Back of the Head: X-Men

Showing posts with label X-Men. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 18, 2020

The New Mutants

THE NEW MUTANTS

** SPOILERS **

To say that The New Mutants was worth waiting for would be an X-treme X-aggeration. Delayed by over two years and a victim of studio meddling and the sale of 20th Century Fox to Disney, writer-director Josh Boone's The New Mutants finally materialized at the worst possible time in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic. A YA horror movie set in the world of the X-Men, The New Mutants is The Breakfast Club crossed with The Gifted, one of the other Fox X-Men spinoffs about people who learn that having mutant powers is a pretty terrible thing, but it also reminds one of M. Night Shyamalan's Glass, which was also set in a morbid asylum. (Asylums keep the budget down). The New Mutants literally exist in a closed-off freaky snowglobe and you can't blame them all for wanting to get out.

The New Mutants are Illyana Rasputin AKA Magik (Anya Taylor-Joy), the sister of Colossus (who is never mentioned) and can use her sorcery to enter a nether-realm called Limbo (she also has a sock puppet named Lockheed that can become a real CGI dragon). Honestly, Magik alone has powers so complicated and that are totally underexplained (why can't she enter Limbo from the asylum and then exit Limbo in a different location?) that a whole movie could (and should) just be about her. Plus Taylor-Joy has fun with a Russian accent that makes her sound like Jodie Comer's Villanelle in Killing Eve. Unfortunately, The New Mutants can't settle on Illyana's character; one minute she's uber-confident and the next she's a quivering mess on the floor, sometimes in the same scene. And what's with her arm armor and sword? Why just armor up her arm? Why not armor up her whole body? See what I'm getting at about Magik needing way more X-planations than this 90-minute horror flick wants to provide?

Oh right, there are other New Mutants. Maisie Williams from Game of Thrones plays Rahne Sinclair AKA Wolfsbane, who can turn into a werewolf - the one magic trick Arya Stark couldn't do unlike her brother Bran. Then there's Roberto Da Costa (Henry Zaga) AKA Sunspot, the good looking Brazilian dude who becomes a human torch. Charlie Heaton from Stranger Things plays Sam Gutherie AKA Cannonball, a Kentuckian who can literally blast off. Finally, there's the appealing Blu Hunt, who plays Dani Moonstar, a Native American who enters the asylum and it's a big mystery what her powers are, despite everyone being visited by their worst fears after she joins the New Mutants. Turns out Dani's mutant power is making your fears real. Weirdly, the only person in the asylum Dani's powers don't work on is Dr. Reyes (Alice Braga), the somber psychiatrist who's ostensibly there to treat the New Mutants but is obviously the bad guy. Reyes is also a mutant who can create force fields, and she has a permanent one covering the asylum, which the New Mutants all seem to know about. When they want to escape, why don't they just knock Reyes out or lock her in one of the asylum's creepy dungeons? They actually do the former and then just party in the asylum Breakfast Club-style, but they don't escape.

Anyway, Dr. Reyes pretends she's working for her "superior" who "runs a school for the gifted", but why are these New Mutants locked up in an asylum when other mutants get to attend Charles Xavier's School. Reyes claims it's because they're dangerous and must be protected from themselves but, hello! Rogue? Wolverine? The New Mutants clearly know who the X-Men are and they also know Dr. Reyes, a humorless, charmless, obviously crooked "doctor", is full of shit, but they just go along with it for the sake of the plot. At one point, Reyes traps them all in force fields but again, Magik can just go to Limbo, right? Can't she do that and emerge outside the force field?

The plot of New Mutants hinges on Dani, who doesn't know her powers are haunting the other New Mutants while she herself is being haunted by the Demon Bear, a manifestation of evil, or something. Dani and Rahne have the hots for each other and they have a sweet little romance in the middle of the bland horror movie they're all participating in. Eventually, Dr. Reyes gets orders from her real superiors at the sinister Essex Corporation, the same bad guys who experimented on mutant children and cloned Wolverine in Logan, and they decide she has to kill Dani. Luckily, Rahne figures it out and turns into a wolf and mauls Dr. Reyes. It all culminates with all of the New Mutants' inner horrors attacking them all at once and there's a lot of screaming and crying and using their powers against the Demon Bear and then more screaming and more crying and none of it makes sense and then the movie is over - along with the X-Men franchise. It's all too bad because the actors are good and the concept of an X-Men horror movie is sound and The New Mutants had potential but instead, we'll never see the New Mutants again.

