I want Bryan Singer back

[rusty_halo]

Haven't seen X-Men 3 yet?

Here's what to do:

Put X2 in your DVD player. Turn out the lights and turn the volume up.

Appreciate the depth of the story. Revel in the nuance, the complexity, the layers. Enjoy the fact that even the "villains" are treated as three-dimensional characters, that the metaphor is explored in a variety of intriguing ways, that the various storylines are so perfectly woven together. Realize how carefully the events are foreshadowed, and how genuine the emotion is, how honestly you believe the relationships between the characters.

Preserve your memories of the first two films... and save your money for Superman Returns.

--one pissed off former X-Men movie fan

(On the other hand, if you want to see inane action movie cliches, characters acting like they're possessed by really boring puppets, stuff blowing up, pointless comic book shoutouts, and not a single drop of complexity or genuine emotion ... yeah, go see X-Men 3.)

Comments

[rusty_halo.livejournal.com]

In this movie, though, the juxtaposition of Xavier's "fixing" of Jean with Angel's gruesome attempt to "fix" his wings makes it clear that Xavier is making a really dubious ethical call, and I think it's strongly implied that this played a significant role in his parting of ways with Magneto. The comics are filled with cases of Xavier meddling with people's minds for what he claims is their own good, and he's never ever been called to account for it, so I was delighted to see it taking center stage here.

I wish I'd seen what you describe here, because it would've been cool. But I honestly didn't feel like they were trying to point out any kind of ambiguity in Xavier's actions; if anything the characters were more black (Magneto) and white (Xavier) than ever here. Of course, I saw lots of darkness in what Xavier did (it was horrible, and I was pretty much rooting for Jean to kill him), but I don't think the film really treated it as dark. Xavier was basically proved right when Jean went nuts and Wolverine had to kill her.

Unfortunately, turning Jean into the object of a philosophical tug-of-war between Xavier and Magneto pretty much reduces her to a pawn, which is a real step backwards from the strong, determined, self-motivated hero we saw in the previous movies.

Yes, and that really pissed me off after the buildup of Jean as an actual strong character in X2. I liked that, even though she was the object of a love triangle, she asserted herself and was clearly in control (she chose Scott--it was ultimately her making an active choice), whereas here she was just totally a pawn to be used by the men around her. Even when Wolverine killed her, you felt sorrier for him for having to kill the woman he loved, than for Jean (who wasn't really even an individual anymore at that point). Not to mention the sexism in the idea of a woman who can't control her power/ the idea that it was right for Xavier to cut her off from it instead of helping her deal with it and use it for good. UGH, and the fact that evil Jean automatically equalled sexual Jean. Oh, and why didn't Storm even seem to care of feel bad about killing Jean? It was all "Wolverine, you have to kill her," when really if you look at the previous film, it was Storm who'd known her longer and had more of a relationship with her--didn't Storm even feel sad about the death of her friend?

And don't even get me started on Rogue giving up her powers. That was so one-sidedly stupid. Either they should've shown it as the tragedy it was (Bobby should've dumped her immediately, that's for sure) or they should've had her come in at a pivotal moment and use her powers to save someone, thus showing that even though her difference has major social drawbacks, it's also a power that she can use for good. But they just went for making her utterly pathetic.

Or (to get off the sexism rant), what about Iceman and Pyro? They were friends in the previous film. Their showdown should've had some layers, depth, sadness, or at least the passion of friendship turned to hatred. But it wasn't even a very interesting fight! Just an excuse to show Bobby covered in ice so the comic fans could squee.

I don't know... I'm glad you liked it, but I really didn't see most of the stuff you're saying. I don't think they explored Magneto and Xavier's differences in any great depth. The one thing I did like was that Magneto clearly didn't want Xavier to die and was sorry when it happened, but aside from that... meh.

[toysdream.livejournal.com]

(Reposting this to fix a ghastly formatting error... stupid non-editable comments!)

I guess it's often hard to tell whether a story's deliberately trying to be complex and ambiguous, or if one is simply trying too hard to rationalize a shoddy story. I suspect this often comes down to the degree of trust one has in the creators. In this case, since Brett Ratner has yet to distinguish himself as a director and the scriptwriters are relative newbies, I don't think we need to go out of our way to look for deeper levels of meaning.

Still, I think there's some basis for thinking that the creators are deliberately calling Xavier's actions into question. Wolverine seems to take a pretty dim view of Xavier's judgement - I recall some grumbling from him about how animals don't take kindly to being caged - and I think the audience is expected to take his side over Xavier's. The fact that Jean eventually goes into full psychic meltdown seems to vindicate Xavier's dire warnings, but if Wolverine is to be believed, repressing this side of her personality has only made it that much worse.

The problem, of course, is that this "dark side" comes completely out of nowhere. Hookles and I just sat down and rewatched the first two movies, and while the first one has its share of weird hints and strange behavior on Jean's part, her depiction in the second one is so spirited and confident and unabashedly heroic that the notion of a repressed evil persona seems kind of bonkers.

Be that as it may, I didn't feel that the filmmakers were putting Xavier in a terribly saintly light. Even his post-credits resurrection shows him blithely stepping over something that Xavier himself had earlier identified as a pretty questionable ethical line. And meanwhile, I thought Magneto came off rather well in some respects; his insistence that Jean doesn't need to be "fixed" or controlled echoes the sentiments of all right-thinking mutants regarding the prospect of being "cured," and his agenda here is very much one of mutant self-defense rather than a crackpot scheme to mutant-ize world leaders or explode the heads of the entire Homo Sapien population. Of course, his ruthless methods tend to undercut his noble goals, but that seems consistent with the previous movies.

Once again, I've blathered on and on about Jean and Xavier and Magneto, but when it comes to Rogue and Iceman and Pyro I think I'll just agree with you. I was really hoping that Rogue would end her reunion with Bobby with a firm "goodbye," confirming that she took the cure for her own sake rather than his, but instead I'll just have to settle for my shippy conviction that studly Colossus will catch her on the rebound. :-)