I saw the new Xmen movie today.
Let me set one thing straight:
IT’S DAMN GOOD. GO SEE IT NOW.
It’s directed by someone other than the directors of the last two, and it’s a good movie. Xmen 3 kinda sucked. Spiderman 3 really sucked. Wolverine was awful (but in a hilarious, motorbike-into-helicopter, walk-away-from-explosion-without-turning-back, kind of way). Xmen First Class… is brilliant. It really is up there with Dark Knight, as it’s been compared. It deserves the sub-title/description of service. And the Magneto guy was really good. As you’d hope for a movie about a good guy turning bad and becoming the legend that will be known as a villain (but oh so sympathetic). And it’s like the last two movies, the weakest in the series, didn’t happen. Wolverine still has amnesia, but he only gets a cameo (and a hilarious one at that).
I have a feeling geeks everywhere will be painting themselves blue in tribute to the romance. I like how it *wasn’t* the Protagonist and The Girl (backup singer and tambourine player). I liked that it was about lesser-known mutants. I like how it was set to the Cold War backdrop (that’s always fun). And it was at moments hilarious. And inspiring (Magneto learning control over his power, and the laser dude too for that matter). I liked the 60′s montage bits. They were perfectly suited.
But most of all I liked that they didn’t rip off Superman’s powers. Okay, two could fly, but they were hardly godlike – one had wings (dragonfly ones, as you’d have seen on the ad) and one had one of those nifty flight suit things with wing-membranes between the arms and legs, and he used his sonic screech to stay airborne (also what you see in the ad). And there was a laser guy, but it came from his chest, in rings. That was interesting, and also not copyright infringing. Unlike a certain dude who has to wear shades to prevent mass destruction. I was never really a Cyclops fan, but his ability was pretty cool. (I was a Gambit and Wolverine fan).
What I don’t like, when everyone does it, is the standard Superman forte split up amongst a team, usually Team Family or Team Mom and Dad. Of course there are exceptions. If my mum likes it, that pretty much tells you in no uncertain terms that it’s good, because she will not sit still if it isn’t a British murder mystery.
The Incredibles did, more or less – but they had a cool idea, what with Super Civil Rights etc, something which is at the core of Marvel’s mythos, but not DC’s to my knowledge, but I wouldn’t know because the only thing DC can make is Batman and Superman, and I never really got into comics until just recently, and then only the movie adaptations (and I call myself a geek!). Dad had Strength. Mom had Speed. Boy had Stretch (Gordon). Girl (Violet, of course) had Psychic (of course). Baby had Fire (hehe).
Megamind parodied this in a BIG way. Metro Man = Superman, Megamind = Brainiac with just a dose of Lex Luthor’s Super Preparedness. The Fire Vision was used ONCE by Metro Man, but Titan used it like a Playa uses his dick (sorry for that cringe-worthy analogy – but it’s true). He was Superman, but Drunk On Power (and thus made a wicked bad guy).
Sky High plays the Flight and Strength powers straight. That movie is about Superhero cliches and High School, a horrible mix played for laughs. Will gets Strength AND Flight, of course (gee, wonder what that’s ripping off?) but that movie is damn funny. The villain is dreadfully cliche, of course. But she’s also Ramona Flowers, so…
Hell, I couldn’t write this without mentioning the rival team in Venture Brothers. The lead scientist has stretching powers, the only useful one, and a I’m A Dick But I Don’t Realise It syndrome. Fire boy is in a capsule lest he burn up (with associated pain), invisible girl goes invisible – or at least her skin does – and rock man is… special. Love it. Also love the Scooby Doo parody and the Johnny Quest guy. Scooby Gang: Fred is a controlling, abusive bastard, Daphne is a university-educated man-hating dyke, the other girl is cowed into submission, Shaggy is a paranoid schizophrenic on drugs – oh wait! – and Scooby is a gangster, from Detroit no less. And I think only Shaggy can hear him talk. Hilarious.
Seriously. Check this series out. Yesterday.
But there’s a point where the Default Superman Powers gets ANNOYING. I’m looking at you, 7′s No Ordinary Family. Dad has Strength. Mum can Fly. I have the power of the Channel Changer. I don’t know, or care, what the kids have (probably stretching and fire). NOF looks like utterly lazy, money-grabbing, pandering, uncreative, copyright-infringing tripe. And it does it shamefully. And plays it all straight. That’s what I get from the ads, and they do not persuade me in the slightest. They sit faaaaaaaaaaar out on my Latitude of Rejection. They cause severe cognitive dissonance, of a sort.
On a much cooler note, I learnt that word, dissonance, from RahXephon (though it might have been assonance; the kid’s an art major who fights alien golems in another alien golem, and it’s a love letter to Evangelion – Ben, I’m talking to you). I’m one of the four people who’s seen it. Typical art statement, really. But what the hey, it was fun – something Very Ordinary Family doesn’t appear to understand the meaning of.
And that’s how I feel about Superheroes. Now to get back to my mercenary/superhero novel.
