Talk about subtext! Rec: X-Men First Class
Jun. 4th, 2011 01:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
freakykatOr in this case - just plain text. O.o
Warning: Spoilery (I'll try to keep it to almost nothing!)
Let me perface this by saying two things: 1) I absolutely loathed (that doesn't even cover my feelings to be honest) X-Men: Last Stand because everything about it just plain sucked but 2) I adore X-Men in general.
Take those two facts as you will.
I honestly loved this movie. Now, I'm not gonna lie and say it was perfect because it just wasn't. This is essentially supposed to be a reboot, imo, but there was a lot of the movie franchise canon (you'll understand when you watch it) so it gets muddied a little.
There are characters that shouldn't be in this particular timeline most notably Alex Summers. I mean, I really enjoyed him and thought the actor was really good but if this is set within the universe of the movie franchise then um...HE WASN'T EVEN BORN YET FOR LIKE DECADES. Alex is Scott's (Cyclops) younger brother and if we go by movie canon (and canon comic as well), Scott would have been in his thirties during the present day so...how is Alex there forty years before we see Scott for the first time? IDEK.
There's Mystique's origins and her relationship with Charles that's just not at all what it was in the comics. (I loved it regardless, okay?)
There's having to suspend disbelief that Emma Frost could be more powerful than Charles or that they would actually come out to the CIA by admitting they are mutants or that Moira is not the brilliant genetist that helps them so very much in canon comic lore but a CIA operative or that Russia (who has no idea about mutants from what you can decipher) would have created a shield to block telepathics from entering your mind or that... you get the picture.
There's also the issue that others are having with the movie about miniorty characters either being dead or turning to the evil side (which IMO there isn't a clear cut evil side, more on that later).
Now, I didn't get that at all. I don't think it was meant to be seen that way. There is a particular scene where one character makes a comment directed at a minority character that made everyone in the audience go "dude" but let's remember one fact: this movie is set in the early to later sixties (and the character making the comment was a Nazi, just saying) so it fits with the movie and what that character was implying. And that's the only time I felt that particular issue at all.
I'm not taking this lightly or anything. I was completely up in arms over the second Transformers movie and its serious racism/sexism/misyoginistic tendencies. I mean, that shit was blantant. I didn't get that here. So just wanted to add my two cents to that.
I bet you all are reading this and going..."um, Kat, you don't seem to like this movie.." but that's the thing, guys. Despite those imperfections this movie worked on so many fucking levels.
The characters were layered, sympathetic and you rooted for them even when you know where some of them will end up. The writing -- oh I loved the writing -- because it was fair. By that I mean that you got to see both sides of the story with the characters. I'm not referring to Shaw and his crew -- they were the enemy of course -- but what I'm talking about is the two sides we know will duke it out later: the X-men and the Brotherhood.
Charles isn't the perfect, calm leader of a well-trained group of mutants. He's a young, sometimes entitled, well-meaning man who doesn't always see what he sould. Erik isn't some crazy leader of a rogue group of mutants but a man dealing with the scars and damage caused by what was done to him in the Holocust, trying to prevent that from happening again to others. Their meeting, their friendship and how they balance it out is just awesome. Really. Just plain awesome.
This brings me to the actors which is the reason this movie works. Everyone was fabulous. Every single one of them.
Most especially James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender. There's like nothing I can really say to explain what they did for their characters or how deeply they protrayed the relationship between Erik and Charles. Erik's pain -- sometimes so entrenched in who he is that you couldn't breathe while watching him and Charles' empathy for it, his willingness to share in it, his ability to get through to him...and the heartbreak when he eventually can't. It's all just fucking lovely.
I've always been a Erik/Charles shipper because well they have that kind of feel to them but this was the first time the movie gave that to me.
Seriously. It was just magnificent.
Jennifer Lawrence was amazing. Simply charming and a tiny bit scary at the same time. Nicolas Hoult is beautiful. Which makes Hank's unfolding arc touching in so many ways. And January Jones was a revelation: her Emma is kickass.
Yes, the special effects are great, score is wonderful (especially the one specifically used for Erik), the cinematography wailed...blah blah blah.
I could go on and on and on.
But I won't. I'll just say go watch it. Enjoy it. Fangirl with me.
That's all.
Now, can anyone point me to fic, please?
♥
Warning: Spoilery (I'll try to keep it to almost nothing!)
Let me perface this by saying two things: 1) I absolutely loathed (that doesn't even cover my feelings to be honest) X-Men: Last Stand because everything about it just plain sucked but 2) I adore X-Men in general.
Take those two facts as you will.
I honestly loved this movie. Now, I'm not gonna lie and say it was perfect because it just wasn't. This is essentially supposed to be a reboot, imo, but there was a lot of the movie franchise canon (you'll understand when you watch it) so it gets muddied a little.
There are characters that shouldn't be in this particular timeline most notably Alex Summers. I mean, I really enjoyed him and thought the actor was really good but if this is set within the universe of the movie franchise then um...HE WASN'T EVEN BORN YET FOR LIKE DECADES. Alex is Scott's (Cyclops) younger brother and if we go by movie canon (and canon comic as well), Scott would have been in his thirties during the present day so...how is Alex there forty years before we see Scott for the first time? IDEK.
There's Mystique's origins and her relationship with Charles that's just not at all what it was in the comics. (I loved it regardless, okay?)
There's having to suspend disbelief that Emma Frost could be more powerful than Charles or that they would actually come out to the CIA by admitting they are mutants or that Moira is not the brilliant genetist that helps them so very much in canon comic lore but a CIA operative or that Russia (who has no idea about mutants from what you can decipher) would have created a shield to block telepathics from entering your mind or that... you get the picture.
