fifty frenchmen can't be wrong (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
some_stars) wrote2011-06-14 10:47 pm
some_stars) wrote2011-06-14 10:47 pm
slash as welcome side effect of sloppy writing: some paragraphs
This is neither grumpy (no really) nor in any way significant. It's not even meta really, just me going on about things. Also it is long, and probably the end contradicts the beginning, I really just kept typing until I got bored.
Okay so: timeline problems. X-Men: First Class is totally slashy, I would never deny, that pairing is in forever love in all possible incarnations. But it's not that slashy--I mean, it doesn't strike me as necessarily "this is incomprehensible any other way"...EXCEPT. Except the ridiculous compression of the timeline. If the movie had covered ten years, and they'd had the same relationship with each other at thirty minutes, an hour, ninety minutes--and then the beach scene or something like it, and then we all go away knowing they'll be Best Enemies for 40+ years--that would still be quite slashy, especially them being them, but it would also make emotional sense if they'd never been lovers or at least in love.
But six months--well, I mean. A relationship that last six months and ends with that kind of intensity and they both continue to care passionately about each other, in whatever way, for the rest of their long lives? It doesn't have to be sexual (though of course I personally prefer to think it is), and if it is sexual it certainly doesn't have to be consummated--a word for which I apologize sincerely--but it has to be more than what was shown onscreen. Some serious intimacy has to happen in between every single one of their scenes, to get them from where they are in the first to the so-much-closer in the next, and the next. They have to be some kind of in love.
Now, this doesn't actually help with how the timeline is totally fucked--the whole team spends a week at the mansion? ONE WEEK, what even--and how slashier or not, cutting Xavier and Magneto's pre-split friendship to half a year sucks out a lot of wonderful things from their relationship as their usual old-guy selves. But I find it interesting, because it's so clueless. Like, what was the pitch here? "They have an instant intense connection, within a couple of days they develop a rapport and soon they're working together seamlessly, a few months later Charles cares about him A LOT, a week after that they share manly tears and vulnerability and passionate praise and Erik smiles and laughs in a non-creepy way (and is suddenly without his months-ago opposition to having his mind read), then they part ways foreverfor no apparent concrete and immediate reason really and spend the next several decades fighting and longing for each other. IT'S SO HETEROSEXUAL."
I don't usually do the "no other explanation!" thing, because I find it both annoying and usually false, based on an equation of emotional intensity with sexual and/or romantic intensity. But...less than six months! Six months and the payoff is that beach scene, you need some seriously powerful intimacy to fuel that amount of betrayal and emotion. It has to come from somewhere. And when you stop and actually flip back through their scenes and the words they said and things they did...it doesn't add up. Which is not to say I think a romance is "canon" or whatever, and I continue to be mildly annoyed by fic that purports to be more than porn (porn is 100% off the hook for this) but doesn't bother really explaining or emotionally selling how/why/when they get together. It's strong subtext but it's not text, it's very far from text, I feel really uncomfortable treating it like text because, guys, a textual romance would involve things like kissing or touching or being acknowledged in words ever at all. This is not a substitute! It's just really, really, really slashy, a great deal of which was apparently an accident. (Yes, I'm aware of the actors' thoughts, but they didn't actually write the script.)
--and that timeline, I just. YOU GUYS. That fucking timeline. I'm stretching it out in my head to at least eight months, and at least two of them spent in Westchester. Not much of an improvement but better than a WEEK.
The interesting thing is that I'm right now paused a bit more than 2/3 of the way through a full rewatch, and the groundwork for Erik becoming Magneto--and more specifically, founding the Brotherhood, becoming a leader and taking on a mission--is pretty much entirely laid quite early, in the scene where he says he and Charles will use Cerebro and find mutants. Well before he shows a significant, clear emotional attachment to Charles on the level that Charles is showing to him, and if I didn't know how their final 24 hours would go down, it would seem like Erik has no real journey at all. He tells Raven and Hank--maybe just Raven, the cam copy is awful and I can't quite tell where he's looking--that if he looked like her/them, he wouldn't change a thing. That happens, like, IMMEDIATELY. Then he listens to Charles' words about finding others--"Shaw's got friends. You could do with some"--and decides to use Charles and Cerebro to find more mutants, and his language is already separatist. He reflects Charles' words back to him, about Shaw's army and they need their own, and...I mean, peace WAS never an option, his approach to mutant/human relations seems to have settled within just a couple days of learning that other mutants existed, and then remained unchanged except to intensify somewhat. (I want so many stories about HOW could Charles never see that, and all the futile arguments.) Aside from the satellite scene, and before the divorce on the beach, it's not really notably slashy on Erik's end. Not not, it's not like it would be a crazy hard-to-sell stretch, but not omg why aren't you KISSING you FOOLS, not on that level.
