Movies You Have Done a 180 On...

For me, the film was Fargo. I saw it at home first, so I was 14 or 15 years old. I had no idea what the hell was going on. I read reviews, I knew it was supposed to be great, but damned if I could have told you why. I couldn't get past the accents, Frances MacDonald, all of that.

 

Then I rewatched it when I was 20. Holy shit! All the pieces fell together, the despair, the wackiness, the mood. My parents had raved about Raising Arizona, but after seeing Fargo and understanding it, I started keeping track of the Coen films.

Crash: Watched it in a Freshman Humanities class and was taken with it and felt it was powerful and just. Rewatched it last month, and it is just preachy and tin-eared. Really feels like the dialogue is trying to hit you over the head
 

I, uh, I thought DAREDEVIL was pretty great when it came out. Sorry about that.

The entire goddamn prequel trilogy.

By the way, this thread should be FULL of shamefaced Chewers admitting that, actually, AVATAR was just a mediocre-to-okay blockbuster and not some return to the Golden-era childlike wonder of sci-fi serials.

I didn't like "Punch-Drunk Love" the first time I saw it. Part of the reason is because I watched it with my dad, who is very much a traditionalist when it comes to movies, and therefore doesn't have a lot of tolerance for this sort of modern unconventional fare. My parents have hated every one of PT Anderson's movies that they've seen. They're clearly not the right people to watch these movies with.

 

I have trouble with Anderson's movies myself. I love "Boogie Nights" and like "Hard Eight" a lot, but "Magnolia" only engages me in fits (it has some brilliant moments and performances, but I find a lot of it infuriating) and I can't stand "There Will Be Blood". "Punch-Drunk Love" holds up pretty well, though.

 

The first time I saw it, I was both influenced by my dad and annoyed by some of its flourishes like the weirdass score, which drove me nuts. I also thought maybe people were digging it more for the novelty of seeing Sandler play a serious role, rather than the quality of the movie in its own right.

 

I still think there's some bullshit in it (the pillow talk scene was lame...just because they say the opposite of what people would say in that situation doesn't make it cool), but overall I was much more impressed the second time. The scene with the two leads meeting in silhouette to that "He Needs Me" song was magical.

 

I didn't like "Fargo" the first time I saw it either, because "The Big Lebowski" was my first Coen Brothers movie, and I was expecting something more in that vein. "The Big Lebowski" was so funny that I was disappointed by "Fargo" when my first impression was that it didn't bring the humour as much.

 

I've since come to realize that "Fargo" is actually just as funny, albeit in a much different way, with darker humour and 'the humour of the pathetic'. Now I always think of it as the movie with the most humourously pathetic characters I've ever seen. More of a spiritual cousin to something like "Happiness" than "The Big Lebowski".

Guilty

First time I saw Reservoir Dogs I was 12 or so and was perplexed and befuddled by it, Saw it last year at 19 and loved it. I guess when I was 12 I was only really into "classic" cinema circa 1965 and before and didn't appreciate the fresh dialog of Tarantino that I have come to love and cherish. 

BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID.

 

I never understood what the bid deal was on this movie.  I always thought it was OK at best.  At Jeb's urging, I gave it another go about a year and a half ago and fell in love with the damned thing.  It's now one of those movies that I'm almost obsessed with, actually.

 

Avatar was more about the experience than the actual movie, and I have no qualms defending it as such.

 

That said, the Blu-ray has been sitting on my shelf unwatched since I got it for Christmas the year it came out.

Just mentioned this recently in the relevant Franchise Me thread, but when I first watch Alien 3, it was through the eyes of an immature fanboy who was (for some reason...) annoyed by the deaths of Hicks and Newt and totally failed to appreciate anything the movie had going for it.  A second viewing when it first came out on VHS didn't leave the same bad taste, but still left me pretty cold.

