It Ain't Over, Bub - X-Men X-travaganza #2

Welcome to part two of an RPC Capes special, featuring our take on the second half of Fox’s X-Men film franchise! Jacob, Brock, Keona, and special guest host Millennial Mike from the Exiles Network podcast discuss the finer adamantium claw-points of The Wolverine, X-Men: Days of Future Past, X-Men: Apocalypse, Logan, Deadpool 2, Dark Phoenix, and New Mutants! It’s a long show, with a lot of chatter and opinions and tangents! Click that play button below, and remember… This one’s also for you, Morph!

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Again, a quick SPOILER warning… If you’ve never seen any of the X-Men films, and you don’t want to know anything that happens in them, be warned! We discuss performances, plot points, character development, various Deadpool jokes, and other shenanigans in this episode! Now pile into the Blackbird and let’s jet away on a x-traordinary adventure!

Up first on the show is our take on James Mangold’s The Wolverine, a loose adaptation of Chris Claremont and Frank Miller’s iconic “Japan storyline” from the original Wolverine mini-series that Marvel published in 1982. This is a classic story, and places Logan in a rather precarious position between a woman named Mariko Yashida and her father Shingen (as well as his Yakuza cronies) as they vie for control of Yashida Industries, Japan’s most cutting edge technology firm. The film takes liberties with such characters as Yukio, here portrayed as Mariko’s best friend, and Shingen’s distrustful father, who was rescued by Logan in World War II, as well as the Silver Samurai and the forked-tongued mutant woman known only as Viper. Moreover, the ending fight sequence seems to come from an entirely different (and far cheesier) film. Still, the character development for Wolverine himself is handled far better in this film than it was in X-Men Origins, and the performances, particularly by Hiroyuki Sanada (Shingen), Rila Fukushima (Yukio), Will Yun Lee (Harada), and Tao Okamoto (Mariko), stand out among the best this franchise has to offer. The one thing I will encourage everyone to do is to watch the extended cut of the movie, if only for one action sequence featuring a snowplow. Oh, and one more thing: The fight between Wolverine and Shingen was perfection. From the editing to Hugh Jackman being a huge, jacked man to Sanada’s expert swordsmanship to Marco Beltrami’s ominous-yet-triumphant score to that comic book-accurate final claw-stab, it’s my favorite sequence in the film, bar none. I love this movie, so I’d recommend it.

Second on our list was the masterful X-Men: Days of Future Past, based on yet another Chris Claremont-penned story from the comics. For two issues, the X-Men sent Kitty Pryde to the past in order to save Sen. Robert Kelly from being assassinated by Mystique and her Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. John Byrne provided the art to this harrowing time travel tale, and by the end of the story, after readers witnessed many, many X-Men deaths at the hands of the Sentinels, the timeline was restored, and the mutants had a fighting chance once again. The movie follows a similar narrative path as the comics, except with Wolverine in the starring role, acting as a bridge between an older Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and Magneto (Ian McKellen) and their younger selves (James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender, respectively). The film also features Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), as she tries to assassinate the creator of the Sentinels, a scientist named Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage). The intercutting of the dark future sequences featuring the original X-Men cast and a group of newcomers (like Omar Sy’s Bishop and Fan Bing Bing’s Blink) with the desperate actions of the past X-Men really lends the film an intensity that was perhaps missing from the original films, and it all culminates in one of the most intriguing and timeline-altering finales in the entire franchise. The moment where the two Xaviers (young and old) meet each other is staggeringly emotional, and I have to give major kudos to John Ottman, both for editing the movie and crafting the best score in the history of the X-films. The best film in the franchise! Watch it now!

