According to SuperHeroHype, 20th Century Fox has hired Simon Kinberg to write the sequel to this year’s X-Men: First Class movie. Kinberg was the writer of X-Men: The Last Stand, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Jumper, and Sherlock Holmes, so he has a track record of success. Let’s see if he can continue to rejuvenate the X-Men franchise with another hit.
Stephen Schleicher began his career writing for the Digital Media Online community of sites, including Digital Producer and Creative Mac covering all aspects of the digital content creation industry. He then moved on to consumer technology, and began the Coolness Roundup podcast. A writing fool, Stephen has freelanced for Sci-Fi Channel's Technology Blog, and Gizmodo. Still longing for the good ol' days, Stephen launched Major Spoilers in July 2006, because he is a glutton for punishment. You can follow him on Twitter @MajorSpoilers and tell him your darkest secrets...
11 Comments
I would not call X-Men: The Last Stand a success. That movie is terrible.
I was just coming in here to write that. Thank you.
X-Men : The Last Stand sucked. Why would you give this man another shot at an X movie? Knowing this information I now expect Magneto to be the bad guy, and no Sentinels to be seen.
X-Men: The Last Stand and Mr. & Mrs. Smith sucked, Jumper and Sherlock Holmes were pretty good, so he can do good or bad, let us just hope for the best for for it could go either way.
Co-sign all of the above, partiucularly X-Men: The Last Stand deeply sucking.
Let’s be honest here, though: X-Men: First Class, at least from a fanboy perspective, pretty much sucked, too.
That movie threw all semblance of continuity, either within the established ‘movie universe’ of the X-Men or within the larger ‘comic universe,’ and entirely threw it out the window just so that it could mash a bunch of characters into a story in which they didn’t fit.
Alex Summers, Scott’s younger brother, being a teenager in the 60’s? How’s that play with the rest of the X-Men universe? Emma Frost had already made an appearance as a teenager in one X-Movie (Wolverine: Origins) but now, 40 years before that movie is set, she’s the same age as Charles and Magneto? Is her other superpower that she’s Benjamin Button?
I don’t care if ‘critics’ liked it.
Batman Begins and The Dark Knight had both, at that point, long since proven you could tell a comic book story, tell it well, not deviate entirely from comic book continuity and still have both critical and box office success with it.
As much depth as there is within the X-Men franchise, even in re-booting it, there was no excuse for how far ‘off-script’ they went with this movie.
Critics liked XM:FC?
Yep. 87% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes aggregate.
actually I dont think the movie went off script in the least since its really a movie about prof x and magneto and in that respect its pretty awesome and spot on. the rest of the mutants and the plot are just back drop to explore the relationship between these 2 characters. if you think were ever going to see an x-men movie with any semblance of continuity with the comics your highly deluded. there is simply too much convoluted continuity in the x universe to ever represent it correctly in a movie.
Im not a critic Im a 38 year old fanboy whos been reading x-men since the ealy 80’s and Id say xmfc is easily the best x-movie thats been made so far.
Ive also read batman that long and if you think joker creating 2 face is in continuity your ignorant of batman continuity. also Lucius fox was invented for the cartoon and didnt come into continuity until batman 307. not to mention they skip the whole red hood origin of joker thing falling in the vat of chemicals ect. so thats an epic fail on batman movies as an example of good continuity in movies.
I’m really very tired of people trying to backpedal FOR Singer, Vaughn and all the rest when it comes to negating the fact (not opinion…FACT) that the intention was to be in continuity with the other X-Men movies (not the comics). I honestly don’t care if it’s in continuity with ANYTHING. What I CARE about is hypocrisy. If you try to sell me on something, then sell me on what it REALLY is.
The fact that they sold the movie as being in continuity with the other movies (and it wasn’t) was only one reason I didn’t like it. There were a host of other reasons.
Again. Like it, don’t like it…whatever your choice. But the reality is that they DID try to sell it as a prequel–not a reboot or re-imagining.
The funny part is, the closer you get to the release date of the movie, the less you see caveats, like Matthew Vaughn saying, “There are a lot of nods to the X-Men world and the X-Men movies, but it’s definitely its own beast,” in January or Singer saying “we made a few concessions,” in March.
Come June, that all seemed to disappear.
“Ive also read batman that long and if you think joker creating 2 face is in continuity your ignorant of batman continuity. also Lucius fox was invented for the cartoon and didnt come into continuity until batman 307. not to mention they skip the whole red hood origin of joker thing falling in the vat of chemicals ect. so thats an epic fail on batman movies as an example of good continuity in movies.”
Gee golly, I’m glad you schooled me on that one.
They also didn’t bother to mention Jeannie being the reason why he helped those crooks break in to Acme Chemical either. Man, what an epic failure to not include irrelevant parts of his back story and, instead, focus on the overall confusion of how he came to be what he became and his acting as the unpredictable chaotic element.
Nor, is there any mention of Gilda Dent in The Dark Knight, which is clearly an unforgivable affront to the sensibilities of all Batman comics readers. I mean, sure, they managed to seamlessly tie Dent’s story in to the universe that has been created in the re-booted Batman movies and turn him into Two-Face in a way that would’ve made sense in a modern, real-world version of Gotham (because, really, what criminal is going to be able to smuggle acid into a courtroom in a post-9/11 world?).
And including a character Lucius Fox who’s, as you note, currently ‘in continuity’ both in the cartoons that moviegoers might’ve seen and in the comics they might go pick up off of the shelves to read? That’s just plain unthinkable.
And, at the end of the day, all of your complaints about revisions to Batman’s comics continuity are still completely off-point, as the point wasn’t whether or not comics continuity could be changed to make an effective movie but, rather, how it could be changed to tell a story that makes sense without entirely deviating from what comics readers want to see and what movie-goers know as ‘established continuity.’
(After all, these movies are really nothing more than marketing tools to get new readers to go pick up the books associated with them. But, I digress …)
Batman Begins and The Dark Knight both handled that challenge flawlessly, which X-Men: First Class didn’t.
I’ll be the first one to invoke some Major Spoilers product placement and say “eff continuity”. X-Men: First Class is not a good movie; it is a GREAT movie! It is easily the best X-Men movie there’s been and it isn’t even close. In fact, it’s one of the top five “comic-book” movies done so far.
I still haven’t seen “Captain America”, though my kids say it’s great but I have seen “Thor” and “X-M FC” is hands down the better movie. And this is coming from someone who holds Thor in very high regard. It was the first comic I read and the first comic I collected and Simonson’s run on Thor beginning with issue 337 is still my favorite super-arc in all of comics.
I don’t care that the “window-dressing” particulars of “X-Men: First Class” are out of continuity. Considering how convoluted and warped X-Men comic book continuity is, I think it’s a good thing this movie “reboots” the timeline. They couldn’t have done it any other way and done it as well as they did, IMO.
I do care that it has an excellent plot with highly developed characters and actors who showed a joy for the material. As I said, it’s a great movie.