Revisiting the Older Marvel Films (part 1)

It dawned on me the other day that X-Men is 22-years-old. I remember the excitement at the time about a live action Marvel film after some forgettable rubbish that had gone previously, most notably the Blade films, which were all right, the Punisher films which weren't and the odd thing like Daredevil etc. Yet with X-Men there was this sense that the 21st Century could be the time of the superhero live action film and to a not so aging geek like myself, not yet 40, this was a good thing.

It also dawned on me that I haven't seen X-Men for about 20 years, nor had I watched any of the five previous Spider-Man films more than once, with a good chance I've never actually got around to watching Andrew Garfield's second outing. I've that to experience, but for someone so involved in comics for so much of my life, not watching these superhero films more than once seems odd. I've now seen all of the recognised MCU films and I'm expecting to see the new Spider-Man film in the next few months, so I thought I'd give the 'originals' and the first three X films another look, to see if I could understand why I've only seen some of them once.

Spider-Man is odd. It's a clever updating of the origin but Parker (Tobey Maguire) and his peers are all basically too old and too much like their original 1960s comics counterparts. In fact it's dripping in nostalgia and homage to Steve Ditko and John Romita, the artists who draw Spidey for their first ten years. Aunt May almost looks like she'd walked from the pages of Ditko's early issues and everything was suitably slightly pantomime - lots of melodrama and facial acting. It does, in so many ways, capture the original comic better than any other comic adaptation since. The Spidey special effects are really good to a point and while there was an excessive use of webbing, it illustrated the uniqueness of the character.

However, when we wander into the world of Norman Osborne things get a little dodgier and with hindsight as there had been the hint there were other superheroes out there in a throw away line, having Ozcorp go against Stark Industries in a bid for a government contract might have been an interesting little nugget. The thing is there shouldn't be anything wrong with a science company trying to come up with a) a super soldier serum and b) a battle suit; I just couldn't imagine the US Military being interested in a battle suit that makes you look like a goblin and a flying hoverboard. 

Considering this was about Peter Parker the student now with enhanced abilities, there didn't seem to be much building on character or continuity or even an attempt to make the actors more than just the characters they were on the comics page, in a way they were even less. The preamble to the ending should have been a little more sophisticated in its set-up, but it all feels a little 1920 silent film peril and when the Green Goblin finally fights Spidey the overriding feeling you get is you're watching a slightly more expensive version of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. The movement of the Goblin from fight scenes to extrapolating about how brilliant he is all look a bit Toho Godzilla.

Plus the ending stinks and was so unlike anything a Spider-Man of my early life would have done. It did, however, feel like a BIG film and important film and one that allowed Marvel characters the same gravitas afforded to Batman (and Superman).

X-Men - [let's come back to the ol' webslinger in a bit] Things I noticed quite clearly: 1) It's a remarkably short film for such a grand idea. 2) It's glaringly obvious, even with advances in CGI, that the X-Men are not as visually spectacular as many of the other MCU heroes and only Wolverine has the feel of a character with longevity. 3) It's a load of shit. It simply doesn't really make a lot of sense and when it tries to make sense it simply muddies the water. From the initial Wolverine and Rogue meeting where she's a runaway who introduces herself as 'Rogue' - WHY? He's a cage fighter called the Wolverine, that's almost plausible, but why a codename - she isn't a superhero? To the amount of testosterone on display throughout the film from Cyclops; James Marsden just growled like a spoiled teenager and the relationship between him and Jean Grey just seemed like it was there; the two characters interaction didn't suggest they were making the beast with two backs all the time. The woeful dialogue that sounds more like a PowerPoint explainer than a feature film. The fact they're just a bit crap and send a man with a metal skeleton against a bloke who controls magnetism? You could literally go on and on and on picking holes in this film, it's that bad. 

