DVD Review: Marvel Knights, Astonishing X-Men

From Joss Whedon, the Mastermind Behind the Acclaimed TV Series Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Firefly, and Award-Winning Artist John Cassaday Comes the Ultimate Story of Mutant Survival!
 
When Dr. Kavita Rao develops a controversial mutant cure, Professor Charles Xavier's X-Men, the aggressive Wolverine, conflicted Beast and newly returned Kitty Pryde, led by Cyclops and Emma Frost, once again find themselves battling against science, prejudice and a mysterious new foe named Ord! Can the X-Men protect the mutants of the world against this powerful new alien menace and the concoction that threatens to rid them of their unique abilities?
 
With smart storytelling, incredible action, startling revelations and the reemergence of old friends, this Will Eisner Award winner for Best Continuing Series will have you on the edge of your seat like never before with truly astonishing animated motion co-directed by artist John Cassaday and the legendary Neal Adams himself! 
 
Editorial Review for Astonishing X-Men - Gifted (Marvel Knights) (2009)
 
Sometimes your local public library can have some interesting videos. Last week, I discovered mine had the Astonishing X-Men Gifted, Dangerous, and Torn motion comics (at least, that's what they're called. The videos are taken from the graphic novels of the same name. Having never read the graphic novels, I can only assume the story lines are the same or markedly similar.

However, I had to read up on the Marvel Knights imprint to find out that these stories were taking place in one of a collection of Marvel Universes (comic books are becoming way to complicated, in my opinion).

In brief, this trio of videos forms an entire, unbroken sequence of stories starting with Kitty Pryde's (Sprite, Shadowcat) return to Charles Xavier's school as an adult after an absence of some time. Although Cyclops (Scott Summers) is currently running the school and is the leader of the X-Men, the story is largely Kitty's story. She's the heroine on more than one occasion and the person who seems to be seeing with the clearest eyes.

Jean Grey (Marvel Girl, Phoenix, Dark Phoenix) is dead and the Professor is on a sabbatical at some initially unknown location. The other X-Men are Hank McCoy (the furry blue version of the Beast), Logan (the recently returned Wolverine), Emma Frost (the White Queen) and eventually Peter Rasputin (Colossus). Since the audience is thrust into the sequence of events mid-stream, we pick up details as the action moves along.

The videos seem geared to an older audience, as evidenced most clearly by the sexual scenes involving Scott and Emma. Nothing pornographic, but you see them in bed together in fairly little clothing and leaving almost nothing to the imagination. Also, at one point, Wolverine starts swearing. No, you don't hear the words, but you hear a lot of bleeping, during one sequence for about ten seconds solid, so you know he's unhappy.

The X-Men are apparently trying to recover as a team both in terms of public image and motivation at the beginning of the story. The school is like how Xavier's school is treated in the live action X-Men film series with the X-Men being the core team and the school's instructors but with a large number of young mutant students who play supporting roles in both the film series and this motion comic series.

The series ties directly into the larger world of Marvel characters with a cameo appearance by the Fantastic Four and an ongoing presence by SHIELD.

There are a number of subplots including the aftermath of a genocidal event which claimed the life of Kitty's father among millions of others, and which seems to have involved both the Sentinels and the X-Men. This is where the Professor has chosen to go, leaving the X-Men behind (he never rejoins them at the Mansion during the three-disc series.

The story arc that crosses all three discs is the prediction that one X-Man will be responsible for the destruction of an alien world. Someone from that world was sent to Earth to kill all the X-Men, since it's unsure which one will be "the destroyer of worlds." SHIELD is charged with stopping the alien but also finding the "guilty" X-Men, and it's unsure if one rogue agent and her team may not try to take the X-Men out themselves to prevent an interstellar war.

Within this context, other subplots occur, including the Danger Room becoming sentient and reforming itself as a feminized, humanized robot and trying to destroy the X-Men (and all of the students) by exploiting their weaknesses which "Danger" (the humanoid version of the Danger Room) knows all too well.

