^Here's the thing, there actually were no continuity errors or inconsistencies in First Class. If you listen to or read all the interviews with the people behind the movie, they don't ever refer to it as a direct prequel. They actually go out of there way to not say it is.
There's an interview with Bryan Singer and Matthew Vaughn where they talked about taking elements from the original films and making a movie that could stand on it's own.
There's also an interview with Jane Goldman where she says she wrote First Class as an alternate story from the original films. It was a way to reboot the franchise, while keeping some of the elements of the original films so as to not completely go against Singer's vision. She likened it to how comic book companies have handled reboots. Like DC after the first Crisis and other "reboots". They didn't make up completely new stories and origins each time, but kept some of the best aspects of the previous incarnations and weaved them into the new canon. That's what they did here. She even used the word "reimagining".
They blatantly told us the movies are not in the same timeline. So, there are no continuity errors because it's not part of the same continuity. It's not a prequel, it's a reboot. Now, it may be considered a soft reboot, but it is a reboot.
How did they blatantly tell us that? They blatantly said the opposite. The advertisements showed the actors from the previous movies. Hugh Jackman made an appearence as Wolverine. The scene in the beginning with Magneto as a child appeared to be lifted right out of the first movie.
If its not a prequel... then why are they re-introducing the other actors from the first series into Days of Future Past movie with the people from First Class? If its not a prequel than why did the director say its a prequel when asked directly by Rich Marshall of MTV?
'Vaughn also offered up some details about the setting for the film, which he said "absolutely" positions it as an in-continuity prequel to the other "X-Men" films made over the last decade.' ... more...
“Yeah, I would say absolutely so… You’ve got Magneto and [Charles] Xavier when they first meet… The backdrop of what’s going on in the world when they first meet, it’s very interesting. You see them and their relationship develop and play out with this major political event in the background.”
I say they blatantly told us because the original writer/director (Singer) and the actual director (Vaughn) said they took the elements they liked and disregarded the ones they didn't. I say so because Goldman, who wrote the shooting script, says she wrote it as an alternate story and a reimagining of the original films.
The things you cite as blatantly saying the opposite are based on a number of reasons. Sure, the advertisements show the actors from the previous movies, but the studio is in charge of making the promos, not the director, writer or producer. The promos don't necessarily reflect what the creative team have said. And even so, it's still in the same universe of Singer's original movies. It's a separate timeline, but it's the same universe. Why wouldn't they use the same future actors? Hugh Jackman is currently Wolverine. Even in an alternate timeline, he'd look the same. He'd be the same actor.
As for the Magneto scene, it's like in comics. Even if you reinvent a universe, certain aspects of a character's history will remain intact. Be it Earth 1, Earth 2 or New 52, Kal-El is always going to be rocketed from Krypton and crash-land on Earth. We're always going to see a version of that scene. In the X-Men, Magneto's past will almost always include a concentration camp. And this also goes back to one of those elements Singer and Vaughn spoke of keeping from the original films. He decided to not only keep it, but to recreate the same scene.
They're re-introducing the other actors from the first series into Days of Future Past as a way to "bridge" or bring together the two separate timelines, not explicitly because those are directly future versions of these characters. At least that's how I understand it from what I've read.
As for the quote, I honestly don't know. That interview was early on in the production of the movie, before they started filming. It seems to contradict what was said by Vaughn, Singer and Goldman in later interviews.
If you want to think of it as a direct prequel, that's cool. I was just saying they didn't really have to explain the inconsistent elements because they more or less explained why everything didn't match up.
By the way, could I ask about some of the major continuity issues you had problems with? Some people posed a few questions they had about the film's continuity and a friend of mine came up with some answers he felt were credible solutions. I'm wondering if they're the same problems others had. Would you mind rattling off a couple?
The only continuity thing that I noticed/stuck out was Cerebro being built by the government. And I really didn't care after noticing that. The movie was that good.
By the way, could I ask about some of the major continuity issues you had problems with? Some people posed a few questions they had about the film's continuity and a friend of mine came up with some answers he felt were credible solutions. I'm wondering if they're the same problems others had. Would you mind rattling off a couple?
I totally believe they took what they wanted and left the rest because they're selfish. Why should they let previous movies prevent them from making the movie they want to make? They don't care, just like if a comic writer wanted to do something special he wouldn't let previous history bother him. That's how retcons and errors happen. We accept them in comics sometimes because the stories are written over several decades. Why would we hold a comic being writtten in 2006 to something that was said in a different comic in 1989? It infuriates me they couldn't keep stuff strait after only a couple movies. They could have had the same movie essentially and still avoided all of this.
This isn't me being a typical continuity obsessed crazy person either. My wife, who does not read comics but does like the X-Men movies and some Marvel movie stuff, borderline hates First Class because of everything below. Whenever it comes on HBO and it happens to be on she talks about it for 15 minutes.
That's a very good example of what I'm talking about... but just to rattle off a few
1) Cerebro being built by Beast, when it was mentioned in X-Men that Xavier and Magneto built it together.
2) Magneto's Helmet: said in the first film he knew how to make it because he helped build cerebro
3) Emma Frost: clearly makes an appearance as a teenager in the 1980's during X-men Origin's Wolverine. Then is clearly depicted as a 30 something in the 1960's in First Class.
