Mostly (But not entirely) Spoiler Free


So I missed this in the big release, but I caught a large number of glowing reviews. Having seen it let me respectfully disagree with the glowy reviews.  Don't get me wrong, compared to most of the crap coming out these days, and for an X-Men film, this is a fine movie... but its still pretty much a modern pop-corn offering at its heart.

On that, however, let me first proclaim that the lead performances are top notch. If you don't worry, at least a little, about Patrick Stewart's health while watching this film you have no imagination, or you hate Patrick Stewart.  True, Hugh Jackman's 'Sick Man' performance got a little overwrought by the end of the film, but I think that's at least a bit of a writer/director problem, while Dafne Keen's performance as Laura or X-23, was unobjectionable... which is high praise for a child actor in my book.  Again, she was saddled with more than a bit of a writer/director problem.

The supporting cast was a bit more... hit or miss.  Caliban (Stephen Merchant) was fine, but had almost nothing to do... so was he fine because he had so little to fuck up, or was he excellent but we never got to see it?   The Family of Oppressed-By-Big-Agriculture Farmers were generally quite enjoyable, but the leader of the Reavers, Pierce (Boyd Holbrook) was nothing but dead screen... though again, the writers and director seemed to actively avoid giving him anything to do. Dr Rice, his boss, comes in halfway through the film and does a credible job, but he's the typical low-key amoral scientist most of the time.

So lets talk about the film.  The trailers give away a good chunk of hte plot. Road Trip with two old dying mutants escorting a little girl who is basically mini-me wolverine, who is being chased by shadow-government types.  The dark tone, the old guard giving their last for a good cause, is well done and faithfully, and I think that's one of the reasons this movie gets so much praise... they don't cop out and pull a last minute happy ending on us, nor do they really force the bitterness down our throats by forcing the bad ending on us, as some films do when going for this tone.

That said there are some missteps.  

Spoilers ahead:

First, instead of letting the 90 year old Professor X die due to his ill health/alzhiemers (or whatever... telepath with mental seizures), they have X-24 kill him.  In the exact same tone, instead of just having Wolverine die at the end, having strained his regenerative powers too far at the last, they have to have him have the cinematic lethal wound (impaled on a tree). Its a bit over the top, and in both cases actively circumvents the idea that these deaths were inevitable.

Second, and this is a damned common (universal you might say) problem with superhero films, and almost all sci-fi. We accept the impossible happening because 'powers', or 'techno-babble', but the more impossible the thing you need us to accept, the more important the rest of the setting feel real. So, we can accept that a teenage Laura (13 according to the film (132 months, exactly), though she looks 9...the actress is 12~) is a superhuman killing machine, with claws and regeneration, instincts and even training... what gets laughable is when the 20lb girl tosses a 200lb cyborg soldier around like a ragdoll.  Stabbing him with claws and killing him? Not laughable. Stick with the not-laughable stuff.   There is too much of the 'fuck physics, because superheros'... which is the opposite of a good idea.


End Spoilers


There are some clunkers in the writing but less than usual. There is a stupid bit about female lions that breezes right by before you can say 'what the fuck'?  I can unpack that if you really need me to, but trust me: Its dumb.  

I think its a measure of just how stupid people have gotten in general, at least the movie going public when it comes to how civilization works, that so much of this movie... and pretty much every other movie... gets a pass.  We just accept that a bunch of employees on a big agribusiness farm will act like terrorists to the one farmer who hasn't sold out to the company... because employees of every company are brainwashed into the bottom line. We accept that a shadowy government conspiracy will accept a deathtoll in the hundreds on a cross country pursuit over an escaped experiment they were disposing of anyway...  We accept that a 13 year old girl raised in captivity... literally never allowed to see the sun (according to the film!!!) will know how to drive a car, or in fact a stick shift 1970s era Bronco.   Why ARE they chasing these X-23 mutants who are escaping from Mexico to Canada (By the way...) when they were just liquidating them all in favor of X-24?  

Oh, and for that matter: once they find them, why are they trying to capture them? Because they were literally executing and disposing of them when they escaped... but now that they got out into the wild and have killed at least some of your employees (the Adult Reavers), why do you want to capture them?

Oh, right, because killing kids on screen is somehow worse then having those same kids gleefully murder one of your villians in an almost ritual fashion?  


I'm not going to go into the weird social commentary bits, mostly because any attempt by a film to be topical, no matter how its handled (or what case it makes), unless that is explicitly the purpose of the film, sets my teeth on edge.   I will point out that we have an american 'company' that has the power to apparently cram world-wide genetic modifying food down the throats of, well, the world, operating in Mexico City, murdering (I suppose???) the surrogate mothers of its breeding program because 'no one will miss them', acting like its mexican nursing staff is too stupid (says the film) to know what is going on in the lab where they work... and Canada is a safe haven for Mutants, while we have Agri-business assholes sabotaging water pumping stations while growing genetically modified corn for corn syrup...

