Friday, February 10, 2006

X-Men: The Last Stand


"Ok, We Know X3 is utterly doomed, wanna see how bad it can get?
This is what happens when an idiotic rushed schedule happens to a film. But see, it actually gets worse. Ratner is kinda afloat on his own here. He doesn't have the money or the time to finish and fix the things HE would want to fix... never mind just the horrible shit that just seems to be busting from the seams on this thing.
Beyond the terrible reports of the screenplay, there's dreadful costume design... look at that shot above! What the fuck is that? I'm just mortified by this stuff. And there's more. There's a ton of new pics... like Wolverine and Phoenix all making out on a stainless steel table... to absolutely dreadful looking Morlocks... to a really bad looking shot of Mystique... and how the fuck do you do that? Even BEAST which I'm warming to in a way, looks terribly wrong in a pinstripe suit in a board meeting. I'm hoping to God I'm wrong on this film, but the word I'm hearing is that the film isn't getting the time or the money it needs... and we've been hearing from the beginning, that the insane pushing to get this film out before SUPERMAN RETURNS... well that it was resulting in less than ideal circumstances. I hope to God Ratner manages to pull this sucker off. I don't mind if he makes a bad Rush Hour film or a some caper flick. Ultimately, I'm not pre-invested in the material. But this is the third X-Men film on a series, that while by no means absolutely perfect... it certainly got us a Raimi SPIDER-MAN series kicking strong... if nothing else.

I saw ULTIMATE AVENGERS tonight... and here's the thing. The story is pretty fun, hell, when Hulk shows up... you'd kill to see that Live Action. My problem is that it is grotesquely underfinanced. The animation is sloppy and a grade better than some superhero animation, but not much. Looking at this, I just can't help but wonder what a no holds barred CG animated, in partnership with SQUARE, ULTIMATES would look like. I'm telling you, it'd knock everybody's dick in the dirt. It's worth getting cuz it is fun, but it's the least effort put forward. It's almost like they're ashamed to really invest in this. I could gripe for hours about the changes they made in classic characters, but ultimately... I gave them that. In fact, I had fun with that... sort of a "What If" scenario. I just can't really understand cheapskating out to make sub-Television quality animation... with moments that shine above that. It's just a shame. Hopefully when Marvel starts producing their own films, Avi and Kevin Fiege will roll the dice on a "HOLY SHIT" animated Marvel Epic. Well, I can dream." aintitcoolnews







5 comments:

JPX said...

I don't know, it doesn't look that bad to me...

Anonymous said...

I agree. But then I'm not Harry Knowles or whoever wrote all that. (I assume someone else wrote it because of the opening quotation mark and the Horrorthon pattern of occasionally quoting other sites and blogs.)

I kind of like the way the X-Men movies completely ignore the physicality of the comic book characters. Sure, Xavier's bald, Wolverine has sideburns, etc. but they just cast people they thought would be cool and didn't worry about whether they looked like Marvel Comics drawings. (Unlike, say, Fantastic Four.)

Kelsey Grammer as Beast is good casting.

But, this movie will suck. Brett Ratner.

JPX said...

Oops, yep it's Harry from Aintitcool.

Octopunk said...

Nothing about these stills screams bad to me, but yeah...Ratner. Rush Hour, Red Dragon, Family Man...not the kind of middle-of-the-road talent I want getting fingerprints on the X-men.

Interesting side note on The Ultimates cartoon. I've been wondering if that's any good. The Ultimate Marvel universe would make good cinema

JPX said...

I just watched some Ultimate cartoon clips, here's the link: http://www.superherohype.com/news/featuresnews.php?id=3834

It looks pretty good.

Malevolent

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