X-Men 2 Rewatched (comes with Mystique fanfic rec)
You may have wondered why I didn't include X2 among the sequels surpassing the originals yesterday. I mean, I loved the film when it came out. (Still do, having just rewatched.) But in retrospect, it does have a few plot and characterisation problems that prove the mess that was X3 didn't come from nowhere and/or Bryan Singer's departure from the franchise.
To start with the complaint so I can finish with the praises: to me, the big problem with X2 is the way Jean Grey is (under-)written. If you want to make Jean's sacrifice the big climax of the film (and after such a stunningly horrible event as the Dark Cerebro sequence, no less, so the stakes are really high), then you better give Jean something of an arc leading up to this. But movieverse Jean simply doesn't have one. She's worried about her growing powers at the start of the film and has A Moment with Logan in the middle where she's attracted but turns him down... and that's it. Leaving aside the very dubious implication if we're to assume that Jean's attitude towards her powers and her sexuality are connected, let's compare this with what some of the other characters get. Logan goes from being obsessed with his past and letting it drive him away from his friends repeatedly to deciding his newfound community matters more and literally turning his back on said past. Conversely, John becomes Pyro and leaves one community for another. Bobby comes out to his parents and loses the "normal" life he came from. Rogue who in the last film was the damsel in distress who kept having to be rescued/ the human sacrifice now is the one doing the rescuing - she saves Wolverine via making Bobby go back for him when Logan would have walked towards Stryker, she saves a whole lot of cops from getting torched by Pyro (more about that scene later), and she saves all the older X-Men later, flying the jet to the rescue. Kurt/Nightcrawler starts mindcontrolled, afraid and alone and ends the film having become a team member. But Jean? She doesn't have a story of her own here, and it doesn't help, either, that the way her exit is written is less than stellar; it's not obvious why only Jean of everyone there should have been able to lift the jet in order to get it going, and why she needed to be outside it in order to do so.
(Footnote: in the comicverse, Jean's story was written and retconned and told in various continuity forms - 616 Jean, Ultimate Jean, 1602 Jean - but at the core of it, what triggers Jean's transformation into Phoenix is always a sacrifice in order to save her friends' lives, thus making her becoming Dark Phoenix later all the more tragic. Now it was clear the movieverse couldn't use the original form of said sacrifice - there is no alien entity for Jean to bond with in order to save the day; I'm not quibbling about this. But just look at 1602!Jean to see how Jean pushing herself and her powers above and beyond in order to save the day can be written in a way that leaves no doubt she was the only person in that particular situation who could have, and that this was the only way, without involving aliens.)
Letting Charles say at the end "she made a choice" would work if Jean had been given an arc where making choices was her big problem, but actually, there is none. Neither in X1 nor in X2 does she have a problem to act in fight situations. Of course, next we get Logan trying to comfort Scott by saying "she did make a choice - she chose you" which I can accept as Logan wanting to help but not having much practice in comforting adult men, so coming up with the most stupid thing possible, because he would neither be the first nor the last to do that in grief situations, but if he's supposed to speak with narrative authority, then it's infinitely headdeskworthy. Does the film seriously want to imply Jean's big problem in life was "Logan or Scott, which one should I choose?" I really, really hope not.
To sum up my complaint: see, that's what I mean when I say the utterly botched job to tell the Dark Phoenix story in X3 didn't start there. It starts here, and it's on Singer's shoulders as much as on anyone elses.
