Wolverine. We see most of this movie through his eyes, and when we're not seeing it through his eyes, we're seeing it through the eyes of Rogue, played by Anna Paquin. Which, again, I don't have a problem with because these two characters are brought together because of their isolationism. She's isolated because of her superpowers. He's isolated because he wants to be.
00:39:46
Speaker
Yeah. So the two of them have to learn to overcome this isolationism by joining the X-Men and giving themselves over to a higher purpose. Okay. Listen, I got no problem with that. Straight up and down. I love the notion story-wise. However, like I said, it's to the detriment of the X-Men concept because
00:40:09
Speaker
It reduces them to being supporting characters in their own movie. Right. And that's been one of the weaknesses of all the Fox movies is that it's been so hyper focused on Professor X, Magneto, Wolverine, and later Mystique.
00:40:26
Speaker
Yeah. And then it completely ignores all the other characters. Yeah, there's no room for anybody. I mean, I understand why Halle Berry, you know, she kept pushing because they said one of the bones of contention that she kept pushing for, you know, more for her character to do. And I don't blame her. You know, I don't blame anybody else because nobody has got anything else. I mean, OK, if you want to make a movie about Magneto and Professor X, then make a movie about them.
00:40:50
Speaker
Right. You know, don't give us this whole host of characters and then just have them standing around, you know, during the background, you know, not in their head and, you know, they have nothing to do. Well, I think first class was probably the most egregious in that because you had this entire team and basically they're just there for background CGI effects. Well, you know what? We're going to save first class for another time because me and you need a whole episode talk about first class.
00:41:15
Speaker
that. So we're going to save that for another time. Because if we had started it on first class, we're never going to stop. But on the whole.
00:41:25
Speaker
I have no problem with this movie. Is it a perfect X-Men movie? No, of course not. But I mean, as far as casting goes, and I really like how you have these great Shakespearean actors in McKellen and Patrick Stewart, because I find that they take the material serious. You know what? They elevate it. They treat this stuff with superpowers and superheroes and costumes. They treat it like it is Shakespeare. Yeah.
00:41:52
Speaker
And as a consequence, it lifts the material and it makes it better. And also, you know, Stewart and McKellen are best friends in real life. So that adds a whole other dimension. And that really improves their performance when they and they've only got like two scenes in this movie, but they they play off each other great in those two scenes very briefly.
00:42:13
Speaker
Oh, that's all you need because when you have a scene that establishes care and that's one thing about this movie that I really like. It establishes character very well as a writer. I always like to start off when I introduce a character, I always like to introduce a character by having them do.
00:42:32
Speaker
whatever it is that they do best. So if I write a Dylan story, usually in most of the Dylan novels people have read, I start them off like a James Bond movie. He's in the middle of an adventure because that's what he is. If I was writing the story about a school teacher, I would have her in front of a classroom teaching. In this movie, we introduced a rogue when she kisses a boy and he goes into a coma because she's inadvertently, you know, stolen his energy, which is her superpower.
00:43:01
Speaker
that she could feel it. So that's how we're introduced to her. We see the effects of her power. We're introduced to Wolverine. He's in a cage fight. You know, he's in Alaska someplace and he's, you know, fighting for beer money. And, you know, so we introduced to him that way. When we introduced to Cyclops and Storm, they're using their
Character Introductions and Movie Experiences
00:43:19
Speaker
power. So we get really good shorthand into who these people are and what their powers are and who they are.
00:43:27
Speaker
by seeing what it is that they do. Yeah, which is what I really like, you know.
00:43:33
Speaker
And it does it especially well with Xavier and Magneto because you've got that scene when they're at the congressional hearing and then he sees Magneto walking out and he goes after him. And it's like that brief conversation, right? They establish that they're both mutants, they establish their different points of view. They even establish Xavier's powers when he starts to narrow his eyes and then Magneto goes, are you sneaking around in here? Right, yeah, exactly, yeah.
00:44:00
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, like I said, this movie does a very good job of establishing character real quick. So even if you don't know who the X-Men are, you get a good sense of what it is that they can do and what mutants are. And the movie accomplishes that in a very short amount of time. But at the same time, it doesn't feel like they're rushing, which is another thing I like about this movie. There's a lot happening, but it never feels like it's being rushed.
00:44:30
Speaker
I remember when this movie came out, it was in summer of 2000. I'd been an X-Men fan since the early 90s when the animated series came on the air. Right.
00:44:42
Speaker
So I became really invested. And when you're a kid and you get interested in something, you get really interested in it. So I went to my local public library. I got every single X-Men trade paperback they had in that interlibrary system. And I read them all several times over. And so I'd done my homework a fair bit of amount by the time I went to see this movie. And I actually started collecting comics regularly about, I think maybe a year before this movie came out.
00:45:11
Speaker
And I was so excited. I remember when it came out, there was line around the block for the theater to get in to see it. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah, it was amazing the first time I saw it. Wait a minute. As a matter of fact, well, there wasn't a line when I went to see it because as a matter of fact, we were in Florida that summer. Yeah, that's where I saw it. I saw it in Florida. Were we in Orlando or Dayton?
00:45:35
Speaker
I think it was in Daytona Beach, and that's where I saw that. And I went during the middle of the day, you know, and we went during the day. But you know what, I was kind of surprised because it was the summertime and it was a nice little crowd there. And everybody was like, you know, doing a little clapping at the appropriate times, you know, because I got the impression from listening to the chat around me.
00:45:56
Speaker
that a lot of people there, they were X-Men fans that they knew, you know, at least had a passing knowledge, like you said, from the cartoons of who the X-Men were. So, yeah, but this movie was very well received and with very well received and with good reason, because it is, you know, it is a good, solid movie. And like I said, I was watching it today to prepare for this, and I had forgotten
00:46:21
Speaker
which is like I keep saying, that's one good thing I love about doing this podcast. I'm getting to go back and revisit movies I haven't seen for a while. And I completely forgotten just how well put together this movie is. It is just put together, even though they screw around with Cyclops and I hate what they did with them, but they give him a nice little. There's a nice little scene I like where
00:46:43
Speaker
Wolverine, he's he's just walking in. He's walking. He's just walked into the office and Charles Avery is, you know, he's introducing him to the X-Men, everything like that. And Wolverine, of course, he's giving him shit and he's talking about, you know, well, I'm out of here and everything like that. So he steps up to the Cyclops and he grabs him and he tells him, you know, he better get out of his way. So Cyclops, played by James Marsden, he gives us a little look over Wolverine's shoulder at Professor Xavier.
00:47:11
Speaker
as if he's asked me to listen I'm gonna bust his character I caught that too and you know that's one of the things I you don't get to see it as much in in here because they cut one of the best scenes or they shortened it and that was um
00:47:28
Speaker
when Cyclops confronts Wolverine in the bedroom, and also later when they're suiting up to go to the Statue of Liberty. So if you haven't seen these extended versions of the scenes, you can see them on YouTube, probably. I remember seeing them on the DVD when I got it. Are you talking about the scene where he tells...
00:47:48
Speaker
with him and Wolverine to talk him back and forth. And he says, oh, yeah. Oh, you're not going to tell me to stay away from your girl, are you? Right. Yeah. That there's an extended version of that scene. Oh, OK. And in the extended version, like he comes in and like Hugh Jackman, Logan starts giving him shit. And he's like, have you ever seen real combat boy? And Scott just gives him this look. He's like, have you?
00:48:10
Speaker
You know, it's like you don't like to talk a lot about your past, do you? So do you even know if you've seen real combat? And he's like giving him shit and he never really lets Wolverine get to him.
00:48:21
Speaker
He always maintains this level, this cool head the entire time. Right. He has this level of professionalism that I always associate with Cyclops. You know who Cyclops is? If there was a writer that really understood Cyclops to handle him the way he's supposed to be handled, you know who he is, right? Who's that?
00:48:43
Speaker
Cyclops, you know who he is, right? Well, I mean the writer, which writer are you talking about? No, no, I'm not. I'm just talking about any writer in general. There's no writer that I don't think that really has gotten the essence of what Cyclops is. Okay. And what Cyclops is, the way I see him and the way if I was writing it, this is how I would write him. He's Captain America for the mutant community.
00:49:08
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. He's their Captain America and that, you know, and that's how he should be written. Unfortunately, nobody ever writes them that way. They just have him going gaga for women that can read his mind, which I think he should get on the couch and have some serious therapy for that to find out why he's attracted to women who he can have no secrets from. What I thought was interesting was if you, did you read Morrison's run? No.
00:49:33
Speaker
Okay, what I thought was interesting in Morrison's run, because he took up the book after Cyclops' body had been possessed by Apocalypse and all this stuff, so he took it after.
00:49:45
Speaker
So he had to pick up after that. And what he did with it was he kind of did this thing that I thought was really good, where he establishes Cyclops as being amazing in the field. But in his personal life, he's a total train wreck. And there's this one scene where Emma Frost tells him, you know, stop being such a damn superhero all the time. And Cyclops responds with, I've never been allowed to be anything else. Well, yeah, that's the whole thing.
00:50:11
Speaker
And that's what I like about him, the fact that, yeah, when he puts on the visor, when he puts on the costume, he's Captain America for the mutants. But when he takes it off, he doesn't know what to do with himself.
00:50:23
Speaker
Which is pretty much the same thing with Captain America. Captain America doesn't really have a life as Steve Rogers. He's Captain America, pretty much 24-7, whether he's in the costume or not. That's why when the comics ever try to delve into his secret identity, it never quite felt right. No. No, it didn't, because he's all...
00:50:48
Speaker
He's the guy that's always at Avengers Mansion. He's always on call. Captain America is like a doctor or a fireman. He's always on call. He is always Captain America 24-7. Back in the old days, even when he wasn't with the Avengers, what was he doing? He was hanging out with Nick Fury, going on missions for S.H.I.E.L.D.
00:51:11
Speaker
You know, yeah. It's too bad they cut out all these great scenes that Marsden did and that they didn't give him more to do. Because you see, in these moments, he really gets the character and he plays him really well when he gets the opportunity to. Like in that scene where Wolverine tries to get in his face and says, like, get out of my way. And Cyclops just, he looks all calm, he looks over at Professor X, and he's like, look, is this guy serious? Can I blast his head off now or what?
00:51:38
Speaker
And that's what he's basically saying that wordlessly. He said, listen, you better talk to this cat before I bump him up. And James Morrison, the way he plays Cyclops, you believe he could. Yeah. And he has these great moments like this one movie and in X2 when he's got that that short little scene with the with the guards, when he can't use his visor. And in the third movie, when he's got completely shafted character wise, but he gave the best performance in that movie.
00:52:06
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Oh, that's one where he dies. Yeah. Yeah. And he's only on the screen for like five minutes, but he gives the best performance of anyone in that movie. Yeah, because I think Jason Marsden had to go off to do the Superman movie, right? Right. And that's why he that's why he wasn't in the third movie.
00:52:22
Speaker
Right. And we can talk more about that situation at another time. Mm-hmm. Because that's a whole other mess that Fox made for themselves. Oh, that was a whole mishigash. But this movie, and it's, I remember in the days, in the months leading up to it, when they first released the images of the characters in costume, oh my God, the internet was on fire. Like, people were so pissed off when they first saw the costumes.
00:52:51
Speaker
Why? I mean, because, you know, this it was the fanboy mentality. And I remember people were saying like Hugh Jackman looks terrible. He's too tall. Famke Janssen's hair isn't red enough. Sabretooth looks like a hobo and all this every everything you could think of. They were they were bitching and moaning about. Well, you know what? God bless the fanboys, because if we didn't have them, we wouldn't
00:53:19
Speaker
we wouldn't learn to appreciate what it is that we have. And you know my feeling about superhero movies and, you know, I've lived a lot longer than a lot of these fanboys that are crying and complaining. To me, these are the movies that I've been waiting to see ever since I was 12 years old. So I'm happy with it. And also I understand that, okay, it's like when you translate our English book into German or Russian,
00:53:47
Speaker
It's not going to be exactly the same book because there's certain idioms of the English language that don't translate very well into German or, you know, Russian or whatever language that you're translating it to. Movies, movies are a translation. So therefore they have to tweak certain things. Some costumes, you know what? We don't mind the black outfit because
00:54:15
Speaker
People have to remember, this was back in 2000. We didn't have superhero movies coming out every, you know, what, three or four year like we do now. Right. The only superhero movie that really leaned in heavily to the spandex look and did it right was Superman the movie.
