what I've been up to (3/3)
Jun. 21st, 2014 08:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessLet's get this right, four hundred years ago (actually, a few weeks ago) I went to see X-Men Days of Future Past. I started to write a review, or at least a reaction post, ran out of time before I'd said all I wanted to say and for a while didn't have the time to finish off my thoughts and check I'd spelt everyone's names properly. Oh for a timeturner or a mutant with helpful powers. Anyway, here it is.
This did about as well as a film trying to do the near-impossible task of aligning the two timeframes (or six if you’re being picky) of the X-men movie franchise was going to, I think. There are certain things that it did that I have a visceral reaction to: yay! Scott is still alive and they’re sticking to the fact that Jean chose him, boo! Rogue got literally no lines, and they’re lucky that prequel!Mystique is my girl. I know that the film was mainly about Charles getting over his manpain and finding hope, but there was just enough there that I could read it as being about Raven’s soul and Mystique’s agency. If they want to make a spin-off where, after this, Mystique tries to balance being Raven and Mystique – awesome. (I read a rumour once. While Channing Tatum’s Gambit is more likely, as they have Jennifer Lawrence, I’ve got to believe...) Apparently the next film will be the one set up in the stinger and it will take place during the 1980s.
In one sense, it dumped us forward a fair bit after X-men 3/The Wolverine and X-Men: First Class, and though I sense it would have been depressing, I would have liked to know what happened in those lost times. How did Erik and Mystique’s relationship deteriorate so? (Basically, more Fassbender and Lawrence being All Intense scenes would be fine with me.) How did Xavier come back to life and rebuild his relationship with Erik? Presumably the rise of Trask and the Sentinels affected the latter. Was Magneto part of bringing Xavier back to life? How did he, Mystique and Rogue and the world react to the Cure wearing off? I don’t need to see how Mystique, Beast and Rogue died in the adaptive Sentinel timeline, although I wonder if Bobby/Kitty got together before or after that. What happened to Yukio and the X-kids of X-men 3? Also we got introduced to a lot of new mutants who helped, but only saw their powers in action, really. We didn’t get to know them. It just feels like that was material for a whole movie, especially in the Steward-McKellan etc timeline that was skipped over.
For a moment, I thought the future we were being shown wasn’t the one that followed on from the trilogy and that we were discounting The Wolverine until there were flashbacks from that. It was a problem that there was no Professor X-Mystique interaction in the trilogy, so Patrick Stewart had to sell a whole relationship in a line of exposition, which he is almost capable of doing.
Also, I liked Charles Xavier much more after this movie than I probably have ever, because it faced some of his flaws and earned more of his heroism.
But how did Wolverine get his adamantium claws back after The Wolverine? I can buy that he might have chosen to if things were really desperate with the Sentinels, but how? Also, his surprise at having bone claws when he went back into his body in the 1970s had diminished returns for me. Although I remember thinking he had more of a chance against Magneto (which as it turns out was poppycock, because Erik is quite thorough) without the adamantium.
I didn’t need to roll my eyes at the foregrounding of Logan in yet another X-Men movie, because it was really about the triumvirate, with him playing a supporting role in the past (relationship counsellor every now and then). Between having to keep his emotions in check (and I thought the use of Striker turned out to be unexpectedly brilliant, because I would have argued that they’d dipped too deeply into that particular well before), with the streak of grey (!?!) and the insinuation of what he’d been through under the Sentinels (even more people lost), Wolverine seemed faded.
I though McAvoy did exceptionally well with what his Xavier was going through (the visual language was of heroin addiction). Fassbender did his best to root Magneto in reality (and live up to McKellen) and Lawrence, as ever, was aces. One thing that’s struck me in rewatching the X-Men movies is how male actors playing Mystique usually add a softness to their voices. I don’t know that it’s strictly necessary – there were a couple of exceptions here in the guy playing the Vietnamese general and the President during Mystique’s hero moment. Obviously, there are moments when softness is going to creep in because of her reaction, but...I’m thinking of Jackman’s take on her in the Statue of Liberty fight, which was good.
Oh, and you just knew the costume and hair people were desperately ducking and diving to show a 70s Mystique without treading on American Hustle territory.
Quicksilver was great, although all I could think in that brilliant scene in the kitchen was ‘where WAS this lightness of touch in Superman Returns, Singer?’ I think there needs to be a factsheet explaining why he’s different from the character Aaron Taylor-Johnson will be playing in the MCU. (I tried to explain it all to the person who I watched the film with after. And failed, I think.) So, they dangled the possibility that he’s Magneto’s son (although isn’t it movieverse canon that mutation passes through mothers? Something it skirts over because it’s all about the fathers. Of course. See Striker turning up again, which I don’t necessarily object to. Even if I really don’t think we need a remake of Origins: Wolverine to explain how Wolvie got metalled up in this timeline.)
The tone shifted quite a lot, I could have done without some of the broader comedy – especially when the punchline of the joke was ‘it’s the 1970s’. Although if it was a musical joke, I was usually fine with it. The wryer, banterier stuff was fine and leavened the darkness of the future, the Sentinels and what Magneto did and the others faced. I’ve said this before, but a lot of bad stuff went down offscreen.
