X-MEN 3 and mediocritocracy (Extremely Spoilerific)
POSTED BY: HKCavalier
UPDATED: Wednesday, June 14, 2006 21:14
VIEWED: 5818
PAGE 2 of 4
Quote:
Originally posted by DesktopHippie:
That being said, the Jean storyline in the movie was an awful mishmash cobbled together to avoid the whole Shi'ar, alien Phoenix force stuff, which granted would have swamped the movie completely. Unless they got Joss to write it. The movie didn't do the character Jean justice.
I'm glad they didn't go the alien route...but yeah Joss would have sold it a whole lot better ;)
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Go read the novel they lifted most of this plot line from - which handles the whole concept in a far more rational, reasonable, adult manner instead of the juvenille action-movie drivel that hollywood reduced it to via film.
The novel is called smoke and mirrors.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1572972912/qid=1149657975/sr=1-6/ref=
sr_1_6/102-7323786-3402520?s=books&v=glance&n=283155
At the end of the book, you kinda still hold out hope for mutant and humankind, but at the end of hollywoods bizarre mutilation, you just kinda feel.. disgusted.
I really, really didn't like that flick, it wasn't entertaining, sent mixed and disturbing messages it didn't even hide very well, and took certain liberties that make the story just plain not work - at all.
Even if I had zero foreknowledge of any of the story, I still would have hated it, there's no significant plot, no real resolution, no character development... hell, if you want a semi-mindless action flick, Golan-Globus could have done it ten times better on half the budget.
Me-> 
<-Hollywood
That about says it all, yes ?
-Frem
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Quote:
Grounded, please, this isn't logic you're using. You imply a symetrical relationship between the sexes when there isn't one in this context. The people in charge of this movie, the writers, producers, director of this film are predominantly men. That the choice was made to disempower these three key female characters in the way they were disempowered is consistent with a centuries old anti-feminine tendency. Simply changing the gender of these three characters would not invert the situation unless you also changed Stan Lee's sex, the sex of the director, writers, producers--and for that matter, the President of the United States, Jesus, God, etc. Any discussion of discrimination must take context into account.
Well, what about the first two movies which had predominently male crew members? Why didn't those movies "disempower" females?
As much as this subject irks me, I'm going to try and remain open minded about this. But for the record, this just seems like extreme liberal garbage to me. If you're constantly looking for a specific thing to be wrong, then eventually you're going to find it, even if it's not there.
This movie was poorly made, and that's about it. The "disempowered" female Jean Grey destroyed not only her lover, but also the mutant who was made out to be the MOST powerful in the previous movie: Professor X. Beyond that, she made Magneto, another of the most powerful mutants, cower away from her several times.
Aside from that, they had what looked to be a 15 year old girl, Kitty Pride, hold her own during a giant mutant gang war, then beat the Juggernaut. Sure, she didn't do it physically, but he punked Wolverine earlier in the movie, and now he's getting bested by a teenager.
I'm not taking the exact opposit position and saying that I think the makers of the film were in fact trying to empower females, but rather I think it's a complete and total non-issue. If you want true equality, then you have to stop beleiving that it absolutley exists in every dark corner that you can find. Be objective about it.
There's this book I heard of called "White Guilt", which has the underlying theme that if black people (or, in my opinion, any minority) keep trying to earn things by playing off of the guilt and accused discrimination of white people (and in this case, males), they are in fact disempowering themselves.
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They say I am a sinner and seducer, they try to put the blame on me, but I don't give a fuck for the way they see
Stand up and you'll win, surrender and you'll lose, it's heads or tails, you have to choose.
Heads or tails, which way will you choose? Die or live, surrender or fight? Wild and free, together we'll stand, strong and proud, we will claim our right.
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Actually, the head producer on all three X films has been a woman: Lauren-Schuler Donner.
Not trying to take sides here, just pointing out a fact that was overlooked above - though I agree that 3 had an obviouse subtext about the a woman with power being dangerous. Then again, that was part of the subtext in the original story, so damned if you do...damned if you don't...
"I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him."
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Don't producers just give money to the project? I'm seriously not well versed in their roles, but I thought that they had little to nothing to do with the creative department.
Even if they do, though, I don't see how that conflicts with my point. It was HKCavalier that brought that issue up, and if indeed producers have say in the creative process, and with the head producer being female, that's more of an argument against Cavalier's accusation that the movie's biased against women.
Conversly, if producers don't have say in the creative process, it's pretty much a non-issue.
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They say I am a sinner and seducer, they try to put the blame on me, but I don't give a fuck for the way they see
Stand up and you'll win, surrender and you'll lose, it's heads or tails, you have to choose.
Heads or tails, which way will you choose? Die or live, surrender or fight? Wild and free, together we'll stand, strong and proud, we will claim our right.
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If you folks don't see that we live in a sexist culture, I can't help you. If you can't see that art, particularly deeply symbolic fantasies like the X-men saga, have an opportunity and therefore a moral responsibility to explore alternatives to the same old "if you can't control it, it must be destroyed" mentality, we have nothing here to discuss.
This world is in deep shit folks, pardon my french. In my oppinion, the systematic disregard and devaluing of what are understood, psychologically, to be feminine values and traits--expressive emotionalism; consern for the feelings of others; introspection and talking through conflict rather than always choosing violence; genuine valuing of human lives, even when those lives belong to people who are our ideological enemies--has a lot to do with why things are as effed up as they are right now. All of us humans, male and female alike, suffer by it.