Emma Frost is something of an "X" factor within the team since she originally was a member of the Hellfire Club. It's revealed at the end of "Dangerous" that she is still in league with her former partners for some insidious purpose, but she's conflicted (of course) because she really does love Scott (even though she takes away his powers and reduces him to a drooling idiot in "Torn."

The stories are all reasonably compelling and the "acting" isn't bad. Each disc is made up of about six "chapters" running around fifteen minutes each (sometimes it seems that the opening and ending credits of each chapter go longer than the actual story). The animation seems choppy and especially in the opening sequence, the X-Men move more like robots than people, but I think that's an effect of this series being "motion comics" as opposed to straight up animation.

In addition to how the school and students are presented, other similarities to the films include a cure for mutation, the death of Jean Grey, and sinister Government forces threatening to destroy the X-Men. SHIELD even has a mole inside the school (I won't give the identity away and its only revealed late in "Torn".
 
Oh, one more similarity is that Scott is pretty much a stooge and an ineffectual jerk in both the films and the motion comic series. He's a tad more heroic in these videos, but not by much. Emma even confronts him about how Xavier only made Scott the leader because he felt sorry for Scott. Scott doesn't deny it.

Apparently Jean's death breaks him completely and he never emerges as the hero and leader he was (though still admittedly conflicted) in the original comic book incarnation.

The series is definitely watchable but if there is a back story that explains what's going on and what lead up to this sequence of events, I don't know about it (which is no surprise because I don't really keep up on the comic book universes...who has the time or the disposable income?). I was disappointed when I saw that "Torn" ends on a cliff hanger. We discover who the "destroyer" is and that destruction of the alien world is coming soon, but with the launch into space of a SHIELD spaceship trying to head off the disaster, that's all she wrote...literally.

Both the graphic novel set and the series of videos include only "Gifted," "Dangerous," and "Torn" without any subsequent products, so either the story was continued in some older series which was eventually collected as graphic novels, or (hopefully) the cliffhanger will be resolved at some future date.

The creation date for the videos runs 2009-2012, so they're recent. My interest and curiosity is piqued. I want to see what happens next. I think you will, too.

DVD Review of X-Men First Class

X-Men: First Class (2011) is the classic example of how Hollywood gets its greedy little hands on a vast body of work and canon and completely screws it up. Really, the film wasn't totally horrible, but it was so muddled and overworked that I couldn't like it, and I really, really, wanted to like it.

No, I'm not bitching about how the film makers took excessive liberties with canon. I expect that films aren't going to stick lockstep with how the comic books portray a hero or group and that's to be expected. What works in a comic book almost never works the same way on TV or in film. But the X-Men have been around since Lee and Kirby introduced the original team (Cyclops, Angel, Beast, Marvel Girl, Iceman, and Professor X) to the world in 1963 and a lot of material has been accumulating.

The film's writers, director, and producers tried to cram damn near almost 50 years of history in to 132 minutes of running time. It's like they felt they have to jam pack the movie with all of the back story on the Professor and Magneto, plus many of the team members, starting with childhood and, even though set in 1962 (a year before the comic book team came together), also had to drag in material from the 1970s (the human-looking Hank McCoy turning into a real, furry Beast) and 1980s (the Hellfire club including Sebastian Shaw and Emma Frost).

They needed to scale back. If this is to be the first of many X-Men films based on the prequel/reboot, then they could have saved some story for later.

I have to admit, I liked the way McAvoy portrayed Charles Xavier (in real life, the "X" in "Xavier" is pronounced like the "X" in "Xylophone"). You just know that a young, male telepath would probably act like an asshole if he knew every thought of every mind around him. He certainly f*cked up "outing" McCoy as a mutant right in front of his CIA boss. Also, his telepathy sense must have stunted his common sense if he couldn't tell that Raven was head over heels for him right from jump street. He payed for that one dearly in the end.

I also liked the Xavier/Lehnsherr chemistry (I think everyone did). Erik (Magneto) Lehnsherr isn't power hungry and evil. He's a holocaust survivor who can see the world treating mutants the way they treated the Jews. This time, he plans to strike first and not wait for the humans to build the death camps. I don't blame him.