00:54:33
Speaker
At this point. Exactly. Exactly. Any other time it had been attempted, it looked terrible. Like you had the 1991 Captain America movie with J.D. Salinger's son playing Captain America. Yeah. You had the Roger Corman Fantastic Four. You had the Flash TV show from the early 90s. The Adam West show. You know, the costumes did not look right in any of these versions. So the Spider-Man TV show too.
00:55:03
Speaker
Yeah. And people have to understand that costumes on screen. First of all, they have to be comfortable for the actor because these are real people. They have to wear these. Right. They have to wear something that they can act in, that they can move in. The stuntmen have to wear stuff that they can move in.
00:55:23
Speaker
You know, which is why I guess we get so much CGI now and certain things because especially like with an Iron Man and stuff like that. But you know what? You can get away with that because it's Iron Man. Right. When you put a real person in a costume and then I hear people talk about, oh, well, cosplayers, they do it all the time and they look terrific at it. Yeah. But they just stand it around. They don't have to act in a movie. That's right. They tried to do the the blue gold suits like they did test designs of them.
00:55:53
Speaker
But, and Bryan Singer said, the problem was the yellow looked like shit on film. We couldn't make it look good. And you know, you understand that because that was, this was at a time when they didn't have the kind of technology to really touch them up in post-production or to make them look, find the right material to make them look good under the correct lighting. And it was also at a time when the public at large did not think of superheroes as something to take seriously.
00:56:18
Speaker
So you needed to lead the public into this. So you give them, and the X-Men are a good place to start with that because they're a team, they're a unit. So it makes sense for them all to have matching uniforms. That would not work if you try to do the Avengers in 2000. I agree. I mean, because you can't have Captain America running around in black leather.
00:56:39
Speaker
No, no. But see, and also about it, like you said, you know, you know, the technology had caught up with that. You could put Captain America on screen in an outfit that looked realistic, you know, instead of the Buccaneer boots, you know, they had, you know, like regular, you know, combat boots. He wore, you know, regular combat boots. He wore, you know, he didn't have the mask with the wings. He had the helmet with the wings painted on the side, which worked.
00:57:07
Speaker
Right, it was basically a military, they did what Brian Hitch did in The Ultimate's design for the World War II era cap. They just gave him basically a military uniform, but changed the color scheme to match Captain America's. And one of the genius things of the Captain America movie, which we will get to eventually,
00:57:25
Speaker
down the road, but what a genius thing is that I like how they worked in the original costume as a propaganda thing that he wore when he was on the road doing the show. So they gave a reasonable explanation for why he wore that outfit. Exactly. Yeah. But then they translated that and they said, okay, well, he goes on this mission and he basically puts together a combat style uniform.
00:57:45
Speaker
for him, which I said, OK, that was genius. Yeah, they did a really good job of that. And it makes sense for the X-Men to have these matching uniforms. It makes sense for them to be in leather. And you've got to lead the public into this. And it's only, you know, the success of this movie, it gave studios a chance to say, oh, let's push it a little further. Let's try Spider-Man and let's try putting him in a comics accurate costume. And it worked.
00:58:10
Speaker
And these types of things, you push a little bit more, you push a little bit more, and then eventually what do you end up with? You eventually lead to Avengers Endgame, where you've got nothing but like unabashed superheroes on the big screen. Or you've got the DC shows where you've got the Flash running around in a red unitard and nobody bats an eye.
00:58:29
Speaker
Yeah. And also, because let's face it, red is a more attractive color. Yellow is a pretty ugly color. Right. And, you know, I'm going to say something that's probably going to piss off a lot of X-Men fans, but I have always hated Wolverine's mask.
00:58:44
Speaker
Yeah, me too. He's got this really distinctive hairstyle. His look is so iconic without it. Why do you need to give him some, you know, Batman knockoff mask? Yeah. Wolverine is, is one of the characters I've never understood why he wore. I mean, it's not like he has a secret identity because everybody knows that Logan is Wolverine. It's not like, you know,
00:59:11
Speaker
I mean, so there's really no reason for him to have a mask, you know, so I don't know why they didn't get rid of it years ago. But again, this is another way that the movie improves upon that because they don't get well, they don't give any of the X-Men, you know, none of them wear masks. No, no, not in this movie. Yeah. I mean, the closest one is Cyclops because he wears the visor. Yeah.
00:59:33
Speaker
But that's functional. Right, exactly. And that's the thing, like they make the costumes functional. They make it make sense in the context of this world. And so that that allows the public to accept the comic book tropes a little bit more. And then you can you got to take people by the hand and lead them into this. You can't just drop them into the deep end. The one thing, and I've said this many times before, and I know people scream and yell at me about that, but comic book fans have to really get over it. They don't make these movies just for you.
01:00:03
Speaker
Right. You know, they have to appeal to a broad audience. Yes, they would like to make them just you. But let's face it, if they made X-Men movie exactly like a comic book,
01:00:17
Speaker
exactly like it, you know, I don't know if it would have been as successful as this movie because... Oh my god, well, I mean, the X-Men is one of the, like, I'm saying this as a fan, but it is one of the most confusing, convoluted comics ever created. Yeah, exactly, yeah.
01:00:36
Speaker
I mean, and because part of the reason was the approach Claremont and Byrne took with it was they treated it as a superhero soap opera. Marvel was famous for that because Stanley has started that with Spider-Man because Spider-Man is basically a superhero soap opera. Right. Right. You know, and Daredevil also picked up a lot. Matter of fact, you had a lot of those soap, which is another reason why I think that
01:01:04
Speaker
Marvel Comics became so popular because back when I was growing up.
01:01:10
Speaker
Soap operas was extraordinarily popular. Everybody watched soap operas. My father worked for transit, and he didn't have to go to work until around like 12 o'clock. He would watch soap operas before he left. He got caught up in the soap operas. So for Stan Lee to take the elements of soap operas and apply them to superhero storytelling, that was a stroke of genius, I think. You know, I've always thought. That's one of the things that makes it difficult to do the X-Men
01:01:39
Speaker
as they are in the comics is because there's all that backstory that's been done because they weren't thinking as much about how will this look to readers 20 years from now. They're going to think, how can we keep readers coming back now? So they would put all sorts of convolution in that. Well, that's what it is. Your whole thing is to get readers to come back every month and buy the next issue.
01:02:02
Speaker
So how could you do that? Well, you have these serialized storylines that keep going on and on and on and on. And Claremont became renowned for that, for having these storylines that just seemingly would just keep going on and on and on with no resolution. Oh, yeah. In fact, his trick was every time he wasn't sure what to write, he would introduce a subplot.
01:02:25
Speaker
And he wouldn't have a resolution for it, but he'd keep a note of that subplot. So then when he gets to a point where he couldn't think of a story idea, he looks back to the subplots he already established. Yeah, which again, that's brilliant. Yeah, it worked really well for the series, although it also left the X-Men with a whole lot of dangling subplots too. Well, that was okay because you had a lot of writers that picked up on them later on and with varying degrees of success. And are still picking up on them, even to this day.
01:02:54
Speaker
Oh, wow. Well, yeah, because X-Men is still going strong. Yeah. Well, especially now, I mean, they got they now they've got Jonathan Hickman on the book who did really acclaimed runs on Avengers and Fantastic Four. And then he went to went to image, do some stuff there. And then he comes back to do the X-Men and to kind of do for them what he did for the other properties.
01:03:16
Speaker
Now, how long do you think that the X-Men as a comic book is going to last? Because I know you've been predicting the death of the monthly comic book for a while now.
01:03:31
Speaker
Um, so what I think about that is I don't think that comic books will die. Like I'm not one of these people who says the comic industry is dying. I think that's we don't see all the data to really make judgments on that. We can't judge it based just based on what the direct market monthly numbers say. And we don't know what is being sold to comicsology or how much so we can't really make those judgments. I don't think
01:03:54
Speaker
But one thing I think is going to happen is you're going to see a lot less of the monthly comics buying link. You're going to see people doing more. What I do now is waiting for the collection to come out and picking that up.
01:04:08
Speaker
So I think you'll probably be seeing more of that. Because that's how most of the comics are written these days anyway. They're written for, they're written in, they're not written in the same serialized format. They're written as like four to six issues is one story. Then another four to six issues is another story. So you're going to have more of like, more of that kind of thing, I think, as we go forward. They're written for the trades, as they say. Yeah. You know, they're written for the trades, as they say. Yeah. And also, whenever people start talking about, oh, well, comic books are down, comics are down.
01:04:38
Speaker
I find that after I talk to them for a while, you know, and I'll ask, well, what do you mean the comic books are not? Actually, what they're talking about is Marvel and DC, because when you say comics, that's who most people, that's who 90 percent of the public thinks is comic books anyway. Right. You know, they they know absolutely nothing about the wealth of independent comics, you know, that our
01:05:00
Speaker
and other companies, you know, everybody just says, OK, well, it's Marvel and D.C. and they don't know about anybody else, you know. And I said, oh, no, no, no. I said, there's plenty of other comics out there, you know, just go to. I said, I'll take it to a comic book shopping and you can see all the comics that are out there. So yeah, so this is still going to be around. I mean, I don't know what shape they're going to transmogrify into because
01:05:25
Speaker
Simply because there's so much other entertainment that we have now, you know, they just, you know, we have so many other options. I remember, I mean, when I was a kid, the big thing for me was going every month and picking up my comic books. Well, it hasn't been like that for me for about like 20 years. I know. I mean, so and I think that most people now like me, if I get a comic book, I read it on my tablet. I don't go to the comic booth.
01:05:51
Speaker
I don't even go to the library. I used to go to the library and I used to borrow and trade paperbacks. Yeah, same here. You know, they're so cheap now. Well, I mean, just the other day, yeah, just the other day I picked up the Watchmen trades because they got a sale of Comixology and I read it in years and it was six bucks. Okay. See what I mean? Yeah.
01:06:12
Speaker
And I said it, you know, I picked up the Morrison Doom Patrol run and they added in three big collections. Total price was like 15, 20 bucks for all three. Yeah. I mean, you were talking about this in the last episode, I believe. And Comixology, you know, they make it so cheap. It's all you almost feel stupid for not buying. Exactly. Yeah.
01:06:34
Speaker
You know, I bought like a whole bunch of because I read planetary. You know, that's what I'm into now. Oh, that's awesome series. So I've read the first one. And so I said, well, let me go see how much other ones are. I went to see something like like five bucks a pop. Yeah. You know, for the rest, I said, man, I'm clicking like a maniac. Click, click, click, click, click. You know, yeah, more stuff like that. And plus, when you've got it,
01:07:00
Speaker
When it's digital, you know, a lot of people don't think about it as real money. Exactly. Exactly.
01:07:07
Speaker
Like, they just go in, they're like, oh, OK, click one click by. And that's a remove. It removes the resistance. So I think you're going to see a lot more people moving to comics digitally. And I wish they would get their act together a little more and improve the interface. But you've got things like Marvel Unlimited and DC Universe as well. Yeah. Yeah. So yes, I mean, comics will survive. I'm not you know, I'm not really worried about that. I don't know what I think that DC and Marvel.
01:07:35
Speaker
have to seriously change their business, the way they do business. I don't think you have to worry about them because they've got, you've got Time Warner and you've got Disney backing them. Disney and Time Warner, they're gonna keep Marvel and DC around, if nothing else, just for an idea factor. Yeah, but you don't have as many comic creators as you used to going to them with creating brand new characters.
01:07:59
Speaker
Well, you actually still do. There's still quite a bit, quite a few that are being created. Like you got the new Ms. Marvel, who's now gonna be getting her own TV series on Disney+. Oh, okay, yeah, you're right, yeah. You're right, okay.
