On the Notion that there might be anything to Spoil in X-Men 2

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It's one of those movies where plot is really really beside the point. Of course the good mutants will fight the bad mutants. And the good mutants will mostly win.

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Monday, 5 May 2003 15:00 (twenty-three years ago)

(shocked)

― amateurist (amateurist), Monday, 5 May 2003 15:07 (twenty-three years ago)

ehhhhhh, have you actually seen the film? there was very little mutant on mutant action in this one.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Tuesday, 6 May 2003 08:21 (twenty-three years ago)

Not spoil the plot, silly, the good lines.

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Tuesday, 6 May 2003 08:33 (twenty-three years ago)

yeh its not so much about giving away the general plot, more the scenes and sequences and indeed 'good lines'. that said, i walked into X-Men 2 with no real idea about what was going to happen other than the obvious outcome resulting in a relative triumph of good vs evil - in this case that good managed to prevail despite evil still remaining at large in the world and the battle never being resolved but despite this the refusal to abandon hope. and i was actually prepared for the possibility there was going to be more of a cliffhanger ending and i did get the impression that SOMEONE was going to sacrifice themselves but i never like to think about these things too much so didnt try and work out what was going to happen and in hindsight the somewhat inevitability of that sacrifice aspect.

― stevem (blueski), Tuesday, 6 May 2003 08:57 (twenty-three years ago)

at least it's not as bad as like,Titantic, y'know, the boat SANK.

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Tuesday, 6 May 2003 14:12 (twenty-three years ago)

in other news, the chick from the crying game is really a man

― jess (dubplatestyle), Tuesday, 6 May 2003 14:13 (twenty-three years ago)

i mean, uh, man what a great movie

― jess (dubplatestyle), Tuesday, 6 May 2003 14:13 (twenty-three years ago)

Hitchcock was right when he said that with a really good movie (i.e. his own) it doesn't much matter if you know what happens in the end.

― amateurist (amateurist), Tuesday, 6 May 2003 16:59 (twenty-three years ago)

But it can reduce the pleasure in watching a movie that isn't really good.

― slutsky (slutsky), Tuesday, 6 May 2003 17:12 (twenty-three years ago)

Meh, not really. If it's mediocre, it's mediocre. Knowing what happens matters little.

― Nicole (Nicole), Tuesday, 6 May 2003 17:14 (twenty-three years ago)

the whole point of a blockbuster isn't what's going to happen, it's how big will the explosions be?

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Tuesday, 6 May 2003 17:15 (twenty-three years ago)

OK, now we've staked out our positions, time for mudslinging.

― amateurist (amateurist), Tuesday, 6 May 2003 17:32 (twenty-three years ago)

In Presumed Innocent, the wife did it.

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Tuesday, 6 May 2003 17:38 (twenty-three years ago)

I've still never seen The Crying Game, and now jess has spoiled it for me.

― Mr. Diamond (diamond), Tuesday, 6 May 2003 17:54 (twenty-three years ago)

i feel like jay leno in 1990 or whatever

― jess (dubplatestyle), Tuesday, 6 May 2003 18:11 (twenty-three years ago)

Just as long as no one tells me the deal with Sixth Sense 'cause I haven't seen that one either, but I gather it's a real big deal.

― Mr. Diamond (diamond), Tuesday, 6 May 2003 18:18 (twenty-three years ago)

bruce willis is really her sister and her mother

― jess (dubplatestyle), Tuesday, 6 May 2003 18:20 (twenty-three years ago)

and Soylent Green is made out of Tofu

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Tuesday, 6 May 2003 18:24 (twenty-three years ago)

I've never seen Chinatown be referenced so much as in the past month around here.

― Ally (mlescaut), Tuesday, 6 May 2003 18:24 (twenty-three years ago)

and in Ka-Zaam the boy learns that wishes are nice, but hard work is more rewarding.

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Tuesday, 6 May 2003 18:25 (twenty-three years ago)

In Chinatown John Huston dies during autofellation, and it ends with Jack Nicholson caressing the eleventh toe of Faye Dunaway's child.

