'X-Men: Days Of Future Past'

1.7 Gigawatts And It's Back to ...1973!

The X-men franchise is getting on a bit. It's always been pretty good,what with the original crew headed up by Hugh Jackman bearing the standard. Some of the entries across the 7 or so films have been less interesting than the others, but overall, the X-men movies are the movies that keep delivering for Fox.

Spoiler alert. Don't proceed if spoilers would ruin it for you.

What's Good About It

1973. Come on, you thought I wouldn't say so? It's a little bit like 'X-men does American Hustle'. It even features Jennifer Lawrence who was quite convincing as a denizen of the 1970s in 'American Hustle'. The scenes of a very hairy Wolverine and Charles Xavier driving around in a Cadillac and wearing brown leather jackets, sporting sideburns was quite fitting. The mimesis of the film is Part 'French Connection', part 'Twelve Monkeys', part 'Dick', but also part ret-conning the 'X-men First Class' movie on to the older X-men movies, this one has some interesting moments of character interplay. And really, it helps a comic book movie greatly if the characters give you something more than just smashing through stuff.

What's Bad About It

I'm not sure the movie makes sense by its own logic. There's something of the story that leaves you a bit miffed when at the climax the bad future fades and disappears. Only Wolverine and Charles Xavier know what happened but there's no real objective evidence for it having happened. In that sense it shares the problems of "it was all a bad dream" ending.

What's Interesting About It

I undersold this movie in the introduction above. It's actually a great sentimental movie, pulsing with the love for these characters. It's downright melodrama, but there's enough of an edge to it to let you forget how melodramatic the story is. The best bits of the film are things like the scene where Wolverine makes the young Charles promise he will put together the X-men and find Jane Gray, Scott and Storm. If we didn't know how important that was - having seen the  earlier films - then how could we ever weigh up the importance of Wolverine's plea?

Some people won't like the sentimentalism of this nature, but after 6 other X-men movies it seems acceptable to have one rendition where everybody is being brought together for great stakes, and for once we get to see past the comic book superhero facade. It's interesting that after 5 films and 1 cameo, Hugh Jackman is exerting such moral authority with his Wolverine character. It's interesting when the young and old Charles Xavier talk. It's interesting when Magneto takes matters into his own hands twice, once as an old man and once as a young man and each time he fails.

The Suffering Of Magneto

Magneto is actually the emblematic character in the X-men movies. The whole cycle of movies started way back when with a beginning rooted in Auschwitz, where we first saw the mutant powers of a Jewish boy who could magnetically manipulate metals, remotely. Having survived the Holocaust, Magneto is hyper-motivated not to suffer the same fate of being on the end of an extermination campaign just because he is a mutant.

Effectively he is facing a pogrom for the second time in his life when the film starts, so in some ways his determination to fight for his cause is far more understandable. As villains go, Magneto's motivation is possibly the most sympathetic. The irony is that he himself is some kind of Nietstzchean superman, so when he decides to take matters into his own hands, he has essentially given in to the inner fascist implanted into him in his childhood. It's totally tragic, because it's almost the moral mirror image of 'Schindler's List' - to survive, he thinks he has to put together a list of people who have to die.

As with all the installments, it is Charles Xavier who has to appeal to his compassion and sense of justness to rein in the runaway fury, but no matter how many times I go back to these X-men movies I can't but help think that may be Charles is fundamentally wrong about the universe he inhabits. If there were mutants with such powers, there may well be a struggle for survival and Magneto would be entirely justified in being as radical as he is. It's a scary thought that puts me in the shoes of Peter Dinklage's character Bolivar Trask. It's actually quite uncomfortable to watch at times.

Tolerance And Takei

On a tangential note, the film has had mixed press about its racial politics. The film kicks off with a multi-cultural, multi-racial bunch of mutants in the future, but they give way to the same old heroic white people in the middle where it counts. I get the criticism for this sort of critique but on another level, it's not like it's the only film that's guilty of populating the important story arc with heroic white people. It's probably some progress Hollywood wants to do things this way than not at all.

