Word: quillion
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This time the sacred monsters must battle not only their fellow-mutant nemesis Magneto (Ian McKellen) and the morph-o-matic Mystique (Rebecca Romijn-Stamos) but also a figure familiar from a quillion adventure movies--the steely sicko military renegade. Stryker (Brian Cox) is an ex-Army conniver who would use X powers to evil ends and has a kung-fu cutie named Oyama (Kelly Hu) to kick start any fight. Stryker must contend with a late recruit to the coalition of the thrilling: Nightcrawler (Alan Cumming), whose powers include walking through walls, vanishing in a plume of fume...
That's what happens when the Wizard of Oz gives interviews. But Lucas' first Star Wars film in 16 years was the victim of its own mammoth hype, stoked by a quillion cover stories, including TIME's, before anyone had seen the completed work--and by the worldwide audience's communal memory of Star Wars (1977) and its sequels, The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983). If the Odyssey had enjoyed--or suffered--as much anticipatory fluffing as Phantom Menace did, some ancient Greeks would surely have muttered, "Homer's lost it." And the poet would...
...enough early clues to know that something wrong is in the wind. Gloucester gal (Diane Lane) to her sailor beau (Mark Wahlberg) before he boards the Andrea Gail: "Don't go, Bobby. I got a bad feelin'." Bobby: "Just one more time, I promise." This dialogue, familiar from a quillion melodramas, is always uttered by the sap about to step into the old dark house, the line of fire or the unforgiving sea. The Perfect Storm has more whispers of impending doom than all the witches in Macbeth...
...Kenobi and the planet Alderaan. The invocation to "trust your feelings" seems a woozy echo of the '67 Summer of Love, not the '77 summer of Wars, but Alec Guinness carries himself with the majesty of a Jedi knight and an acting peer. The climactic dogfight, copied in a quillion arcade games, has thrust and logic; it's the clearest, most potent narrative section of the movie...
...real Nixon was a tragicomic figure; he doesn't need Stone's demonizing or mythologizing touch. His saga, moreover, is familiar from a quillion docudramas and Saturday Night Live skits. It is also imprinted in the TV memories of Americans over 35. The President's bizarre farewell speech, nicely re-created by Hopkins, captures that spooky poignancy. Then as he boards Air Force One, Hollywood gives way to archive videotape, and we see the real Nixon with his implausible grin and victory wave of the arms--apotheosis and self-parody in one indelibly weird moment. For once, the gonzo director...