I feel better when I distract myself.

[trinityvixen]

A link on linaerys 's journal has proved most interesting. I do not necessarily agree that X-Men: First Class plays up the X-Men as the Jewish other, but that's an experience-dictates-impression sort of deal, I suspect. This is the part that I liked the most:

Rather, what troubles me about the film is that it feels like yet another expression of an

Comments

We can agree on something! It's a miracle! :D

[trinityvixen]

The Star Wars example you cite gave me chills. I honestly had never thought about it before, and that's just wrong. Because you're so very right: killing one man with rage, to prevent his doing something wrong, is somehow worse than shooting a hundred men without caring at all? That's some bizarre-ass values system right there.

Iron Man is another brilliant example because, in part, it does engage with the moral strangeness of heroes who kill. It has to because Tony Stark, though he had never lifted a hand to kill a man himself, is the author of untold and unimaginable levels of butchery. He is one of the rare vengeful victims who is not a villain. It doesn't come with the weight of being a Holocaust survivor, but Stark's experience in Afghanistan (in the movie; Vietnam in the comics) is one that completely twists and breaks him as a person to the point where not only is his need for revenge understandable, it's righteous. And the people against him are no less cartoonishly evil than Kevin Bacon's character in X-Men: First Class, so there's no way you can say they deserve it more. (They deserve it less, honestly. That's the way Godwin's Law works.)

Batman Begins, on the other hand, stated from the beginning that any personal feelings, one way or another, turn Batman into a villain. In his world, though, even common criminals can be turned into saviors--as evidenced by the incredibly good convict who tosses the detonator out the window in The Dark Knight--which somehow automatically makes up for the fact that normal people become raving psychopaths all the time (and the ones who don't are still kind of awful--again, see that boat detonator scenario). It represents, to my mind, the deep divide between DC and Marvel. DC is about the angels and demons of our natures, and the heroes must always be on the side of angels, fighting back the darkness and rescuing people from it so they, too can be paragons of virtue. Marvel is all about accepting that no man is perfect (except maybe Captain America) and that imperfections do not doom us to villainy any more than good intentions make us heroes. DC's is the more hopeful vision; Marvel's is the more realistic (and pragmatic).

Re: We can agree on something! It's a miracle! :D

[jethrien]

I wonder if that's why Marvel makes more reliably good movies.

Re: We can agree on something! It's a miracle! :D

[trinityvixen]

It's probably part of it. A willingness to engage in more than hero/anti-hero dynamics is a good step in the right direction. Marvel's put out a host of movies so far where the hero isn't even likable. Tony Stark is a prick. Thor's arrogant and occasionally outright stupid. Xavier is something of a privileged cockface at times. (I'm sorry, he outs Hank McCoy as a mutant, thus demonstrating that he read enough of the kid's mind to know that--which is icky enough--but he didn't read far enough/didn't care enough to notice HANK HADN'T TOLD ANYONE?)

The uniting features of these movies seem to be that you start with someone with problems and rebuild them so that their strengths overcome (or at least subjugate) their weaknesses. It's a very relatable story, and one in which the heroes who reform don't get better because of being rich/being an alien, but because they work on it? I can see why that's compelling.