 

Then, years later, when a college friend picked up the widescreen VHS version and I agreed to join him for a viewing; this time, I found myself watching it not as an immediate follow-up to Aliens, but as a movie in its own right, and one I liked.  With subsequence viewings (particularly later on DVD), I saw the importance of taking away Ripley's remaining human connections (also, I just watched Aliens the other night for the first time in a few years, and I'm baffled as to why I ever gave a damn about Hicks...), I was drawn in by the nuanced performances, the score, the photography, the overall claustrophobic intensity of the thing, even by the unnervingly (if unintentionally) surreal quality of the puppet alien shots.

 

Now, I rank it as second only to the original (although that's still a wide gap) in the Alien saga.

 

I was about to say the same thing.  

 

Weirdly enough I don't think I've ever done a 180 on a movie.

I think this subject is only interesting if we're talking about movies that you did a 180 on in your adult lifetime.  We've all had movies we've loved as a kid look pretty pale in the harsh spotlight of adulthood.  That's pretty universal (or Disney, in some cases, har har).  

 

MILLER'S CROSSING is my big one.  I was expecting something more comedic having just come off RAISING ARIZONA, so I was a little put off by the film at first.  It soon became one of my all-time favorite movies.  

I teased Monster Pete in the Lebowski thread, but I admit that I wasn't drawn into The Big Lebowski the first time I saw it. I still liked it, but I didn't quite get the cult adoration. That was a couple dozen viewings ago.

A friend and I watched Jackie Brown when it first hit video. We both hated it. JB had been my first exposure to Tarantino and I was hesitant to watch any of his other movies. After a few years, I watched Pulp Fiction and gave Jackie Brown a shot. I ended up watching Jackie Brown twice in the same day. For me, Jackie Brown is still my favorite Tarantino film. I love the shit out of it.

My Coens flip-flop was Raising Arizona. The first time I watched it it had been hyped to hell for me and I was expecting a transcendent experience and so, naturally, found it underwhelming to the point I felt it was a failure which had been wildly overrated by crazed Coen Bros fanboys. But after so many years of being a Coens fan myself I couldn't not give it a second run and when I watched it again I found it a whole lot more charming.

 

I also flip-flopped on American Beauty. I was dazzled by it in the theatre but now I find it nigh unwatchable. Same with that most sacred of sacred nerd cows X Men 2. Liked it a lot the first time. Can't get through the whole thing now.

 

THERE, I SAID IT!!!

You people are nuts. That movie has aged like fine wine. I seem to like it more every time I watch it, which I never thought possible given how apeshit I went for it the first time I saw it. The only thing that's bumming me out is that it drags a bit at the end (it seems to take FOREVER for them to get out of that damn Alkali Lake base).

 

There's so much awesome before that overlong final sequence that I don't much care, though. Apologies to nooj if he's reading this...I know my immense love for this movie is getting on his nerves, but I can't help myself. Any time a person says anything negative about it, I can't resist rushing to its defense like it's my child or something.

 

Sorry buddy, I'll watch Kurt doing business in the White House and the scene at Bobby's parents place any time but don't you find that the more you watch X2 the more you realise that the real powers of both Storm and Cyclops are a Rogue-like sucking of life out of things, except in their case it's the entire fucking movie? Couple that with the laming of Wolverine, the remaining set pieces being a bunch of sound and fury signifying sweet f-all and the fact that, Magneto aside, nobody's dialogue feels worth listening to and I'm hitting the eject button faster than Nightcrawler can teleport-fuck a secret service presidential bodyguard.

 

I just pray to any god who'll listen that Avengers Assemble doesn't fall from grace in the same way.

Mine would be Terminator 2.  I loved t so much when it came out that I came out of the screening, went to the ticket office and got a ticket for the next show.  I thought, at the time, that it was infinitely superior to Terminator.

