Spandex Heroics

As Surreal Girl pointed out a few weeks back, it was ‘inevitable’ that I would see X-Men 3 at some point. This afternoon, in a cinema empty except for me, the inevitable happened. As a concluding film in a Hollywood trilogy it was reasonably satisfying, but as usual when it comes to putting a comic book love on the silver screen, I have gripes.

On the plus side the plot was good, borrowing some of the best elements of both Grant Morrison and Joss Whedon recent story arcs. It also had some nice touches – one the best of which was Magneto as Osama, sending out video messages – and did not pull away from killing off some key characters.

However, overall it was emotionally flat, often degenerated into a Wolverine and Storm team-up and wasted the introduction of Hank McCoy and Warren Worthington III. Scenes that should have carried huge impact such – as Magneto revealing his concentration camp tattoo and explaining that no one would mark his skin again – failed to deliver; tepid direction and photography bleaching McKellen’s fabulous acting of the moment’s natural poignancy and power.

I am still waiting for just one film that is worth its comic book origins, but taken as a whole, the X-Men movies have probably been the most satisfying comic book translation to the big screen. Part of this has been in the films willingness to engage with the big themes of the X books and not just the potential for explosions and fantasy violence. Starting the series with Magneto being taken into the concentration camp and ending it with him a broken man, playing chess against himself in a park, even shapes the whole affair into a story I would expect to see in my monthly dose of spandex heroics.