One X-Cellent Scene - You Picked the Wrong House, Bub

let's take a step back a little more than a year ago a bunch of youtubers and i put together the one marvelous scene project a celebration of the marvel cinematic universe in the lead up to end game and we encouraged everyone to make their own videos and like end games so many other amazing youtubers came out to join the project made their own videos it was truly amazing and i wanted to do something similar this year bring together a remarkable group of youtubers celebrate another cinematic moment as a group and encourage everyone to join in the fun so we looked through the usual suspects nothing too exciting or final on the dc front star wars was over for a while no new spider-man james bond was ending some like maybe that but then 2020 happened and everything got thrown off the table but somewhere in the middle i realized 2020 was also supposed to be the year that the fox x-men movies were set to come to a close and it kind of felt like a bummer the series wasn't ending with an end game style bang but with a whimper and oft delayed whimper at that dark phoenix followed by new mutants and i think that really sucks because i honestly believe the x-men movies are some of the most dare i say it astonishing the superhero movie genre has produced sure they have their flaws and some seem quaint when compared to the more out there stuff of today like thor ragnarok or into the spider verse but that's what happens when you blaze a trail a trail that was all but destroyed when the x-men came along in july of 2000 besides blade which does rule the 1990s saw the end of the schumacher batman franchise and then just a bunch of weird almost knock-offs of the fantastic four captain america nick fury agent of shield the shadow movie the phantom movie a spawn movie steel starring shaquille o'neal and then in 2000 we get a movie that spawns a 20-year series with some of the most compelling characters in action in superhero cinema so i sent out a telepathic message to some of the most uncanny youtubers i know with a new idea make a series of videos about their favorite scene in x-men history and yeah i said history because unlike the mcu which is a tight 20ish movies in one consistent universe the x-men movies are reboots within reboots so like screw it let's make this series about all x media comics shows games one thing that the x-men are known for is diversity diversity of backgrounds powers so let's celebrate everything about the children of the atom in a project we are of course calling one excellent scene i'll start [Music] x2 is my favorite superhero movie ever made full stop i know it isn't the best one and it probably isn't even the best one in that series but i absolutely love it there's so much terrific stuff there and i honestly think the movie ages pretty well sure some of the special effects don't hold up quite as well as you'd probably hope but when you take that out of the equation the writing the acting the score the story the themes everything works really well and because of how much of it works so well it was almost difficult to narrow this down to one scene one scene that stood out for me as the most interesting in the series nightcrawler's introduction is amazing bobby's conversation with his parents is great every single line magneto says in this movie is hilarious when he's not being completely serious and dooming all of mankind magneto is nothing but pure catty sarcastic humor and it is so entertaining in fact a lot of the humor in this movie really holds up it's incredibly dry a lot of it comes from the juxtaposition between both teams working together the heroes and the villains magneto and mystique mixed with the rest of the x-men so you get interactions like this one have you found it a large portion of energy from the dam has been diverted to this chamber cerebrum there it is can you shut it down from here no easy to forget but phenomenally delivered but after a re-watch one scene did stand out for me the one scene that i think embodies everything that is awesome about the original x-men movies and that is the attack on the x-mansion so right around 35 minutes into the movie it's clear that something is off professor ekton scott have been kidnapped magneto has revealed information to stryker that he shouldn't have under mind control and wolverine goes downstairs to get a beer has a quick talk with bobby that is interrupted by a midnight raid from striker's forces now i want to talk about three things that i find specifically awesome about this scene starting with the action okay so that sounds like a really general term specifically the x-men movies had to do a lot with a little the budget of x-men 1 was under 100 million dollars somewhere in the high 90s the budget of x-men 2 is around 110 million dollars from everything we know that's a lot lower than the 200 million dollars spent on dark phoenix or even the 165 million dollars spent three years later on x-men the last stand and these movies had to attract top-tier talent besides most of these actors coming off of a successful x-men movie patrick stewart was the face of star trek and had just finished the star trek nemesis movie ian mckillin besides coming off of x-men one was also coming off of the first lord of the rings movie halle berry had just won an oscar for monsters ball and was just in a james bond movie and on top of that yet guys like famke janssen brian cox james marsden rebecca romain alan [ __ ] this was a big cast it was probably pretty expensive on top of that this movie was going to be full of action you had set pieces for pyro storm jean mystique magneto nightcrawler in the white house wolverine fighting lady death strike they all had some big expensive moment but this the assault on the x-mansion needed to be big it needed to be dangerous because it was going to shake this team to their foundation and what they were able to do with it was honestly really impressive most of wolverine's action is off screen wolverine stabs you in the foot pulls you around the corner and then you shoot him a bunch and then your flashlight goes out that's the whole fight but they still manage to capture that berserker rage that wolverine is so well known for without going overboard and i don't care what you say about deadpool or days of future past or anything like that this moment is easily the best colossus moment in any of the x-men movies this effect has never looked better in fact it only looks worse as these movies go on and the movie knows what the fun part of that action sequence is you see the shadow he turns into metal kind of a silly look on his face before the soldiers are thrown through the wall we