X-Men: Dark Phoenix (2019)

 “She’s not your little girl any more.” 

It's always instructive where a movie that has a lot seemingly going for it, like this one,turns out to be mildly disappointing. Not that it's terrible, but there's no denying that it fails to translate the excellent of Christ Claremont and John Byrne's source material, nor that the promising first half hour with lots of interesting character development and subtext yields to a load of dull fighting against a bland alien threat. Beyond the fact that we can by now be sure, I think, that Simon Kinberg isn't the person who should have been in charge of these films. But what went wrong?

There's a lot of good stuff in the early part of the film. All the characters feel real and well-rounded, even relatively minor ones like Quicksilver and Nightcrawler. There's some interesting questioning of Charles' habit of manipulating people's minds for their "own good". There's also a nice point made of Charles pushing the X-Men, at great danger, to be superheroes and to be popular, as the alternative is to be hated and feared: it's effective to see how quickly Jean's antics have the X-Men change overnight from popular celebrities to feared outcasts. It's unexpected, and effective, to have Raven die at the hands of Jean.

And yet, James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender aside, the main cast are all a bit bland, despite a splendidly charismatic performance by Evan Peters as Quicksilver, for the last time in this continuity. And then there's the vague nature of where the Phoenix force comes from and the equally vague aliens looking for it. There's a lot of good ideas here, but no real way of resenting them once the plot gets moving. A sad ending for the Fox X-Men movies. Let's hope we see them again under happier circumstances.

X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)

“Well, at least we can all agree the third one's always the worst...!

 Yet again an X-Men film that isn't supposed to be all that great turns out to be pretty damn good viewing. Oh, I know that the continuity has been pretty dodgy anyway and at this point they just give up and blatantly contradict stuff about all kinds of characters. It's also awkward having two alternate casts, the less expensive of which we see here. But it's nice to get an X-Men film where Scott gets to be a likeable hero for once. It's also nice tht Wolverine, rather than hogging the limelight as usual, only gets a Weapon X cameo.

Apocalypse is a solid villain, with  suitably epic backstory and oodles of power. The film has metatextual fun with its 1983 setting, hence the line above, ostensibly about Return of the Jedi but, well, you know. It’s also fun utilising the freedom to make characters like Angel (him off EastEnders), Psylocke and even Storm be baddies for a bit. There’s the obligatory “how Charles lost his hair” bit. Of course there is. There are the obligatory philosophical scenes with Charles, Eric and Raven, but not too much. But most of the time it’s what we want to see: cool set pieces. And few are cooler than Quicksilver, even if he is dead in Marvel’s other celluloid universe. This film is quite simply just fun to watch. The timeline  and cobrinuity may be utterly broken but the film makes the right decision to ignore all that and just go with it. Quite right too.

Is it just me, though, or are we all fed up of Colonel William bloody Stryker...?

Game of Thrones: Season 1, Episode 2 ("The Kingsroad")

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone."

I blogged the first episode of Game of Thrones on 18th September 2015 so... yeah. There won't be quite as long before episode three. Promise.

I'm still getting a handle on the setting; this is a fantasy world with only light fantasy elements- so far we've seen dragon eggs but dragons appear to be semi-mythical, and dire wolves seem not to be overtly supernatural. It's a gritty, realistic mediaeval world which is obviously going to focus on the power games surrounding the eponymous throne, and I've heard that this is based on both the Wars of the Roses and the Anarchy of the twelfth century. But Robert Baratheon is certainly no Henry VI; I'm not sure how strong a king he is but he appears laddish yet weighed down by kingship. I suspect he's not all that long for this world, given the apparent premise of the series.

Daenerys is interesting in the sense that she's getting a lot of screen time and her situation- marital rape in the context of semi-forced marriage- is horrific and surely would not be depicted so prominently if she were not eventually to end up powerful and fortunate in spite of it. Her brother claims Robert's throne. Hmm.

Meanwhile, Robert's only son Joffrey is a right little sod, as his behaviour towards Arya and her poor friend illustrates. Sansa is happy enough to marry him, but then she'll be queen. She's so motivated towards this that she's ready to lie under oath about her sister. But I suppose that being queen- a glorified womb- is the best a woman can hope for in this society. Certainly Arya's tomboyish ways are a fascinating way to explore the theme of what we can't really call feminism.

And then there's Tyrion. He's still a sot and a shagger, but there's a more intellectual side, too; he may be a semi-outcast just because he's a dwarf but, crude and direct though he is, he isn't shallow. And his relationship with the literal bastard Jon Snow (not yet a Channel 4 newsreader) is interesting. Jon, a very naive bastard, is off to devote his entire life to guarding the northern walls from whatever lies beyond, which none of his legitimately born relatives would presumably stoop to. Ned is proud but, when he says That "When we next meet, I'll tell you about your mother" I'm left suspecting that, one way or another, they won't ever meet again. Let's see if I'm right.

Meanwhile Catelyn Stark is keeping watch over the thankfully not-dead Bran but, after being attacked, she's off to tell her husband about her suspicions regarding the Lannisters. And, while she's away, Bran wakes- and he knows too much. Why do I get the feeling that the immediate future of the Stark family is not set to be a happy one?

Absolutely superb telly, this.