That's the part about Erik that Charles could never understand. As far as the movie presents, Charles was raised (although we never see his parents) in a safe and secure environment. Nothing ever threatened his world so he can afford to see the possibilities of a human/mutant friendship. Erik, on the other hand, learned from Shaw in the camps that anyone who claims to be your friend just wants to use your mutant powers for their own gain, and they'll even blow your mother away right in front of you if that's what it takes (I can't imagine why Erik killed the soldiers who murdered his mother, but didn't drive every sharp metal object in that chamber of horrors right through Shaw's black heart).

It's the billion inconsistencies in the film like the one I just cited that makes "First Class" feel like "low class" to me.

Other stuff.

They could have let Hank McCoy be like the Beast in the 1960s comic books. He didn't tragically cause his metamorphosis into the furry Beast for over a decade, after he joined the team, graduated, and left to pursue his own career (he eventually joined the Avengers).

OK, no Cyke, Angel, Iceman, or Marvel Girl. The original team is out. So we have Sean (Banshee) Cassidy, who in the comic books, was more Xavier's age and an ex-cop. Raven (Mystique) Darkholme, who really didn't make the scene until the early 1980s (same time frame as the Hellfire Club) as opposed to growing up with Charles in his huge Westchester mansion.

Um, wait!

Charles doesn't have any other X-Men by the end of the film except Sean, Alex (Havok) Summers, and Hank. Everybody else either dies (Darwin) or deserts him (Erik, Raven, Angel Salvador). Oh, and never mind that Alex is supposed to be Scott Summers' (Cyclops) younger brother.

Now that I read what I'm writing, maybe I am complaining about lack of adherence to at least some canon.

However, I do think it's more "realistic" for Charles to end up in a wheelchair due to a bullet (a la "Ironside") rather than having his legs crushed by a giant block of concrete by an alien being called Lucifer (see X-Men #20). But Charles lost his hair before he even got into high school as part of his mutation (see X-Men #12). I'm not even sure James McAvoy will look good with a shaved head (Patrick Stewart nailed it, however).

One interesting thing that I don't find in any of the other reviews of this film is the subtle comparison between mutants and the LGBT community. At least twice in the film, one of the mutants (Raven says it for the last time in the movie) says "mutant and proud." It referred to the struggle (especially in Raven's case) of feeling that you always had to hide who you really were because the world wouldn't accept you (blue, scaly skin and all) as you really were. That, coupled with the inadvertent "outting" of McCoy by Charles which I mentioned earlier, gave a whole new meaning to Lady Gaga's Born This Way sentiment.

What could have saved this film? A much less "everything and the kitchen sink" philosophy as far as details were concerned. I know that films go through a lot of rewrites, often while being actively filmed, but this movie really showed it. It was like a patchwork quilt of this bit of X-Men history or that. It's as if no one could make the hard decisions necessary to keep the movie on track, internally consistent, and able to tell a "clean" story that the audience doesn't need a scorecard to follow.

I've read every one of the original 1960s through 1980s X-Men comic books and there was a great deal of good history to draw from. Rather than carefully picking and choosing what to put in and leaving the rest for another day, someone randomly loaded a bunch of X-Men comic books into a cannon and blasted them at a movie screen.

The early X-Men stories are among my favorites. X-Men: First Class pretty much crapped on them.

Misfit

Not a fan of reunions of either the class or family type. They tend to be opportunities for those who have achieved by society's standards to brag and those who have not to get to be the example of what not to do with your life. Guess which category I fit in?

One of the reasons I lean toward superhero fantasy is that the heroes are misfits, at least a lot of the time. For instance, while swave, cool, rich Bruce Wayne leads a life that's the envy of anyone in Gotham (or anyone in the world, for that matter), it's his tortured, driven alter ego who sheds the tuxedo by night to wear the cape of the bat, walking in the gutters and consorting with the sleeze of the city.

The X-Men, at least as originally conceived by Lee and Kirby, are also outcasts. Genetic freaks, hated and feared by "normal" humanity, have to hide behind masks and behind the walls of Xavier's school for "gifted youngers" to keep from either being lynched by mob justice or dissected in some government lab. While touted among other mutants as "homo superior", the next stage in human evolution, they also represent another marginalized segment of our culture: victims of birth defects.

