Life Goals
What’s this? Oh, nothing – just a write-up about/interview-with yours truly in THE NEW YORKER – only one of the most respected publications… pretty much ever, really.
Do I feel good about this? You bet your ass I do. But I feel even better about THIS passage making it into print:
“Donald Trump, for instance, gives ranters a bad name. “Fuck that guy,” Chipman said.”
My work here is done.
Review: VACATION (2015)
This review made possible in part by The MovieBob Patreon.
Despite the knowing self-mockery already displayed in the trailers, I feel like a certain amount of the new VACATION’s success is going to depend on how audiences (in the U.S. at least) feel about its relationship to the VACATION franchise – not in terms of “continuity,” but in terms of a vague sense of tonal-rightness: Of the now five “canonical” films in the series, on the first and third are in regular rotation, but they cast a long shadow over 80s and 90s comedy. People who’ve never even seen a VACATION movie feel they “know” what one is and/or should be, and I wonder if the “danger” for this continuation is that it’s aiming squarely for the darker, more mean-spirited original… which I’ve long suspected has been deposed as the defining entry in the series by the more sentimentally-michevious CHRISTMAS VACATION.
The question of whether or not this new VACATION is any good or not, apart from whether audiences will actually embrace it, is a more complicated matter…
The original VACATION is a bizarre animal of a movie, stuck partway between the winding-down 70s vibe of coked-out, sexually-charged anarchy comedy and the revving-up of the glossy, high-concept vibe that would define the 80s. It’s inspiration was a famously pitch-black short-story from John Hughes, “Vacation ’58,” that became a sensation in the pages of The National Lampoon. But where Hughes’ story was a backwards-looking dressing-down of the mythology of post-WWII American Nuclear Family (related in dryly unself-conscious manner by the family’s young son, it ends with the father being arrested after attempting to murder Walt Disney and the family not really caring all that much) the eventual film is about the Boomers who did that very dressing-down now trying to remake the myth and failing spectacularly.
Chevy Chase’s Clark W. Griswold Jr. was a pathetic idiot, yes, but there was weird nobility in his idiocy. Exactly smart enough to know he was stupid and be constantly working to conceal that fact under quick-wit and an almost heroic degree of false confidence. He was the id of the lie that was the (then) just-beginning Reagan Era personified – the lie that if white Boomers would just abandon their “radicalism” for Fortress Suburbia they’d be allowed to remake a “real” version of the All-American childhoods most of them never got to have. His film-length breakdown as the truth of this situation becomes inescapable is the all-important theme that makes VACATION more than just a string of repeating “Well this seems pleasant… no it doesn’t” setup/punchline sequences; and what makes CHRISTMAS VACATION the true sequel is that we see that theme pay off as Clark learns stop chasing an extension of that lie and build his own happiness.
This new VACATION indeed gets back to the spirit of the first: No muss, fuss, very little in the way of CHRISTMAS’s sentimentality – its a road trip where everything goes wrong and that’s that. The jokes are funny, the characters are enjoyable, it’s got a decent energy and the gags land more often than they don’t. What it’s missing, sadly, is a theme to call its own: The story is the same, as is the “ugliness under the American Road-Trip Mythology” moral, but they aren’t held together by anything that gives meaning to the mayhem. It’ll probably earn its money back, and a few of the setpiece gags will likely have folks talking for months down the road… but there just isn’t weight to any of it – a classic miscalculation in comedies of this type.
The best (or, at least, most VACATION-ish) joke hits right up front: Rusty Griswold (Ed Helms) has grown up to be an airline pilot. It’s a perfect gag because it makes sense connected to the rest of the series but also because it sets up his character as a separate entity from Clark. Rusty thrives on the comfort of the routine schedule, and when he learns by chance that the rest of his family (cheifly Christina Applegate as wife Debbie) isn’t anywhere near as enamored of it as he is (particularly yearly summers at a lakeside cabin) it’s a shock to the system; and to rectify things he goes with what worked for his own family once: A road-trip to Wally World.