01:08:11
Speaker
Well, see, that's why I like talking to you, because you've got your feeling much more on that. No, seriously, you got, I really, and you're talking to somebody, you should go faithfully to my favorite comic book store every week. You would go there and spend half the day talking to other people and buying comic books and stuff like that. And that was like the highlight of my life. It killed me when I stopped buying comic books, but when I could read a comic book in the time it took me to walk from the door to my car,
01:08:37
Speaker
And I was paying like, you know, three bucks for it. I said, nah. Yeah. Yeah. It was a hobby that, you know, was and also I simply was not enjoying the stories I was reading. And unlike and unlike most of you on the Internet, if there's something that I don't enjoy, I just stop doing it. If it's a TV show I don't like, I stop watching it.
01:09:03
Speaker
If there's a book that I'm reading and I get to like the fourth or fifth chapter and I find I'm not enjoying it, I stop reading it. I don't understand this mentality of continuing to spend money on or spending precious time on things that you don't enjoy.
01:09:21
Speaker
I remember years ago I was at a comic convention in Chicago and it was a discussion that Mark Wade was leading. And this one guy in the audience, he got into this argument with Mark Wade about the comics industry.
01:09:37
Speaker
And he was bringing up all these titles that he didn't like. This was back in the late 90s, early 2000s, right? So one of the things he said was he was talking about the Harley Quinn series that had just started coming out by, I think, Carl Kessel. I can't remember exactly. But he was saying, you know, he's like, I'm sorry, Harley Quinn is just not a funny book. I don't enjoy it at all when I read it. And then Mark Wade just says, then don't buy the fucking thing.
01:10:03
Speaker
i don't understand it then why i don't say why are you still buying it then if you don't like it yeah so yeah so i turn my back on reading at least marvel in dc independent comics i enjoy especially
01:10:18
Speaker
comic books that are done by people of color, creators of color. So and then I still have my collection from, you know, the 70s and the 80s. I still got a lot of my comments from there. And I like rereading them. So, you know, I do that. I reread those, you know, simply because I don't like what's being done with the guy. I find that in spirit,
01:10:44
Speaker
a lot of the characters, such as Thor and Black Panther, that are being done in movies, that's closer to the spirit of the characters that I remember. You know, the ones that are in the movies now, rather than the ones that are in the actual comic books. You know, like every once in a while, like say, like with me and my wife, when we go to Walmart and they've got comic books and she's walking around doing her thing and I'll go and I'll pick it up and I'll leaf through it. And I don't recognize any of these characters
X-Men Movie Appreciation and Critiques
01:11:12
Speaker
now. I don't know who they are.
01:11:15
Speaker
You know, but however, if people enjoy them, that's quite all right. God bless you. I'm glad people should enjoy what they, you know, I don't know people for enjoying what they enjoy. I just, it just doesn't have anything for me anymore. That's all. But we have the movies and I enjoy them, such as the one we're talking about today.
01:11:35
Speaker
And something I liked about this movie is that they actually made the mansion a school. Because the whole thing about the X-Men is, you know, all the teams in Marvel, they had some sort of little shtick, right? The Fantastic Four was a family. The Avengers was like, you know, like a pro football team or something like that. And the X-Men, they were a school. That was the shtick behind it. But the comics never really leaned into that too much.
01:12:06
Speaker
Right. We just got to see the X-Men. And that was it. They was in this movie. And yeah, you're absolutely right. We see there's a whole lot of students running around the school. Like you said, it's actual school. And they did it in a way that they allowed it to bring in a bunch of other characters in cameo roles. So you've got Jubilee, you've got Kitty Pryde, Ice Man. There's one guy that some people think might have been Thunderbird, Colossus. You see all these characters in the background.
01:12:36
Speaker
Yeah, pyro. Yeah, he's in it, too. Yeah, there's a lot of and you actually see the X-Men actually teaching classes. Yeah. In fact, one of the extended scenes is is Storm's lecture. And another extended scene is Cyclops teaching a bunch of students about motorcycle maintenance. And I think that that's absolutely so cool. One of the cool things I like about the X-Men, they're not just superheroes, they're teachers. Right.
01:13:05
Speaker
You know, they're actively teaching the next. You know what? They do more like you have all of these other superhero teams that say, you know, they have this nebulous thing that they're going to go out and fight for justice and everything like that. But the X-Men are actually working with the next generation to actually try to make
01:13:25
Speaker
them live in the world and make the world a better place. Well, and it's like Xavier tells Wolverine, because when Wolverine asks, well, what's going to happen to Rogue? And he says, well, it's up to her. She can rejoin society as an educated young woman who can control her powers and blend in if she wants a normal life, or she can stay here, become a teacher and join the X-Men.
01:13:46
Speaker
Right, she has a choice, it's up to her what she wants to do, but this will be a place for her to be safe where she can figure out what she wants to do. And you get the sense that
01:14:00
Speaker
That's been going on for a long time at this place. That's what Xavier's always been doing. So there are probably other X-Men who have come through, they've gone through the school, and then they went on to return to society. Right, because not everybody wants to put on spandex and go fight the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.
01:14:17
Speaker
Exactly. Yeah. You know, they don't. Some people don't. Some people want to live a normal life, which is one of the things that I've always appreciated also about the X-Men that, you know, OK, listen, if you don't want to join a team, you just want to rejoin society. God bless. See you later. But we'll always be here if you need to come back.
01:14:37
Speaker
And they've had characters do just that. Like Iceman left to became an accountant. Beast left and went in to work as a scientist. Havoc and Polaris, they left and went on archaeological digs and stuff like that. Yeah, which was... And I think in this movie they have...
01:14:59
Speaker
No, no, no. It was, I'm thinking of where even in one of the later movies, Wolverine is teaching a class or something like that. I think he's substituting in that one. Cause in the funk.
01:15:11
Speaker
Yeah, and I really think that that's a cool notion that, you know, they just don't run around beating up supervillains that they're also teaching and then take an active hand in guiding the next generation of mutants in what, in whatever it is they want to do. If you want, okay, if you want to put on the spandex and you want to go with us and fight the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, fine. If you don't,
01:15:36
Speaker
You don't have to do that either, you know? And then the comics ended up adopting those, bringing those concepts in. So when Morrison came on, he turned it into a school just like that. He had all these mutant kids running around the mansion all of a sudden. Later on, you had Jason Aaron did it where he did Wolverine and the X-Men where Wolverine reopens the school and runs it. But I'm watching this movie and I'm sorry. I can't, okay. Two things got on my nerves.
01:16:06
Speaker
and it's something that I said I'm going to sit down and do. I'm going to write a superhero story and I'm going to write one where the bad guys do not come into the good guys' secret base or lair or underground headquarters and sabotage something.
01:16:25
Speaker
I saw that scene, I said, oh god, not again. But then I said, you know what? I can't really complain about, because this was made back in 2000. And that's also a trope that happens in the X-Men comics all the damn time. There's always, that mansion has been blown up like, I don't know, a dozen times already.
01:16:42
Speaker
You know what and I don't care how rich charles a rear is you know I mean come on you can't keep absorbing the course of the mansion being completely destroyed and Rebuilding and mind you he has a rebuilding from the ground up. Yeah. Yeah, which means is plumbing which brings me to my other thing and
01:17:01
Speaker
And I'm going to do this, so help me. I'm going to write a superhero novel where it's not going to be about the superheroes. It's going to be about the contractors that build these underground complexes and secret bases and secret. Seriously, because who built this shit? I mean, even Wolverine says he said, damn, this is a big round room. You know, cerebral, you know,
01:17:26
Speaker
How did he build, where did you get the contractors to build it? Well, I think with that, he probably had, because at least in this movie, it's not quite established how him and Magneto split up, but I get the sense that Magneto helped build a lot of those underground stuff, at least as this movie was originally conceived. But, okay, you still had the hanger for the Blackbird.
01:17:51
Speaker
Yeah, you gotta have facilities to store spare parts. You gotta have facilities for maintenance. That's a whole underground complex. The only thing that I configure is that there must be organization like, what was it called? Damage control? Damage control. And it cleans up at the superhero battles. Somewhere in the Marvel universe, there must be the secret contracting unit that comes and builds secret bases for superheroes, the superhero teams. There's gotta be.
01:18:20
Speaker
I remember there was an article there talking about how could Batman have built the Batcave all by himself. Oh my god. With just him and Alfred. And it's like, you know what? He's got to have some help. So what happens after the contractors are done? Did he just kill them? Every time I watch The Dark Knight Rises.
01:18:37
Speaker
I can't help but there needed to be a scene where you had a contractor saying, okay, Mr. Wayne, explain to me one more time why you need these giant, clear plexiglass cubes to come up out of the water or the hydraulics. Could you explain that to me? Seriously, he didn't build it on his own. Yeah. I think at that point, you know, Bruce Wayne just writes a bigger check and says it's a sex thing.
01:19:08
Speaker
The only thing that I can figure is that he goes to the other side of the world and he gets a bunch of Chinese guys that don't speak the language and flies them over in a plane with blacked-out window and stuff like that. But even then, he's got to have armed guards to make sure they don't leave until the work is done. You see what I mean?
01:19:31
Speaker
So anyway, I'm watching a movie and I'm watching this underground complex and it's all nice and pretty and shiny and everything like that. And I said, damn, who built this shit?
01:19:42
Speaker
The thing that kills me though is how easy it is for Mystique to get in because especially when we get to first class, we find out that Xavier knows her and grew up with her. So you'd think you'd have some better security measures to protect against her. First of all, the only two people that need to have access to Cerebro is him and Jean Grey. And not even her because he asked her, have you ever used Cerebro? And she says no.
01:20:10
Speaker
She's like, I'm not ready for it. I don't have enough control over my powers yet. Yeah, but still, you got to have her just in case of an emergency like they did in this movie. Right. When Xavier is incapacitated. And yeah, she does have to use it, you know. And hey, she's the only other psychic that they have. You know, so yeah. But really, those are the only two people that need access. Cyclops doesn't need access to. He's not a psychic. Nobody should have access to Cerebro except for Professor X and Ginger.
01:20:39
Speaker
that's the first thing now the second thing is as i understand okay so what so mystique can copy somebody right down to the molecular level i don't think so i think it's just appeared just outward appearance because she gains because she gains access by turning herself into a copy of bobby
01:20:59
Speaker
Right. And she uses the retinal scan. Right. Now, why would a student have access, you know, to Cerebro? Well, in that case, it wasn't him. She changed into Professor X because they do say welcome professor when they pans away from her. Okay. But okay, which really back to my original thing. So she can copy somebody on the middle. In other words, she can copy their fingerprints, their retinal pattern.
01:21:24
Speaker
Yeah, and that's something that comes from the comics as well. So it doesn't quite make sense, just like how in the comics her clothes can transform along with her. Right. So yeah, it's just one of those things that you just have to kind of go with. You just go with it. Oh, OK, fine. Yeah, because even she has the fight with Wolverine, and she copies him, and she's got claws. Well, she copies the claws, but remember, he can cut them off.
01:21:52
Speaker
Yeah, so they're not real claws. They're just extensions of her own body. But he cuts them off. And there was a distinct metallic sound when he cut them off, as if they were metal. Because see, I was thinking the same thing that you did. Well, that's just meat that looks like bone. In which case, you should be blood gushing out. Yeah, that's a good point. I guess they probably weren't going to have blood gushing out just because of the rating. Yeah.
01:22:20
Speaker
But yeah, that's a good point. I didn't even realize there was a metallic sound. Yeah. No, I would. No, I would just say because I, you know, being so long that since I've seen the movie and I read the comic, I wasn't exactly sure how her powers work. If when she, cause my whole thing was that I always thought that she just took on the appearance of sort of like offenses. She could look like Thor, but she wouldn't be able to control the thunder.
01:22:42
Speaker
Right, but physical mutations like claws, those things she can do because that's just manipulation of her form. Oh. And she's been able to do things like that. In the comics, she's done things like grown wings and grown claws and all those types of things. Oh, okay. She's even been able to increase her muscle mass to make her stronger.
01:23:05
Speaker
Okay. All right. No, I'm just trying to think because I was looking and I'm saying, okay, well, I know she can shape shift herself to look like other people, but when she did the thing with the retinal scan, I said, wait a minute, how would she even know what Charles Xavier's retinal scan is like? Cause presumably, presumably she has to have enough. You see what I mean? This is, I'm sorry folks. This is where my mind goes when I watch stuff like this. What can I tell you?
