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some_stars) wrote2011-06-12 08:09 pm
some_stars) wrote2011-06-12 08:09 pm
X-Men: First Class
I have seen it! Icon is from the wrong character but the same fictional universe, so it will do.
I thought it was pretty good for a comic book movie--aside from the UNBELIEVABLE racefail, literally unbelievable as in I could not believe it was/kept happening--and the intense sexism. Sadly it was pretty typically shitty in those respects (the racism seemed worse to me but my sensors there are still not that finely tuned, so I might have just missed it in other stuff) (but seriously oh my god, they killed the black guy first--and only--and they didn't even lampshade it, like they're not even aware, they just DID IT and WHAT THE FUCK, and they tossed his nascent friendship with Alex to give Alex a relationship with another white guy instead, and the WOC character (the, singular) became Evil (and also was a sex worker who we meet in her underwear) and one of the bad guys was Latino, right? And entirely without speech? And everybody else including the blue and red people were white? Such a mess).
What it was good at--again by comic book movie standards--was creating some genuine moral ambiguity. There could definitely have been more, if they'd cut back on minor characters--eliminate one henchman and two of Xavier's kids, streamline some stuff, there you go--and made time for more development of Charles and Erik, but still, I came away from it feeling like neither of them was Right and the other Wrong. Of course this could partly be because I don't see murdering a Nazi war criminal who tortured you to be a moral point of no return. I wish that had been brought up explicitly, that it's not like Erik is deciding to kill some random person who's in his way and also how exactly were they going to contain Shaw once they had him alive? And also HE DESERVED TO DIE.
But having the Americans and Soviets fire on the beach, and that moment when Charles realized it was happening, was really great. I haven't read almost any X-Men comics but I keep trying and sliding off the wall of canon, and I keep trying because I am so drawn to that idea, which I encountered in the first two movies, that the normal majority really is a dire threat to them and can't be trusted, and the struggle is between the mutants who want to keep trying to reach out and earn trust and not kill people in pre-emptive self-defense, and the mutants who--for entirely understandable, if not morally sufficient, reasons--want to fight back and dominate normal humans. I love how it reframes the story of an oppressed group and makes the oppressors the real Bad Guys and shows how the members of the group doing evil things (and the Good Guys too) have been shaped by oppression (not excused, obviously, but their lives and selves have been damaged in real ways) and turns the real drama into the almost-never-fulfilled potential for the two sides to work together and learn from each other.
It would have helped, I think, if we got to see Erik at some point in between "child" and "cheerfully tortures people with zero apparent discomfort and actually seems to enjoy it," even if they were Nazis. Actually that's pretty much what I wanted from this movie: more of Erik's potential to not become evil so that the moment when they split feels more--MORE, and more of Charles' flaws and scariness. --I should interject, btw, that I know very little about the X-Men, like almost nothing actually if it wasn't in the Bryan Singer movies or at least talked about a lot among fans. The only secondary character whose name I even recognized, aside from Hank who was somewhere in between main and secondary, was Alex Summers, because even when I was into DC exclusively the jokes about the Summers family tree were ubiquitous. But I don't actually know anything about him. And the others are a blank slate to me, and I also don't know almost anything about any of the probably-numerous versions of Charles' and Erik's history. So everything in this post is just me reacting as a movie viewer, and really, comic book movies should be able to mostly stand alone.
BUT--I did enjoy it, I just wish it had been as good as it could have been. But it was pretty good, and I want ALL THE FIC. --oh and the other thing I liked was Mystique, even though admittedly her arc was fraught with a lot of sexist bullshit and there REALLY needed to be a scene where we SAW Charles reading her mind against her will and breaking his promise, and not when he had just been shot and she'd already made her decision. (--did this happen in that awesome kitchen scene? I don't remember it happening but it was a great scene, maybe it did and I forgot? What I remember most is being impressed they gave Charles a moment of such total awfulness.) BUT--they made a point of making her grievance legitimate, not just in the "well of course everyone's going to look at you and scream, you're blue and spiny" way, but actually making us feel it by having Hank say it to her so cruelly, after she'd only reached out to him, and with Charles in that kitchen scene. (Yes there are problems there but, still. At least it was SOMETHING. The women really got shafted to hell in this movie, even more so because the occasional moment I'm almost sure was meant to be skeevy and creepy, like Charles wiping Fiona's memories, will most certainly not be received that way by 99.5% of viewers. I mean, I may well be giving the movie too much credit, considering what it followed that up with.)