don't need to see colossus pick those guys up that's not the cool part of this action sequence and that's why x2 holds up so well they were able to work really well within the limitations of the budget instead of turning magneto bringing everyone on to alcatraz into some big unnecessary cgi moment like they would do an x3 or have a big cgi fight with the juggernaut that's going to look bad in two years keep it simple that way you can work creatively and give everyone something cool to do and yeah this action sequence does use that one thing that the x-men movies cannot stop using and have not gotten any better at using either wire flying but because of how engaged you are in everything coming up to the bitwear wolverine clearly does not throw two stunt actors over his shoulders you don't really mind so much because you're too wrapped up in the action to notice how silly it looks the second thing that i think is so terrific about this scene is post 911 striker so the same way spider-man 1 was a cathartic moment for new york like everyone bands together to throw tire irons at the villain x2 represented the other kind of comic book response to a post 911 world see x2 stays relatively faithful to god loves man kills the x-men story on which it's based xavier's kidnapped and turned into a weapon even the makeup of the x-men at the time is relatively similar wolverines cyclops storm colossus nightcrawler and shadowcat who isn't really a part of this movie she's more or less replaced by bobby since he becomes the metaphor for social persecution and this is even one of the admittedly many x-men stories where magneto and the x-men put aside their differences to deal with the larger threat but god loves man kills makes one huge change striker in the comics william striker is a radical passer who wants to wipe out the mutant menace if you haven't read the book which i highly recommend it's it's short and they actually just released an extended cut of the series but if you haven't read it yet you may recognize striker he's from this panel where he asks people if they believe kurt is human one of the most x-men x-men panels of all time but in the movie striker is a military scientist and partially that seems like an effort to tie striker's origins into wolverines so that the story can be more personal with a villain who has a beef with everyone but this also feels at least partially informed by the post 911 politics of the early 2000s now i am aware that this movie was more or less written in 2001 although rewritten slightly in 2002 so it's really difficult to say how much of this story was impacted by the events of september 11 2001 but the parallels are a little on the nose honestly like as a response to the september 11th attacks the united states government almost immediately passed something called the patriot act gave the government sweeping surveillance powers that some believe went far beyond what the government should be able to collect without a traditional search warrant people were beginning to see the government especially in the information age as maybe an enemy an enemy that used an attack against the united states as an excuse to pervert a generally benevolent system by turning it into this sort of surveillance weapon on one hand there's no way that these changes were made that late in the game but on the other hand it is really difficult to separate x2 williams striker from the politics of 2003 when the movie was released there was a fear in the united states a terror if you will that something was always just about to happen there was a terror warning chart that didn't really make too much sense but but that sentiment and that fear is perfectly embodied in this scene by brian cox's william striker the military scientist he's confident he's dangerous and he is 100 that everything he is doing is to protect the human race maybe it was all coincidence but striker was the perfect villain for 2003. and then number three the third thing that i find so terrific about this scene the school one of the special things about the x-men was always the institute itself while i understand the idea that the x-men need to go places and do things i never thought we spent quite enough time with the institute itself not enough to appreciate what it was outside of x2 the best comparison i can think of is between x-men and something like harry potter in both x-men and harry potter once you hit puberty you get an invitation to the special school full of special misunderstood kids just like you and you learn regular school things but you also learn to fight because there's a guy that the person in charge of the school knows and he's bad and and you might need to fight that guy someday and maybe even kill him it's a weirdly specific kind of story but because the harry potter stories were focused on the students we were always able to spend time with them get a sense for what it felt like inside of hogwarts going to classes learning about the history of the world second hand and then eventually becoming a part of the world however i think this moment in x2 is the best dx mansion has ever looked it's the most it ever felt like a real place somewhere where real kids live special alone together kids in his review for x-men 2 peter travers of the rolling stone came to what i thought was a pretty interesting conclusion near the end of the review he says what's unneat is how singer and screenwriters michael doherty and dan harris overload the film with new x'ers pyro aaron stanford is viably flashy but do we need the steel guy the screamer the girl who passes through walls the kid with the fork tongue by expanding the x-men franchise singer dilutes the film at hand and while peter travers definitely knows what he's talking about generally i think he completely missed the point of this scene the x-mansion is supposed to feel overwhelming you never get any indication of what these mutants can do ahead of time on purpose like there is not an extended danger room sequence where you see all the powers in action so when the soldiers break into the mansion you know what's waiting for him sure we know wolverine's around and we know a young iceman's there who hasn't really ever done much and a young pyro who's done even less and then a rogue who doesn't have the original miss marvel power set yet so she's pretty useless in this fight but who fights back the background characters random kids we saw once in the hallway or heard senator kelly fear-mongering about in the last movie we are taking completely off guard when siren screech wakes everyone up or when shadow cat runs through a guy it's filmed that way on purpose we deliberately get an extra second with the soldier