By Jason Apuzzo. • A series of new trailers for X-Men: First Class have been released, the key one (for story purposes) being the international trailer. This trailer really sets the tone for this film being situated in the Kennedy-era of the Cold War, right at the height of the Cuban missile crisis. The X-Men mutants are sent on a top-secret mission related to Cuba, and seem to be depicted as expendable pawns of the CIA in an effort to defeat the Russians, with the X-Men brooding over the general ingratitude of humanity – and, one senses, the American military establishment – toward their contributions.
Boo-hoo.
This type of storyline, which would be annoying under any circumstances, is seeming even more irritating to me after the events of this past weekend, when the CIA proved its tremendous value to America and the entire free world by helping to take out bin Laden. You’d think we could now take a breather from soft-pedaling our intelligence services and military operations … but no. Note the conspiratorial tone taken in the trailer toward the X-Men, as our military people refer to them as “collateral damage” and contemplate the extra-legal measures the government will take in controlling them. It’s the usual anti-military stereotype in play here, with distant cinematic relatives of Colonel Jack D. Ripper contemplating ways to eliminate the Soviet threat and mutant threat in one fell swoop. I was expecting to see Dick Cheney show up and water-board Jennifer Lawrence (preferably in a bikini).
The confluence of events here – between this film, and real-life events in the War on Terror – is quite telling. You really get a sense of how backward and behind the times contemporary Hollywood always is, constantly following yesterday’s Baby Boomer narratives, especially when they concern America’s place in the world. Why make a snarky now movie about the last war – which we won – just as we’re finally gaining ground in the new one?
I have to tell you: although the new X-Men trailers have a smooth, stylish look to them – a Cold War retro-chic that’s quite appealing – I’ve never really liked the X-Men films, and I’m approaching this new one skeptically. Basically I’ve never liked the whiny victimology the X-Men films peddle. The characters in these films are always a little too precious and narcissistic, and not especially heroic. And despite the filmmakers’ intentions, these films never strike me as adequate metaphors for the civil rights struggles of the 1960s – which were very much crusades of the powerless rather than of glamorous, power-enabled superheroes. (Incidentally, star Michael Fassbender – who looks compelling in the trailer – recently told The LA Times that the Magneto-Professor X relationship of the film is based in part on the Malcolm X-Martin Luther King relationship, underlining the film’s civil rights-era subtext.)
We just saw how real military heroes (not the comic book kind) acted in Abbottabad, Pakistan on Sunday: they went in, completed their mission, and moved on to their next task with a maximum of anonymity and a minimum of drama. Had our Navy SEALS completed the bin Laden mission, and then returned to Washington to conduct a rage-filled raid on the Pentagon, followed by a tear-filled recounting of their sad childhood on The View … you’d essentially have this new X-Men trailer. [Sigh.] What a bummer. The people who really fought the Cold War were so much cooler than this.
Btw, in other X-Men: First Class news, Michael Fassbender talks to The New York Times about the film here, and here are some new promo shots of the film.
• Thor is about to open, starring Chris Hemsworth, and based on what I’m hearing the film is likely to make Hemsworth a major star. This is also likely to have major ramifications for MGM’s Red Dawn, which still doesn’t have a distributor.
My sense is that distributors will be very eager to grab Red Dawn post-Thor, and that MGM will have significant leverage at that point … which makes the scrubbing of the Chinese threat from that film seem all the more cowardly now.
• Speaking of MGM and craven market pandering, the studio is apparently raising about $45 million toward the next Bond film – a full third of the film’s budget – by way of product placement. The Bond films have always done a lot of product placement – but that figure is nonetheless raising eyebrows for the epic scale of its cupidity. My personal recommendation is that when Bond is chasing the new villain, he should wear the new Nike Zoom Kobe VI, with its “Black mamba-inspired rubber outsole for excellent traction.” Just a thought.
In other Bond news, it looks like the new Bond film will be shooting in India – for the first time since Octopussy (I was just watching that film recently; it’s better than I remembered) – and Ralph Fiennes may still appear in the film (yawn), now that he’s done with his 40-year commitment to the Harry Potter films.
