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| All Images from IMDB unless otherwise stated |
Ok something I've been musing over and something that has
been slowly eating away at me for a while is xXx the Return of Xander Cage. I've mentioned it places before but
I don't think I've ever really gone deep into why I think it really wasn't
good. I mean sure you can argue that it made money in foreign markets but
domestically in the USA it made $45 Million on an $85 Million budget.
Now before I dive into this let me lay my cards on the table. I love xXx (not that in this case, the movie get your mind out the gutter) I consider xXx to be one of my favourite films and how much people will acknowledge it or not, a rather major turning point for the action / spy fiction film genre.
xXx as a film opened with essentially
a 007 James Bond esc character in a tuxedo / suit being killed at a rock
concert he'd run into while trying to escape some enemy henchmen. The imagery
was quite clear about showing how said agent stuck out like a sore thumb among
the rock music fans and the idea he was easy picking. This theme is brought up
again later in relation to why the xxx program is looking for les conventional
people to become operatives, the idea they'll be able to blend in better and
not be so easily picked out. It's quite shocking really how much the symbolism
of the opening sequence has come to be a commentary on the spy films. After xXx spy films seemed to go down a more
grim and dark route with gritty heroes surviving on their wits alone. Gone were
the gadgets and flashy tech of older 007 films and in came the age of spies
like Jason Borne, Jack Reacher and the Daniel Craig era of James Bond.
xXx was a film that tweaked the nose of the genre initially. The symbolic killing of the older style spy film character was just the start of it though. From making jokes about the villains monologue to how impractical vehicles with huge amounts of gadgets built in would be to use there were plenty of jokes at the expense of the genre at the time.
xXx was a 2002 film with a 90's attitude from basically taking the piss out of genre tropes to having Xander Cage be a video game playing, extreme sports loving internet celebrity. Xanderstarts the film trashing a US senator car to get said senator to start listening to the argument that video games don't diminish the intelligence of the youth and to stop voting to try and ban games.
What's worthy of note though is Xander Cage as a character isn't written as some infallible super spy. He's an extreme sports person who posts videos of his stunts and escapades on the internet which is why when later his gun doesn't fire Yelena, after dispatching the enemies, tells him he need to take the guns safety, off it highlights this inexperience. Xander Cage in xXx is cocky and often overconfident that he can handle situations until it dawns on him that things are out of control and suddenly the cocky attitude vanishes and he focuses much more and takes things far more seriously for the most part. He's super competent at the extreme sports stuff but other stuff it's bluffing and bluster. He's not super capable of handling every situation solo and that's why in the finale he enlists the help of local police / special forces to help with the operation.
So the big question has to be how does this all feed into the failure of xXx the Return of Xander cage?
The first problem with xXx the Return of Xander Cage is being the 3rd film in the xXx franchise and while the first xXx pretty much redefined the Spy genre in films, the 2nd film was, well.....
Fast and the Furious meets what the Spy film genre was before xXx. Over the top, bombastic and lots of gadgets and tech. Very much not what the first xXx film was and that created the first problem of trying to merge two fanbases into one with one film. I have seen xXx state of the Union and it's fine, it's a fairly forgettable popcorn flick in my view.
The second problem being the "poking fun at the spy fiction genre" crown vacated by xXx had already been picked up and put on by another franchise. A franchise that was able to poke fun at the level of silly gadgets etc while still using them and making something that could be seen as what xXx was originally, a middle finger to the spy fiction genre in essence.
Yes Kingsman took the same inner city youth style spirit and combined it with some YA novel tropes to make essentially a coming of age spy comedy of a kind. xXx as a franchise had competition and it could have pulled off the comeback, however rather than going for Cold War style gritty spy action with some jokes like the first film it decided to charge head on at Kingsman before Kingsman 2 could come out. I've said other places about how I wasn't a huge fan of Kingsman: The Golden Circle as it didn't push the franchise to be more and just felt like a vague re-tread of the kind of beats the first hit, xXx The Return of Xander Cage felt like a lesser version of Kingsman: The Golden Circle.
