Generation X - Review

Generation X is a made for TV movie adaptation of the X-men, which aired in 1996 on the fox channel in America.  It is impossible to find on dvd or video, but there are copies floating around in the ether of the realms of dubious legality. 

Warning, this is a spoiler based review

This is what I know about this movie, it's supposed to be terrible, Jubilee is played by a white person and they used the same castle setting for the school which would be later used in the high budget X-Men movies.  It's been sat on my hard drive for a while, and I've been putting it off long enough so I guess I'm going to have to watch it.

Our first shot of the movie is this handy little info bite, then a shot of a human brain and a guy with some white rubber gloves, handling some medical instruments which look like they've come from the high octane nightmare fuel department and they prepare to cut into the brain of some poor sod to harvest his brain juice. 

But I only came in for a gentle foot rub

A blonde woman bursts into the room and flings one of the mad scientists away saying "stop right there, Russell" and proceeds to free the poor bloke on the operating table.  A mild annoyance, every single shot so far has been tilted for no particular reason.  Some guys come in and arrest the bloke on the table for being an unregistered mutant and because he was unregistered they aren't going to aresst the evil doctor type guy for trying to saw into his brain.

This place doesn't look sciencey enough, add more wheels to the wall!

The blonde woman is Emma Frost, she gets very annoyed when a guy tells the Doctor Russell that his punishment for trying to murder someone is getting fired so she creates some wind and lightning and scowls at him.  So, Emma Frost has Storms powers in this? 

We get a 'five years later' and see a young guy called Angelo (Skin) who is packing his things to go to Xavier's school for the gifted.  His father says it's time to go and his family all say goodbye as he gets into the car.  His little sister grabs his hand as the car starts to drive off, despite his protests to let go, she grins evilly as his skin stretches as the car drives away until her mother pulls her off.

Bitch

At a corporate office block doctor Russell hams it up as he explains to his boss what exactly it is he does, something about dream devices and brain monitoring.  Russell tells his boss he'll explain it all really slowly for him, the guy playing Russell is that guy in Dawn of the Dead who Ving Rhames shoots as he slowly turns into a zombie and his daughter is the annoying one with the dog.  He's so over the top he's a walking block of cheese and also quite entertaining.   His machine allows him to enter the dreams of anyone and they put subliminal messages in adverts and his machine will boost this as he's putting stuff directly into peoples brains. 

We then cut to a girl who I think it supposed to be Jubilee playing video games at a weird techno rave arcade place.  We see a girl putting on some uv lipstick and then Doctor Russell lightning up some guys cigarette.

One of Jubilee's friends asks her if she's really going to take off, she says that she intends to as "home sucks, freedom rocks", not exactly t-shirt material.  Jubilee is playing a street fighter game (I think, it's been a while) and while she's playing Doctor Russell's head pops up saying "play more, play more". 

This is not subliminal messages, this is just a message

Jubilee doesn't really seem to notice the giant head talking and carries on playing as sparks start flying out of her hands, which she also doesn't notice.  Though every person around her does and stands and stares at all the flying sparks, included Doctor Russell.

Subtle X-Men product placement, movie

Some blokes come to arrest Jubilee for making sparks before Russell can get to her, and she runs through the crowd so he grabs her friend who's that guy who was the friend in the programme where the kid is the son of the devil and the devil is Ray Wise.  He tells Russell what Jubilee's name is and then we see that more guys arrive and arrest Jubilee when they corner her in a room.

Cerebro, the amiga version

We see this info pop up and then Emma Frost in bed in a super shiney room, wearing a super shiney nightie and the movie remembers it's all supposed to be on a slant so the camera tilts and Emma Frost walks into a computer room where Cerebro is and it's sodding huge.

Emma Frost prints off the information about Jubilee and we get a shot of the outside of a police station, which for some reason is lit in neon lights.  What is it with you and neon, nineties?  Inside the station Jubilee's mother is giving her a good telling off for being a mutant without telling her first and giving her lip about it. 

Emma Frost goes to wake up some guy who thinks he's doing an Irish accent, saying that he'll get up when she gets dressed.  Ok.  Jubilee's mother asks a guy not to take her away as she's only 15 and they just found out she's a mutant and not had chance to register her, the guy says that these things don't just happen and as a mutant she doesn't have any rights. 

