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X-Men First Class
12 Jun 2011 05:17 pmBen & 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.)
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.)