And then: feelings! FEELINGS FROM NOWHERE. Of course the acting's pretty good and they don't seem to be from nowhere in the moment, but honestly they kind of are. The only thing that makes any sense is if some really big moments happened between the parts we got to see, because by the time of the satellite scene, the gun at the beginning and the mindreading and tears and laughing at the end...they are totally doing it. Or at a similar level of nonsexual intimacy, whichever. And--WHEN DID THAT HAPPEN? --this is also why I wanted so much to see Erik at SOME point between 1944 and 1962, because from the moment he meets Charles, he doesn't really change. And even then, it's more clarification than change--though I don't want to understate it, because it seemed like pre-Charles he had no conception of what he'd do with the rest of his life once he'd killed Shaw, certainly nothing like a goal or a mission or a purpose. It's not that he has to change for it to be a good story, though he would have to have at least one moment where he was tempted to change--or wanted to be tempted, perhaps, but couldn't. But there is change, and it feels confused.
(Also confusing and apparently static but I don't even know--calling Shaw his creator in his THIRD post-childhood scene. Way at the beginning! He's a monster and Schmidt/Shaw created him! And then the WHOLE MOVIE happens and he gets his final confrontation and: IT IS THE SAME. That...I mean, that's not inherently flawed, he doesn't have to grow and change, but.......I don't even know what to do with this. HELP IS WELCOME.)
I don't know, I'm just throwing around some thoughts, trying to figure out Erik's head and their relationship and what to do with this AWFUL TIMELINE. Hopefully in the future I can work it out via sex scenes instead of rambling. (My current most-thought-out fic idea has them doing it the first night back on the road after finding Angel, or possibly the night before that--the 'threesome' scene I can read equally easily as "increasingly tense flirting" or "very recently resolved sexual tension." And then, porn and emotions and emotional porn. And more regular porn. I really hope I can get it done.) Anyway, I've only seen the damn thing once on a real screen and most of the way through on a blurry cam, so corrections/alternate interpretations/etc. are more than welcome. Share your thoughts!
--and I'm feeling a dangerous urge to start another enraptured screed about Charles' terrible beautiful terrible feeeeelings, so I think I'm just going to hit post now and save us all. NO WAIT, one more thing, apropos of Erik's "I thought I was alone"--if he never knew Schmidt/Shaw was a mutant, what would he have thought about his inability to use his powers against him while in the camp, and then once he was away from him, his ability to use his powers against anyone? If it wasn't because of Schmidt than it must have been because of him and that--okay I need fic, like right NOW.
Okay so: timeline problems. X-Men: First Class is totally slashy, I would never deny, that pairing is in forever love in all possible incarnations. But it's not that slashy--I mean, it doesn't strike me as necessarily "this is incomprehensible any other way"...EXCEPT. Except the ridiculous compression of the timeline. If the movie had covered ten years, and they'd had the same relationship with each other at thirty minutes, an hour, ninety minutes--and then the beach scene or something like it, and then we all go away knowing they'll be Best Enemies for 40+ years--that would still be quite slashy, especially them being them, but it would also make emotional sense if they'd never been lovers or at least in love.
But six months--well, I mean. A relationship that last six months and ends with that kind of intensity and they both continue to care passionately about each other, in whatever way, for the rest of their long lives? It doesn't have to be sexual (though of course I personally prefer to think it is), and if it is sexual it certainly doesn't have to be consummated--a word for which I apologize sincerely--but it has to be more than what was shown onscreen. Some serious intimacy has to happen in between every single one of their scenes, to get them from where they are in the first to the so-much-closer in the next, and the next. They have to be some kind of in love.
