|
Post by mcr on Sept 27, 2018 0:27:39 GMT -5
I'll always think of Famke Janssen in this role, so it's a little jarring to see someone else. Jessica Chastain would've made a decent Jean, but apparently she's playing someone else?
|
|
|
Post by takewithfood on Sept 29, 2018 18:31:18 GMT -5
This movie is set in the 90s, I believe, so they needed someone a little younger than Jessica Chastain. I'm not sure I like Sophie Turner in the role, either, but I don't really like anything about these X-Men movies anyway.
Anyway, there's a trailer:
One important note: The release date has been pushed back again. It was originally set to premiere in November, but was pushed back to February 2019. Now it's been pushed all the way back to June 2019, which is significant.
I strongly suspect this has to do with the pending Disney/Fox deal, which would allow Disney/Marvel to use the X-Men in the MCU. This puts Disney in an interesting position where they might actually want to spike this film and not even release it.
I know that might sound insane, but consider it this way: If they release Dark Phoenix and it fails at the boxoffice, it could tarnish the X-Men brand in minds of moviegoers (especially casual comic book movie fans). If instead they release Dark Phoenix and it's a huge hit with fans, it could instead blunt the reception of a possible X-Men reboot in the MCU.
And what do they have to lose if they spike the film? Just the cost of production, which has already been spent. Not including the cost of advertising (which has been minimal so far) we're talking, what, $250 million at most? It's a lot of money, sure, but potentially insignificant weighed against the budget of successful MCU X-Men films and their inevitable crossovers with the Avengers. It could breathe a decade of new life into the MCU.
My guess is that they WILL air Dark Phoenix, but in a small, short run in the US with a very quiet advertising campaign. The Singer X-Men films are big money in China, so I expect it to get a normal release over there. With luck they can recoup some costs without causing too much of a fuss. A mild reception and reviews might be ideal. So far the trailer seems to be getting a pretty tepid response already.
Bear in mind I'm not a producer, so wtf do I know. I'm just spitballing, but I do find this situation very interesting and I look forward to seeing how it plays out for the X-Men (and Gambit).
|
|
|
Post by Gris on Feb 28, 2019 14:14:29 GMT -5
So... are we getting X-Men 3 again? Not interested, I hope that this thing is the last one besides New Mutants (in whatever shape or form it takes, it seems that they don't know what to do with it) before it all ends under Marvel's control and does something better with the mutants.
|
|
|
Post by takewithfood on Mar 1, 2019 14:01:34 GMT -5
I just don't think they've done enough work laying the foundations to pull off a story like Dark Phoenix. It worked better in the comics because we already felt at least something for these characters, but all we've had in the new X-Men universe is one movie that barely featured the kids.
They actually cut out the best character development scenes for the kids in Apocalypse in order to cram in more Magneto angst and some pointless cameos from Betsy, Angel, etc. Maybe it's a matter of personal taste, but I prefer smaller stories with actual, relatable human impact to Michael Bay-level explosions. Here's the scene I'm talking about:
If you want to crush these kids with cosmic powers beyond their comprehension, you have to start here. Show us what the Phoenix is destroying first, then by all means destroy it.
Still, the trailer doesn't look as bad as I expected. I just really don't care for these X-Men movies.
|
|
|
Post by roxolid on Mar 2, 2019 5:43:33 GMT -5
It's difficult to get excited about superhero movies for me these days. Feels like we've seen it, over and over. Didn't bother seeing Venom, Aquaman or Glass and a year or so ago I'd have caught all three. As for this? I liked First Class and what they did with the X Men in the 60s but knowing that all this is going to be wiped clean by Marvel when they complete the Fox deal and integrate into the MCU means this gets a 'meh' from me. I'll keep an eye on the thread though and depending on reviews/opinions I may give it a look.
|
|
|
Post by takewithfood on Mar 2, 2019 18:53:40 GMT -5
Agreed. I put a ton of comic book movies in the "Watch on Netflix/whatever" category these days, which is insane. Maybe I'm spoiled. ^__^
I also skipped Venom, Glass, Apocalypse, Aquaman, Suicide Squad, Man of Steel, BvS, and Justice League. In fact, the only DCEU film I've seen in theaters is Wonder Woman, though so far I'm still cautiously optimistic about Shazam. I saw First Class in theaters and disliked it so strongly that I haven't paid for any others except Logan (which I consider part of the old trilogy anyway). Days of Future Past had its moments, though, as did The Wolverine.
