1) Jean Grey and the Viper woman were complete stereotypes with hardly any real depth.
I felt that their characters weren't well developed for this particular movie. I know it's a sequel, but if you're like me, you might not have watched many of the previous movies. It's my personal opinion that a movie shouldn't hold anything from you just because you didn't watch the other movies or you didn't read the book. (Don't get me started on book adaptations. That's another post.)
As far as Jean Grey... It's one thing to like, maybe have a gag or a subtle nod to a previous movie for the longtime fans. Maybe a previous character has a cameo. Maybe something in the background nods to the events of a previous work. But she plays a major role in the story. I think we need to know WHO she is. Granted, she doesn't get much screen time. But when she does, it's nothing new. She serves to represent Logan's guilt for having killed her in a previous picture. He goes through these guilt trips in his sleep where he dreams he's in bed with her, talking.
This is a premise that has been done many times before. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But the way she's portrayed, (a snappy, condescending, semi-antagonist) is nothing new. It's interesting, but only the surface, as it's an interesting premise to begin with, but nothing interesting is done with it. She just eggs on his guilt and shoves it in his face, as seen in various war movies and the like. (Sorry I couldn't find a good still of her in the movie.)
The Viper woman has no excuse however. She's a generic movie villain b-word. No complexity. She's essentially the mad scientist overlooking the city from his fortress saying, "I will get them now!" I couldn't even make out what her driving motivation was for being evil. It would seem that she was evil for the sake of being evil. In fact, they even acknowledge her lack of depth once or twice in the movie! Stuff along the lines of, "She serves herself," and, "I know the Viper woman is evil." Yeah. I know that too.
2) Hugh Jackman Has One Facial Expressions Throughout The Whole Movie.
Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying Hugh Jackman is a bad actor. He's quite good. Worlds better than your usual Matt Damons and Channing Tatums. It took THIS movie for me to realize that. He's capable of complex emotions. For the first quarter of this movie I was comparing him to Kirk Douglas, the manliest actor of all time.
Was.
I, disappointedly, relinquished those notions about a quarter into the movie. While he might be like Kirk in that he's very manly with his acting, with all of a man's complex emotions (guilt, fear, regret) He fails to let it bubble the way Kirk does.He simmers with them. Kirk Douglas would let his emotions simmer, then bubble, then absolutely boil. He would do this very subtle movements and facial expressions. Little twitches, convulsions, micro-expressions. Even when he was acting happy, you could still tell he had those feelings brewing inside. They'd build until they exploded right out of him in a fury of anger and rawness. Then he'd regret his explosion and go right back to brooding. Brilliant.
Hugh only seems to be able to let it simmer, then explode only somewhat satisfyingly. But BOY DOES HE SIMMER. Even while in bed with Jean Grey (who simmers in her own right) he's got that face. My friend Christopher calls it the, "You're gonna die mother effer," face. WHILE IN BED WITH JEAN.
3) SO MUCH ORANGE AND BLUE LIKE WHAT THE FREAKING CRAP.
I wish I could find some stills of the landscape shots. It's VERY prevalent there. Like. My gosh. Go see the movie, and count the number of times you seem blue and orange being the two dominant colours on screen.
Now this, to me, seems to be Hollywood sticking it's smelly foot into the movie. Blue and orange are natural complements, so they should look great together. But sadly, there's not real composition to the colour in this movie. The shots (for the most part. There ARE some dang cool shots) aren't built around the mandatory one-tone-of-blue and one-tone-of-orange palette.
I say mandatory because it seems like every Hollywood picture coming out is full of orange blue. Sometimes it's orange and grey.
Not only does it look pretty bad most of the time, it effectively damages any shred of uniqueness that a film can have. It's not even controlled well! You need variety and subtle colours to make a picture look nice and pop out. You have to be creative with framing shots and composing colours if you want to really make something pop and look nice. Not take the easy way out and make them perfect complements for the whole freaking movie!!
It's pretty prevalent in games too.
I'm not sure entirely, but I think this trend started with the Transformers movies. I could be wrong.
(Photo's taken from here. You can read more about this disease on this post from Indie Filmmaker, Todd Miro's blog. http://theabyssgazes.blogspot.com/2010/03/teal-and-orange-hollywood-please-stop.html)
