X-Men - The Series (general; ALL the movies)

[jo]

It was a film portrayal of the relationship between Prof Charles Xavier and the loner mutant, Wolverine/Logan/JamesHowlett. First depicted in the 2000 release of the first XMen movie... and ended in Logan.

[jo]

If ever another movie would be made which looks back at that relationship, a strongly dramatic lookback at what happened before we found Logan caring for the ailing Professor would be welcome.

*What happened to Prof Xavier? How did he get to the mental state we found him in Logan?

*What happened to the mutants, who were briefly referred to or hinted at in Logan, as having perished through the hands of their mentor?

*Where was Logan when this happened? How did he escape the deathly hand of the Professor's unstable mental condition?

*How did he manage to take the Professor away, with Caliban, to a place where he hoped he would be able to take care of him in his last days?

*What and when did the slow death that Logan was facing happen? How did he accept it?


Interesting questions and issues hinted at in LOGAN!


Jo

[jo]

http://instagram.com/p/BuMDNFQH3g0

[jo]

[jo]

Ryan's reaction was probably intended to be funny (in his inimitable Deadpool style) but some fans are interpreting it as green-eyed jealousy

Or maybe "Deadpool" is jealous because "Wolverine's" name is being coupled with Prof Xavier...when he has been hounding his clawed buddy on a possible tie-up movie. LOL!



Jo

[jo]

Is Marvel courting Hugh Jackman

[jo]

www.marvel.com/articles/movies/hugh-jackman-guinness-world-record-wolverine?linkId=63856283

Movies
Published February 20, 2019
Hugh Jackman Earns Guinness World Record Title for His Marvel Career as Wolverine
That all ya got, bub?



by Christine Dinh



The ageless Hugh Jackman's commitment to his Marvel alter-ego Wolverine is finally being recognized. Took ya long enough to get here, bub.


Sharing the distinction with Sir Patrick Stewart, who plays Charles Xavier AKA Professor X, Jackman was presented with a certificate yesterday from the Guinness World Record for his record of the longest career as a live-action Marvel super hero.


The Emmy/Tony/Grammy award-winning actor, who is one Oscar away from being inducted to the exclusive EGOT club, began his 17-year (or 16 years 228 days, to be exact) Marvel career with Stewart with 2000's "X-Men," culminating in the critically-acclaimed 2017's "Logan."


As shared with Guinness, Jackman had his eyes set on being a record breaker since he was young. "When I was a kid, the Guinness Book of Records was it," shared Jackman. "That's it, I've made it! This is why I got into showbiz, thank you."


His first attempt was "most coins snatched off at the elbow" when he was 10, before moving on to "longest marathon playing badminton, singles" with his brother.

He is the best there is at what he does but what he does best isn't very nice. That's not true, he'll always be my Wolvie.

Hmmm...kinda getting suspicious

[jo]

LOLOL!

Hugh replied to Ryan's tweet

[jo]

Someone redesigned the GUINNESS Record artistic representation for the join award to Hugh and Patrick

[jo]

This fan with an artistic hand ( he has done a few in the past) has a new poster --

[jo]

[jo]

[jo]

At CinemaCon ( for theater distributors) --

Disney wanted to highlight the FOX creative assets that became part of their film property and showed off many of past film accomplishments of the then Fox Studio. But why include an XMen reel that had Hugh Jackman as Wolverine in it? They could have just shown a generic scene from the many XMen movies, unless --

they are hoping to convince the public that the character of Wolverine is their property now, which they can do whatever way they want with ( such as recasting him...or changing his past film history?).

or are they still clinging to the hope that they can persuade Hugh Jackman to be Wolverine at least One-last-time, Disney version?

Jo

[jo]

I am reposting this from the GREATEST SHOWMAN thread --

Apr 3, 2019 22:37:13 GMT -5 jo said:

Not sure what to make of this --

A report from ComicBook.com/Marvel on what happened at the CinemaCon Disney/Fox presentation.


comicbook.com/marvel/2019/04/03/disney-cinemacon-avengers-lion-king-aladdin-footage-spoilers-fox-xmen/

You may want to read the whole narrative of how the two studios will complement each other.

This part directly refers to something about The Greatest Showman's prospects --

Excerpts :

Fox then takes over, promising to look for their next big franchises, along with films such as Bohemian Rhapsody, The Martian, and The Greatest Showman. They will continue to work hard and take risks. In June, Dark Phoenix will arrive as "the final chapter" of the X-Men franchise. It's a "dramatic finale worthy of its predecessors Logan and Days of Future Past."

