Hello hello hello! The new episode of Follow Friday is out now, and it features Chelsea Rebecca from Dead Meat, although I first knew her as one of the hosts of the iconic YouTube series Drunk Disney. We talked about horror movies, pro wrestling, the death rattle of late-stage capitalism … you know, normal stuff.
This week, I saw two different attempts at origin stories for the X-Men franchise, which may be completely moot now that Disney owns the movie rights to those characters, but both got me thinking about a question that will still be important no matter what happens to the IP: What does a good origin story look like?
“Let's just say I'm Frankenstein's monster... and I'm looking for my creator”
My answer today is filtered through the two movies I mentioned … X-Men Origins: Wolverine and X-Men: First Class. The former was broadly hated and the latter is generally well-liked, and they came out back to back in 2009 and 2011. Sandwiched between the original X-Men trilogy and a new run of prequels, they both expect the audience to know Professor X, Magneto, Wolverine, etc. are and to be interested in “how they got that way.”
Which takes us to what I’m calling the “origin story test”:
1) Could a non-fan understand and enjoy this movie?
2) Would a fan come out of it with a deeper appreciation of the main character(s) than they had coming in?
3) After viewing it, do “previous” movies in the series (released earlier, but covering events that take place later) become more interesting?
This test is not a stand-in for quality. But like the Bechdel Test, which exposes how few movies have female characters who talk to each other about anything other than a man, seeing which movies pass and fail is an interesting thought experiment:
Batman Begins: Yes, yes, no
Solo: A Star Wars Story: Yes, no, no
The Godfather Part II (the young Vito scenes): Yes, yes, yes
Casino Royale: Yes, yes, yes
Rise of the Planet of the Apes: Yes, no, maybe*
X-Men Origins: Wolverine: Maybe, no, no
X-Men: First Class: Yes, yes, yes
I will repeat: This is not a test for quality, and I am not trying to compare Godfather Part II or Casino Royale to X-Men: First Class. The latter is just not in the same league, with some horribly unsubtle dialogue and direction, and — let’s just say it — a distractingly horny male gaze. Nevertheless, the cast is quite good (especially Michael Fassbender as the young Magneto) and the story is well-paced, making First Class a pretty good entry in the series.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine, on the other hand, is a decent revenge story with a few cool action scenes, but which tries far too hard to foreshadow the movies we’ve already seen. It explains Logan’s character while barely deepening him, and like Disney’s Solo some years later, the movie strains to make a reluctant hero perfectly noble before his character arc really begins, which doesn’t sit right.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine ★★★ - on Hulu.
X-Men: First Class ★★★½ - on HBO Max.
* If your brain auto-completed “… I don’t know, could you repeat the question?”, then congratulations! Our brains work the same way.
Other stuff I’ve watched recently
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 ★★★½ - Yikes, this series got dark! And that’s saying something since the entire premise is that the most popular TV show in the world is about children killing each other for sport. Anyway, this is probably Jennifer Lawrence’s best performance that I’ve seen to date, albeit in service to an incomplete story that sometimes feels like wheel-spinning and table-setting. On Freeform, Sling TV, and DirecTV.
X-Men: The Last Stand ★★★½ - Maybe it’s just the benefit of low expectations, but this supposed trilogy-ender (which was later retconned into irrelevance) was better than I remembered. There are several dumb subplots and lines, and an overabundance of mutant characters at a time when the series seemed to be winding down, but the fundamentals of the story are good: A nice philosophical wedge between the different groups of mutants, and some fine action. Available to rent/buy on digital.
P.S.
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Leave your reactions, questions, recommendations, and origin story test results in the comments below.