There's also the issue that others are having with the movie about miniorty characters either being dead or turning to the evil side (which IMO there isn't a clear cut evil side, more on that later).
Now, I didn't get that at all. I don't think it was meant to be seen that way. There is a particular scene where one character makes a comment directed at a minority character that made everyone in the audience go "dude" but let's remember one fact: this movie is set in the early to later sixties (and the character making the comment was a Nazi, just saying) so it fits with the movie and what that character was implying. And that's the only time I felt that particular issue at all.
I'm not taking this lightly or anything. I was completely up in arms over the second Transformers movie and its serious racism/sexism/misyoginistic tendencies. I mean, that shit was blantant. I didn't get that here. So just wanted to add my two cents to that.
I bet you all are reading this and going..."um, Kat, you don't seem to like this movie.." but that's the thing, guys. Despite those imperfections this movie worked on so many fucking levels.
The characters were layered, sympathetic and you rooted for them even when you know where some of them will end up. The writing -- oh I loved the writing -- because it was fair. By that I mean that you got to see both sides of the story with the characters. I'm not referring to Shaw and his crew -- they were the enemy of course -- but what I'm talking about is the two sides we know will duke it out later: the X-men and the Brotherhood.
Charles isn't the perfect, calm leader of a well-trained group of mutants. He's a young, sometimes entitled, well-meaning man who doesn't always see what he sould. Erik isn't some crazy leader of a rogue group of mutants but a man dealing with the scars and damage caused by what was done to him in the Holocust, trying to prevent that from happening again to others. Their meeting, their friendship and how they balance it out is just awesome. Really. Just plain awesome.
This brings me to the actors which is the reason this movie works. Everyone was fabulous. Every single one of them.
Most especially James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender. There's like nothing I can really say to explain what they did for their characters or how deeply they protrayed the relationship between Erik and Charles. Erik's pain -- sometimes so entrenched in who he is that you couldn't breathe while watching him and Charles' empathy for it, his willingness to share in it, his ability to get through to him...and the heartbreak when he eventually can't. It's all just fucking lovely.
I've always been a Erik/Charles shipper because well they have that kind of feel to them but this was the first time the movie gave that to me.
Seriously. It was just magnificent.
Jennifer Lawrence was amazing. Simply charming and a tiny bit scary at the same time. Nicolas Hoult is beautiful. Which makes Hank's unfolding arc touching in so many ways. And January Jones was a revelation: her Emma is kickass.
Yes, the special effects are great, score is wonderful (especially the one specifically used for Erik), the cinematography wailed...blah blah blah.
I could go on and on and on.
But I won't. I'll just say go watch it. Enjoy it. Fangirl with me.
That's all.
Now, can anyone point me to fic, please?
♥
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no subject
Date: 2011-06-04 06:38 pm (UTC)Geeks of the world unite!
I was all meh about this movie for some time, having been burned by the last X-Men movie and the Wolverine shit fest. (Oh, don't get me started.)
THIS. THIS. THIS.
My feelings about The Last Stand are just -- really strong, lol. I hated that movie. I mean, it takes a lot for me to hate a movie and I really hated that movie. Everything. The minimalization of Angel, Jubilee, and Beast. The way they had Rogue decide to become human -- not because it was a conflict her character had for years which it was in comic canon -- but for a fucking boy. The complete and total fuck up with the Phoenix aspect of that story -- multiple personalities, my ass, she's a FUCKING GODDESS-LIKE BEING. The death of Scott and the hands of Jean for fuck's sake. The fact that the ONLY person to notice that Scott is dead is fucking Logan. The anti-climatic "death" of Professor X. Ororo. (Yeah, that's all I have to say because srsly she was way fucking better than they let her be.)
And as much as I love Logan, and I really do, centering the whole of that universe on Wolverine is ridiculous especially since he wasn't even one of the original five but whatever, I'll stop cause I can rant about this for ages.
Anyway, lol, I felt the same way you did when I first saw the trailer but the Cuban Missile crisis angle and admittingly, the scene of Erik pulling the sub out of the water with tears in his eyes kind of got me, lol.
the core of the movie-the conflict between Charles and Erik.
Brian Singer told him that Charles and Erik are Martin Luther King and Malcom X, and while both the comics and the movies sometimes forget that part. They sometimes make Magneto entirely too villainous, IMHO-that Erik has REALLY good reasons for what he does.
THIS. RIGHT. HERE.
That is by far the best description of those two characters and their conflict. They are two sides of the same coin. Their goal is exactly the same: the survival of the mutants. They just go about it in completely polar opposite ways: one chooses peace, the other force.
And seriously, Robin, this movie gets that. You see Erik's side plainly, you actually are on his side because he's right. Charles is too eventually. And they are both wrong.
And I love that's shown to you in this. That Erik isn't this horrible villian or that Charles isn't this sainted hero. It's layered in their characters. Their reasons behind how they see things especially Erik. He's protrayed more like the anti-hero I've always kind of seen him as rather than the single-minded villian previous movies and some comic universes like to show him as.
Fassbender is brill in this part. He touches into the core of Erik and just lays it all out there.
James...dude, James is heaven to watch. His body language, his grace, his connection with Michael and the character, it's awesome.
With that I'll be quiet cause I want you to totes enjoy the movie without my like spoiling everything, lol.
I love that you like me in how you go see these movies. I walk in there knowing full well I am not going to see something resembles the canon I have in my head and I'm okay with that, lol. It's the only way.
So, yeah, I geeked out again but eeeeeee...so good, Robin. SO GOOD.
I can't wait to hear what you think!
Love you back!