Year of the Month: Was The Original X-Men Really A Game-Changer For Superhero Movies?

This essay was written for The-Solute's monthly Year of the Month column, with January 2019 being dedicated to pop culture from 2000. 

At the dawn of the 21st century, movies based on Marvel Comics were not a recurring fixture of American cinema. Though now it's like saying that the sky was once colored green, it was true at the very start of 2000, with Marvel Comics having about as many box office hits based on one of their properties (the 1997 sleeper hit Blade) as Image Comics. That all changed in July 2000 when the very first live-action X-Men movie made its way to the silver screen courtesy of 20th Century Fox and director Bryan Singer. The feature managed to gross $157.2 million domestically, a sum that put it ahead of all superhero movies sans the first three post-1988 live-action Batman movies. In an era where Batman & Robin seemingly killed off the comic book movie, and the likes of Spawn and Steel weren't making the case for the subgenre's revival, X-Men proved not only did comic book movies still have life left in them but that movies based on Marvel Comics characters could make big bucks.

Kidnap Wants To Be The Next Taken But It's More Like The Next Taken 2

Like a lot of women in Hollywood, I feel like Halle Berry hasn't gotten the roles she deserves in Hollywood. When you put her in the right movie like Cloud Atlas, she's great, but for far too much of her career, she's been stuck in either underdeveloped supporting roles (like her time as Storm in the X-Men movies or her love interest part in Robots or her appearance in a segment with Stephen Merchant in Movie 43) or terribly written leading roles (Catwoman, 'nuff said!). Halle Berry tries her best once again with Kidnap, a new thriller that, alas, turns out to be yet another example of Berry not getting the sort of high-quality or even just entertaining films she deserves to headline.

The First Teaser Trailer For Logan Makes Hugh Jackman's Last Wolverine Movie Look Very Different And Emotional

The final X-Men movie to feature Hugh Jackman as Wolverine is on its way for March. It's got a title (Logan, a nice little contrast with the title of the last solo Wolverine movie The Wolverine), a cast that includes Patrick Stewart, Stephen Merchant and Boyd Holbrook and now it's got a teaser trailer. Check it out below and prepare to see something very different from past X-Men movies and American blockbusters in general.

A Look At The Complicated Confusing Future Of The X-Men Franchise

20th Century Fox is in a fascinating position with their X-Men movie franchise. This year they scored a massive box office hit with an X-Men movie that became a pop culture phenomenon. But said movie wasn't X-Men: Apocalypse, a $178 million (at least) budgeted summer blockbuster intended to launch untold amount of sequels and spin-offs. Nope, their big success story was Deadpool, a film Fox executives had zero confidence in and cost less than a third of X-Men: Apocalypse. And yet, Deadpool managed to make $200 million more domestically alone than X-Men: Apocalypse, the latter film managing to make slightly less at the domestic box office than the sixteen year old X-Men movie that started it all.

X-Men: Apocalypse Review

As the clouds loomed overhead, Erik Lensherr, A.K.A. Magneto (Michael Fassbender), took in the sights of his surroundings, an area he had not inhabited for so very long. This was Auschwitz, where he and his parents had been separated four decades ago. All of the memories of the pain come flooding into his body, the emotional turmoil that had eliminated any remaining affections he had carried for the human race. Standing amongst the ruins of where his entire life had been shattered by forces far more evil than any comic book supervillain, a weary Erik took in every sight, every sound of this domain. Standing directly behind him in this emotional moment are (among others) Olivia Munn in basically a purple swimsuit and Oscar Isaac splattered in blue paint.

X-Men Is Far Far From Perfect, But It Forever Changed the Superhero Movie Game

This Friday brings a project to the big screen few thought would ever truly exist...a live-action Deadpool movie. The eighth feature film in the live-action X-Men feature film series in 16 years, it's one of a number of project Fox has in the pipeline for this universe of mutants, most of which are movies (X-Men: Apocalypse of course arrives in May, and next year will bring the final solo Hugh Jackman as Wolverine movie and will likely unleash a solo Gambit film unto the Earth) and a few of which are TV shows (such as the Dan Stevens FX program Legion). With all of these mutant projects on the horizon, it's easy to forget this whole shindig started with one little 2000 feature film called (what else?) X-Men.