 

Now I can;t get through it at all.  There are aspects I like, but overall it just does not do it for me in the slightest, and I find Linda Hamilton almost unbearable.  If I can get that fa,r the speech about "men can;t create" kills it every time and it's a channel hop to something else (it never made the jump from video to DVD in my collection).

Scorsese's King of Comedy and Cronenberg's Dead Ringers. At first I hated 'em. Later, well, I can't say I "loved" them, since they're not the kind of films you "love," both being depressing as fuck, but I certainly came to see their brilliance.

Anchorman.  First time I saw it, the unexpected surreal nature of the universe took me right out of the movie.  Ended up revisiting it months later, and realized it was trying to do more than a typical SNL movie, was in the right mood to "accept" Ron Burgundy's world.  Loved it ever since.

Blue Velvet. In the 90's thought it was overrated. Acted like I liked it so people would think I was cool, but I really didn't get it until 15 years later when I actually paid attention to the non-Frank Booth freak-out scenes ( which I, and many, many people like me quoted endlessly for shock value).

The only thing I'll agree with you on is that Storm sucks. Well, not so much Storm the character, but Halle Berry. Her performance is really stilted and does hurt every scene she's in, but she's hardly in the movie, so it's not a big deal.

 

And Cyclops is in the movie even less, which sucks if you're a fan of the character, but he doesn't hurt the movie when he's onscreen, except in that crying scene at the end (the only part of the movie that I really dislike).

 

I thought Wolverine was great in this movie start to finish. I don't know what you consider lame about him. His reaction with Cyclops at the end ("She's gone") was corny (seriously, fuck that whole scene), but other than that, nothing objectionable. His rampage against the soldiers in the mansion was a blast, I dug his intense interactions with Stryker, and his flirting with Jean was fun.

 

And I fucking love the set pieces. Every one of them. Not just the Nightcrawler one (which a lot of people seem to love saying is the only decent one). Pyro fucking up the cop cars and Magneto's daring prison escape were wonderful, as was the aforementioned Wolverine rampage. And Magneto isn't the only one with juicy dialog. Brian Cox OWNS as Stryker. I relish his words and the way he delivers them. Reading your comments just makes me want to quote Stryker when Xavier tells him that mutation is not a disease.

 YOU'RE LYING!

 

This movie is a God among insects. I'll never let anyone tell me different.

I'm with you, Naisu. I don't understand people who don't like X2. It's filled with great performances and great setpieces (if only they'd cast a different Storm. Sigh). It boggles my mind that people here are saying it's boring, since I find myself continually entertained by it. To each his own, I suppose, but I love it.

 

I did a complete 180 on Hot Fuzz between my first and second viewings. The first time, I watched it with a friend who kept telling me how great it was, and having not seen Shaun of the Dead, I had no idea what I was in for. I don't know if I'd say I hated it, but I was so unprepared for the type of movie that I got that I just completely didn't get it. I came back to it a few years later though, and laughed my head off at it. I really love it now. (I have a bit of a similar story with Eternal Sunshine, which just completely caught me off guard the first time, but is now my all-time favorite movie)

 

I'd say I've done a 90 on No Country For Old Men. I hated it the first time I watched it, and I'd heard such great things and it had won so many awards, it was just such a letdown to me. After watching it again and again, I've come to appreciate what people see in it. I appreciate that it is an incredibly well-made movie, it's got a lot of great qualities, but it just does nothing for me personally. I can appreciate it, but I don't really enjoy it.

Spiderman. I tried to watch it recently, and minus some good moments, it has not aged well.  The effects suck, the green goblin is horrible and the pacing is weird to me. I loved it once. I may never watch it again.  Some other comic movies are close to being included, but will only be mentioned for being dangerously close - X-Men, Blade.  Funny, their sequels are all outstanding, relatively, to me.

 

Royal Tenebaums absolutely defines this post though - for two reasons. 

 

When I first saw it, I just didn't get it.  It was so damned weird and dry.  I tried it again a second time and absolutely fell in head over heels for it.  It is easily one of my favorite comedies and I have seen it more times than I can count.

