X-Men: First Class

[rivkat]

Loved it!  Am largely in agreement with Abigail Nussbaum's review, except that I think the heroes of the movie are Erik and Mystique, and that the movie (absent metatextual expectations that Charles is the good guy because of all the other canon) validates Erik's viewpoint and makes Charles out to be an idiot who thinks he's smart and thinks that his privilege will protect him. 

And by the way, where does the guy who's willing to mindfuck humans not just to carry out secret spy activities but also to protect his own ass get to have the moral high ground?  Also, he must have mindwiped all the people who met him the first time around at the CIA, given that McTaggart specially requested to go meet him in particular, which meant there were records of who he was, but I'll just assume he had the brains to do that because that doesn't involve an iota of emotional intelligence.

I mean, how epically dumb do you have to be to make your plea for the survival of hundreds of sailors be "they're just following orders" when you are talking to a Holocaust survivor?  Especially when the truer "hundreds of men on those ships have no power at all and they'll be dying for the actions of a few" is also available?

I appreciated that the theme of "saying just the wrong thing" was consistent, though.  While Xavier walked away with the gold, bronze goes to Havoc for calling Hank "Bozo," and silver to Hank for telling Mystique that she was only beautiful when she wasn't herself.

But this is why I loved it!  There was character momentum and Erik was a badass Mossad agent without an agency to back him up.  And the great powers did what they do, which was unite to face an apparently greater enemy (the Soviets were our friends while we fought the Germans; then the Germans were our friends while we didn't directly fight the Soviets; allying against an apparently greater threat was perfect Cold War logic).  

Could've done with Darwin surviving and Emma Frost having an actual motivation, to be sure, but overall I am now wholly invested in Mystique/Magneto(/Xavier or any combination thereof).  What abbreviation are we using, and is the fandom eligible for Yuletide?  I hear there's a kink meme, but I haven't gone looking to find whether there is good stuff there.

Comments

[ceares]

I mean, how epically dumb do you have to be to make your plea for the survival of hundreds of sailors be "they're just following orders" when you are talking to a Holocaust survivor? Pretty much the 1st thing that came out of my mouth when the movie was over. I agree with everything you've said here. I've always tended to agree more with Magneto than Prof. X anyway but this movie just cemented it.

Also that while Charles can access other's memories and have sympathy for them, he doesn't have true empathy. I don't know if the idea was to have him come off as a privileged, naive, kind of douchy character--with the idea that he grows into the Prof X persona and Erik as a bad ass vigilante antihero character (who lets just say if he's auditioning for James Bond--totally pulled it off)who grows into a meglomaniac but that's how it came off.

[liviapenn]

Loved it! Am largely in agreement with Abigail Nussbaum's review, except that I think the heroes of the movie are Erik and Mystique, and that the movie (absent metatextual expectations that Charles is the good guy because of all the other canon) validates Erik's viewpoint and makes Charles out to be an idiot who thinks he's smart and thinks that his privilege will protect him.

*nod nod* I don't really see any other way to read Charles sending Raven off with Erik at the end, with "...yeah, I promised you a lot of things, didn't I. Sorry!" Even he realizes how totally flawed his treatment of her was. He never even saw her, and Erik did.

[cathexys]

Yes, all of that. I read Nussbaum's review and others complaining about this issue and I kept on thinking: But the movie's all about how Charles fucked up! Like present day Professor X is still living down his asinine actions of his youth and the way he failed the two people he loved most completely! And nothing in the text really made a case for Charles's pov--it was Erik's pretty much right all the way!

XMFC? that's a bit long. Just FC?

I literally cringed when he said they're just following orders, and while the never again took the overall problematic Holocaust analogy/use a bit too far for me, it made sense PERSONALLY for Erik!

Oh Darwin! here's already a vid, though: http://talitha78.dreamwidth.org/218746.html

[sinensis]

Yeah. As a narrative device, I loved the privileged jerkiness and failures of Charles' character; a thing that I really enjoy about the X-men universe is that there is no single comfortable place to let your moral sympathies rest.

I get the impression from various interviews that McAvoy, at least, was well aware of Xavier's failings.

There's a good Darwin story here, which was nice to read after being disappointed by his fate in the film.

[sorrel]

I think they actually did have a comment or two about Xavier's Rich White Boy privelege- Erik said something about "oh, how did you cope" when Charles first dragged them there for training, so there was some awareness. And on a larger, metatextual level I do see what you mean about Erik being the hero of the piece, in the sense that he was choosing to fight back against the oppressors and Charles was choosing, essentially, to conform. But Charles, for all of his numerous flaws (mindwiping Moira holy shit), at least wasn't advocating racial superiority. So that's a point to him. I mean, I get the headspace that Erik was in, where you have been made worthless because of something in your genes that is no fault of your own, and I get the "turn the tables" temptation of the victimized. But he was, essentially, a Nazi hunter that grew up to BECOME A NAZI, because I can't separate this movie from the ones to which it was a prequel. And I don't find that particularly heroic at all.

[deadlychameleon.livejournal.com]

I can't see Magneto as the better man here. He's convinced that mutants and normals CANNOT live together in peace.

I think it would be basically impossible for Xavier to truly be naive, since he's telepathic. He KNOWS the horrible things that people think about mutants. OTOH, this also gives him the knowledge that it's impossible for the quest for mutant acceptance to be anything other than a long, painful struggle.