Movie Three: X2

Film: X2

Date seen: 3 August, 2011

Location: In Bed

Beverages: none 

Companionship: In virtual, Arizonana, g-chat spirit, Ian.

Rating: 8 out of 10.  

The Review.  Of Sorts.

Let me state now that my rating is not based on how good the movie is.  Honestly, I am not an arbitrator of taste, and I have no real way of being able to adequately give a rating based on how good a movie is.  What makes a film good?  It's like saying what makes art good.  Or what makes food good.  Or writing.  Does anyone want a blog on the theory of aesthetics and taste?  I mean, I could do that, but my reading is really out of date.  Maybe I'll do a post about Jean-François Lyotard and superheroes?  Or not.  But I'm rating them in terms of How Much I Liked Them At The Time.  Anything in a cinema is probably going to do better, just because i've seen it in a cinema. I really like the cineplex!


So - this X-Men movie was better than the first one.  It was really tightly done, and it managed to juggle a great deal of 'stuff happening' with interesting and relevant character development.  Wolverine became more complex, and continued to not wear a shirt for most of the movie.  Mystique's slightly uncomfortable level of hotness continued (she's blue! but she's naked, all the time.  interesting...).  


The theme of 'otherness' was still really didactic.  Using children in the movie is an interesting move - we've got the innocence of the child not understanding why it is other, and then, the unsympathetic, but occasionally sympathetic children who are normal.  Just think about the scene with Pyro & co at the museum - or when the small child pokes his forked tongue out - the children/teenagers react with revulsion.  Is this an example of how children are programmed to dislike the other? Or is it implying we are all opposed to otherness by default?  


What I've found most interesting in both 1 & 2 is the almost complete lack of 'humans' sympathetic to the mutants.  It's really narrow, and polarized.  Though the recent prequel was not as good in a lot of ways, at least it showed a slightly broader range of humans reacting to mutants.  Good-Bad binaries tend to shit me.  I like that Magneto is more than just evil, and that X is not pure. This gives their actions space to move.  It makes the films less predictable.  


Personally, the Good-Bad binary is something that I know I'm going to find irritating in this process. In almost all of the movies I list as my favourites, one of the clearest commonalities is a lack of good and bad, or a far blurrier line between them.  Take Wings of Desire.  There's no good or evil, as such.  There's no confrontation or point of culmination of conflict, and that is one of the many things i like about it.  Or, to be looking at this from a really different angle, Deadwood.  There are people who do good things, and bad things. There are complicated human beings, being, well, complicated.*  Also - Al. He's fucking great. But the best example of a character who's extraordinarily complicated, and wonderful. And hot. 


Anyhow. This is not me saying that genre films are shit because of these sorts of binaries, or the fact that there is always an other, a bully, a 'force' that needs to be fought. Obviously this is something that people broadly are identifying as happening in the world.  Sometimes, I imagine myself as some sort of slightly inappropriate librarian superhero.  Like Rex Libris, or that lesbian-overtone manga about hot librarians.  I don't know what I'm avenging.  But were i to be a superhero, I like the idea in the X-Men series that 'you are not alone'.   That's significantly different from both Batman and Captain America - both of whom were overwhelmingly alone.  

So there's the theme of isolation which is curious. 


I like movies that help me suspend my disbelief in the scenario.  This one did.  The complexities were interesting without being too complex. The characters developed realistically.  Gender was... well... interesting, but I think i'll leave any more discussion on that until after the third movie, given i know that the playing field, in regards to 'who is the most super powerful' is about to change.  


Go X-Men.




* I will also be always in Deadwood's debt for it teaching me to be OK with violence on screen. It's violent. Far, far more violent than i am used to watching, because I'm a bit funny about realistic screen violence. But after three series straight, I feel far more immune to seeing people shot, stabbed, beaten to death with a log, pushed off mountains then beaten to death with a rock, and so on.  Oh, and eaten by pigs. So, thanks Deadwood!