He tells her mother that she's going to mutant camp, aka death camp, fun happy camp, where she will be rehabilitated into society.  As the mother leaves the police station, she's accosted by Emma Frost and bad Irish accent, aka Banshee (really, movie?) 

Excuse me Mrs Lee, the camera was almost straight for a moment there and we needed to correct that.

They tell her that they'd like to offer her an alternative to mutant camp, Xavier's school, Mrs Lee thinks it's a sales pitch and for some reason Emma Frost gets all bitchy and sarcy with Mrs Lee about it.  They tell her that unless she agrees to let Jubilee come with them, that Jubilee will be sent away to death camp, happy fun camp and she'll never see her again.

Emma Frost and Banshee enter the police station and Emma Frost uses a postcard like psychic paper in order to steal Jubilee from the police station.  They use the fake names, "Hootie" and "Blowfish", really, movie?  Really?  Sometimes Emma Frost sounds English, sometimes American so I can't tell if the actress is supposed to be trying to use an American accent or not.

They go outside and tell Jubilee that she's got to go with them, Jubilee wants to leave, but they tell her she's basically got no choice but to come with them.  They bundle her into their car and tell her that at the school she will be trained to use her powers and she's being trained to be a super hero.  Not that she has a choice in this mind, they tell her that when she graduates she'll be issued with a uniform which they assure her is "quite tasteful."  On route they pick up Skin from a bus and introduce him to Jubilee.

Back to the entertaining person in the movie

Doctor Russell tells his boss he's found a mutant brain, he went to the mall to check how the brainwashing was working on the kiddies and he's so excited because she's "at least a level 3."  He then starts babbling on about a woman he met once who was a psychic and a mutant who told him about the dream world and the door to it which blew apart everything they were doing. 

Don't you understand what this means? 

He starts talking some more crazy talk about mutants and dreams and his boss looks very dubious and asks if the thing they've been paying him to make is ready.  He tells Russell to not speak to the board about the brain thing as they "aren't on his intellectual level" and just try to keep the money flowing by concentrating on the dream machine. 

The mutants arrive back at Xavier's school which is suspiciously sparse of other people.  Emma Frost makes Jubilee do a retinal scan and then strip off behind a screen to do a full body imprint.  Why?  Why do they need to do this?  They don't even make Skin leave the room, he just stands are stares as Jubilee undresses.  Emma Frost rubs something on Jubilee's chest and it all feels very skeezy and dirty.

Outside some kids are playing with an american football and Skin and Jubilee go over to introduce themselves.  A blonde kid with sunglasses assess Skin as a "dork", but his friend corrects him and says he's a "butthead".  Oh, harsh, /end sarcasm.

A blonde girl comes over to introduce them, she introduces herself as Arlee, the blonde kid with a bad attitude as Kurt, the guy who thought butthead was a grave insult as Mondo and another girl as Monet.  Kurt asks Jubilee what her thing is, Jubilee says she doesn't know exactly what it's called but she shoots fireworks from her fingers.

Monet laughs and says, "it's called thermo dynamic emission", god, Jubilee, as if you didn't know that?!  She says that Kurt has something similar which shoots out of his eyes, so Kurt is this movie's cyclops, except he sort of has x-ray vision as well.  Then the guys take the piss out of skin for having a rubbish super power.

The kids start playing american football and Mondo takes the ball from Skin, and takes his hand with him, they all stare in horror as his arm stretches halfway across the field.  This is the second time this has happened, and it clearly really hurts him every time it happens, so why the hell would they try to train him to use a super power which causes him a lot of physical pain?

The blonde girl knocks over Mondo to get him to let go of Skin's hand, so fakecyclops jumps on her, then Jubilee and Monet sort of pile on as well for some reason.  Emma Frost and Banshee see this and when they don't immediately break it up, he screams at them with his powers and that works quite quickly. 

Later that night Arlee the blonde girl shows Jubilee to the girls room, Arlee says she's going to change clothes, Jubilee offers to go with her, but Arlee rebuffs her and Monet explains that she doesn't like anyone seeing her change because she's embarrassed about her body because she's very strong and her physique is all buff.

