I realize that the usual fan dichotomy is between Star Wars and Star Trek, but I just finished watching X-Men: First Class, which is in some sense a prequel to X-Men, and I was struck by how much better it was than the prequels to Star Wars. Not just the absence the-character-whom-we-pretend-did-not-exist, but also in the development of Magneto’s motivation. We know that he was in a concentration camp as a child from the other film. We know that he has a history with Xavier, and that he comes to oppose him. Despite this foreknowledge, X-Men: First Class is an OK movie, that actually provides us with some character development and back story, and makes us begin to buy into the character and see things from his point of view.
Contrast the Star Wars prequels, in which Anakin Skywalker starts off as an annoying moppet, grows up to be an annoying teen and becomes evil due to circumstances that…well, are opaque at best. We never, or at least I never, gave a damn about his motivation or back story, or cared whether or not he had gotten around to becoming evil yet. This despite the fact that there were 3 movies in which to establish whatever was needed.
I realize that the X-Men films had the benefit of a pre-established complex universe from which to draw, while Star Wars just had Lucas, but even so, it’s interesting to see the job that was done on X-Men in a parallel situation.
Kevin Bacon would have also been an amazing addition to the Star Wars prequels. I’m thinking maybe instead of Liam Neeson. Seriously. Imagine this dialogue with Kevin Bacon as Kenobi:
Obi-Wan Kenobi: You don’t want to sell me death sticks.
Elan Sleazebaggano: Ah, I don’t want to sell you death sticks.
Obi-Wan Kenobi: You want to go home and rethink your life.
Elan Sleazebaggano: I want to go home and rethink my life.
If you happen to be one of those rare creatures that likes both Star Warsand Alec Guiness’s work from the '40s and '50s, you’re liable to think he did more than “okay.”
I don’t know that this is a fair comparison. X-Men has had forty-plus years of comic book scripts produced by a wide variety of creative talent to pick and choose story elements from. The Star Wars prequels had… one guy.
Pretty much. LucasArts restricted most of the EU stuff to post-Jedi because George didn’t really ever plan to go there, but the reserved the pre-New Hope material for him to fuck [del]up[/del] with.
I think the OP meant that at least one character was left out of the X-Men story. Which would be… um… Lockheed? Or maybe the point was that X-Men didn’t have Jar Jar Binks in it?
I thought he was talking about how Jar Jar is mostly absent in any but the first sequel. He wasn’t literally written out, but he might as well have been.
The sad thing about the prequels is there almost was a story there. As filmed, Anakin was already an extremely troubled child with rage issues. He murdered another child in a deleted scene. If GL hadn’t cleaned it up to up child appeal, it would have set up a real sense that Qui-Gon was blinding himself and the Jedi council had a real point.
No Jar Jar = better movie right off the bat. Sorry, wasn’t trying to be opaque.
Damn. You’re right. I knew that. I think I’ve been reading Darths & Droids too much. In my head they’re probably Jim and Ben forever now.
I think it was Cracked that had an article arguing that the Star Wars prequels should have been Obi-wan and Anakin just out [del]raising hell like gunslingers[/del] protecting the weak and adventuring for a movie or two to establish motivation and relationship. That’s the thing that struck me about X-men first class. They made some attempt to make us relate to Magneto, and to have Magneto and Xavier have a convincing relationship before it got all dark.
I just saw X-Men: First Class over the weekend, and liked it quite a bit. I’d give it a B+. Just enough in-jokes and knowing references to link it to the other movies, but it also stood pretty well on its own. The actors who played Xavier and Magneto were quite good, and you could see how Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen influenced the roles. The Wolverine cameo was hilarious. The Cuban Missile Crisis tie-in, although ahistorical in all sorts of ways, was pretty well-done. And Kevin Bacon made a good hissable villain…
…although I still don’t understand why Erik wouldn’t kill him, rather than - or in addition to - the two concentration camp guards, when the Bacon character killed his mom in cold blood. Great scene with the Nazi coin passing through his brain on the sub, though. Payback is bitch!