4) Moira: depicted as a doctor in her 40's in Last Stand sometime in the 2000s, then depicted as a American woman in her 30's who is a CIA agent in the 1960's
5) Xavier: depicted as walking around and being fairly pleasant with Magneto in the 1980's during Last Stand and Wolverine.... crippled in the 1960's in First Class.
6) First Classes: in the early trilogy, Xavier makes it clear Jean and Cyclops were part of his first class. Ooops, turns out he had a class 20 years before they were born.
From the io9
"There are plenty of other minor discrepancies, discussed throughout the Nerdenet, but also some extremely ludicrous explanations for them. Apologists - and I can't believe X-Men Origins: Wolverine and The Last Stand have apologists - point out that Professor X has gained and lost the use of his legs in the comics multiple times, that Beast has repeatedly transformed back and forth, that occasionally characters seem to get younger, and so forth. This is all true. However, the X-Men comics have had 50 years to get this fucked up. The X-Men movie franchise has only had five movies; there's no way it should be this twisted already.
More importantly, just because the comics have had countless retcons and errors, why does that make it somehow okay for the movies to have them? Just because Marvel can't decide what they want Beast to look like doesn't mean the movies have to have him randomly change back-and-forth every time he shows up on-screen. We accept these things in the comics because there's so much history and story that it would be impossible to keep every detail on track - there have only been five movies, and only three of them were any good. It should not be hard for Fox to maintain one semi-coherent timeline, okay?"
I have a serious question about the X-Men movies, First class in particular, and what it might mean for the future of the franchise and Days of Future Past....
I pay attention to box office, I look at it every week, and certain movies that I'm interested in, I track through their entire run (like Skyfall for instance).
Anyway, does anybody else have any thoughts about why X-Men compared to other big time super hero movies does so horrible? And why First Class in particular did kind of mediocre? As an example, First Class's opening was essentially the same as the first X-Men ten years earlier, and the original had a higher domestic gross. First class had the lowest domestic gross of the whole series. It did make more money abroad than X-Men and X2, but less than Last Stand and Wolverine.
That's bad. Thats not what you want from a big time movie series. Especially considering the huge importance of the overseas box office where truly big movies are making way way more than they ever did 20 years ago. But other than First Class taking a step backward the whole series is very anemic compared to other comic movies. Superman Returns, which was a piece of crap, made more money in 2006 than X-Men First Class made in 2011. It had no established movie series, no established actors, and it was horrible. Everyone mostly acts like they love First Class and it had so much more going for it. Thor in 2011 had absolutely nothing going for it and even it beat First Class.
I only bring this up because I fear if the movies keep having anemic returns compared to other big time movies that they might stop making them.
No, not caring about things that came before is selfish. I as an audience member, and I'm sure many others like me, had invested in the original movies. Now we're being told this is a prequel, but it isn't, or its in the same timeline but not really. And other fans are basically saying its an entirely new series. They could have made the same movie, they could have had the same basic storyline without doing these things. Its distracting. Instead they said to themselves: Look, this is the story I want to make... yea sure it has inconsistant with movies made just a couple years ago... but eff it, this is what I want to do.
Suppose you and I work on a TV show. You write the entire first season and then move on to other projects. I write the second season and write a whole bunch of things that retroactively changes the things that you wrote. Now, this isn't ignorance on my part. I saw your whole season, I worked on the show, I know what you did. But I decide things you did interfere with what I want to do.
I think that would take a certain amount of selfishness yea. You seem to be one of those who don't care about continuity. Right? If the story you're reading right now is good, why does it need to be in perfect continuity. I get that to a certain extent, but we're not talking about X-Men movies made 40 years ago by a different studio with different producers. Same studio, same producers, some of the same writers and they are only separated by a few years.
To me this is the equivalent of if the Marvel Movie Universe suddenly moved to the 1960's and Iron Man and Thor etc were suddenly in the 1960's and there was no explanation. Would that bother you? If Marvel/Disney just said "well its kind of a prequel, but its not, and we just took what we liked and wanted to make the best movie". Would that not bother you?
Everyone mostly acts like they love First Class and it had so much more going for it.
My love of First Class isn't an act. I actually liked it, continuity problems aside.
And more importantly, my girlfriend (who I saw it with) enjoyed it too. Which means she'd be willing to see a sequel.
Yea I like it to. I liked it a lot when I first saw it. That's my point. People like first First Class. There appears to be mostly positive feelings for it. It had a lot going for it in terms of how successful it should be. So why did it make less than the first X Men? Why is the whole series so much less successful than other big time series and why did First Class take a step backwards?
Just curious if anyone has any thoughts. I'm not saying its because the movies are not good. But other movies of this type are making two or three times as much. Is it marketing?
Yea I like it to. I liked it a lot when I first saw it.
You do? Huh.
And rereading you previous posts, I get what you're trying to say now.
And here I thought That's my point. People like first First Class. There appears to be mostly positive feelings for it. It had a lot going for it in terms of how successful it should be. So why did it make less than the first X Men? Why is the whole series so much less successful than other big time series and why did First Class take a step backwards?
