old school!
Oct. 8th, 2011 08:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaydeefalls
So I spent the past two evenings rewatching the first two X-Men movies, which I haven't actually sat down and watched in years. Now, of course, I'm seeing everything through the lens of First Class. And doing my best to ignore the continuity errors, because First Class is in many ways more of a reboot than a proper prequel. Still. I can actually see the evolution of Erik into Magneto far more directly than Charles into Professor X -- I think Fassbender's performance lines up with McKellen's better than McAvoy's with Stewart's. (Which isn't meant as a criticism -- from what I've read in interviews, the First Class actors were told to make the characters their own, and deliberately NOT to try to impersonate younger versions of the X1-X3 incarnations. So.)
But my god do I ever adore Ian McKellen's Magneto. He does legitimately AWFUL things, and yet I root for him the whole time. Because he is both snarky and baldly honest at all times, I think -- I have a huge amount of respect for that. Rogue asks if he's going to kill her, and he says yes, he is. Logan calls him on his hypocrisy (sacrificing Rogue instead of, y'know, himself) and he doesn't even attempt to argue otherwise. I'll take Magneto's brutal honesty over Xavier's constant evasions or lies of omission any day.
(I prefer McKellen's Erik and McAvoy's Charles, if I must choose. I just connect to those two individually more than Fassbender or Stewart. But both older and younger pairings have such utterly fantastic chemistry together, it really doesn't matter.)
And Mystique! No lie, I spent much of X-Men 1 yelling at her whenever she was onscreen, because NO HONEY NO, LOOK AT YOUR CHOICES, RAVEN WHY ARE YOU DELIBERATELY POISONING YOUR BROTHER'S CEREBRO JUICE, AND ALSO THAT THING WHERE YOU IMPERSONATE BOBBY TO BITCH OUT ROGUE IS SO FUCKING CATTY, YOU ARE BETTER THAN THIS.
But then X2 happens, and I swear to god, Mystique is actually the hero of that movie. Because she's like the only character who actually makes choices and ACTS rather than just reacting, and also, she is responsible for every single positive step forward the plot takes. LET ME SUM UP. In X2, Mystique:
1. Impersonates Senator Kelly, keeping the Mutant Registration Act off the Senate floor.
2. Attempts to protect the X-Men by insisting to the President of the United States that the mansion is just a school.
3. Finds out that Stryker is involved in Erik's imprisonment.
4. Hacks into Stryker's files to find the location of Erik's prison and intel on the guards.
5. ...and, oh yeah, that Stryker is building his own Cerebro.
6. Seduces the guard and injects iron into his bloodstream, enabling Erik to break out of jail.
7. Impersonates Logan to infiltrate Alkali Lake and kicks everyone's asses once she's inside.
8. Hacks into the Alkali Lake mainframe to find Cerebro.
9. Impersonates Stryker in Cerebro to convince Jason to alter his illusion.
10. Pilots the motherfucking helicopter off the dam.
Granted, there's also the bit with the attempted genocide, which she perpetrates, and leaving the X-Men behind to die. And attempting to seduce Logan for no reason except to fuck with his head, which, frankly, the way he keeps hitting on a basically-married woman who has turned him down at every single impasse and yet he never stops harassing her, I gotta side with Mystique on this one.
In contrast, our nominal hero Wolverine stabs some guys, steals yet another of Scott's vehicles, gets shot a bunch, and then abandons his entire team at Alkali Lake in order to get his own personal vengeance. Yeah, whatever. If it weren't for Mystique, Erik would still be in prison and then Charles would have killed all the mutants on the planet because the X-Men would never have put Stryker together with the assassination attempt, therefore never thinking to have Jean read Kurt's mind to find Alkali Lake in the first place.
So basically, this was a good reminder of why I'm writing Raven as primary protagonist in Queen's Gambit, especially given Stryker as the primary antagonist. Because Raven gets shit done while Logan's too busy manpaining.
(Also, the way Charles freezes the entire fucking museum just to tell off a couple of his students for showing off? Oh, Charles, you arrogant bastard. Your precious code of ethics is on a slippery fucking slope, isn't it?)
But my god do I ever adore Ian McKellen's Magneto. He does legitimately AWFUL things, and yet I root for him the whole time. Because he is both snarky and baldly honest at all times, I think -- I have a huge amount of respect for that. Rogue asks if he's going to kill her, and he says yes, he is. Logan calls him on his hypocrisy (sacrificing Rogue instead of, y'know, himself) and he doesn't even attempt to argue otherwise. I'll take Magneto's brutal honesty over Xavier's constant evasions or lies of omission any day.