I thought it was useful to have the director of the first two films, just in the little nods he brought in – Mystique interacting with Trask’s secretary, the ball bearings, guns around Magneto and the use of the mansion.
However, there is more than one subtext to the X-men, Singer, so I wish they’d given more thought to disability issues. How did the fact that he’s a little person affect Trask’s choices? They foregrounded Xavier’s choice to suppress his powers being because of wanting to block the voices and pain, but it meant he could walk and I’m not convinced that they thought through what that implied, beyond thinking that the physical weakness and dependence on others was a cool visual and a check on having this enormous power. I’d love to read disability activists’ take on the movie. And they introduced a few non-white characters in the destructive future, but Storm was, I think, the main POC as usual. And we were reminded of how the experience of the Holocaust affected Erik, but the main (barely ‘sub’) subtext was queer.
Though I see why others see the slash, my shipping is dictated by feelings for Mystique. I hated the goopy-eyed shot of Hank looking at Mystique, even if I thought she was awesome too. Hank had shown no signs of appreciating Mystique/Raven qua Mystique in this or XMFC. This was always something in Erik’s favour. Now, he still manipulated her, turned on her when he thought it was necessary and is a raging psycho, so while I enjoy their scenes and think they’re electric, I can’t quite ship Mystique/Magneto, though I’d probably read some fic about them.
At least Charles moved on to appreciating that Mystique/Raven has agency and the right to make choices more. He was all mopey that she’d left him, managing to forget that he sent her away at the end of XMFC. He wouldn’t give her what she wanted, at all, part of which included him not seeing her as his little sister. That is to say that despite the original trilogy, I can sort of ship them, even if I know that the problem is that it’s a triangle, with Raven sort of positioned as a fulcrum between Charles and Erik.
I’ll just quickly say that the intensity of the scene with Alex and the fact that they’re almost the last ones standing would make me interested in Mystique/Havok.
Meanwhile, I found Kitty/Bobby quite sweet. My headcanon, based on what was shown in the movie, was that they found each other after Marie had died and are definitely a war couple. But, overall, I think better for each other than Bobby/Rogue. Like, I find it hard to believe that she’s even given him her name, if, as was suggested at the end of X3 that she’d left the school. They both deserve better, so seeing them moon over each other as if they were still teenagers in the new future Logan woke up to was disappointing.
So, it was less of a mess than it could have been, but still a mess in some ways. What happened in the coda, really? I like to think Professor X’s long talk with Logan included ‘and then we did the Pheonix saga much, much better and Jean had agency and used her powers believably’. And yet, I got excited by the scene after all the credits!
Please feel free to link to any interesting stuff about the movie, especially people writing about the treatment of disability in the film.
This did about as well as a film trying to do the near-impossible task of aligning the two timeframes (or six if you’re being picky) of the X-men movie franchise was going to, I think. There are certain things that it did that I have a visceral reaction to: yay! Scott is still alive and they’re sticking to the fact that Jean chose him, boo! Rogue got literally no lines, and they’re lucky that prequel!Mystique is my girl. I know that the film was mainly about Charles getting over his manpain and finding hope, but there was just enough there that I could read it as being about Raven’s soul and Mystique’s agency. If they want to make a spin-off where, after this, Mystique tries to balance being Raven and Mystique – awesome. (I read a rumour once. While Channing Tatum’s Gambit is more likely, as they have Jennifer Lawrence, I’ve got to believe...) Apparently the next film will be the one set up in the stinger and it will take place during the 1980s.
In one sense, it dumped us forward a fair bit after X-men 3/The Wolverine and X-Men: First Class, and though I sense it would have been depressing, I would have liked to know what happened in those lost times. How did Erik and Mystique’s relationship deteriorate so? (Basically, more Fassbender and Lawrence being All Intense scenes would be fine with me.) How did Xavier come back to life and rebuild his relationship with Erik? Presumably the rise of Trask and the Sentinels affected the latter. Was Magneto part of bringing Xavier back to life? How did he, Mystique and Rogue and the world react to the Cure wearing off? I don’t need to see how Mystique, Beast and Rogue died in the adaptive Sentinel timeline, although I wonder if Bobby/Kitty got together before or after that. What happened to Yukio and the X-kids of X-men 3? Also we got introduced to a lot of new mutants who helped, but only saw their powers in action, really. We didn’t get to know them. It just feels like that was material for a whole movie, especially in the Steward-McKellan etc timeline that was skipped over.
For a moment, I thought the future we were being shown wasn’t the one that followed on from the trilogy and that we were discounting The Wolverine until there were flashbacks from that. It was a problem that there was no Professor X-Mystique interaction in the trilogy, so Patrick Stewart had to sell a whole relationship in a line of exposition, which he is almost capable of doing.
Also, I liked Charles Xavier much more after this movie than I probably have ever, because it faced some of his flaws and earned more of his heroism.
