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yellow spandex Milwaukee seems to be at the heart of a political battleground at the moment. Yesterday Al Gore was here and today both George W. Bush and Gore were here. I only heard a small amount of what they had to say though. ... Against my better judgement, I went to see the X-Men movie this afternoon and I wish that I had gone to see something else. Sigh. I honestly tried as hard as I could to lower my expectations, because whenever they try to bring a book to the screen things get twisted. Yes, I still consider a comic book to be a book, not to mention that we are talking about at least twenty years worth of material here. Why they insist on changing major parts of the story is beyond me. Oh, the public just won't accept that part of the story, because that would too silly. This line of thinking just makes me want to scream. Don't they realize that they alienate their core audience by tinkering with the story. Before I go any further, I just want to state that what was in the movie never happened in the book and probably never will. Okay. Now that I've said that I feel so much better. Yes, I made the twelve year old geek in me feel vindicated after the movie tried to destroy a precious childhood memory. In their defense, I will admit that they got some of the characterizations correct. Hugh Jackman as Wolverine was perfect and so was Famke Janssen as Jean Grey. Patrick Stewart also did a good job as Xavier, while Scott and Ororo were tolerable. On the other hand, I could have done without the Toad, Sabretooth and Mystique. The phrase two dimensional springs to mind. Personally I found Mystique to be disturbing and I have to mention that in the book she raised Rogue after she ran away from home. The two of them were almost mother and daughter, but the general public has no idea that this happened so it isn't important to the plot. I also have to wonder why Kurt and Peter didn't make the cut for the team. Something tells me that their powers would have pushed the special effects budget through the roof. For those people that don't know Kurt is blue, has a tail and can teleport. Peter can transform his skin into metal. I should also mention that the two of them were around long before Rogue came into the book. Another strength of the movie was that it did a fair job of establishing the basic premise of the book so that they could get to the action scenes as quickly as possible. People need to have their thrills. I won't list all of things that they changed from the book, because it wouldn't matter to anyone else except myself. I will however take a moment to rate the movie on a scale of five stars with one being the lowest and five the highest. X-Men gets a two in my book, while The Cell gets a four. To me this is an excellent example of the damage that a PG-13 rating will do to a movie. I'm not asking for nudity or sex. I just want more depth from the people on the screen. At least in the book I cared about Logan, Scott, Jean and Ororo. They were people with emotions. Then again maybe I was expecting too much in ninety minutes. No doubt a sequel is in the works for the future, but I won't go to see it.
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