X-Men First Class

[feuervogel]

Ben & I went out for dinner and a movie last night (Margaret's and X-Men). We went to dinner a little early, perhaps, but if we'd have gone a little later, the place would have been busy, and we'd have gotten stuck in a torrential downpour on our walk over to the theater.

I really liked the movie, though they just had to kill off the brother early on, and the women got some short-end of the stick (or were pastede on yey). Kevin Bacon can't do accents for shit, but the little British kid playing young Erik was quite good. (And the German was grammatical! Holy shit!) Also, Michael Fassbender (Erik) is really hot. (And Charles/Erik is so fucking canon. Their love is so tragic.)

X-Men has always been a blatantly obvious metaphor for how society treats the Other: LGBTQ, racial or ethnic minorities, the disabled, etc. This movie highlights how two people with relatively invisible differences (telepathy and magnetism) from very different social statuses interact with the world. Erik (Magneto) had a second invisible difference: being Jewish.

Xavier is the high socioeconomic status one, with a background made entirely of privilege. He believes (at least initially) that mutants and humans can live together, because they can all just get along.

Erik is a concentration camp survivor, whose background was probably working class at best. He's seen humanity at its worst, and his belief that humans fear mutants is based on his experience. His motivation is revenge, and his power was initially born in fear and rage.

I don't think it's a spoiler to say that Xavier's naive idealism is crushed. His school and its secrecy in future canon is evidence of that.

I wonder if the racefail (all the bad guys on Shaw's team are racial minorities) is a meta commentary on the privileged idealist's perspective in comparison to the disprivileged's perspective. After all, someone who's had experience with being treated like shit because they're different on the outside knows just how much bullshit Xavier was spouting. (I doubt the director was being that conscious of it, and it's certainly more likely that they fell on the usual tropes. It's an interesting thought, though.)

Comments

[kirin]

Emma Frost (and Shaw himself of course) is pretty white, and Azazel is.. uh, demonic? So that's really just Riptide and Angel, who I'm presuming are both Hispanic. And it looks like all the casting was pretty true to the comics, which I guess is a good thing from a casting point of view, and kind of lays the stereotyping on the original Marvel stories.

Of course, if you dig through the Marvel canon, I swear like 90% of these people have switched allegiances between the "good" and "bad" guys multiple times, and the X-Men setting likes to blur that line anyway.

[feuervogel]

I was thinking of Riptide and Angel, yeah. And the fake-out (though I don't want to spoilers a lot...probably everyone's already seen it anyway). Magneto has an invisible minority status. Kind of ignoring the red demon dude. So it's half of them, anyway, plus Magneto once Shaw's gone, and Mystique.

Team Magneto ends up being the people who've felt discrimination (plus the demon, maybe Emma?) for looking different, so they don't have the faith in humanity Xavier does.

[tiurin.livejournal.com]

I've always been a bit "meh" about the X-men being a metaphor for how society treats the Other. The problem for me is when we're talking mutants, the Other tends to be out-and-out better than the rest of society. And we're not even talking a little better, we're talking orders of magnitude better. Telepathy? Control of one of the universe's fundamental forces? Teleportation? Sign me up.

[feuervogel]

That makes it an imperfect metaphor, it's true. It wouldn't be a superhero comic if they didn't have special powers, and using space aliens is either more obvious or problematic for other reasons.

SPOILERS! But I know how to hide them!

[smarriveurr.livejournal.com]

I also saw it today for the first time and ... discovered that styles do not work in comments, somehow, even though they will work in comment previews.

Hence, editing out spoileriness. But, damn, transparency.

Re: SPOILERS! But I know how to hide them!

[kirin]

Well, if you don't think a big SPOILERS warning in the thread is enough, there's always rot13...

Re: SPOILERS! But I know how to hide them!

[smarriveurr.livejournal.com]

Now that there's a thread proper, I think I can accept it as sufficient. But rot13 isn't nearly as elegant as white-text-white-background. Damn LJ for teasing me.

Re: SPOILERS! But I know how to hide them!

[feuervogel]

Yeah. Kill off the brother in a ridiculous way. WTG, guise.

Re: SPOILERS! But I know how to hide them!

[smarriveurr.livejournal.com]

In a ridiculous way, just to illustrate how big a threat the bigbad is, and motivate the white kids for revenge. Not to mention that he dies trying to save another character from her own choices. So it's also a STUPID death.

[thesmallwonder.livejournal.com]

Gah! Could you cut potential spoilers next time? I would super mega appreciate it. (I hadn't heard they killed the brother early on ;_;)

[feuervogel]

Sorry :( I thought we were the last people in the world to see it.

[thesmallwonder.livejournal.com]

It's okay, you're usually really good about spoilers. And nah, me and Xander are usually a couple weeks behind the releases in order to avoid theater crowds.

[amakarie.livejournal.com]

I didn't like it initially, but as I've thought about it, the film's grown on me.