Monet goes on to explain why she's the perfect mutant and super smart and super special and the most special unique snowflake there ever was.  Jubilee clearly isn't impressed, because they've made Monet so very, very unlikeable.  In the boys room fakecyclops gives Skin more shit about his powers and Mondo joins in.  Mondo's power is that he can be as strong as anything he touches, rock, wood, metal, etc, Skin asks what happens if he eats jell-o, Mondo says he doesn't like jell-o.

The next morning, for some reason there's only one bathroom in all the school and all the students are waiting for Arlee to get done using it, fakecyclops starts mucking on by saying he can see through the door so Arlee comes out and holds him against the wall to threaten him, but for some reason she does this with her eyes shut and she doesn't sound all that angry.

You five six teenagers with attitude are here because you have powers, a wide range of powers, you will search for other people with a wide range of powers, we're going to call you, power rangers, generation x, hope you like the t-shirts.

Later Banshee tells the students about Cerebro and how they'll all be expected to learn to use it and learn to monitor for other mutants who are at level 3 or above.  Emma Frost later is teaching them about psychic powers and how to walk around a school in thigh high silver boots and a corset, while the room is tilted at an odd angle.

Fakecyclops asks how they are supposed to relax and concentrate at the same time, she tells him to imagine he's playing with himself.  You know, for kids!  She holds out a bunch of cards and tells them they contain subliminal messages and they should look at them and try to see what it is.  The cards are magic eye pictures, so I'm guessing the first one is a schooner. 

Skin writes down what he sees and Jubilee calls them out, so I don't know if she's picking that up from him or he just doesn't mind not getting credit for his work.  Emma Frost tells them they are to monitor their dreams for their home work, she says that dreams are the mental thread that connect them all.  Fakecyclops reckons that Emma Frost is mental and she confirms this and then calls him ignorant.  She's a crap teacher. 

Later the kids are relaxing in a recreation room and a news report comes on the telly about mutants and Fakecyclops decides to blow it up instead of turning it off, because destroying something that isn't yours is cool!  Everyone is super impressed by this act of vandalism of course.  Banshee comes in to  tell Jubilee her mother has called, but she tells him that she doesn't want to speak to her mother.

Skin is working on Cerebro when there's a security breach and and he tries to solve it, but it quickly descends into madness, he shouts for help, but someone holds a gun to his head and the training sequence ends.  Because traumatising your students is the way to get them started on the basics!  Banshee tells him he was basically crap and he gets to spend the next day training all day. 

Later in the day, Skin finds Jubilee reading a book about meta physics by Emma Frost, which Jubilee describes as weird.  Skin wants to travel into dreams to get away from the school because he hates it, he could of course just tell someone that the other students are being dicks.  Jubilee wants to travel into her parents dreams to find out why they sent her there, apparently no one told her it was this or death camp happy fun camp.

They read from the book that mutants are apparently hard wired already to enter the dream world and they can access it by using a white light or something other such nonsense.  They also find out that Emma Frost was involved in a government project to create a dream machine. 

Meanwhile Russell's boss tries to talk him into not being crazy at the presentation he's supposed to make, Russell starts babbling on and says he won't be happy until the psycho slut who humiliated him grovels at his feet and declares him her god.  I wonder who he's talking about? 

The next morning the students asks Banshee if they can drive into town alone and for some reason Banshee agrees because they moan a bit.  Monet goes to try on some clothes and is snotty to Arlee and Jubilee, Jubilee gives Arlee some clothes to try on  and they unsubtly slip in a stunt double for Arlee's buff body. 

Fake Arlee

Actual Arlee

Why didn't they just hire a body builder to play the part?  It would have made a lot more sense.  Elsewhere Fakecyclops and Mondo discuss how fun it is to objectify women based on their looks and Skin looks at pretty girls looking at clothes.  Later, Mondo gets into a macho eating contest across the room with a highschool kid for no apparent reason at a restaurant, the pretty girls that Skin was looking at come in and sit with the high school guys, one of the guys goes over to embarrass Skin by asking him to sit with them.  They tease him by pushing his face into some food as the Monet, Jubilee and Arlee arrive and he walks out embarrassed. 