she ran through just to absorb how weird of a thing just happened at their best the x-men are a family the kind sometimes described as a family of choice charles brings these students and teachers together they're hated and feared by society but they understand each other in a way that no one else does near the middle of the movie we meet the drakes bobby's family and they are not great mom and dad try to get bobby to change and act normal while his brother just calls the cops the young mutants have been failed by their families but they aren't alone during the assault on the expansion we get a look at the x-men acting like a family wolverine and colossus protecting the younger students bobby pyro rogue escaping together asking logan for help externally x2 is about a struggle for the fate of mutant kind but the internal struggle for our protagonists is one between past and future characters who cling to their past like striker magneto and the drakes fail the weight of their trauma crushes them some literally but characters who look forward are able to grow this choice is presented to logan in the mansion striker has answers about its past but the kids need protection and logan goes with them this is the crucial choice of the movie that sets almost everything else in motion not just for the plot but for you as a viewer that one moment is enough to sell you on the idea that there is this school in the middle of westchester new york that nobody knows about with a bunch of random kids who have been rejected by society but they all really care about each other and they're all willing to give up the thing they really really want have wanted their entire lives to protect each other that is awesome you can't ask for anything more from an x-man story and that's why i think the attack on the x-mansion is one excellent scene now that you finish this video go watch the other ones tons of other creators that i love that you probably also already love have made videos in this series there's a playlist linked in the video description and then when you're finished watching those make your own watch one of the x-men movies watch an episode of the old cartoon play one of the games read some of the comics the new ones are awesome and the old ones are also awesome and if we do that if we really do something special maybe just maybe we can collectively wild new mutants into existence oh and one more thing by now you've definitely heard me talk about nebula it's an amazing subscription streaming service made by myself and a bunch of the other top educational creators on youtube you can watch our videos without ads support the creators you like and watch nebula originals videos that only exist on nebula like for instance there's a series called the working title series where a bunch of us creators each made a video in a series about the opening title sequence for some show that we're really interested in so i made an episode on one punch man i also made an episode on the titles for the hbo watchmen series patrick h williams who is also participating in the one excellent scene project his working titles video was actually on the x-men the animated series opening title sequence so if you want even more x-men content by creators you already like you should definitely check out nebula you're also probably familiar with curiosity stream it's a terrific subscription streaming service devoted to non-fiction programming documentaries things like that curiosity stream and nebula have teamed up and created a bundle if you sign up for curiosity stream at the link in this description you get a nebulous subscription for free you can check out curiositystream watch one of their series for instance leaps in evolution which is about actual evolution as opposed to the fun x-men kind of evolution and check out what we've got on nebula and right now there is a 26 discount on annual plans it is a win-win-win-win go to curiositystream.com or just click the link in this description and sign up today watch all those things i said it's awesome before we get to the usual stuff thank you so much to everyone that contributed to this project i have always been huge x-men fan i grew up watching the cartoon reading the comics playing the games watching the other cartoons and then of course watching these movies some of them are really amazing some of them even the ones that aren't that great are still like a lot of fun so it was really cool to be able to set up a project where everybody could share their fond memories of this franchise before it disappears the videos are all awesome i would really encourage any of you guys to make your own videos and submit them to me like send me them over twitter and i'll put them in the playlist i talked to a lot of people last year who their one marvelous scene video was the first video on their channel and it started them making more videos and building some sort of audience which super cool this could be that for you or it could just be a fun opportunity to talk about x-men a thing that you like i assume as always i have to thank everyone who continues to support the channel on patreon you guys are the best you want to see your names up here get access to videos early other cool stuff throw in literally any amount of money at patreon.commovies you have no idea how much i appreciate it also make sure to listen to my podcasts mostly nitpicking where every week me and my friends dj and diggins pick apart a piece of pop culture by looking exclusively at the details we've done plenty of episodes about x-men things in the past we will definitely do an episode on new mutants if the movie ever comes out who knows maybe it is out right now when you're watching this and if it is out that means we either are about to do or have already done our new mutants episode which i'm so excited for eventually also definitely follow me on twitter instagram and tick tock my handle is nandovy movies it's where i post updates on videos podcasts pictures of my cat and tease for a future video captain america shield finally making my winter soldier one small change video that i'm so excited about i think you guys are gonna really love it that is all i've got i'll see you next [Music] time

Channel: Nando v Movies

Views: 355,211

Keywords: X-Men, Xmen, One Xcellent Scene, Wolverine, Movies, Superheroes, Disney, One Marvelous Scene, Colossus, Iceman, Magneto, Cyclops, Stryker, Comics, God Loves Man Kills, Bub, Hugh Jackman, Marvel, Logan, William Stryker

Id: fWWTb0OBhC8

Length: 21min 43sec (1303 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 23 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/browncharliebrown]

Disappointed there’s no video on legion