• … and speaking of spies in India, Tom Cruise is apparently shooting Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol in India right now, chasing Russian spies around. Also: producer J.J. Abrams has high praise for Ghost Protocal director Brad Bird, most famous for his work at Pixar.
• Another production still has come out of Meryl Streep as Maggie Thatcher. Ugh. I have such bad feelings about this …
• David Koepp will apparently now be writing the Jack Ryan reboot. I liked Koepp’s work on Indiana Jones 4, less so his work on War of the Worlds. Koepp is also rewriting Men in Black 3 … while that film’s still in production. Ouch.
The Jack Ryan series could return to being a major franchise if Koepp handles this one properly. The working title of the Jack Ryan reboot was supposed to be Moscow; we’ll see if that still holds, along with the notion of the story being an origins tale of Ryan’s youthful adventures during the Cold War …
• Jack Ryan reminds me of The Hunt for Red October which reminds me that Nikki Finke recently broke news about a new project called Phantom, starring Andy Garcia, Ed Harris and Natascha McElhone, that’s about to be sold at Cannes. The film is apparently “a supernatural thriller about a troubled Soviet submarine captain who discovers there is something aboard that could control the fate of his ship and the impact it will make on an unsuspecting world.” Sounds good, but let’s hope this ends up being more like Red October and less like K-19 in the growing ‘troubled Soviet submarine’ genre.
• In related Cold War submersible news, Hugh Jackman may be jumping on board the Fantastic Voyage remake that James Cameron is producing in 3D. That suddenly makes that project look interesting.
• Here’s a pic of Leonardo DiCaprio as J. Edgar Hoover in J. Edgar, which he’s currently shooting all over L.A. with director Clint Eastwood. Leo’s looking pretty suspicious here, perhaps spying on Bar Refaeli – who seems to have dumped him, or something.
Incidentally, DiCaprio also just spent $1.2 million buying a Dali painting. I guess Inception really got to his head.
• Transformers: Dark of the Moon has a U.S. vs. Russia, Cold War space race component to it (read here), so we should mention the film here in our Cold War Update! Michael Bay talks here to the LA Times about the film – which according to the Times “starts in the 1960s with the moon landing … and weaves a new mythology of government conspiracy into the Autobot and Decepticon battle.” I love the teaser for the film, featuring that Moon landing.
Also: MTV discusses Rosie Huntington-Whiteley’s role in the film here. Ms. Huntington-Whiteley, incidentally, just got named the Hottest Female in the Galaxy or something by Maxim magazine, who make it a business of theirs to evaluate such things. All I can say is that she’d better bring the heat in Transformers, because she’s got some very sharp stilettos to fill …
• In other Cold War News & Notes: Stephen King has a new Cold War era novel coming out about the JFK assassination; an Aristotle Onassis biopic is currently being planned; and Angelina Jolie is eager to lure Anthony Hopkins into playing Winston Churchill in her new project, Churchill and Roosevelt. She’s apparently still lacking a Roosevelt … but didn’t her father play FDR in Pearl Harbor? Maybe she didn’t dig his performance.
• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … Olga Kurylenko will be playing a CIA agent in the new action thriller The Expatriate, starring opposite Aaron Eckhart as his former lover. Hooray! This is exactly the kind of casting we need if the CIA is to continue meeting its recruitment quotas.
And that’s what’s happening today in The Cold War!
Posted on May 5th, 2011 at 5:59pm.
When they were making Dr. No it was decided that Bond had to be seen wearing a Rolex, because Fleming had specified the brand in the novels (although he was vague about the model). They tried to get Rolex to lend them one, but Rolex weren’t interested. The budget wouldn’t stretch to buying an expensive watch, so Cubby Broccoli ended up taking his his personal Submariner off of his wrist and putting it on Sean Connery’s. That is the watch that appears in the movie. When you consider that the franchise is now so associated with, and apparently so dependant on, product placement, that’s deeply ironic.
That’s a great story. For what it’s worth, I’ve actually seen the original champagne bottle used during the dinner with Dr. No, along with several other props from that film. It’s also worth pointing out that the original Bond novels themselves were filled to the brim with high-end ‘product placements’ befitting Bond’s lifestyle and world.
