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

[rivkat]

Interesting! I heard him agreeing with Shaw in the sense of "you made me a strong monster," not him agreeing with Shaw's goals of wiping out humans just yet, and likewise I thought "we are the better men" was "we haven't tried to kill anyone for what they are instead of what they've done." Paranoia yes--though objectively fairly well justified paranoia--but superiority no, except insofar as it is superior not to have committed genocide.

And I think we're talking about the same stuff Abigail Nussbaum saw, and she's more on your side--because what is a victim supposed to do, in this narrative? Is it monstrous not to forgive? I haven't seen anyone worrying about him killing the Nazis; I think Charles was right, for the wrong reasons, that he shouldn't have tried to kill the Soviets and Americans--a show of ability to harm combined with an offer to negotiate would have been much smarter--but I don't think it's monstrous to shoot the same weapons that were shot at you first back at the people who shot them. Where should Magneto have stopped, and isn't Xavier naive at best to think that he shouldn't have started? (Xavier implicitly decided that killing Shaw was better than the alternative when he failed to release Shaw from his control so that Magneto could kill him.)

[sorrel]

Huh! It actually never even occurred to me that interpretation of his words; I think this is a case of my knowledge of his later character tainting my reading. So I guess I should have prefaced this whole discussion with "actually I'm not sure I can look at the movie as a lone entity."

I don't find his failure to forgive those who trespassed against him, so to speak, monstrous at all. And I honestly don't think, unlike the essayist, that Erik killing Shaw was the point of no return, because I think that Charles had pretty much accepted that Shaw was going to die, even though he tried to argue against it. But while I found Xavier's "following orders" line grotesque in the extreme (which was pretty much the point) I don't think that single-handedly destroying an entire fleet full of human beings is acceptable morally or even strategically. I mean, they walked in there to stop a war, even Erik was on board with that- what, exactly, did he think that blowing up all those American and Russian fleets would do? He would be single-handedly condemning his fledgeling race to a witchunt that would soon become global in scale. I think that scene rendered him unheroic not because of his moral choices, which were sketchy but understandable, but because of the sheer idiocy of his moment of rage. Charles Xavier wasn't flawless, and he certainly wasn't guiltless, but I do think in that context that for all his sense of privilege and naivete he did genuinely have a better grasp on both the politics of the situation and the predictability of human nature.

And a side note, because hey it's not like this comment isn't epic already, another thing I see Erik lauded on in comparison to Charles is his treatment of Raven. And yet his campaign of "self-acceptance" instead feels deliberate and manipulative; the scene where she comes to his bed and he kisses her before sending her away skeeved me right the hell out. And not just because of later movies- although what he did to her in the third movie, when she takes the shot meant for him and is turned human against her will, and he walks away from her like she is no longer of any importance, definitely colored my reading of all of his interactions with her. I couldn't help but see all of his actions toward her as predatory and self-serving.

[rivkat]

I think we agree that actually destroying the fleets would have been boneheaded. Tactical error, absolutely. I think we let many heroes have equally boneheaded moments without losing their heroism (though usually it's the reverse bonehead move of letting the irredeemably bad guy live so he can do more damage later).

I didn't feel Erik was manipulative--again, this is probably because I didn't feel influenced by the later/earlier movies in this one. He told her what I think he honestly believed, that she was most beautiful as herself, and I thought the kiss was something she wanted and was old enough to want for herself. He had more experience of the world than she did, certainly, but I think she was old enough to choose who she wanted to experiment with--and I don't think he slept with her, which would've been over the line. But even Xavier acknowledges her as a fully developed moral agent right after, when he tells her to go with Erik. I guess I didn't find him any more self-serving than any leader who says "follow me and I'll do good things."