You know, there aren't a lot of stories about transendently powerful females in our culture. Whereas our major religions all present ultimate power as a masculine monopoly. When a woman's power is so thoroughly and completely demonized as Jean Grey's is in X-MEN 3, it makes me sad. It's discouraging to see our culture's will to discredit and destroy feminine power so very alive and well in the 21st century.
God damn, it's not about us and them, my fellow men. I'm not extolling the supposed "benefits" of guilt and shame that this discussion evokes in so many of you. Harming and disempowering women--and anything and everything resembling a woman--harms the human species, harms our children. Remember, all us boys are a good 49% female, genetically speaking.
Why does simply mentioning this topic, the disempowerment and debasement of the feminine, make you so mad? I know why I'm angry, do you know why you are?
HKCavalier
Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.
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HKCavalier wrote a very interesting analysis and I'm sorry that I have to disagree with a couple of things in it (generally I agree with HKCavalier much more often than I disagree with him - this is one of the things where I guess I disagree with him). By the way, I'm definitely not a fan of the movie, so don't think I'm trying to defend it.
First off, I think the anti-feminism thing is reading too much into it. I can see why one could think that, but still... naaah. Storm was written pathetically, but as somebody else said, they never knew how to write her. Rogue made her own choice. Pretty much everybody would have told her not to get the cure and she did anyway because it was the right choice for her as an individual. It's not about a woman surrendering her power, it's about making an individual decision that gave her what she wanted most, to be able to have physical contact with somebody (she already had these desires before Bobby came along, so it wasn't just to be able to shag him and get him back). Is making individual choices and having physical urges really anti-feminist?
I liked this explanation of Phoenix much more, I think it's a far more "plausible" explanation for her than an alien entity being bored. Anyway, her being so powerful and then being killed hardly seems anti-feminist to me, which brings me to my second point, where I agree with HKCavalier's argument that killing her wasn't necessary.
Quote:
Originally posted by HKCavalier:
There's a chance for healing here, but neither of them see it. She merely succeeds in suppressing her darkness long enough so he can murder her. /golfclap
Don't know about a chance for healing and the use of the word "murder", but definitely another solution could have been found. For example, there were still plenty of broken dart guns with the cure in them and this idea worked fine with Magneto, so why didn't Logan just grab some when he was walking towards her (or before, so that she wouldn't know he had them)? No need for killing if you can just take away her powers.
Third point. Regarding the question of whether the cure is permanent, I think it's safe to just assume it's a permanent "solution", not that a single injection will last permanently. Leech's DNA in the injections seem to be what causes the mutants to lose their powers, so once this has been expelled from the bloodstream the mutant will have to get a new injection. The time it takes to be expelled may vary depending on what else they put int he injection to make organs pick up the DNA so that it stays in the body for longer... or something along those lines. The point is that the cure can effectively be considered permanent for those who really want it.
Finally, Prof X blocking Jean's subconscious. I only saw the movie once so maybe I remember it incorrectly, but I'm pretty sure he said that she set up mental blocks to keep her dark side locked away, not he. I'm sure his plan would have been to try to work with her dark side while she was younger, but the mental blocks she installed were too powerful. He kept her sedated after they found her again because he knew how destructive her dark side could be and that he couldn't fight that side of her and win. The disappearance of Scott probably suggested to him that something bad happened and that Phoenix possibly was that bad thing. I don't think Wolverine was being visionary at all, and by keeping her sedated Prof X did exactly the right thing, namely try to suppress an evil he knew shouldn't be unleashed and possibly couldn't be beaten.
By the way, what was the point of having Moira McTaggert there? If one wants to introduce an important character, make them actually do something important. Or anything at all. And I still don't see why they couldn't find a spot for Nightcrawler in this movie, it was six X-Men against an army, I'm sure he could've been useful. But I have many issues with the movie and I'll rant some other time.
Other people can occasionally be useful, especially as minions. I want lots of minions.
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Just a quick note Khyron, Professor X was actually the one that set up the blocks. This provoked the argument between him and Wolverine about him having no right to control her in that manner. It was also one the reasons that she killed him.
HKCavalier had some good points, but speaking as a woman, I don't find X3 to be really anti-feminist. When I was a child, one of the reasons I enjoyed X-Men was the fact that it had strong female characters. Any faults with the movies I think are due to either bad writing, bad directing, or (in one very Halle Berry-specific case) bad acting. And truth be told, if you want to find anti-feminism in the comics, there are a lot better examples than X-Men. Early DC comics, hell, even some Marvel comics are more anti-feminist than X-Men could ever hope to be. I'm not saying things shouldn't have been handled differently in the film, but I don't agree that it's as bad as you make it out to be.
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"I'm going to sing the doom song! Doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, dooooooom...."
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Quote:
Originally posted by deepgirl187:
Just a quick note Khyron, Professor X was actually the one that set up the blocks. This provoked the argument between him and Wolverine about him having no right to control her in that manner. It was also one the reasons that she killed him.
Thanks. As I said, I may have remembered it wrong and it seems that was the case. I stand corrected, but I still think Prof X handled the situation as best as he could. If one can't defeat an evil, one should try to at least incapacitate it.
Other people can occasionally be useful, especially as minions. I want lots of minions.
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Agreed. Though if Jean could have eventually been able to control her powers, you have to admit it would be pretty amazing to see.
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"I'm going to sing the doom song! Doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, dooooooom...."
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