That's actually a good question. I'm sure someone more qualified than me will have an answer.
No, not caring about things that came before is selfish. I as an audience member, and I'm sure many others like me, had invested in the original movies. Now we're being told this is a prequel, but it isn't, or its in the same timeline but not really. And other fans are basically saying its an entirely new series. They could have made the same movie, they could have had the same basic storyline without doing these things. Its distracting. Instead they said to themselves: Look, this is the story I want to make... yea sure it has inconsistant with movies made just a couple years ago... but eff it, this is what I want to do.
Suppose you and I work on a TV show. You write the entire first season and then move on to other projects. I write the second season and write a whole bunch of things that retroactively changes the things that you wrote. Now, this isn't ignorance on my part. I saw your whole season, I worked on the show, I know what you did. But I decide things you did interfere with what I want to do.
I think that would take a certain amount of selfishness yea. You seem to be one of those who don't care about continuity. Right? If the story you're reading right now is good, why does it need to be in perfect continuity. I get that to a certain extent, but we're not talking about X-Men movies made 40 years ago by a different studio with different producers. Same studio, same producers, some of the same writers and they are only separated by a few years.
To me this is the equivalent of if the Marvel Movie Universe suddenly moved to the 1960's and Iron Man and Thor etc were suddenly in the 1960's and there was no explanation. Would that bother you? If Marvel/Disney just said "well its kind of a prequel, but its not, and we just took what we liked and wanted to make the best movie". Would that not bother you?
If the movies were great, and entertained me, then no. It wouldn't bother me at all. Why should I let it? It is all make believe anyway. It is all still fiction. It is not like I have to worry about whether a movie about actual American history is grounded in fact or not.
Continuity can enhance the entertainment. I get that. And when it does, great. But I am always less invested in that than I am in what the new ideas and new story being brought to the table is. I personally am much more interested in the new than in callbacks and winks at what has come before. Especially when I find that a lot of times the effort of winking at continuity often feels like pandering to me. In many instances, a scene stretches away from the present story to make time for an "Easter egg". Usually those shout outs feel more clunky to me than exciting.
When I sat down to see X-Men: First Class, I was game to see a new thing. A new story X-Men set in the 1960s? I'm in. Especially as I found it very well executed. Sure, I could have been spending attention playing continuity police to see if the story in front of me honored or contradicted what would come later, but that is not that interesting to me. Especially as I find that exercise usually doesn't enhance, it distracts. At least for me. Staying in the moment with the movie in front of me, I had a great time with X-Men First Class.
I understand that continuity is of more interest to other people, and I respect that. But I feel like it almost always comes up in a negative. I almost always tend to hear about continuity in the instances when they got something "wrong", and it distracted from the entertainment. And it makes me wonder if the whole exercise of judging continuity as your watch is time away from the present experience of the new story. But, so it goes. We all watch in different ways.
Everyone mostly acts like they love First Class and it had so much more going for it.
My love of First Class isn't an act. I actually liked it, continuity problems aside.
And more importantly, my girlfriend (who I saw it with) enjoyed it too. Which means she'd be willing to see a sequel.
Yea I like it to. I liked it a lot when I first saw it. That's my point. People like first First Class. There appears to be mostly positive feelings for it. It had a lot going for it in terms of how successful it should be. So why did it make less than the first X Men? Why is the whole series so much less successful than other big time series and why did First Class take a step backwards?
Just curious if anyone has any thoughts. I'm not saying its because the movies are not good. But other movies of this type are making two or three times as much. Is it marketing?
One takeaway from their analysis is the low expectations from the prior two X-movies, both of which were stinkers. I know that made me pretty hesitant to see it, so it took positive buzz after the opening weekend to get me in. And even though it had a disappointing opening, X-Men First Class continued to perform in a way that likely benefited from the kind of positive buzz that made me decide to go see it two or three weeks into the run.
The original X-Men had a higher budget ($75M and that was in year 2000 dollars), which would suggest that more was also spent on marketing (as it tends to be that higher budget movies also get more money spent on marketing). X-Men had recognizable stars in it, like genre fan favorite Patrick Stewart.
And given that, despite those challenges, X-Men First Class still went on to make $10M less than the hit original* is not bad. I am not surprised they are making a sequel so soon.
*Yes, there is a 11 year inflation different in those numbers. But even if the different was $20M, that is still an impressive job for a fifth movie in a franchise with no name stars. It still made over $100M.
Well, after doing my own digging at Box Office Mojo... I think I have somewhat of an answer for the whole series.
But regarding what you said, the original X Men absolutely did not have a higher budget. It had nearly $100 million dollars less to work with. First Class cost $160 million dollars to make according to Box Office Mojo.
If a studio is putting out $160 million, they are looking to make more than $300 million worldwide. They don't get all the money. Sure it was successful, but other similar properties are making several orders of magnitude higher. Other comic movies or sci-fi properties if they have a budget and are heavily marketed, they are making tons overseas right now, many times more than the X-Men movies have. Not to mention the relatively anemic domestic total.