Third up on our list was X-Men: Apocalypse, a film which most aficionados seem to dislike, if not hate with a fiery passion. I’ve never understood why, as the movie opens with a sequence that felt straight out of an old-school Hollywood epic. A young En Sabah Nur, the ancient mutant known as Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac), is placed within a pyramid in Egypt, where an inhuman ritual is taking place. With his Four Horsemen observing their master, Nur is infused with the life force and healing powers of another nameless mutant. As the transference continues and Ottman’s incredible music crescendos, a group of human dissidents attempt to entomb Apocalypse, thus killing him and preventing him from ruling over them. Thousands of years later, a cult reawakens him, and Apocalypse once again attempts to gain control of the world, using such mutants as Psylocke (Olivia Munn), Storm (Alexandra Shipp), Magneto (Fassbender), and Angel (Ben Hardy) to accomplish his goal. While that setup is pretty sound, the movie itself is a bit of a mess. Pacing is all over the place, and some sequences seem to have been added in order to clean house after the timeline was reset in Days of Future Past. For example, we’re reintroduced to Cyclops (Tye Sheridan), Jean (Sophie Turner), Nightcrawler (Kodi Smit-McPhee), and even Jubilee (Lana Condor) in this film, and Wolverine appears in a cameo designed to show off a more comics-accurate escape from Weapon X sequence. While neither of these concepts are badly done, they do feel like filler in a story that should have been more cohesive. Still, the performances are good, effects are solid, and the score is magnificent. Give it a chance!

Now we come to the big one as James Mangold re-teams with Hugh Jackman to bring us Logan, a neo-Western exploration of the X-Men mythos, featuring even older versions of Wolverine and Charles Xavier (Stewart). For many, this movie is the pinnacle of the franchise, and you won’t get much resistance from me on that front. However, I will say that I’m not as in love with this film as many are, and here’s why: this movie is ashamed of its roots, in my opinion. I don’t mean that it’s not a comic book movie, or that there aren’t any elements from the Wolverine or X-Men comics in it, as there obviously are. Xavier is still an omega-level telepath, Logan is still a man with adamantium claws and a healing factor, there are berserker clones and children with superpowers and death-dealing cyborgs running rampant. Hell, there’s even a comic book featuring the X-Men within the movie itself, a concept that I had a hard time accepting because it just seemed terribly hokey. Still, I can’t help but feel that this movie was missing something. Maybe it’s due to the fact that all the other X-Men are dead, possibly because of Xavier’s seizures, and we never even got to see it happen. Or it might be because the movie was more concerned with being a victory lap/send off to Hugh Jackman, who did deserve a ton of recognition for portraying this character for nearly 20 years. While I am a fan of the film, I don’t believe it’s perfect, and for me, it’s not my favorite movie in the franchise. There’s a ton of good stuff here, too, and I don’t mean to overshadow that with my criticisms. Dafne Keen as Laura/X-23 is brilliant, and Boyd Holbrook is a smarmy douchebag as Donald Pierce, leader of the cyborg mercenaries known as the Reavers. Once again, Marco Beltrami delivers a great score, Mangold’s direction is on point, and Patrick Stewart is excellent as Xavier. I just wish I loved it more. One of the best films in the franchise, but not my favorite overall. Still, you’ll probably love it. Watch it.

From one of the most serious X-films to one of the wackiest, as we tackle Deadpool 2. Ryan Reynolds returns as the Merc with a mouth, along with TJ Miller as Weasel, Morena Baccarin as Vanessa, Brianna Hildebrand as Negasonic Teenage Warhead, Karan Soni as Dopinder, and newcomers Julian Dennison as Firefist, Zazie Beetz as Domino, Shiori Kutsuna as Yukio, Eddie Marsan as the evil Headmaster, and Josh Brolin as Cable. This sequel absolutely lives up to its predecessor in every way except for one: There ain’t nearly enough Wade and Vanessa. That’s my only real disappointment, though, and even when the W/V lovefest appears to be over, we get a mid-credits scene (which is canon, folks) that restores hope for the future, if and when Deadpool 3 happens. (And it better happen, Disney. It. Had. Better.) As DP builds up his supporting cast in order to take on Juggernaut and the apparently destined-to-be-evil Firefist, we are treated to his first meeting with the time-jumping mutant known as Cable (who is in fact Cyclops’ son from the future, but they’re not even touching that origin story in the movies with a 10-foot pole, which is probably for the best). Personally speaking, I was excited to see the best Odd Couple in comics finally team up onscreen, and the addition of Domino and a different version of Yukio to Wade’s strange little family was a perfect call. I really, really hope they continue to make Deadpool movies, and I hope they never reboot or recast the roles. Reynolds and Baccarin have chemistry for days (years, even) and Beetz, Brolin, and Kutsuna need to reappear in future sequels. Let’s just hope the Mouse House has the guts to make them. Do you like hilarity, violence, and profanity? Then this is the movie for you!