The third major problem being the Vin Diesel problem. Vin Diesel has a reputation for being a fairly solid reliable action star but has become rather B-list because of the perception that he's not that great at acting and has a very specific set emotions he can portray, but anything outside of that won't end well. How true this is who knows but the solution studios have generally tried to implement in this regard is to couple Vin Diesel with one or more actors who can carry some of the weightier scenes and cover for Vin Diesel a bit. The problem in this instance is being unsure quite who to use the studio have opted for a huge cast of characters which results in most of them getting little time to develop. This is a film where the "Team" consists of 8 charactesr and while Xander Cage is the "lead" it's worth remembering Fast and the Furious has only reached those kind of numbers by having smaller films introducing characters to the audience. Return of Xander Cage just throws out 8 people only 1 of which the audience will know (Xander himself) in some kind of hope that people will come back for future films where said characters might get developed, because Paramount wants its own version of franchise like Universal's Fast and the Furious.
The Fourth major problem is that while it's clear whoever wrote the script was
a fan of xXx and picked up on minute
details such as Xander Cage's coat and drink orders (yes really) they also seem
to have failed to grasp the part about Xander Cage not being a trained spy as
such. Instead of seeming to be flying by the seat of his pants at times Xander
seems to be in control almost all the time, have planned things well ahead of
time and be supremely competent. This turns Xander into almost a "Gary
Stu" is best exemplified by the fact out of 4 prominent female characters
2 of them almost immediately are flirting with him quite heavily and the two
who don't well have their reasons.
Oh and this is not including the woman Xander is seen sleeping with at the start and the head of a criminal hacker group it's implied Xander has had relations with, oh also the room full of women it's implied Xander sleeps with at some point. It's like an adolescent fantasy and as some-one whom would likely be said to not be much more mature than an adolescent, it even felt immature to me, the guy who sneaks masturbation jokes into some of my blog posts here while giggling to myself. In the first XXX it really felt like Xander did build a connection slowly with Yelena starting with banter between them and then bonding when they realise they're more alike than they realise and may need one another to survive. The ultimate culmination being Xander going back in despite being "burned" as an agent to try and get Yelena out.
The Fifth major issue is it almost entirely forgets about the first xXx movie and the supposed death of Xander Cage (and Yelena) mentioned in xXx: State of the Union. There's no fallout from it. Xander Cage isn't completely unknown in the first film, how did he keep hidden? Did the world suddenly come down with amnesia? Xander Cage was implied to be known a far afield as Prague. In fact the film opens with Xander already shown to have moved on and to be living with another woman (whom is never brought up again after this either). Xander Cage the main character of the film gets no character development. This could have been a chance to do some well done character development with Xander being somewhat angry and bitter that the first person he's had a real connection with seemingly (Yelena) has been taken away from him. A Xander Cage reluctant to work with a team lest anyone else gets hurt or working with the government agency in question only to stop others getting hurt. Instead there's maybe one passing line about Yelena and Xander Cage as a character spends most of the film being cocky and confident without any hint of anything deeper going on. By the end of the film little to nothing has changed character wise really.
With a 4th xXx film coming and Vin Diesel set to star as Xander Cage who knows if the studio will manage to right this boat fully but it damn well seem like they're determined to try. Or at least sell the film hard to China to try and make bank that way. Hopefully it will dodge the mis-steps of Return of Xander Cage, though I doubt they could do worse, short of having a sequence where Xander Cage runs through Hong Kong beating up pro-democracy protestors.
Either way I really don't know how to end this actually, uh, go watch xXx you're on the internet after all.
Now before I dive into this let me lay my cards on the table. I love xXx (not that in this case, the movie get your mind out the gutter) I consider xXx to be one of my favourite films and how much people will acknowledge it or not, a rather major turning point for the action / spy fiction film genre.
xXx was a film that tweaked the nose of the genre initially. The symbolic killing of the older style spy film character was just the start of it though. From making jokes about the villains monologue to how impractical vehicles with huge amounts of gadgets built in would be to use there were plenty of jokes at the expense of the genre at the time.
xXx was a 2002 film with a 90's attitude from basically taking the piss out of genre tropes to having Xander Cage be a video game playing, extreme sports loving internet celebrity. Xanderstarts the film trashing a US senator car to get said senator to start listening to the argument that video games don't diminish the intelligence of the youth and to stop voting to try and ban games.
What's worthy of note though is Xander Cage as a character isn't written as some infallible super spy. He's an extreme sports person who posts videos of his stunts and escapades on the internet which is why when later his gun doesn't fire Yelena, after dispatching the enemies, tells him he need to take the guns safety, off it highlights this inexperience. Xander Cage in xXx is cocky and often overconfident that he can handle situations until it dawns on him that things are out of control and suddenly the cocky attitude vanishes and he focuses much more and takes things far more seriously for the most part. He's super competent at the extreme sports stuff but other stuff it's bluffing and bluster. He's not super capable of handling every situation solo and that's why in the finale he enlists the help of local police / special forces to help with the operation.