Matt Murdock is blind. Yeah, his other senses are great, but he still can't see a sunset or watch a movie. Ben Grimm, though incredibly strong, was hideously disfigured by exposure to radiation. Cyborg, AKA Victor Stone, was also disfigured by an interdimensional massive gelatinous monster and only survived by having the damaged parts of his body replaced with experimental prostetics. The Doom Patrol's Cliff Steele, otherwise known as Robotman, had his body completely destroyed in a car crash and miraculously lives only because his brain was transplanted into a completely mechanical body.

Yeah, extreme examples compared to "real-life", but despite their heroic identities, they not only don't fit in to human society very easily, but are almost completely assured that they'll never have relationships the way most people have. If your body is robotic, will you ever have a spouse and children?

We have such "extremes" in our world too, but not of the superhero variety. People are injured and mutilated every day. How many people have prosthetic limbs (that don't make them as strong as the Terminator)? How many people are blind, in wheelchairs, disfigured, suffer from Downs Syndrome, are terminally ill, are chronically in pain? And Kermit the Frog says "it's not easy being green". Tell that to the Hulk.

That leads me back to my original statement about reunions. In the film Star Trek: Generations, Geordi is kidnapped and subsequently tortured by an Elorian scientist named Sorn. At one point, before the torture begins, Sorn queries Geordi about his visor, asking why he doesn't wear a prosthetic that makes him look more "normal". Georgi asks Sorn, what's normal. The reply is "Normal is what everyone else is and you're not"

Not sure normalicy is the currency by which acceptance is bought and sold at reunions, but I'm pretty sure compatency is. Example. I was once told by a very attractive lady that dancing is sexy. She implied that she'd probably hook up with a guy who was a good dancer. We got along in just about every other way, but guess who has two left feet?

I was reminded of this over the weekend. Hung out with some relatives. Uncle was there. Uncle's a nice guy. Very successful. A CEO type of guy, but not too hard to talk to. He also took dancing lessons, Very graceful. Says everyone should do it. I broke out in a cold sweat. Remembered the first and last jazz dance lesson I was talked into. Felt like a hippo among gazelles.

Uncle is successful, like I said. Very good money maker. Understands investments. Talked about the plan to take his company public. Everyone else in the conversation seemed to understand all of the strange words and phrases being tossed about like ancient sanskrit. Yeah, Uncle left his wife, moved out of his huge mansion digs into a more modest setting. Took up with a new woman. Says it's helped him relax a lot more. Still friends with the ex. She even showed up with one of the kids (grown). Everyone says he looks a lot better. Leads a charmed life. I hate reunions.

We're all more or less comfortable in our own wombs and cocoons. All by ourselves, we can be depressed, but we can be depressed and still safe, without the intrusion and judgment of the world around us, especially by those we are supposed to be closest to and safest with. A roomful of strangers would be safer than a gathering of relatives. Everyone wants to know what you're doing now and what your plans are. Socially acceptable activities and plans are rewarded. Socially unacceptable activities and plans are punished.

You can't dance. You can't make money. You aren't successful. Your car isn't a Porsche. You don't understand business or investing. Your house isn't big. You can't afford the latest iPhone. You suck.

Yeah. Being "outside the box" is supposed to be a good thing, but only if you can make money at it and it's a socially accepted and approved area outside the box. It's really still inside the box, just relabeled. If you're actually operating outside the norm, you're just a misfit. Unlike superheroes, being a misfit doesn't come with the benefit of being really strong or having wings. You're just ugly.

Not a fan of reunions of either the class or family type. Reunion is over. Time to crawl back in the cave, lick my wounds, and overcome enough intertia to get on with day-to-day life. Got to let the memories of other people's expectations fade. Time to put on the mask and hide behind the walls.

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves...
Julius Caesar (I, ii, 140-141)

Epilogue: The quote from Shakespeare's Cassius is a reminder that fate or circumstances aren't the final authors of what happens to us and how we think or feel about it. We are.