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At some point in the past few weeks, I saw X-Men: First Class.
Others online have already made a lot of commentary on both the ways that it succeeds (the chemistry between its male leads, the way that it uses its setting to its advantage) and the ways that it does not (stereotyping, more unfortunate implications than you can shake a stick at.) I really do not know that I have more to add.
This would've been a better movie if it had just been about Charles and Erik - if the other characters hadn't shown up at all, or if they'd been a bunch of generic, featureless figures. The pair steal the show anyway, and definitely have stolen the fandom. They weren't the only characters in this, though, and so the film's treatment of the other characters has to be considered, and frankly? It falls short. It's tremendously telling that at the end of the film, every single one of the soon-to-be-X-Men are male, white, and (in film-verse) American. (Except for Charles, perhaps. I'm... honestly not clear on him in filmverse. He seems to have been born in Great Britain but raised in America?) Everyone else is either evil and often a traitor, or they are simply dismissed.
I was discussing some of the unfortunate implications of the film with someone else, and his response was that the film's setting excuses some of them, as social attitudes towards minority groups and women were very different in the fifties. I don't think that's an excuse, though. Even if you could make a case that the characters' attitudes towards minorities were justified by the time in which they lived, you can't say that it excuses what the writers decided to do - and the latter bothered me far more than the former, for the most part. Just because racism was more pronounced in the early sixties doesn't mean that the writers deciding to have Shaw deal Darwin a pointless, hypocritical death almost immediately after he appears isn't going to bother me. Darwin's death cannot be attributed to in-universe racism. The fact that sexism was more common might excuse that infamous "This is why women shouldn't be in the CIA!" line, but it doesn't excuse treating us to that utterly gratuitous "I have to run around in my underwear for great justice" moment at the very beginning of the film. (I mean, the Hellfire Club? Really? No reason why that whole scene couldn't have been set somewhere else? It only existed so that the guys in the audience could have something to look at, best I could tell...)
I'd watched Green Lantern shortly after watching X-Men: First Class, and I was wondering something. In this film, well, I've pretty much laid out the racial/gender situation; a fair amount of diversity, but the various minority groups were generally not treated well. In Green Lantern, trying to avoid spoilers, there were practically no minority characters and few women, but the few that we did get were treated in a comparatively more equal and more sympathetic way. It makes you wonder. In the end, which is better?
Okay. Moving on to a different subject about the film.
Does anyone else think that Charles and his initial experiment with Cerebro reveals his own attitude that mutants are superior to humans? The baseline humans show up in black and white, while the mutants show up in living, vibrant color. I don't know if that was deliberate on the part of the writers, but if it was an accident, it was an effective one. That little detail would turn his interest in mutant-human cooperation into something much more paternalistic - mutants would have a responsibility, a burden, to help the humans. We all know how well that went over with other groups.
In fact, I rather liked that Charles wasn't a saintly character. It's easy to characterize a heroic character as perfect, but Charles? No. He had a pick-up speech that he used on two different girls (that we saw.) By all appearances he routinely used his mind-reading powers on people, without regard for their privacy; we see him ask permission to read something very personal with Erik, and possibly a couple of the other mutants, but almost never with regular humans. He doesn't even seem to feel the need to ask their permission. What he did to Moira was probably the worst, and completely beyond the pale - he wipes a decent chunk of her memories, without permission. Sure, he had to protect his anonymity - but this is a man who was able to hold back Jean Gray's powers by putting mental blocks in her mind. There's no way he could've spent a little bit of time and found a way to put a block in her mind for some run-of-the-mill intel? But no, he had to wipe out her memories entirely, because it was easier to keep their secret that way. Ugh. But... it told us something about young Charles, that he isn't as saintly and reasonable as he (and perhaps Erik, and some of the fandom) would have us believe.
At any rate... do I recommend this film? I've thought about it, and in the end, I really can't. The story between the main characters, at least, is worth seeing. Your mileage may vary as to whether or not seeing most of the other characters completely disregarded or mistreated is worth that.
