A brief rant...
Jun. 5th, 2006 09:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
catherineldfOkay, so maybe it's the killer cold I had all weekend and most of last week or hearing on Thursday afternoon that a job that seemed locked up isn't going to work out. Or not. At any rate, we went to see "X-Men 3" on Saturday night and I emerged fairly irritated with the whole thing (so if you're dying to see it, stop reading now). On the one hand, the queer subtexty and not-so-subtexty parts were fun: the trannie(?) mutant, the lingering glances passed between Magneto and Xavier, the whole connection between the mutants' civil rights struggle and others including GLBT.
On the other: why the hell are almost all the female characters so bloody passive? It's 2006 and Dark Phoenix, who is supposedly just short of being a goddess, stands around looking undernourished and angsty through the majority of the film, all so she can make some stuff spin around and get skewered by Wolverine at the end. Storm can control the weather but can't seem to reason her way out of a paper bag. Mystique gets "cured," suddenly loses all links to her identity and next appears when she's betraying Magneto and the other mutants, just in time for one of the generals to be a sexist ass. Rogue gets "cured" so she can make out with her boyfriend. And it goes on. Granted I haven't read the comic books in a long time but I don't remember them being this bad. :-(
On the other: why the hell are almost all the female characters so bloody passive? It's 2006 and Dark Phoenix, who is supposedly just short of being a goddess, stands around looking undernourished and angsty through the majority of the film, all so she can make some stuff spin around and get skewered by Wolverine at the end. Storm can control the weather but can't seem to reason her way out of a paper bag. Mystique gets "cured," suddenly loses all links to her identity and next appears when she's betraying Magneto and the other mutants, just in time for one of the generals to be a sexist ass. Rogue gets "cured" so she can make out with her boyfriend. And it goes on. Granted I haven't read the comic books in a long time but I don't remember them being this bad. :-(
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Date: 2006-06-05 03:03 pm (UTC)Yeah. The Rogue and Mystique stuff bothered me the most. Storm just seemed flat to me.
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Date: 2006-06-05 06:13 pm (UTC)It wasn't just the women, it was everyone...
Date: 2006-06-06 10:38 pm (UTC)My 14-year-old son and I just finished seeing it this afternoon. Now first of all neither one of us are Marvel fans (I was raised in the DC universe) so we only know x-men from TV & movies. When we left the theater he said "boy they sure paid a lot for special effects, but I wish they would have developed the characters more." I said, "That was one of the thinnest plots I've ever seen." Really though-- couldn't they have given us a story?
I hope you stayed after the credits. Our ticket seller told us about the teaser, but we always stay for the credits anyway. At least they gave some hope. I'm thinking this episode must have had different (poor) writers than the previous two. I really wish I'd waited for the video.
Re: It wasn't just the women, it was everyone...
Date: 2006-06-07 01:17 am (UTC)Re: It wasn't just the women, it was everyone...
Date: 2006-06-09 01:39 am (UTC)So, lady, just wanted you to know that I have stopped by and visited your journal. I will be skimming the surface more often. Alaska has a way of distracting me in the summertime.
HUGS - lilbluecat
Re: Hi there!
Date: 2006-06-12 03:33 pm (UTC)Phoenix annoyed the hell out of me
Date: 2006-06-14 08:42 pm (UTC)*sigh*
And what is _up_ with her character needing to be penetrated by Wolverine in order to tame her wildness at the end and "save her" from...the angst of the possibility of being a really cool strong character? GAWD...
They should have kept the director from the first 2 movies...
Re: Phoenix annoyed the hell out of me
Date: 2006-06-14 09:20 pm (UTC)Twice? You are stronger than I by far. :-)
I found that the further I got from seeing it, the more annoyed I got. I think it had to sink in around all the special effects. The whole guy kills woman he loves to save her from herself also hit a bunch of my buttons about domestic violence and the justifications for it that a lot of perps come up with. There's always a "good" excuse for bumping off a dangerous woman after all. Or even one who is dangerous in very, very brief intervals. You never actually see Phoenix try and get much in the way of control, just freaking out when she's directly threatened and that's it. Also, they never bother to explain why being frozen for a few months makes her wake up ready to spin crap around and dissolve Cyclops. She doesn't seem to draw power or much of anything else from it.
In short, I left the movie with a general feeling of ickiness that even watching Patrick Steward and Iam McKellan flirt cannot sooth away. :-(