Basically it had a really solid and reasonably thoughtful core with great actors, I just wish they'd let me rewrite about half the script. I would change it thus: more moral ambiguity for everybody bad and good, fewer minor characters and develop the relationships more(at LEAST another twenty minutes of Erik and Charles, individually and together, and I am not just saying that because of the slash, because I also want MORE MYSTIQUE, a lot more and richer), eliminate all the -fail. On the first count, I did find James McAvoy did a good job of injecting just a slight touch of "hey this guy's kind of creepy" into his performance, though without support from the script--and not much! Just a shade, in just a handful of scenes. I may actually be reading into things but whatever.
Oh, and I would make it continue to feel like the sixties after the plot had been set up, because I really liked that and then it just vanished and became "now, but with the Cuban missile crisis."
ANYWAY. ALL THE FIC. ALL. Charles/Erik OBVIOUSLY, Erik/Mystique, gen about any/all of those people, fic about the kids if it's really good (especially Alex or pre-blue Hank, because I'm shallow). Recs, relevant comms, anything? Stuff that brings in comics canon is fine as long as it's based on the movie.
This post sounds like I hated it, I swear I did not. I just have a terrible memory so specific moments--lines, facial expressions--are already slipping away from me, even the ones that brought me enormous delight. A couple I can remember: the Wolverine cameo was AMAZING. amaaaazing. Also amazing: the moment when Hank not-very-surreptitiously gropes the mannequin.
--also okay this is really just asking for an end to all productivity, but if you have recs for actual comics, arcs/trades/oneshots/anything with a beginning and end, that are easily obtainable (preferably by downloading but I can always go sit in a bookstore for a couple hours and read trades) and can stand alone at least enough to be comprehended, if not fully appreciated, and are good or at least not dreadful (I've read like a thousand issues of various stuff from the seventies and eighties so my standards are not that high), and most importantly are about Erik and Charles and their forever love: I would appreciate those recs.
I thought it was pretty good for a comic book movie--aside from the UNBELIEVABLE racefail, literally unbelievable as in I could not believe it was/kept happening--and the intense sexism. Sadly it was pretty typically shitty in those respects (the racism seemed worse to me but my sensors there are still not that finely tuned, so I might have just missed it in other stuff) (but seriously oh my god, they killed the black guy first--and only--and they didn't even lampshade it, like they're not even aware, they just DID IT and WHAT THE FUCK, and they tossed his nascent friendship with Alex to give Alex a relationship with another white guy instead, and the WOC character (the, singular) became Evil (and also was a sex worker who we meet in her underwear) and one of the bad guys was Latino, right? And entirely without speech? And everybody else including the blue and red people were white? Such a mess).
What it was good at--again by comic book movie standards--was creating some genuine moral ambiguity. There could definitely have been more, if they'd cut back on minor characters--eliminate one henchman and two of Xavier's kids, streamline some stuff, there you go--and made time for more development of Charles and Erik, but still, I came away from it feeling like neither of them was Right and the other Wrong. Of course this could partly be because I don't see murdering a Nazi war criminal who tortured you to be a moral point of no return. I wish that had been brought up explicitly, that it's not like Erik is deciding to kill some random person who's in his way and also how exactly were they going to contain Shaw once they had him alive? And also HE DESERVED TO DIE.
But having the Americans and Soviets fire on the beach, and that moment when Charles realized it was happening, was really great. I haven't read almost any X-Men comics but I keep trying and sliding off the wall of canon, and I keep trying because I am so drawn to that idea, which I encountered in the first two movies, that the normal majority really is a dire threat to them and can't be trusted, and the struggle is between the mutants who want to keep trying to reach out and earn trust and not kill people in pre-emptive self-defense, and the mutants who--for entirely understandable, if not morally sufficient, reasons--want to fight back and dominate normal humans. I love how it reframes the story of an oppressed group and makes the oppressors the real Bad Guys and shows how the members of the group doing evil things (and the Good Guys too) have been shaped by oppression (not excused, obviously, but their lives and selves have been damaged in real ways) and turns the real drama into the almost-never-fulfilled potential for the two sides to work together and learn from each other.
