Oh, wow.

Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow.

Just watched Superman Returns.

o.o

What a BEAUTIFUL movie. Just, so so beautiful.

Brandon Routh was a quiet, gentle, introspective Superman (and almost inhumanly pretty). And Kate Bosworth has such delicate, lovely features, she was a totally different Lois than Margot Kidder, who was a tough, hard talking, rough voiced woman. Bosworth is graceful and strong through the hurt, a woman scared for her son. And then James Marsden, playing her fiance….
A good man who can take care of her son, and be there for them.

Ohhhhhhh, pathos is the word.

The action sequences where fabulous and had me clutching my hands in front of my face in suspended tension. And the emotion…so understated and beautiful. The ideas of a need for a savior.

Brian Singer, I bow. Beautiful movie.

I watched all of X-men: Evolution on YouTube over the weekend. :) (Search for “X-men Evolution episode #” to get to most of them.)

With it’s teen/pre-teen Saturday Morning target-audience, and most of the characters being speed-zapped into 16 year-olds and going to public high school (which feels rather contrived, as Xavier’s Institute doesn’t have a name change, and it would be easier for the mutants NOT to go to public school), the first season is pretty lame.

But starting with the 2 season and going on from there it gets cool. Very cool. By season 3, things start having consequences further-reaching then just high school, which ups the drama 10-fold. And some things that happened in previous episodes actually start to affect later episodes (oh, what a thought!). There is still too much wanton destruction of property with few consequences throughout, however. Yeah, yeah, it’s a cartoon, but if your antics start costing $10,000’s of dollars in repairs, authorities will track you down and put you in juvie, mutant or no. And they wonder why people don’t like mutants? ;]

With Jean being teen and Logan being 80+ years of age and this being an American cartoon, I was quite happy with the directors decision to have absolutely NO Logan/Jean/Scott angst. Yay!

Some of the character designs I utterly love, some I have issues with. Logan is too pale. Why would Manly Animal Man be pale? He should be tan, rough, and weather-beaten. He needs more hair and less under-arm revealing uniforms. :P His second, “Ultimate” based, uniform is great.

I ADORE Rogue as pale, heavy-make-up-wearing GothGrrl. It fits her so well. I also love that this isn’t a Rogue afraid to use her powers. Too many movie-verse fanwriters write Rogue as unwilling to use her powers (with now some X3 justification, sadly); it’s one of my biggest pet peeves in Rogue-fic.

Crimson Witch’s gothy redesign (which is sorely needed in a few other x-universes) is FABULOUS and is definitely what the X3 designers based Dark Phoenix’s outfit on in the movie (as both I and SteveG noticed). Both designs look fantastic and fit the characters, so I’m not complaining.

Steven Gordon is the character designer, and he has a great “How to Draw X-men:Evo characters” section on his website.
He was also one of the main character designers for Rich Animation’s direct-to-vid Biblical animations through Nest, which explains why his designs looked so extremely familiar to me. My family owns about 40 of those animations on VHS. :)

By the end of season 4, the writers of X-men:Evo have set up a version of the X-men universe that I really like, and I wish they’d been able to continue. I’d love some fanfic too, but with the lower age demographic, I despair of finding any of quality! Oh, woe!

Hereafter–X:Evo Spoilers!!! » Continue Reading