X-Men: First Class

[petronia]

Well, that was great fun although I have come away with an EXCRUCIATING urge to argue ethics/power/privilege/ALL THE ISMS with both Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr - not to mention the scriptwriters - verbosely, forever. Just, did you mindwipe Moira without her consent ;sladws;mf;q43;ld&*&& and Erik puts the helmet on because he knows you'll cross that line, god forbid someone make a choice that doesn't square with your model minority values. No, you can stay right there and keep the adorable sweater vest, let me rant. XD;; To be fair I think the movie is smart enough to lay it all out and step back, sorta. It's not like the dialogue between Xavier and Raven was accidental... She was the most loveable character in it, actually.

Oh well: I'm sure Fandom will perform a thorough literary analysis on the whole "Erik likes Charles in his head too much to make a fuss about what he realizes perfectly well is frequent unthinking moral skeeviness on Charles's part" aspect of it that I'm seeing. Haaa, literary.

I'm filing this one with Tricky Dick In The TARDIS, more or less. The tactical treatment of the moon landing versus the Cuban missile crisis is identical. I once read an essay - I wish I could remember who wrote it? - by someone who watched a 1950s-set contemporary film and observed astutely that it was costume drama. That is, the societal strictures the characters struggle against were reproduced sans comment, as in eg. a Merchant and Ivory adaptation of Henry James, assumed to be so different from our own that they no longer threaten us directly. At the same time, one had carte blanche to remix the setting, reduce it to background... Now the 60s are becoming fair game, which among other results sets Doctor Who up to swallow its own tail. I've never watched Mad Men, but I hear the casual misogyny there creates the right Brechtian alienation, which this movie doesn't achieve despite presumable intent, because it tries to do 1,573 things in ~2 hours and drops the ball on a few of them. Given which I could have done without the casual misogyny (keep the miniskirts - lose Emma Frost's actress, she was terrible), or... did they just kill off the black guy?... mind you, 30 minutes before the start of the movie I was still reading Delany, so I assumed Darwin and Havoc were sleeping together and no one had an issue with this. OTHERWISE I GUESS I'LL BE OVER HERE ON THE TEAM WITH ALL THE WOMEN AND LATINOS AND MILITARIZED ZIONISTS BAWLING FOREVER

Tomorrow I might even end up seeing it again! But I think this is all the rants there is. XD;

Comments

[flax.livejournal.com]

This post contains pretty much all the feelings I had about the movie but was too lazy to write down! Excellent rant(s). :D

[petronia.livejournal.com]

It was really enjoyable! But at the end you're sitting there like, um so all the white dudes are now on one team and the women and minorities are on the other team uhhh ok I guess the latter is clearly cooler, which I think is not the desired effect, it should be more balanced than that. XD;;

[flax.livejournal.com]

I mean, I think that's how the teams shook out in the teevee show always, though there were usually some ladies with the X-Men at least? But they changed a lot of other stuff, why not that?

[petronia.livejournal.com]

At least some ladies! And Canadians OKAY IDEK. I guess the more I think about it the more I feel like Magneto was the protagonist (which, to be fair, when I first heard of this movie in the pipeline it was definitely billed as Magneto's origin story). The plot does a pretty good job of making dude this tragic Jewish anti-hero in the vein of Mark Zuckerberg who is basically justified in most of his actions and expectations (and they were going to do what else with Mr. I-can-eat-a-nuclear-reactor-for-breakfast exactly, drag him off to the Hague?), and Xavier into this ineffectual and faintly sanctimonious WASP liberal. Though, actually, if Erik is the (anti)hero then Charles is in the position of lady love interest. = = Even unto getting shot at the end thus destroying the protag's chance at redemption. Picture me sitting there in full-blown Cereal Bowl Guy mode, like, "Didn't this happen to Wolverine's girlfriend?" Of course, since Charles Xavier is not actually a lady, movie logic dictates he survives at least.

[lesstraveled.livejournal.com]

The mindwiping at the end was so uncomfortable! As was the Black Dude Dies First trope, but I made myself believe this was on purpose and supposed to be ~ironic 60s throwback~ somehow. Little hopes, I has them >___>

[petronia.livejournal.com]

It was X-Men Meet Dr. No! I don't know what it is we're doing nowadays with this stuff - it's not irony, I thought Austin Powers was when we did irony. XD;; But it's not played straight, either. Oh for a latter-day Bourdieu or McLuhan or whoever can explain ourselves to us.