01:23:32
Speaker
It looks like she can change some aspects of her biology so she can make like change like some of the, like she can give her appear her body, the appearance of clothing and different materials and that kind of stuff. So I guess mental would probably be okay then in that. Cause one of the more salacious things I found out about this movie was that the actress who plays
01:23:58
Speaker
Mystique in this movie, Rebecca Romaine. Am I pronouncing it right? Okay. For all intents and purposes, she was walking around on that set naked. I mean, she just had like, you know, makeup was covering up.
01:24:15
Speaker
She had, there were prosthetics covering up the naughty bits and then everything else was just blue body paint. Yeah, but pretty much she was, you know, acting that role, you know, naked, which to me is, first of all, it's an impressive job. I like how she plays Mystique in this movie. Once they brought in Jennifer Lawrence and then they started
01:24:36
Speaker
trying to make Mystique the music character that she played. No, she, you're right. Yeah. Katniss. Yeah. That's who they were trying to turn Mystique into. I guess they were trying to bring port over that appeal from the hunger games into that character, which to me completely, you know, ruin the character.
01:24:58
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I love Jennifer Lawrence, but she was a terrible choice for Mystique. And they just kept making it worse because Hunger Games, I think, came out after first class. And then once that hit it big, they were just like, all right, we're going to try and make her the new star of the franchise.
01:25:14
Speaker
Right, right. I have a friend of mine, a good friend of mine. He likes to say that it took Marvel 30 years to completely screw up X-Men continuity and the movie studio, they only did it in five, in five movies.
01:25:35
Speaker
And they they screwed it up so much. It's all men. Again, we could talk about that when we get to first class and X-Men origins, because they both of those just completely fucked up the continuity. Yeah, I know. It was like they just said, you know what? Literally, I can see the right district and I can see the script right in my fucking. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I don't care. I can't.
01:26:03
Speaker
Now one of the things I think is a weakness in this movie is just the overall plot Like they didn't take this story from any of the X-Men comics they tried to tell their own original story and it doesn't quite work out like the whole idea of
01:26:19
Speaker
Magneto using this machine to turn people into mutants. The story itself doesn't really work out. It's just an excuse to get them to the X-Men and the Brotherhood to fight. Here's my thing. I like it because it's not your typical supervillain who wants to conquer the world.
01:26:38
Speaker
plot magneto's not interested in conquering the world he's not i think that what a stronger plot would have been would have been uh mystique because okay once you've taken over the identity of the senator you know you've infiltrated the government yeah to me that would have been a more better but then again you don't have like you said the battles and you don't have the pyrotechnics and everything like that but yeah i i
01:27:05
Speaker
I get to a point, I'm not saying it's not valid, but I'm just saying that I appreciated seeing something different than like, oh well, the super villain, you know, he wants to take over the world or he wants to destroy the world. Well, you know, my real problem is, is how he goes about it. He uses, he's going to transfer his power to Rogue and make her do it.
01:27:25
Speaker
That's the part of it I got a problem with. Cause that's, it's just like Wolverine says to him, he's like, you know, you're so full of shit. You know, if, if you really believed in this, it would be you up there instead of doing this to an innocent girl. That's the thing that's very un-magnito like to me. And if you see magneto gives him a look like you sub a bit, you pointed out the one, the one thing about my player, I didn't want nobody to point out. Yeah. But yeah, he's right. Well, listen, if you were that much in, you're okay.
01:27:55
Speaker
You want mutants to be safe and everything like that you want to do, and you believe in your cause so much, then you sacrifice your life. Yeah, yeah. So that's the one problem. And in fact, the original script, if you've ever read the original script, it actually went and handled this much better. Because in the original script, he didn't need Rogue to transfer his powers to. What he needed was the machine operated kind of like a light bulb, and it needed filament. And the filament that operated it was adamantium.
01:28:24
Speaker
So he needed Wolverine to be in it. So in fact, in the original script, Rogue sneaks aboard the Blackbird and goes along and tags along with the X-Men. And then she actually ends up saving the day. Yeah. See that? See again, that's why I said this movie should have been called Wolverine and the X-Men because it's Wolverine who ends up saving the day. It's Wolverine who ends up putting like when, um,
01:28:49
Speaker
They're doing strategy and everything like that. He's pointing out all the, you know, the things that they should be doing. In other words, the stuff that Cyclops should be doing, Wolverine is doing in this movie to me. You know, I mean, I don't mind Wolverine overrated runt that he is in the comic books, but there's a lot of things in this movie that he's doing that actually Cyclops should have been doing.
01:29:12
Speaker
And this kind of established this, and I remember when Avengers trailers were coming out, everybody was like, oh, it's basically just gonna be Iron Man 3, because they're gonna focus on the most popular character at the expense of everyone else. And they thought that because that's what the X-Men movies did.
01:29:29
Speaker
You know, they focused on just Wolverine, Xavier, and Magneto at the expense of everyone else. But then the Avengers showed, no, you can actually make an ensemble movie where the other characters are just as important. Oh, yeah. Well, yeah. But see, also, they had the benefit that they had their own separate movies beforehand that laid the groundwork so that, OK, we knew these characters. See, Dexman, like I was saying earlier,
01:29:53
Speaker
I appreciate the fact that they have a lot to do in this movie and they get it done and they never. Seems like it's rushed, but they have to introduce all these characters. They have to show you their relationships together. They have to establish their powers. Then we got to get the super villain plot in and we have to get the resolution of the plot. We have to get the resolution of the relationships between all these characters, which really don't.
01:30:20
Speaker
get resolved in this movie, really. But that's because, presumably, they knew they had a money maker on their hand. That was gonna make a ton of money, so they were gonna come back for a sequel, which is why they left some threads hanging, especially the ending where Magneto, he's in that bad-ass plastic cell. Yeah, the third act is the only thing that's really kind of weak about this movie for me.
01:30:47
Speaker
I mean, it's fine. It's just, I feel like it could have been so much better with the original script that they had. And it would have made so much more sense for Magneto's character instead of turning him into this, into Coward, basically. Yeah. And it would have been, yeah. And like you said, it would have made more sense for, uh, okay. It would have given a stronger reason for Wolverine to become involved in the plot.
01:31:13
Speaker
Right. If it was the fact that the Adam Antene, you know, was what Magneto really needed and not, you know, yeah, because as you said, the way it stands now, yeah, he's willing to sacrifice an innocent young girl for his own selfish ends, you know.
01:31:30
Speaker
He says he's doing it for the betterment of mutant kind. But like you said, the Wolverine said, well, then if you felt that way, why don't you get in the machine? No, because see, I want to be around to take all the bows and cheers when it's all said. And really, yeah, he wants to be to say he wants to be heralded as the savior of mutant kind instead of Charles Xavier. You know, exactly. Yeah. Dirty dog.
01:31:57
Speaker
What do you think of the performances in this movie? Okay, once again, okay, we'll start with the top. We'll start with Hugh Jackman. This was the movie that made Hugh Jackman a star. Yeah. Quite frankly, made him a star. And well deservedly so. And well deservedly so. I mean,
01:32:18
Speaker
I've heard the talk. Oh, well, he was too tall to play Wolverine. OK, maybe so. But you know what? He got the attitude down right. He had to look. Oh, totally. He looked like he stepped right out of the comic books. Yeah. And he had the attitude, which is the important thing.
01:32:36
Speaker
And he was able to adequately portray the conflicts of the character who has, because Wolverine, much as I say, yeah, well, you know, so what. But Wolverine does have a lot going on inside of him, which is his whole thing is a lot going on inside that he doesn't let show to anybody else.
01:32:55
Speaker
And Jackman had a trick for for conveying that because he jumped in the shower. And one day he jumped in the shower at 5 a.m. and he realized there was no hot water. Now, he didn't want to wake up his wife. And so he just gritted his teeth and bore it. And he realized that this mindset of wanting to scream and lash out but having to hold it in was how Wolverine feels all the time. So then every every morning he took ice cold showers before filming. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. OK. Yeah. That would piss me off, too.
01:33:27
Speaker
Yeah, that would put me in a pissed off mood for the rest of the day. Yeah, but it's quite a remarkable performance because again, as I said,
01:33:39
Speaker
when I was talking about Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen, and I said, you know, they're Shakespearean actors and they elevate the material. Well, Hugh Jackman elevates it, too, because people who are in superhero movies, their job is to make me believe in the reality of the situation. And that's what every actor, a matter of every actor in this movie, they do. I mean, the acting, I really don't have a problem with any of the acting.
01:34:03
Speaker
in this movie, even Halle Berry. That was the one I was going to bring up that I do have a problem with. Okay, well, we'll get to her. But yeah, I really have no problem because in order to convince me of the reality of a world where people have superhero powers, you have to convince me of it.
01:34:24
Speaker
And that's what they're doing. That's what you drag. He's never anything less than convincing. When he popped them claws for the first time, there was an audible gasp. Oh my God. I got chills when I saw that scene. Yeah. When he pops his claw for the first time. And then it's just like, and I keep going back to, it's just like that first scene with Michael Keaton, where he got the guy hanging off of a roof. He says, I'm Batman.
01:34:46
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Or it's like that scene where Clark Kent is running across the street and he rips open the shirt and he's Superman. Well, Hugh Jackman from right then, he was Wolverine. Yeah. And it's funny because he was brought in at the last minute.
01:35:02
Speaker
Yes, Doug Ray Scott was supposed to be. Doug Ray Scott was supposed to play the character he was cast and then he was filming Mission Impossible 2 right before this and got injured. Yeah, he had the job. He had it. He had signed the contracts and everything. He was going to be Wolverine. Right after he finished Mission Impossible 2 he was going to go do X-Men and then he got hurt.
01:35:24
Speaker
And Singer's first choice was actually Russell Crowe, but Crowe turned it down because he thought the character was too similar to his character in Gladiator. And he also thought it was a cartoon and he wasn't interested in that. Other ones considered were Mel Gibson, Aaron Eckhart, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Viggo Mortensen, Edward Norton, not sure how that would have worked, Bob Hoskins, don't know how that would have worked at that time, Keanu Reeves, and Gary Sinise.
01:35:55
Speaker
And it was actually crow who suggested Hugh Jackman to Bryan Singer Okay is because he was friends with him And so they had to bring him in shortly after filming had already started like they had already started filming Oh, they were three weeks into filming already when they had to bring in Hugh Jackman
01:36:14
Speaker
Which makes it all the more impressive because Jackman did not know anything about the comics when he came in. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. That's impressive that, you know, he came in while, you know, while he was filming. He just fitted in so well. And he dove right into the material. Like as soon as he got the role, right away, he started buying up and reading every single Wolverine comic he could find.
01:36:38
Speaker
And he became a fan of the character because of that. So Wolverine's signature line in the comics is he always uses the word bub. That line was nowhere in the script. But Hugh Jackman made sure to ad lib it in in a few different parts. Only one of them actually made it into the final cut. But he tried several takes to say it.
01:37:00
Speaker
But I can remember, and like I said, I just watched a movie a couple hours ago. Yeah, there are two times in the movie where he distinctly says bub. He uses bub, yeah. But yeah, but I mean, okay, he went, see, I am so sick and tired of these actors when they say, oh, well, what research did you do for the comics? Well, I didn't do any research because I didn't want to be influenced by the source material. Wait a minute. Like the new Fantastic Four movie that came out a few years ago when Kate Mara said, no, we were told not to read any of the comics. Yeah, what?
01:37:30
Speaker
How do you not read, how do you not read the comics if you're playing? Okay. The whole template for how to play the character is right there for you in storyboard fashion. Exactly. Because the comic book is what else? That's just a storyboard. Yeah. I don't understand why people would do that, but you know, kudos to everyone who worked in this movie because all the actors did that. They don't, like Singer encouraged them to read the source material and all of them dove into it.