 

Interestingly, the movie was my transition into appreciating dry humor over slapstick. From that point forward, I watched every comedy differently. I even like some fairly maligned movies simply because of dry beats. In retrospect, I seemed to gravitate towards the driest parts of even the silliest movies.  So, I didn't just flip on Tenenbaums, but also several others as a result - just opposite.

 

Shaun of the Dead was another 180 now that I think about it.  I didn't like it at all the first time I saw it.  Granted, I expected more of a zombie movie, so that was my fault.  I now own it. I really like it.  I still don't love it like many do, but it's quite great.

The Green Goblin is my favorite cinematic comic book villain of all time. Willem DaFoe is brilliant. Just the right mix of delicious Silver Age eeeeeevil and hilarious camp. I don't get people who don't get and appreciate what Raimi was going for.

I was in some weird nerd mood the first time I saw Galaxy Quest. Had all these notes about how the film didn't properly establish who the (fictional) actors were in relation to their characters, and whether the in-jokes actually applied to the real-life shows being spoofed. Later realized I was having a self-conscious reaction to seeing a film that chose not to waste time flattering me with stuff I already knew. Love it today.

 

ETA: I do still believe that GQ represents the case of Franchise Envy exhibited by DreamWorks SKG throughout the '90s. That whole 'Hey, competing studios, here's OUR version of your stupid cash cow' thing that seemed to have a lot more to do with Katzenberg's professional rivalries than with entertaining people.

 

Really?  I mean, Dafoe's fine an all, but I wouldn't put that performance near the work of Ian McKellan, Alfred Molina, Heath Ledger, Tom Hiddleston, Jack Nicholson and Danny Devito.

 

I don't much enjoy the odd numbered Spidermans, which is sort of strange because I love Spiderman 2 so damn much.  I think a lot of that is down to pacing.  Spiderman 3 is just one of the most weirdly paced action movies ever.  Things just start and disappear and just sort of happen all over the place.

Dafoe is alright, sure. But the best? Eh. I dunno. I do admit that I may be clouded by the costume. I just can't shake how cartoony he was anyway. He wasn't a big threat. Half the climatic battle in the parade was due to incidental shit and a malfunctioning glider. At least I didn't see him as a threat. Especially since spidey 2 exists. The awesomeness of every second of that movie overshadows nearly any bit of the first.

My 180 film would have to be Titanic.  My initial reaction was that the film was an instant classic despite its flaws.  Now I can't even stand to watch a minute of it.  Atrocious dialogue, highly questionable casting aside from the two leads, and terrible plotting. 

 

The love for X2 in this thread surprises me.  I still recall, at age 12, my local comic book shop proprietor handing me a copy of an X-Men graphic novel titled God Loves, Man Kills.  It had a profound effect on me and completely changed how I viewed popular entertainment.  Chris Claremont's writing was passionate and inspired.  I don't feel even the slighted bit of passion or inspiration in any of the original trilogy of X-men films.  X2 is a carnival park ride to me - momentarily fun at times but not the least bit engaging.  X2 feels like nothing more than the perfunctory machinations of a big budget summer tent-pole film whose only aim is to fill the coffers of the studio that financed it.

Does X-Men: First Class work for you?

FLASH GORDON

I didn't ger this one for a long time. When i was young, i thought it was just a cheesy, poorly made film with two hot female leads (even then i recognized the glory of Ornella Muti ). Only years later, probably in my twenties, did i finally GET it. I was heavily into Queen at the time and listening to the soundtrack piqued my curiosity enough to give it another go. Now, i love the film and consider it to be one of the most thoroughly entertaining films in my collection.

MOONRAKER

Loved it when i saw it in the theaters when i was a kid. Hated it when i finally saw it again on tv...it was far too out there and silly for my tastes and i pretty much dismissed it for thirty years. I warched it again about a year ago for some reason and loved it. It's completely a product of its time and woeks because it maintains the perfect tone throughout. If you turn off your cynicism and go with it, you'll have a blast.