I Was Totally Wrong! Channing Tatum Will Be Gambit After All!

Earlier in the week, I published an article claiming Channing Tatum would be not playing Gambit in the X-Men franchise, a surprise to many considering his passion for the project. Frankly, I had heard from people the night the news broke that nothing was set in stone and that maybe Tatum would end up staying on the project, but in a rare move of pessimism from yours truly, I chalked that kind of chatter to just wishful thinking.

Fault In Our Stars Director To Tackle X-Men Spin-Off, The New Mutants!

As the X-Men cinematic franchise prepares to expand next year, hopes are high for this 15 year old film series. In addition to a new X-Men feature (Apocalypse) due out next May, new spin-offs centered on Deadpool and Channing Tatum as Gambit will help take advantage of all the storytelling possibilities this universe has. Now a new project has emerged; a film centered on The New Mutants!

Get A Feel Of The Cast, Scope And Humor Of Fantastic Four With New Trailer!

A lot of this summers big blockbusters (Ant-Man, Terminator: Genisys) have been releasing trailers recently, likely in order to make sure their shown on Avengers: Age of Ultron. This trend continues tomorrow when Jurassic World releases its new trailer, and now 20th Century Fox has gotten into the game by releasing a new look at the Fant4stic, er, Fantastic Four.

Michael Fassbender Goes West In Trailer For Slow West

Michael Fassbender has been on a roll for pretty much his entire career. Whether it's been a great complicated villain in the X-Men movies, having a terrifying presence in 12 Years A Slave or being the star of one of last year's most underrated movies, Frank, the guy is usually quite compelling in his acting work. His next venture is Slow West, a film that debuted at Sundance and one A24 (with help from DirectTV, which does movies now too I guess?) is distributing. Check out the trailer for the movie below!

A Look At The Various Superhero Movie Universes

There's about four superhero cinematic universes running around right now, each with varying degrees of success and potential. Since two of them unleashed trailers of their newest features onto the world in the past month, I thought it was time to look at each of these four superhero universes and analyze how well they're doing currently and what ventures they have planned for film and television in the future.

Editorial: Can We Start Giving Superhero Movies Some Respect?

The writer with the largest presence on Rope of Silicon, Brad Brevet, used to be one of my favorite writers when it came to the world of cinema, but sometime last summer, a shift happened in his writing. It was like a switch flipped in his brain or something, every single thing he wrote was dripping in gratuitous cynicism. Now, a cynical approach is not only a perfectly fine way to write pieces on movies, it can be a great angle if one does it in a successful fashion. Unfortunately, Brevet has made it tiring to read his endless mean-spirited attitudes towards blockbuster filmmaking.

Summer Movie Memories: All It Took Was Time Travel To Revive The X-Men Movies

Over the next seven days, I'll be looking at seven different summer movies from Summer 2014 and analyzing what really made them stand out this summer, for reasons both good and bad. Obviously, SPOILERS for X-Men: Days of Future Past lie ahead. 

Box Office Analysis: What May Movies Tells Us About The Rest Of The Summer

Well, May 2014 sure was huge. With 4 movies hitting $60+ million openings, it was the 5th biggest May on record and a rollicking start to the summer movie going season. Going forward, it must be said that there are certainly more larger tentpoles in the back half of the summer than last year, with Transformers: Age of Extinction, Dawn of The Planet Of The Apes and Guardians of The Galaxy still likely to rake in big bucks for studios.

Still, the large amount of those gives me pause, simply because many of the May movies didn't seem to have a lot of stamina, despite good word of mouth and reviews. This can be mainly attributed to the fact that a new summer blockbuster emerged each and every week; who has time to see Godzilla when X-Men just popped up?? It's a real shame, as it's rendered a film like Godzilla (my favorite movie of the summer so far) into the Ang Lee's Hulk of the summer through its disastrous plummets from week to week (the mixed reception it's received from the fanboy community also adds to this perception).