|
|
|
Post by ZehnWaters on Mar 4, 2019 14:41:51 GMT -5
I didn't like First Class either. The new Dark Phoenix movie looks...okay. I'm a big Jean fan but am tired with this being the only story anyone can tell about her. Sophie Turner seems to be doing better this time around; she was alright in Apocalypse. Some scenes were better than others. I know they reshot a bunch of Dark Phoenix so hopefully they improved it. At least this time it's their only focus instead of being the background story, like in X3. I just don't get why people don't understand how MCU got as big as it did: it built up to it! It took 4 films until they did The Avengers and nearly a decade until they built all the way up to Thanos.
|
|
|
Post by takewithfood on Jun 6, 2019 22:50:55 GMT -5
Dark Phoenix is debuting to brutal reviews (~23% at RT, 43 at Metacritic). A whimpering end to the Fox X-Men series. RIP.
I still have doubts that New Mutants will ever see the light of day, or at least not a full release. It has been flagged for massive reshoots that were supposed to begin in September, but as of reports as recent as this week they haven't even started yet. That's a yikes. It's currently set for an April 2020 release, but if that gets pushed back again, why even bother?
I still can't help but wonder what Marvel/Disney has planned for mutants in the MCU. Audience fatigue must be a serious concern for them right now, but they handled the Spidey reboot so well that I have hope.
|
|
|
Post by WildKnight on Jun 7, 2019 7:27:29 GMT -5
I haven't seen the movie yet, and I'm not likely to see it in the full price theaters, so it may be a few weeks before it comes to the $1 show here, but I'm seeing several different outlets claiming its the worst X-Men movie ever... and I just cannot wrap my head around the notion that its worse than X3 (The Last Stand, whatever name you know it by). That movie was so bad in every possible way. Its not that I don't think Dark Phoenix could be bad... Age of Apocalypse was a complete travesty, I just can't wrap my head around worse than X3. Its like when the reviews for Man of Steel were saying it was the worst Superman movie ever and I was just thinking "have... have you seen The Quest for Peace?"
Personally I've never been on board with the reboot X-Men. I didn't like First Class, and while Days of Future Past was okay, its by far the best of the lot since X2, and that's not saying much. As much as I think Logan is overrated, I also think its good enough that its a shame that its tied to the rest of this garbage. Sophie Turner, like her GoT castmate Emilia Clarke, is just not good, and certainly shouldn't be anchoring a movie. All of which is a shame, because starting with young X-Men is, IMO, the absolute best way to go, and conceptually I loved the idea of doing one movie set in each decade re-telling the history of the X-Men by re-interpreting classic X-Men events/stories (though I would have gone with a new cast for each film, so that aging could be represented properly). All of this is to say; I'm just thoroughly disappointed with what they've done with the fertile ground that is the X-Men franchise and like TWF, I look forward to seeing what happens with mutants in the MCU.
As far as New Mutants... I believe it will be released, but at this point I think its much more likely to be released as an "exclusive" for Disney+ than to see an actual theatrical run. (On a side note, I know someone who has seen at least two different cuts of the film, and she is convinced that there simply is not a good film in there at all, no matter how much they reshoot and recut the thing)
|
|
|
Post by takewithfood on Jun 7, 2019 21:09:12 GMT -5
+1 to pretty much all of the above, with the exception that I loved Logan.
I think people have forgotten how rough X3 really was, not to mention X-Men Origins: Wolverine, a movie so bad it killed the whole series of "Origins" films before they could even get off the ground. Reviewers also like to pretend things are more extreme than they really are (cue the lineup of reviews and articles claiming Black Panther was the first black super hero with his own movie, or that Captain Marvel was the first female super hero with her own movie, etc).
