Tuesday, May 12, 2009

What origin story would you like to see next?

There is an interesting poll on Rottentomatoes.com today, talking about what origin story you would like to see next for the X-men. Wolverine's story was first, with a followup; apparently there is a Magneto movie, still in the pipeline somewhere, but after that, is there an X-man you would love to see an entire movie dedicated to?
Now, most people who voted for the pole predictably picked Gambit as the next origin story. It's only fair, as he was the most popular X-man, next to Wolverine, but I would not really be excited about this. Do we really need another "loner who was scorned and a guy who lost a love, but it's ok because he's a mutant with really cool special abilities, so he's also a bad ass," type character? After a certain time, doesn't that whole thing just become a bit too cliched?
Perhaps its the result of the last movie, or more likely the last three movies, but I am just not convinced the X-men franchise can be translated into a movie, or at least a really good movie. As far as I'm concerned, it hasn't been done yet, and it's not due to lack of technology, it seems to me its due to a lack of creative writing, or maybe a grasp of the source material in general. Furthermore, I don't see any of the characters as truly deep enough to have a full length feature movie with any depth. I mean, sure you can blow stuff up, and move bridges and stuff, but actually introducing us to these interesting characters has been something that was mismanaged, to say the least.
I'm going to go slightly off topic here, but, it's Kevin's movie blog, so, I'm entitled. The X-men franchise as a comic book had many story lines, but in my opinion, the root of the franchise was based on racism, and people, despite being different, and often facing violence fight to save the same people that would turn around and hang them. The movie franchise not only did not understand that, they couldn't seem to focus on a good storyline, or build the several unique characters. It is often hard to juggle the character development of multiple lead characters, but it is essential if you want the audience to feel for them during their toughest hour in the climax of the movie; with X-men, I couldn't have cared less. The only reason I was worried at the end of the first X-men was Anna Paquin was hot; the second movie, I was just too bored to care, and finally, the third, I was just praying for a stabbing so the movie would end. If you need tips on how to juggle multiple lead characters, ask Joss Whedon, especially with the Firefly series.

Now that I'm back on topic, which character would you like to see for a two hour feature film?

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