X-Men (an old 2010 post never posted)

One of the podcasts I listen to is doing a re-watch of the X-Men movies and weaving those in with the comic books, so I'm watching X2 this evening.

The X-Men movies have that sort of glossy blockbuster patina all over them, despite the attempt to go darker and more serious with black leather outfits and some serious heavy-duty casting. Famke Janssen has never been warmer or more approachable than in X2 as Jean Grey; Hugh Jackman has really never been manlier or more ironically humorous than as Wolverine (and that's saying something because he's both extremely manly and very funny). While Anna Paquin doesn't knock my socks off as Rogue, I love her character's big brother/little sister relationship with Wolverine. And you've got Ian McKellan, Patrick Stewart, Halle Berry on top of it all. This is not a low-budget flick by any stretch.

But it's not a thinking movie by any stretch either. You're to sit back and enjoy the special effects and the pretty people in the leather catsuits. Sure, it's fun, but that's about it.

I got to thinking about the premise as well. Sure, we've all dreamt of discovering we had special powers and finding others like us - I'd lay money that as a little kid, you wished you could fly, or you read a Harry Potter book and thought the idea sounded really cool. So the idea of the X-Men as a premise isn't new, but the way it's been handled feels fresh. I'm saying this, of course, not having read the comic books. I would be interested in reading them if someone had them in book format - as my attention span gets annoyed by having to wait a month to read more - and if I could get past the way the women are drawn - sex kittens with tiny waists and ginormous breasts, never in need of a good sports bra for fighting evil. I was poking around on the Marvel website to read more about the comic book characters, and, while I like the drawing style used in many of these types of comics (see Rogue or Jean Grey and ignore the boobs), I was more than a little put off by the way the women are portrayed. Of course, these books aren't made for me. They're aimed at young men, so double-Ds perfectly hung in Spandex makes sense.

Anyway, as a writer I'm curious about the powers the comic writers have assigned and the way the characters have been created. And while I think it would be really cool to have a comic-esque character drawn of me some day, she'd have to have more realistic proportions and far less skin showing than is de rigeur.