Is this an indication of what's to come specifically for projects ( like Greatest Showman or other existing franchises )...or were they simply looking back at past FOX film accomplishments?
>
>
>

Jo

Also, from the same report on what happened at CinemaCon --

“You’ll be seeing more of Deadpool in the years ahead,” Horn said with a photo of Ryan Reynolds’ tweet regarding Deadpool joining the Disney family showing on the screen behind him.

*Is the end of the road for the XMen franchise, per se?

*Is Deadpool being spun off as a separate franchise as he was not really much a part of the XMen franchise ( except for XMEN Origins:Wolverine)?

*How can the story of Jean ( Dark Phoenix) be the end-story for the XMEN, per se? It may be the last movie to be made that follows the original storyline of the XMen, but the XMen is not basically her story. LOGAN dealt with the end of the Wolverine saga, Days of Future Past simply reset the timeline and backtracked from past events... but what happened to Prof Charles Xavier and Magneto - as they ( in addition to Wolverine) were the 3 major characters in the franchise. Are they expecting what happened to Charles Xavier, as portrayed by Patrick Stewart, in LOGAN as the finale for his character. But then again, his younger self ( James McAvoy) seems to be still around? I guess Disney/Fox are still unsure on the trajectory for this series. Unless the characters will be enfolded under the Marvel universe? I guess you cannot have 2 competing franchises under one umbrella?

*Does this mean that we have seen the last of Wolverine - whether it is with Hugh or if he is recast?


Jo

[jo]

Or is this really the more pragmatic interpretation of what happened at CinemaCon --


cosmicbook.news/wolverine-black-panther-cinemacon-disney

[jo]

Flashback!

ComicCon in SD was in July 2008.


Was this before the release of XMEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE ( 2009)?


Jo

[jo]

From a Simon Kinberg interview on Rolling Stones re Dark Phoenix --

www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-news/dark-phoenix-hugh-jackman-wolverine-844237/

Excerpts --

Beginning with the original X-Men movie, back in the pre-superhero-industrial-complex year of 2000, every non-Deadpool entry in the franchise has had one thing in common: Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. Dark Phoenix, due in theaters on June 7th, is the exception, and it’s not just because Jackman bid farewell to the character in James Mangold’s superb 2017 film Logan.

Jackman could still have fit into the timeline, Kinberg notes, in keeping with his small role in 2016’s X-Men Apocalypse. But there was another issue: In the original Dark Phoenix saga in the comic books — and even in the botched previous adaptation in 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand — the love triangle between Cyclops, Jean Grey (the X-Men member who becomes Dark Phoenix, currently played by Sophie Turner of Game of Thrones fame) and Wolverine is key to the narrative. “If you know the Dark Phoenix story, you’d want to really service the love story between Logan and Jean,” says Kinberg. “And I think the notion of Hugh Jackman, as great as he looks for his age, and Sophie Turner — it didn’t sit well with me. Or anyone else!”

Ha! That is very flawed reasoning! How old is Wolverine anyway when he first met Jean ( even in Apocalypse) - at least over 150 years old!! Hugh is the right actor for that role even with Sophie - as his facial features, especially the eyes, embodied all the years of danger and suffering experienced by Wolverine ( and Jean was like a sea of calm for him...and there was obvious initial physical attraction). You can't have a 20'ish actor, no matter how buff, but without a face that mirrors all those years on earth portraying Wolverine! Kinberg simply doesn't want Jackman in his XMen movies! Remember Apocalypse - how he rewrote the script to change the leadership role - take it away from Wolverine and give it to the lackluster portrayal by actress Jennifer Lawrence of the role of Mystique? Remember how Bryan Singer had to practically apologize to Hugh for that...and how he tried to make amends with that afterhought cameo?? Even as early as First Class, he and Matthew Vaughn wanted a young Wolverine ( and not the Wolverine portrayed by Jackman - yet the most compelling and best-remembered scene in First Class was the Wolverine cameo). Is there some tension between Hugh and Kinberg? Kinberg never showed up at the LOGAN filming ( even if he had producer's credit -- only Hutch Parker, co-producer for Fox, was allowed on set, it seems) although he came to the Berlinale premiere but it was Emma Watts who was prominently interviewed there as the FOX rep!


And btw - Kinberg only has to go see #TMTMTS to see how all the ladies ( " from prepubescent to menopausal", to quote one reviewer) were all going gaga for Hugh! Looks, charm, sex appeal!!