[bladderwrack.livejournal.com]

with you on the srs bzns obvs, but the /other/ problem with the movie is, what is /with/ Xavier's English accent? Kept reminding me of David Cameron DDD: brb scrubbing myself

[petronia.livejournal.com]

LOLLL the more I think about it, the more I feel like you're meant to want to punch Charles Xavier in the nose. XD;

[cherrypark.livejournal.com]

you always make the best observations. agree that the movie tried to do too much - I felt like we were constantly zipping from one scene to the next and each one felt unfinished, and they were like, "plot point here! plot point there! casual reminder that we're in the 60s!" but then we got to the scenes where it was just erik and charles staring at each other and I lost all my previous thoughts.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I went to see it again, due to not being able to coordinate all the ppl the first time. XD; Not only did it stand up to a second watching, it actually worked better, because once I decided that this was 1) Magneto's origin story with a side order of 2) Mystique's origin story, all the little structural/narrative bits fell into place. And that the specific meta thing it was doing was conflating the pop fantasy contemporary to an era with the actual historical happenings of said era, so my brain could stop being LOOKIT MOAR SIGNIFIERS all the time.

(And this is a really weird thing to do! Really weird! If it were the 1980s it would be like conflating Spielberg movies with the fall of the Berlin Wall! Although the 1980s heavily featured, uh, Rambo, so I should think about this more.)

[petronia.livejournal.com]

ALSO YES THE ERIK AND CHARLES STARING SEARCHINGLY INTO EACH OTHERS' EYES AND SHEDDING MANLY TEARS DRINKING GAME

[arboretum]

ahhh interesting

i think i definitely watched the movie feeling like xavier's douchebagginess was intentional / we weren't really supposed to sympathize with him because he kind of sucks / we were supposed to be on magneto's side pretty much 100% right up until the point where he's like, "oh yeah actually i want to exterminate all the humans."

but actually that was probably just me viewing the film through my own biases ahaha. i guess that's why i was initially less bothered by the zoe kravitz character going to the magneto side etc. than other people seemed to be; as i watched i was sort of like, well, yeah she'd choose his side, i mean, i'd choose his side........ except for the exterminate all humans bit.

which, really is the major problem i have with x-men / magneto, is, well... is that ever really explained or rationalized? like, i follow erik emotionally through all his vulnerability / desire for revenge / inability to trust people or feel safe / etc., but he always loses me when he makes the jump to mass extermination. especially that he chooses to exterminate all humans, among which one assumes, jewish people are included? unless there's some fine print on the evil mastermind speech that excludes them lskdjf.

idk i just can't follow him there, and i don't feel like anyone has ever presented to me a convincing case for why he comes to the conclusion that This Is The Way?

i mean i ask these questions but ultimately i kind of think it just boils down to some dudes at marvel needing professor x to be the good guy, and pinning some genocidal rhetoric on magneto is a cheap and easy way to put xavier in the moral right by comparison, regardless of anything else the two dudes say/do/believe.

idk if this comment is really saying anything, but after talking with my coworkers about it briefly and hearing them label team magneto and team xavier as "the bad guys" and "the good guys" so simply and so thoughtlessly, i realized maybe not everyone cares as much as i (we? lol) do about magneto and his ragtag bunch of !white!male mutants and their motivations.

like i feel like i watched a movie that was Magneto!!!! Is Great!!!!!! but possibly that was not the movie they meant for me to watch lol. then again i also approach the entire batman franchise from the pov of Robins!!!!! Are Great!!!!!!! Why Is Batman Even In This Comic!!!!!!!!! so obvs i am just not the target audience superhero comics are trying to reach lol.

anyway also agreed on the casual misogyny not quite having the intended effect (though one could see what effect they were going for lskjdfh) and that all in all the treatment of darwin by the story was just horrendous, full stop. and unsurprisingly, i'm with you on team magneto. ;)

</disjointed comment>

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I watched it again and it was clearly the Magneto: Angsty Crypto-Israeli James Bond With Superpowers movie, that's the only viewing strategy that really makes sense. With Prof. X in the role of Good Bond Girl, and Emma Frost as Bad Bond Girl XD;; thus freeing Raven up to have a real character arc and Moira to, like, do her goddamned job. Actually both times in the theatre there were mega-groans at the period misogyny lines, so ppl are perhaps not hopeless on the whole.

