Five Crotchedy-Ass Questions about X-Men: First Class
First, a caveat. I was totally prepared to love this movie. Every year one blockbuster surprises me — Star Trek, the first Iron Man, the first Pirates, etc. — and I was ready for this to be this year’s pleasure. I’m not a die-hard X-Men fan, and I haven’t seen X-Men 3 or Wolverine. But I do love the central premise, and watched the shit out of some X-Men cartoons on Saturday mornings circa 1990. Which I guess means that I’m a pretty perfect peripheral target for this film: a woman who likes movies, goes to blockbusters when they’re reviewed well (as this one was), and has a moderate investment in the genre. If this movie got a bunch of people like me in the seats, it’d could become a veritable phenomenon, doing even better than its predecessors. But I won’t equivocate: I was pretty sad about how bad this movie was. I’m sure there are answers to some of the crotchedly-ass question in the original text of the comic book, and I don’t begrudge a movie for attempting to follow its source material. But you’ve got to make it work, and work it did not not. And so: are there answers to these questions?
5.) IS THIS MOVIE FROM 1962 OR 2011?
There’s a tremendous amount of period confusion going on this film — hairstyles, body types, clothing choices, and art design. Some outfits (especially the ones for the women) take advantage of the ’60s go-go aesthetic in order to highlight the legs/breasts of January Jones, Jennifer Lawrence, and Zoe Kravitz, but apart from Darwin’s leisure suit and Beast’s glasses, there’s little to place the men in the decade. And the hair? Havoc and Banshee both look like they just got styled for an Abercrombie shoot. A movie doesn’t need to be perfectly historically accurate to be good, but this is just shoddy work.
See what I'm talking about?
4.) ROSE BYRNE WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING IN THIS MOVIE?
No seriously, how would a twenty-something woman get a high placed job in the CIA in 1962? How is this even *slightly* plausible? And then once she’s there, could her role be more vacant? Am I supposed to buy that there’s chemistry between her and Professor X? When she shows up on the mission I seriously said to myself HOW THE F DID SHE GET THERE? This should not happen with a major character.
3.) IS THIS MOVIE CAMP OR STRAIGHT UP?
There are several moments — mostly within Kevin Bacon’s “inner sanctum” — when I’m pretty sure that this movie is making a joke about bad Bond films from the ’60s. The sipping of champagne, January Jones’s bad acting, Kevin Bacon’s earnestness, the matching outfits -
Plus the incredible moment when McAvoy reads Jones’s mind and a montage of missiles making their way across a giant world map materializes. (This is hard to describe, but if you’ve seen the film, you know what I’m talking about — I laughed *really* loudly). Now, in the case of Black Swan, I loved the debate over whether it was camp or not, whether it was trying to be camp and therefore not camp, etc. etc. I also like when a genre refuses to take its conventions too seriously (see: Iron Man). But again, this movie can’t decide if it’s campy or very serious, a Guy Richie-esque series of montages (see: the training segments with the split-screens) or a straight-up super hero story. Two very disparate tones, one jumbled movie.
2.) WHY ARE THE WOMEN IN THIS FILM SO INCREDIBLY UNINTERESTING?
I love Jennifer Lawrence, and despite the inanity of January Jones’ star persona, I do like her particular brand of bad-acting in Mad Men. (I especially enjoy how the writers/directors use it to convey the fact that Betty Draper was/still is trying to act a certain part in life, and her inability to convincingly play that part). And Rose Byrne shouldn’t be appearing in this movie so close on the heels of Bridesmaids: I keep expecting her to serve me some giant Parisian cookie. As Anne Thompson notes, the women in this film are under-developed, poorly-directed, seem to be bad actresses, or all three. Female super-heroes can be sexy, they can be stubborn, but don’t make them so sucky. I wouldn’t want to be any of these women.
1.5) ARE KEVIN BACON’S HENCHMEN ACTUALLY CLONES OF THAT RANDOM OTHER-DUDE FROM THE BLACK EYED PEAS?
Am I right or am I right?