Matching Hugh with the young Jean/Sophie might seem too wide an age gap - but what is over-150 years between the comic book characters anyway? LOL!

Jo

[hughmanity]

Everything I've ever read about Kinberg makes me think he's an idiot.  

Jun 4, 2019 18:37:31 GMT -5 jo said:

From a Simon Kinberg interview on Rolling Stones re Dark Phoenix --

www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-news/dark-phoenix-hugh-jackman-wolverine-844237/

Excerpts --

Beginning with the original X-Men movie, back in the pre-superhero-industrial-complex year of 2000, every non-Deadpool entry in the franchise has had one thing in common: Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. Dark Phoenix, due in theaters on June 7th, is the exception, and it’s not just because Jackman bid farewell to the character in James Mangold’s superb 2017 film Logan.

Jackman could still have fit into the timeline, Kinberg notes, in keeping with his small role in 2016’s X-Men Apocalypse. But there was another issue: In the original Dark Phoenix saga in the comic books — and even in the botched previous adaptation in 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand — the love triangle between Cyclops, Jean Grey (the X-Men member who becomes Dark Phoenix, currently played by Sophie Turner of Game of Thrones fame) and Wolverine is key to the narrative. “If you know the Dark Phoenix story, you’d want to really service the love story between Logan and Jean,” says Kinberg. “And I think the notion of Hugh Jackman, as great as he looks for his age, and Sophie Turner — it didn’t sit well with me. Or anyone else!”

Ha! That is very flawed reasoning! How old is Wolverine anyway when he first met Jean ( even in Apocalypse) - at least over 150 years old!! Hugh is the right actor for that role even with Sophie - as his facial features, especially the eyes, embodied all the years of danger and suffering experienced by Wolverine ( and Jean was like a sea of calm for him...and there was obvious initial physical attraction). You can't have a 20'ish actor, no matter how buff, but without a face that mirrors all those years on earth portraying Wolverine! Kinberg simply doesn't want Jackman in his XMen movies! Remember Apocalypse - how he rewrote the script to change the leadership role - take it away from Wolverine and give it to the lackluster portrayal by actress Jennifer Lawrence of the role of Mystique? Remember how Bryan Singer had to practically apologize to Hugh for that...and how he tried to make amends with that afterhought cameo?? Even as early as First Class, he and Matthew Vaughn wanted a young Wolverine ( and not the Wolverine portrayed by Jackman - yet the most compelling and best-remembered scene in First Class was the Wolverine cameo). Is there some tension between Hugh and Kinberg? Kinberg never showed up at the LOGAN filming ( even if he had producer's credit -- only Hutch Parker, co-producer for Fox, was allowed on set, it seems) although he came to the Berlinale premiere but it was Emma Watts who was prominently interviewed there as the FOX rep!


And btw - Kinberg only has to go see #TMTMTS to see how all the ladies ( " from prebuscent to menopausal", to quote one reviewer) were all going gaga for Hugh! Looks, charm, sex appeal!!


Matching Hugh with the young Jean/Sophie might seem too wide an age gap - but what is over-150 years between the comic book characters anyway? LOL!

Jo

[jo]

In that split second of a future connection - no one questioned that Wolverine seemed much older than the very young Jean.


There was a spark!

[jo]

What a very sad way for a franchise that launched the rebirth of superhero movies to end


Edward Douglas (who writes the reviews for COMINGSOON.NET and SuperHeroHype.com ) deplores that the end-movie of this franchise is very disappointing... and not true to the beautiful and strong movies that the original trilogy cast and Bryan Singer started!

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Jun
5
DARK PHOENIX REVIEW: ED’s Very Important Thoughts on the X-Men Finale

I went into the X-Men finale Dark Phoenix– written, directed and produced by Simon Kinberg – trying to be optimistic and positive, thinking it couldn’t possibly be as bad as many of my colleagues thought it would be. As of this writing, I haven’t read any other reviews, but I’ll truly be shocked if anyone thinks this movie was even up to par with the notoriously lousy X-Men: The Last Stand.

The problem is that Claremont/Byrne/Austin’s “The Dark Phoenix Saga”was also the basis of that 2006 Brett Ratner-directed movie, which was co-written Kinberg, and Dark Phoenix, while more faithful to the story in the comics, doesn’t do enough to match the quality of the last few Bryan Singer movies.