01:37:57
Speaker
Uh, you know, Halle Berry talked about how she had like a box of X-Men comics under her bed. Uh, Famica Jansen, James Marsden, Patrick Stewart, who, you know, is a comics fan to begin with, but he had never really read the X-Men. And so they sent him a bunch of comics and he looks at the cover of one of them that has Professor X on it and he's like, why am I on the cover? Oh, and how, listen, and Halle Berry, you know what? Halle Berry, before, before X-Men became a hit,
01:38:26
Speaker
I distinctly remember reading she did an interview where she complained that here she was, an Academy Award winning actress, and she was being, and she was reduced to being in our comic books. Yeah, I remember that too, yeah. Now all of a sudden, as soon as X-Men, you know, he cracks a hundred million dollars at the box office, I was like, now all of a sudden they have interviews, and now she's this life-long comic book fan. Right. Please. You know, if you didn't read the comic, listen, I understand, you know.
01:38:57
Speaker
I mean, she was a hot chick. Why would she read comic book? I'm going to get in trouble for that one. But but yeah, but I mean, listen, I understand if you didn't read the comic books if you did, but I don't understand it myself. Matter of fact, if I was director of a comic book movie, that would be the first thing. Listen,
01:39:17
Speaker
Here, we'll buy you up a whole mess of the comic books. You take a week and go sit down and read them so you know who is supposed to be playing. So you should have some familiarity with who you're supposed to be playing. Yeah.
01:39:29
Speaker
And so Patrick Stewart, as soon as he fell right in love with the characters when he read the comics. And Stewart was forever like the fan favorite choice to play Professor X. Oh, absolutely. Ever since he was in the way back when he was doing The Next Generation. Right. Yeah.
01:39:48
Speaker
He basically played a walking Professor X on that show. Yeah, absolutely. People say, oh, this guy played Professor X. I remember way back in the 60s when they were talking about doing it because they were talking about doing X-Men movie back in the 70s, you know, everything like that. And I was saying, like, you'll Brenner. Yeah, you know, well, I mean, it was all around that like Clint Eastwood as Wolverine would have been perfect back in the day. Yeah, you know, they were throwing around names like that. But yeah, but again,
01:40:17
Speaker
casting we see Wolverine was essentially modeled on the man with no name in the comics. Oh, really? Oh, basically, come on, you look at you look at his character and a fistful of dollars, you look at Wolverine. There's so many similarities between the two.
01:40:35
Speaker
OK, well, I know that later on, they got him into that whole samurai thing. Yeah, that came later. Yeah. Yeah, which to me also fitted to, you know, when he got into the samurai thing or whatnot, you know. But again, we see in X-Men, we see how casting in a superhero movie
01:40:54
Speaker
is so crucial because now you know you have a hard time imagining anybody else playing wolverine oh everyone you go on the you go on the message boards or reddit or anything like that and whenever there's talk about who should play wolverine in the mcu everyone's saying just bring Hugh Jackman back well that's what i heard i heard he's supposed to be coming back they're gonna make another Deadpool movie i believe he's supposed to be in that one uh no i don't i don't think he'll be coming back at all because they've
01:41:22
Speaker
He had this great swan song with Logan and I think he just wants to leave it like that because I mean yeah the guy's what he's like 50 now and having to go through that workout regime where you're eating nothing but you know steamed chicken and hard-boiled eggs all day that's
01:41:37
Speaker
I mean, that's tough for a young guy to do, let alone a guy who's in his 50s. Oh, listen, hey, listen, I agree with him 100%. He did Logan, and I believe that that should be it. Yeah. Yeah, they should get, that should, you know what? That put the cap to his legacy on playing that character, and they should go with somebody completely new. Get somebody else new, because you know what? Jackman's suggestion for who should follow him was actually Tom Hardy.
01:42:05
Speaker
I can see that. But I don't think that's going to happen now that he's Venom. Yeah. I don't think that's going to happen either. You know what? I think, I think that they should go with the same way. Cause you Jackman was an unknown, right? You know, and they got, I think they should do that. Get somebody. I always think that it's always best when you get unknown people because see, you know what? First of all is the face you don't recognize. So you immediately associate them with that character. Right. And second of all, uh,
01:42:35
Speaker
you know, give the role to somebody that's hungry, that want to prove themselves, which is why I think a lot of people in this movie, Hugh Jackman, Anna Paquin, because she hadn't been in very many movies before she made X-Men. So, you know, she was just starting out. So she was eager to, you know, make her mark. You know, James Marsden, a lot of people didn't know who he was. I think the only three people in this movie that were really well known was Halle Berry. Uh,
01:43:05
Speaker
Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen. Also, why did I also make an art for Rebecca Romaine and Ray Park as well? I don't know. Ray Park, nobody really knew that guy. Not as an actor, but he was known from like the Star Wars stuff. Right. Yeah. He was known from the Star Wars stuff. But, you know,
01:43:26
Speaker
It's not like I think I think if you said Ray Park to a lot of people that they would have to search their memory. Oh, yeah. OK, that guy. But whereas and Rebecca Romain. Wasn't she mostly on no for television?
01:43:43
Speaker
She, I think she was still mostly known as a model at this point, but I do remember her being pretty popular because I knew who she was when she was announced. Oh, okay. Okay. Because this was before I was really into the film world. So if I had heard of these character, these guys, then they, they were pretty popular. Okay.
01:44:02
Speaker
Once again, I bow to your expertise. You know, yeah, because no, my lack of expertise back at that time. No, because her, I really didn't know who she was at all. I mean, the only thing I knew about her is she was married to John Stamos. That was the only thing I knew about her at the time. I think that's mostly what I knew of her, too, at the time. Yeah, because she was using Rebecca Romaine Stamos as a name.
01:44:24
Speaker
Right. As a professional name. And then I said, oh, I wonder if she's related to John Stamos. And then I googled her and I thought she was married to myself. Oh, OK. Lucky dog. You know, and then they end up getting divorced, I think. Yeah, well, he's an asshole. So Jackman, you know, basic character defining performance here. But basically, I think you can say the same thing about Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen.
01:44:51
Speaker
Oh, yeah, well, I mean, you know, what can I mean? Ian McKellen, Ian McKellen, aside from his. Aside from the plot that you don't like, which, you know, which he has no control over that, so we can't. Right. But what I look for any time I look to see somebody playing a supervillain or any kind of villain, I look for them.
01:45:19
Speaker
There's something that I look in the performance that's telling me that, okay, they're not being a bad guy just for the sake of being a bad guy. They're being a bad guy because this is something that they have a personal stake in. And he honestly thinks that, yeah, he's doing his bit because having lived through the Holocaust, which was a brilliant opening scene, again, we've introduced to him in a scene that tells us everything we need to know about his character.
01:45:43
Speaker
The guy lived through the Holocaust. Okay, well, you know what? Maybe he might have a pretty damn good reason for feeling the way he does. He's got a good reason. Now, his methods, okay. We can debate the right and wrong of his methods all day long.
01:46:00
Speaker
One thing I'm not debating is that yeah, he's got a right to feel the way he do. Right. And then from him, you know, we talked a little bit about Marsden and how he has these little touches where there's a lot of good things he has about Cyclops in those little touches, but he's just not given enough to do in this movie.
01:46:18
Speaker
no no no he's not giving anything to do mostly except for those little bits he stands in the background and you know we just see him standing back there and most especially in the scenes when like if you Jackman and Patrick Stewart are in that scene
01:46:38
Speaker
Notice that Mars is, you know, he's just standing there. He doesn't have a, he should be an active participant in the conversation, but he's not. It's between Wolverine and Professor X. And he's just like kind of standing there with his hands behind his back saying, damn, I'm going to kill the script writer.
01:46:56
Speaker
I liked his interactions with Jackman, like, you know, we talked about the bedroom scene and when they first meet, but also, and there's this extended scene when they're suiting up to go to Statue of Liberty, and Scott tells them, he says, Logan, if we're gonna do this, we gotta do this as a team, which means I need to know that you can follow orders, can you? And Logan says, well, I don't know, give me one. And he points the costume, he says, put this on. And Logan looks at it, and he's like, whose is it? And Scott just smiles, he says, it's one of mine.
01:47:26
Speaker
which doesn't make any sense because why would Scott have tiger stripes on his uniform to begin with but it's a cool line yeah but it's a cool line and by the end of the movie you do get the feeling that okay they may not be friends but there's respect now they have each other
01:47:43
Speaker
because they've been they've been through battle together when they're in the when they're in the statue and like when they go through the metal detector and he and he takes out his claws and he stabs it and then he retracts only his outer claws so he's flicking him off with the middle claw yeah yeah and even cyclops smile when he's laughing he looks at it he get crazy and he gives him that okay i see what you did there type of career
01:48:07
Speaker
Or then after he fights Mystique and he comes to find them and Cyclops is ready to blast them. And he goes, hey, hey, it's me. And Cyclops says, we'll prove it. And he's like, you're a dick. He's like, okay, that's you. He said, okay. You're Wolverine. And he says, he comes with no rancor at all. And you know, like he did, he said, okay, you're Wolverine. Let's go continue to miss you. I said, okay. See, that's cool. See that? Like you said, it's those little touches, which again, shows to me that,
01:48:37
Speaker
Jason Morrison, this was the guy who did his research and he understood his character and he understood the tone that that character was supposed to have, which he does maintain all throughout the movie. And I only wish to God that there had been more for him to do in this movie. You know, this should have been a scene. I mean, there was a scene where he's sitting by Professor X after he's been brain blasted and he's sitting there and he's telling him basically that, listen,
01:49:06
Speaker
If it does so happen that you knock off and, you know, you go on to the great mutant happy hunting grounds in the sky, I will take over and the kids will be, you know, basically that's what he's telling them. And it's a nice scene, but we should have had a scene like that where Professor X is sitting up and he's conscious and they're talking. We did get a scene like that was also another one of the cut scenes where- Ah, you're going to cut scenes again. This is the thing, like there was like 30 minutes of extra footage that Fox cut out of the movie.
01:49:36
Speaker
See, now you maybe want to go buy the damn Blu-ray so I can see all this shit. It was that they should have put in the movie. They should have put it in the movie, because all these scenes were gold. Like, they did so much more work establishing the characters, and they just cut them all off and left them all on the cutting room floor. And the movie's weaker for it. And they did it because Fox was afraid that the movie would become two-character focused, and they wanted to be more action focused. Ah, okay.
01:50:03
Speaker
But yeah, this movie, it's like 90 minutes, I think, and originally it was supposed to be actually like two hours with all the cutscenes. Wow. And you know, I don't know. See, I'm one of these people that are in favor of when they do these extended versions, like
01:50:24
Speaker
You know, put the scenes back in the order that they're supposed to be in. Don't just give me a deleted scenes thing. You know, put the scenes back right where they are. So now I can watch the whole thing, the way the same, like what they did with Superman, the movie, that they put all the scenes back in there.
01:50:41
Speaker
But they had done something like that. It was kind of a half-assed effort, though. So when X2 came out in theaters, Fox released what was called X-Men 1.5. And this had a feature where you could watch when you press a button on the remote, when an X-flight flashes on the screen, then you can view the extended scene. But they weren't integrated seamlessly into the movie, and you had to do this extra effort to do it. So it was kind of like this half-assed thing.
01:51:10
Speaker
fit together the way it should have. Okay, yeah, see, I'm not... See, that's too much work. That's too much work. But if they put the... I would love to see an actual... Now that Disney has the rights, when they end up getting around to releasing a complete Blu-ray set of all the X-Men films, which you know they're gonna do once they have an X-Men film in the works. I hope they do that. They released an extended version of the original X-Men movie.
01:51:42
Speaker
Well, if they do, I'm definitely going to get that one because again, like with the Crow, I have upon watching this movie today, I have found a newfound appreciation for this movie. Because like I said, it's put together a lot better than I remember. I mean, and I mean, the story moves. You know, there's no slow parts. But again, I'm
01:52:11
Speaker
I am in awe about how much information is conveyed in such a short running time. And like you said, it's only what, like 90 minutes long? Yeah. Yeah. It's not a long movie at all. I mean, compared to the three hour plus blockbusters that we get now, this is a short movie. Yeah. Yeah.
01:52:33
Speaker
you know, so they don't they don't waste any time in this movie is what I'm trying to say. They don't waste any of the time that they have. They tell the story, but they tell in a coherent. Oh, this is what I wanted to ask you. What are you thinking? The continuity screw up with Wolverine and sabertooth? What do you mean? Because in this one, Wolverine doesn't recognize sabertooth. Well, that I understood that to be because Wolverine doesn't have his memories. Oh, OK.
