*None of the Iowa-class vessels were actually in active service in 1962, however.
Where were they? I thought they weren't retired until after Gulf War I.
Another historical anachronism: the "bullet-proof" flight suits. Para-aramid (Kevlar) fibers didn't exist in 1962. They weren't commercially available for another eleven years.
I only spotted three "Why didn't they do that?" problems in the film:
Magneto should've cut Sebastian Shaw's yacht in half with the anchor chain, taking the submarine out with it, not do what he did. To be fair, he didn't know the sub was there, but that's still the most logical course.
He should've bent the sub's propeller blades all the way back so they can't generate thrust.
Professor X should've been able to find Shaw's sub by locating Angel, Riptide, or Azazel.
I rationalized the last one by thinking he couldn't control proto-cerebro like that. Rather, he was locating random mutants (well, random helpful mutants.
I also figure Magneto wanted to face Shaw to avenge his loss(es), just as he ultimately did. Shaw dying from some other mishap at Magneto's hands would not have been as satisfactory.
*None of the Iowa-class vessels were actually in active service in 1962, however.
Where were they? I thought they weren't retired until after Gulf War I.
All four of the Iowas were decommissioned and mothballed after the end of the Korean War. By late 1958, there were no battleships on active duty in the U.S. Navy. New Jersey was recommissioned in 1968 for service in Viet-Nam, and then decommissioned again in 1969.
All four ships were modernized and recommissioned in the 1980s. They were decommissioned and eventually stricken from the Naval Registry after Gulf War I.
Missouri, Wisconsin and New Jersey are now privately-owned and serve as museum ships. Iowa was stricken from the Naval Registry in 2006 and is currently awaiting a buyer.
Personally, I think they should have kept at least one of the Iowas in service. If nothing else, because the Marines love those ships. Nothing else delivers a greater tonnage of ordnance on a target with such lethal precision as does a battleship.
Didn't X-Men III show that Professor X and Magneto were still friends well after the time of the events depicted in First Class? It's not impossible, of course; they could have temporarily reconciled. Still, it seemed a bit strange to me.
Cheers,
Michael
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“The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.”
I don't know if this was intended to be a reboot/retcon/reimagining of the 20th Century Fox X-Men franchise. I'd like to consider it tongue in cheek considering the source material can be fluid with characters' origins in a similar manner. But the reality may be that not enough people cared about continuity to make the effort to keep things organized.
It was fun to see both Hugh and Rebecca as their respective characters, though. (And, in my opinion, two of the lighter, more fun moments in the movie.)
Coincidentally, the way Azazel took out the guards at the paranormal investigation facility thingie is exactly the way that John Wraith should've approached attacking Sabretooth in Wolverine.
The scene where he attacks Sabretooth was so It's like, ummm... you realize that punching Sabretooth in the face at normal strength, no matter how many times you do it, isn't going work? Right? You worked with him, you know his powers...
Maybe the writers just didn't like will.i.am and wanted his character to die.
Didn't X-Men III show that Professor X and Magneto were still friends well after the time of the events depicted in First Class? It's not impossible, of course; they could have temporarily reconciled. Still, it seemed a bit strange to me.
I didn't see where they stopped being friends. Charles basically gave his blessing to his "sister" to go with him, after getting shot in the back.
I just finished Big Man Japan. I was going to wait until tomorrow to poast about it, but I just can't help meself.
This is a pretty amazing, entirely insane flick. Not entirely what I expected -- I was expecting weird, but what I got was weird with poignancy, satire and more weird. And weird.
It's a mockumentary about a Kaiju monster-fighter. The documentary portions are slow, but also have a great deal of heart and, considering the subject is a guy who transforms into a giant and fights monsters out of someone's bad LSD trips, a surprising realism. Along the way there's a great deal of satire of commercialism and reality shows. There's a scene where Big Man is waiting for his monthly visit with his young daughter that's excruciatingly poignant.
The CGI fight scenes are just plain weird, and hilarious. The Stink Monsters sequence is particularly brilliant, disturbing, and might make you pee yourself.
Unfortunately, the ending sucks. For the first 1:30 or so, this is an extremely clever subversion of the Kaiju genre. Then, for the last 15 minutes, it takes a 90-degree turn into slapstick parody. And leaves it there. I found it extremely disappointing; it's not an "it was all a dream" sort of ending, but the letdown and cheapening effect is essentially the same. Overall, I give it 3 out of 5 stars. I'd give it 4 or more if it weren't for the ending. If you're interested in seeing this, be prepared for extreme levels of both weird and slowness. You might want to watch most of it, then stop it at the point it says "Watch the rest live!" -- then go have a few drinks, and watch the rest "live" with no expectations that anything will be resolved.
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"Her eyes in certain light were violet, and all her teeth were even. That's a rare, fair feature: even teeth. She smiled to excess, but she chewed with real distinction." - Eleanor of Aquitaine
Saw a trailer for it on something recently and wasn't sure I wanted to see it. I think I'll give it a miss.
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"freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order."
- Justice Robert Jackson, West Virginia State Board of Ed. v. Barnette
I had sworn off watching David Cronenberg movies, but accidentally added 2 on my queue, because they were Viggo Mortensen movies: "A History of Violence" and "Eastern Promises."