 I loved First Class.  Vaughn gets what made the X-Men popular in the first place.  FC aims to engage your brain as well as your eyes.  And the performances are top-shelf all around, Fassbender in particular. 

"X-Men: First Class" is, in a way, the evil mirror version of "X2". "X-Men: First Class" is a generally weak movie with individual moments and performances that are excellent. "X2" is a generally awesome movie with a few moments (i.e. Wolverine and Cyclops at the end) and performances (Halle Berry) that don't work. But this is off-topic...there's a whole thread comparing those two movies (started by me!). Check it out if you haven't. It's a doozy.

 

Back on topic. I did a 180 on "The Simpsons Movie" and "Star Trek: Nemesis". These are the two best examples in my life of being totally seduced by hype and expectations for a movie. I don't think there's ever been another movie I wanted to love as much as I wanted to love these two.

 

My anticipation level was so high for "The Simpsons Movie". There was this period where I just kept thinking "I want to see this movie so badly, I'm not going to be able to sleep until I do". Just knowing it was out there made me so excited. I was dying to watch it, but I didn't want to watch it alone, so I couldn't watch it on opening night since I had to wait for a friend to be available. Hence, the several nights of almost no sleep, just wondering what it would be like and building anticipation for it.

 

It was like the people who made that movie could have done pretty much anything and I would have liked it. I was that predisposed to liking it. I just kept thinking to myself "HOLY SHIT, the Simpsons are in a freaking movie! After all those incredible seasons (7, to be exact). This HAS to be an tremendous experience, just for the simple fact that it even exists". So I sat down to watch it. I literally said something like, "THIS IS GONNA BE AMAZING" out loud as it started in the theatre. And I reacted to it as if it was.

 

I watched it and enjoyed it. I laughed at all the jokes when I was supposed to. I convinced myself that it was just as moving at certain moments as it tried to be. But when it was over, I had this sneaking suspicion that it wasn't all that great. I tried to ignore that suspicion, but it was hard. This first became apparent when I tried to talk to my friend about what parts we loved (as one does after watching a great movie) and I was drawing a blank. Worse yet, all the examples he gave of stuff he liked were things I either didn't care about or couldn't even remember.

 

Another more cynical friend of mine told me he thought it was lame, aside from one or two funny moments/bits of dialog. I was in denial. I swore that it was like a movie made around the time the show started declining, but still pretty decent. "It was like a season 9 or 10 episode!", I insisted.

 

Then, I got the DVD as a Christmas gift and all my delusions were shattered. It was exactly what it inevitably had to be...just another episode of whatever shitty season of "The Simpsons" was on TV at the time. The only differences were that it was a little longer and tried to disguise itself as something deeper by having a plot turn where Marge and Homer's marriage was in trouble (a plot that hadn't been meaningful or effective since like season 8).

 

I sold the DVD and now I just try to forget that this movie exists, because it's depressing to think of what a blown opportunity it was. Here is this film adaptation of what is arguably (and there's a strong argument to be made) the greatest television series of all time (again, just on the strength of 7 out of 20something seasons). It should have been epic, yet it wasn't even good enough to get a "Best Animated Feature" Oscar nomination. It was this unbelievably slight piece of work that probably would have been a masterpiece if it had been made during the prime of the TV series (circa 1993-1997).

 

As for "Star Trek: Nemesis", I was just so stoked to see the cast of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" on the big screen for the first time (I was too young to watch their first two movies in theatres and too busy with school to even be aware when the third one came out) that I was predisposed to like it no matter what it was. The weird thing was, the first time I saw it, I not only liked it, I thought it was excellent!