Importantly, the film references the original series of Star Trek, which must have been the grand-daddy of all tolerance texts in the history of American screen culture. We see Captain Kirk babbling on about a time travel scenario, and it cuts to George Takei as Mr. Sulu. Mr. Sulu and Lt. Uhura broke huge ground for non-white actors, and consequently the position on tolerance in American society itself. Not only has George Takei stood up for the Asian community, he's been a vocal activist for the LGBT cause, so it's very evocative to see the 'Star Trek' cuts in this film, and reflect on the distance traveled since 1973.

"Dickie's Such An Asshole"

Inevitably, the film features a fictional Richard Nixon. This portrayal of Nixon doesn't have the punch of other portrayals; he's barely there. The gag of the tape recorder in the drawer getting turned off was funny, but otherwise it was a very odd portrait of Nixon, largely untainted by Watergate. I guess we need to be tolerant of a President in history full of interesting foibles too.

The more interesting aspect of going back to 1973 probably is the fact that the last years of the Nixon administration were the years in which faith in the American government was destroyed. not only did America lose the Vietnam war - which is of course touched upon in the story of this film, Nixon ending the gold standard essentially cut the world's currencies adrift, and with it unleashed a multitude of valuation and therefore moral relativism. Part of the reason why the 70s hangs so heavy over this film as well as 'Captain America: Winter Soldier' has its roots in the disintegrating trust in the public institutions that ensued.

The end of the monolithic government started with Richard Nixon and Watergate and really has culminated with Wikileaks and Snowden-in-exile. Is this all Nixon's fault? Most definitely not, but it is an interesting thing to see both Captain America and X-men round in on the Nixon administration as a cornerstone of its re-tellings of history. In that sense, it has a great deal in common with 'The Watchmen' where the reign of Nixon's Presidency does not end and goes into the 1980s. On one level, it arguably did.

 

I Get Asked What I Think Sometimes...

12.8 million For Hugh, Nothing For You

The news this week for film industry types is that Hugh Jackman is going to bring his next Wolverine production back to Sydney. Because the degree of my jadedness - my ad-jade-ment if you will - is at such proportions, I thought I'd just not comment on it until Pleiades brought this little thing to my attention:

You’d have thought that riches to rags story had taught Australian politicians that dumb subsidies don’t work and may have actually damaged the local film industry more than it helped.

Unfortunately not.

Last week the Australian federal government announced $13 million in support for production of Wolverine. The prime minister’s office gushed:

"To attract The Wolverine to Australia, the Gillard government granted the producers a one-off payment of $12.8 million which will result in over $80 million of investment in Australia and create more than 2000 jobs.

"The payment effectively provided The Wolverine a one-off investment package equivalent to an increase in the existing location offset to 30 per cent.

"Without this effective tax offset incentive, the producers of The Wolverine would not have chosen Australia as the location."

"That's just the nature of this government," thundered Pleiades. "It's all about bribing people. It's corruption and bribery that's marked this government."

I'm inclined to believe it's true. What's truly spectacular about this account is that 12.8million can buy you a lot of things in the film industry: development, advertising support, distribution support, publicity. Instead, Julia Gillard's government has chosen to hand this over to a Hollywood production on the grounds that it's going to be shot in Australia. Heck, there are any number of good film scripts out there to be made for a flat 12.8million. When you consider that the annual budget at AFTRS used to be 9million p.a. (I think it might even be less now), you think "wow, they really don't care about the front end of the industry, they only care about the rear end."

They could have done a lot more things with that money that actually helped.

All this is to say that it is incredibly dubious as to what merit there is in throwing this money at Hugh Jackman's production which is already funded out of the Hollywood machine. Now, I'm not taking anything away from Hugh Jackman who is able to do so, but you have to seriously question the ALP government where they really stand with regards to the rest of the Australian film industry. It's nice that some of the crew and special effects houses and post-production houses will get some business coming through, but when it's done, it's going to be the breadline for most of those people again. The ALP government can't be buying temporary jobs like that, they should be trying to re-establish the industry as a industry instead of this public-money-consuming sheltered workshop - assuming they're serious.