Its a hodge-podge of pop-culture condemnations that can't stand up to scrutiny, tossed in I suppose to make the film feel relevant, and its irritating... but more curiously, its incoherent.  I mean: We can't claim that the film is trying to tell us how secretly wonderful mexicans are, because it opens with a feral pack of Cholos (the film's term) trying to murder a man (Logan/Wolverine) for the rims of his limo.  Not kick his ass, murder him. Shotgun to the face style.  For rims.   Yet, despite setting about twenty minutes or so, plus backstory, IN Mexico, the only mexicans in the entire film are two of the X-23's (Laura and Rodrigo(?)), and the nurse Gabriella... and that random group of wheel-jackers.    Its just... odd.  (yes: A couple of mook federales also appear to be dutifully murdered by our heroes...)

Anyway: IN summation, this film is better than most of the crap released, oh... since Waterworld.... but I wouldn't say its 'great'. Worth a watch for the performances.

I had to rush this one out the door so I could get to work on time. After I posted it I had another series of thoughts, especially regarding the X-23 children.  

It occurs to me that these children are supposed to be saints in a fashion.  I could make a comment about their needlessly wonderful rainbow diversity, but that topic bores me... they should all be mexican based on their surrogate mothers (and yes: I know that not all surrogates provide genetic contributions, but as Laura, a female 'daughter' rather than 'clone' of Logan shows, in this case they in fact did).

But lets look at some facts regarding this absurd saintliness.

First: Children raised from birth to be loyal supersoldiers spontaniously develop a conscience and rebel, at the cost of their own lives (beginning we can easily assume, with resisting torture into compliance) because they 'don't want to be killers'.  Its that spontanaity that bugs me.  We could argue that the nurses taught the X-23 compassion, but we see clearly that the Nurses were denied even the ability to name the children, so complex moral lessons is right out of the question.  Someone doesn't seem to understand the process of enculturation, and presumably has never raised children.

Second: These kids are absurdly hypercompetent. I get that they are mutants (super powers), and that they were trained (against their will) to be supersoldiers... but I find it hard to believe they were trained to Escape and Evade, especially as they were never even allowed to see the sun, sayeth the film.  Somehow they all made it from Mexico City to North Dakota without being tracked... except for Laura for some reason... and yes, the Movie vaguely touches on it, but a deeper analysis proves profoundly unsatisfying in the wake of these dozen or more children all successfully... and without escort... making it while the most dangerous of them (as seen on screen) requires help from adults.

Third evidence: Despite being told that the X-23's were being liquidated (executed, disposed of, terminated), the Reavers seem more intent on capturing alive and mostly unhurt the children, suffering some casualties in their attempts to do so (as they have to make themselves vulnerable to some nominally pathetic superpowers... such as minty fresh breath (I wish I kid)), whereas if they were just shooting them dead the final fight scene would have been over in seconds.  In fact NONE of the children die... and only one is even injured in any way... during this long 'set peice' fight, and that is a deliberate flesh wound from the shooter.

fourth:  Frankly, the sight of six or seven kids tormenting Pierce (the Reaver Leader) to death over a good minute or two of screen time with their collective powers is creepy as hell, yet these are the sympathetic good guys/victims of the film?  Pierce is a shithead and asshole, but you know what? I don't think he kills a single person on screen.  We can assume he killed Gabriella the Nurse (off screen), though that doesn't make much sense timing wise (movie logic, he kills the nurse, then LEAVES without Laura so he can follow Logan from California to Mexico to acquire teh girl?). He definitely tortured Caliban briefly, and probably tortured (For NO REASON WHATSOEVER!!!!) the random gas station attendant.

But on screen? His worst crime, aside from being annoying, is flesh-wounding Rodrigo to capture him. Also, mysteriously surviving a point blank double-grenade blast with no harm.  No, seriously.

But these kids take their sweet time murdering him at the climax of the film and we're supposed to cheer them on?  Because Villain?  

This is like watching Children of the Corn and getting upset that Sarah Connor is not sacrificed to the Walker Behind the Rows.  

Almost.

So we have some sort of writer failure here, of assumed saintliness to these kids, and because we are supposed to know they are saints and good people, its okay for them to occasionally ritually murder a guy after they've beaten him and destroyed his whole army... by proxy wolverine no less.   Don't get me wrong: Peirce should die in the film, it catharic for the audience given what an asshole he was... but generally speaking the asshole has to die like an asshole, not like a screaming whimpering victim after he's been beaten. (Exceptions can be made, such as electric chair guy from Taken...).

Talk about overthinking it. Pierce is a cyborg and he leaps free of the explosion because this is a comic book action film not The Wire.

I found nothing creepy about his death, not dismissing your personal reaction but I haven't encountered or read anyone have anything resembling your reaction to that scene. The kids aren't supposed to be saints, their violence could be viewed as disturbing and contrasting with their youth but Pierce is clearly more than deserving the punishment. Just because we don't see Pierce violently kill anyone on screen doesn't mean that he is a sadistic prick isn't communicated.

Seems odd to obsess on a bloodless death scene that is probably 30 seconds in length when we see Logan repeatedly  plunge his claws through several peoples' faces close-up. This is a very violent film.

Hi, let me introduce myself. My name is Spike, and I'm Internet Famous for nigh on autistic over-thinking of trivial shit, like movies, books and games... and you are?

