X-Men: First Class...
I loved this movie. I watched it smiling. I loved it on more counts than I can name. I loved the way it was true to the X-Men story, and yet didn't repeat stories I'd already seen, and provided a number of interesting characters. It relied more on character and story than special effects, and yet I liked the special effects as well ( Read more... )
Oh, no sexual tension at all. But when Xavier said they were "together", and at other moments, I thought there were nuances. I thought it was implied that she kept her white blonde girl look because he liked it. Certainly nothing was spelled out and I'm not commited to this intepretation; but I rather like it. Including the nothing that if it was a sexual relationship, it had already faded and they were ready for a parting of the ways.
It's a Hollywood movie so M would have been a screaming harridan if she would have thought that Magneto was some sort of rival. I really wish Hollywood were actually capable of portraying polyamory but their portrayals for mature monogamy are also so few and far between that I don't have any hopes.
I certainly can't prove anything to the contrary. I wish!
in the comics Riptide has different powers and is part of the Marauders.
Yes. Totally confusing. Another character with the same name. Any other resemblance being... hard to find.
Is she pretending? How can you tell? I don't remember her saying anything like that.
No, no, that was me, interpreting like mad, and going more from the comics background than the movie. Emma being the plain jane who made herself into something else. And it was part of the theme that she didn't really like the way Shaw treated her.
As for Mystique's age - again, I'm going entirely from comics canon here, embroidering happily on the movie. There was nothing there to imply Mystique wasn't really a teenager. But I don't like the idea of so big a change in the character, and I like the idea the Mystique is still whatever age Mystique is, but not telling people her real age.
I don't really remember the ending. You mean the bit with Xavier in the wheelchair? Why did it make you cringe?
I definitely want to see it again.
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Okay. The movie is certainly ripe for interpretations and speculations.
"interpreting like mad, and going more from the comics background than the movie."
I see. I think of this movie as a separate alternate universe. After all, Emma, Beast, and Havok are all a generation older than Cyclops and Storm (from the previous movies)... So.. Havok is Scott's father here? (that noise is my mind boggling)
"I like the idea the Mystique is still whatever age Mystique is, but not telling people her real age."
Definitely!
"You mean the bit with Xavier in the wheelchair?"
Earlier, when the mutants split into the evil and the good groups. *All* the good X-Men where white US males. All of the others, women and non-USAian males, are the evil. I sat there wondering why are we still being fed this crap in 2011?
The new Angel also made me cringe: the only non-white woman in the group is a stripper? And of course the start where Moira just had to strip to her underwear. Sigh.
The writers also managed to not portray 1960s racism even though there was a black man on the team and managed to put in 2011 racism by killing him first.
With just a little more thought into characters who aren't white men, this movie could have been so much better. Sigh.
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I'd like to think he was lying, or changed his mind, because as the movie progresses, I can't help thinking of them as having a physical relationship - just as I can't and don't want to accept as movie canon that Mystique is a young girl or a teen or a young woman. I'd rather think of her more as she is in the comic - a ruthless manipulator quite capable of pretending to be much younger than she is to make people underestimate it. It doesn't make any of her feelings less valid. It just... changes their context a little.
Yes, it does seem to be a separate/unique universe, one which matches up with the movies in most but not all ways. I can't help but tweak it in my head, though.
I noticed the racism of the good/bad split of the mutants, too. Mitigated by the fact that I like the evil mutants more than the good one - wouldn't, in fact, call them evil. Since the comics was both non-sexist and non-racist, it seems odd that they would do it that way. The point is, I suppose, that the 'bad' mutants have been marginalized and cast out, so they have a reason to oppose a world that won't accept them - but I'm still uncomforatable with that.
It seemed odd to me that a woman who wanted to appear as if she was not a mutant to be accepted by others should be a stripper when she has very visible wings on her back.
The writers also managed to not portray 1960s racism even though there was a black man on the team and managed to put in 2011 racism by killing him first.
Good point. I liked the inclusion on 1960s sexism. Again, not so much the 2011 variety, i.e., making Mystique comparatively juvenile. The movie was about Magneto and Xavier; they didn't need to be contrasted to a younger, needier female.
With just a little more thought into characters who aren't white men, this movie could have been so much better.
So true.
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