If the premise has a central stumble, it’s in assuming that it absolutely needed to be a road trip at all – the idea is even more an anachronism than it was in the 80s, and one can easily imagine a whole new crop of jokes could be mined from the nightmare of 21st century air travel (and also Ubers, AirBnB type scenarios, etc). But a road trip it is, and that means we’re mainly watching updates to the broad strokes of the original, with mixed results: The ongoing “weird features” joke involving a foriegn rental car are mostly misses, outside of a gag involving the GPS voice getting stuck in Korean speech (“Why is it so much angrier than the others?”) it’s nowhere near as funny as the simple visual awfulness of the Wagon Queen; but an interlude with Griswold sister Audrey and her new ultra-rich Texan husband (Chris Hemsworth) is pretty amusing as an inversion of the Cousin Eddie sequence from the original, i.e. swapping “wealthy hyper-consuming ultra-conservatives” for “weirdo rednecks” in the “strange rural relatives” role. Funny stuff.
Unfortunately, the lack of theme keeps coming back, meaning that there’s no overall meaning to connect what now feel more than ever like a lot of “and then…” beats stacked in a row. One potentially fun sequence finds Rusty deciding to take a detour to Applegate’s old college, where it’s revealed that her old sorority is/was a party-house and she was a legendarily uninhibited wild-child – great potential for fun with family dynamics, but instead it’s just setup for an extended slapstick bit wherein Applegate attempts a drunken obstacle-course and ends up vomiting everywhere. Funny, sure, but it feels out of place in a way that becomes a repeating problem: The film is trying desperately to get back to the darkness of the original, but can’t quite find the way there in a saleable way and instead settles for “gross.”
Still, gross can be funny – and it’s mostly funny here, especially a repeating bit where the film allows the audience to “get” what’s happening to The Griswolds before they do, the standout being when they find themselves white-water rafting with a guide (Charlie Day) who has a suicidal episode mid-trip. I also imagine the “Griswold Springs” scene would’ve been a winner had they not spoiled it in every single trailer. On the lesser side, a series of gags about awful things happening to cows (obviously attempting to one-up the dog death from the first film) fall weirdly flat.
What’s not a great idea is trying to divide the focus between the individual family members. It likely felt like a good update to give Applegate and the kids more agency whereas the original never really leaves Clark’s perspective, but again: No theme. Their individual issues (Applegate is bored with marriage, the older brother is a sensitive kid bullied by his psychotic younger brother) don’t sync up in any meaningful way, which is unfortunate since if they had a climactic beat involving a brawl with another family at Wally World might’ve had some real energy behind it. Instead, like the rest of the piece, it’s conceptually amusing but lands much too lightly.
That pervasive “not enough” execution is unfortunately encapsulated by an Act 3 cameo by Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo, which appears to arrive years late having not been informed of its own expiration. I won’t lie – I got a little bit choked up when Clark (sort-of) saves the day by revealing that he’s held onto a specific keepsake from their own Wally World journey (the reveal, complete with mandatory needle-drop, is really something) – but it’s too little, too late.
VACATION is funny – exceptionally so at times, but my memory of it is already fading and I doubt we’ll be thinking about it even two months from now. Whether or not that means the studio has their franchise back will be another story, but for now as comedies go you’re better off seeing SPY or ANT-MAN again.
This review made possible in part by The MovieBob Patreon.
Review: TERMINATOR GENISYS
Michael Bay’s BENGHAZI Movie. Yes, For Real.
This piece made possible in part by The MovieBob Patreon
For my international readers: American politics is still currently consumed by conspiracy theories surrounding the terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya in 2012. The event (which resulted in the deaths of multiple CIA operatives and at least two longtime American diplomats) is universally regarded as a tragedy, but differences in accounts of the day re: why relief was not deployed earlier and on whose authority have lead to widespread speculation and theories, most settling on a displacement of blame (“Someone important fucked up and their incompetence is being covered up”); but for a particular brand of unhinged paranoiac (read: The Republican voting-base) it’s another insidious betrayal by President Evil – aka Barack Obama.
So goes some of the more popular lunacy: Obama and Hillary Clinton, in order to placate their respective Black Panther and Feminazi foot-soldiers (who are, for some reason, aligned with Islamic Fundamentalism in this scenario) “allowed” the Americans stationed there to die as some sort of sacrifice to either Al Qaeda, Gaia, or both. Or neither. Maybe they’re just so evil it doesn’t matter. Anyway, for obvious reasons it’s not an issue that Democrats or “mainstream” Republicans are particularly hot to discuss (bringing it up during the last election led to one of Mitt Romney’s most embarassing public gaffes), so the only time you really hear about it is when some hot-air escapes the right-wing talk radio echo-chamber.