We see Skin running the security program on Cerebro again and runs into some trouble as he tries to get into a password encoded file, but he hacks his way in very quickly and gives himself a full security pass code key so he can get into any area he likes.  He uses his new card to get into a room where he finds the dream chair from the book he looked at earlier with Jubilee. 

Meanwhile, Russell hams it up as he gives his presentation to the board and starts babbling on about the dream world again, they ask him to get to the point and he tells them that he can make anyone buy anything he wants them to by speaking to their brain.  He then says that he visited each of them in their dreams the previous night and he will make them all fart because he told them to in their dreams.  I'm really not sure that's how it's supposed to work.

Cut to the students training on climbing walls and gyroscopes without any safety equipment and Skin comes to tell Jubilee that he's found the dream machine and they can use it that night.  The climbing wall that Mondo is using keeps trying to kill him.

How is this an effective way of teaching children?

The board members at Russell's meeting decide he's insane and dangerous and they should call the police, because he's a bit too much for them to handle.  They ask Russell's boss and he agrees, then Russell appears and it turns out he's having a dream and Russell has come to get himself some revenge and he makes his boss jump out of a window. 

Skin and Jubilee set about to use the dream chair, Jubilee says she should go first because if anything goes wrong then he will be able to fix it and she wouldn't know how.  She sits in the chair and we see that Russell is sitting down in his own dream chair having a merry little sing song to himself.

Jubilee goes into her fathers dreams where he's having a convenient dream conversation with Jubilee's mother about how guilty he feels, it's lucky Jubilee chose to visit on this night instead of the night he dreams he's captain of a cruise ship and all the passengers are monsters trying to kill him.  Russell pops up behind Jubilee and explains that while she was trying to visit her father, he was trying to visit her.  He tells Jubilee he wants her for her mind and she freaks out and wakes up.

It was so horrible, a flamboyant man said I was talented, you have no idea what that's like!

Skin gets in the chair in order to find himself a hot chick and tells Jubilee not to disconnect him or he'll be a vegetable.  He finds himself in the dream of the pretty girl he was looking at earlier, she's dreaming about sitting on her bed brushing her hair, so he decides to stare at her through her window, so he's a creepy dream stalker now.

Russell turns up and for some reason I keep wanting to call him Frank, I have no idea why, Russell tells Skin that he can make the pretty girl fall in love with him, and he goes into the girls bedroom and tells the girl that she now loves Skin.  Again, I'm really not sure that's how it works, the other night I had a dream where I lived in a mansion with Spoony and Tim Robbins and my girlfriend was Blake Lively, that dream did not make me fancy Blake Lively when I woke up. 

The police come to arrest Russell for something and find him hooked up to the dream machine so they decide the best thing to do when they see someone hooked into a complicated piece of machinery is to pull out all the wires and Russell's body wakes up, but Russell starts falling through the dream world, but Skin saves him by doing a stretch armstrong. 

Russell starts getting his full crazy on and says he has to go, after he kisses Skin and he tries to re-enter his body.  The next day Jubilee and Skin discuss their experiences, Jubilee was scared, but Skin really enjoyed it, Jubile says he's "fucking nuts" and she "cosmically shit her pants".  You know, for kids!  Skin and Jubilee argue over whether Russell was awesome or crazy. 

After a class, Fakecyclops awkwardly asks Arlee if she'd like to go to a carnival with him in town, she turns him down because he's been nothing but a complete arsehole for the entire film, but he says that he's serious about asking her out.  So, he's been nothing but horrible to everyone in the film and all he's done is ask her out and say that he hasn't told anyone he's asking her out, she agrees to go out with him, because real women have no self respect, eh, movie?

Russell's body is being kept at a psych facility, you can tell because everything is white, the orderly complains because he has to feed Russell and Russell can't feed himself.  At the carnival, all the students are attending and Fakecyclops and Arlee ride the ferris wheel while skeezy guys hit on Monet and Jubilee and Mondo eat.  Skin spots the pretty girl, but she disappears behind a ride.  While he's hanging out by a tree moping, the pretty girl approaches Skin and she apologises for her friends behaviour.  He invites her to walk around the fair with him, she asks to walk somewhere else because she doesn't want her friends to see them.

