X-Men Trilogy (X-Men/ X2 - X-Men United/ X-Men - The Last Stand)
I have to say, I'm pretty excited about watching this movie largely in part because I really liked X-Men a lot more than I had ever anticipated.
After watching the movie:
(Possible spoilers below)
I wasn't even a little disappointed with this movie. I'm sure there may have been a few die hard X-Men fans who maybe didn't like it as much as I did, but that seems to go without saying. Now that I've at least seen the first two movies, I feel a little more connected to the story but I'm just barely inside the gates.
I have to say though, as I'm starting to think about this next feature film that I'm going to be taking on, this movie had to have been in production for what seems like years. Our shooting schedule for the low, independent budget I'm about to take on is eighteen days. It took about that same amount of time to film the fight sequence between Wolverine and Yuriko. That's insane to me! I can't wrap my mind around what it would have been like to try to match continuity for something we shot six months ago. Only because my sister's birthday is six calendar months after mine, do I very vaguely remember what I was doing six months ago. The shooting schedule really shouldn't be too big of a surprise though, because it was clearly set to be a summer blockbuster. (The movie would actually be entered into The Guinness Book for World Records for having the widest film release. The movie opened on 3,741 screens on the same day.) I'm just sayin' that kind of time and resources would be nice to have. Just what kind of time and resources did they have exactly? The replica of the President's desk in the Oval Office, it took two months to build. Two months! For a desk that isn't in a big chunk of the movie.
The second movie like the first required a lot from the actors as well, which makes me appreciate them more for their dedication to the series. Remember all the time it took to put Rebecca Romijn into full costume? Five hours. Which to put into better perspective for those who aren't familiar with the industry, a typical day for any production (both cast and crew) is twelve hours. Which means for the first five hours of her day, Rebecca Romijn was in makeup. Which means there was roughly an hour before lunch when she could be on set and ready to shoot. And although I never found any actual number, it can be safely assumed that then removing all the makeup took more than 30 minutes at the end of her day. Luckily for her, this time she wasn't required to wear the same kind of contact lenses and her eyes were done digitally in post production.
Aside from Rebecca though, there were a lot of other actors who I think also deserve a lot of credit for their time spent in makeup, performing various stunts, and filming sequences that took weeks to complete. Alan Cumming, who played Nightcrawler, spent ten hours in makeup specifically for the scene in the church where his skin and makeup is visible from the waist up. Kelly Hu had to grow out her fingernails in order to glue the claws into place that she wore as Lady Deathstrike. I think that would have been the most difficult part for me. I would have been so afraid that I was going to break a nail, and nothing hurts more than having a nail rip/break off too far into the bed of the nail. I cringe just thinking about it.
Final thoughts: I loved this movie. I thought it was a lot of fun and I didn't think it was too campy or over the top. Having known nothing previously about the X-Men series, I thought those who wrote and drafted the story did an amazing job bringing in new characters without just completely forgetting about characters from the first movie. At this point it's a little hard to say which movie I liked better, because both turned out great and having watched them both only once and nearly back-to-back I can safely say that I just liked both movies a lot. Although I have to say I thought the addition of Nightcrawler was brilliant. I think I even said (out loud) "Of course" when he rescued Rogue from being sucked out of the jet. Well played X-Men, well played.
OFFICIAL COUNT 92 DOWN 273 TO GO
Next up: The Lady From Shanghai
No comments:
Post a Comment