 

I think that what fooled me more than anything else was Tom Hardy. He just acted the hell out of his role. He brought so much fire and conviction to it, he tricked me into thinking his character and its evil scheme were actually worth a shit, when in fact they were both just fucking stupid. I realize now that what ultimately made me like the movie was a combination of Hardy's performance and nostalgia for the TV series and cast that the movie took to the big screen.

 

Later, I tried to watch it on TV. Again, delusions shattered. Without my judgement clouded by a haze of nostalgia, hype, the novelty of seeing the TNG cast on the big screen, and my first reaction to Hardy's performance, everything was different. I saw the movie for what it really is: fucking terrible. I could barely get through a few minutes of it before I had to stop watching. It was just too painful witnessing these characters completely go to waste given a nothing story as their last shot at being in a movie.

 

There are two things to be learned from these experiences. First, hype and nostalgia can be powerful influences on one's reaction to a movie, and that influence can turn you into a self-deceiving dumbass. Second, Tom Hardy rules. Only a truly high caliber actor can take a role as useless as his character in "Star Trek: Nemesis" and make it engaging almost entirely off the strength of the intensity he brings to the role. The script gave him just about nothing to work with and he damn near spun shit into gold.

The Third Man

 

1st viewing: Bored to fucking tears. The music sucks.

 

2nd viewing: Meh. I still don't see what the big deal is.

 

3rd viewing: Funny in spots. Joseph Cotten kinda rules.

 

4th viewing: This is pretty good. I'm kinda digging the vibe of the thing.

 

5th viewing: Holy shit. I think I kinda love this movie. Criterion blu, bought.

 

Now I regularly listen to this movie at work. It is magic.

Wow, I might need to give that one another shot. I watched it once and DESPISED it. Had the same reaction of "I don't see what the big deal is". The one thing I loved the first time was everything involving Orson Welles.

 

As soon as he showed up, Welles seemed to breathe a ton of life into the film (basically resurrecting a corpse). His speech and the chase he leads (through tunnels that comprise one of the coolest locations I've ever seen in a movie) at the end are clearly brilliant from the first viewing, but the rest of the movie did nothing for me.

X2 I've kind of done a 90 on.  When I first saw it I hated it, like hated literally every minute for some reason.  I was on a work trip, doing some consultancy and there was fuck all to do in the place that evening except go to the movies.  So possibly wrong head space.  I'd liked X-Men (enough to buy the DVD), so was looking forward to it, but I came out super unimpressed.

 

I saw it again on TV and liked it enough to buy the DVD (to sit next to the X-Men one for some weird OCD reason).  I have literally never watched the DVD, but if it's on TV I'll watch the whole thing.  I love Brian Cox in it, and the Magneto escape is top notch.

 

But I still don;t like it enough to actively seek it out.

The Matrix - When I saw it at a preview screening, I came away feeling utterly underwhelmed. I read a lot of Gibson, Ghost in the Shell and similar cyberpunk SF at the time and this film just felt like a crib sheet for people who had never seen or read anything like that. I recall being pretty vocal about it for a long time afterwards until it came out on DVD and a friend, wanting to show off his home cinema set up, played it to me... And by the end of the film I loved it.
I don't know if it was the distance from the hype, the big booming audio of my friends system or the fact that I had just got bored with being so militantly contrary about a film everyone else loved but I did do a full 180 on this film.

Unfortunately that lead me to believe that I was doing the same thing on the later sequels and to go round extolling their virtues when clearly they were utter gash.

Been a while since i saw The Matrix Reloaded. Was Meh on it the first time. But i wonder if subsequent viewings will change my opinion.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture

 

1st viewing: Boring boring boring. I want to punch Robert Wise in the balls.

 

Subsequent viewings (years later):  God that score is great. I kinda dig the dark, deliberate vibe of the thing.

 

Repeat viewings: GodDAMN that score is great. This movie is pretty damn gorgeous too. There are no space battles or anything but I can melt into this uniquely handsome & mysterious (and admittedly cheesy) movie anytime. I love it.