June is a bit more level, but there's really only one guaranteed conventional blockbuster that month; Transformers: Age of Extinction. Then, two weeks later, a constant barrage of summer blockbusters arrive. For six weeks straight, one big movie after another opens up. This is gonna make it difficult for non-sequels like Jupiter Ascending who have to contend with proven franchises like the Ninja Turtles and Planet of The Apes. Even then, those sequels will have to make as much money as possible in their first week before new releases come and steal some of the spotlight (the good news for these six major releases is that they'll have summer weekdays where they can make some extra cash)

Frankly, the situation isn't terrible, especially since we've always had to contend with a jam packed schedule in the summertime. But with all these giant tentpoles fighting for space, I just wish studios could be more flexible with their scheduling, which would allow greater opportunities for all. Consider this; The Lego Movie, Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Gravity all opened outside of summer (February, April and October respectively) and are going to make more money than any movie released in May.

X-Men: Days Of Future Past Review

Welcome to The Future

The X-Men face their most terrifying threat yet; Sentinels...and bad photoshop

The future is very rarely an idyllic place in the world of movies. Even family movies like WALL-E make sure it looks terrible, while R-rated movies go to the most extreme ways possible to prove just how deplorable the future is. The X-Men likely think everybody from Max Mad to Robert Neville got it easy though, as their future consists of giant adaptive robots killing every mutant in sight.

The opening scene of X-Men: Days of Future Past, which introduces us to those robots (called Sentinels), is a thing of beauty, as it beautifully sets up how miserable this future really is, as mutants are killed off in a casual manner that makes one sick. Besides setting up an impressive action and tone-defining sequence, the opening also shows off one of the movie’s greatest assets; it’s ability to make any character that pops up immediately memorable. The unique powers that comes with each of the many mutants we meet in the film are so darn cool that it’s hard not to root for them (my personal favorite is featured in that opening; Bishop, played by Omar Sy).

Soon though, Wolverine (still played terrifically by Hugh Jackman) is off to 1973, where he hopes to get younger versions of Xavier (James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender) to help prevent the creation of those pesky Sentinels. The arc Wolverine’s undergone in six of these seven movies has had it’s ups and downs, but it all culminates nicely here, as he has to take responsibility and be more of a helpful presence to the younger versions of Xavier and Magneto. Jackman handles this thoughtful side of the character in fine fashion, while also delivering an immensely quotable one-liner and awesome fight scene in similarly successful style.

The 1973 seen in this movie is a dazzling place that sucks one in due to the insane amount of detail here. That year really wasn’t that long ago, yet it feels like an entirely different world compared to the one we have today. Thankfully, they play up these differences to their maximum potential, as everything from Pong to Richard Nixon is given time to shine.This era also gets us to McAvoy who absolutely brings it as young Xavier, a tortured soul who’s now a drug addict and a recluse. McAvoy does do an excellent job making sure his character comes off across as damaged, but not unlikable, a tough balance that he pulls off nicely.

McAvoy and Fassbender had some terrific chemistry in X-Men: First Class (for me, still the best X-Men movie) and perhaps the film’s only disappointment is the lack of time the two spend together. The one major scene they do get is gripping, but soon Fassbender does some things that feel abrupt and unwarranted; I get why they did him, but they could have been executed better, especially since they come at the cost of Fassbender interacting with the spectacular ensemble cast. It doesn’t help that Fassbender does some stuff in the finale that feels….weird and a little over the top considering the circumstances he’s acting in. Add in some questionable actions involving Beast and Wolverine, and some of the climax of this feature does slightly underwhelm, though it’s saved by some final few set pieces that being the film back to glory.

Oh, and lest I forget, the rest of the ensemble cast, by the way, is thankfully well balanced, with Halle Berry and Ellen Page getting nice cameos while (contrary to the public consensus) Jennifer Lawrence does a superb job handling all the complexities Mystique has to endure in this film. By the way, you’ve likely heard by now about Evan Peters landmark action sequence as Quicksilver. Spoiler Alert: it more than lives up to the hype.

Really, some underwhelming aspects of the finale notwithstanding (which still pale to The Wolverine, which I was overly generous with last summer) X-Men: Days of Future Past is still excellent moviemaking that shows how good storytelling mixed with superb action is an extremely potent mix.