This is not a reflection on First Class, despite the continuity stuff that fills me with rage, I went to see it and I own it on blu-ray. Its a good movie. I think the thing that holds back the x-men movies is the lack of one or two character that everyone can latch onto. For instance, if you like Cyclops... he's barely in the movies. They have to share screentime with so many other characters. And then with First Class any attachment people had to those actors and those characters was gone and they had to start over earning some cache with people.
Remember all the talk before Avengers came out, like "will they be able to share a movie?" And then it came out and it worked well. How many more characters does each X-Men movie have? I think it makes it hard for people to identify with someone they can root for or be a fan of.
@Planeis You're right, I misread the budget numbers. Well, I can see now why the opening was considered a disappointment.
I'm not sure about the $300M number as a target. I mean, sure, they would like to hit that number, but considering that none of the prior X movies, including the third one, which looks (looking more carefully this time) to have had a budget of $210M (in 2006 dollars) and made $234M, and yet they kept going. And something is making them continue on to a sequel.
I agree that the characters in X-Men First Class aren't as already known or popular as Wolverine. But I do think there are characters to latch onto- Xavier and Magneto. Maybe particularly Magneto. They may not be called X-Men: Xavier and Magneto, but the movie basically belongs to the two of them. First Class helped make a star out of Fassbender. And I think people will go to the First Class sequel to see more of him, more Xavier, as well as the established characters playing the older versions.
EDIT- To be clear, though, X-Men First Class was never going to perform like Avengers. As Box Office Mojo reminded us- it was following two prior critical (and, perhaps, audience) turkeys. Avengers got to pay off on four prior successes.
I pay attention to box office, I look at it every week, and certain movies that I'm interested in, I track through their entire run (like Skyfall for instance).
Anyway, does anybody else have any thoughts about why X-Men compared to other big time super hero movies does so horrible? And why First Class in particular did kind of mediocre? As an example, First Class's opening was essentially the same as the first X-Men ten years earlier, and the original had a higher domestic gross. First class had the lowest domestic gross of the whole series. It did make more money abroad than X-Men and X2, but less than Last Stand and Wolverine.
That's bad. Thats not what you want from a big time movie series. Especially considering the huge importance of the overseas box office where truly big movies are making way way more than they ever did 20 years ago. But other than First Class taking a step backward the whole series is very anemic compared to other comic movies. Superman Returns, which was a piece of crap, made more money in 2006 than X-Men First Class made in 2011. It had no established movie series, no established actors, and it was horrible. Everyone mostly acts like they love First Class and it had so much more going for it. Thor in 2011 had absolutely nothing going for it and even it beat First Class.
I also track the weekly Box Office and have done so since the early 00's. I actually have thoughts on this. I use the Burton/Schumacher movies and the Nolan Batman movies as an example. After Batman Returns, the opinions on the Batman movies started to go south. After Batman and Robin was released, a movie widely considered to be one of the worst films of the 90s and all-time, the movie-going public had completely lost faith in the character. At least in terms of the character in films.
8 years later, when Batman Begins was released, Batman and Robin was still on people's minds. The last time they saw Batman, it was a disaster, so they were very wary of this new Batman. Because the audience was cautious, Batman Begins ended up making $372M. Just barely making it into the list of top grossing movies of the year. #9, I think. It made a lot of money, moreso than all but 8 other films that year, but less than it could have made. Less than Batman (1989), to draw comparison to your X-Men 1 and First Class observation.
The movie was well reviewed by critics and the audience, but a lot of people still weren't feeling Batman after Batman and Robin. Batman Begins did very well in Home Video, to the point of almost matching half of it's box office. Over the years, strong DVD sales and rentals, as well as people constantly hyping Nolan and what he did with Batman Begins, got people very excited about The Dark Knight. And 3 years later, the majority of the audience were now onboard with Batman. The sequel ended up making $1B and was the highest grossing film of the year. All the doubts that plagued the character were gone.
Another example is Star Trek. J. J. Abrams Star Trek was released 4 years after the cancellation of Enterprise, which failed to perform as well as previous Star Trek series, and 7 years after Nemesis, which was the worst performing Star Trek film. Enterprise only lasted 4 seasons, compared to the 7 seasons of TNG, DS9 and Voyager. Nemesis only grossed $7M beyond it's $60M budget.
By 2009, the Star Trek franchise didn't carry much weight with the mainstream audience, as there hadn't been an overall successful or well-received incarnation in the public eye for a number of years. And when Star Trek was released, much like Batman Begins, the audience was cautious. The film ended up making $385M. A lot of money, but nowhere near what it could have made. Genre movies tend to be the highest grossing films of the year, and this was the return of one of the most prominent franchises in the genre, but people were apprehensive because they'd been burned in the past. Hell, even the sequel to the first Twilight carried more weight than the Star Trek reboot at that point, as it made $709M that same year.
Unlike Batman Begins, it didn't make it into the top 10. It was #13, right behind The Chipmunks and the Night at the Museum sequels. Like Batman Begins, it was well-received and went on to do very well in DVD sales and rentals. Good word of mouth over the years has made the next film one of the most anticipated films of the year. I don't expect it to make $1B like The Dark Knight, but I expect it to perform significantly better than the original.