Turning people into mutants? For fuck's sake! As a holder of Biggest X-Fan in the UK for many years, I can honestly say I must have liked the film first time around because I've got the DVD, unless someone bought it for me, then I have an excuse. It has a bunch of fine actors hamming it up in a film so pantomime that it makes Spider-Man seem like a David Lynch film. These actors must have been paid a lot of money. X-Men might have benefitted if it had been made by David Lynch, because otherwise what you have is just a bunch of scenes sewn together with bullshit. I don't even really want to talk about it; it felt like an episode of McMillan & Wife with a budget.

Before I leave this alone, hopefully for the last time ever, I want to return to that point #2 and how the X-Men might not work on the big screen. Not only is the Marvel mutant universe fat, bloated and unwieldy to try and find a way of shoehorning it into the existing MCU - unless it's done when we have a reunification of the multiverse in a few years time - but Marvel has attempted to introduce various incarnations of 'mutant type' characters before and they've all failed. If Agents of Shield is cannon then there's The Inhumans in that series and the failed solo-series and, now, in many respects The Eternals represent a sort of higher level of mutantness - because the similarities between what the Eternals can do and what the X-Men do is a bit similar. 

All of the later X films, with the dreadful acting and SFX did nothing to convince anyone that X-Men work on camera - yeah some of them do, but if you're going to be selective about who you use and how you use them then the key reason The X-Men became so popular is lost.

It's my belief that mutants would work better as a Marvel/Disney TV series, the problem with that is it would need ramping and speeding up if you didn't want to spend the first half a dozen series plodding around with scene setting, because 1960s X-Men wasn't really a good comic until it was being cancelled. Nothing in the MCU rule book says the X-Men and mutants have to have a similar 'origin' to their comic roots like the other heroes in the universe have, but part of the reason the MCU works is its willingness to stick to the structure that made the comics successful in the first place.

Spider-Man 2 - Here's the thing; I know many people think this is the complete superhero film or at least the best Spider-Man film of the live action ones, but it's remarkably boring. The amount of time it takes Peter to persuade Otto to do the right thing I could have died and not given a shit. If Sam Raimi's first film was an exploration of and homage to 1960s Spider-Man comics, then the sequel is his attempt at doing a serious superhero film with the comicbook backdrop. This is all about struggle; all of the main characters are struggling with something - Peter with his life, Aunt May with the bills, Harry with the death of his father, MJ because of her love life, Otto Octavius because his work is not happening the way he wants it and it's already cost him his wife. If people aren't struggling they're crossing people who are trying to make them struggle.

With 2 we've ditched the Flash Thompsons, streamlined the core cast down, and devoted the time the first film should have spent on character development and failed dismally. I simply didn't care about any of the characters any more, not that I had that much emotional attachment after the first film. It is a good superhero film; the fight scenes are considerably better, with Raimi's stop motion blending in well, but the film needed another villain or an action distraction. Peripheral characters were so shallow they were literally plot devices. Don't get me wrong, it is a good film to a point, I just don't think that point is higher than about average.

The penultimate scene of the film would, most definitely, be a mid-credit scene now and the ending was about as perfect an ending you could have for a Spider-Man film.

A slight digression...

In 2005, Marvel had its name tagged onto a US/Australian film called Man-Thing. Everything about the film until it starts is Marvel. The flashing comic images, music, etc., it's obviously linked to the Multiverse in some way or shape especially if it can make Disney money. Let's just say that I have indeed sat through this film and I can honestly say that apart from the names of the characters and the ones named after Man-Thing creators there is nothing remotely similar to the comic apart from possible exposition. It makes the DC Swamp Thing films of the 1980s (with Adrienne Barbeau getting her baps out) look like true classics. If I were Kevin Feige I'd buy all copies and burn them.

And if you're waiting for X-2, The Amazing Spider-Man 1 & 2 and X-Men: Last Stand, that's going to be next time because I have some decent stuff to watch before I have to dive into that anachronistic bunch again.