I get various summations of comic continuity from geekdudes of my acquaintance far more recently than I watched any of the X-Men movies, so I guess my general impression of Magneto is that he doesn't fuck with humanity unless he is fucked with, but that the latter happens a lot and it just escalation spirals, basically. (OTOH, you shouldn't trust me on comics continuity ever, I am not good at that shiz. XD;;) I've thought about it and I just can't flaw Erik's logic in the last part, tbh - they were not, like, trying to arrest Shaw, they were carrying out a paramilitary strike on someone who was trying to start a nuclear war, and if Charles imagined it was the former he hardly made that clear. Also generally speaking, if military forces shoot torpedos at me without provocation, I would take it as a sign that I was justified in shooting torpedos back. But then I am not fully an ideological pacifist. XD;; I think ultimately violence never solves the problem, problems get solved at the negotiating table, but if you can't demonstrate power you don't get invited to the negotiating table (not that this is the mutants' problem, which is where the parallel with human minorities falls down). I would normally argue Xavier's side - actually because I tend to act as my friends' shrink I have had those EXACT conversations, bawling - but Xavier doesn't get to make good arguments in this movie, so I do feel like the script intentionally stacked the deck more than usual. Most ppl I know think Prof. X and Magneto are both somewhat right and somewhat wrong, and that this refusal to reduce the complexity of the situation is what's good about the 'verse. Though I guess there could be ppl out there who come away from this film like "women and PoCs suck because they all turned evil" ahahaha orz.

Anyway they should do the bit where Magneto gets turned into a baby next, so after X-Men: The Dr. No Remix we have X-Men: The Look Who's Talking Remix.

(Just clicked through yr entry: fwiw, Fassbender's French is amazingly good. There's a pretty marked Inglorious Basterds influence on all those scenes IMO, which is... not exactly surprising.)

although

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I am starting to realize that my memories of the first two X-Men movies revolve around massively crushing on Sir Ian as Magneto, so very possibly I just have a thing for Magneto. = =

Re: although

[arboretum]

re: your general impression of Magneto, that is also the impression i want to take and run with? but the problem for me is that he just keeps getting set up as this mega-baddie (cf the older x-men movies, i guess) who is sort of relatable except for the genocidal bit. also yeah, if someone shoots torpedoes at me, i will think it is probably ok for me to shoot back, but i wouldn't take it to the next step of concluding that actually what i am going to do is exterminate all the people who are like the people who shot torpedoes at me. that is where he loses me every time. :(

i also naturally gravitate towards xavier-ish arguments in that i always sort of want to give people another chance and although i can understand magneto's anger, i just don't really think lashing out violently will solve anything -- that is just my personal stance 8)

idk idk like maybe i should read some actual x-men comics so that i know more about the 'verse but it'd be one thing if magneto was like some sort of terrorist lashing out indiscriminately at humans trying to like, deliver a message of STOP FUCKING WITH ME AND MINE, etc., but i just. feel like. he gets saddled with such silly plans for destroying the world as we know it lksjdkfjg.

basically i think he would be a lot more interesting if he didn't keep tipping over from understandably pissed the fuck off into megalomaniac territory.

ugh idk i just also think it's cheap to use the holocaust to motivate erik's mutant vs human agenda...? i'm not sure how to even articulate my thoughts on that really. just like, his identity is a liiiiittle more complicated than just "mutant," and it kind of bothers me that his jewishness and his holocaust survivor background is sort of ... used as a convenient storytelling device? eh idk. like i'm thinking of the earlier x-men movies now, where jewishness just doesn't seem to be a Thing for erik at all, esp when compared to how much being a mutant is a Thing for him. even in this movie it was hardly a thing. he was out for revenge for his mom, and he didn't mind causing some collateral damage, but especially towards the end, it just felt like being a mutant was 99% of his identity and everything else, including being jewish, was the other 1%.