Which, they're not. So why am I bothering with this today? Oh yes, I got asked what I thought.

More On The Sheltered Workshop Thing

Here's a more detailed account of what they think they're doing.

Hugh Jackman is returning to Australia to make The Wolverine, his sixth outing as the Marvel character, thanks to a $12.8 million federal government subsidy.

And while billed as a “one-off”, the local film industry has its fingers crossed that the near-doubling of the standard assistance for a big-budget foreign production is a sign of things to come in next month’s budget.

The Wolverine is set in Japan but will be shot at Fox Studios in Sydney between July and December. Hugh Jackman will star and produce. “It’s so great to bring these big movies down there, to keep people working,” Jackman told the Today program from London, where he is filming Les Miserables for Oscar-winning director Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech). “I just have to say thanks to Prime Minister Gillard, she was instrumental with this.”

Yikes. Sounds awful already. Set in Japan but shot in Sydney sounds a bit like the Last Samurai which was set in Japan but shot in NZ. Nothing wrong with that, just that it looked really weird in many parts. I'm resigned to there being an alternative universe where there is a Japan that is totally on another planet with totally weird things going on. Even so... let that slide for now.

The patent myth - and outright wishful thinking on the part of SPAA - is that this is going to lead to there being more direct input from the Federal government to lure productions to Australia so that they hire Australian crew and talent. The other patent myth is that once this Wolverine Production starts or finishes in Australia that it's going to open the flood gates for more productions to come back through the Fox lot that is mostly sitting dormant right now, thanks to the high Aussie Dollar. When you choose to look at the funding through these two rose tinted glasses, then sure, this $12.8million seems like chump change. But as with the generous amount of government money dropped on Baz Luhrman's 'Australia' , there's nothing that strengthens the industry, nothing that gives it an ongoing mechanism for growth, nothing that allows for the Australian industry itself to grow unless you define the Australian Film Industry as a service industry for Hollywood in which case why are we doing this?

Haven't we been here before with Baz Luhrman's number?

The point is, it's not even good policy to be throwing money at a Hollywood production, just so it comes here to shoot. If they don't come of their own accord, it's proof positive that our service part of the film industry isn't competitive enough. We're either going to be competitive on the world market on our own merits or not. The producers hoping the government's going to make a habit of funding these things are uncompetitive swill, sucking on the government teat wanting more. I'm sorry but years and years of public funding has reduced our film industry to these kinds of producers getting the loudest voices.

On a personal note, I struggled greatly to convince the production for Kamui Gaiden to come here when their main objection was cost - and that was when the Australian Dollar was only 70yen. Had somebody handed even 5million on a platter, it probably would have happened here or NZ instead of Okinawa; but nobody was there to do it because it was during the time the FFC was being rolled into Screen Australia, just before the GFC hit. (And really, it was probably the natural course of things that it didn't happen that way, which was not only my loss but arguably Australia's film industry's lost opportunity.) Still, that was the last straw for me.

It goes back to the problem that the people who want the industry don't know what they're getting; the people in the industry don't know what market they're operating in; and the world really doesn't like in-between-ers, which is exactly what our film industry is.

Wolverine Review

X-Appeal

In the never ending cascade of comic-book-based fodder comes something with a bit more Australian colour, Hugh Jackman's self-produced 'X-Men Origins: Wolverine'. Nobody would have guessed way back when the first X-men movie hit the screen but not only has Hugh Jackman's rendering of Wolverine eaten up the X-men films, this spin off likely signals that he's eaten up a good portion of Marvel's cache, even considering the outstanding franchises.

In that sense it's possibly an indicator for future comic book films. So far the box office receipts are strong, which is a good sign for Marvel. If the market gets saturated with superhero movies, it won't be long before the era will draw to a close as the market retreat to the hardcore comic book afficianados only. With that in mind, it's actually quite a brisk, entertaining film.