In any case, you can see why this is fodder for a movie Hollywood would be desperate to make but almost no one would want to lend their name to: It’s a more topical BLACK HAWK DOWN, with the potential to draw major box-office on curiosity alone… but it’s also almost-certain to become co-opted by GOP/Tea-Party types and wind up bearing some super-ugly stigma. You’d basically need a major director who lives and breathes action, has a comfortable relationship with the “security community,” desperately wants attention (and awards) as a Serious Filmmaker but also doesn’t give a fuck about a bad media image.
Commissioner… get to the roof and light The BAY Signal…
For what it’s worth, 13 HOURS: THE SECRET SOLDIERS OF BENGHAZI is based on a book compiled from eyewitness accounts by members of the ex-military contractor team at the story’s focus; which aligns largely with the “known facts” of the events and maintains an “in the moment” perspective and doesn’t get into the stateside political theories or implications – save for the suspicion among some of the contractors that their CIA handler – whom they claim ordered them to delay intervention by about 20 minutes, leading to the attack getting disasterously out of hand and ultimately preventing rescue – did so in order to further conceal Agency presence in Libya by trying to enlist local militia fighters instead.
I have no idea what Bay’s politics are, save that he has very strong feelings about animal cruelty and the protection of endangered species in particular. For what it’s worth… I think it looks pretty good. I don’t always love the way he cuts/edits the final product together, but Bay really is something like a prodigy when it comes to composition and mood – and for better or worse it’s obvious that military settings inspire him to really dig deep. Cinematography is by Dion Beebe this time around, though it’s impressive how much of the expected Bay aesthetic shines through.
My sense of this is that any political “interest” he might have in Benghazi begins and ends with his obvious affection for various military branches and the ability of the word “Benghazi!” to get audiences into theaters and the movie into the Serious Discussion circuit – that January 15th release date almost-certainly means it’ll be screening NY/LA and critics groups in December to qualify for Awards Season. Yup, 15 years after PEARL HARBOR, Michael Bay is ready to try for his Oscar again. That should be interesting.
This piece made possible in part by The MovieBob Patreon
PIXELS (2015) Review: TEXT-VERSION:
Because you demanded it, here (after the jump) a text version of my now-famous PIXELS review. And hey, while you’re here, maybe consider visiting The MovieBob Patreon?
I… have no words. I just don’t. I saw PIXELS mere hours ago as of this writing, and I find myself incapable of putting what I’m feeling into words – such is the magnitude of the disaster I’ve witnessed. Is this what Cavemen felt the first time they saw what, to them, looked like something was literally eating the Sun? Is this that Existential Horror thing Lovecraft was talking about… in between all the super-uncomfortable anti-semitic stuff?
PIXELS… is an unmitigated piece of godawful fucking dogshit. It’s existence feels like alternately like a poison or a genital infection. It is celluloid chlymidia. Cinematic strychnine. I shouldn’t even BE here – this isn’t my jurisdiction: I’m a film critic, and PIXELS isn’t a movie… it’s a motherfucking active crime scene. And the crime is cultural vandalism.
What we’re faced with here is not simply the almost-certainly WORST major Hollywood movie of the goddamn year and easily the worst Adam Sandler movie where he’s NOT doing a stupid fucking vocal-affectation, but the vomit-encrusted nadir of the unholy assembly-line transmutation of Generation-X nostalgia into the quote-unquote “geek” corporate-branded marketing identity – the Burning of The Library of Alexandria by way of Hot Topic t-shirt printing.
PIXELS is bad enough to make you hate the things you love, and watching it made me want to take a blowtorch to every scrap of video-game memorabilia… except then I’d only have like 2 decent t-shirts. I didn’t merely hate this movie – I wanted to beat it slowly to death with a fucking wiffle-ball bat. So it’d take longer. I was bored within 2 minutes, angry after 5 and by the time all 100 minutes had run out I was sad and numb… which has now simmered into pure, white hot pants-shitting rage. This is the kind of movie that shouldn’t be “reviewed” so much as fed through a malfunctioning industrial shredder… cock first, as I have to assume is the custom over at Happy Madison.
Egh… fuck everything. But anyway! The “plot” to this tepid cauldron of room-temperature yak piss (inspired by a charming animated short film from a few years ago whose creator I… hope was well fuckin’ compensated at least) is that a race of aliens have misinterpreted samples of Earth popular-culture contained in NASA probe for a declaration of war and have attacked the planet with an army of energy-creatures mimicking the forms of circa-1982 arcade games included among said samples.
