X Men First Class in Oxford

Hollywood came to Oxford (again) as the film crew for X-MEN: FIRST CLASS filmed in sites around the city. They came prepared to create their own rain, but the city provided the real thing for free.

The film, which tells the story of the early lives of Professor X and Magneto, both of whom attended Oxford University in the '60s, hence the period costume being worn by the bored looking extras.

Stars James McAvoy and Jennfer Lawrence were watched by a small group of onlookers (hey it was raining quite hard) as they tried to meet up on at the entrance to the Sheldonian theatre on Broad Street. At least it was easy for them to act out being wet.

The streets around were filled with period vehicles parked up for the wider shots and in these days of austerity measures it seems like the X-Men are being forced to give up the X-Jet for the less glamorous X-Bus.

The film is being directed by Matthew Vaughn and was written by Jane Goldman. Since this is the team behind KICK ASS and STARDUST we have high hopes for it to restart the franchise.

Sci Fi Franchise Hell

RESIDENT EVIL:AFTERLIFE in 3D emerged onto cinema screens this week and proved not to be the much better than the original. This got me thinking about sci fi movie franchises and how there just aren't any good ones.

Immediately an army of STAR WARS fans leap to the fore and demand apologies, but the prequel movies aren't that great, special effects advances are not, and there aren't that many people STAR WARS fanboys or not who would be able to argue with that.

The STAR TREK fans would be the next ones up to complain, but be honest STAR TREK V THE FINAL FRONTIER is just plain pants. The original STAR TREK THE MOTION PICTURE was not nicknamed the slow motion picture without reason either. For every good one there's a not so good one.

The ALIEN franchise might have a claim after the first two films, but ALIEN 3 didn't rock most people's world and ALIEN RESURRECTION was generally found to be lacking. When it merged with the, frankly average, PREDATOR franchise things went seriously downhill with the ALIEN VS PREDATOR movies.

The MATRIX movies had a hell of a start in the original movie but he architect's nonsense put an end to that even before the dodgy rave/orgy scene in REVOLUTIONS.

So what does that leave us with? And if anyone suggests the bloody awful TRANSFORMERS films they might just get a punch in the mouth.

It leaves us with the superheroes. The X-MEN movies had a chance, but THE LAST STAND and WOLVERINE certainly put a crimp in the quality of that and THE FANTASTIC FOUR could only manage and OK Two. Robert Downey Jr's IRON MAN films might make it, but the second film was just the first film reheated and ought to have seen the end of that particular franchise. SPIDER-MAN 3 was so poorly received that the whole franchise is to be rebooted from the start only a few years after it was started.

Only the reborn BATMAN franchise shows any sign of managing to create a franchise with any consistency of quality and that's because the studio aren't about to hurry the creative team into a rush job when they are getting successes like INCEPTION out of them.

Science fiction has never been a genre that has lent itself to the franchise market (PLANET OF THE APES aside), but with many potential franchises not even getting past the sequel, things have never been as thin as they are right now.