After one of those patented “X-Men as kids” intros featuring Jean Grey, Dark Phoenix begins with the X-Men more popular than ever as they journey into space to save a stranded shuttle. There, they encounter a solar flare that almost kills some of the team if not for Sophie Turner’s Jean Grey being able to use her powers to save them all. If you’ve read the comics, you already know that Jean has absorbed the Phoenix Force, and that’s given her power that will corrupt her. She ends up lashing out at her teammates and becoming a target of government agents. At the same time, there’s an alien race called the D’Bari, led by one that takes on the guise of a white-haired Jessica Chastain, who also are looking for Jean to get their hands on the Phoenix Force.

That’s the general gist of the plot, and if you’ve read the original comics or seen any of the trailers/commercials, you probably already know everything that’s going to happen in the movie. Because there are just no surprises and everything is so predictably telegraphed by the weak dialogue, it’s hard to not get bored by the lead-up to what’s already expected.
What makes Dark Phoenix even more boring is that there’s so much talking about stuff we basically already know – Jean has more power, she’s losing control of it, she’s doing bad things, and she doesn’t care. WE KNOW.

I’m not going to mince words here, but Sophie Turner is NOT A GOOD ACTOR. Putting more focus on her makes it that much more obvious, as she stumbles her way through Kinberg’s dialogue, trying to make Jean Grey remotely interesting and failing miserably. It made it so obvious how much I missed the original cast, because most of the newer cast are just fumbling around with bad acting and worse accents. I really just don’t like any of them.


The more experienced actors like McAvoy, Hoult and Fassbender do much better in their scenes together, but even Fassbender has a few highly embarrassing moments. Jennifer Lawrence isn’t much better having to go through the movie with some of the worst make-up we’ve seen on Mystique yet.

The few action sequences during the first 2/3rds of the movie aren’t particularly exciting with shockingly poor visual FX, probably the worst of the entire franchise. In one scene, Jean Grey and Magneto are fighting against each other by using their powers to jockey a military chopper between them, and Fassbender’s reactions and over-emoting is so bad in these scenes, it kills any good will to having him show up an hour into the movie.

This is the thing. It’s generally known that a movie should have a great script from the beginning, but when a script isn’t up to snuff, a good director and cast can potentially fix or elevate the material. In this case, it feels like the older cast just doesn’t care anymore, and Kinberg either doesn’t have enough directing experience or just isn’t a good director – not everyone can be – to realize the problems in his own script.

Whatever you want to say about Bryan Singer’s personal life and the bad decisions he keeps making, he constantly proved his skills as a director, improving on the material, and that’s been the case with every X-Men movie he’s made since the very first one.


On top of that, the whole movie just looks and feels cheap, which is not something you expect from a movie that helped launch the big budget superhero movie trend back in 2000.

Things finally pick up in the last act battle between the X-Men and the D’Bari on a train that’s taking the X-men to be impounded, very similar to The Last Stand in fact, and the very ending is a nice nod to the original relationship between Charles and Erik. By then, it’s just too late, because you’ve already spent most of the movie bored, and let’s face it, the Marvel movies have made this type of bad moviemaking even worse.

Granted, Dark Phoenix isn’t the worst superhero movie ever made. It’s not even the worst superhero movie this year – that would be you, Hellboy – but it’s just so lazy in every aspect of its storytelling and filmmaking you wonder if anyone but Kinberg even gives a shit anymore.

(Make sure to stick around for the end credits scene where Kevin Feige shows up on set to shut it all down and call Bob Iger to ask if there’s a chance Disney can buy Fox to end this madness.)


Rating: 4.5/10

[jo]

And the initial summarization of early reviews on ROTTEN TOMATOES seem to reflect the same sentiment!

www.rottentomatoes.com/m/dark_phoenix

With 42 reviews in, it has a current rating of 17%.

PS: Kinberg, resign!!!


Jo

[jo]

At least, we had LOGAN!

[jo]

[njr]

Jun 5, 2019 1:01:46 GMT -5 jo said:

In that split second of a future connection - no one questioned that Wolverine seemed much older than the very young Jean.


There was a spark!

Logan may be 150, but Hugh is still 50 and Sophie Turner is 23, so I can see his point. But when i was 23 i went out with Mike Love who was 37 at the time. I wouldn’t have turned down a 50 year old Hugh Jackman either! 😂

Nancy

[jo]

A comment on Hollywood Elsewhere re the bomb called DARK PHOENIX --

Jeff • 7 hours ago
On the plus side this should finally end Kinbergs career. He’s been a solid hack for a long time who has somehow maintained working.