But how did Wolverine get his adamantium claws back after The Wolverine? I can buy that he might have chosen to if things were really desperate with the Sentinels, but how? Also, his surprise at having bone claws when he went back into his body in the 1970s had diminished returns for me. Although I remember thinking he had more of a chance against Magneto (which as it turns out was poppycock, because Erik is quite thorough) without the adamantium.
I didn’t need to roll my eyes at the foregrounding of Logan in yet another X-Men movie, because it was really about the triumvirate, with him playing a supporting role in the past (relationship counsellor every now and then). Between having to keep his emotions in check (and I thought the use of Striker turned out to be unexpectedly brilliant, because I would have argued that they’d dipped too deeply into that particular well before), with the streak of grey (!?!) and the insinuation of what he’d been through under the Sentinels (even more people lost), Wolverine seemed faded.
I though McAvoy did exceptionally well with what his Xavier was going through (the visual language was of heroin addiction). Fassbender did his best to root Magneto in reality (and live up to McKellen) and Lawrence, as ever, was aces. One thing that’s struck me in rewatching the X-Men movies is how male actors playing Mystique usually add a softness to their voices. I don’t know that it’s strictly necessary – there were a couple of exceptions here in the guy playing the Vietnamese general and the President during Mystique’s hero moment. Obviously, there are moments when softness is going to creep in because of her reaction, but...I’m thinking of Jackman’s take on her in the Statue of Liberty fight, which was good.
Oh, and you just knew the costume and hair people were desperately ducking and diving to show a 70s Mystique without treading on American Hustle territory.
Quicksilver was great, although all I could think in that brilliant scene in the kitchen was ‘where WAS this lightness of touch in Superman Returns, Singer?’ I think there needs to be a factsheet explaining why he’s different from the character Aaron Taylor-Johnson will be playing in the MCU. (I tried to explain it all to the person who I watched the film with after. And failed, I think.) So, they dangled the possibility that he’s Magneto’s son (although isn’t it movieverse canon that mutation passes through mothers? Something it skirts over because it’s all about the fathers. Of course. See Striker turning up again, which I don’t necessarily object to. Even if I really don’t think we need a remake of Origins: Wolverine to explain how Wolvie got metalled up in this timeline.)
The tone shifted quite a lot, I could have done without some of the broader comedy – especially when the punchline of the joke was ‘it’s the 1970s’. Although if it was a musical joke, I was usually fine with it. The wryer, banterier stuff was fine and leavened the darkness of the future, the Sentinels and what Magneto did and the others faced. I’ve said this before, but a lot of bad stuff went down offscreen.
I thought it was useful to have the director of the first two films, just in the little nods he brought in – Mystique interacting with Trask’s secretary, the ball bearings, guns around Magneto and the use of the mansion.
However, there is more than one subtext to the X-men, Singer, so I wish they’d given more thought to disability issues. How did the fact that he’s a little person affect Trask’s choices? They foregrounded Xavier’s choice to suppress his powers being because of wanting to block the voices and pain, but it meant he could walk and I’m not convinced that they thought through what that implied, beyond thinking that the physical weakness and dependence on others was a cool visual and a check on having this enormous power. I’d love to read disability activists’ take on the movie. And they introduced a few non-white characters in the destructive future, but Storm was, I think, the main POC as usual. And we were reminded of how the experience of the Holocaust affected Erik, but the main (barely ‘sub’) subtext was queer.
Though I see why others see the slash, my shipping is dictated by feelings for Mystique. I hated the goopy-eyed shot of Hank looking at Mystique, even if I thought she was awesome too. Hank had shown no signs of appreciating Mystique/Raven qua Mystique in this or XMFC. This was always something in Erik’s favour. Now, he still manipulated her, turned on her when he thought it was necessary and is a raging psycho, so while I enjoy their scenes and think they’re electric, I can’t quite ship Mystique/Magneto, though I’d probably read some fic about them.
At least Charles moved on to appreciating that Mystique/Raven has agency and the right to make choices more. He was all mopey that she’d left him, managing to forget that he sent her away at the end of XMFC. He wouldn’t give her what she wanted, at all, part of which included him not seeing her as his little sister. That is to say that despite the original trilogy, I can sort of ship them, even if I know that the problem is that it’s a triangle, with Raven sort of positioned as a fulcrum between Charles and Erik.
I’ll just quickly say that the intensity of the scene with Alex and the fact that they’re almost the last ones standing would make me interested in Mystique/Havok.
Meanwhile, I found Kitty/Bobby quite sweet. My headcanon, based on what was shown in the movie, was that they found each other after Marie had died and are definitely a war couple. But, overall, I think better for each other than Bobby/Rogue. Like, I find it hard to believe that she’s even given him her name, if, as was suggested at the end of X3 that she’d left the school. They both deserve better, so seeing them moon over each other as if they were still teenagers in the new future Logan woke up to was disappointing.
So, it was less of a mess than it could have been, but still a mess in some ways. What happened in the coda, really? I like to think Professor X’s long talk with Logan included ‘and then we did the Pheonix saga much, much better and Jean had agency and used her powers believably’. And yet, I got excited by the scene after all the credits!
Please feel free to link to any interesting stuff about the movie, especially people writing about the treatment of disability in the film.