Friday, June 21, 2019

Dark Phoenix at Screen Rant

DARK PHOENIX AT SCREEN RANT

Dark Phoenix is the final X-Men film of the Fox era. The X-Men saga has lasted for 19 years and I was there since day one. In the long buildup to Dark Phoenix's release, I've been fortunate to write a lot of Screen Rant Features about the film and the X-Men franchise as a whole. Here they all are collected below:

JESSICA JONES SEASON 3 IS MARVEL NETFLIX'S DARK PHOENIX

THE X-MEN CHARACTERS WITH THE MOST MOVIE APPEARANCES

DARK PHOENIX'S SCATHING REVIEWS WERE UNFAIR TO THE FINAL X-MEN FILM

OUR 10 BIGGEST UNANSWERED QUESTIONS AFTER DARK PHOENIX

WHO'S OLDER: WOLVERINE IN LOGAN

OR CAPTAIN AMERICA IN AVENGERS: ENDGAME?

DARK PHOENIX IMPROVED ON X-MEN: THE LAST STAND

(SO WHY ISN'T IT A BETTER MOVIE?)

EVERY X-MEN CHARACTER IN DARK PHOENIX

DARK PHOENIX'S ENDING SETS UP A FINAL X-MEN MOVIE THAT WILL NEVER HAPPEN

EVERY X-MEN MOVIE RANKED, WORST TO BEST (INCLUDING DARK PHOENIX)

WHICH X-MEN MOVIES TO REWATCH BEFORE DARK PHOENIX?

FOX'S X-MEN MOVIES ARE BETTER THAN MARVEL FANS WILL ADMIT

EVERYTHING DARK PHOENIX HAS COPIED FROM X-MEN: THE LAST STAND

DARK PHOENIX IS THE FIRST X-MEN MOVIE WITHOUT WOLVERINE

DARK PHOENIX IS JUST X-MEN: THE LAST STAND AGAIN
(BUT THAT MAY BE A GOOD THING)

HERE'S HOW OLD THE X-MEN ARE SUPPOSED TO BE IN DARK PHOENIX

WHAT IS THE SONG IN THE DARK PHOENIX TRAILER?

Thursday, June 6, 2019

Dark Phoenix

DARK PHOENIX

** SPOILERS **

"We're all that's left, the last of the First Class," Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) tells Beast (Nicholas Hoult), and we feel the significance of how long these X-Men have known each other and how long we, in turn, have known them. Though you'd never know it by looking at them, Mystique and Beast, along with Professor Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender), have known each other since 1962. They are indeed the last of X-Men: First Class, which rebooted the X-Men saga into a new continuity. Like the four X-Men founders, writer-director Simon Kinberg's Dark Phoenix is the last of this quadrilogy of films and also the last of the 19-year saga of X-Men movies from Fox. It's both a continuation and a finale about endings, rebirths, and... evolution. The film strains and teeters under all of that weight and it never truly takes flight (it tries but can't quite). And yet, it's still a pleasure to be with these X-Men after all of these years.

While it seems so on the surface, Dark Phoenix is thankfully not a retread of X-Men: The Last Stand. Instead, it feels like a glorified TV episode, which is both a good and bad thing. Good because at least it strives to be Peak TV and hits some of those dramatic notes; bad because it still feels undercooked and it could be grander, but it isn't. What is here, though, is rather interesting. We know the beats of the Dark Phoenix Saga story by heart, even if you've never read the comic: Jean Grey (Sophie Turner) is a powerful mutant psychic with a tragic past (in this telling, her powers caused the death of her mother when she was 8) who is imbued with a cosmic force from outer space that she can't control. The Phoenix Force (though it isn't called that) feeds on her rage and trauma, which was kept in check by psychic walls secretly built by Professor X, and transforms her into a malevolent, god-like being. The X-Men try to bring her back to the Jean they know and it ends in tragedy.