1.) AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, WHY ISN’T THIS MOVIE ALL FASSBENDER, ALL THE TIME?
McAvoy v. Fassbender; Decision: Fassbender
James McAvoy is one of my star boyfriends. But in this movie, I couldn’t care less about him — and giggled each time he did put his finger to his temple in arch concentration. He’s supposed to be our hero. This is a HUGE problem. Can the next movie just be a pre-prequel when we follow Fassbender before he arrives in Switzerland?
Do you have even more crotchedly-ass questions to add?
4 Responses to “Five Crotchedy-Ass Questions about X-Men: First Class”
You know, I enjoyed this movie-largely because my expectations were nada after the horrific awfulness of the third X-Men (you want to talk aimless female characters? I could go on all day about the writers’ inability to process or depict the Phoenix’s rage). But as for the female characters here, I am so right there with you. As we left the movie, I was saying how i enjoyed it…and then I couldn’t help rewriting it.
Here are ideas-if you want to locate the heart of a female character in her relationship with men, how about playing with the attraction that could/should be there between Prof. X and Mystique. Then, when she finds a man who wants her as she is, there can be another layer of tension. And can allow her to make a choice away from a man who shuts her down, limits her (fake girl power-since she’d only realize he shuts her down after meeting a new man). But better than nothing.
Or…have a woman make choice that isn’t depicted exclusively in relation to a man. Notice how the characters that betray others here are often women? And notice how their choices often make no sense?
Give Prof. X a character-any character. For example, let him do something really stupid, wrong, or downright dastardly early in the film. They show him using his power to exploit women for a half a second, then suddenly he’s all noble. How about letting him learn the hard way not to exploit his powers for selfish reasons? How about using that in her relationship with Magneto, another person wanting to use his power for selfish reasons. And why can’t film/TV learn that nobility does not have to equal boring? (that’s you I’m talking to Eddard Stark).
And here’s a perennial problem with these films-can the bad guys also have any sort of personality?
There are a lot of characters in this film, so I get why some are under developed. But for main character like Professor X to be such duds? Inexcusable.
As for your comments on the CIA agent-preach, sister. That woman had zero role, zero chemistry, and zero point.
Mystique is somewhat in that zone you talk about, re: someone who accepts her for who she is, but it gets muddled between Beast, Charles, and Erik all swirling around that, and her inner-turmoil isn’t as well played out as it frankly could have been.
I’m willing to roll with Mystique’s shift of sides, but Angel’s just happens for no reason other than for us to have an aerial battle at the end (which really wasn’t necessary anyway). And it involved Darwin dying. And that made me sad.
The answers are not in the comics, I’m afraid. Your questions are mostly with the film itself.
MacTaggert’s role in the movie is decidedly blah. I do wish she had remained the geneticist and Xavier confidant she is in the comics, where she’s also one of the creators of Cerebro (but I guess it was more important to establish how smart Beast was…). Indeed, MacTaggert’s primary role in the comics gets split up between Beast and Mystique in all sorts of dead-end ways for her.
(And the shoe-horned romance between she and Xavier only detracts from the true romance between Charles and Erik. And we all know it. So much crying and supporting each other. Those two belong together.)
I think question #3, however, is probably the most pressing. I feel like Bacon, throughout the entire movie, thought he was in a campy film (from his first scene and onward) and played it that way, and with considerable charm and fun. But the rest of the movie isn’t on the same page (certainly Jones isn’t, good grief she was terrible).
While I enjoyed the movie, it is a mishmash of tones (I didn’t pick up on it until a bit later, going over it in my head). But first superhero movies rarely know what they’re doing (except for Iron Man), so maybe I’m cutting it some slack.
I agree with you about the period styling. Apart from Fassbender and Jones and a few side characters, no one looked like they were from 1962. Totally ruined it for me. MAD MEN has set the bar high in terms of period styling. If a multimillion dollar blockbuster can’t match, let alone top, a basic cable TV show, it’s a problem. And, like I said on Twitter after seeing the movie, I wish the whole thing was about Fassbender hunting down Nazis in Argentina.