That’s… not the “worst” mechanism for setting up what is effectively retro-game JUMANJI by way of a castrato-cover of MARS ATTACKS – assuming that’s something you’ve decided needs to exists for some shit-awful reason – but in Sandler’s typical combination of overwrought yet somehow still half-assed story-structure, it can’t just leave things there. Instead, PIXELS wants to shoe-horn in a metric-ton of Kevin Smith-style pop-reference pandering in the form of another tired-as-fuck manchild hero’s journey; so the invaders opt to challenge humanity to life-sized “real life” variations on one specific classic game at a time – leading Kevin James’ embattled United States President (fucking really!) to conscript Sandler, Josh Gad and Peter Dinklage as a team of former competitive arcade champs to lead the battle… mostly by engaging in tacky, dated stereotypes about these “loser weirdo” gaming-nerds having to prove themselves against the skepticism of the big meanie army guys.
SIDEBAR: The *hell* is Peter Dinklage doing in this pile of skidmarked Sumo thongs? I know a Lannister always pays his debts but what the FUCK? Did Sandler pull him out of a tire fire or something? He doesn’t have to do this shit! Hell, neither does Josh Gad – I’m pretty sure he gets paid every time someone buys one of those fuckin’ Olaf dolls!
Anyway… The whole “SCOTT PILGRIM but for assholes” routine with the game sequences is so overcomplicated yet poorly thought-out you’d think they shot the fuckin’ thing over a weekend if not for shamefully expensive it all looks. The rules, stakes and mechanic change with no rhyme or reason: The humans play the “good guy” player role for the Centipede scene but they have to be the Ghosts in the Pac-Man scene – why? Who the fuck knows and the movie doesn’t care. At one point entering a “cheat code” works for some reason without explaining how it was entered and why it mattered; and these aren’t tiny nitpicks – these are major plot developments getting ground up into some of the worst action-movie storytelling since TRANSFORMERS 2.
What do the Aliens even want? Nobody seems to care – sometimes they’re evil, then in the next scene it’s all about them being confused, at one point we’re flat-out told in a moment of important, highlighted exposition that they were peaceful until they got hold of our probe and could maybe be reasoned with… and it’s dropped ONE scene later never to come up again because there’s some Donkey Kong jokes we haven’t done yet! There’s the germ of an interesting idea dying from lack of oxygen within this shitstorm i.e. so muchof our popular-culture being grounded in the mythologizing of, competition and the arbitrary winner/loser binary why wouldn’t they mistake it for us declaring war… but that might’ve been interesting and insightful, and PIXELS is clearly aiming more of an “advanced scrotum-cancer” kind of vibe.
But what really turns the whole thing from just one more stupid fucking waste-of-time Summer comedy into the waterfall of elephant jizz cascading into theaters this weekend is that it’s so oppressively, endlessly, bald-faced cynical about the disingenuous appropriation of its own supposed reason for existing. There’s not a single interesting joke or visual gag making use of the presence of all the classic gaming iconography Sandler and his goon-squad have been allowed to fuck around with. The supposed “humorous” use of every single Pixelated “thing” in the movie never ONCE rises beyond the level of “HAHAHAHAHA! I recognize that, which for some reason qualifies as a joke now!” This isn’t just keeping great art in a bad frame – this is using original Monets to wallpaper a port-a-potty at an IBS Symposium.
This is the kind of bad licensing-driven movie that’s so fucking glib and self-satisfied with its own sleazy cash-grab existence that it takes time out to make sure it ALSO shits on the sort of more earnest, heartfelt version of the same idea someone who gave two shits might’ve made – as you’ve already seen in the trailers with the weirdly mean-spirited “creator of Pac-Man” sequence.
But it get’s worse: One of the dozen fucking go-nowhere nonsensical subplots is that the aliens beam down “good” incarantions of random game characters as “trophies” when the humans win a game, which literally ONLY exists so that Q*Bert can become a comic-relief sidekick midway through… except the aliens later refer to him a “traitor” which contradicts this and OH MY FUCKING GOD DID ANYONE PROOFREAD THE SHOOTING SCRIPT FOR GORILLA TURD!? Still… Q*Bert briefly becomes the only decent (if pointless) thing in the movie because he’s cute and its just kinda funny that he’s “there” …but they find a way to fuck it up.
See, another subplot is that Gad’s creepy basement-nerd caricature is obsessed with a made-up female game heroine who shows up as one of the Pixel-monsters but then switches sides and helps him fight because reasons… and then he’s sad vanishes with all the other aliens once the good guys win (SPOILER! Fuck you!) win because “they only get to keep the Trophies” …which then causes Q*Bert to magically transform into that same heroine for some cocksmith’s idea of a fucking happy ending. So PIXELS *ends* with the only likable character and the only non-bullshit incarnation of it’s own premise blinking out of existence so that ONE of two vaguely-prominent women characters in the cast can serve as a literal trophy. Holy fucking shit.
