GORDON wrote: All the time it gets safer and safer to figure the movie sucks, and just wait for the surprised and positive word of mouth.
Watched it tonight, and this is exactly what happened to me. Don't get me wrong, it's not great. Loads of teen angst, and it takes a long, long time to get to the really good stuff. However, the cast is excellent and it wasn't as terrible as I expected.
There will be minor spoilers regarding powers that might help you understand more about the film. It's biggest flaw is that it really tells you nothing, so if you don't know the characters, you'll be lost.
Maisie Williams, Anya Taylor-Joy (Queen's Gambit), Charlie Heaton (Stranger Things), and Alice Braga are the big names. There's only two other cast members, if you don't count CGI, and they were fine.
Maisie is Rahne Sinclair (Wolfsbane), a character I always thought was a super low rent Wolverine knock off. Anya is Illyana Rasputin (Magik). Does that name sound familiar? It's Colossus' little sister. Heaton is Sam Guthrie (Cannonball). Braga is Dr. Reyers. (This casting was interesting as I thought Reyes was black in the book, but maybe she was Latino?) Henry Zaga, who I don't know, plays Robert da Costa (Sunspot). Finally, Blu Hunt, another actor that's unknown to me, plays Dani Moonstar, a character I thought was boring as shit in the books.
I have to admit, they nail the personalities pretty well. I think that's what helped me enjoy the movie. However, they don't particularly nail the powers super well, worse still, they don't explain them. I'm certain the plan was for more movies to really delve into the characters, but that's obviously not happening. So here's a quick primer: Cannonball is invincible when he's moving. Sunspot is super powerful and hot (temperature), but he's really underplayed here. Wolfsbane is basically a werewolf, but with advanced healing ala Wolverine. Moonstar is a psionic, so able to give life to thoughts. Dr. Reyes controls forcefields. Magik has a deep connection with hell/limbo. When you see her porting, that's where she's going. Her sword is a soul sword and she walks the line of good and evil. She's easily one of the most complex characters in the Marvel universe, so she's a tough one to just throw in like this.
If you want to know about the guy behind the place. Holler at me. He's a whole other topic that you won't get if you've never read the books.
Anyway, the story is that Dani survives a tragedy and is brought to this facility for treatment. That's not exactly what's going on, I mean it is, but it isn't. The others are also there being treated. Dr. Reyes runs the place, seemingly by herself.
I just realized that hitting the story summary 7 paragraphs into this is really a great review of the movie...
It's not great. I would say it's just passable. It has moments and the actors really do their best. I also really dug the darker tone, and the one guys from limbo are really cool looking. Ultimately though, I understand why Disney didn't like it. Without a full universe, like the MCU, to fill in a lot of the blanks the audience is going to be confused unless they know the source material. This superhero film is more character driven, and assumes you know them all. Not the way to go in the debut movie for a B level super team.
I was entertained despite 2/3rds of the movie just being a talker.