01:53:03
Speaker
So because that's something else I wanted to talk about was kind of the little nods they have to the comics here. Like they have that with... Because why else would... Because in the beginning you think that the Brotherhood is after Wolverine, but then you find out later they're actually after Rogue. Right. Why in the hell would Sabretooth take Wolverine's dog tags?
01:53:24
Speaker
Right. Right. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. So he took the dog tags because he knows it's Logan. Okay. And, but Wolverine doesn't remember him because he has no memory, right? Xavier says, you know, it's been like almost 10 years or something, you know, going to play some plays without any memory of who or what you are.
01:53:42
Speaker
I got you. Yep. You're right. Yeah. He does say that. Okay. I got you. Thank you. Okay. Wait, wait a minute. That is brother. Don't they shouldn't they? Now there are, there are other continuity screw ups between this and X-Men origins, which we can talk about more with when we get to origins and then even more ended up getting thrown in with first class, but that's a whole other story because they just, they just, I guess every time they brought in someone to write these movies, they just never bothered to watch the ones that came before.
01:54:12
Speaker
Which, you know what, which to me, I don't know, as a writer myself, remember back when we were doing fan fiction? Okay. Say like if I went to a new fan fiction site and they said, okay, well, Derek, we want you to write. Okay. Like the Avengers. Cause usually that's what happened. A lot of times I would take over when I got, for some reason I got to be known as the Avengers guy. And uh, but what I would do is that,
01:54:42
Speaker
I made it my business to go and read everything that the writer had did before me. Well, yeah, of course. I felt I owed that to the guy because God, you know, I mean, God blesses that quality. Well, that's another story. But no, but and I figured that I wouldn't be doing my job unless I familiarize myself with what had already been done.
01:55:03
Speaker
Right. So I don't understand why you would come on and write a movie and not watch the, damn, at least watch the previous movie. I mean, and that required a bigger time commitment for us because we'd have to, these are stories that were written in prose. Sometimes there'd be like 50 to a hundred stories on a site that you have to read back on. And like you said, the quality was not always the best. So it was kind of a slog to get through some of those.
01:55:26
Speaker
Right. I mean, like some people, yeah, it was a pleasure to say, oh, yeah, well, I'm going to be following someone's up. Oh, great. You know, and I would be enjoying the story as a fan of whoever wrote it. But don't let it be somebody who couldn't write a laundry list. Oh, my God. Did that be a slot? But still, again, this was a commitment I said I was going to do. And I felt I owed it to my craft to do it.
01:55:52
Speaker
to do it. So I don't understand people when they say, well, yeah, well, I'm writing the sequel or so and so. Well, did you watch the, well, no, I didn't watch the first one. Well, how can you write the sequel or something? And you never saw the first one. Especially because, you know, when you're coming in X-Men origins or when you're coming into first class, like there's not a whole lot of stuff you got to watch. There's basically three movies and two of them are really good. And one of them is just kind of okay.
01:56:17
Speaker
I mean the blatant laziness is something that I don't comprehend. I think that's one of the problems with some of the crew they got on these movies, some of the behind the scenes people.
01:56:32
Speaker
The cast, you can tell that they love the source material. Like even if they weren't fans to begin with, they became fans when they got the jobs. But the producers, you get the sense that they really did not give a shit at all and they didn't really care too much about it.
01:56:50
Speaker
I mean this isn't like Kevin Feige doing the Avengers where he actually likes the Avengers. Right. These are people who brought in like Laura Schuler Donner who doesn't really give a shit about superheroes at all. Which is another thing that I don't understand because I'll read interviews you know and they talk to these people well I don't know who this is and I was just brought in just to do it.
01:57:12
Speaker
Shouldn't you at least have a working knowledge of rights? I mean, the material that you're working with? Exactly. I mean...
01:57:22
Speaker
I don't know. I just consider it to be a horribly arrogant attitude when I read these interviews with writers and directors and they say, well, no, I didn't read the original. I don't have to read it. Not only arrogant, but also disrespectful to the work that came before. I mean, come on. That's what I say. If you're doing an adaptation, you take on a responsibility to treat that source material with respect. Because how would you feel if someone
01:57:49
Speaker
came along and took something you created and just trashed it completely. Bingo. There you go. There you go. You know what? It just goes back to the old golden rule. Treat others as you would want to be treated. Right. Right. You know, and I know that if somebody came to me and said, okay, well, we want you to write, you know, X, Y, Z. I would make it my business to sit down and say, okay, well, listen, you know what? You got to give me a month to go through all of this material.
01:58:16
Speaker
or if it was a movie series, I said, okay, well, give me two weeks to watch all the movies, you know, before I even started writing, you know, word one. But then again, that's just me. Well, I mean, you see people like Zack Snyder who comes on to Superman and he says, well, I thought it was my job to grow Superman up. Like, well, if you think that Superman is immature and that it's beneath you, why the hell are you directing the damn movie?
01:58:43
Speaker
I'm trying to tell you. You don't need to grow Superman up. Yeah. I mean, it's one thing if you say you're going to take the job and you try and you dive into the source material and then you find out, look, I just can't connect with it. Fine.
01:58:58
Speaker
back out, move on to something else. But then again, it goes back to what you said about people like the different, okay, remember how people said, well, you can't do Superman because he's a boy scout and people won't relate to that anymore. And bam, up comes Marvel with Captain America. Right. And they do it as a boy scout and completely works. Which shows that if you treat that character, Captain America is a man with morals. So you're telling me that nobody would relate to a character. And matter of fact, in the current,
01:59:29
Speaker
political, social state of this country. And now I think that's why Captain America was so successful. Oh yeah. Cause it was drawing that contrast between the two. Yeah.
01:59:40
Speaker
I think that's exactly why, and I think that if a Superman movie was done in that exact same way, it would be a success because that's what people expect from that character. Right, people want something to, people want hope now. And it's like I always say to people, oh and people always say, well I can't relate to Superman. I tell them, well you're not supposed to.
02:00:00
Speaker
You're supposed to relate to Clark Kent. You aspire to be Superman. Exactly. Of course, you can't relate to Superman. He flies. He changes the course of mighty river. He bends skills and bends. But you aspire to what he represents morally in spirit. That's what you, you know, but Clark Kent, yeah, Clark Kent is the regular, because all of us feel like there's something special inside of us that we take off, you know, this.
02:00:25
Speaker
What we wear every day going to a nine to five we're Superman inside Right. Yeah, but once again, I'm not running things. I just You know, we should be running things. We should be we should be didn't we just have two predictions that we set on this podcast and it came true I
02:00:45
Speaker
Yeah, so we were talking about, what was the first one I'm blanking now? It was something to do with crisis on Infinite Earths, I believe. Right, it was something to do with crisis on Infinite Earth. Another one was that they just said they're trying to get Michael Keaton to do Batman Beyond. Right, although that's from We Got Discovered, so. Yeah. Gotta be careful with looking too much into that. Yeah, but we should be running things. They should be giving us the jobs, yeah.
02:01:14
Speaker
if they weren't done right, but hey. If they want it done right, yeah. That's the thing, they don't want it done right. So, okay, we're coming up on, what, about two hours here, so you wanna... Yeah, so, well, what did you think, I wanna talk a little bit briefly about the cast. So we still, what about Famke Janssen? What'd you think of her as Jean Grey?
02:01:35
Speaker
Oh, I always liked her. I like family. You know what? She's one of those actresses that can't do anything wrong to me because she always commits to what she's doing. And and telekinesis is one of those superpowers that to me is actually is kind of hard to pull off because.
02:01:53
Speaker
It's not like you have to do super strength because, you know, you can pick up something and you can show the strain on your face or anything like that. But I mean, with telekinesis, there's a part where Wolverine, he's lying on the table and is when they brought him to the X mansion and she's making stuff float into her hands, you know, she's standing in the examine. And it's the way that she does it. She does it as if she does it every day.
02:02:18
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. It's no exaggerated gestures like she's, you know, pulling it to her with her hand. She just holds up her hand and lets it like kind of naturally float into there. And I kind of like that because, yeah, because if this is something that you do every day, you don't do exaggerated gestures. You don't reach out for things. You bring it to them. That's why you have telekinesis.
02:02:43
Speaker
I thought she did a really good job. One of the things that I wish we had gotten, and that we never got in any of these movies, is her relationship with Storm. Like, we never get any interaction between them. Oh, no. No interaction. I mean, they might as well not be on the same team as far as the interaction between them. Yeah, we should have had a scene where, I mean,
02:03:04
Speaker
these are the two main female characters or they're supposed to be you know rogue is actually the main female character but it would have been nice to have a scene with the two of them talking and now that i now that you say that i just realized like rogue never really the female characters in these movies they almost never interact with each other never never you never see any you never see any interaction like there's no sort of like
02:03:30
Speaker
Any sort of like, you know, rogue going for them for like, like a ment- taking- looking to one of them for like some mentorship or anything like that. Yeah!
02:03:37
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, you would naturally think that road would, you know, immediately bond with Jean or whatever. What's the professor like? What Scott, right? When did you come here? And that's what women do. You don't see, it's like I recently watched the John Carpenter movie, The Fog. And one of the most curious thing about this movie is that Jamie Lee Curtis and Janet Lee, mother and daughter, now they're in a horror movie together. They never have a scene together. Wow.
02:04:06
Speaker
Yeah, which struck me as really weird. Why wouldn't you have these two women who have been in iconic horror movies? Why don't you have them have a scene together?
02:04:15
Speaker
It'd be like if you did Heat and you never had Al Pacino and De Niro interact. Bingo, there you go. And then there's Halle Berry, who, I don't know what the hell she was doing in this movie. For the life of me, I don't understand why you would get Halle Berry, who doesn't even care about the X-Men, when you've also got Angela Bassett, who wanted to play Storm. For years, I have heard.
02:04:40
Speaker
the rumor. I don't know how true this is. If anybody out there can verify or disprove this rumor, believe me, I'll be the first one to appreciate it. But for years, what I've heard that Angela Bassett actually did lobby hard for the role, but the studio felt she was too old to play the part.
02:04:57
Speaker
which is ridiculous. Like even now she looks like she could still play the part. Of course it's ridiculous. She's Angela Bassett. Yeah, she could have played it. What I think what it was is that they just wanted to skew the cast as being young and they already had Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen.
02:05:14
Speaker
Plus, they also had Halle Berry coming off her Oscar win. So she was like the whole thing in town. Well, yeah, I mean, you know, she was the hot thing. I mean that so they were hoping to break. And then, of course, you want to bring in the African-American audience. Yeah, because she's like the only black person is in the movie. Yeah, the only one. And then she makes it even worse with this really terrible accent. I felt that what it was is that and this this proves
02:05:42
Speaker
her maintaining later on that she was a comic book fan because she gave no how can I best put there's no personality to store no not at all she's you know she's just there
02:05:56
Speaker
And when, in the later movies, when she does put some personality in, she goes angry black woman route. She doesn't, she's nothing like Storm from the comics. And now, before y'all Halle Berry fans jump on me, tell the old man, why are you going to diss her sister? Actually, I think Halle Berry, when she wants to be, she's a brilliant actress. If you've ever seen a dude, the Dorothy Dandric biopic, oh my God.
02:06:21
Speaker
And then there's another movie that she does when she plays a schizophrenic. I'm trying to think of the name of the movie. Frankie and Frankie and something. But I'll put the review up on the site. I'll put the review up on the Superhero Center files Facebook page when I finish. But it's a movie where she plays a schizophrenic. The point I'm trying to make is that
02:06:45
Speaker
Halle Berry can act and she can act very well. A lot of times I think that even no matter how brilliant and after you are, sometimes if you're not given anything to do, well, then there is nothing for you to do. And that's the case in this movie. The part was severely underwritten. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they gave her, they gave her one of the stupidest lines and I give her all the credit matter of fact,
02:07:10
Speaker
Okay, yeah, I'm ragging on her, but I can give all the credit in the world for trying to make that stupid-ass line work. That line was terrible. Oh, what line is it, Perry? Go ahead. Do you know what happens to Trode when it gets struck by lightning? Same thing that happens to everything else. What? What does that even mean? You know what's even weirder? Do you know who wrote that line? Who? Josh Whedon.
