fifty frenchmen can't be wrong (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
some_stars) wrote2011-06-23 08:35 pm
some_stars) wrote2011-06-23 08:35 pm
(no subject)
Finishing off the last thirty minutes of my First Class rewatch with ridiculous notes and feelings and shit. AND NOW, THE PAIN.
1. That line about "our boys" gets more annoying every time I watch it. Can you imagine how much time this movie could have saved for character development if they'd cut out 80% of the "noble brave soldiers" scenes on the ships? A few brief moments to heighten the pathos when their lives are threatened--it really doesn't take that much--and eliminate all that slobbering camerawork and eye-rolling dialogue. Of course some of this annoyance is probably due to the fact that whatever parts of the last week and a half I haven't spent obsessing over this movie, I've spent pulling clips for two Iron Man vids, one of which is basically three minutes of rage over those movies' loving fetishization of the military-industrial complex. So...you know.
2. God, EVERYTHING about Sean annoys the crap out of me. I don't know why! I don't like feeling this way! But JESUS CHRIST, he sounds like he's got a bag of marbles in his mouth and I want to punch him FOREVER.
3. Hey, Riptide got to make a noise! Not words, but it came out of his mouth, that's a step in the right direction surely?
4. Okay, so Charles is with Erik in the morning--he's with him on the Blackbird--he's in his mind guiding him through the submarine--Erik told him last night he's going to kill Shaw, has obviously been thinking about it as long as they've known each other--they know Shaw's turned himself into a nuclear bomb--yet somehow it's a moment of great horror and betrayal and the crossing of a permanent moral event horizon (for Erik only, of course) when Erik...wait for it...kills Shaw. I mean for fuck's SAKE, Charles, what did you think was going to happen? What was your brilliant heroic alternate plan? I know I've said this before, I think more than once, but oh my GOD it's just so DUMB.
5. I know I've mentioned this before, but it seriously obsesses me--it seems strongly implied that Erik never knew Schmidt was a mutant, based on the way he plans his murder attempt, and his "I thought I was alone," and his reaction to Shaw absorbing energy during their final confrontation, and the fact that nobody else whom he might reasonably have told about it seems to know what Shaw can do until they see it in person (and sometimes not even then, this MOVIE, jfc). The only evidence against this, as far as I can tell, is that Erik doesn't seem all that surprised to see the photo in the bar in Argentina that shows Schmidt/Shaw not having aged a day.
So I don't know what to make of it as far as canon, but I feel completely justified in wanting fic where young!Erik repeatedly tries and fails to kill Schmidt, beginning in that first scene when his mother is murdered, and no matter how strong his powers get and how many other people he can (is forced to) kill, he can never hurt Schmidt and he doesn't know why. And so of course, somehow it must be him, it must be that he's too weak. Too weak to protect his mother, to protect any of the people he's hurt, even to protect himself. It must be him, and the war ends and he's freed or maybe even frees himself, but Schmidt escapes and Erik grows up and never stops hating himself for that failure. I want that fic SO MUCH.
6. --oh my god, HORRIFYING observation: after Shaw is frozen, Erik takes a few steps towards him, tilts his head a little--into Shaw's outstretched hand. He steps forward just enough, places himself right there and leans into it and it's this grotesque parody of Shaw's hand tenderly caressing his face, like a loving parent or...something. Now, to be clear, the sequence of shots is obviously meant to indicate that Erik's tilting his head to match Shaw's frozen tilt, as a whimsical/nasty mocking gesture to Shaw's helplessness. But he moves exactly close enough to make it look like, well, like THAT. Everything about their relationship just gets a thousand times more vile and distressing with each rewatch, I swear to god. I feel like my standards for whether fic is making Erik incredibly fucked up and broken enough are going to go way up now. I don't even like the kind of fic that this observation probably makes you think I do! I mean, I don't not like it, I have read and enjoyed my share, but it's almost never the first or second or fifth thing I focus on and go looking for in a new fandom. The tenth, sometimes. But I just, I don't even know, I can't look away from the unfolding layers of horror.
7. I really really want fic all about the horrible agony and trauma Charles suffered being trapped in Shaw's mind as he died and his reactions afterward, but I want these fics also to acknowledge that Shaw had to be killed--or else he would EXPLODE--and Charles holding him for someone else to kill was pretty much the only way to do it, unless Charles was willing to do it himself or at least lobotomize him. The characters don't have to acknowledge this, there can be all kinds of delicious guilt and anger, but I can't enjoy that guilt and anger if the story is telling me that it's logically/morally correct.
8. OH, this is interesting! Erik and Charles are rolling around in the sand, the other four--Alex, Sean, Hank, and Raven--move forward, Erik yells at them and throws them backward--except he doesn't throw Raven. It's not immediately obvious because the shots are so quick, but she doesn't leave the ground and she's not shown flying through the air or landing, though there's room in the frame where she would have been. That's a wonderful touch. Not just that he doesn't throw her, but that she moves forward with the rest of them, as if to stop him, and he still doesn't.
9. THE DIVORCE MAKES NO SENSE. NO FUCKING SENSE. NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES I WATCH, IT NEVER MAKES ANY GODDAMN SENSE AT ALL.
