[The Le] comics-to-film reviews

[Darth Shoju]

Its really not, though.

He IS the X-Men's real leader, the one capable of pulling them all together and pushing them to be the best they can. The movies ended up giving this role to Wolverine because of how insanely popular the character is, but that's just not Wolvie.

Thankfully, the comics, especially lately, are doing a great job of showing Cyclops as he is. Not only that, but it sounds like he's going to be playing a very major role in the upcoming Endangered Species event.

So all that is required to be "the Aragorn of the X-men" is to be their leader? That's a pretty shaky analogy as far as I'm concerned. I'm not trying to knock someone's taste in comic characters (just a gentle ribbing is all), but I would take some convincing to think of Cyclops as anything other than another boring, generic team-leader character. Aragorn had a bit more depth to him for my money, and it is arguable whether he was ever really the leader of the Fellowship anyway (although he certainly became a leader later).

Now, I have to admit that I've only read bits and pieces of the Claremont/Byrne era of X-men (and enjoyed those bits quite a bit), so old Scotty Summers could be more well-developed there, but in the rest of his incarnations that I've seen (TV, movies, cartoons, other comic runs, etc), he's been pretty dull to me. Frankly I've always been far more interested in Nightcrawler, Colossus, Shadowcat, Beast, and Rogue (as she appeared originally) than Cyclops. I even like Angel, Storm and Iceman better than him.

As far as The's list is concerned, I have to admit to disagreeing with the majority of his ratings (although some only slightly). Giving those old TV shows a 5 (as well as The Mask and Men in Black) is just shy of incomprehensible to me. Still, the whole thing is very well written and I certainly respect his opinions (at least they are well thought-out).

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Mutant X was indeed the name of the show. Much more style than substance. Everybody was so pretty pretty.

 

[horacethegrey]

Not to mention that being a mutant on the show meant you automatically had some mad kung fu skillz!

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Given that in the X-Men source material they had access to a "Danger Room," that wouldn't have been so bad...but I don't think they had one in the TV show. :\

 

[horacethegrey]

Having access to a super advanced training facility like the Danger Room doesn't mean instant martial arts skills. Only a handful of the X-men have had real martial arts training. Characters like Wolverine, Psylocke, Kitty Pryde, Storm and Gambit.

The problem I had with Mutant X is that it seemed to be more about the mad kung fu skillz rather than their powers, which is wrong for a tv show about superhumans.

 

[Klaus]

So Hugh Jackman wasn't cast as Wolverine in the first X-Men movie? Hmm, I'll have to go update Wikipedia, those guys are clearly way wrong.

Actually, no.

Dougray Scott (the villain of MI:2) was supposed to be Wolverine, but he got injured during the shooting of that movie. Hugh Jackman was brought in in the last minute to wield the claws.

 

[Klaus]

So all that is required to be "the Aragorn of the X-men" is to be their leader? That's a pretty shaky analogy as far as I'm concerned. I'm not trying to knock someone's taste in comic characters (just a gentle ribbing is all), but I would take some convincing to think of Cyclops as anything other than another boring, generic team-leader character. Aragorn had a bit more depth to him for my money, and it is arguable whether he was ever really the leader of the Fellowship anyway (although he certainly became a leader later).

Now, I have to admit that I've only read bits and pieces of the Claremont/Byrne era of X-men (and enjoyed those bits quite a bit), so old Scotty Summers could be more well-developed there, but in the rest of his incarnations that I've seen (TV, movies, cartoons, other comic runs, etc), he's been pretty dull to me. Frankly I've always been far more interested in Nightcrawler, Colossus, Shadowcat, Beast, and Rogue (as she appeared originally) than Cyclops. I even like Angel, Storm and Iceman better than him.

As far as The's list is concerned, I have to admit to disagreeing with the majority of his ratings (although some only slightly). Giving those old TV shows a 5 (as well as The Mask and Men in Black) is just shy of incomprehensible to me. Still, the whole thing is very well written and I certainly respect his opinions (at least they are well thought-out).

Cyclops is "the first X-Man". He was Xavier's first student, and of all the original X-Men, he was the only tragic one (couldn't turn his power off). He was a natural leader, and had the guts to sacrifice the love of his life in order to save the Universe in the Dark Phoenix Saga.

Back then, Wolverine was a secondary character. He only rose in popularity when John Byrne (also a Canadian) prodded Claremont into giving Wolvie the spotlight. Cyclops was actually the only original X-Man to be included in the new X-Men (Cyclops leading Storm, Nightcrawler, Banshee, Wolverine, Colossus and Kitty Pride).

 

[TheLe]

So Hugh Jackman wasn't cast as Wolverine in the first X-Men movie? Hmm, I'll have to go update Wikipedia, those guys are clearly way wrong.

My apologies. I had completely misread your original post. I thought you were implying that there was a focus on Wolverine because of Hugh Jackman, whereas my counter argument was that they always decided to focus on Wolverine regardless of who the actor was.

My bad.

Honestly though, the focus could have been on anyone. Bryan Singer does a great job with the movies and knows how to bring characters alive -- if he wanted to make the movies focus on James Marsden's Cyclops, then I am sure they would have been just as good. I think he is a fine actor equally as good as Hugh Jackman. Case in point: it was heartbreaking to see his emotion at the end of X2, when he realized that he was losing Jean Grey to the flooding waters. I think James has tremendous range as an actor and I think what they did to his character in X3 was a total waste of talent.

`Le

 

[Darth Shoju]

I think James has tremendous range as an actor and I think what they did to his character in X3 was a total waste of talent.

`Le

I always thought they did that because he was jumping ship to Superman Returns.

 

[TheLe]

I always thought they did that because he was jumping ship to Superman Returns.

The how do you explain the crap they did to Patrick Stewart's Professor X character?

`Le