cf some post on tumblr i read weeks ago (that was probably about queers actually but feels kind of relevant) about x-men side-stepping the harder work of engaging with actual disenfranchised groups even as it makes its imaginary mutants to make a great allegory about the disenfranchisement of groups of people...

i should do some digging on the internet, i feel like i saw a link to someone talking about this (appropriation of the holocaust etc.) but didn't have time to read it.

anyway i'm with you on crushing on sir ian's magneto. basically magneto is a hottie, the end.


ps yes, i'd heard from other sources also that his french is good! 8) yeah i picked up on the inglourious basterds influence, which, hm. not my favorite movie either, but. i can't deny all the language hopping is fun to me as a movie-watcher, hahaha.

Re: although

[arboretum]

so many typos sorry. that should read

uses its imaginary mutants to make a great allegory


and hopefully all the misplaced/missing commas are not too disorienting

sorry lmao

Re: although

[petronia.livejournal.com]

especially towards the end, it just felt like being a mutant was 99% of his identity and everything else, including being jewish, was the other 1%

Someone on my droll made an entry (http://labingi.dreamwidth.org/46620.html?#cutid1) about that (a good half of DW seems to be XM:FC meta over the past week XD;). I'm reading seperis's writeup (http://seperis.dreamwidth.org/86111.html#cutid1)** [now w/ bonus link included] and she agrees the film drops the ball on a few aspects as it rushes to wrap up the character arcs, Erik's Jewish identity included. Although the Jews/Israelis I've seen post about it (in particular marina (http://marina.dreamwidth.org)) don't seem to feel, generally, that Erik's Jewishness was elided or badly handled, so much that he's actually a fairly accurate depiction of one particular set of responses to Holocaust trauma, and what was glossed over was that this (among others) led to problematic acts IRL as Jews. Instead the movieverse did a straight swap-A-for-metaphorical-B and also never gave Xavier any convincing arguments. But Israelis can consider Israel critically, I suspect Hollywood won't go there. ^^; I mean Magneto straight up adopts fascism, basically, which is not at all incompatible with hunting Nazis, but then you can't remind the audience of his crypto-Israeli-ness too much, because what are you then saying about Israel? But if not, what are you actually trying to say in general? I assume Lee/Kirby with their Jewish immigrant backgrounds were precisely putting across that 1) this is an AWESOME power fantasy, but 2) there is a line that shouldn't be crossed, and if you do you become the bad guy. I mean, they were actually writing in 1962. XD;

** She's also got a whole bunch of apt observations re: how Charles doesn't trust humans at all, he just doesn't consciously realize that at this point, because he's barely crested the "beer pong!" stage of his personal growth. But it's Us vs. Them for him as well, it's just that his power allows him to achieve goals without bloodshed. Whereas (to paraphrase a great fanfic observation re Tony Stark) Erik is a hardware guy... and who was it writing that there's a missing third act in which Charles has to deal with his disability, and that's when he finally gets it? But I am pretty sure I'd rather leave that one to Fandom than to moviemakers haaaaaa.

Re: although

[arboretum]

oh cool so many things to read lskdjf

yes at everything you have said here! i think also i feel like it's just a bit problematic to just... er, hm. i mean if you relate magneto's story to shosanna's in inglourious basterds, both are jews traumatized by the holocaust seeking vengeance, but x-men does this weird flippy magic trick thing where at some indeterminate point in erik's life, "jewish" is suddenly substituted by "mutant." nothing else changes about his motivations or whatever, he just goes on his merry way wreaking vengeance etc. but the categories of people involved have shifted.

anyway, yeah, what that first link in your comment is saying, i think. (though i just skimmed it and will have to read it more carefully later when i have time.)


re: lee/kirby & jewish immigrant backgrounds, i'm so unaware of comics history that i didn't know that this was the team that had created x-men, nor had i ever looked into their personal histories. suddenly the mental image of michael chabon flipping through lovingly preserved back issues of x-men.......


heh yes i'd love to see that missing third act but agree moviemakers would most likely botch it in an extremely painful manner lksjlkdjfhs

Re: although

[petronia.livejournal.com]

It gets even more mindbreaking when you realize 1962 was when teh Mossad kidnapped Adolf "The Banality of Evil" Eichmann from Argentina. XD; I am also 99% sure Charles could not have put a number on the gene for auburn hair since when he'd've started his PhD Watson and Crick had just about discovered that DNA was a double helix.... when I put this to my friend he said "well clearly in this 'verse Watson or Crick is a mutant 40 years older than he physically appears and have been working on the problem for much longer".

