X-Men Untied

[theodosia]

I seem to be alone in not liking X2 as much as the first X-Men movie -- not that it was a terrible film, but by and large I was hoping for some quiet character moments and conversations like we had in the first movie. The action was great, the characterization (with few exceptions) remained good, or improved, but I wanted more quiet and contemplative, because, dammit, not only are the characters capable of carrying the interest, Bryan Singer is a guy who can direct that kind of thing!

Yes -- very spoilery below. Proceed at own risk!



Stuff that I liked:
* Lots of great action scenes -- no complaints on that score. Singer is a good crisp director, and I never got lost in details like where characters were or what they were doing.

* Good mix of SFX and regular effects. Almost any director would come up with a gag where Iceman freezes a cup of coffee. But focusing afterward on the real upturned coffee-cube, and the altogether real cat licking at it is genius. Same thing with the "real" actual police cars getting all explodey. Goes a long way towards making the audience feel how it must be to be there amidst such awe-inducing wonders (and terrors).

* Any scene Hugh Jackman is in. He's practically the viewpoint character for the entire story, which works because as a partial outsider he can be potentially as in conflict with the good guys as the bad.

* Mystique is surprisingly cool, considering that I was lukewarm to her character in the comic books.

Stuff that makes me go meh:
* Storm -- much improved. Certainly she had more to do. Given how Halle Berry gave me itches in the first film, this is much better this time around. Still room to get better, particularly if the part gets recast with somebody I really like for future films, like Angela Bassett or Gina Torres.

* Nightcrawler -- I felt there must have been more missing scenes where we got the full wonderfulness of Alan Cummings, but alas.

* Not enough Rogue. Paquin is a very good actress, and really nailed the scenes she had in the first. Perhaps for this outing, the character is limited because her power is much more reactive than useful. She was mostly peripheral to the main action, or so it felt.


I got more, but I've run through the time I allotted to reading and writing tonight....

Comments

[veejane.livejournal.com]

You know, on some thought, the thing that bothers me most about Mystique -- aside from the part where she never wears clothes -- is that she never wears a bra. I mean, okay, mutant, walk around naked for the political statement of it. But her breasts were just a little too bounce-around-the-room not to need a bra, and don't tell me it's a mutant power never to ache when you bounce like that. For that matter, what does she do when she has her period? Just a big blue woman with granny underpants on, and nothing else?

"Crisp" strikes me as a good word for Bryan Singer. I'm not entirely enamoured of his style, because I tend to find it too cool and sometimes too sharp, or cutting, or, I don't know, not-nice for the material. (This worked just fine for The Usual Suspects, but a lot of the quiet character moments in X1 felt, to me, a little too staged, a little too rushed, as if the actors were acting their brains out and the director was like, Yeah, yeah, move on.)

I mean, I'm all for disallowing emotional wallowing in your average action blockbuster, but I think Singer turns away a little too quickly, creates tension and then diverts our attention from it rather than playing it out.

I sort of wonder what a love story directed by him would look like. No, I don't mean Xavier and Magneto.