So the big question has to be how does this all feed into the failure of xXx the Return of Xander cage?
The first problem with xXx the Return of Xander Cage is being the 3rd film in the xXx franchise and while the first xXx pretty much redefined the Spy genre in films, the 2nd film was, well.....
Fast and the Furious meets what the Spy film genre was before xXx. Over the top, bombastic and lots of gadgets and tech. Very much not what the first xXx film was and that created the first problem of trying to merge two fanbases into one with one film. I have seen xXx state of the Union and it's fine, it's a fairly forgettable popcorn flick in my view.
The second problem being the "poking fun at the spy fiction genre" crown vacated by xXx had already been picked up and put on by another franchise. A franchise that was able to poke fun at the level of silly gadgets etc while still using them and making something that could be seen as what xXx was originally, a middle finger to the spy fiction genre in essence.
Yes Kingsman took the same inner city youth style spirit and combined it with some YA novel tropes to make essentially a coming of age spy comedy of a kind. xXx as a franchise had competition and it could have pulled off the comeback, however rather than going for Cold War style gritty spy action with some jokes like the first film it decided to charge head on at Kingsman before Kingsman 2 could come out. I've said other places about how I wasn't a huge fan of Kingsman: The Golden Circle as it didn't push the franchise to be more and just felt like a vague re-tread of the kind of beats the first hit, xXx The Return of Xander Cage felt like a lesser version of Kingsman: The Golden Circle.
The third major problem being the Vin Diesel problem. Vin Diesel has a reputation for being a fairly solid reliable action star but has become rather B-list because of the perception that he's not that great at acting and has a very specific set emotions he can portray, but anything outside of that won't end well. How true this is who knows but the solution studios have generally tried to implement in this regard is to couple Vin Diesel with one or more actors who can carry some of the weightier scenes and cover for Vin Diesel a bit. The problem in this instance is being unsure quite who to use the studio have opted for a huge cast of characters which results in most of them getting little time to develop. This is a film where the "Team" consists of 8 charactesr and while Xander Cage is the "lead" it's worth remembering Fast and the Furious has only reached those kind of numbers by having smaller films introducing characters to the audience. Return of Xander Cage just throws out 8 people only 1 of which the audience will know (Xander himself) in some kind of hope that people will come back for future films where said characters might get developed, because Paramount wants its own version of franchise like Universal's Fast and the Furious.
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| just some of the full cast in this promo |
Oh and this is not including the woman Xander is seen sleeping with at the start and the head of a criminal hacker group it's implied Xander has had relations with, oh also the room full of women it's implied Xander sleeps with at some point. It's like an adolescent fantasy and as some-one whom would likely be said to not be much more mature than an adolescent, it even felt immature to me, the guy who sneaks masturbation jokes into some of my blog posts here while giggling to myself. In the first XXX it really felt like Xander did build a connection slowly with Yelena starting with banter between them and then bonding when they realise they're more alike than they realise and may need one another to survive. The ultimate culmination being Xander going back in despite being "burned" as an agent to try and get Yelena out.
The Fifth major issue is it almost entirely forgets about the first xXx movie and the supposed death of Xander Cage (and Yelena) mentioned in xXx: State of the Union. There's no fallout from it. Xander Cage isn't completely unknown in the first film, how did he keep hidden? Did the world suddenly come down with amnesia? Xander Cage was implied to be known a far afield as Prague. In fact the film opens with Xander already shown to have moved on and to be living with another woman (whom is never brought up again after this either). Xander Cage the main character of the film gets no character development. This could have been a chance to do some well done character development with Xander being somewhat angry and bitter that the first person he's had a real connection with seemingly (Yelena) has been taken away from him. A Xander Cage reluctant to work with a team lest anyone else gets hurt or working with the government agency in question only to stop others getting hurt. Instead there's maybe one passing line about Yelena and Xander Cage as a character spends most of the film being cocky and confident without any hint of anything deeper going on. By the end of the film little to nothing has changed character wise really.
With a 4th xXx film coming and Vin Diesel set to star as Xander Cage who knows if the studio will manage to right this boat fully but it damn well seem like they're determined to try. Or at least sell the film hard to China to try and make bank that way. Hopefully it will dodge the mis-steps of Return of Xander Cage, though I doubt they could do worse, short of having a sequence where Xander Cage runs through Hong Kong beating up pro-democracy protestors.
Either way I really don't know how to end this actually, uh, go watch xXx you're on the internet after all.
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