Dark Phoenix Trailer

[Nova]

It is like you read my mind.

For me, X-Men First Class was a home run. Each mutant appeared and acted as if they stepped from the pages of comics. All the characters were spotlighted virtually equally. Plus the story flowed smoothly from start to finish. I attributed much of its (in my opinion) success to Matthew Vaughn's direction.

Agreed. It felt very X-Men. The more I think about it, the more I appreciate it.


Erik Lensherr is an incredibly compelling character.


It was really fun watching a revenge fueled, super powered, holocaust-survivor-turned-anti-hero track down and kill ***** in different corners of the world.


And I can’t help but point out the incredible timing of its release date. The stylized presentation of the 1960s coincided with a resurgence in 1960’s trends in pop culture, largely influenced by the show “Madmen” which was at its peak in popularity. And they were extremely fortunate to cast Jennifer Lawrence and Michael Fassbender right before they exploded—especially Lawrence.

Then the studio reversed gears and went the safe route by bringing back Bryan Singer to direct X-Men Days Of Future Past. The soul of the first movie did not flow into the sequel. Logan returned as Singer's central character, aka Singer's Hugh Jackman safety net. A braver screenplay, like the one for FC, would have introduced Kitty Pryde's character, who would have been protected by Logan in the future, while she traveled back in time to prevent the catastrophe. Just like the original story. Jackman would have still played a large role in the movie.




Of course, Singer could have argued continuity since Pryde was a super minor character from his X2 sequel and that Last Stand nonsense. Then again anyone could have made the counter argument that the string of pre-First Classfilms jacked up continuity to the point that a total refreshing of the mutant film environment would have been a blessing rather than a mistake. Days Of Future Past was a good movie that could have been better with a little more courage behind the camera.

I didn’t realize how little Vaughn was involved in DOFP until you mentioned this.


Apparently he only co-wrote the screen play, but it seems like a lot of the decisions (like settling on Wolverine as the Time Traveler) were not his.


Vaughn stepped away from the project and from there, it looks like the majority of people involved were Singer’s old team that he brought back.


I’m not too upset about Wolverine being the time traveler, but you’re right. Sending Pryde back would have been a braver move. And it would have been fun to watch Wolverine fighting the future sentinels.


I found it interesting that Vaughn left on his own partially because he wanted DOFP to be the third film of the trilogy.


So I agree it was a good movie that could have been better with more courage at the helm. And we probably would have gotten that with Vaugh and with DOFP being the third of the retcon trilogy.

However, what happened to DOFP does not hold a candle to what derailed X-Men Apocalypse's odds of success. I can still remember reading the 12-month Age of Apocalypse epic that ran through all the mutant comic titles. There was literally TONS of existing material that could have been retrofitted for the most imagination challenged audiences. That... movie barely scraped the top layers of that story also. It is sad how badly the film performed considering the amount of quality acting it had at its disposal.

Growing up, Apocalypse was the ultimate comic villain. He was bigger than Thanos and Darkseid in my view. But we got a really lame version instead, completely wasting Oscar Isaac’s acting prowess.


At any rate, I love the idea of Vaughn being able to finish a trilogy ending in DOFP, and then a new Age of Apocalypse trilogy emerging after that.

Crap. I think I am depressing myself more about what Dark Phoenix may end up being

Let’s hope to be surprised, I guess.

 

[DallasEast]

I’m not too upset about Wolverine being the time traveler, but you’re right. Sending Pryde back would have been a braver move. And it would have been fun to watch Wolverine fighting the future sentinels.