That, above all else, is what’s so irrationally infuriating about this maggot-oozing head-wound of a movie: It plays at being this sentimental ode to the glory days of classic games, but clearly doesn’t have a fucking drop of sincere interest in what’s made these characters and imagery so enduring or even what made the games themselves so compelling! No matter how many classic cabinets and 80s MTV needle-drops PIXELS trots out, it’s always – nakedly! – the work of a bunch of shit-gargling fuckwits with zero love for or understanding OF this stuff beyond the ability to sell tickets based on “Hey! Remember PAC-MAN!? Remember SPACE INVADERS!? Remember when this guy was in GOOD MOVIES!?”
Fucking hell. Sandler’s literal character-arc in this movie is learning to let go of the pride he takes in having the skill to excel at these classic games and instead embrace an open-ended “what-ever!” just-try-not-to-die modern-gaming approach in order to succeed – “But hey! Don’t pay attention to all that, folks! Look! Stuff from JOUST! Remember JOUST!? Pay us money to remind that JOUST existed!!!” And the only thing worse… is that it’s probably going to work – one more bullshit movie-interlude for the masses to break up the monotony of our ongoing waddle toward IDIOCRACY.
Let me be crystal fucking clear here, folks: PIXELS is the *worst* thing to happen to video games since the CDi, Microtransactions, YouTube screamers, voice-chat and the death of the Dreamcast combined… but it would absolutely still be a festering ocean of stagnant koala feces no matter WHAT licensed-property nostalgia it was pretending to pander to – and probably will still be less than four fucking months from now in the form of that Jack Black GOOSEBUMPS movie. Every game company who let their creations turn up in this shitpile should be flogging themselves like a Catholic masturbator right now – yes, even you, Nintendo – fucking hell, you “swear off” Hollywood for like 20 years after one shitty Mario movie but NOW suddenly you’re totally okay with Mario, Donkey Kong and the Duck Hunt Dog showing up in this abortion? Classy. Real motherfuckin’ classy.
But for now, PIXELS is awful on a level that defies even the most negative conventions of review. Not a single joke lands, not a single performance works, the story is beyond lazy, the stakes make no sense, the staging is limp and lifeless and director Chris Columbus has finally made a movie worse than NINE MONTHS. It demands some sort of new metric below the “stars” or “thumbs” number-scales, like “How many fingers should the people responsible for this be allowed to keep?” I hate this movie so much I would’ve rather watched BLENDED again. I hate this movie so much I wish I’d caught up with PAUL BLART 2 instead. I hate this piece of shit so much I’m no longer rooting for Tyrion to make it out of Season 6 alive! I wanted to run this movie over with my car. Repeatedly. I wanted to ritually blind this movie with razor-wire.
As a film critic, I’m so used to Sandler sucking at this point that it’s a challenge not to start grading his bullshit on some kind of “curve,” but as some who actually loves all the stuff PIXELS fucks around *pretending* to appreciate it feels like the Pride of Manchester New Hampshire here broken into my fuckin’ house, took a bloody, backed-up post-Taco Bell Miralax-shit in the middle of my fuckin living room and now wants me to pay him for the goddamn privilege.
Fuck this movie. Fuck everyone who made this movie. And if you pay money to watch this movie? FUCK YOU TOO.
IN BOB WE TRUST: "Does Batman Need a New Origin?"
Pitch Me, Mr. B: MARVEL’S X-MEN
This piece made possible in part by The MovieBob Patreon. Please consider becoming a Patron.
In case you missed the earlier installments of this: Here’s what’s up, here’s the first one and here’s the second.
So… yeah, hypothetical “scriptment” pitches for hypothetical movie adaptations. Thought exercise and all that.
This one will be a touch on the different side, less of a blow-by-blow and more of an outline; since in this instance the “challenge” isn’t to figure out how to turn the X-MEN franchise into a movie (that’s been done) but to work out how a “reboot” of the series might be made to fit into the Marvel Cinematic Universe if and when the rights to the characters were to fall back under Marvel/Disney’s control.