Jubilee takes Mondo on a ride where he looks ill, Monet breaks various strength based carinval games and Arlee and fakecyclops go to the car to make out, though she asks him to take his glasses off because she feels like she's kissing Quentin Tarantino.  Really, movie?  A guy wearing sunglasses and the first place you went was Tarantino?  He takes them off and his eyes don't blast her with xrays so why the hell was he wearing them in the first place?

As they are kissing he breaks off and starts staring as we hear some strange whispers, Arlee asks what's wrong and he says nothing then suggests they find the others.  They meet up with Jubilee and Mondo and the girls go off to go to the bathroom and Mondo asks what happened.  Fakecyclops says that when they were kissing when he took his glasses off his powers kicked in and he could see Arlee's naked thigh, but Mondo coughs as the girls are stood them and have heard what they were saying.

Arlee looks devastated and walks away, Jubilee calls Fakecyclops an asshole and goes after Arlee.  Skin and the pretty girl have been having fun as she is carrying a prize from one of the games, but they run into her friends.  Her friends start calling Skin a retard, which Mondo and Fakecyclops see and they decide to go over and cause trouble, one of the guys punches Mondo and calls him a pube head, but Mondo had picked up a rock so the guy breaks his hand. 

This starts a fight between all the students and the locals and Monet is forced to say goodbye to her merry band of guys following her around, carrying her prizes to go help.  Emma Frost goes to the police station to bail out Fakecyclops, Skin, Mondo and Jubilee. 

Emma Frost chews them out when they return to the lopsided room for exposing themselves to the public and endangering their safety.  She expels Mondo for grabbing a rock and absorbing it, Skin stands up and asks to be expelled too, so she expels him too, then the others stand up and also ask to be expelled in an "I'm Spartacus" moment.  She tells them all to pack their things, she's a really terrible teacher.

Banshee tells them all to wait outside while he talks to Emma Frost about their punishments, Emma Frost accuses him of undermining her, which he did, but she was also over the top as he points out you can't have a school if you expel all your students.  Instead of expelling them they decide to ground the students for a month.

In the study room, fakecyclops comes crawling back to Arlee, but she packs her stuff and walks away.  Skin pulls a creepy stalker moment by turning up at the pretty girl's bedroom window in the middle of the night, so she gets dressed so that they can go dancing in the middle of the night at some sort of botanical gardens place with a parrot watching them.

Not making that up

They start making out in the gardens, but it turns out that it's really just a dream and Skin has invaded the pretty girls dream to make her do what he wants.  Later, however, Skin falls asleep and is taken back to the botanical gardens and Russell comes to visit him, and to ask why he hasn't been to visit, he asks what's going on in the real world and explains he's been detached from his body.  Skin mentions Emma Frost and mentions that he knows how to use the machine so Russell asks him to help him get back into his body.

Russell tells him all he needs to do is take the headset to his body and he should be able to get back inside and Skin agrees to help him out, so Russell tells him where they are holding his body.  Because he feels like being contrary, Skin then changes his mind and says he won't help, so Russell loses his temper and says if he doesn't help he will hurt his girlfriend and if that doesn't work, his sister.  Why he'd cared about his sadist little shit of a sister is beyond me.

Skin breaks into the hospital at night, why he didn't come during the day and claim to be a relative visiting I don't know.  He takes the headset to the room Russell is in and sets up all the equipment, when he presses the buttons a loud spark goes off and Russell wakes up and then chases away the orderly by pretending to be a zombie.

Russell then takes Skin to his lab because he wants his brain juice, he leaves Skin tied up to the chair and goes to sleep for the night, why he didn't knock him out I don't know because you only don't sedate brain surgeries if you want them to survive and that's not really in Russell's plan. 

Skin uses his dream powers to tell Jubilee to tell Emma Frost he's in trouble, Jubilee goes and tells Emma Frost what they've been up to with the dream machine so she knows what Russell is up to, she says the only way they can get to him in time is if they use the dream doorway.  Er, bullshit.  He's not that far away.  Use Cerebro to find out his location and then use the dream machine to manipulate Russell into sleeping in, he's not a mutant, it'll totally work on him.  Emma Frost says that the dream dimension is there all the time and sleep is just a way to get to it. 

