I went and saw X-Men: The Last Stand last night. I’d meant to see it Friday night but didn’t because I didn’t buy the ticket when I thought I should’ve so had to settle for Saturday night.
Saturday was pretty much spent doing what I should’ve done on Friday – meaning I should’ve packed all my books Friday and did clean-up Saturday and instead did very little constructive Friday (you should be reading into that, “nothing constructive,”) which meant that I had to do the work Saturday. So, most of the morning and into the afternoon was spent listening to music and packing books into boxes and moving boxes to a staging area in my room before showering and then going to an audition for a short film some BYU students have already sunk some money into making.
The short film, which I did not try out for, was a (let me see if I get this right) coming of age story about a kid who discovers he has super-human powers. The powers, making food appear out of nowhere. The problem, he doesn’t know how to control them. My problem, the concept and the script both sucked.
Since walking out of those auditions yesterday I’ve put some thought into the idea of what those guys were presenting. I could audition for a part where food, and lots of it, was a major factor. The ick factor. The comedic ick factor. Pretty much we’re talking about a high school story where some kid makes lots and lots of food out of nothingness and there is a big mess.
My problem is that I look at something, movie, book, music, whatever, and I am pretty accurate about whether or not there is any marketing potential. I am pretty wickedly accurate. The Republican party, by the by, has very little marketing power at the moment. They’ve pretty much shot themselves in the foot. I can see a movie trailer and tell you whether or not the movie will do well AND whether or not it will be a good movie. Sometimes you get both, other times you only get one or the other. My Super Ex-Girlfriend will be a bad movie that does rather well at the box-office. Go figure. There are others.
Regardless of all that, I looked at the concept, looked at the writing, and made a pretty broad decision. The writing sucked. The concept was bad. The principles (which had created a company that I am sure they will be sued over the name) were not experienced enough to be able to handle either the concept or the execution and in the end, it is a waste of time to pretend that either the concept or the “sides” they had people reading from were worth more than the time I’d put into it. I believe what everyone involved will discover is that this is a colossal waste of time and money and effort and will all be for nothing.
What I was told, a couple of weeks ago, was that they wanted to make something “like Napoleon Dynamite.” Which means that some people, lets call them “guys”, got together and decided on a concept they felt was like Napoleon Dynamite and then proceeded to write something they thought might work. They thought, “We can shop this around,” which is their intent, and decided to do it “right” they had to form a company. Which means they had to spend a couple hundred dollars between filing fees, research fees, and probably lawyers fees (if they found someone cheap), all for a concept that isn’t worth the paper they printed it on.
I could, and probably should, go into more detail; but I think at this point I’ve probably breached some kind of unwritten contract or something, some weird rule of filmmaking that will come back and not bite me on the tuckus. If you know what I mean.
Anyway, after that I went to Borders and looked through their plays until I came up with two that I thought would work for what I need them to work to do. Mainly, I need a play to read (which I technically have in one of my boxes), and I need a second play to pull a monologue out of. I ended up with The Goat or Who is Sylvia? and Copenhagen. Bother were written and produced on stage for the first time since 2000. You cannot get more contemporary than that.
After that I looked at the time and made a purchase far greater than I was expecting to (I also saw that Boston Legal: Season One was released onto DVD and snatched it up. Cheaper than Amazon.com by quite a bit and money off the price as well because I spend WAY too much money in that bookstore, in any bookstore, in bookstores in general.
Because there was still time to kill and I can always do that in my room, I went home and kicked it for about an hour before heading over to the movies. I then went to the movies and was reminded of two things:
A) I don’t like going to movies anymore. AND,
B) I remember why I kept buying X-Men comic books back in my teens even when they got to the point where I didn’t really like them anymore. And by that, I mean the stories’ became so unbelievable even in a world that is completely unbelievable, that … well … let’s call it growing up, ONE, and can’t afford it, TWO, as my principle reasons.
For a while there I was purchasing Excalibur, a spin-off series where Kitty Pride, a.k,a, Shadowcat, ended up with Rachel Grey in England with Megan and Captain Britain to help defend England against… well, you know, whatever. It was pretty much a British take on the whole X-Men storytelling as I recall by a British writer/artist duo. They did a good job. He did a good job. I don’t remember if it was a “he” or a “they” and I ended up dropping all of the other X-titles from my purchasing and only buying that one.
The reason I bring this up is that the X-movies have hinted at Shadowcat or Kitty Pride in just about every movie, some actress playing the part without any speaking roles or any close-ups and in this film she had a significant speaking role. She pretty much took the place of Rogue when Rogue decided to throw a fit and get the “cure” for the mutation.
I had a thing for Shadowcat from the moment she was introduced in the pages of X-Men. So, watching this girl last night, a pretty good semblance of what I recall thinking Shadowcat should look like, I was taken back to the years and years I collected comics specifically because she was in them. This fantasy character who I knew was not real but seemed to fill a vacancy in my life. My world. My whatever. It was a pleasant ride back to the past for me, back to a time before I knew what debt was, before I knew what responsibility really was, before I’d lived and traveled all over the country, been hired by places and fired by places, gone through layoffs and unemployment, thinking I’ve fallen in love and then having my heart ground into a paste, and probably doing the same to one or two girls.
Yeah, so I watched X-Men: The Last Stand and I can see how it wouldn’t be a creative giant, but I felt that the violence the critics were complaining about felt in line with the story that was being told. If you have never read the comics, you would probably not understand.
The X-Men were created as a metaphor for things we don’t understand, for people we don’t accept. You can build a list. It’s discrimination at its finest. I don’t necessarily agree with the idea of what they were created for or the tone the series has taken and continues to take, but I do like the way the movies were created and continue to flow. I can see how this one was built with the possibility of another movie, or another trilogy of movies, but at the same time everyone involved claims it is the last X-movie. The next to come is Wolverine and other titles.
With all that said, I thought it was a really good movie with great special FX’s and a pretty nice completion to a planned trilogy. I even think the replacement actor, for Bryan Singer, did a really good job at keeping the tone what Bryan would’ve done and, at the same time, adding his own little touches here and there. Like Dark Phoenix. Definitely not my vision of what she should’ve been, but this is an adaptation.