Principal aims: Work out the “purpose” of Mutants in an MCU which, within a few years, will likely have already burned through the “disenfranchised minority metaphor” business using THE INHUMANS. Renew focus on the sexual/relationship politics-dominated “soap opera” interplay that characterized the Claremont/Cockrum/Byrne era wherein these characters became popular.
See what I came up with after the jump:
And here we go:
OPEN in 1834, the THE GALAPAGOS ISLANDS. Yup, we’re going here: CHARLES DARWIN is investigating animals and cataloguing samples, gradually discovering the beginnings of his theory of Natural Selection… faster than one might have expected, thanks to some whisper-gentle nudging from a largely anonymous assistant who seems to already know as fact the theories he’s subtly planting the seeds of in Darwin’s head. His name is NATHANIEL ESSEX.
We move ahead to: WORLD WAR II, the liberation of a Concentration Camp by joint U.S. and Canadian forces including CAPTAIN AMERICA and The Howling Commandos. Cap is irritated by the fact that freeing these camps isn’t higher on the Army’s priority list, and that this is the first one his unit has been sent to – and not for the camp itself, but for what’s “under it.”
As if on cue, HYDRA troops appear from an underground bunker and a fight breaks out. While the Commandos protect the prisoners, Cap finds himself fighting into the bunker alongside a Canadian soldier posessed of superhuman strength. When asked who he is: “Would you believe ‘Captain Canada?'”
In short-order, Cap and yes-we-know-it’s-WOLVERINE discover a HYDRA lab where experiments are being conducted on a boy of about 6 – ERIK LENSHER. The scientist in charge gives up rather easily and offers a fake name, but we can recognize Nathaniel Essex, looking not a day older than 1834.
Another leap, this time to 2015 (presume, for the sake of this exercise, that this film would not be produced until at least 2020 – one year after Marvel’s last currently-slated feature is set to bow) and the offices of the AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D. An update on the Inhumans “situation” is being presented, along with a theory that some of the assets classified as Inhuman are actually not – that they are mutations of ordinary humans, not descendants of alien interference.
These “Mutants” are a troubling prospect – born with powers nascent until their teens but biologically indistinct from humans and not requiring Terrigenesis to “activate” their abilities – but the talk is gently but firmly shot down by a Senior Agent – Essex, once again.
Finally, the PRESENT – a suburban Superintendent of Schools office late at night. Teenaged student KATHERINE “KITTY” PRYDE slips into the building to steal SAT answers – via the mutant power of walking through solid walls. But she’s stopped by an oddly well-timed security guard – Essex again, brandishing a gun.
Kitty is saved by a voice in her head telling her to beware, followed by the appearance of CHARLES XAVIER (bald, wheelchair) and his much older companion – Erik Lensher (ancient-looking but strong, standing/walking with the aid of metal braces on his legs, back and arms.) Essex proves able to block Xavier’s psychic attacks, but Lensher’s metal-controlling powers bludgeon him badly enough that he reveals his monstrous-looking true form: MISTER SINISTER!
Enter THE X-MEN, in classic blue/gold uniforms, ages ranging from 19 to 22: CYCLOPS, JEAN GREY, ANGEL, PYRO and MYSTIQUE. Brawl ensues, Sinister escapes.
The X-Men bring Kitty aboard the BLACKBIRD jet and explain the scenario: Mankind isn’t prepared to know about Mutants, fear of the recently-revealed Inhumans has made it worse, Xavier and Lensher operate XAVIER’S SCHOOL FOR THE GIFTED to protect/nurture Mutant youth, the X-Men are onetime students graduated to teachers.
Recruitment to Xavier’s School (via CEREBRO, which can discern Mutant from human/Inhuman where biology cannot) has been increased of late in order to checkmate abductions by MR. SINISTER (an augmented human via experiments on Mutants, which he believes he “discovered” in the mid-1700s) the reasons for which are yet unclear.
At the school, Kitty (yes, he’s our audience-POV character for this one) meets her same-aged (mid-teens) student contemporaries; chiefly cocky athlete ICEMAN, gentle-giant COLOSSUS and withdrawn beauty ROGUE.
Xavier reaches out to a contact in S.H.I.E.L.D (or whatever the post-CIVIL WAR power-aparatus is), HANK “BEAST” MCCOY (non-furry version) for information about Sinister. Not much known, but his actions threaten to (finally) pull Mutants into the public sphere. Charles and Erik argue – Erik in favor of going public and starting a fight he believes will occur no matter what, Charles on the cautious side.
Also noted: The Inhumans have (off the record) refused to “cover” in the event of exposed Mutants by claiming them as part of their race.
