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those lovable mutants At midnight this morning, I found myself sitting in a very crowded movie theater. This had been planned in advance a day or so ago, but I still wasn't quite sure what to expect once I got there. Back when I was in college I had been to a few midnight screenings, but usually it was a small group of ten people. That wasn't the case this time. We, and when I say we what I mean is a few hundred people, were eagerly waiting for X2, the first of the hyped movies of the year, to start. Actually most of the people there including myself had been waiting an hour before the lights finally dimmed. Yes, people were there that early to get a good seat even though this was a special screening before the general public would see it. Now having said that getting there when we did was good enough for me and the seats that we had were fine as well. Not having read God Loves, Man Kills, the graphic novel written by Chris Claremont which was the basis for the film, and not overly pleased with the first one, I was surprised that I liked X2. My expectations going in were very low. Now, however, I can honestly say that it was so much better than the first one and that the creators left it wide open for another one, which I would be tempted to see. What made me like the movie was that this time the characters felt like people. They were more than archetypes or sad cliches. Plus the last time there was too much back-story that overwhelmed the acting and for me an interesting story. The audience suddenly had to comprehend about forty years worth of story in the span of two hours. All of the text from those years was painfully compressed and came out feeling flat. Now the audience could move forward with characters that they already knew and the questions were kept to a minimum. Maybe to make up for the flaws of the first movie, there were more than a few comic book references for the people who actually read the books. Every so often there was a collective cheer from the audience for something onscreen that the average person off of the street would completely miss. It was nice to see the makers of the movie acknowledging the key audience instead of completely alienating them. For example, seeing the Russian farm boy transform his skin into steel drew some of the loudest cheers. Personally I miss Warren, but if they were going to cgi his wings then maybe it's better he wasn't in the movie. ... Looking back through the journal, I see that a year ago I was still trying to make some kind of connection with some of the women in class. I was not successful. Little did I know that I was talking to the wrong women. |