Which brings us to X-Men: First Class. Same deal as Batman and Star Trek. First Class followed The Last Stand and X-Men Origins, two films that ultimately left a bad taste in the mouths of a lot of fans and critics. People hoped Origins would be an improvement over The Last Stand, but were disappointed, for the most part. When First Class rolled around, not many people had much faith in the franchise, which had 2 consecutive underwhelming entries. There was also the fact that a number of people have an automatic disdain for any comic book project produced by 20th Century Fox. There really hadn't been a "good" X-Men movie since 2003, at least as far as some where concerned.
So, you have another situation where previous "failures" have soured an audience on a franchise and when a reboot or new entry is released, the audience proceeds with caution. Even if the movie is well reviewed, which First Class was. First Class wasn't able to perform better than The Last Stand and Origins, movies that weren't as praised.
I think it was due to expectations. People assumed The Last Stand would be good, as it was following X-2. People hoped Origins would be good in order to make up for The Last Stand. They assumed First Class would be bad, as it was following The Last Stand and Origins. With Days of Future Past, I think we're back in the same boat we were in with X-2. Since the release of First Class, faith in the franchise has more or less been restored. Instead of automatically thinking the worst about every tidbit we hear, like a lot of people did with First Class, people seem to be initially optimistic about any new information. They're no longer in a position where they have to prove to the audience that they're making a good movie. For the most part, the audience already believes it.
Those are my thoughts. Audience trepidation due to the other films caused the lower box office for First Class.
Does the Bond movies disregard continuity after a while (besides the change in actors portraying 007)? Don't people just accept each as a stand alone or series featuring that specific actor portraying Bond?
No. Not really. Before they did the reboot, the James Bond series acted very much like comic time. They did reference things in the past, like Bond getting married, or there being previous "M's" or people dying, or the Cold War ending. Some movies continued almost directly from the previous one (like On Her Majesty's Secret Service and Diamonds Are Forever). Bond was never allowed to truly age, just like Batman will never ever be 55 years old in the mainstream continuity.
Besides, like I said, if there was some continuity errors in a series that went on for 50 years... it'd be understandable.
No. Not really. Before they did the reboot, the James Bond series acted very much like comic time. They did reference things in the past, like Bond getting married, or there being previous "M's" or people dying, or the Cold War ending. Some movies continued almost directly from the previous one (like On Her Majesty's Secret Service and Diamonds Are Forever). Bond was never allowed to truly age, just like Batman will never ever be 55 years old in the mainstream continuity.
Besides, like I said, if there was some continuity errors in a series that went on for 50 years... it'd be understandable.
Okay, I just don't recall too many callbacks by the time Bronson picked up the role. Also, I will have to rewatch XO: Wolverine, but I do not recall anyone ever identifying Silverfox's sister as Emma or White Queen.
No. Not really. Before they did the reboot, the James Bond series acted very much like comic time. They did reference things in the past, like Bond getting married, or there being previous "M's" or people dying, or the Cold War ending. Some movies continued almost directly from the previous one (like On Her Majesty's Secret Service and Diamonds Are Forever). Bond was never allowed to truly age, just like Batman will never ever be 55 years old in the mainstream continuity.
Besides, like I said, if there was some continuity errors in a series that went on for 50 years... it'd be understandable.
Okay, I just don't recall too many callbacks by the time Bronson picked up the role. Also, I will have to rewatch XO: Wolverine, but I do not recall anyone ever identifying Silverfox's sister as Emma or White Queen.
M.
I'm 100% positive her name was never mentioned, but it was in the credits according to IMDB and wikipedia. And if that aint supposed to be Emma Frost then that is a serious case of them jerking everyone around because obviously that is what everyone is supposed to think unless there is another hot blonde woman who turns into diamonds in the X-Men mythos that I'm unaware of.
^ From his casting in 1999 to the release of Days of Future Past in 2014, Jackman will have portrayed Wolverine in 7 films over the course of 15 years and counting.
^ From his casting in 1999 to the release of Days of Future Past in 2014, Jackman will have portrayed Wolverine in 7 films over the course of 15 years and counting.
So, who do you think will make more appearance overall: Jackman ad Wolverine or Jackson as Nick Fury?!
^ From his casting in 1999 to the release of Days of Future Past in 2014, Jackman will have portrayed Wolverine in 7 films over the course of 15 years and counting.
So, who do you think will make more appearance overall: Jackman ad Wolverine or Jackson as Nick Fury?!
M
I think Jackson will end up being in more films. He's currently appeared in 5 films and is signed up for The Winter Soldier and Avengers 2. He may also have an appearance in Guardians and Ant-Man, but we don't know anything about that yet.
Even though Jackman will probably be in fewer films, he will have a more significant role than Jackson had. Out of those 7 films, he was the co-lead in the original 3 films (some would say he was the lead) and the lead in the 2 solo films. He only appeared for a few seconds in First Class and his role in Days of Future Past is to be determined.
As for Jackson, he's only had a significant supporting role in Iron Man 2 and Avengers, while only appearing for a few seconds in Iron Man, Thor and Captain America.
As far as I'm concerned, they should scrap the first 3 and use 1st Class as the starting point for a new round of movies.