While the machinations of the Bigger Story grind on in the backdrop with the “grownups” (short version: Sinister is collecting powerful Mutants for what he calls a “Brotherhood,” promising that he can both keep them safe and improve their natural powers, Xavier has plotted out a list of likely targets to try and head him off) Kitty does the Harry Potter thing moving between the students and classes. All is not well: Growing “cliques” of students profess a psuedo-cultist fixation on “militant” essays (as opposed to Xavier’s pacifist philosophy) Erik penned as a younger man…
…but Erik is ambivalent about those writings now, and gently dissuades his would-be acolytes. He develops a rapport with Kitty, explaining that his lifelong militancy softened fairly recently and for a specific reason: When Captain America (effectively) returned from the dead, he had a chance to meet and thank the man who’d saved his life as a boy and began to believe in second chances.
On a dare, Kitty sneaks onto the Blackbird for a mission – quietly observing the X-Men’s recruitment of STORM (usual origin re: orphan worshiped as a goddess/witch in tribal Africa.) Back at school, she and Kitty become friendly.
Meanwhile, a Christian Fundamentalist religious sect called THE CHURCH OF NATURAL LAW (think Westboro Baptist, but fixated on hating aliens, Inhumans and superheroes) led by REVEREND WILLIAM STRIKER begins to make news with outlandish protests against various events/ideas referencing other recent story points in the MCU. Erik finds him especially disturbing.
Kitty and her friends discuss whether or not they’ll also be X-Men as they get older. One thing they agree on: The blue/gold uniforms don’t work for them, and they begin to discuss their own hypothetical gear/getup.
A later recruitment (with Beast tagging along for S.H.I.E.L.D reasons) does not go so well: The target, TOAD, has already sworn allegiance to Sinister – it’s a trap! The X-Men escape, but not unscathed: Beast is hit with an “improvement” injection from Sinister and mutates into his blue furry form.
With the team’s progress delayed, Xavier asks Erik to take a detachment of “advanced” students (Kitty, Iceman, Colossus, Rogue and Storm) to attempt contact with another potential target in rural Germany: Teleporter Kurt Wagner, NIGHTCRAWLER. It goes… awkwardly, but Nightcrawler ultimately agrees to come along because he’s immediately smitten with Kitty.
All parties return to the School for some (relative) down-time. While the grownups compare notes (and Erik secretly agonizes over growing issues with his arthritis and bone problems), a group of “cool girls” (including JUBILEE, maybe?) goad Kitty into getting Nightcrawler to teleport them into a sold-out local concert by pop-star DAZZLER (think Miley Cyrus by way of Lady Gaga.)
At the Dazzler concert, Kitty feels bad about “using” Kurt, but he’s already over it – he’s noticed that Dazzler seems to be setting off light-effects on the stage without any means of ignition: She’s a Mutant!
Something else they both notice (too late) “Nathaniel Essex” is in Dazzler’s roadie crew! He sets off a chemical release which supercharges Dazzler’s powers, causing he to fire destructive light-beams out of her fingertips. Footage makes the news, and just like that Mutants are now publically known.
The Federal government (particularly whatever superhuman governing-machinery is set post-CIVIL WAR) mobilizes hearings on “The Mutant Problem.” With public hysteria growing, Erik presses a reluctant Xavier to hold a press-conference spearheaded by “a friend” (Tony Stark if that’s still plausible, someone else if not) introducing/rebranding The X-Men as an Avengers-style superhero team to put public fears at ease.
Kitty is torn between the two “sides” in the school: Some want to go militant and prepare for war with humanity, others want to coexist. The only person she can fully confide in is Storm, who is thus far an observer not taking any full side.
During the press conference, a Mutant henchman of Sinister’s hits Erik with the power-charging serum, resulting in a metal-controlling freakout that turns the assembled crowd (with goading from Stryker’s “Church,” who attended to heckle) against them.
Amid the chaos, Sinister appears in full regalia, feigning as though he’s an ideological ally of the scattered, confused X-Men. His “Brotherhood” (a small army of B/C-list Mutants, have fun with it) attack the crowd, and by the time The X-Men can regroup to fight them everything has gone to shit. Sinister escapes, but before he does he hands Lensherr a vial of “something” and an ominous message: “Admit it. You enjoyed yourself back there. Here’s another taste – if you want it. And you will.”