It would have helped, I think, if we got to see Erik at some point in between "child" and "cheerfully tortures people with zero apparent discomfort and actually seems to enjoy it," even if they were Nazis. Actually that's pretty much what I wanted from this movie: more of Erik's potential to not become evil so that the moment when they split feels more--MORE, and more of Charles' flaws and scariness. --I should interject, btw, that I know very little about the X-Men, like almost nothing actually if it wasn't in the Bryan Singer movies or at least talked about a lot among fans. The only secondary character whose name I even recognized, aside from Hank who was somewhere in between main and secondary, was Alex Summers, because even when I was into DC exclusively the jokes about the Summers family tree were ubiquitous. But I don't actually know anything about him. And the others are a blank slate to me, and I also don't know almost anything about any of the probably-numerous versions of Charles' and Erik's history. So everything in this post is just me reacting as a movie viewer, and really, comic book movies should be able to mostly stand alone.
BUT--I did enjoy it, I just wish it had been as good as it could have been. But it was pretty good, and I want ALL THE FIC. --oh and the other thing I liked was Mystique, even though admittedly her arc was fraught with a lot of sexist bullshit and there REALLY needed to be a scene where we SAW Charles reading her mind against her will and breaking his promise, and not when he had just been shot and she'd already made her decision. (--did this happen in that awesome kitchen scene? I don't remember it happening but it was a great scene, maybe it did and I forgot? What I remember most is being impressed they gave Charles a moment of such total awfulness.) BUT--they made a point of making her grievance legitimate, not just in the "well of course everyone's going to look at you and scream, you're blue and spiny" way, but actually making us feel it by having Hank say it to her so cruelly, after she'd only reached out to him, and with Charles in that kitchen scene. (Yes there are problems there but, still. At least it was SOMETHING. The women really got shafted to hell in this movie, even more so because the occasional moment I'm almost sure was meant to be skeevy and creepy, like Charles wiping Fiona's memories, will most certainly not be received that way by 99.5% of viewers. I mean, I may well be giving the movie too much credit, considering what it followed that up with.)
Basically it had a really solid and reasonably thoughtful core with great actors, I just wish they'd let me rewrite about half the script. I would change it thus: more moral ambiguity for everybody bad and good, fewer minor characters and develop the relationships more(at LEAST another twenty minutes of Erik and Charles, individually and together, and I am not just saying that because of the slash, because I also want MORE MYSTIQUE, a lot more and richer), eliminate all the -fail. On the first count, I did find James McAvoy did a good job of injecting just a slight touch of "hey this guy's kind of creepy" into his performance, though without support from the script--and not much! Just a shade, in just a handful of scenes. I may actually be reading into things but whatever.
Oh, and I would make it continue to feel like the sixties after the plot had been set up, because I really liked that and then it just vanished and became "now, but with the Cuban missile crisis."
ANYWAY. ALL THE FIC. ALL. Charles/Erik OBVIOUSLY, Erik/Mystique, gen about any/all of those people, fic about the kids if it's really good (especially Alex or pre-blue Hank, because I'm shallow). Recs, relevant comms, anything? Stuff that brings in comics canon is fine as long as it's based on the movie.
This post sounds like I hated it, I swear I did not. I just have a terrible memory so specific moments--lines, facial expressions--are already slipping away from me, even the ones that brought me enormous delight. A couple I can remember: the Wolverine cameo was AMAZING. amaaaazing. Also amazing: the moment when Hank not-very-surreptitiously gropes the mannequin.
--also okay this is really just asking for an end to all productivity, but if you have recs for actual comics, arcs/trades/oneshots/anything with a beginning and end, that are easily obtainable (preferably by downloading but I can always go sit in a bookstore for a couple hours and read trades) and can stand alone at least enough to be comprehended, if not fully appreciated, and are good or at least not dreadful (I've read like a thousand issues of various stuff from the seventies and eighties so my standards are not that high), and most importantly are about Erik and Charles and their forever love: I would appreciate those recs.
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And the Wolverine cameo made me CACKLE. WITH. GLEE.
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I know, the amount of canon can make you gulp, and then say 'OH BUT IT IS SO PRETTY.' And then, as you say, you wake up dazed, days later and wonder why your life is a shambles.
Do eeeeet.
I love that South Park has a quote for every occasion
Re: I love that South Park has a quote for every occasion
Also Darwin turned into air and he's all pissed off that nobody brought the vacuum around so he can coalesce. He's all hanging out in the CIA air ducts going "god dammit, some telepath."
Re: I love that South Park has a quote for every occasion
Re: I love that South Park has a quote for every occasion
Re: I love that South Park has a quote for every occasion
http://archiveofourown.org/works/209208
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*wail of despair at the awful cam rip floating in the internet that she will not use*
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and the second is serious character study of Erik and Magneto from all movieverse.
*waaaaails and claws at the Internet and the universe and her brain* I AM SO IMPATIENT.
fic rec: La Valse
La Valse