I don't think that is entirely fair. The X-Movies are certainly products of their time and they have some flaws but when the first x-men movie came out...minds were blown. i know we've had several much better superhero movies since then but in some ways X-Men was as influential as the Burton Batman movie in regards to the future course of superheros in cinema.
Comments
If its not a prequel... then why are they re-introducing the other actors from the first series into Days of Future Past movie with the people from First Class? If its not a prequel than why did the director say its a prequel when asked directly by Rich Marshall of MTV?
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1644986/x-men-first-class-has-lot-heart-director-matthew-vaughn.jhtml
'Vaughn also offered up some details about the setting for the film, which he said "absolutely" positions it as an in-continuity prequel to the other "X-Men" films made over the last decade.'
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more...
“Yeah, I would say absolutely so… You’ve got Magneto and [Charles] Xavier when they first meet… The backdrop of what’s going on in the world when they first meet, it’s very interesting. You see them and their relationship develop and play out with this major political event in the background.”
The things you cite as blatantly saying the opposite are based on a number of reasons. Sure, the advertisements show the actors from the previous movies, but the studio is in charge of making the promos, not the director, writer or producer. The promos don't necessarily reflect what the creative team have said. And even so, it's still in the same universe of Singer's original movies. It's a separate timeline, but it's the same universe. Why wouldn't they use the same future actors? Hugh Jackman is currently Wolverine. Even in an alternate timeline, he'd look the same. He'd be the same actor.
As for the Magneto scene, it's like in comics. Even if you reinvent a universe, certain aspects of a character's history will remain intact. Be it Earth 1, Earth 2 or New 52, Kal-El is always going to be rocketed from Krypton and crash-land on Earth. We're always going to see a version of that scene. In the X-Men, Magneto's past will almost always include a concentration camp. And this also goes back to one of those elements Singer and Vaughn spoke of keeping from the original films. He decided to not only keep it, but to recreate the same scene.
They're re-introducing the other actors from the first series into Days of Future Past as a way to "bridge" or bring together the two separate timelines, not explicitly because those are directly future versions of these characters. At least that's how I understand it from what I've read.
As for the quote, I honestly don't know. That interview was early on in the production of the movie, before they started filming. It seems to contradict what was said by Vaughn, Singer and Goldman in later interviews.
If you want to think of it as a direct prequel, that's cool. I was just saying they didn't really have to explain the inconsistent elements because they more or less explained why everything didn't match up.
This isn't me being a typical continuity obsessed crazy person either. My wife, who does not read comics but does like the X-Men movies and some Marvel movie stuff, borderline hates First Class because of everything below. Whenever it comes on HBO and it happens to be on she talks about it for 15 minutes.
http://io9.com/5966264/8-ways-x+men-movie-continuity-is-irretrievably-fucked
That's a very good example of what I'm talking about... but just to rattle off a few
1) Cerebro being built by Beast, when it was mentioned in X-Men that Xavier and Magneto built it together.
2) Magneto's Helmet: said in the first film he knew how to make it because he helped build cerebro
3) Emma Frost: clearly makes an appearance as a teenager in the 1980's during X-men Origin's Wolverine. Then is clearly depicted as a 30 something in the 1960's in First Class.
4) Moira: depicted as a doctor in her 40's in Last Stand sometime in the 2000s, then depicted as a American woman in her 30's who is a CIA agent in the 1960's
5) Xavier: depicted as walking around and being fairly pleasant with Magneto in the 1980's during Last Stand and Wolverine.... crippled in the 1960's in First Class.
6) First Classes: in the early trilogy, Xavier makes it clear Jean and Cyclops were part of his first class. Ooops, turns out he had a class 20 years before they were born.
From the io9
"There are plenty of other minor discrepancies, discussed throughout the Nerdenet, but also some extremely ludicrous explanations for them. Apologists - and I can't believe X-Men Origins: Wolverine and The Last Stand have apologists - point out that Professor X has gained and lost the use of his legs in the comics multiple times, that Beast has repeatedly transformed back and forth, that occasionally characters seem to get younger, and so forth. This is all true. However, the X-Men comics have had 50 years to get this fucked up. The X-Men movie franchise has only had five movies; there's no way it should be this twisted already.
More importantly, just because the comics have had countless retcons and errors, why does that make it somehow okay for the movies to have them? Just because Marvel can't decide what they want Beast to look like doesn't mean the movies have to have him randomly change back-and-forth every time he shows up on-screen. We accept these things in the comics because there's so much history and story that it would be impossible to keep every detail on track - there have only been five movies, and only three of them were any good. It should not be hard for Fox to maintain one semi-coherent timeline, okay?"
I pay attention to box office, I look at it every week, and certain movies that I'm interested in, I track through their entire run (like Skyfall for instance).
Anyway, does anybody else have any thoughts about why X-Men compared to other big time super hero movies does so horrible? And why First Class in particular did kind of mediocre? As an example, First Class's opening was essentially the same as the first X-Men ten years earlier, and the original had a higher domestic gross. First class had the lowest domestic gross of the whole series. It did make more money abroad than X-Men and X2, but less than Last Stand and Wolverine.
