On the one hand, I actually enjoyed the movie a lot. There were good action sequences and gorgeous special effects. The CHERIK coming from the Sir Ian and Sir Patrick side of the house could easily fuel some great "old people in love" stories. I really liked most of the cast. I was glad to see all the former X-men, the XMFC cast and the new mutants all on one screen. The Quicksilver scene was hysterical. Plus, I am a huge James McAvoy fan and his performance was AMAZING.
On the other hand, the characterization of Mystique bothered me a lot in this. I liked that they gave her the chance to become her own character rather than just being relegated the role of 'Magneto's minion.' I get that she's supposed to be a strong willed person. That being said, there's a line between tenacious and foolish. When Erik, Charles, and Logan are ALL warning her about the same thing, I would have expected her to at least stop and think about the repercussions about what she's about to do. I felt like, in their attempt to make her independent, they failed to show her intelligence. In a way, she simply became a plot device; the vehicle by which Charles learned his lesson du jour.
The other thing that really bothered me was Erik's treatment on Logan at the end. If Erik's goal is protect his fellow mutants, then what he did to Logan just seemed extreme.
I also had some issues with the movie's treatment of the 10 year time skip.
All that being said, I did enjoy the movie quite a bit, so it pains be to say anything negative about it.
Nah. I don't think I need to rant over it. I didn't hate the movie. It's more that I was charmed by XMFC. Even though XMFC had its own flaws and plot holes, I was willing to ignore them because I loved the character interactions so much. Not to mention the silliness and camp.
DOFP, while a fun movie, didn't have the same level of charm. I also felt like Michael Fassbender was trying so hard to pretend to be mini "Sir Ian," that his own acting didn't really shine through. The result, for me at least, was that Erik's character didn't have as much impact. He felt 'stiff' or stifled.
That all being said, I bought the DVD because James' performance was enough to make me want to watch it again.
I think the other reason is that I'm much older than the average fangirl. I've seen a _lot_ of truly awful comic movies over the years. Compared to some of those movies, DOFP was terrific.
My issues with DOFP upon reflection comes down to this: I've spent three years picking apart everything Erik, Raven and Charles were, who they were, and DOFP took the first two and replaced them with cardboard cut-outs. Charles was fantastic, well-written and acted to perfection, but there's only so much to be done when acting with cardboard. It was lazy writing, most of all. And when a $200M movie can't bother to spring for a writer that gives a fuck, I don't feel obliged to, either.
I think XMFC did a really great job of keeping the special effects from taking over the movie.
That's one of the reasons why I hate Michael Bay movies with the passion of a thousand burning suns. All flash, no substance. Any discussion related to Michael Bay (or James Cameron) usually sends me into rant mode.
In XMFC, there was a good balance between plot-driven scenes and character-driven scenes. I loved XMFC because the movie felt intimate and made me care about the characters. XMFC's main narrative was really about Erik's character development. The rest of the cast, and event the plot, was really in support of the shaping of Erik's character.
To me, DOFP fell somewhere in the middle. Not as engaging as XMFC was, but much better than a Michael Bay movie.
The DOFP storyline is a very ambitious one. Lots of important plot points and tons of characters to introduce. By comparison, XMFC's plot was more straightforward and the main cast was much smaller.
Since there's so much going on in DOFP, I think it's hard to fit character-driven scenes into the movie without the movie being too long or having to break it into two movies. Personally, I wouldn't have minded DOFP being broken into two movies to allow for better character development, but I realize that breaking one movie into two comes with its own challenges.
What I am sad about is that the movie had such a terrific cast - many of whom are Oscar nominees or Oscar winners - and yet failed to make good use of many of them.
I think the movie tried to be character-driven with the Charles' growth as the main narrative, but at times the complex plot - and whiz-bang special effects that accompany a summer blockbuster - took over the narrative, which took away from the development of the other characters.
All that being said, I am glad that DOFP allowed the XMFC storyline to break away from X3, which I really did not enjoy.