On to the praise. X2 is far less Logan-centric and more ensemble-showcasing than I remembered, which I mean as a big plus. The film already starts out with a considerable ensemble of characters inherited from X1, and introduces new ones, and yet, as opposed to many a sequel (lookin' at you, Spiderfranchise!) does not feel overburdened by them. Introducing Kurt Wagner ("but in the Munich circus, they called me the Amazing Nightcrawler") via an action sequence where he seems to be the archetypical thug/assassin in the Sabretooth vein only to reveal later what a gentle soul he is was inspired, and his very existence helps with a problem some people addressed after X1, i.e. that the X-Men featured only mutants that could "pass" as ordinary humans (with the arguable exception of Scott, and wearing eyeglasses helps with that). (Hence one of many reasons why I think Hank becoming Beast in First Class before the film is over was very necessary, especially given that Raven becomes Mystique and leaves.) Bobby and Pyro, only briefly shown in X1, get fleshed out more, to the point where they're essentially reintroduced (especially Pyro), and there are a lot of great character moments - Bobby and Logan in the kitchen and his coming out scene with his parents (aka the one where the metaphor is glaringly obvious), with the reaction of the parents is incredibly hurtful because it strikes one as very realistic and because it's not mustache twirling evil - "have you tried not being a mutant?" cuts deeper, if you ask me, than "begone, you're not my son anymore, unnatural creature!" (Leaving aside the line is pinched from Joyce Summers and Joss Whedon.) Pyro looking at the family photos in Bobby's house, and his scene with Magneto later. Logan tossing the motorcycle keyes at Scott and Scott tossing them back. (I may not believe in movieverse Logan/Jean and complain poor Scott got screwed in the trilogy screentime wise so you can understand why Jimmy Marsden departed for greener pastures, but the Logan/Scott scenes are amusing - and in one instance touching.) Jean and Ororo's exchange in the church ("Are you bored yet?" "Oh yeah.") The fact that Charles is able to see through poor Jason's original illusion because Jason has him able to stand and walk again (and Patrick Stewart plays that moment perfectly), but falls for the illusion where Jason (with a neat gender ambiguity being not just a child but a girl as his mind self) is a lost child in distress who needs him. Even William Stryker, hiss-worthy villain that he is, gets that moment where he talks about his wife's suicide and you understand where this awful man who mutilated his own son and is trying to wipe out the entire mutant population is coming from. The great, great exchange between Kurt and Mystique, which may or may not be a nod to their comicverse relationship as mother and son but completely works on its own and basically sums up the whole mutant issue.
Again, while Mystique doesn't get many lines as herself - more than in X1, but that's not saying much - the one she does get is the most striking of the film. She also has a far greater role already in this film, played by various actors with gusto in addition to Rebecca Romjin, and proving herself the best Trusted Lieutenant ever. Also, as
artaxastra once observed, Mystique's plans are far better than Magneto's. They're less grandiose and they always work. If she weren't that fond of him she'd have taken over as head of the brotherhood and I think the brotherhood (siblinghood?) would habe been better for it. Oh, and rewatching the Mystique scenes confirmed something I thought when reading various First Class fanfics. For all of Magneto's talk of "what's your real name?" (and oh, Sir Ian says that so seductively and shiver-worthy), Charles isn't actually the only one who calls him "Erik". So does Mystique in X2. Repeatedly. So much to fanfics where she's not allowed to. (Actually I think it's a nice way to get their closeness across that she does. I can't see movieverse Pyro being allowed to do it, ever.)
Talking of Mystique, however, brings me to the biggest emotional turbulence of the film, a scene already horrible (in the sense of gut-wrenching, not in the sense of being bad) the first time I watched which now is even worse in the light of First Class. Which is of course Magneto's and Mystique's action in Dark Cerebro. I mean, it was attempted global genocide before already, but no in addition to being an incredible betrayal on Erik's side it's also one by Raven. I hadn't watched the film for a few years, so when Magneto said "it doesn't look as if they're playing by your rules, Charles, maybe it's time to play by theirs" I thought, wait, have I wronged him and he did have that idea spontanously (doesn't excuse it but makes a whole lot easier to deal with emotionally if he didn't have time to think about it), but no, then Mystique comes in and Magneto doesn't have to explain or ask anything of her, she already knows what he wants her to do, so they must have talked about it during that day and night between the jailbreak and this point. The whole Let's-use-Charles-to-kill-every-single-nonmutant-on-the-planet thing was premeditated. Now I've seen it argued that Erik does this only in response to "the humans" having tried to kill all the mutants, but come on. Even Magneto can't be so far gone as to regard William Stryker as a licensed representative of the (non-mutant) human race. (As I said elsewhere, I'd like him to meet some of the non-American Marvelvese inhabitants like T'challa to give him their opinion on having their people condemned to execution for the actions of a member of the American military.) You can see a line from the beach on Cuba to this moment, BUT the Cuba scenario was also substantially different (and Erik not nearly as far gone) - he literally turned the weapons on the people who fired them, not, say, on the entire continent, let alone the world. You can make an argument why this was an understandable but unwise thing to do (and I did in a previous meta post), but it's still worlds away from global genocide. (Which, btw, would have included the entire non-mutant population of Israel. How many million Jews would that have been, Erik?) So there is the attempted global genocide horror, and then there is the horror of what this means in regards to his relationship with Charles. Which post First Class backstory also goes for Mystique. Yes, he was sometimes a privileged dick to her. But he also was her brother and they loved each other, so making him into an instrument of mass murder is a betrayal far beyond anything he did to her. So rewatching the scene gutted me even worse than it originally had done.
Thankfully, there is fanfiction.
andrastes Then Thousand Candles remains the definite take on Charles trying to work through the enormity of it post X2, but it was written years before we found out about movieverse Raven. So I was really glad to find a post-First Class written take on Mystique post X2: A dash of truth spread thinly. Which is an unsual take on Raven/Mystique and her identity issues through the years, examines her relationship with Erik intensely and presents a great alternate take on Charles' attitude to both of them post X2. Highly recommended.