That's bad. Thats not what you want from a big time movie series. Especially considering the huge importance of the overseas box office where truly big movies are making way way more than they ever did 20 years ago. But other than First Class taking a step backward the whole series is very anemic compared to other comic movies. Superman Returns, which was a piece of crap, made more money in 2006 than X-Men First Class made in 2011. It had no established movie series, no established actors, and it was horrible. Everyone mostly acts like they love First Class and it had so much more going for it. Thor in 2011 had absolutely nothing going for it and even it beat First Class.
I only bring this up because I fear if the movies keep having anemic returns compared to other big time movies that they might stop making them.
Suppose you and I work on a TV show. You write the entire first season and then move on to other projects. I write the second season and write a whole bunch of things that retroactively changes the things that you wrote. Now, this isn't ignorance on my part. I saw your whole season, I worked on the show, I know what you did. But I decide things you did interfere with what I want to do.
I think that would take a certain amount of selfishness yea. You seem to be one of those who don't care about continuity. Right? If the story you're reading right now is good, why does it need to be in perfect continuity. I get that to a certain extent, but we're not talking about X-Men movies made 40 years ago by a different studio with different producers. Same studio, same producers, some of the same writers and they are only separated by a few years.
To me this is the equivalent of if the Marvel Movie Universe suddenly moved to the 1960's and Iron Man and Thor etc were suddenly in the 1960's and there was no explanation. Would that bother you? If Marvel/Disney just said "well its kind of a prequel, but its not, and we just took what we liked and wanted to make the best movie". Would that not bother you?
And more importantly, my girlfriend (who I saw it with) enjoyed it too. Which means she'd be willing to see a sequel.
Just curious if anyone has any thoughts. I'm not saying its because the movies are not good. But other movies of this type are making two or three times as much. Is it marketing?
And rereading you previous posts, I get what you're trying to say now. That's actually a good question. I'm sure someone more qualified than me will have an answer.
Continuity can enhance the entertainment. I get that. And when it does, great. But I am always less invested in that than I am in what the new ideas and new story being brought to the table is. I personally am much more interested in the new than in callbacks and winks at what has come before. Especially when I find that a lot of times the effort of winking at continuity often feels like pandering to me. In many instances, a scene stretches away from the present story to make time for an "Easter egg". Usually those shout outs feel more clunky to me than exciting.
When I sat down to see X-Men: First Class, I was game to see a new thing. A new story X-Men set in the 1960s? I'm in. Especially as I found it very well executed. Sure, I could have been spending attention playing continuity police to see if the story in front of me honored or contradicted what would come later, but that is not that interesting to me. Especially as I find that exercise usually doesn't enhance, it distracts. At least for me. Staying in the moment with the movie in front of me, I had a great time with X-Men First Class.
I understand that continuity is of more interest to other people, and I respect that. But I feel like it almost always comes up in a negative. I almost always tend to hear about continuity in the instances when they got something "wrong", and it distracted from the entertainment. And it makes me wonder if the whole exercise of judging continuity as your watch is time away from the present experience of the new story. But, so it goes. We all watch in different ways.
Just curious if anyone has any thoughts. I'm not saying its because the movies are not good. But other movies of this type are making two or three times as much. Is it marketing?
Here is Box Office Mojo's take on the opening weekend.
One takeaway from their analysis is the low expectations from the prior two X-movies, both of which were stinkers. I know that made me pretty hesitant to see it, so it took positive buzz after the opening weekend to get me in. And even though it had a disappointing opening, X-Men First Class continued to perform in a way that likely benefited from the kind of positive buzz that made me decide to go see it two or three weeks into the run.
The original X-Men had a higher budget ($75M and that was in year 2000 dollars), which would suggest that more was also spent on marketing (as it tends to be that higher budget movies also get more money spent on marketing). X-Men had recognizable stars in it, like genre fan favorite Patrick Stewart.
And given that, despite those challenges, X-Men First Class still went on to make $10M less than the hit original* is not bad. I am not surprised they are making a sequel so soon.
*Yes, there is a 11 year inflation different in those numbers. But even if the different was $20M, that is still an impressive job for a fifth movie in a franchise with no name stars. It still made over $100M.
But regarding what you said, the original X Men absolutely did not have a higher budget. It had nearly $100 million dollars less to work with. First Class cost $160 million dollars to make according to Box Office Mojo.
If a studio is putting out $160 million, they are looking to make more than $300 million worldwide. They don't get all the money. Sure it was successful, but other similar properties are making several orders of magnitude higher. Other comic movies or sci-fi properties if they have a budget and are heavily marketed, they are making tons overseas right now, many times more than the X-Men movies have. Not to mention the relatively anemic domestic total.
This is not a reflection on First Class, despite the continuity stuff that fills me with rage, I went to see it and I own it on blu-ray. Its a good movie. I think the thing that holds back the x-men movies is the lack of one or two character that everyone can latch onto. For instance, if you like Cyclops... he's barely in the movies. They have to share screentime with so many other characters. And then with First Class any attachment people had to those actors and those characters was gone and they had to start over earning some cache with people.
Remember all the talk before Avengers came out, like "will they be able to share a movie?" And then it came out and it worked well. How many more characters does each X-Men movie have? I think it makes it hard for people to identify with someone they can root for or be a fan of.