Jubilee goes to wake up the others and Emma Frost tells Banshee that if Russell has spent so much time in the dream land that he may have developed the x factor and may be too powerful to defeat.  So, the dream land is a place you can use to create new mutants?  I don't understand, movie!

They gather the students for a pep talk and Emma Frost tells them that once they enter the dream land if they see the doorway appear again to go through it because they will either have won or lost and it will be their only chance to escape.  Fakecyclops gives a half arsed apology to Arlee and she accepts it because real women only need a half arsed apology when you superficially insult their physical appearance!

The students walk into the dream world as Russell prepares to drill into Skins head.  Russell pauses for a moment and tells Skin he has something he really needs to get off his chest, he really hates Skins hair, so he pulls out a straight razor to cut Skins hair, but Jubilee turns up and fires her fireworks at Russell.

 Mondo throws Russell into some equipment then Arlee punches him, she goes to punch Russell again, but Fakecyclops stands in front of her and tells Russell, "if you touch her, you die!"  Then fires his eye lasers at Russell.  Because real women who are physically ten times stronger than you will ever be, want your stupid bleach blonde arse to stand in front of them and "rescue" them!  The eye lasers knock down a pipe which completely misses Russell, so he runs up some stairs to get a kick in the gut from Monet. 

Russell picks up Monet and tries to throw her in the furnace but is foiled by Banshee as he catches Monet, dammit, Banshee!  Banshee screams at Russell and knocks him through a wall into the dream dimension.  Russell stands up and is giant and realises he has mutated so he blows some wind at them. 

Skin tells Emma Frost to open the door to get them out of there, which she does, Russell taunts Emma Frost that he could easily beat her, Skin gets angry and uses his stretchy powers to wrap himself around Russell and fall into the abyss of the dream dimension.  If none of this is sounding like it makes any sense at all, it's because it doesn't.  Then Skin stretches up his hand and pulls himself out of the dream dimension, making his sacrifice totally pointless.

Later, Monet, Jubilee, Skin, Fakecyclops and Mondo are playing a hideously complicated and nonsensical card game and then they all stare at they see this in the doorway:

It's Arlee and look, she's clearly a foot and a half taller than she actually is! 

The new school uniforms, oh yeah, they totally went there

Back at the mental hospital, the orderly returns to feed Russell his meal as he is stuck in the dream dimension, but his body is still there apparently for some reason.  End of movie.

Summary:

Oh good god, what a piece of shit this movie is.  The plot literally makes no sense, I was writing it down whilst watching the damn thing and I could not make heads nor tails of it.  What the hell does all this dream dimension shit have to do with the x-men? 

The acting was awful across the board with the one exception of Russell.  If you are going to see this movie, watch it for Russell and only for Russell.  He's massively entertaining and very funny and really the only good thing about this movie.  If they made a spin off about Russell with the same actor I would watch it, he's awesome.

Emma Frost is awful, she's an awful teacher and the actress playing her is awful.  Banshee's terrible Irish accent you won't have to suffer much of, because he's not in the movie all that much.  Jubilee uses her powers twice.  Fakecyclops uses his powers twice.  Monet, Mondo and Arlee don't get an effect for their powers and both girls only get to throw one offensive move in a fight on screen. 

Why have all this stuff about the mutant registration act if the plot of the movie is about Russell mind-raping people in their sleep?  Why does Skin receive no punishment for mind-raping a girl into loving him?  Why is Monet even in this movie, she contributes nothing to the plot at all, Mondo barely contributes, Arlee and Fakecyclops are also kind of pointless. 

Why were half the scenes filmed on a slant?  Why were there loads of random neon back lights?  What was the point in Skin learning Cerebro's security system?  What will happen to the pretty girl now she's hypnotised against her free will to be in love with Skin?  

If you want to see a bad B movie, then this is definitely both bad, and a B movie and if you can find a copy then I recommend you watch it for Russell, but that's about it.  You'll probably get a few laughs from this movie, because it's so bad, it's something die hard X-men fans should probably see at one point.  I will say this, it's better than X-men 3. 

Russell gets 10 out of 10

The movie gets 5 out of 10