An analysis of the vial reveals that it contains (among other things) genetic material with a remarkable healing factor… but NOT the type that keeps Essex/Sinister effectively immortal. It’s marking also trace back to an obscure decomissioned military facility in Canada’s Northwest Territories. An obvious trap, but The X-Men (bringing an insistent Nightcrawler along for good measure) have no choice but to try.
Kitty (and the rest of the school) watch via video monitors as The X-Men attempt to raid the compound… only to find themselves attacked by amped-up Brotherhood henchmen and taken prisoner via mind-control devices of Sinister’s design. When Xavier tries to reach out psychically to stop this, an already-ensnared Jean Grey telepathically knocks him unconscious. Nightcrawler barely manages to teleport himself and a badly-beaten Cyclops to safety, beginning a travel-by-teleport rush back to the Xavier School…
…which has problems of its own: A torches-and-pitchforks style mob, led by Reverend Stryker, has stormed the grounds, and without Xavier to hold them back things go straight to hell – including a brutal injury to Erik. The students are unable to coalesce in resistance (Kitty leads the “protect and de-escalate” side, with the militants outnumbering them) until…
Storm appears (classic costume, classic attitude), demands they fight together but backs Kitty’s “just get them out of here, don’t make things worse” approach. She does, however, use some extreme examples of her power to put the fear of God(dess) into Stryker before sending him on his way.
Xavier comes to amid the wreckage just as Cyclops and Nightcrawler teleport in, adamant that the X-Men have to be saved but unsure how to do it. Kitty proposes a solution: She, Rogue, Nightcrawler, Colossus, Iceman and Storm should serve as a new/temporary X-Men team under Cyclops’ leadership to go and rescue the others. He’s unsure… but there’s no other choice.
The “All-New X-Men” suit up in the unique costumes they’d discussed earlier (Cyclops trades his battered blue/gold uni for his 80s all-blue look) and head into battle.
Unseen in the rubble, Erik is alive… barely. He manages to get his hands on the vial from Sinister and, with nothing else to lose, drinks it. The effects are shocking and immediate – he begins to de-age into a remarkably fit-looking man possibly in his mid-30s, just with white hair.
The “new” X-Men fight through Sinister’s goons, only to find themselves fighting the mind-controlled originals! After a difficult fight, all of the X-Men are now on the same team, and chase Sinister himself into the bowels of his base. There, Sinister reveals a mysterious form inside a tube of chemicals – a Mutant of “remarkable powers” whom Essex calls an “old friend” that had been turned into a bio-weapon by a Canadian military-backed science project. “The truth is, some people already DID know about Xavier’s little Boy Scout troop, and wanted a checkmate. Enjoy your time with WEAPON X!”
Sinister takes off as WEAPON X (Wolverine-but-not-with-that-name-yet from the prologue, duh) emerges, pops his claws and an all-against-one fight breaks out, eventually exploding out in the forest with both X-Men teams easily matched by this rampaging monster. Only a combined pooling of their various powers, with Kitty and Nightcrawler using phasing/teleporting in tandem to wear him down, prevails.
Jean Grey uses her powers to un-brainwash “Weapon X,” who remembers nothing except the codename “Wolverine” – but he’s immediately fond of the “lady head-doctor.”
Back at the school, repairs are underway. Angel (real name Warren Worthington III) is reveal to have gotten his family business to donate much of the cost, but at a price: He’s to finally take an active role on the board, meaning he must depart The X-Men. Also departing: Mystique and Pyro, who confide in eachother that after what they’ve seen from Stryker etc they can’t believe in Mutant/Human coexistence anymore. Beast is headed to (an MCU science/research reference) but will be in touch.
Saddened but accepting of this change in personel, Xavier makes it official: Kitty, Nightcrawler, Rogue, Iceman, Colossus and Storm will join Cyclops, Jean and Wolverine as the new official X-Men team.
STINGER: Pyro and Mystique seek out “Mutant resistance” information in a secret location, only to hear talk of “TRUE Brotherhood” and the reveal of a still de-aged Erik Lensher, now wearing his classic uniform and calling himself MAGNETO.
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Review: PIXELS (2015)
Time To Light The Lights.
This is the “pilot pitch” for the upcoming ABC prime-time revival of THE MUPPET SHOW. It represents probably the best use anyone has made of these characters since at least MUPPET TREASURE ISLAND (and I liked the first of the two recent movies, so don’t start any shit.)
I love The Muppets like few other things, and this feels like it could be something really spectacular. The movies have always been fine – at least three of them are great – but these characters belong on TV in this exact type of farce. So excited.
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