I don't know if you have seen any of this Summer’s Big Blockbuster Flicks, but if you have, this will be hysterical, if you have only seen the film trailers, this will be hysterical.
There are actually a bunch of these stop-motion shorts all over Youtube, most are very entertaining. This one is one of the best.
The Perfessor
OK, we went the whole weekend, and the numbers are in. It seems that for its opening weekend, the X-Men proto-flick did $87 million in domestic sales ($160 million worldwide), which puts it just a bit behind Iron Man, and about even with X-Men 2. So in spite of naysayers (Walt) it did pretty good.
Personally, I saw it twice — not because I’m that much of a funnnybook Geek (even though I technically am), but because the first time I saw I did so with my son, and the second time I did it with my nephew and a few funnybook friends after a Free Comic Book Day event. As it turns out, by seeing it twice I saw two of the (three or more) rotating codas on the film. I can tell you that are, but then I’ll have to gut you. At any rate, I did have a couple of additional observations that I wanted to tag onto my original comments (A full-blown review will show up here later, but I still have to write that.
In no particular order:
Well, that’s about it for my casual observations for the nonce. The rest will follow in my film column, Suspension of Belief.
The Perfessor
Yep, this is my “Just saw it @ Midnight, and I want to talk about it†mini Wolverine chat. I went to the midnight show (with my newly-minted 18-year0-old son) to the film, and he seemed to like it, although he felt that it needed more of the other X-Men involved with the action.
Personally, I felt that while I did enjoy the backstory which let us in on the fact that Wolverine (and his brother, who winds up being Sabertooth), are about 150 years old, and then we watch at the two lads grow up and fight in virtually every single armed conflict from the mid 1800s to Vietnam, which is when the real story begins. (Interestingly enough, the opening sequence felt a bit like the opening to Watchmen, only with not as cool a soundtrack).
Still, there was much snarling and sharp-edged weapons flashed through the film as well as explosions, and cameos of other X-characters (plus not one, but two tacked-on post scripts that run during the ending credits, as well as one surprise big-name reprise).
The film is fast and furious and plays well into the legions of who Wolverine is (hey, I’ve been reading comics since the very early ‘60s and until recently I didn’t know that Wolvie had this much back story (I stopped regularly reading X-Men in the mid ‘90s). Anyway, even though I recognized many of the characters (there were a couple I couldn’t completely place) and was aware of much of the plot threads that ran through the film, and still rather enjoyed what was going on in the film version of his past.
The interaction between Logan (Jackman) and Creed (Liev Schreiber) plays well and you can see some of the animosity that will keep them at each others throats. We get to see how an already clawed Logan has Adamantium (a super-cool, wicked-hard comicbook metal) is infused into his bones, and why and how he lost him memories (which he doesn’t fully regain until the X-Men trilogy).
On the down side, those of you who don’t know as much about his visceral past might find some of this film a tad tedious, plus as this is all prequel there are no colorful costumes, and many of the characters that you might have gotten used to seeing in the first films simply aren’t here. Dylan felt that most views might want to see more of the kind of large-scale action from the first films, which is missing from this film, as it is much more of a personal story.
What surprised me, was that, yeah, it is a “school/work†night but the Midnight show at my local theater was not quite half full, and much of the “crowd†didn’t arrive until just a couple of minutes before the lights went down and the trailers started to play. In years past, I’ve been to these events with theaters so packed that management opened up another screen. I can’t help but to wonder if the crappy economy and the fact that a not-quite-completed-version was leaked online a month or so back hurt sales.
Still, it was a fun ride, and (I believe) still worth the trip out.
The Perfessor
Renown romance author Marjorie Liu has been writing a six-part continuation of a small group of mutant teenagers for Marvel Comics (home of the equally-renown group of mutant teens; The X-Men). The only thing about this group of teen mutants is that none of them wear colorful spandex (or even black leather), solve their problems by immediately punching out the other guy, or even fight criminals or world-threatening baddies.
Nope, they are really just a bunch of street kids cut adrift in a harsh world that (mostly) doesn’t give a right, royal damn about them. The are tough and street-wise, but still, they are kids in a grown-up world with grown up problems. Someone is chasing them and they really aren’t sure why, only that they must stick together and fend for each other, because each other is all that they have.
Sure, sure, the circumstances of their collective lives is not so much the cut-and-dried issues that real-world street teens must deal with in the world in which we live, but still, the set of circumstances are truly not so much different if you think about it all. They still must put up a brave front against a cruel, uncaring world, and make it through each day relying on their own wits and all.
So yea they have powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men, but the story is truly well-written and the fact that they do possess these extraordinary powers becomes transparent to the story being told. They must work their way through to the conclusion of events set in motion both at the beginning of this series as well left over from the previous series. So if you are a fan of either the X-Men, Heroes or (Stan know shy) Push, you should enjoy this well-written series.
As a matter of fact, you should enjoy this series even if you are not a fan of the above-mentioned material, because Liu is a most-excellent writer and brings these characters to life in a wining way that will bring you right into their tale and make it completely believable, even given their fantastic powers and abilities.
The last issue of the six-issue series just came out recently, so if you missed any of the issues you could either search for them at a comics shop or on-line, or simply wait a bit more as the entire set is being collected and bound in a hardcover volume and will be available at a book story near you. Each of the individual issues came with “extra†material packed in with it, so the bound volume is sure to also contain like material. I believe that if you haven't read a comic in a while you will be pleasantly surprised by this story.
The Perfessor