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green_dreamsHave seen X-Men: First Class.
Am honestly really happy with how they handled the relationship between Erik and Charles, and Erik's slow change into Magneto. I would watch it again for that quite happily. Raven was a nice counterpoint to Charles (yes, really, the not-pretty mutants do have a hard time of it, you genial ass) and the question of fitting in, and needing to fit in--well, it's X-Men. I don't think there's much new to be said about it, but it was said well.
Emma Frost did not help. Cold poise works for the character, but I was trying to see someone who actually cared or hated or seethed or had some kind of reason to do what she was doing, and I only saw a flicker of it once, when she was talking to Erik and Charles. The rest of the time, she felt like Betty Draper on a rather odd photo shoot.[2]
The 60s vibe was fun when it showed up (and I actually think that's not a bad era for the Hellfire Club). Groovy mutations, indeed.
There were a couple of clunky speech moments, and a couple of times that a scene was set up and then did not deliver in a way that rather threw me.[1]
And come on--they had a ton of characters they could have killed, and they killed the black guy? If you need a dead mutant from X-history, please believe me when I say there are a whole lot of them you can draw on, and it might have been kind of nice to have the heroes at the end not be all-white-except-one-guy-who-was-white-and-turned-blue. If Darwin was chosen because someone *really* needed to die that way I can think of a couple who could have fit the bill.
Overall I'm glad I saw it, and I could easily see getting it on DVD, to have around and watch again. It was a superhero movie, it had a lot of cameos, it wasn't bad most of the time and was fun a lot of the time and I really did love Erik and Charles, mostly Erik. I think it's pretty accessible to people who don't know the setting, although the second scene with Erik might throw people--hell, it threw me. (Again, footnote 1.)
Forgive it the clunky spots and enjoy?
---
[1] I mean, come on. You are an evil doctor. You call young Erik into your office, which is clearly established as being one glass wall away from a steel-tabled torture room with a lot of very unpleasant surgical instruments hanging on the walls. You shoot his mother in front of him, he snaps and begins lashing out with his power, and...
No pointy bits? Seriously?
It just felt strange. It makes sense that they aren't used if you think about it, since Erik seems to be doing more crushing than throwing at that point, but the setup is just so clearly a call to great destruction. It's like putting James Bond unrestrained in an interrogation room with a collection of guns within reach, and then all he does when he gets up is knock over the furniture. In fact, said evil doctor not being targetted at all felt strange, especially given what happened to the other two guys in the office. I feel that if you do not know who he is, the scene rings rather weird.
[2] The double-sized white fur Cossack hat paired with the garter-belt-and-leggings? I cringed.
Am honestly really happy with how they handled the relationship between Erik and Charles, and Erik's slow change into Magneto. I would watch it again for that quite happily. Raven was a nice counterpoint to Charles (yes, really, the not-pretty mutants do have a hard time of it, you genial ass) and the question of fitting in, and needing to fit in--well, it's X-Men. I don't think there's much new to be said about it, but it was said well.
Emma Frost did not help. Cold poise works for the character, but I was trying to see someone who actually cared or hated or seethed or had some kind of reason to do what she was doing, and I only saw a flicker of it once, when she was talking to Erik and Charles. The rest of the time, she felt like Betty Draper on a rather odd photo shoot.[2]
The 60s vibe was fun when it showed up (and I actually think that's not a bad era for the Hellfire Club). Groovy mutations, indeed.
There were a couple of clunky speech moments, and a couple of times that a scene was set up and then did not deliver in a way that rather threw me.[1]
And come on--they had a ton of characters they could have killed, and they killed the black guy? If you need a dead mutant from X-history, please believe me when I say there are a whole lot of them you can draw on, and it might have been kind of nice to have the heroes at the end not be all-white-except-one-guy-who-was-white-and-turned-blue. If Darwin was chosen because someone *really* needed to die that way I can think of a couple who could have fit the bill.
Overall I'm glad I saw it, and I could easily see getting it on DVD, to have around and watch again. It was a superhero movie, it had a lot of cameos, it wasn't bad most of the time and was fun a lot of the time and I really did love Erik and Charles, mostly Erik. I think it's pretty accessible to people who don't know the setting, although the second scene with Erik might throw people--hell, it threw me. (Again, footnote 1.)
Forgive it the clunky spots and enjoy?
---
[1] I mean, come on. You are an evil doctor. You call young Erik into your office, which is clearly established as being one glass wall away from a steel-tabled torture room with a lot of very unpleasant surgical instruments hanging on the walls. You shoot his mother in front of him, he snaps and begins lashing out with his power, and...
No pointy bits? Seriously?
It just felt strange. It makes sense that they aren't used if you think about it, since Erik seems to be doing more crushing than throwing at that point, but the setup is just so clearly a call to great destruction. It's like putting James Bond unrestrained in an interrogation room with a collection of guns within reach, and then all he does when he gets up is knock over the furniture. In fact, said evil doctor not being targetted at all felt strange, especially given what happened to the other two guys in the office. I feel that if you do not know who he is, the scene rings rather weird.
[2] The double-sized white fur Cossack hat paired with the garter-belt-and-leggings? I cringed.
