In Laman's Terms is a weekly editorial column where Douglas Laman rambles on about certain topics or ideas that have been on his mind lately. Sometimes he's got serious subjects to discuss, other times he's just got some silly stuff to shoot the breeze about. Either way, you know he's gonna talk about something In Laman's Terms!
“Nobody had made those movies before, certainly not on
the level that we were doing it,” actress Famke Janssen told Observer
in a retrospective on the original X-Men movie. “The comic book adaptation
hadn’t been done in this kind of grittier fashion.” Coming out in 2000, X-Men
arrived at a precarious time for the comic book movie. Blade’s recent successful
box office run cemented the idea that movies based on Marvel comics could work.
However, there was still trepidation over the idea that audiences would come
out in droves for comic book movies in the wake of Spawn, Steel and Batman
& Robin.
Those three films codified comic book movies as being
campy and detached from reality. The first X-Men movie, meanwhile, immediately
established itself as something different by having its opening scene be a
flashback set in a concentration camp in Auschwitz. Further moments of raw
vulnerability (like Wolverine responding “Every time” when asked if it hurts to
unfurl his adamantium claws) cemented X-Men as a different creature in
the comic book movie landscape circa. 2000. That uniqueness helped to propel X-Men
to a strong enough box office haul that it spawned a franchise that’s been
going on for two decades.
Of course, everything must come to a close. So too
must the first comic book movie franchise of the 21st-century. This Friday’s
The New Mutants is not only actually finally premiering, it also brings
with it the
closure of the X-Men series. Now the X-Men films will move over
to Marvel Studios, where they will get some kind of reboot. The future of X-Men
movies is uncertain but its past, that’s fully concrete. The twenty-year legacy
of the X-Men movies is an odd one. Here is a series that found its best
moments when it was pinned in a corner, working under tight budget constraints
and in smaller-scale stories. I’m, of course, talking about Deadpool and Logan,
two of its most recent entries.
One’s personal feelings on the films may vary, but in
terms of public response, Deadpool and Logan caught fire with the
public in a way most of the other X-Men movies just didn’t. All the extravagant
visual effects in the world couldn’t make people interested in X-Men:
Apocalypse. But, much like the opening scene of X-Men, Deadpool and Logan
both offered something different from traditional superhero fare. They had the
courage to stick with unique creative instincts rather than just hew to what
other superhero fare had done recently. We will see how New Mutants
fares as a movie, but on a conceptual basis, this horror movie is also
attempting to try something new in the superhero film landscape. In its
spin-off’s, the X-Men movies tended to flourish.
While Logan represents the most ambitious vestige
of this saga, the principal X-Men movies have aged far worse. For one
thing, the later entries in the principal X-Men saga began to get more
creatively stagnant as its spin-off’s began to get more bold. Whereas Logan
and The New Mutants were exploring new genres for mutant stories to
inhabit, X-Men: Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix were content to be
knock-off’s of other popular superhero movies. Apocalypse was going for
the scale and heightened nature of an Avengers movie but its heart just
wasn’t into it. Dark Phoenix, meanwhile, saturated the screen in dim lighting
in the hopes of securing the depth of dark and gritty superhero movies like The
Dark Knight. Neither film matched the creative highs of the movies they
were mimicking.
Something that’s been running throughout all of the X-Men
movies is a self-conscious nature. Dating back to the days of “yellow spandex”
jabs, the X-Men films have always been trepidatious about embracing the
wackier aspects of their source material. Now, fidelity to the comics does not
equal a good movie. Just ask last years Hellboy movie, which featured a
comics-accurate Lobster Johnson in one of the most slipshod movies to grace the
big screen in the last few years. However, X-Men ditched fun aspects of
the comics and proceeded to replace them with generic ideas.
Even if you didn’t know the X-Men donned colorful
yellow outfits in the comics, you’d likely wish they’d go fight baddies in
outfits that were more interesting than disposable black outfits lifted from The
Matrix. Whereas Blade in 1998 was a direct precursor to the Marvel
Cinematic Universe’s approach to embracing the fun details of the comics, the
original X-Men now feels a relic. Blade was a glimpse of the
future. X-Men, and its embarrassment of where it came from, was the
past.
Worse, though, is how the creative decisions of the
main X-Men movies undercut the idea of having the mutants work as
stand-ins for marginalized populations (which, of course, originated in the
comics). For starters, the primary X-Men films (and also the Deadpool
movies) shove women off to the side while also totally ignoring characters of
color. Storm, one of the most beloved and prominent characters of the X-Men
comics, barely has anything to do across her six individual film appearances. Rogue
starts out the first X-Men movie as an audience point-of-view character
before becoming a damsel-in-distress in the climax and subsequently being a
forgettable part of the sequels. To boot, neither Dark Phoenix
adaptation could subvert the icky gender politics of Jean Grey going evil because
she gets a hold of too much power. It didn’t help that both adaptations decided
to filter this story through the perspective of a male protagonist.
The X-Men are supposed to represent the “little
people” of the world so how come all of the angst in these stories revolve around
cis-het white men? And then, of course, there’s the behind-the-scenes aspects
of the X-Men movies that really taint the whole franchise. Out of the
seven main X-Men movies, five of them were directed by either Bryan
Singer or Brett Ratner. Both have been leveled with a barrage of sexual
assault allegations. Such allegations include Ellen
Page accusing Brett Ratner of sexual harassment on the set of X-Men: The
Last Stand. The X-Men films
being adversely impacted by the actions of Singer and Ratner is one of the
least important ripple effects of these accusations coming to light. However,
it is still disappointing that a series that could have been used to champion
the underdogs of society instead became another place for powerful white men to
engage in alleged acts of seediness.
After twenty years on the silver screen, the X-Men
movies leave behind a complicated creative legacy. Even the earliest films
managed to birth a movie star in the form of Hugh Jackman and allowed the likes
of Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellan and Kelsey Grammar to deliver memorable
performances. In its best installments, the X-Men spin-offs like Logan
and Deadpool managed to shift perceptions of what mainstream comic book
movies could be.
Unfortunately, the X-Men franchise, both on and
off-screen, also serves as a microcosm of how white male perspectives get
premium treatment above all others Despite spanning two decades and twelve
movies, it’s only with the upcoming New Mutants that this saga realized
women could serve as lead characters in movies. Even with the era of Fox X-Men
movies coming to an end, thanks to Marvel Studios, these merry mutants aren’t
gonna stop showing up on the big screen anytime soon. Hopefully, future X-Men
movies take cues from the boldest entries in this franchise to improve on the
shortcomings of the past. Chiefly, give Storm something to do, you cowards.
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