Others online have already made a lot of commentary on both the ways that it succeeds (the chemistry between its male leads, the way that it uses its setting to its advantage) and the ways that it does not (stereotyping, more unfortunate implications than you can shake a stick at.) I really do not know that I have more to add.
This would've been a better movie if it had just been about Charles and Erik - if the other characters hadn't shown up at all, or if they'd been a bunch of generic, featureless figures. The pair steal the show anyway, and definitely have stolen the fandom. They weren't the only characters in this, though, and so the film's treatment of the other characters has to be considered, and frankly? It falls short. It's tremendously telling that at the end of the film, every single one of the soon-to-be-X-Men are male, white, and (in film-verse) American. (Except for Charles, perhaps. I'm... honestly not clear on him in filmverse. He seems to have been born in Great Britain but raised in America?) Everyone else is either evil and often a traitor, or they are simply dismissed.
I was discussing some of the unfortunate implications of the film with someone else, and his response was that the film's setting excuses some of them, as social attitudes towards minority groups and women were very different in the fifties. I don't think that's an excuse, though. Even if you could make a case that the characters' attitudes towards minorities were justified by the time in which they lived, you can't say that it excuses what the writers decided to do - and the latter bothered me far more than the former, for the most part. Just because racism was more pronounced in the early sixties doesn't mean that the writers deciding to have Shaw deal Darwin a pointless, hypocritical death almost immediately after he appears isn't going to bother me. Darwin's death cannot be attributed to in-universe racism. The fact that sexism was more common might excuse that infamous "This is why women shouldn't be in the CIA!" line, but it doesn't excuse treating us to that utterly gratuitous "I have to run around in my underwear for great justice" moment at the very beginning of the film. (I mean, the Hellfire Club? Really? No reason why that whole scene couldn't have been set somewhere else? It only existed so that the guys in the audience could have something to look at, best I could tell...)
I'd watched Green Lantern shortly after watching X-Men: First Class, and I was wondering something. In this film, well, I've pretty much laid out the racial/gender situation; a fair amount of diversity, but the various minority groups were generally not treated well. In Green Lantern, trying to avoid spoilers, there were practically no minority characters and few women, but the few that we did get were treated in a comparatively more equal and more sympathetic way. It makes you wonder. In the end, which is better?
Okay. Moving on to a different subject about the film.
Does anyone else think that Charles and his initial experiment with Cerebro reveals his own attitude that mutants are superior to humans? The baseline humans show up in black and white, while the mutants show up in living, vibrant color. I don't know if that was deliberate on the part of the writers, but if it was an accident, it was an effective one. That little detail would turn his interest in mutant-human cooperation into something much more paternalistic - mutants would have a responsibility, a burden, to help the humans. We all know how well that went over with other groups.
In fact, I rather liked that Charles wasn't a saintly character. It's easy to characterize a heroic character as perfect, but Charles? No. He had a pick-up speech that he used on two different girls (that we saw.) By all appearances he routinely used his mind-reading powers on people, without regard for their privacy; we see him ask permission to read something very personal with Erik, and possibly a couple of the other mutants, but almost never with regular humans. He doesn't even seem to feel the need to ask their permission. What he did to Moira was probably the worst, and completely beyond the pale - he wipes a decent chunk of her memories, without permission. Sure, he had to protect his anonymity - but this is a man who was able to hold back Jean Gray's powers by putting mental blocks in her mind. There's no way he could've spent a little bit of time and found a way to put a block in her mind for some run-of-the-mill intel? But no, he had to wipe out her memories entirely, because it was easier to keep their secret that way. Ugh. But... it told us something about young Charles, that he isn't as saintly and reasonable as he (and perhaps Erik, and some of the fandom) would have us believe.
At any rate... do I recommend this film? I've thought about it, and in the end, I really can't. The story between the main characters, at least, is worth seeing. Your mileage may vary as to whether or not seeing most of the other characters completely disregarded or mistreated is worth that.