02:07:34
Speaker
Really? Yeah, because he was brought in to do rewrites and a lot of his draft was thrown out. The only two things that made it through were the scene where, um, the interactions between Cyclops and Wolverine in the statue and storms lined to toad. That is without a doubt. And like I said, I'd give her all the, cause know what? If it was me, I would have said, no, I'm not saying that.
02:07:57
Speaker
I'd rather not say nothing and just blast them with a lightning bolt and let's go on to the next scene. I'm not saying that. But you know what? She tries her best to make it work and I give her credit for that, you know? See, that's a professional. But still, this is a case, going back again, when you do casting right,
02:08:17
Speaker
That actor becomes indelibly associated with that character. Right. Nobody associates Halle Berry with Storm. I'm afraid they don't. You know, when I see when I watch this movie, I'm not seeing Storm. I'm seeing Halle Berry in a wig. Yeah. Well, yeah. You know, and again, listen, I understand she was hot at the time.
02:08:39
Speaker
I mean, I'm talking about hot as far as the box office folks, even though she is hot. But, you know, listen, I understand all that. But she didn't know the character. She didn't know what character she was supposed to be playing. You know, and she only she had to work with a script that
02:08:59
Speaker
where her character was underwritten. She didn't have much to do. And going along with being critical of some of these actors, the other one that I think is a really weak performance is Anna Paquin. Just like Halle Berry is not Storm, Anna Paquin is not Rogue, not the one I know from the comics. She's way more Kitty Pryde than Rogue. Oh, yeah. Well, this is Kitty Pryde's personality.
02:09:30
Speaker
And we're not even teenage Kitty Pryde. This is very young Kitty Pryde's personality when she first joined the X-Men. Yeah. Although I do like the chemistry between her and you, Jackman, they have great chemistry together. And like I said, it goes back to the theme of these two people.
02:09:50
Speaker
who are isolated not only from unity but from mutant con as well because of their ability in wolverine's case is because he's done it to himself and because of his memory then know who he is that's why it's isolated she's isolated because of her power she can't touch anybody but
02:10:07
Speaker
they form a bond because they're in a weird way, it's their isolation that draws them together. Because they recognize themselves in the other person. And I really do like their chemistry together. However, whenever I think of, okay, Roe, whenever I think of Roe, but she would have been too old for this part too, they would have said, Reba McIntyre.
02:10:33
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. Definitely would have been too old, but I get, I get where you're coming from. Yeah, but you get one, but you know, like that sassy Southern type of, you know, because whenever, yeah. Cause whenever I read the comic book and I read her dialogue, that's whose voice I heard. You know, we've been back to time. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
02:10:52
Speaker
Yeah, that kind of attitude, that kind of personality, definitely. Right, that kind of attitude, that type of personality. Yeah, this is, as you said, this is like, you know, Kitty Pryde when she first joined X-Men and she didn't know what to do, which of course, which is what the movie is about because we are introduced into the whole mutant
02:11:12
Speaker
subculture by these two characters joining the X-Men, you know, they didn't know about this war going on between Professor X and Magneto and about the school and, you know, so, you know, they didn't know about it, you know, until they got thrown together and then got into the situation. So that's understandable. But
02:11:35
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I like Anna Paquin. I do. I like, you know, I'm not as hard on you, on her as you are, apparently. Because to me, she fulfills what she's going to be doing in this movie.
02:11:48
Speaker
Yeah, she does. Yeah. One performance that really surprised me was Ray Park as Toad, because Toad's always been kind of like this joke character for most of the time in the comics. But Ray Park actually makes him into someone who's kind of a threat. He makes him dangerous in this movie. Yeah. And he makes him funny, too. He has these little quips he gives here and there. He fucking teases Sabretooth.
02:12:15
Speaker
Yeah, he got the nerve to talk shit to Sabertooth. I said, oh, shit, yeah. Yeah, because he gets off a couple of good one-liners at him, you know. And Sabertooth doesn't say anything to him. Yeah, Ray Park. If anybody had told me that he would make the toad a dangerous character, I wouldn't have but, yeah, he does. Yeah, yeah. So he did a really good job. And I wish we'd seen a little bit more toad in some of the sequels, but we never saw him again after this.
02:12:46
Speaker
Well, I suspect that they have planned for him because we never see that. We just see storm blast him off the off the Statue of Liberty.
02:12:55
Speaker
and he lands in the water, and then we never see him after that. And you know, my theory is that, listen, if I don't see a body, if I don't see a funeral, well, then the characters still lie. Especially in the superhero movie. Oh, definitely. If I don't see nobody with a sheepskin saying that not only is he really nearly dead, but he's also really dead? To me, he's not dead. All right, so any final thoughts about the X-Men movie and kind of like the effect it had on superhero cinema?
02:13:25
Speaker
OK, I think that it was most fitting this movie came out in the year 2000, because even though the 21st century didn't start then, you know, most people just take it, OK, this is when the new century started, you know, 2000. And I think that it's most fitting that.
02:13:46
Speaker
X-Men did start in 2000 because as you said, it started a whole new phase in superhero movies. You know, there was a there was a level of sophistication in this filmmaking. There was a level of sophistication in the acting
02:14:02
Speaker
as well as the casting choices with, like I said, in particular with Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen. There was some measure of respect with the source material. There was an effort to make this about more than just, okay, well, we're just going to have the good guys.
02:14:21
Speaker
punching out the bad guys in that we're dealing with the issue of humanity being supplanted by mutant kind and the fear of that. So there was a level, there was a level of sophistication that was attempted and I believe largely accomplished in this movie. I, okay, as I said, I watched it today. Like the last time I watched this, I think was when Logan came out and
02:14:47
Speaker
But now I was watching it with a critical eye toward discussing it Here as opposed to just pleasure and I found a lot more in this movie like I said in that Level of sophistication that it tries to achieve that I hadn't noticed before and I got to give this movie a lot of credit for that and the director Brian Singer no matter how much he screwed up later on in life folks. I Got to give him I have to give him credit for this
02:15:13
Speaker
because this is a superhero movie that works. Despite all the things we've been knocking it for, it works for me not only as what I am now saying, yes, it's a landmark in superhero cinema, but also just film, period, you know, because it's a superhero movie that we could take seriously, and it works on a lot of levels that,
02:15:41
Speaker
regular movies work on that we just take it for granted because we never saw them working superhero movies before X-Men. Right. I mean, I think this was probably the movie, even more so than Batman, probably the first movie since Superman that really embraced the source material and took it seriously. Like Batman to a small extent did, but Tim Burton's own admission was, you know, he didn't really care too much about the comics.
02:16:10
Speaker
Right. And Blade, you know, we talked about they didn't even want Marvel's name on it. So they didn't really care too much about embracing the source material. Yeah. This was a superhero movie like Superman that wasn't ashamed to be a superhero movie. This was also the first time we got a Stanley cameo. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's the guy selling hot dogs on the beach. Right. Yeah. But Peter Davidson comes out of the water. Yeah.
02:16:35
Speaker
Yeah, Peter Davidson, who also was very good in this movie. He was he was really good. Yeah, I liked he he made Senator Kelly's position understandable, like when he's on the phone and he's talking about comparing mutants to gun registration. Exactly. And see, again, that's what I'm saying. It goes back to motivation. Yeah. Did I like him? No, I didn't like him as a human being. But I understood.
02:17:02
Speaker
His position understood why he felt the way he did. And, man, he had one of the creepiest death scenes I've ever seen. That she was straight, straight up fucked up. Halle Berry runs out. I didn't blame her.
02:17:20
Speaker
You know, I just realized, I remembered one plot hole in this movie is, so Xavier knows who the Brotherhood is, right? Because he mentions that when he meets Wolverine, he says that, you know, Magneto was sent Sabretooth after you. So he knows who Sabretooth is. He knows who, obviously, we know from first class, he knows who Mystique is. But
02:17:47
Speaker
Only Magneto uses the helmet to avoid detection. Like he never has to, why doesn't he ever try to track Sabretooth or Mystique? Oh, good point. That's a, you know what, that's an excellent point. I mean, it's one thing if Magneto's working alone, then that makes sense, but it just seemed like the whole, you know, I wear the helmet to keep Xavier out, just didn't really...
02:18:09
Speaker
to keep him from tracking me just didn't really fit. Which could have been, and yeah. And as we see in later movies, you know, Charles Xavier and Mystique were intimate or whatever you want to call it. So yeah, he knows about her. And yet it could have been very easily solved by Magneto saying, well, here, wear this headband. Well, why should we wear the headband? Well, it's made out of the same material as my helmet. Right. Yeah. Charles Xavier will be able to track you. See, bingo. That's one simple line.
02:18:40
Speaker
could have fixed the whole thing. But you know, that's a good point. I never thought about that before. But yeah, Magneto is the only one that's wearing that helmet. So why didn't they even just try to attract the other three members? Yeah. Yeah. Or you just don't reveal that he knows who Magneto is working with or something, something like that would work.
02:19:00
Speaker
But anyway, overall, I think my opinion's pretty much largely the same as yours. Like, there's some things in the movie that don't hold up over time, but when this movie came out, it was revolutionary. Like, it changed everyone's attitude towards what superhero movies could be. Because... Oh, absolutely, yeah. After... Before this, we had... The big tentpole superhero movies were really Batman and Robin and Spawn, both of which were terrible. Agreed.
02:19:28
Speaker
So, Hollywood pretty much thought, you know, superheroes are dead, it's not going to work. And Fox was even unsure of this movie because they only gave it a budget of $75 million. They weren't confident in this movie at all. That's also why they cut so many scenes out. And only after it started becoming successful, then Fox said, okay, well, maybe we should think about a sequel.
02:19:50
Speaker
Well, yeah, because what had happened was that you had the thing where people were going back and seeing it in the theater three times, you know, especially the X-Men fans, you know. Oh, yeah, I think I'm pretty sure I saw this three times in the theater, at least. Oh, see what I mean? I what I saw it.
02:20:07
Speaker
I saw it with my wife in Florida. And then I believe when I came back to New York, I went with some friends of mine to see. Oh, yes. I saw it twice in the theater. And I'm not even X-Men fan. And I went to see it twice. And I know people that, yeah, they went back two, three, even four times in the theater when it was in the theater to see it. And then, of course, as soon as the DVD came out, boom, they bought it.
02:20:30
Speaker
You know, that thing sold out $75 million. Really. That was for the cake. That wouldn't even pay for the catering on Avengers and I know.
02:20:41
Speaker
That was a budget for the caterer. Yeah. Oh my God. So even though you don't like the X-Men interacting with the rest of the Marvel universe, you like them more on their own, we know it's going to happen. Oh, sure. Sure as you're born, it's going to happen. So how would you do it? How do you think it should be done? How would I do what?
02:21:07
Speaker
bringing the X-Men into the MCU, bringing the idea of mutants into the MCU. Well, you know what I would have done? If it had been me, at the end of Avengers, okay, the end game? Mm-hmm. End game? I would have had, like, shots, you know, of different places, like, all around the world, showing how people were reacting to, you know, their loved ones being brought back.
02:21:36
Speaker
And I would have cut to Westchester and the X mansion and you would see all the students hugging each other. And I would have just had that. And then I would have cut to, you know, the Baxter Building. And I would just show the Baxter Building, just showing that by the snap, you know, they're now in this universe. You know, which to me, which would explain because now
02:22:02
Speaker
Okay, to bring X-Men in, you already established in the Marvel Universe that, okay, now you got to establish mutants now. In other words, is what I'm trying to say. Because we've been through what, 22 movies and we haven't had mutants? Okay. How come we haven't had, which is why I want to see how they want to do it with, uh, um, it's not the Inhumans. What's that other group, the Jack Kirby?
02:22:24
Speaker
Oh, the Eternals. The Eternals, yeah. I want to see how they're going to do that, because they've been around for that. OK, well, how come we haven't seen them before? See, now that's the problem. You've got to not only bring in mutants, but it's that, well, how come we haven't heard of them before?