Kurylenko’s outfit is perfect for spy work! Really helps her blend into the background.
Yes, plus they could’ve cast her in Goldfinger.
King’s work grows ever poorer, and thus ever more stridently political. I really hated his last four or five novels. He seems to have lost the thread entirely since he sobered up.
Didn’t King announce a while back that he was going to give up writing?
I’m not sure about that.
I’m with you %100 on the X-Men films, although I consider X2 a legitimately great super-hero film. There’s a great “don’t tread on me” libertarian feel to it.
If the real tension in “First Class” emanates from the Charles/ Xavier dynamic, then it’ll be fine, but I too have the feeling it’ll devolve into victimology.
As for David Koepp, I’ve always been critical of his work, which I always think suffers from poor construction. I really enjoyed “Crystal Skull”, but I don’t know how everyone involved missed the biggest problem with the screenplay: It doesn’t begin with Indy’s previous adventure, which each one of the films do. It’s not tradition that makes it cool, but doing it that way always gave the view a sense that he had to catch up. “Crystal Skull” had a lot going for it, but I think its pacing struggled a bit.
Those same problems plagued “War of the Worlds” and “Spider-Man” in my opinion.
And finally, I play a lot of basketball, and I bought the Zoom Kobe VIs. I’ve always been a big fan of Zoom, but I can see why Kobe struggles with his ankles in these: They’re are a little light, but they’re if you’re not going to be in the paint too much, I HIGHLY recommend them.
Unlike previous Bonds, Craig actually seems rather fleet of foot – so we want this defender of the free world having the best shoes possible. And best wishes to The Black Mamba tonight, by the way. Down with Mark Cuban!
That’s an interesting take on the opening of Crystal Skull. Actually, having read the Crystal Skull novelization I seem to recall that when Indy’s dragged to the Nevada base, it is intended to be a continuation of a previous adventure, and that was my impression on first seeing the film … that this was a story thread picked up in medias res. I loved that opening sequence, incidentally; I thought it was the best since the opening to Temple of Doom. The pacing was otherwise a little weak in the film, I agree. Also: in chasing an alien artifact, they really should’ve visited Antarctica! There was too much time spent in the jungle.
You’re right — the opening of the film did intend to show his previous adventure. That’s why you see Irina smash the items he found.
In the other films’ openings — “Temple of Doom” is my favorite as well — the first 15 minutes almost had nothing to do with the story, so you only had about 90 minutes to tell the rest of the story, which to me is why the films are so breathless.
I too LOVE the opening of “Crystal Skull”, but I think it would’ve been even better in a place, say, like the shootout in Marion’s bar was in “Raiders.”
By the way, if you haven’t already, there’s a version of “Indiana Jones and the Saucer Men From Mars” out there. It’s pure Lucas goodness.
I’ve got Saucer Men from Mars … and I’m going to read it and tell you what I think of it down the line. Give me a few days …
I’m really hot and cold on Koepp. He’s written some really fun movies. But, he’s also prone to stupidity (all of Snake Eyes, big chunks of The Shadow, Lost World, Angels & Demons and Crystal Skull). The line of dialogue in Crystal Skull that’s something about how the government sees commies everywhere felt like a typical anti-anti-communist sentiment. It’s especially bad considering Indy was just being chased by…commies in the Nevada desert who knew the location of that secret Army storage warehouse.
Plus, he made some idiotic remark about how the aliens in War of the Worlds were an allegory for the US in Iraq. And, honestly, what was the deal with those stupid monkees!? They wasted Karen Allen, too. Crystal Skull’s a very frustrating film for me.
Yes, those were irritating elements in his prior work. At the same time, the basic storyline in Crystal Skull was ardently anti-communist, and I appreciated that … and indeed was quite pleasantly surprised by it.
I’m expecting we’ll get a similarly mixed result with the Jack Ryan screenplay. I really wish Tom Clancy was still in charge of his own franchise, so that we didn’t have to speculate like this …
Love these updates. Now only if someone would turn Team Yankee into a movie….
Wlad
Thank you, Wlad. Yes, a Team Yankee adaptation might really be something …