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/703874.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
To start with the complaint so I can finish with the praises: to me, the big problem with X2 is the way Jean Grey is (under-)written. If you want to make Jean's sacrifice the big climax of the film (and after such a stunningly horrible event as the Dark Cerebro sequence, no less, so the stakes are really high), then you better give Jean something of an arc leading up to this. But movieverse Jean simply doesn't have one. She's worried about her growing powers at the start of the film and has A Moment with Logan in the middle where she's attracted but turns him down... and that's it. Leaving aside the very dubious implication if we're to assume that Jean's attitude towards her powers and her sexuality are connected, let's compare this with what some of the other characters get. Logan goes from being obsessed with his past and letting it drive him away from his friends repeatedly to deciding his newfound community matters more and literally turning his back on said past. Conversely, John becomes Pyro and leaves one community for another. Bobby comes out to his parents and loses the "normal" life he came from. Rogue who in the last film was the damsel in distress who kept having to be rescued/ the human sacrifice now is the one doing the rescuing - she saves Wolverine via making Bobby go back for him when Logan would have walked towards Stryker, she saves a whole lot of cops from getting torched by Pyro (more about that scene later), and she saves all the older X-Men later, flying the jet to the rescue. Kurt/Nightcrawler starts mindcontrolled, afraid and alone and ends the film having become a team member. But Jean? She doesn't have a story of her own here, and it doesn't help, either, that the way her exit is written is less than stellar; it's not obvious why only Jean of everyone there should have been able to lift the jet in order to get it going, and why she needed to be outside it in order to do so.
(Footnote: in the comicverse, Jean's story was written and retconned and told in various continuity forms - 616 Jean, Ultimate Jean, 1602 Jean - but at the core of it, what triggers Jean's transformation into Phoenix is always a sacrifice in order to save her friends' lives, thus making her becoming Dark Phoenix later all the more tragic. Now it was clear the movieverse couldn't use the original form of said sacrifice - there is no alien entity for Jean to bond with in order to save the day; I'm not quibbling about this. But just look at 1602!Jean to see how Jean pushing herself and her powers above and beyond in order to save the day can be written in a way that leaves no doubt she was the only person in that particular situation who could have, and that this was the only way, without involving aliens.)
Letting Charles say at the end "she made a choice" would work if Jean had been given an arc where making choices was her big problem, but actually, there is none. Neither in X1 nor in X2 does she have a problem to act in fight situations. Of course, next we get Logan trying to comfort Scott by saying "she did make a choice - she chose you" which I can accept as Logan wanting to help but not having much practice in comforting adult men, so coming up with the most stupid thing possible, because he would neither be the first nor the last to do that in grief situations, but if he's supposed to speak with narrative authority, then it's infinitely headdeskworthy. Does the film seriously want to imply Jean's big problem in life was "Logan or Scott, which one should I choose?" I really, really hope not.
To sum up my complaint: see, that's what I mean when I say the utterly botched job to tell the Dark Phoenix story in X3 didn't start there. It starts here, and it's on Singer's shoulders as much as on anyone elses.
On to the praise. X2 is far less Logan-centric and more ensemble-showcasing than I remembered, which I mean as a big plus. The film already starts out with a considerable ensemble of characters inherited from X1, and introduces new ones, and yet, as opposed to many a sequel (lookin' at you, Spiderfranchise!) does not feel overburdened by them. Introducing Kurt Wagner ("but in the Munich circus, they called me the Amazing Nightcrawler") via an action sequence where he seems to be the archetypical thug/assassin in the Sabretooth vein only to reveal later what a gentle soul he is was inspired, and his very existence helps with a problem some people addressed after X1, i.e. that the X-Men featured only mutants that could "pass" as ordinary humans (with the arguable exception of Scott, and wearing eyeglasses helps with that). (Hence one of many reasons why I think Hank becoming Beast in First Class before the film is over was very necessary, especially given that Raven becomes Mystique and leaves.) Bobby and Pyro, only briefly shown in X1, get fleshed out more, to the point where they're essentially reintroduced (especially Pyro), and there are a lot of great character moments - Bobby and Logan in the kitchen and his coming out scene with his parents (aka the one where the metaphor is glaringly obvious), with the reaction of the parents is incredibly hurtful because it strikes one as very realistic and because it's not mustache twirling evil - "have you tried not being a mutant?" cuts deeper, if you ask me, than "begone, you're not my son anymore, unnatural creature!" (Leaving aside the line is pinched from Joyce Summers and Joss Whedon.) Pyro looking at the family photos in Bobby's house, and his scene with Magneto later. Logan tossing the motorcycle keyes at Scott and Scott tossing them back. (I may not believe in movieverse Logan/Jean and complain poor Scott got screwed in the trilogy screentime wise so you can understand why Jimmy Marsden departed for greener pastures, but the Logan/Scott scenes are amusing - and in one instance touching.) Jean and Ororo's exchange in the church ("Are you bored yet?" "Oh yeah.") The fact that Charles is able to see through poor Jason's original illusion because Jason has him able to stand and walk again (and Patrick Stewart plays that moment perfectly), but falls for the illusion where Jason (with a neat gender ambiguity being not just a child but a girl as his mind self) is a lost child in distress who needs him. Even William Stryker, hiss-worthy villain that he is, gets that moment where he talks about his wife's suicide and you understand where this awful man who mutilated his own son and is trying to wipe out the entire mutant population is coming from. The great, great exchange between Kurt and Mystique, which may or may not be a nod to their comicverse relationship as mother and son but completely works on its own and basically sums up the whole mutant issue.