Now, this doesn't actually help with how the timeline is totally fucked--the whole team spends a week at the mansion? ONE WEEK, what even--and how slashier or not, cutting Xavier and Magneto's pre-split friendship to half a year sucks out a lot of wonderful things from their relationship as their usual old-guy selves. But I find it interesting, because it's so clueless. Like, what was the pitch here? "They have an instant intense connection, within a couple of days they develop a rapport and soon they're working together seamlessly, a few months later Charles cares about him A LOT, a week after that they share manly tears and vulnerability and passionate praise and Erik smiles and laughs in a non-creepy way (and is suddenly without his months-ago opposition to having his mind read), then they part ways forever
I don't usually do the "no other explanation!" thing, because I find it both annoying and usually false, based on an equation of emotional intensity with sexual and/or romantic intensity. But...less than six months! Six months and the payoff is that beach scene, you need some seriously powerful intimacy to fuel that amount of betrayal and emotion. It has to come from somewhere. And when you stop and actually flip back through their scenes and the words they said and things they did...it doesn't add up. Which is not to say I think a romance is "canon" or whatever, and I continue to be mildly annoyed by fic that purports to be more than porn (porn is 100% off the hook for this) but doesn't bother really explaining or emotionally selling how/why/when they get together. It's strong subtext but it's not text, it's very far from text, I feel really uncomfortable treating it like text because, guys, a textual romance would involve things like kissing or touching or being acknowledged in words ever at all. This is not a substitute! It's just really, really, really slashy, a great deal of which was apparently an accident. (Yes, I'm aware of the actors' thoughts, but they didn't actually write the script.)
--and that timeline, I just. YOU GUYS. That fucking timeline. I'm stretching it out in my head to at least eight months, and at least two of them spent in Westchester. Not much of an improvement but better than a WEEK.
The interesting thing is that I'm right now paused a bit more than 2/3 of the way through a full rewatch, and the groundwork for Erik becoming Magneto--and more specifically, founding the Brotherhood, becoming a leader and taking on a mission--is pretty much entirely laid quite early, in the scene where he says he and Charles will use Cerebro and find mutants. Well before he shows a significant, clear emotional attachment to Charles on the level that Charles is showing to him, and if I didn't know how their final 24 hours would go down, it would seem like Erik has no real journey at all. He tells Raven and Hank--maybe just Raven, the cam copy is awful and I can't quite tell where he's looking--that if he looked like her/them, he wouldn't change a thing. That happens, like, IMMEDIATELY. Then he listens to Charles' words about finding others--"Shaw's got friends. You could do with some"--and decides to use Charles and Cerebro to find more mutants, and his language is already separatist. He reflects Charles' words back to him, about Shaw's army and they need their own, and...I mean, peace WAS never an option, his approach to mutant/human relations seems to have settled within just a couple days of learning that other mutants existed, and then remained unchanged except to intensify somewhat. (I want so many stories about HOW could Charles never see that, and all the futile arguments.) Aside from the satellite scene, and before the divorce on the beach, it's not really notably slashy on Erik's end. Not not, it's not like it would be a crazy hard-to-sell stretch, but not omg why aren't you KISSING you FOOLS, not on that level.
And then: feelings! FEELINGS FROM NOWHERE. Of course the acting's pretty good and they don't seem to be from nowhere in the moment, but honestly they kind of are. The only thing that makes any sense is if some really big moments happened between the parts we got to see, because by the time of the satellite scene, the gun at the beginning and the mindreading and tears and laughing at the end...they are totally doing it. Or at a similar level of nonsexual intimacy, whichever. And--WHEN DID THAT HAPPEN? --this is also why I wanted so much to see Erik at SOME point between 1944 and 1962, because from the moment he meets Charles, he doesn't really change. And even then, it's more clarification than change--though I don't want to understate it, because it seemed like pre-Charles he had no conception of what he'd do with the rest of his life once he'd killed Shaw, certainly nothing like a goal or a mission or a purpose. It's not that he has to change for it to be a good story, though he would have to have at least one moment where he was tempted to change--or wanted to be tempted, perhaps, but couldn't. But there is change, and it feels confused.
(Also confusing and apparently static but I don't even know--calling Shaw his creator in his THIRD post-childhood scene. Way at the beginning! He's a monster and Schmidt/Shaw created him! And then the WHOLE MOVIE happens and he gets his final confrontation and: IT IS THE SAME. That...I mean, that's not inherently flawed, he doesn't have to grow and change, but.......I don't even know what to do with this. HELP IS WELCOME.)