LOL I have not read the Chabon book but always had a vague impression it was Stan Lee And Jack Kirby Stanz: The SSBB Edition... don't disabuse me. XD

Re: although

[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

I was talking to a friend about Magneto suddenly switching allegiances as described in your comment (not that I have seen the movie, or anything...) and her comment was that this actually DOES happen, for example, for people who find they are gay. The new identity conflict can overwrite the old identity conflict. 'Course Magneto doesn't have identity conflict as much as massive trauma and the "knowledge" that unfair persecution --> eventual attempted genocide, but, I'm just saying. According to her this is something that happens.

Re: although

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm pretty much with labingi on this, i.e. it's not so much that dude swapped identities (because he clearly did) as sooner or later he will have to think about the fact that Jews are also part of non-mutant humanity. XD;; OR HE COULD NOT THINK ABOUT IT BUT

Also this is a Doylesque problem really, not a Watsonian one. In that the original comic writers were presumably using metaphor to comment on stuff that was happening IRL 1962, without bringing IRL 1962 into the comic. And now the movie has scooshed the two together, necessitating an awkward bait-and-switch - not that I've read early X-Men comics or anything, but I'd bet money Magneto shows up in his helmet and cape and there is no lengthy backstory about him hunting Nazis in South America. XD; (See also: loads of armwaving re how POC mutants "adapt to survive", zero mention of actual civil rights movement lolol)

[ampersandals.livejournal.com]

WHY AM I FOREVER LATE WITH COMMENTS

the casual misogyny there creates the right Brechtian alienation, which this movie doesn't achieve despite presumable intent
Huh. Was that what they were going for? (In First Class, not Mad Men, which I haven't watched either but now feel like I should XD)

Oh, haha, Darwin/Havok was so canon in the movie, it delighted me! And then they racefailed Darwin to his death, which really really broke my heart. THEN AGAIN THERE WAS NO BODY SO IN MY HEADCANON THEY GET REUNITED.

And LOL @ mindwipe. I enjoyed Charles's douchery, tbh. I liked his side of the story better than Erik's (I love villain backstories but this was too easy, it made me uncomfortable). The skeeviness, though, was... just skeeviness, and I'm not sure that that was in aid of the Professor-X-was-a-douche deal? :( They both failed at being ultimately hero/villain, at any rate. XD Raven's character/storyline was the most solid and logical and, yeah, most likeable. And she's the one who (supposedly, idk about movie canon) grows to have the most ambiguous morals and unclear motivations.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I think so? Like the audience is supposed to go, "Whoa, no one would ever say that now!" Which - yeah mebbe hopefully. But XMFC is also not obsessively period like Mad Men, it's almost more like... those 1980s movies set in the 1950s, you know? Grease, Cry-Baby, Back to the Future. Some subtle distinction hinging on hair and makeup design. (NB: arguably there is a Cry-Baby pastiche to be had from all this. XD;)

That being said, I find I get annoyed at fic that is full of anachronisms! I think because IMO the 1962-ness is what's interesting about it. LOL in 1962 Darwin/Havok would have been very marginally acceptable, but it's not like ppl are writing it anyway orz

Yeah, I have sort of come around to... like, in a way, the movie doesn't tell one all that much about Charles, compared to Erik. Did he mind whammy his parents and the servants to make them think Raven was his sister? That is pretty epically scary. (Why does this plot feel so familiar... bawling I think it's cropped up a few times as a Sherlock AU, of all things.) He also doesn't have any friends. Like, it's honestly kind of disconcerting that dude is as well adjusted as he is. It's gotta be the telepathy but you can easily imagine the same talent in the same context producing a total psychopath. XD;

Sigh I am pretty sure that when Mystique was Rebecca Romijn all she did was go around being blue and henchwoman-y; it was the ppl I went to the movies with who filled in the details.