This is the perfect film to have on in the background. You can listen to the score and pay attention to the film itself during the 'good' moments.

I've got the giant special edition Star Trek: The Motion Picture 3-disc score. It's a regular on my iPod. I will never own the movie.

 

As for some of the points above-- Dafoe is great, but his shining moment is the two-way mirror talk. It's the same conceit as Gollum, but did it seven months earlier. He's a villain without a purpose beyond "Kill Spider-Man and then vaguely think about taking over the world"--the characters works in service to Peter's arc, but Dafoe has little motivation to draw upon. He makes it sing (I actually adore the rooftop conversation he has with Spidey--it's even more unabashedly comic book than The Avengers), and he does what he can with that suit, but outside of entertainment factors there's not much behind the curtain. Another thing that needs to stop is bitching about the effects from ten years ago--yeah, no shit they don't look as great today. 2002 was the year films first started even attempting digital stuntmen, and for the crazy shots Raimi wanted--Spidey swinging from 100 stories up, down through traffic, and back up again--it was the only way. Do you people knock Last Starfighter because your cell phone backgrounds have better effects?

 

X2 is fantastic, First Class merely pretty good. X2 has weak spots, but to call it soulless machinations of a Hollywood blockbuster seems like applying the wrong description to the wrong X-Flick. The film is a collection of great, character defining moments--name me two such moments in First Class for anyone who isn't named Charles or Eric. In X2, it's all about the characters and how they interact--Singer's strength is ensembles, and it shows here. Everything, from Stewart's brief, tear filled moment when Jason makes him think he's gotten his legs back, Mystique's "fuck you" to Stryker as she takes over his command center, Pyro getting a better Anikan Skywalker story in two minutes than three films worth of prequels, Magneto's smile as he senses the extra iron in Mr. Lario's body, Rogue and Bobby's kiss, hell, even Storm's conversation with Nightcrawler about faith. All in service to the characters, while moving a pretty expansive story along at a brisk pace. It's a great example of how to do summer blockbusters. First Class works, but overstuffs the film with needless characters thinly drawn--some even barely sketched--with the most compromised ending to any of the X-Films. That beach scene is straight up terrible.

I hated the CG in spiderman the first time I saw it. They haven't held up but they've still always sucked. There are plenty of CG heavy movies from around the same time that didn't look as bad then and hold up better today. For fuck's sake, jurassic park still has better CG.

 

The dynamic between Xavier and Lensherr has always been at the forefront of what made the X-Men great and deserved the bulk of the screen time that it received in  FC.  And First Class, while certainly not a perfect film, at least earns it's character moments.  There is not a single moment in the original X-Men trilogy that even comes close to the move the coin scene at the climax of FC.  Singer's films, on the other hand, approached the philosophical elements of the X-Men story through cheap exposition laden, on-the-nose dialogue, before quickly moving to the next expertly shot, yet wholly unmoving set piece.  X2 is a series of isn't that really fucking cool? action scenes strung together with the least amount of characterization possible. 

 

Agreed.  ST:TMP bored me to tears as a kid.  As an adult I view it as a ballsy piece of hard SF, even with the occasionally clunky dialogue.  And that score is still epic as hell.

Yeah, I thought Spiderman's CGI looked like crap in the theater.  I also remember being really confused as to why you would even bother to do the classic Green Goblin/girlfriend/bridge set-up if you weren't going to follow through with what made it memorable.  There's some fun stuff there but I never really revisit it.

 

First Class gets its main characters really right, but the actual X-men horribly, horribly wrong.  And that beach scene starts out okay, but they might as well have the checklist actually pop up on screen and start marking things off, it's so clunky.  It's so inorganic that it feels like it must have been forced in by some outside mandate, but I can't imagine why the studio would be like "we DEMAND that you scuttle all sequel potential from our most profitable superhero property before you end this thing!"