Call me Uatu. To some I am also known simply as The Watcher. It is my duty to watch the events which transpire on the planet Earth. While I am sworn to only observe and never interfere, I am permited to unfold the fabric of what have been and what never was. Let us examine “What if X2 had remained focused on its X1 characters?”

Okay, enough with the fanboy nonsense. X1 kept its cast fairly lean and so every mutant was able to have a few minutes screen time. X2 expanded the cast, and consequently expanded the running time to 133 minutes. But already some characters were losing out. And then X3 had the largest cast of the three, yet it is an extremely slight 104 minutes. So while I enjoy the three X-Men films, the second and third entries are more and more plot driven than character driven. Characterization is given insufficent time. A large cast is possible, the LOTR films did it, but those films hover around the 3-hour mark (significantly longer for the superior Director’s Cuts).

X3’s problems began with the refocus of the cast in X2. Nightcrawler is a valued addition because the movie’s engine is driven by his actions in the amazing opening sequence. This segues the plot nicely into the hunt for him. And he’s given two character moments with Storm in the Blackbird and at the film’s climax in the Cerebro sequence. Even X2’s introduction of Iceman and Pyro and the rivalry between them pays for itself as it shines a light on the relationship between Xavier and Magneto and the mutants they are fighting for. The biggest loss comes in Rogue, a character established in the first film that is forgotten in the second. This could have been corrected when Wolverine and the X-babies escape from Stryker’s attack on the mansion by driving to Iceman’s parent’s house.

They instead should have driven to Rogue’s parent’s house. Firstly, this would give Rogue screen time commensurate to a returning cast member. Secondly, a confrontation with the parents and boyfriend she ran away from would give closure to the story begun in X1. Thirdly, it allows her and Wolverine’s friendship, which has the common thread of being a loner, more time. Pyro and Iceman can still bicker, only this time in the background. Why the film spends time setting up Iceman as the character who becomes estranged from his family due to being a mutant when all that ground was already covered with Rogue, I don’t know. And a difficult confrontation with her parents and boyfriend explains why she is mostly inactive during the climax. She is so shaken that she can only pull herself together long enough to badly pilot the Blackbird to save the others.

A fairly short FF I know, but I really have only one point. I’d like to do something for Cyclops, for even more than Rogue he is the X1 cast member cheated in the later instalments. But I’m not sure what to do with him. For now he’ll have to linger in FF limbo.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 7th, 2007 at 11:55 pm and is filed under Action, Comic Book, Forensic Analysis, X, winston. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.