I have to admit that I enjoyed them both, they were tight character based dramas, and I love Mortensen as an actor. That doesn't necessarily mean I'm necessarily keen on watching Cronenberg's back catalog...
I haven't figured out why William Hurt won an Oscar for "A History of Violence," although it looked like he was having a great time chewing the scenery.
I love both of those movies, especially A History of Violence which is the only movie I've ever not liked much on first viewing only to have it haunt me for months afterwards. Now I rewatch it regularly.
William Hurt didn't actually win the Oscar. He was nominated for his whopping 8 minutes of screen time, but George Clooney won Best Supporting Actor that year for Syriana.
We watched Big Man Japan last night, and I thought the ending was great. Maybe I read too much into it, but it seemed like a resolution to me.
He's dead or unconscious or dying or something, and the ending is his fevered rumination on his own obsolescence, I thinked, being rescued and simultaneously humiliated by the more modern, Ultraman style hero family. I don't know the fancy nerd words for that stuff, and I did miss part of the ending credits part because Battlecat was all screaming for her dinner, though, so I might have missed something.
That's better than my half-worked-out interpretation, which was more along the lines of
He was merely an actor on a kid's Kaiju show, and his bewilderment was a result of partially coming to his senses after a long period of self-deluded fantasy.
Like I said, half-worked-out, because my take didn't adequately address what had gone before, which is why I found it so disappointing -- as if the writers just didn't bother with continuity. I don't think you missed anything; rather, I think I did.
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"Her eyes in certain light were violet, and all her teeth were even. That's a rare, fair feature: even teeth. She smiled to excess, but she chewed with real distinction." - Eleanor of Aquitaine
It's no secret that I, among others, thought this movie would be a soul sucking abomination. I hated the previews. I hated the costume. I was wishy washy about Ryan Reynolds as Hal Jordan.
I can't necessarily call myself a fan of Green Lantern comics. I only sort of know stuff by some kind of nerd-mind osmosis. But I did consider the Green Lanterns a fairly large influence on the DC Universe. This was an important movie for WB/DC to get right. Finally, something besides endless Batmans and tired Supermans for fans to enjoy and people who like movies where stuff happens to be exposed to.
I'll stand by my words saying Ryan Reynolds could be a good Hal Jordan (what little I know of the character). He does a fair to good job with the character he was given. I dont' care for the character they are saying is Hal Jordan, I think it's fair to say they missed the mark in that respect. They (the producers, I assume) were hoping to cash in on Reynolds' ability to play a seat-of-his-pants charismatic person when that isn't who I understand Jordan to be. Despite his silver age beginnings he's as four color, arrow straight as they come. That said, Reynolds played what I thought was a pretty good first human Green Lantern.
The costume was the costume. They didn't change anything from the promotional pictures that I can tell. But I will say that it wasn't as distractingly atrocious as I thought it would be. I still have my problems with it, especially the mask part, but it wasn't the horror I thought it would be.
The best news of the bad news is that all of the stupid stuff (or at least a heaping portion of it) was limited to what we've all seen (and hated) from the previews. There is some hoakey cornball stuff spread throughout but it is, thankfully, limited.
Now, on to the better good news and maybe some of the not so bad news.
Overall, I quite enjoyed it. As I said, I expected a bad, if not the worst, movie. The story was adequate enough. WB/DC did not fuck it up. That is the best of the good news. It's not a great movie, but it was good. Everyone turned in a good performance, Mark Strong's Sinestro was the stand out. (Tim Robbins as Senator Hammond and Angela Bassett as Amanda Waller [!!] weren't utilized as fully as I'd like - especially Bassett.)
This won't be a surprise break out hit. It won't win any awards. But neither do I think the nerd rage and derision it's suffered already is warranted. I have to give this a 3.5 out of 5 stars. As a semi-fan, it wasn't bad - but even better than that - it was pretty good as a comic book movie. Entirely appropriate to that genre. Espeically if the nadir of comic movies is something like Batman and Robin. Fans of the series shouldn't be afraid to see it though I leave shelling out the cash to your discretion. (Note: I saw the 2D version.)
Thanks for that. I've been wanting to see it just because I'm in a popcorn movie mood but was worried at all the bad reviews. I also only have nerd osmosis knowledge of the character so no devotion to accuracy to get upset about. I may try to find time out of baking birthday desserts this weekend to go.
__________________
"freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order."
- Justice Robert Jackson, West Virginia State Board of Ed. v. Barnette
The only thing canonical about that was... that Professor X and Magneto used to be friends and had plans to change the world and they disagreed about how to go about it.
I think. Several of the characters were not at all involved in the original X-Men. Mystique is also much older than Professor X, and in fact, most of the characters she normally appears alongside, except for Wolverine (they're both over 100 years old).
However, she was apparently his ex-lover in the Ultimate Marvel universe, so they had a closer relationship in at least some of the comics, but still never an adoptive sibling relationship.
Re: Seen Any Good Movies...?
It's like, ummm... you realize that punching Sabretooth in the face at normal strength, no matter how many times you do it, isn't going work? Right? You worked with him, you know his powers...
...........
Sonoma Bear
Re: Seen Any Good Movies...?
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