10 Movies That Completely Missed The Point
7. XXX: State Of The Union (2005)
It’s not like the original XXX movie is a stone cold classic - it’s one of those hi-octane post-Bond action flicks that attempted to steal the outlandish spy movie genre out from under 007 back when the franchise was running out of creative steam, starring Vin Diesel back when he was believable as an action hero.
And that’s just it - Vin Diesel was the film’s selling point, playing Xander Cage, an anarchic TV star and extreme sports adrenaline junkie with the world’s dodgiest fake tattoos, who’s co-opted into taking part in an NSA black ops mission, failing which he’ll be sent to jail. The ‘XXX’ referred to the ink on the back of his neck, which became a nickname, which directly referenced the whole 007 thing.
Fast forward to 2005, and XXX: State Of The Union is a direct sequel… not starring XXX. Diesel took a look at the script and opted out, saying that it didn’t feel like an XXX movie to him - an odd statement, given that there’d only been one film in the franchise so far.
When Vin ‘Chronicles Of Riddick’ Diesel backs out of your film due to quality control issues, that should be enough of a warning sign to have the production quietly shelved. Not here: the producers had such overwhelming faith in the sequel that they hired scowling human sandwich Ice Cube to replace Diesel instead.
Cube’s Darius Stone is an ex-Navy SEAL with no ties to anything extreme sports related, and no ‘X’ in his name - the only thing he has in common with Diesel’s character is that whole criminal-given-a-chance deal, as he’s serving twenty years for… ah, no one cares.
So why is this film still called XXX? Because apparently now, XXX is the name of the deep cover black ops project that used to run Cage, and now runs Stone. Their secret underground headquarters even has giant scarlet ‘XXX’ logos all over the blast doors… in the exact same shape as Cage’s ‘XXX’ tattoo.
An agency that brands itself on sh*tbox skater ink is bad enough… but not quite as bad as a movie studio that hires hires tubby frown merchant Ice Cube to be the new new James Bond.