Rewatching the X-Men movies

[petronia]

(I opened up this entry window then stared at it for a while as had forgotten what I was going to write about. XD;;)

* Still really love Rogue in this. (I pretty much only remember the Rogue parts from X1, which I watched once on its original theatre run.) Jean is even more boring than I remember, but for some odd reason I like Scott better now - I think this is one of those IRL things where your reaction to various personalities shift as you get older and learn to deal with ppl differently. Or maybe I just have more context for the characters.

* Logan continues to be Logan. I sometimes think I like Logan because he's hilarious in that Leacockian way that all legendarily Canadian things must be, like poutine or Timmy Hos or the hockey mullet. Only much less East Coast than those three.

* Wow there is really not much effort toward continuity happening here.

* Something something evolving CG effects, I don't tend to rewatch action movies of the late 90s and early 00s, something

* Storm kind of sucks in this. I know Halle Berry can act so idek. It's weird how XM:FC does exactly the same thing i.e. one well-developed teenaged female character (Rogue/Raven), one who is older and boring (Jean/Moira), one who is terrible for no good reason (Storm/Emma). Mystique holds the Riptide slot of "cool henchperson who has no lines because we cast an actor with a foreign accent".

* I expected to feel differently about the Sir Ian/Sir Patrick scenes. What I didn't expect was an overweening sense of relief that Magneto was back to his classy knitwear and tailored suits. Having figured out not only quantum electrodynamics but how to integrate the apparently non-negotiable cape in a classy tailored suit. AND YET. /insert ill-advised joke re: the schmatte trade

* Other surprise: damn, it is really triggery to watch a conservative politician do his thing in a movie now. I am email-arguing with a friend about that Star Trek historical materialism essay so this is uppermost in my mind, but it feels like there was some sort of progression in nuance in the way political undertones were presented in SF films, and then for some reason we all stopped and agreed to wallow in the 60s for a bit.

* EDIT -- forgot this one: WTF are "strong and weak forms of entropy", Charles!?!?1! IDEK guys if you were a scriptwriter and had to give a character ONE SINGLE scientific-sounding throwaway line, why would you go out of your way to make it be like, "oh DNA is made out of proteins".

***

In other news, having missed Otakuthon but for the cosplayer gawking, I'm trying to convince Erin to attend Comic-Con with me as I now feel morally obliged to go and squint at the tiny flyspeck that will be Stan Lee at the head of a mile-long line of first-issue-clutching fanboys. Also tickets are surprisingly cheap.

Going to Ottawa for the weekend to see Tania and baby Heero (who is possibly not "Heero" on the official papers, but is "Heero" still to Facebook)! Have not finished my project and will die next week. But what is fun without a mild sense of impending doom.

Comments

[niqaeli]

When I started poking at the cartoon and comics, I found that I altnerately loathe and am bored senseless by Jean, in all her incarnations. This is how I know she was in character in the movies! If I ever find her interesting and/or not annoying as shit, I will know immediately that they have slipped out of the usual confines of her character. And I will be intrigued but also baffled. *snerk*

[petronia]

I don't know if it's the character herself who bugs me, or like... every aspect of her storyline. XD; Jean Grey is a compendium of all the annoying shiz writers like to do with a major female character, from the whole good boy vs. bad boy thing with Cyclops and Wolverine, to the whole "women cannot actually be powerful and morally in control of themselves" bit. Granted this is comics and dude characters go wacky too, but argh.

Jean is Gravity! Maybe there are mutants who correspond to the other two fundamental forces (although having yr power be based off "the weak interaction" or "beta rays" does not sound very bad-ass). Which brings me to a point of completely unnecessary science!fail in X1, because WTF are strong and weak forms of entropy, Charles.

[ukefied]

I've never liked Jean Grey, for many of the reasons you've listed above -- among others -- but upon my rewatch of the excellent 90's cartoon, I've also come to appreciate Scott more. He has a hard job, keeping all those kids in line.

Let me know if you want/need company for Comic-Con. I'm officially going Sunday with my family, but I might be poking around on Saturday for advance signatures and/or dealer opportunities.

[petronia]

Yes, I just saw your post! We should definitely meet up. :D I think I'll be going both days.

[labingi.livejournal.com]

I share a lot of your feelings about the X-Men films, but I really like Jean in the first couple of movies. I do agree, though, that Moira is boring.

What Star Trek essay is this?

[petronia.livejournal.com]

This one! (http://history-is-made-at-night.blogspot.com/2011/07/star-trek-myth-towards-historical.html)

I think Moira could have been interesting (after all she was the only representative of humanity there for a while), but they clearly decided that if they were going to cut, they would start there. ^^; Perhaps - IIRC there were similar edits made to Trek AOS - if she'd been developed more and sympathetically, the ending would have seemed correspondingly more/too horrible. Cognitive dissonance and all that (I have a friend who thinks it should have ended with Charles sitting in his wheelchair alone, staring into space unmoving for 30 seconds. McAvoy might have been game but something tells me the producers wouldn't have gone for it. XD;)

[labingi.livejournal.com]

I would have liked that ending to XMFC:)

Thanks for the Star Trek essay link! I haven't read the whole essay yet, but I read a good portion of it. It actually makes me miss reading formal literary criticism. It makes a lot of thought-provoking connections between ST and various literary and cultural theories. I agree with a lot of it re. bourgeois hegemonic discourse, though on the whole, the parts I read suffer from not addressing counterarguments and from some rather brief assertions of connection between a theory and ST without much exploration/exemplification. Still, it's an intriguing read. Thanks.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I've had someone on FB comment that "as a Marxist scholar" he disagreed with some of the conclusions; not being a Marxist scholar (or a massively-invested Trekkie) all I can say for it is that it's an interesting take. It does seem to lack counterarguments, rather, though apparently the essay was originally published in a leftist zine, so. XD;

[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

"Leacockian"?

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I dunno why I feel that connection, exactly. XD; It just seems to me like the srs bzns of Logan is obvious, whereas the hilarity of Logan is subtler and less definable and probably the saving grace of the character.

[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

Is it because Hugh Jackman has that twinkle in his eye? Or is it because Logan trained as Samurai in Japan before he got amnesia as part of a secret American military project to create the ultimate soldier?

Cause like, the "ultimate fanboy" ness of Logan's backstory, combined with him being originally from Canada, is pretty funny.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Wolverine II (if they ever manage to make it) is supposed to be set in Japan, so I'll be very disappointed if they don't have Logan fighting a uniformed schoolgirl with katanas. And then there was that legendary fanart of him eating takoyaki speared off one adamantine claw.

[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

I'm not getting any comment notifications from livejournal :(

[reynardine.livejournal.com]

I always had a hard time watching the Xmen movies--not because they were bad (they were quite good) but because the actor playing Scott looked exactly like my brother-in-law Russ. I mean, even his voice. They could have been twins. It always distracted me.

Fortunately, Russ has a sense of humor about the whole thing.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

...Excellent Halloween costume opportunity? XD