On films and mutant thingies!

[theweaselking]

Day Of Future Past did not disappoint. Reasonably paced, coherently plotted, consistently entertaining, doesn't contain any especially blatant pants-on-head-stupid parts. My only real complaint can be summed up as "a Nixon says what?" which I'm sure you will also see when you get to it, and does not ruin the movie.

As superhero movies go, it is by far the best X-Men movie, it is easily the best non-Marvel-Studios superhero movie ever made, and it is comparable to several of Marvel's own movies. This is high praise.

(Oh, and in the process it fixes most of the stupid parts of the previous, terrible X-Men movies. And it does so in a consistent in-world way, which is nice.)

Comments

[jsbowden.livejournal.com]

X-Men is Marvel, not DC. Am confused.

[kjn]

The X-Men (and I believe the Fantastic Four) movies aren't made by Marvel Studios, but by another movie studio under a license from Marvel.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

"Marvel Studios" is Marvel's in-house movie making crew. They made the Avengers movies - Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Guardians Of The Galaxy, etc.

Marvel Studios makes good movies.

They sold the movie rights for X-Men to 20th Century Fox a long time ago, before Marvel Studios existed, because they were nearly bankrupt and 20th Century Fox wasn't. 20th Century Fox are not Marvel Studios, and have only just now apparently figured out how to make a superhero movie that is actually really good. They are the only non-Marvel-Studios studio to have done so.

But the fact that TCF owns the rights to X-Men is why you never even see a reference to mutants in any of the Avengers movies - Marvel Studios doesn't own X-Men. And it's why you'll never see a reference to the Avengers in an X-Men movie, despite Wolverine, Quicksilver, and the Scarlet Witch being classic Avengers.

Marvel sold Spider-Man to Sony, which is why all the recent Spider-Man movies have sucked (Sony doesn't know how to make a superhero movie) and why Spider-Man will never, ever interact with or even mention The Avengers, Wolverine, SHIELD, or The Fantastic Four, despite all of them being people he works with regularly in the comics.


It's not as simple as Marvel vs DC, in the movies. Marvel's sold different characters to different studios, and kept some themselves, and while I'm sure they're regretting selling off the X-Men and Spider-Man *now*, at the time they didn't have a studio, didn't have a grand plan, didn't have a track record of making good movies, and didn't have enough money to stay in business if they didn't sell some movie rights.


[1] especially on terms where the movie rights only revert if the purchaser stops using them for a long time, which is why there will be a new shitty Spider-Man movie every two years, forever. Sony will never give Spider-Man back voluntarily, not when they can coast on Marvel's "hew, Marvel movies are pretty good"? vibe and keep making a profit until lightning strikes and they manage a good Spider-Man movie.

[skington.livejournal.com]

What, not even Spiderman 2? (The Toby Maguire one.)

[torrain.livejournal.com]

2004 is no longer recent.

See also: holy fuck I'm getting old.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

#1: The first two Spiderman movies were decent - they hired a nerd who loved comics and knew how to make movies (Raimi) to make a comic movie, and it worked well as a classic example of Superhero Movies From Before They Figured Out How To Make Superhero Movies. They were perfectly adequate, for the time.

#2: Those aren't "recent".

[lurkerwithout.livejournal.com]

I'd quibble with Wolverine being a Classic Avengers member, since he was added at the start of the Bendis-era. Not that the Bendis-era isn't several decades old at this point. Which, fuck I'm old and all...

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Quicksilver and The Scarlet Witch are themselves a pretty interesting kettle of rights, because they really are classic Avengers *and* classic Mutants.

And what's happened is that they were sold to TCF *as mutants*, but not *as Avengers*. TCF can use them (and did - Quicksilver appears in Days Of Future Past) but can't mention The Avengers or any of their history with Iron Man or Doctor Strange or anything like that.

In the mean time, Marvel Studios can use them (and did: Quicksilver and The Scarlet Witch will appear in Age Of Ultron) but can't mention that their power comes from being Mutants, or that their father is Magneto, or anything about them ever working with any of the other Mutants.