On a wider perspective, I do continue to wonder if it is healthy for the long term business of films that they adapt so many of these pieces of fiction for built-in audiences.

What's Good About It

Wolverine's Origin tackles the more prosaic aspect of how a superhero comes to be through a quick title-sequence which segues into a montage of wars Wolverine and his brother Sabertooth fight in through history. In that sense it's not really the essential origin (if such a thing can be described) but just another earlier episode that tells us how Wolverine came into the first X-men movie with his memory loss. Skipping the tedium of how any superhero comes to be the superhero is always a good move.

Hugh Jackman is pretty smooth playing Wolverine, now that he's into the fourth movie of playing this guy. If anything we step into this film too seamlessly as we are introduced to a whole rogue's gallery of Marvel universe figures - from Deadpool, Sabertooth Agent Zero, and Major Stryker through to Gambit. It's pretty cool seeing these characters but there's an aspect to this inter-textuality that demands a proper closure, which of course is never going to come within the film. Still, it's pretty interesting to see Gambit and Deadpool.

The action sequences are pretty big and the explosions are heady. It's nice seeing the bits and pieces of Australia and New Zealand peeking through the scenery. The directing is very assured and possibly too good for what is essentially a computer-generated comic book that moves. It's like a waste of talent.

All the same, the film is a nice addition to the X-men franchise of movies that leaves you entertained the whole way through. It's certainly a lot more articulate and more coherent in its problematic than the Hulk movies, and while this film never reaches the richness of sentiment that the Spiderman movies reach effortlessly, it's a very compassionate film about brothers.

What's Bad About It

I take exception with the more technical aspects of this film more than the other comic book movies. Some of the compositing is crap. The Computer graphics weren't all shit-hot as the other X-men movies were. It's some of the shoddiest CGI stuff I've seen in a while. The audio is a little strident and the picture is a little blurry in parts - but that may have been the idiot teenager projectionist butchering the film where I saw it.

Also, the Wolverine  persona as portrayed by Jackman is pretty cool, but I sort of wonder if they're over-investing in one character when the whole X-men Universe needs to move on from the 3rd film, rather than delve into the past to explain this one character. At the end of the day, Wolverine is a gritty angry dude who can't really remember why. So be it, I thought. Why got to this lengths instead of making episode 4?

I kept wondering if there might have been a better story to have attempted, given the talent and budget they've assembled. It's one thing to think this after the film, but I was wondering this half way through the film which is never a good sign.

What's Interesting About It

The world is full of tedious revenge stories. It's as if a good 30% of fiction seems to be motivated by revenge. One of Steven Seagal's best films is 'Hard to Kill', which is about vengeance. The most important play in English, 'Hamlet' is about revenge. We like revenge stories - but if there's one thing you can say about them then, is that that they are *done*.

So to see yet another film building to this stuff made my heart sink. Except at the the climactic encounter between Wolverine and Major Stryker, you come to realise the Revenge thing was a set up. It's a weird moment when Wolverine realises that no, she's not dead at all; they made him think she was dead in order to motivate him to do... what exactly? I don't know, but the action barrels along into the next sequence so quickly it doesn't matter. If you're Wolverine, there's always the next mutant to fight. But it's this weird moment that turns the revenge motif on its head, that is a nice touch. It's almost worth the price of admission when it gets to that moment where Wolverine has to ponder what exactly he's going to do.

The final battle becomes further confused as the sequence of events unravels around the broken revenge motif. Wolvering confronts Sabertooth, but if his girlfriend mutant is not dead, then his motivation for killing him is gone - which segues into the sequence where he frees the captured mutant kids and then into the confrontation with Weapon XI - the re-engineered Deadpool, where he is joined by his brother Sabertooth in fighting this hyper-mutant.

At the end of the film, Wolverine witnesses the death of his lover, but he has no memory of who she is. So going into the future, he is angry about the loss of his memory but he's actually not angry about how his lover got killed in the fight to free the mutants.