Again, while Mystique doesn't get many lines as herself - more than in X1, but that's not saying much - the one she does get is the most striking of the film. She also has a far greater role already in this film, played by various actors with gusto in addition to Rebecca Romjin, and proving herself the best Trusted Lieutenant ever. Also, as
artaxastra once observed, Mystique's plans are far better than Magneto's. They're less grandiose and they always work. If she weren't that fond of him she'd have taken over as head of the brotherhood and I think the brotherhood (siblinghood?) would habe been better for it. Oh, and rewatching the Mystique scenes confirmed something I thought when reading various First Class fanfics. For all of Magneto's talk of "what's your real name?" (and oh, Sir Ian says that so seductively and shiver-worthy), Charles isn't actually the only one who calls him "Erik". So does Mystique in X2. Repeatedly. So much to fanfics where she's not allowed to. (Actually I think it's a nice way to get their closeness across that she does. I can't see movieverse Pyro being allowed to do it, ever.)
Talking of Mystique, however, brings me to the biggest emotional turbulence of the film, a scene already horrible (in the sense of gut-wrenching, not in the sense of being bad) the first time I watched which now is even worse in the light of First Class. Which is of course Magneto's and Mystique's action in Dark Cerebro. I mean, it was attempted global genocide before already, but no in addition to being an incredible betrayal on Erik's side it's also one by Raven. I hadn't watched the film for a few years, so when Magneto said "it doesn't look as if they're playing by your rules, Charles, maybe it's time to play by theirs" I thought, wait, have I wronged him and he did have that idea spontanously (doesn't excuse it but makes a whole lot easier to deal with emotionally if he didn't have time to think about it), but no, then Mystique comes in and Magneto doesn't have to explain or ask anything of her, she already knows what he wants her to do, so they must have talked about it during that day and night between the jailbreak and this point. The whole Let's-use-Charles-to-kill-every-single-nonmutant-on-the-planet thing was premeditated. Now I've seen it argued that Erik does this only in response to "the humans" having tried to kill all the mutants, but come on. Even Magneto can't be so far gone as to regard William Stryker as a licensed representative of the (non-mutant) human race. (As I said elsewhere, I'd like him to meet some of the non-American Marvelvese inhabitants like T'challa to give him their opinion on having their people condemned to execution for the actions of a member of the American military.) You can see a line from the beach on Cuba to this moment, BUT the Cuba scenario was also substantially different (and Erik not nearly as far gone) - he literally turned the weapons on the people who fired them, not, say, on the entire continent, let alone the world. You can make an argument why this was an understandable but unwise thing to do (and I did in a previous meta post), but it's still worlds away from global genocide. (Which, btw, would have included the entire non-mutant population of Israel. How many million Jews would that have been, Erik?) So there is the attempted global genocide horror, and then there is the horror of what this means in regards to his relationship with Charles. Which post First Class backstory also goes for Mystique. Yes, he was sometimes a privileged dick to her. But he also was her brother and they loved each other, so making him into an instrument of mass murder is a betrayal far beyond anything he did to her. So rewatching the scene gutted me even worse than it originally had done.
Thankfully, there is fanfiction.
andrastes Then Thousand Candles remains the definite take on Charles trying to work through the enormity of it post X2, but it was written years before we found out about movieverse Raven. So I was really glad to find a post-First Class written take on Mystique post X2: A dash of truth spread thinly. Which is an unsual take on Raven/Mystique and her identity issues through the years, examines her relationship with Erik intensely and presents a great alternate take on Charles' attitude to both of them post X2. Highly recommended.
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/703874.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.