I'm not sure about the $300M number as a target. I mean, sure, they would like to hit that number, but considering that none of the prior X movies, including the third one, which looks (looking more carefully this time) to have had a budget of $210M (in 2006 dollars) and made $234M, and yet they kept going. And something is making them continue on to a sequel.
I agree that the characters in X-Men First Class aren't as already known or popular as Wolverine. But I do think there are characters to latch onto- Xavier and Magneto. Maybe particularly Magneto. They may not be called X-Men: Xavier and Magneto, but the movie basically belongs to the two of them. First Class helped make a star out of Fassbender. And I think people will go to the First Class sequel to see more of him, more Xavier, as well as the established characters playing the older versions.
EDIT- To be clear, though, X-Men First Class was never going to perform like Avengers. As Box Office Mojo reminded us- it was following two prior critical (and, perhaps, audience) turkeys. Avengers got to pay off on four prior successes.
8 years later, when Batman Begins was released, Batman and Robin was still on people's minds. The last time they saw Batman, it was a disaster, so they were very wary of this new Batman. Because the audience was cautious, Batman Begins ended up making $372M. Just barely making it into the list of top grossing movies of the year. #9, I think. It made a lot of money, moreso than all but 8 other films that year, but less than it could have made. Less than Batman (1989), to draw comparison to your X-Men 1 and First Class observation.
The movie was well reviewed by critics and the audience, but a lot of people still weren't feeling Batman after Batman and Robin. Batman Begins did very well in Home Video, to the point of almost matching half of it's box office. Over the years, strong DVD sales and rentals, as well as people constantly hyping Nolan and what he did with Batman Begins, got people very excited about The Dark Knight. And 3 years later, the majority of the audience were now onboard with Batman. The sequel ended up making $1B and was the highest grossing film of the year. All the doubts that plagued the character were gone.
Another example is Star Trek. J. J. Abrams Star Trek was released 4 years after the cancellation of Enterprise, which failed to perform as well as previous Star Trek series, and 7 years after Nemesis, which was the worst performing Star Trek film. Enterprise only lasted 4 seasons, compared to the 7 seasons of TNG, DS9 and Voyager. Nemesis only grossed $7M beyond it's $60M budget.
By 2009, the Star Trek franchise didn't carry much weight with the mainstream audience, as there hadn't been an overall successful or well-received incarnation in the public eye for a number of years. And when Star Trek was released, much like Batman Begins, the audience was cautious. The film ended up making $385M. A lot of money, but nowhere near what it could have made. Genre movies tend to be the highest grossing films of the year, and this was the return of one of the most prominent franchises in the genre, but people were apprehensive because they'd been burned in the past. Hell, even the sequel to the first Twilight carried more weight than the Star Trek reboot at that point, as it made $709M that same year.
Unlike Batman Begins, it didn't make it into the top 10. It was #13, right behind The Chipmunks and the Night at the Museum sequels. Like Batman Begins, it was well-received and went on to do very well in DVD sales and rentals. Good word of mouth over the years has made the next film one of the most anticipated films of the year. I don't expect it to make $1B like The Dark Knight, but I expect it to perform significantly better than the original.
Which brings us to X-Men: First Class. Same deal as Batman and Star Trek. First Class followed The Last Stand and X-Men Origins, two films that ultimately left a bad taste in the mouths of a lot of fans and critics. People hoped Origins would be an improvement over The Last Stand, but were disappointed, for the most part. When First Class rolled around, not many people had much faith in the franchise, which had 2 consecutive underwhelming entries. There was also the fact that a number of people have an automatic disdain for any comic book project produced by 20th Century Fox. There really hadn't been a "good" X-Men movie since 2003, at least as far as some where concerned.
So, you have another situation where previous "failures" have soured an audience on a franchise and when a reboot or new entry is released, the audience proceeds with caution. Even if the movie is well reviewed, which First Class was. First Class wasn't able to perform better than The Last Stand and Origins, movies that weren't as praised.
I think it was due to expectations. People assumed The Last Stand would be good, as it was following X-2. People hoped Origins would be good in order to make up for The Last Stand. They assumed First Class would be bad, as it was following The Last Stand and Origins. With Days of Future Past, I think we're back in the same boat we were in with X-2. Since the release of First Class, faith in the franchise has more or less been restored. Instead of automatically thinking the worst about every tidbit we hear, like a lot of people did with First Class, people seem to be initially optimistic about any new information. They're no longer in a position where they have to prove to the audience that they're making a good movie. For the most part, the audience already believes it.
Those are my thoughts. Audience trepidation due to the other films caused the lower box office for First Class.
M
Besides, like I said, if there was some continuity errors in a series that went on for 50 years... it'd be understandable.
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Even though Jackman will probably be in fewer films, he will have a more significant role than Jackson had. Out of those 7 films, he was the co-lead in the original 3 films (some would say he was the lead) and the lead in the 2 solo films. He only appeared for a few seconds in First Class and his role in Days of Future Past is to be determined.
As for Jackson, he's only had a significant supporting role in Iron Man 2 and Avengers, while only appearing for a few seconds in Iron Man, Thor and Captain America.
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