Dark Phoenix's first act is its best: the year is 1992 (though you'd never know it from the fashion or music) and the X-Men are beloved, rock star superheroes on call from the President of the United States. (Xavier even has an X-Phone hotline to the POTUS.) When the space shuttle Endeavor is damaged by a solar flare, Mystique leads her team of X-Men, including Beast, Jean, Storm (Alexandra Shipp), Quicksilver (Evan Peters), Nightcrawler (Kodi Smit-McPhee), and Cyclops (Tye Sheridan) into space on a rescue mission. The X-Men save the astronauts but Jean is struck by the solar flare, which is actually the cosmic Phoenix Force. Instead of dying, Jean's powers grow "off the charts" and the walls in her mind Xavier built come crashing down. The cool thing about all of this is seeing something we've never seen before: the X-Men outright loved by the public. They get a standing ovation from the young students at the Xavier School and they even have a party in the woods with Dazzler (Halston Sage) as the entertainment. Meanwhile, Xavier soaks up adulation with all of the false modesty he can muster at a black-tie gala. All of this is accompanied by a groovy Hans Zimmer score that alternates from heroic bombast to eerie foreboding as the Phoenix grows Dark.

Mystique and Charles have been friends since the 1940s but they've never really seen eye-to-eye. She thinks his lifelong patriarchy and ego-trips (she even calls out the sexist "X-Men" name) will lead to disaster - and she's right. He argues that he's finally achieved his dream - humans trusting mutants and regarding them as heroes - and he's also right that mutants are only one bad day from becoming public enemy number one again. That day comes immediately when the newly Dark Phoenix-ed Jean escapes the X-Mansion; she realizes that Xavier has lied to her for 17 years and that her father is actually alive. Just like in The Last Stand, there's a confrontation at Jean's childhood home and an X-Man dies, but this time it's Mystique, whom Jean kills (and not accidentally). Jennifer Lawrence's reluctant but heroic shapeshifter dies with a whimper and this splits the X-Men apart, with Beast blaming Xavier since they are two of the three men who have loved Mystique since 1962.

Meanwhile, Jean seeks out the third man who loved Mystique: Magneto, who now runs a mutant refuge on the island of Genosha. Unlike Ian McKellan's Magneto, who wanted to seduce Dark Phoenix into his Brotherhood, Fassbender's version doesn't want anything to do with Jean. But someone who does is Vuk (Jessica Chastain), the leader of shapeshifting aliens called the D'Bari, who lost her whole planet to the Phoenix Force. Vuk plays the role of seducer to Jean, offering to teach her how to control her power, but what she really wants is the Phoenix Force itself, which she is somehow also strong enough to absorb. The movie is unclear about how Vuk can also be its host, but Vuk doesn't mince words that she doesn't care about humans and she wants the Phoenix Force so the D'Bari can take over our planet. The whole thing ends with a mutant brawl on a block outside Central Park West, which leads to all of the X-Men captured on a train by the US Military, which then leads to a big train fight between the X-Men and the D'Bari where Jean fully evolves into the Phoenix Force. Unlike the comics or The Last Stand, Jean doesn't die. Rather, Dark Phoenix fulfills the original voiceover by Patrick Stewart's Professor X in the first X-Men movie: "Mutation. It's the key to evolution." Jean transcends her mortal form and embraces her destiny as a cosmic being. While it doesn't quite stick the landing, it's still a better ending to this story.

Just as Charles argued in favor of Jean despite the chaos she caused, I would argue that there is a lot of good in Dark Phoenix. There's more intimacy between Tye Sheridan's Scott and Sophie Turner's Jean than there ever was between Famke Janssen's Jean and James Marsden's Scott (it's easier when there's no Wolverine at all in Dark Phoenix). Cyclops even drops the F-bomb - "I will fucking kill you!" - at Magneto. Alexandra Shipp's Storm also has more to do and is a better fighter (and lightning thrower) than Halle Berry's version, while Kodi Smit-McPhee's Nightcrawler is the MVP and has some cool action moments - the X-Men could not have accomplished anything in this film without his BAMFs. Alas, Evan Peters' Quicksilver is short-changed; Dark Phoenix doesn't attempt a three-peat of the superspeed rescue sequences set to a pop song that were memorable highlights of X-Men: Days of Future Past and X-Men: Apocalypse. However, there's a clever reversal of one of McKellan's signature quips: "You homo sapiens and your guns!" This time, Fassbender's Magneto uses a trainful of guns as weapons and opens fire on Vuk.