02:22:41
Speaker
I think Neil Gaiman did an Eternals miniseries. I bought it off Comixology, but I haven't read it yet. But from what I've read about some of the reviews and stuff, they said that it opens with a lot of the Eternals being amnesiac and trapped in these different lives. So maybe they'll do something like that with the Eternals. Well, with Mutants, I've got an idea for how I think it could work pretty well.
02:23:06
Speaker
Okay, so we established that Wanda and Pietro got their powers from the Infinity Stone. Right. My theory is, what if we have had that mutants are next step in human evolution, they've been around for a long time, but we're talking very, very, very, very small numbers, like one in a million type of thing.
02:23:28
Speaker
So that allows for, you know, you have some mutants who are already around. So you had, like, Apocalypse way back when. You had Wolverine, Sabretooth, Namor, Xavier, Magneto. They've been around, but mutants have been in such small numbers that characters like Xavier and Magneto, they've been able to keep it quiet, right? Maybe even get some help from S.H.I.E.L.D. in that. Because Nick Fury, you get the sense he's been involved in a lot of other different stuff.
02:23:57
Speaker
Well, I think that's the only way that you can go now. Well, and then what I'm saying is, now that we know that the Infinity Stones gave Wanda and Pietro power, and only them, because, you know, they say they're the only two of Strucker's experiments who survived. So my theory is, Wanda and Pietro had this latent X gene that the other test subjects didn't, and the Infinity Stones awakened that X gene and gave them their powers.
02:24:26
Speaker
So then, when you have the combination of the two snaps, because Rocket said Earth became ground zero for this cosmic source of energy that had never been seen before. Right. And you had it done twice.
02:24:42
Speaker
or three times actually, because you had Thanos doing it, then Banner, and then Stark did it less. So you've had these influxes of cosmic energy. So I'm just thinking what happens is that energy has affected a lot of people. So now instead of mutants only being like one tenth of one tenth of one percent, now they're like
02:25:05
Speaker
10% of the world population have this X gene that's been activated. So now it's becoming an issue. Yeah. Okay. Now see, that's a perfectly logical and sensible way to go, given what we know of in the Marvel universe at this state, because to me,
02:25:25
Speaker
I really cannot see them going that tidal route and say, oh, well mutants have been around all this time. We just didn't even know, but no, no, no, no. Right. And also I think the, I think bringing in a multiverse explanation where you just bring all these mutants in from another reality. I think that's really lazy. Yeah. Yeah. That's lazy too. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah. But your way of doing it that yet, like the cosmic radiation from the snaps have like accelerated.
02:25:53
Speaker
the process of mutations and now you got all these people now with mutant powers and like you said you it could very well be that nick fury knew that professor x has been a mutant all this time and of course we get a scene like when he went to stark now he goes to you know professor xavier says okay you remember that plan that she was telling me about about your school and x-men said well i think it's time you initiated that something like that well in the ultimate comics they had um
X-Men Series Speculations and Future Thoughts
02:26:23
Speaker
the background of Xavier and Magneto is that they originally started their school together in secret in the Savage Land. And so I think you could have something like that, or you can bring in Krakoa like they're doing in the current X-Men comics. So where Xavier and Magneto have spent like the past 10, 15 years secretly gathering mutants, like whatever ones they can find. So there's like these small number of mutants they've got there. So that way you could have like a team already in place.
02:26:49
Speaker
Hmm by the time the first movie starts and now they're just coming out in the open Although I think what I would do is I would not put Wolverine in the first x-men movie I would give him his own movie first and then later bring him in in an x-men sequel Yeah, I mean and see now
02:27:05
Speaker
with the way that they're making these movies. Yeah, you could do that. Matter of fact, you could have X-Men movie and the new Wolverine movie come out in the same year. Although you know what I think I would really think would be perfect is if they did an X-Men series on Disney Plus instead of doing a movie. They won't do that, but I think that would be the perfect way to do that because
02:27:27
Speaker
The X-Men, like Spider-Man, like Daredevil, works best in a serialized fashion. And I think if you did like, you know, six, eight episode seasons, you could do things where you have like the first season as well, like with the original X-Men. Yeah, well, there's a lot of characters. Yeah. And then the season finale could be them going to Krakoa and getting trapped there. And then season two, you bring in the international team.
02:27:55
Speaker
There's a lot of characters that, and we saw as we saw from the Netflix series, because as I've been telling people this for years, not every character needs to have a big CGI summer blockbuster. Right. Some characters like Daredevil, like Daredevil works very well as a weekly TV series.
02:28:17
Speaker
You know, Luke Cage works very well as a TV series. X-Men, and see, X-Men, now with the level of technology that we have and with special effects, it would have been impossible to do X-Men TV series, but yeah, but now you could do it. Yeah, especially if you're doing it on Disney+. Yeah, you could do it.
02:28:36
Speaker
I mean, they're not going to do that because there's so much money they'd be leaving on the table. But oh, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. But that would be the perfect way to do it, because then you could really lean into like the character development and the relationships changing and all the super all the soap opera elements that made the X-Men so popular to begin with. And I think that from what they're talking about from the lineup that they've got already, you know, like they're concentrating on like this, even like the bigger characters. I mean, you know, for the movies.
02:29:05
Speaker
Right. Yeah. But this but you know, because I think like there's a Hawkeye series they're going to do. Yeah. They're going to do the Winter Soldier. You know, Falcon and Winter Soldier. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So Scarlet Witch, Scarlet Witch, WandaVision. Yeah. I think there's also been talk about a War Machine series, too.
02:29:22
Speaker
War Machine, well, everybody, everybody and their mother says Moon Knight. I haven't heard it yet, but, you know. No, I think that has been officially announced. Moon Knight's been announced and She-Hulk has been announced. Well, She-Hulk, I'll be watching. As a matter of fact, I just signed up this weekend, this past weekend, I signed up for Disney Plus. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah, me and my wife talked about it. And I said, well, because she wanted CBS All Access.
02:29:52
Speaker
So I said, well, I'll tell you what, you pay for all access and I'll pay for Disney Plus. So as it stands now, I'm paying for the Netflix and Disney Plus and she's paying for Amazon Prime and CBS All Access. Now, one other thing that's been coming up about bringing the X-Men into the MCU is people are talking about
02:30:15
Speaker
how to do Magneto, because you can't really have him believable as a Holocaust survivor anymore. So what do you think they should do in that situation? Matter of fact, funny you should bring that up. As a friend, I was talking with a friend not too long ago about, because, you know, the Watchmen debuted, you know, a TV series, Sunday. Right.
02:30:43
Speaker
So we were talking about Watchmen. Don't ask me how the X-Men got it. Well, this guy, X-Men always get into a conversation. You'll be talking about Vanessa Del Rio and porno movies and he brings in the X-Men. But, but I want to. So is this the one I know as well? No, no. OK. So I want to steal his idea. His idea was that to make Magneto Vietnamese.
02:31:12
Speaker
OK, maybe, you know, he was a child during the Vietnam War and, you know, he saw what the American, you know, did to.
02:31:20
Speaker
you know, his people and everything like that. You know, he's Vietnamese and he's also a mute, you know. I mean, he's Magneto. He's still got the same powers and everything like that. But just make him Vietnamese and give him a background instead of, you know, the Holocaust. Because like you said, you can't use that anymore. Right. Now, I was thinking Kosovo from the Balkans in the in the early 90s with Milosevic and all the ethnic cleansing that was going on over there.
02:31:49
Speaker
Okay, yeah, okay. Well bingo there you go. I mean and but then something else came out and people were talking There's a rumor that's been going around that they want They're looking to black actors to play Professor X and Magneto Now if they did that with Magneto, I think you could easily you do Rwanda or dark Okay, I think either of those would work. Oh see now see that's a rumor I hadn't heard that they were looking for black actors for ya know. Yeah
02:32:20
Speaker
Well, so thinking about like one name that I saw people obviously whenever someone's gonna mention a possible black actor his name always gets dropped but Denzel Washington people were saying for Magneto, um What do you want to do it? First of all, that's a good question, but just speculation wise. Yeah, I mean, you know
02:32:41
Speaker
Especially if you want to go with the whole thing, you know, making the parallels with the civil rights, you know, and everything like that.
02:32:52
Speaker
Yeah, I can see I can see Dezo watch. Although, you know what? If you're going to OK, if you're going to go with black actors for Professor X and Magneto, I would prefer to find younger actors. That's kind of what I'm thinking as well. Yeah, because if you're going to have a movie series. Right. You know, I would think that they could usually what do they do? They sign them up for like about like three movies. Right. Right.
02:33:20
Speaker
usually these actors and so we're talking about what like 10 years yeah yeah yeah basically so i would i would actually not that i don't think that denzel couldn't do because then he's denzel he can do anything right
02:33:34
Speaker
And he played Malcolm X, who's the Magneto analog anyway. You went a little bit further ahead, but that's where I was leading up to, that since he's already played Malcolm X, it wouldn't be that difficult for him to play Magneto, who he's supposed to be.
02:33:51
Speaker
You know analog to Malcolm X so that wouldn't be difficult. Yes, I could see him doing me Actually, I you know, I would go a little bit younger Considering that, you know These actors are gonna and also it's very physically grueling to play, you know to be in these movies, right? You know, so I would skew a little bit younger, but there is no reason why Denzel couldn't but of course now he stands out like playing
02:34:16
Speaker
And Ian McKellen wasn't a young man when he played Magneto either. Right. All McKellen really had to do was he just had to hold his arms out to the sides mostly. Well, yeah. And I mean, listen, let's face it. Most of the physical stuff is done by stunt people anyway. So it's not like, you know, Denzel is actually going to be physically doing all of this stuff. Like you say, he's going to be lifting his arms and stuff like that. So, yeah. Yeah.
Podcast Wrap-up and Listener Interaction
02:34:40
Speaker
Okay. All right. So now we gotta wrap up now. So, um, what are we watching for the next episode? Cause it's your pickup. Well, what I wanted to pick, but I, I have not verified it yet. I wanted to do the, uh, TV, uh, movie.
02:34:58
Speaker
version of Dr. Strange, which was shown in the 1970s. But before I committed myself to it, I wanted to see what it was available on. Because it's kind of an obscure movie, and I don't know if it's available on YouTube or Amazon Prime, whatever. But I'm going to go with Dr. Strange for now. And when I find out what it's available on, I'm going to send you an email.
02:35:22
Speaker
and confirm it. And if not, then I'll pick something else. Is that okay? So we'll tentatively plan for the original Doctor Strange movie, not the new one with Cumberbatch. No, not that one. I'm talking about the original made for TV movie with Peter Hooten, starring as Sir John Mills. Is it this movie? Yeah. Jessica Walter.
02:35:46
Speaker
So, if I could find out. I've never seen this, so it'll be interesting if we can find it. Yeah, but like I said, I've been meaning to look for it. I said, well, let me see if it's on YouTube or Amazon Prime or Netflix or, you know, some format, you know, where you can watch it. But I can watch it too, because I haven't seen it, you know, and God knows how many years. But if I can find it, I'll let you know. And if not, like I said, I'll just find something else.
02:36:11
Speaker
Okay, so that's our episode now. Head on over to SuperheroCinephiles.com as the website. SuperheroCinephiles on Facebook. You can join the group. We'll start a discussion thread about X-Men and what you think about the possibility of bringing the characters into the MCU and all that fun stuff.
02:36:33
Speaker
OK, that wraps us up for this episode. This has been Superhero Cinephiles. I'm Perry Constantine. And as always, I'm Derek Ferguson. I hope you enjoyed this episode. You got a lot of good stuff in there to chew over until next time. Yeah. All right. Thanks a lot. And we'll talk to you guys next time. OK. Good night. God bless.
02:36:59
Speaker
Thanks for listening to the Superhero Cinephiles Podcast. If you have any questions or comments about this or any other episode, or if you have a superhero movie or TV show you'd like us to cover in a future episode, you can email us at superherocinephiles at gmail.com. Or you can also visit us on the web at superherocinephiles.com. If you like what you hear, leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts. Each review helps us reach more potential listeners.
02:37:26
Speaker
You can also support the show by renting or purchasing the movies discussed, or by picking up our books, all of which can be accessed through the website, as well as find links to our social media presences. The theme music for this show is a shortened version of Superhero Showdown, a royalty-free piece of music, courtesy of pheasantlionstudios.com.