I think Sophie Turner was a bit miscast, her credentials for the role being primarily that she's in Game of Thrones, roughly the right age, and a redhead. It's not surprising, considering Jennifer Lawrence was equally miscast for similar reasons: young, popular for being in other productions at the time, and right hair color. But the bigger problem was that they have done basically nothing to establish the characters in this series, particularly the secondary and tertiary ones like Jean. The writing is just so poor and uninspired that it would take a genius to salvage anything significant from it.
|
|
|
Post by WildKnight on Jun 7, 2019 22:02:33 GMT -5
+But the bigger problem was that they have done basically nothing to establish the characters in this series, particularly the secondary and tertiary ones like Jean. This is a major problem with the entire series as far as I'm concerned, even going back to the "good" movies (the first two, basically). Wolverine got character development and Xavier got a little bit of depth by being presented as morally ambiguous in some ways, but for the most part, the characters have all been pretty thin. Just for example, I honestly can't conjure anything to say about Jean Grey in the original continuity that doesn't relate to her powers, or the fact that she was the object of lust/affection for Wolverine and Scott (and there's not much I can say about Scott other than "he was Jean's boyfriend, and it was funny when Wolverine called him a dick.") Even Magneto, who IMO is fairly easy to write well because the core of his character is so basic; audiences can both empathize with him and be disgusted by his behavior. He's like a goose that lays golden story eggs, and even he was bland and mostly one-dimensional. Whatever, its all post-mortem at this point really, I just hope that they bring the mutants into the MCU in a way that captures at least some of the reasons I fell in love with the X-Men in the 90's
|
|
|
Post by takewithfood on Jun 8, 2019 7:53:28 GMT -5
It's so true, especially about Magneto. That's part of why I don't get why they felt the need to give Eric extra conflict and motivation by killing off his bonus family that we never saw or felt anything but default compassion for. He's already a tortured, complex, but focused and driven character - of all the characters to try to distinguish and flesh out, why him?
X1 and X2 worked in large part because Wolverine was their main protagonist and he was fleshed out well enough - as well as you really can for a character with amnesia, anyway. Jackman, McKellen, and Stewart's strong performances filled out the rest, and made for a couple decent, fun movies. X1 is a bit weird in that Rogue starts out as our viewpoint character and protagonist, but soon gets pushed aside as a plot device, and eventually forgotten, but it worked fine.
The reboot series is just a mess in this way, having no clear protagonist, and yet not enough character interaction or development to qualify as an ensemble cast. It isn't really Charles' story, or Raven's, or Eric's, they're all just sort of in it. And while they do grow and change subtly over the course of all the films, it's all so flimsy and pointless that I don't think anyone really cares. And like the downfall of the Solo prequel/origin story, it's all sort of spoiled by the fact that we already know how they'll all turn out. Mystique is maybe the only outlier in that they've always been taking liberties with her in the movies, but Jennifer Lawrence is so checked out of the role now that it doesn't seem to matter. The movies never made me care what happens to her. Aside from having powers, she's just some random girl.
What a waste of so many blockbuster film budgets.
|
|
|
Post by roxolid on Jun 8, 2019 8:04:39 GMT -5
Is the problem with these team movies that the cast is too big? The Avengers films were basically about RDJ and Chris Evans with some others making up the numbers and posing/looking to the skies with muscles tensed a lot.
The X men films were always about Wolverine (I can see it now. 'How can we shoehorn Hugh Jackman into this? Think people! We design these films by committee for a reason!'). Justice League was about... well, probably showing how to waste a franchise. All they had to do was look at the JLA/JLA cartoons to see what could be done with a huge cast. Flash was ok, but a ripoff of Quicksilver who was the only fun thing from the X Film where he's running round walls and wedgy-ing people at super speed.
I'd mentioned seeing this to a friend but if the reviews are so awful I'll not waste the time and effort I spend to get to the cinema (miles away, through rush hour traffic generally). Can't imagine I'll bother seeing Spider "My mask falls off and I announce who I am to complete strangers eight times a film" Man: far from home either. I get they modelled on Ultimate "Everyone knows who I am why bother wearing a mask" Spiderman but that's for a different thread.
I think I'm officially burned out from Supers films!
