Tag Archives: Rebecca Romijn

January 16, 2020 · 2:20 pm

The Set of 400: #165 – My Favorite Claw-Licking Cat

Today! Because I used to think you were one of a kind –

X2 (2003)

Directed by Bryan Singer (x3)

Starring Hugh Jackman (x3), Patrick Stewart (x3), Halle Berry (x2), Ian McKellen (x5), Famke Janssen (x2), James Marsden (x2), Brian Cox (x5), Bruce Davison (x2), Anna Paquin (x2), Alan Cumming, Rebecca Romijn (x3), Aaron Stanford, Shawn Ashmore (x2), Kelly Hu, Katie Stuart, Kea Wong

The last X-Men movie on this list, I swear, X2 apparently might just go by X-Men 2 now! Is this something everyone was aware of? Like how the first Star Wars movie is often called A New Hope, as though that’s its name? Or that Tom Cruise movie went from being Edge of Tomorrow to the pithier, stupidier Live Die Repeat? If you couldn’t figure it out before the release, you shouldn’t just keep hammering away at possibilities forever, folks! I was an extra in a solidly mediocre Vince Vaughn/Kevin James comedy ultimately titled The Dilemma, but when it was filming they were still calling it alternately Cheaters and What They Didn’t Know. That’s the time to sort it out! And yeah, that’s shameless promotion for my movie extra career! Send gigs my way!

I don’t have a current headshot, per se, but this pretty much covers it

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Tagged as Alan Cumming, Anna Paquin, Brian Cox, Bruce Davison, Bryan Singer, Famke Janssen, Favorite Movies Ever, Halle Berry, Hugh Jackman, Ian McKellen, James Marsden, Patrick Stewart, Rebecca Romijn, X-Men, X2

August 13, 2019 · 1:21 pm

The Set of 400: #277 – My Favorite Statue of Liberty Showdown

Today! Because the war is still coming, Charles, and I intend to fight it by any means necessary –

X-Men (2000)

Directed by Bryan Singer

Starring Hugh Jackman (x2), Patrick Stewart (x2), Ian McKellen (x2), Famke Janssen, Halle Berry, Anna Paquin, James Marsden, Ray Park (x2), Rebecca Romijn (x2), Tyler Mane, Bruce Davison, Shawn Ashmore

For everyone who bemoans the epic length of today’s superhero movies, realize, large cast comic adaptations can come in under two hours, but they’re going to look a lot like 2000’s X-Men. Sure, it didn’t have a lot to compare itself to back then – it’s preceded by little more than the ’90s Batmans, the ’80s Supermans, and…Blade, I guess? So how would they know to give equal time to the characters and not have it just be, like, Wolverine and his costumed bubs? Halle Berry’s Storm has like fifteen lines in the whole movie! She would win an Oscar within a handful of years of this film, and she’s got slightly more lines than the random wrestler who plays Sabretooth!

And yeah, it has aged terribly in comparison to the films that followed – not only the Spider-Mans, the Marvel Universe, and the Nolan Bat films, but in the X-Men franchise itself. Hey, it’s still better than every stab at the Fantastic Four, anyway! And it is a pretty fun movie, if you can overlook the completely lousy non-Magneto villains, and some of that dialogue. Oh, man, that dialogue. But this was the film that pulled Jackman from the stage and made him a huge star, after the original Wolverine had to drop out, thanks to Mission: Impossible 2 running over filming – thanks, Dougray Scott! Ah, what could’ve been! Would these movies have worked without Jackman? Would we have nine of them??

He’s worked steadily since, but off the top of your head, what’s the last Dougray Scott film you saw?

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Tagged as Anna Paquin, Bruce Davison, Bryan Singer, Famke Janssen, Favorite Movies Ever, Halle Berry, Hugh Jackman, Ian McKellen, James Marsden, Patrick Stewart, Ray Park, Rebecca Romijn, X-Men

May 14, 2019 · 1:14 pm

The Set of 400: #342 – My Favorite Nuclear Deterrent

Today! Because peace was never an option –

X-Men: First Class (2011)

Directed by Matthew Vaughn

Starring James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Kevin Bacon (x3), Rose Byrne, Oliver Platt, January Jones (x2), Nicholas Hoult, Zoe Kravitz, Lucas Till, Caleb Landry Jones, James Remar (x2), Don Creech, Ray Wise, Michael Ironside, Jason Beghe, Hugh Jackman, Rebecca Romijn, Rade Serbedzija, Glenn Morshower, Jason Flemyng

There was legitimate concern heading into the late ’00s that the mighty X-Men franchise was as good as dead. The Last Stand was pretty widely reviled among fans, and the Wolverine prequel wasn’t…good, so what sort of hope could there be? Even when this thing was announced, I don’t remember people being overly optimistic. What, no Storm? No Cyclops? Nightcrawler? Wolverine? Toad?! Concerns abounded.

But while none of these later prequel-centric cast X-films have been gigantic box office hits, this was crucial proof that they could work. The X-Men movies, even though they predated the MCU by many years, have never quite gotten their due – always overshadowed by the Raimi Spider-mans, the Nolan Batmans, and ultimately Iron Man and company. But overall this has to be considered the second most consistent comic book franchise ever, right? There have been, what, eleven movies so far, if you count the Deadpools, and eight of them are very good-to-great (depending on your opinion of Apocalypse, I guess) – that’s a pretty strong track record for a long-in-the-sabretooth series.