(I prefer McKellen's Erik and McAvoy's Charles, if I must choose. I just connect to those two individually more than Fassbender or Stewart. But both older and younger pairings have such utterly fantastic chemistry together, it really doesn't matter.)
And Mystique! No lie, I spent much of X-Men 1 yelling at her whenever she was onscreen, because NO HONEY NO, LOOK AT YOUR CHOICES, RAVEN WHY ARE YOU DELIBERATELY POISONING YOUR BROTHER'S CEREBRO JUICE, AND ALSO THAT THING WHERE YOU IMPERSONATE BOBBY TO BITCH OUT ROGUE IS SO FUCKING CATTY, YOU ARE BETTER THAN THIS.
But then X2 happens, and I swear to god, Mystique is actually the hero of that movie. Because she's like the only character who actually makes choices and ACTS rather than just reacting, and also, she is responsible for every single positive step forward the plot takes. LET ME SUM UP. In X2, Mystique:
1. Impersonates Senator Kelly, keeping the Mutant Registration Act off the Senate floor.
2. Attempts to protect the X-Men by insisting to the President of the United States that the mansion is just a school.
3. Finds out that Stryker is involved in Erik's imprisonment.
4. Hacks into Stryker's files to find the location of Erik's prison and intel on the guards.
5. ...and, oh yeah, that Stryker is building his own Cerebro.
6. Seduces the guard and injects iron into his bloodstream, enabling Erik to break out of jail.
7. Impersonates Logan to infiltrate Alkali Lake and kicks everyone's asses once she's inside.
8. Hacks into the Alkali Lake mainframe to find Cerebro.
9. Impersonates Stryker in Cerebro to convince Jason to alter his illusion.
10. Pilots the motherfucking helicopter off the dam.
Granted, there's also the bit with the attempted genocide, which she perpetrates, and leaving the X-Men behind to die. And attempting to seduce Logan for no reason except to fuck with his head, which, frankly, the way he keeps hitting on a basically-married woman who has turned him down at every single impasse and yet he never stops harassing her, I gotta side with Mystique on this one.
In contrast, our nominal hero Wolverine stabs some guys, steals yet another of Scott's vehicles, gets shot a bunch, and then abandons his entire team at Alkali Lake in order to get his own personal vengeance. Yeah, whatever. If it weren't for Mystique, Erik would still be in prison and then Charles would have killed all the mutants on the planet because the X-Men would never have put Stryker together with the assassination attempt, therefore never thinking to have Jean read Kurt's mind to find Alkali Lake in the first place.
So basically, this was a good reminder of why I'm writing Raven as primary protagonist in Queen's Gambit, especially given Stryker as the primary antagonist. Because Raven gets shit done while Logan's too busy manpaining.
(Also, the way Charles freezes the entire fucking museum just to tell off a couple of his students for showing off? Oh, Charles, you arrogant bastard. Your precious code of ethics is on a slippery fucking slope, isn't it?)
no subject
Date: 2011-10-09 02:14 am (UTC)I'm with you on preferring McAvoy and McKellen (though between him and Fassbender it's the tiniest of margins.) I think Stewart has such a personal presence commanding of respect that it masks Charles as a character somewhat. McAvoy got more interesting flaws to work with. And I felt like, much as I liked XMFC's origin modifications, it didn't really make the case for Erik's cause beyond a superficial "YEAH BOND!ERIK, YOU GET SOME REVENGE BOOYAH." McKellen was able to imply a lot about Erik's motives without the first trilogy really putting them under a microscope, so he just got to be straightforwardly badass.
I love your analysis of Mystique in X2! I need a Mystique icon.
no subject
Date: 2011-10-09 03:10 am (UTC)This is a fair and valid point. I have no idea how he's managed to con everyone into thinking he holds some sort of moral high ground for all these years.
I agree on Stewart's presence kind of drowning out Charles as a PERSON. Which is why I liked found his character in XMFC so much more appealing. Flaws! Stupid mistakes! Horrible chat-up lines! UGH I LOVE HIM SO MUCH.