Sorry.

― amateurist (amateurist), Tuesday, 6 May 2003 18:29 (twenty-three years ago)

Where are the other X-Men threads? A search didn't bring them up. I want to see what you people had to say about the movies.

― amateurist (amateurist), Monday, 19 May 2003 16:45 (twenty-three years ago)

there's one called x-men 2: classic or classic? But I don't know where it is.

― slutsky (slutsky), Monday, 19 May 2003 17:06 (twenty-three years ago)

A ha!

XMen 2 - Classic or Classic? (spoilers)

― amateurist (amateurist), Monday, 19 May 2003 17:28 (twenty-three years ago)

Anyone else read the hilarious Rolling Stone review? Methinks someone should have told the reviewer that all of these ancilliary mutants actually exist in the comic books and have enormous histories, not so that he could write about them and satisfy comic book geeks, but just to avoid stupid comments like "Why did Singer create these characters?"

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Monday, 19 May 2003 18:35 (twenty-three years ago)

Oh, that is dumb. Was that a Peter Travers review?

― Nicole (Nicole), Monday, 19 May 2003 18:55 (twenty-three years ago)

Of course it was! Peter Travers, the arbitrary film critic.

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Monday, 19 May 2003 19:15 (twenty-three years ago)

A critic well known by default than by talent.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 19 May 2003 19:21 (twenty-three years ago)

What's un-neat is how Singer and screenwriters Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris overload the film with new Xers. Pyro (Aaron Stanford) is viably flashy, but do we need the steel guy, the screamer, the girl who passes through walls and the kid with the forked tongue? By expanding the X-Men franchise, Singer dilutes the film at hand.

I mean, okay, Pyro and Siryn were never big hitters and I'm not placing the kid with the forked tongue (cuz I haven't seen the movie yet), but dismissing SHADOWCAT and COLOSSUS as creations of the director/screenwriters???

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Monday, 19 May 2003 19:26 (twenty-three years ago)

Does Nightcrawler have a forked tongue?

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Monday, 19 May 2003 19:30 (twenty-three years ago)

even if they WERE creations of the moviemakers, they still served the purpose of letting you know that there were people and kids like this everywhere, with all kinds of abilities. And not all of them will or should turn out as heroes or villains.

If anything, the movie was underpopulated by normal people, such as the scene where Magneto flips the migraine switch on everyone else on the planet and it showed us THE PRESIDENT instead of headachey mayhem(ex. from within the film) in the museum, the bar, the ice kid's family, etc etc.

― g--ff c-nn-n (gcannon), Monday, 19 May 2003 19:43 (twenty-three years ago)

Yeah. The reference to the President felt surprisingly weak. Unlike in the first film they didn't seem to bother to try to sketch in a sort of political reality to serve as the background to the main plot. Striker seemed very much a lone mean wolf; they didn't take pains to connect him to a prevailing mood within the general population, save for one or two cutaways to "anti-Mutant" demonstrations. The penultimate scene ***SPOILERS*** where the mutants stand before the President after his speech is "interrupted" felt a bit desperate to me, like they didn't do the work of tying in the president into the rest of the narrative so this was their only means to bringing him in at the last minute. Granted it did afford the opportunity for a "photo-op" style gathering of all the X-Men which was neat.

― amateurist (amateurist), Monday, 19 May 2003 20:03 (twenty-three years ago)

agreed

― slutsky (slutsky), Tuesday, 20 May 2003 02:43 (twenty-three years ago)

Dan: I think it's possible not to read that paragraph as implying that Singer et al invented those characters, rather Travers may be saying simply that these mutants were new to the movie franchise and felt like clutter in that context.

Slutsky: what are you agreeing with me about?

― amateurist (amateurist), Tuesday, 20 May 2003 03:05 (twenty-three years ago)

I'm agreeing that there was no real political context to the movie, which gave the stuff with the president no real weight.

― slutsky (slutsky), Tuesday, 20 May 2003 03:09 (twenty-three years ago)

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