:Dhaha

Well, there's always been in X-men, the idea that, despite Magneto being a victim of Nazis, that the anti-mutants aren't quite the same, they have a point.  Mutants ARE dangerous, sometimes without meaning to.  Charles Xavier losing his mind is a one-man WMD capable of exterminating a city, and if you plug him into Cerebro, he becomes a one-man Extinction Level Event.

For the kids, Pierce was at that moment an embodiment of everything that happened to them.  The experimentation, the slaughter of their fellow kids, the killing of the nurses, everything.  It's always been an ironic theme in the X-men series that for most mutants, if you leave them alone, they do not horrifically kill humans, but when you hunt them, they fight back and you get a self-fulfilling prophecy.  It's when humans try to exterminate mutants, that they find themselves being killed by them.

Quote from: CRKrueger;962176Well, there's always been in X-men, the idea that, despite Magneto being a victim of Nazis, that the anti-mutants aren't quite the same, they have a point.  Mutants ARE dangerous, sometimes without meaning to.  Charles Xavier losing his mind is a one-man WMD capable of exterminating a city, and if you plug him into Cerebro, he becomes a one-man Extinction Level Event.

A good and interesting point. Of course, in the movies the anti-mutants are always written and cast as being objectively, horrifically bad, with the sole exception (in my memory here... so... grain of salt)... being Peter Dinklage's character, who basically treated it as a straight up engineering problem without really considering the moral angles either way.

Here they they've already 'won' against the mutants, using gene-modified/modifying food (gee, thanks.... now the anti-GMO flat-earthers will be even MORE convinced that their food is evil!). to wipe out the genetic expressions of mutation.  Xavier was more or less safely contained in a Mexican desert etc.  Despite that they basically treat humans as cattle, from the sacrificial surrogate mothers (needlessly inhumane, seeing that none of the X-23 appear to be sufficiently abnormal to require demonic murder birth rituals), the murder of their own staff for a having a conscience and so forth. Their primary concern when X-24 straight up murders a family of farmers and then goes on to murder the entire local staff of the multinatational agribusiness next door is... PR, not the thirty or so bodies left lying on the dirt.

Evil, and without even the gloss that they are doing it to protect humanity from Mutants in this case.  Arguably... they are protecting mutants in this case, their little home grown supersoldier project.

QuoteFor the kids, Pierce was at that moment an embodiment of everything that happened to them.  The experimentation, the slaughter of their fellow kids, the killing of the nurses, everything.  It's always been an ironic theme in the X-men series that for most mutants, if you leave them alone, they do not horrifically kill humans, but when you hunt them, they fight back and you get a self-fulfilling prophecy.  It's when humans try to exterminate mutants, that they find themselves being killed by them.

Absolutely, but from a storytelling standpoint its important, or reasonably so, not to cross certain lines. Some, maybe a lot of that, is a legacy of the old Hayes Code (er... that was the movie one, right?)... but its still expected in films that the bad guy's death be righteous.  Torturing a helpless, beaten man is already difficult to pull off in fiction (any source) without rendering the 'Hero' a bit unheroic, though I did point out one example that does manage it.

Voros might not see it, but just about every choice in that scene is absolutely wrong if you aren't filming Village of the Damned, from the camera angles looking up at the children (metaphorically putting the audience in Pierce's position), to the unnaturally calm behavior of the kids during the murder, like they've done it before and its all 'old hat' to them.   To steal a bit from Red-Letter media... you may not notice, but your brain does.

Quote from: Spike;962210A good and interesting point. Of course, in the movies the anti-mutants are always written and cast as being objectively, horrifically bad

Well, of course they are. They're meant to be antagonists in an action movie.

Quote(gee, thanks.... now the anti-GMO flat-earthers will be even MORE convinced that their food is evil!).

You're probably being tongue in cheek here but it does get old when some really push this line of thinking and turn depicting almost anything as potentially having a negative use or unforeseen consequences as a indictment against it by the film makers. Have someone tamper with or distribute a compromise vaccine, of course you're supporting Anti Vaxxers. Have an AI go wrong you're a technophobic Luddite....

Not saying that is what your doing here but it reminded me of it and this being the internet I simply had to let the world know.

Quote from: Spike;962210Voros might not see it, but just about every choice in that scene is absolutely wrong if you aren't filming Village of the Damned, from the camera angles looking up at the children (metaphorically putting the audience in Pierce's position), to the unnaturally calm behavior of the kids during the murder, like they've done it before and its all 'old hat' to them.   To steal a bit from Red-Letter media... you may not notice, but your brain does.

I'm more with Voros on this one, honestly. I didn't see it but scenes will affect people differently

Quote from: Spike;962210Voros might not see it, but just about every choice in that scene is absolutely wrong if you aren't filming Village of the Damned, from the camera angles looking up at the children (metaphorically putting the audience in Pierce's position), to the unnaturally calm behavior of the kids during the murder, like they've done it before and its all 'old hat' to them.   To steal a bit from Red-Letter media... you may not notice, but your brain does.

I more with Voros on this one, honestly. I didn't see it but too each there own.