Bring back non cheesy reasonable budget fantasy! Hell, bring back no budget can't act zero plot fantasy at this point, I'll take it.
|
|
|
Post by WildKnight on Jun 8, 2019 8:20:41 GMT -5
Is the problem with these team movies that the cast is too big? The Avengers films were basically about RDJ and Chris Evans with some others making up the numbers and posing/looking to the skies with muscles tensed a lot. You're not wrong, but Id' add to that, that we got to know the other characters through other movies so the fact that they weren't as "front and center" as Cap and Iron Man (I'd add Thor to that as well, I think that trio is the capstone of the previous wave of Marvel movies) didn't keep us from caring about them. Just for example, Black Widow got enough development in Winter Soldier (and to a lesser degree, Civil War) that her role in Endgame didn't feel forced, it felt like a part of her that they'd taken the time to establish. The X-Men movies wouldn't hold up well to the "individual movies for everyone!" treatment though as frankly, even in the comics, most of them are really only interesting within a team dynamic. As much of a fanboy as I am for Scott and Bobby... neither of them are really all that exciting except in the ways they interact with other characters in their milieu. I wouldn't even be all that interested in a solo Xavier or Magneto movie. Ultimately, while I think you've got a fair point, I think the bigger point is that the people making the X-Men movies have just been lazy and lacked passion for the projects. They got excited about very broad ideas like "Oh, Apocalypse is such a compelling villain" but then when it came time to make the movie, they didn't remember that they had to make their version of Apocalypse compelling to us in the theater, they couldn't just rely on us being fanboys and wanting to see Apocalypse on the big screen. Hopefully the MCU will do better. Honestly, I think they could build the X-Men somewhat similarly to the way they did the first group of Avengers. Don't throw the real big bad out there right off the bat, let them fight secondary villains with the big bad lurking in the shadows. Maybe don't put Wolverine on the team right away, give him a solo movie and link that to the first X-Men movie to create a compelling reason for him to find the X-Men or the X-Men to find him in the second X-Men movie, and use his absence to allow the other X-Men to develop as fully realized characters in their own right.
|
|
|
Post by takewithfood on Jun 8, 2019 13:42:34 GMT -5
I think recent X-Men movies lacked concept and focus, and a lot of that has to do with lack of passion for the material (as WK pointed out), and the series' awkward association with the original x-trilogy. What I mean by the latter is that right out of the gate they had a pretty limited design space due to the way this both was and wasn't a sequel, and was and wasn't a reboot. On top of that, they were trying to cram in a lot of concepts at the same time. Fox had at one point planned a whole series of "X-Men Origins" movies, but after the disaster that was Wolverine's, they got understandably shy. However, the one Origins film that was closest to being developed was Magneto's, and I suspect that a lot of the ideas they had got shoehorned into the new series - hence the high focus on Magneto, even though he isn't the protagonist (and not quite the villain, either). I think they would have been better off if they had decided from the beginning that this new series was about Charles and Eric, and that everyone else would be a secondary character. That was the whole point of going back to the 60's, right? To watch how Charles and Eric first met, became friends, and later enemies? Instead they let themselves muddy the waters with, just to name a few: too much focus on Raven in general; training sequences for the students that focused too much on the students and not Charles' role as a teacher; re-inserting Hugh Jackman as the protagonist of Days of Future Past, which, while probably the series' high point, ultimately only wasted time that could have better been spent on developing this series' characters, etc. That last one is especially telling in Apocalypse, where the absence of a fully-developed character like Wolverine is incredibly blatant and distracting. One last point: I think these recent X-movies also just fell behind the times. This isn't the 90s anymore. People don't just want to see explosions and neat flips; fucking car commercials have that shit now. You can't just stick a pretty lady like Olivia Munn in an accurate costume and have her do green screen flips and expect fresh reviews. Marvel has raised the bar - maybe even too high for its own good, but that's just reality now. And for the people who DO only want explosions and neat flips, we already have movies that do that better, like the Transformers and Fast & Furious movies and whatever. (literally the only thing she did in the entire movie) Fox seemed to be trying to do everything at once: It's about Charles & Eric. It's about mutant oppression and mutant rights. It's about the mansion becoming a school. It's about Raven/Mystique. It's about a young team of x-men figuring out their powers. It's about EVEN MORE and YOUNGER X-Men. It's about Raven becoming a team leader. It's about Wolverine now? It's about cool powers and explosions. Yikes.
|
|