For me it wasn't a question of special effects at all (because that I think was behind Erik's stadium fiasco), it was literally that Raven in that movie, by all accounts a second main character (because let's not kid ourselves, Erik wasn't it, and he got treated even worse), had literally no substance. They took the complex secondary character of a young woman at a crossroads she was in XMFC and reduced her to a bimbo who flashes her tits and crotch every chance she gets and succeeds because The Plot Says So. Yeah, there was a time we were all impressed Raven was the one doing things for the cause, but truth was she didn't matter in DOFP. Nothing she did mattered in terms of plot. She was the box of magic items for the guys to fight over. And that I can't forgive DOFP for that.
Hell, DOFP even fails what it purports to accomplish with Charles, because for most of the movie it's "you need to accept that you can't control people, let Raven grow up and make her own decisions" and suddenly the finale calls for him to tell her "there there, daddy will make it better, do what makes you happy and I will manage the fallout," which is infantilising to the extreme.
I agree with you about the Erik stadium scene. And I would also like to include the "Logan vs. The Potomac River" scene with that as well. There definitely were some special effects (and use of mutant powers) scenes that were gratuitous. And I would go so far as to say that some of those scenes detracted from the main story.
I feel like the failure in Charles' character development really stemmed from the failure in Raven's character development. When ALL the characters spend the entire movie telling Raven that her actions are going to bring about the apocalypse, and she is so one-track minded (READ: flatly-written) that she doesn't even pause to think about her actions, that really only leaves Charles two choices at the end: 1. Control Raven with his telepathy and force her to stop OR 2. Throw up his hands, tell her she can do what she wants, and then clean up the mess afterwards. Is it infantilizing? Yes. Written entirely from a male lens? Absolutely. But I think writing Raven as being stubborn to the point of blindness forced Charles' character into that corner, so the fault lies in their writing/treatment of Raven's character. I was happy to see her go out on her own, but the lack of nuance/intelligence in her characterization bothered me.
And I agree with you about Erik. There were times when I looked at Erik during the movie and wondered who the pod person in Michael Fassbender's body was. I love Michael Fassbender as an actor, but he really didn't have much to work with when it came to DOFP!Erik. Plus, I really felt like he was trying too hard to mimic Sir Ian's Erik, rather than making Erik his own.
Yeah, that I'm pinning on Singer, he really thinks of Magneto as an irredeemable supervillain.
Right? There's only so much meaningful development you can have without character interaction. My problem with Raven is not that I hate Raven-as-a-character, but that DOFP completely and wilfully ignored everything she was and did in XMFC, and then completely ignored her personhood. The fault is with the writers entirely (and also that bloody pervert who choreographed/filmed her fight scenes).
Yeah, that really doesn't work for me. There are comic supervillians that are truly pure evil, like Ultron. Magneto isn't one of them. He's done some truly awful things, but it's all for a cause he considers just. In my mind, he belongs to the 'You can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs' school of thought. Also known as 'The end justifies the means' school of thought. But he has actually done a lot of good things in the comics. He is almost always the one who ends up taking over the school in stories where Charles dies. He's willing to kill, but mainly he kills when he thinks killing will help him reach his goal. His treatment of Logan seemed way over the top. Why try to KILL Logan when Logan's goal was the same as his -- to save mutantkind (and the world)? He could easily have just gotten rid of Logan some other way without killing him.
As for Mystique. Yeah, a lot of her scenes were really fan service. Not that there's anything wrong with a little bit of that. I mean, they had Erik shirtless for part of the movie. And Thor is shirtless a lot in his movies. But with female characters, the fan service goes too far a lot of the time. I have no issue with 90% substance / 10% fan service. But with most female characters, it's the other way around. It makes me sad because I actually really like JLaw as an actress.
Do you ever follow Jim Hines blog? I adore him:
http://www.jimchines.com/2012/01/striking-a-pose/
He does a series of photos where he tries to recreate the overly sexualized poses of women on book covers.
It's a disturbing trend with Singer that he makes Magneto skate right past every conceivable line. I dislike that very much. Sure, he may be a supervillain, but the crux of his character is that you are supposed to understand and sympathise, even if he does evil, and pointlessly torturing a good guy goes way, way beyond.
So agreed. And hey, I enjoy fanservice in moderation! But it's especially jarring in comparison with the old!Mystique, who was equally naked, and yet never flashed the camera.
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