Monday 20 June 2011

vague sexual threats in a frankly unintelligible dialect

It was while watching Footloose that I first realised that I was out of step with popular opinion as regards big movies, as I was on John Lithgow's side. I mean he pretty much goes apeshit when he sees a book-burning and turns on his conservative peers all like "Man what the fuck you doing?" and starts on the road to changing his mind about some stuff he got wrong. He's a decent guy, and that movie is much better if you go in thinking it's pretty much about him and not the douchey Kevin Bacon character who goes through the whole film telling people what to do and learning fuck all.
Anyway, I found myself not getting on with X-Men First Class because it seems to be a movie about a rich old-money white guy who's never worked a day in his life meeting a death camp survivor and telling him to get over it for two hours. Seriously, the first view we have of Charles Xavier is one of privilege, of him insulated from the war that grips the rest of the world and reduces America to rationing and Erik Lensherr to the subhuman status of eugenics experimentation subject in Auschwitz, and Charles has figured out that the woman in his kitchen is not his mother because - and I swear I am not making this up - she wouldn't bring him hot chocolate, she would have his servant do it. For the rest of the film, Charles makes a point of telling grown adults - most of which are working class, I notice - to hide what makes them different and not make waves and this is the problem with the film for me - it assumes Charles Xavier is in the right despite his glaring moral conservatism born of a lack of worldly experience that feeds the status quo rather than helps society evolve. He's no role model, using his parents' wealth to live a life of luxury and gain a university education with Raven draped across his arm like an ornament, all the while using his own powers to help him pick up women in bars (rohypnol not being invented yet as the film is a period piece), and then... well, to be blunt, then he starts telling a Nazi hunter that maybe he should let it go already. He looks a death camp survivor in the eye and tells him that he's wrong to want revenge on Kevin Bacon's Nazi eugenics scientist who is now attempting genocide once again. This is a movie where the good guy is someone saying someone is wrong to kill Super Hitler even though the film actually paints its protagonists into a corner and makes it clear that the character's death is the only thing that will stop him exploding and causing nuclear war.
The text of the film is disastrously muddled, with Erik accidentally causing Charles to be injured and immediately becoming repentant for his actions now that he's seen they have consequences, yet Charles doesn't forgive him even though throughout the entire film he's been telling Erik to let go and move on and somehow even though this inability to forgive births Magneto, Charles is once again in the right. To recap: X-Men: First Class is a film about a wealthy white conservative who is stabbed in the back by a bitter jew - an immigrant, no less - who doesn't know his place.
Oh, and the only black female member of the team is a stripper, who also betrays the team first chance she gets - was this movie written by middle class white people? I can't really tell...

Green Lantern was shit, too, but for entirely different reasons. I'm not what I would describe as a Ryan Renolds hater or fan, but he really needed some funny lines and to be doing his typical schtick in this. He doesn't, so what's already a mess is now a charmless mess. Meh.
Dropping some Frank on y'all...

Got some major problems on this page as I'm only now getting back to trying to draw, but what jumped out at me was the huge hands when I try perspective in that first panel. They look huge like you see in them Mike Deodato comics. Then I fucked that perspective up in the last panel. Plot wise I'm really regretting the decision to not bring in the characters' circle of friends until later - it does focus the plot, but gives me no room to do much of anything in terms of building character.

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