January 16th, 2012 
Dane Sager 
What The Film?! is a weekly column exclusive to Under The Gun Review that brings to light the plot holes Hollywood hoped you’d never notice. Written by comedy writer Dane Sager, this column shows no mercy to films that try and pull the proverbial wool over our eyes.
If you know a film with major plot holes that you feel needs to be exposed, tell us! Email utgjames@gmail.com with the subject “What The Film” and we’ll try to get your suggestion featured on the site.
This Week’s Movie: 2011’s X-Men: First Class
Can we talk about X-Men? The success of 2000’s X-Men is what caused us to still be in this huge wave of superhero movies. Even twelve years later you see a different comic book becoming a movie every month and there is no end in sight. Why? Superhero movies have been around since motion pictures first emerged, what made X-Men the first megabig superhero movie? It could be that X-Men was one of the first comic book movies that took the source material seriously instead of, you know, horribly.
It's as if millions of Batman fans suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
The movie opened with an intense sequence during the Holocaust, a piece that immediately set the tone of the rest of the movie. This isn’t a normal comic book movie, this is something new. There was so much happening during the movie, but none of it undercut the character development or drowned the movie in too many characters. For one of the first times in comic book movies, everything felt right.
X-Men was followed by what is arguably the best in the series: X2: X-Men United. Similar to Lethal Weapon 2, the sequel doesn’t need to introduce everyone to the concept, they can just take the characters and make something incredibly awesome with it. It dove into the backgrounds of some of the characters and set up quite a few plot points that were used/referenced in future X-Men movies.
For our younger readers: No, that is not an Avatar.
Like most trilogies, the third one tends to disappoint, and boy-howdy did X-Men 3: The Last Stand disappoint. Bryan Singer, the director of the first two X-Men movies had originally planned to direct a trilogy and was working on X-Men 3 preproduction when he was offered a chance to direct the new Superman movie. When he left X-Men 3 to do Superman Returns, he took everyone with him; his writers, his producers, his editors, the majority of the crew, and even Cyclops actor James Marsden.
The studio decided to take all this preproduction and throw it out, starting from scratch. Everything the trilogy was building up to was destroyed and rebuilt by someone who didn’t know what the original groundwork was building to or maybe he did know, he was just a greasy hack job director who made his money by making the same movie four times.
Pictured: Brett Ratner, Movie Maker.
X-Men 3: X-Men United is sad. It’s like Jurassic Park III, Spider-Man 3, Matrix: Revolutions, Aladdin 3: The King of Thieves, or every Twilight movie. Brett Ratner, what did you do? The movie felt rushed and characters were treated like the gadgets in James Bond movies. They were introduced briefly and then ignored until their specific power was needed in some horribly written deus ex machina type situation. This style works in James Bond movies because his gadgets aren’t human beings. Any and all character development is thrown out the window due to the overwhelming amount of characters bogging it all down.
When you watch X-Men 3, you get the feeling that all light and happiness is being sucked out of the room, lights flicker, colors disappear, and you get the feeling that you will never truly be happy again. X-Men 3 is the cinematic equivalent to a dementor. Studios tried to rectify this by making the next X-Men movie a prequel about the origins of its famous character: Wolverine. It wasn’t a horrible movie, but it wasn’t a good movie. It was the movie version of Seether or a CBS Sitcom. Not good but not horrible, its middle ground being worse than being on either end of the spectrum.
So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine was a success, largely because of people like me who saw it more than once to really understand how vanilla and boring it was. The studios started working on Wolverine 2 and X-Men Origins: Mangeto. While Wolverine 2 has been delayed and in production hell for a few years now, Origins: Magneto eventually evolved into what may be the best movie in the series: X Men: First Class.
X-Men: First Class is basically James Bond with mutants. It is just as awesome as that sentence sounds. It’s another prequel taking place in the 1960s with the Cold War and the Civil Rights movements translating to the Mutant/Human struggles effortlessly. The movie follows Xavier and Magneto as the X-Men is initially started. While the story is largely Magneto’s origin, Xavier has a few moments that show how he eventually becomes Professor X.
Another role that should have been played by Nicolas Cage wasted.
Ultimately (spoiler alert but not really because it’s a prequel and you should know that he’s paralyzed by now) Xavier is shot in the spine, paralyzing his legs. The movie ends with Xavier accepting his disability, a little wiser, a little more humble, and his relationship with Magneto completely destroyed. It’s a great ending that sets up the rest of the franchise perfectly.
Here’s the problem, at the end of X-Men Origins: Wolverine (which takes place in the 1990s), Xavier has a cameo where he is seen standing as he welcomes many new mutants into his school and care. Hey, maybe it’s some sort of mutant marionette trick to get them to trust him? Who knows. That’s not too damning. I’ll shrug that off, but there’s another issue with this continuity. In X-Men 3: The Last Stand (gross) opens with a scene in the 1980s where Xavier is not only walking but he’s back to being BFFs with Magneto. What the hell? That’s not a trick where he’s standing stationary, he’s flat out walking, sitting, and there may have been a soccer tournament, I don’t quite remember.
The desire to take characters in a prequel and set them up with how we know them is fun, but it presents lots of rushed continuity errors that shouldn’t be overlooked. This is why I like to pretend that the Star Wars prequel trilogy never occurred.
They're like that couple that's always breaking up and getting back together but with superpowers.
Dane once got all 120 stars in Mario 64 in a single sitting. He had help though. You can follow him on Twitter or Tumblr!
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My main problem with Origins was that it was awesome, but remembered it had to be an action movie at the very end. The last fight scene felt very much like the movie was going “Fiiiiine. Here’s your fight scene or whatever.” Then recap themes aaaaaand done. I felt like it was a really interesting, thoughtful (YES REALLY) movie that highlighted what I love about superhero comics, and then fizzled at the end.
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Actually, the events at the end of Wolverine take in the Three Mile Island disaster, which dates the film as 1979. Which raises further question about how characters like Cyclops are well into their 40s by the time of the first film. The other big continuity error is how Emma Frost is a completely different character between Wolverine and First Class. It’s like there was no consultation between the different filmmakers at all.