Our penultimate movie in the franchise is Simon Kinberg’s directorial debut, Dark Phoenix. With an ominous score by Hans Zimmer and a middling performance by Sophie Turner as Jean Grey, I was not thrilled by this movie. For the second time in franchise history, Kinberg takes a shot at adapting the seminal Claremont/Byrne storyline from the comics, which results in another swing-and-a-miss. While I can see the value in attempting to pare down the cosmic elements in the story to appeal to more mainstream audiences, a larger part of me wishes they went bigger and more in-your-face with those facets of the saga. This was to be the swansong of the X-films, after all, and the final outing for the First Class-era cast, including McAvoy, Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence (again playing Mystique), and Nicholas Hoult (young Beast). Why not go big? Why not swing for the fences and leave audiences with something we’ve never seen before? The Dark Phoenix Saga is a huge tale in the comics, featuring new mutant introductions (like Dazzler, who is featured for three seconds in the movie), mind control, cosmic forces, planetary destruction, alien races, and an epic battle on the Moon. However, at its core, it’s about one thing: Family. The emotional connection between Scott and Jean, and Jean and the entirety of the X-Men, is ultimately her saving grace, both in the comics and in their attempted adaptation here. I just wish it wasn’t so poorly paced and one-note. A valiant attempt, perhaps, but I wanted more. Skip it.

Finally, after years of waiting, the true last gasp of the Fox X-Men franchise recently arrived in theaters. New Mutants, directed by Josh Boone and starring Anya Taylor-Joy (Illyana Rasputin/Magik), Maisie Williams (Rahne Sinclair/Wolfsbane), Blu Hunt (Dani Moonstar/Mirage), Charlie Heaton (Sam Guthrie/Cannonball), Henry Zaga (Roberto DaCosta/Sunspot), and Alice Braga (Dr. Cecilia Reyes), finally made its theatrical debut after nearly three years in distribution limbo (no pun intended, Illyana fans) to middling reviews and a mixed reception. I had high hopes for this one, but it left me feeling a tad disappointed, and not just because by the time they could have scheduled reshoots for this film, most of the cast had aged out of the roles. This was intended to be a loose adaptation of Chris Claremont and Bill Sienkiewicz’s Demon Bear story arc, which lasted three issues in the comics. Boone chose to ratchet up the horror elements in his movie, trapping the five members of the team in an asylum and placing them under the care of Cecelia Reyes, who controls force fields, thus keeping the teenage mutants contained. I won’t go into the story details, since the film is still relatively new and could be spoiled easily, but I will say that the resolution of the story hints in the direction the X-Men franchise could have taken under Fox, and that something sinister was clearly on the horizon. Unfortunately, we’ll never see the results of all those narrative seeds they were planting, and the debut of these cult-classic New Mutants will only be remembered as the dying gasp of a franchise in a transitional limbo. So this is how the Fox X-films end. Not with a bang, but a whimper.

Well, after more than three hours worth of discussion, our time with the Fox X-Men films has come to an end. But, like that Wolverine quote in the title of our show notes says, it ain’t over. Not completely. Disney and the MCU now have the keys to the franchise, and perhaps something good will come of it. Perhaps we’ll see a fresh take on the characters we all hold so dear. Maybe we’ll see an R-rated Deadpool 3. Hey, a guy can dream, right? Just ask good ol’ Chuck Xavier. See you all next time, and be safe, Renegades!