10. The end! No moral.
1. That line about "our boys" gets more annoying every time I watch it. Can you imagine how much time this movie could have saved for character development if they'd cut out 80% of the "noble brave soldiers" scenes on the ships? A few brief moments to heighten the pathos when their lives are threatened--it really doesn't take that much--and eliminate all that slobbering camerawork and eye-rolling dialogue. Of course some of this annoyance is probably due to the fact that whatever parts of the last week and a half I haven't spent obsessing over this movie, I've spent pulling clips for two Iron Man vids, one of which is basically three minutes of rage over those movies' loving fetishization of the military-industrial complex. So...you know.
2. God, EVERYTHING about Sean annoys the crap out of me. I don't know why! I don't like feeling this way! But JESUS CHRIST, he sounds like he's got a bag of marbles in his mouth and I want to punch him FOREVER.
3. Hey, Riptide got to make a noise! Not words, but it came out of his mouth, that's a step in the right direction surely?
4. Okay, so Charles is with Erik in the morning--he's with him on the Blackbird--he's in his mind guiding him through the submarine--Erik told him last night he's going to kill Shaw, has obviously been thinking about it as long as they've known each other--they know Shaw's turned himself into a nuclear bomb--yet somehow it's a moment of great horror and betrayal and the crossing of a permanent moral event horizon (for Erik only, of course) when Erik...wait for it...kills Shaw. I mean for fuck's SAKE, Charles, what did you think was going to happen? What was your brilliant heroic alternate plan? I know I've said this before, I think more than once, but oh my GOD it's just so DUMB.
5. I know I've mentioned this before, but it seriously obsesses me--it seems strongly implied that Erik never knew Schmidt was a mutant, based on the way he plans his murder attempt, and his "I thought I was alone," and his reaction to Shaw absorbing energy during their final confrontation, and the fact that nobody else whom he might reasonably have told about it seems to know what Shaw can do until they see it in person (and sometimes not even then, this MOVIE, jfc). The only evidence against this, as far as I can tell, is that Erik doesn't seem all that surprised to see the photo in the bar in Argentina that shows Schmidt/Shaw not having aged a day.
So I don't know what to make of it as far as canon, but I feel completely justified in wanting fic where young!Erik repeatedly tries and fails to kill Schmidt, beginning in that first scene when his mother is murdered, and no matter how strong his powers get and how many other people he can (is forced to) kill, he can never hurt Schmidt and he doesn't know why. And so of course, somehow it must be him, it must be that he's too weak. Too weak to protect his mother, to protect any of the people he's hurt, even to protect himself. It must be him, and the war ends and he's freed or maybe even frees himself, but Schmidt escapes and Erik grows up and never stops hating himself for that failure. I want that fic SO MUCH.
6. --oh my god, HORRIFYING observation: after Shaw is frozen, Erik takes a few steps towards him, tilts his head a little--into Shaw's outstretched hand. He steps forward just enough, places himself right there and leans into it and it's this grotesque parody of Shaw's hand tenderly caressing his face, like a loving parent or...something. Now, to be clear, the sequence of shots is obviously meant to indicate that Erik's tilting his head to match Shaw's frozen tilt, as a whimsical/nasty mocking gesture to Shaw's helplessness. But he moves exactly close enough to make it look like, well, like THAT. Everything about their relationship just gets a thousand times more vile and distressing with each rewatch, I swear to god. I feel like my standards for whether fic is making Erik incredibly fucked up and broken enough are going to go way up now. I don't even like the kind of fic that this observation probably makes you think I do! I mean, I don't not like it, I have read and enjoyed my share, but it's almost never the first or second or fifth thing I focus on and go looking for in a new fandom. The tenth, sometimes. But I just, I don't even know, I can't look away from the unfolding layers of horror.
7. I really really want fic all about the horrible agony and trauma Charles suffered being trapped in Shaw's mind as he died and his reactions afterward, but I want these fics also to acknowledge that Shaw had to be killed--or else he would EXPLODE--and Charles holding him for someone else to kill was pretty much the only way to do it, unless Charles was willing to do it himself or at least lobotomize him. The characters don't have to acknowledge this, there can be all kinds of delicious guilt and anger, but I can't enjoy that guilt and anger if the story is telling me that it's logically/morally correct.
8. OH, this is interesting! Erik and Charles are rolling around in the sand, the other four--Alex, Sean, Hank, and Raven--move forward, Erik yells at them and throws them backward--except he doesn't throw Raven. It's not immediately obvious because the shots are so quick, but she doesn't leave the ground and she's not shown flying through the air or landing, though there's room in the frame where she would have been. That's a wonderful touch. Not just that he doesn't throw her, but that she moves forward with the rest of them, as if to stop him, and he still doesn't.
9. THE DIVORCE MAKES NO SENSE. NO FUCKING SENSE. NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES I WATCH, IT NEVER MAKES ANY GODDAMN SENSE AT ALL.
10. The end! No moral.
no subject
And I would love to see fic about Charles realising that he's got no other option but to help Erik kill Shaw - I've seen fics where he goes along with it because he doesn't want Shaw to kill Erik, and fics where he later says that he didn't know Shaw was going to go nuclear and when he did Charles didn't know what to do, but I'm not 100% sure that Charles even knew Shaw was going nuclear. And I definitely want to see the moment he has to decide to hold Shaw while Erik kills him.