I knew I'd always liked Mystique in X2, if only for her flipping off the soldiers at Alkali Lake, but I hadn't realized just how integral she was in pushing the plot forward -- much more so than any of the other characters. It's kind of amazing.
tl;dr I love Charles too
Date: 2011-10-09 11:34 am (UTC)When the main alternative's approach looks like "Kill ALL the humans!" the bar is set pretty low, I guess. Xavier doesn't actively want to murder anyone so he's one up on Magneto there.
I love Charles in First Class enormously, but I'm also a little puzzled by him. I loved that he used his nerdy genetics spiel as a pickup line, and I loved his drinking and sluttiness, and I loved the way he blurted out things he picked up telepathically before realizing he should keep his mouth shut. And I especially loved how freely he used his powers, because of course a dude who can read minds and control people isn't going to be ethically nuanced about it at first, especially when he has to hide it from nearly everyone; once he started meeting more and more people he could actually tell, and dealing with their reactions, then I could see him developing some ethical guidelines. But I think it makes sense that he wouldn't have them before that point, so I loved how casually terrifying he was with his powers in XMFC.
But... he can read minds and did so freely, which has me fanwanking his moments of (heh) insensitivity. It just seems like someone who could read minds would be a little more understanding of, for ex, Raven's struggle with her appearance; even if he's not reading her mind, he's reading enough other people to know how fraught the issue of appearance was for nearly everyone. (Charles saying 'I don't know what's gotten into you lately, you're awfully concerned with your looks' to a shapeshifter was one of the stupider lines of dialogue, I thought. I get that it was likely meant to be funny but imo it sacrifices characterization for a very faint joke.)
Tl;dr I also love Charles and his dumb mistakes and awful chat-up lines. :D
Re: tl;dr I love Charles too
Date: 2011-10-09 09:49 pm (UTC)Tl;dr I also love Charles and his dumb mistakes and awful chat-up lines. :D
Me, too. <3
Re: tl;dr I love Charles too
Date: 2011-10-09 10:37 pm (UTC)And where that gets me is the awkward, uncomfortable place where a person who's been passing for white/default/non-mutant, on purpose or by accident, for as long as they can remember. When that default appearance starts to become reality to everyone around you, and you begin to believe you're the only one who even remembers you're not that outside shell, it's hard to stand up for yourself as a person who is not the default/norm, and easy for even close friends, loved ones, and family members to forget you're not. (I have family members who will always see my mother as Asian, but because I'm biracial, they seem to have coded me as white in their heads, for example; my grandmother has outright forgotten that I'm not white.)
I'm not sure how much they meant Raven's "passing" to be coded as "passing for white", but it sure worked that way for me. I could definitely see Charles no longer thinking of her blue skin as the norm, even when he saw it face-on. It's painfully easy to have that bit of you erased by the people around you, the less-than-visible non-norm part... it's not that people have bad intentions, they just think of you as being "like them", and in Charles's case, that meant "white and easily able to blend in". Imagine if she'd chosen a different ethnicity for her default skin -- would he have been more understanding, or would he have asked her why she couldn't just be white? (I actually think Raven would be a fascinating character to racebend for that exact reason -- we don't know (well, in movieverse at least) what her family's actual ethnicity is; what if she's not just hiding her blue skin but her heritage, too? Ow ow ow.)
OMG SUCH A TANGENT. Er, sorry? :D? But anyway, if you wanna fanwank that bit of dialogue, there's why I don't even need it fanwanked. It feels like seeing my life right up on screen.
Re: tl;dr I love Raven too
Date: 2011-10-09 11:53 pm (UTC)When she asks "Would you date me?" it doesn't even occur to him that she means "in my natural form"
Very true. I still find the specific line about being 'awfully concerned with her looks' irritating for the reasons I mentioned. But it's definitely true that the point of the scene is that Charles seems to forget Raven is constantly hiding herself, and I do buy that as something he'd fall into, that's something even a well-intentioned person can do too easily. :-/ Even if Charles were more sensitive, as I kind of think he should've been, based on his abilities... even then I could see him falling into that way of thinking.
no subject
Date: 2011-10-09 01:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-09 09:51 pm (UTC)1) Mystique/Raven rocks!
2) I don't understand how Charles and Erik can come back from the beach betrayal, let alone the totally messed up stuff that Erik will do with Rogue and Charles in X2 and X3.
and 3) I am clearly in love with a tragedy that I want to be something more. Or less. Sometimes the XM universe is just so very broken.