I don't know, I'm just throwing around some thoughts, trying to figure out Erik's head and their relationship and what to do with this AWFUL TIMELINE. Hopefully in the future I can work it out via sex scenes instead of rambling. (My current most-thought-out fic idea has them doing it the first night back on the road after finding Angel, or possibly the night before that--the 'threesome' scene I can read equally easily as "increasingly tense flirting" or "very recently resolved sexual tension." And then, porn and emotions and emotional porn. And more regular porn. I really hope I can get it done.) Anyway, I've only seen the damn thing once on a real screen and most of the way through on a blurry cam, so corrections/alternate interpretations/etc. are more than welcome. Share your thoughts!
--and I'm feeling a dangerous urge to start another enraptured screed about Charles' terrible beautiful terrible feeeeelings, so I think I'm just going to hit post now and save us all. NO WAIT, one more thing, apropos of Erik's "I thought I was alone"--if he never knew Schmidt/Shaw was a mutant, what would he have thought about his inability to use his powers against him while in the camp, and then once he was away from him, his ability to use his powers against anyone? If it wasn't because of Schmidt than it must have been because of him and that--okay I need fic, like right NOW.
no subject
In my head, the movie timeline has stretched out to a few years, and this was not the final break in their relationship. For one thing, they have to build Cerebro yet. For another, Scott and Jean and Ororo all know Magneto, too. I also think that Magneto's line on human/mutant relationships *was* settled very early: he's a Jew and people tried to exterminate him, he married a Roma and people tried to exterminate her, they emigrated to the Ukraine and people tried to kill them both and did kill their daughter for being immigrants and fair pay, then finally he turns out to be a mutant and people are STILL trying to exterminate him - but this time he can fight back. But this doesn't mean that he won't try other ways for the mutants to be in charge. In the first movie, he's not trying to kill anyone (except, incidentally, Rogue), in the second movie he doesn't try to kill anyone until the humans try it first, in the third movie he just takes over Alcatraz to stop the "cure". The only person in this movie that he has to kill is Shaw - there's no reason why he can't stay (or come back) and try to convince Charles to be harder-edged while Charles tries to convince him of the opposite.
no subject
Also I think trying to integrate First Class with the other two (YES TWO) X-Men movies is kind of a lost cause. A delightful lost cause that should be undertaken in lots and lots of fic, but it's never going to make logical sense because it wasn't meant to. I mean, it's completely accurate that there's no reason Magneto can't stay or come back after the end of First Class--except that if the beach scene isn't read as a final split, so much about the script and the directing and some of the acting stops making sense.
FC can cohere emotionally with the others, possibly; I really like your thoughts about Magneto's path from here to X-Men/X2, re: identity and killing. (Although I don't see any indication that any of the comics stuff about his post-war family happened in the movie--or didn't happen, necessarily, but it's not sitting there being a factor for us to consider towards who he is when he shows up in 1962. I mean, that's my thing with this movie--it's not the comics, and while fanfic can and should totally bring in all kinds of stuff from comics canon, I don't feel like I can use most of that to make sense of the emotional--or logical--arc of the film itself.)
I mean--I'm always trying to get more people to rewrite canon that doesn't work rather than trying to force it to make sense or let it affect an otherwise-coherent arc or character. I am TOTALLY DOWN with this movie taking two years and reading fic that's all "yeah, it takes two years because that makes more sense, I changed it." But...I also need to grapple with the thing itself, apparently. Especially since a lot of what I want is emotional elucidation, rather than concrete plot happenings that I think were missing. I DON'T KNOW, I am both dissatisfied and extremely engaged with this mess, I need to read more fic. *g*
no subject
This is an excellent essay and I totally agree with you, with the slight difference in opinion in that I actually do some reciprocity and/or ~feelings~ on Erik's part prior to the beach scene, but yeah, in my headcanon Erik didn't know how deeply he felt for Charles until he misdirected that bullet.
-though I don't want to understate it, because it seemed like pre-Charles he had no conception of what he'd do with the rest of his life once he'd killed Shaw, certainly nothing like a goal or a mission or a purpose.
Charles gave Erik's life meaning and purpose, no one can tell me different~