As the centerpiece of the film, Turner has much more inner turmoil to play and she digs deep. Also - this is important - no X-Man has to save Jean as she can save herself, thank you very much. Still, Jean isn't exactly a witty conversationalist and she doesn't have much of a personality, whether or not she's malevolently powerful. Dark Phoenix ends not unlike The Dark Knight Rises, with Charles Xavier retired in Paris and Magneto still looking to play his old friend in a game of chess. It's a low key and muted ending to the grand, messy, but weird and wonderful X-Men saga, but Dark Phoenix also contains a meta-joke for the X-Men's future: when the military captures the X-Men and transports them to the Mutant Containment Unit. The X-Men didn't make it to the MCU in Dark Phoenix but they'll get there regardless soon enough. And when the next evolution of the X-Men begins in the MCU, we hope it'll also be first class.

Wednesday, February 27, 2019

The Gifted at Screen Rant

THE GIFTED AT SCREEN RANT

The Gifted is an X-Men universe I find really fascinating and I enjoy delving into. Luckily, Screen Rant has allowed me to X-tensively dive into the engrossing and complex themes of FOX's X-Men Without the X-Men TV series, especially the vastly improved and compelling season 2 about the #MutantUprising. Here are all of my Screen Rant Features about The Gifted:

SEASON 2

WHAT TO EXPECT FROM THE GIFTED SEASON 3

THE GIFTED SEASON 2 ENDING EXPLAINED

THERE'S NO NEW EPISODE OF THE GIFTED THIS WEEK - HERE'S WHY

THE GIFTED SEASON 2 FALL FINALE EXPLAINED: THE MUTANT UPRISING BEGINS

WHEN THE GIFTED SEASON 2 RETURNS IN 2019 (AND WHAT TO EXPECT)

THE GIFTED HAS NO PROFESSOR X - AND THAT'S A GOOD THING

POLARIS IS THE GIFTED'S MAGNETO

THE MUTANT UNDERGROUND ARE THE GIFTED'S WORST OPTION

THE BIGGEST QUESTIONS ABOUT THE GIFTED SEASON 2 (SO FAR)

SEASON 1

EVERYTHING WE KNOW ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED TO THE X-MEN

THE BEST MOMENTS FROM THE GIFTED SEASON 1

THE GIFTED IS BORING AND IS WASTING ITS POTENTIAL

WILL THE X-MEN TV SHOWS ACTUALLY INTRODUCE THE X-MEN?

DOES THE GIFTED CONNECT TO THE X-MEN MOVIES?

THE GIFTED PILOT: MARVEL EASTER EGGS AND REFERENCES

Saturday, December 29, 2018

Screen Rant Best of 2018

SCREEN RANT BEST OF 2018

2018 was my second year as a Features writer for Screen Rant and this was the year I finally felt like I came into my own, especially in the latter half. Writing about Marvel, DC, and all the nerdy things I like - and being paid for it - is a privilege I'm very lucky to have. And while Marvel, DC, and Star Wars pay the bills, this year I was fortunate to diversify my subject matter and write about a lot of the other movies and television shows that interest me, which was particularly satisfying and something I plan to do even more of in 2019.

I wrote 255 Features in 2018 for a total of 471 since I began in January 2017 - for a guy who liked to review a few movies a month tops on this very blog, this is an output that staggers and surprises me. But I'm very proud of my growing body of work and I think I've improved immensely as a writer. I thank my very British editors Alex Leadbeater and Hannah Shaw-Williams for honing my skills the way Superman can crush a piece of coal and find a diamond inside. Or at least a very shiny cubic zirconia.

Below is my selection of the Screen Rant Features I'm proudest of for a variety of reasons; mainly because I feel like with these, I brought the goods to a fun smorgasbord of nerdy subjects. I would call this my favorite and best work in 2018. Thanks to everyone who has read my Features and I hope they were worth the click. Onward to 2019 and year three - the best is yet to come!

BLACK MIRROR: BANDERSNATCH: ALL 5 ENDINGS EXPLAINED
(AND HOW TO GET THEM)