I sense an ulterior motive
Jun. 26th, 2011 03:07 amSo I saw a post excoriating X-Men: First Class for A. Not changing Charles and Erik's canonical sexual orientation to gay, and thus appropriating gay culture for a straight story (although the X-Men has been a metaphor for many minorities for decades now, specifically the Jewish community in Erik's case, and the disabled for Charles) and B. Changing Mystique's canonical sexual orientation to straight... although in the comics, she's bisexual, so unless I missed a scene where she said "Eww, I hate girls sexually! Vaginas = gross!", she could still be bi. Hell, in the comics, she's Nightcrawler's bio-mother, which has never been explicitly stated in the movies. So for all we know, she's Magneto's homosexual life partner and they gossip about the San Francisco dating scene over platonic lunch dates. And given that Raven is a young twentysomething who's led a somewhat unexamined life in the movie, if she does identify as straight, couldn't she come to a realization about her sexuality later in life? I mean, she hasn't even met Emma Frost yet, give it time.
Not to mention that Mystique's sexuality mainly comes up with Irene Adler, who, to be fair, has the pretty out-there power of seeing the future, which would be a little weird in the realistic Singerverse. "I see that Logan is going to lose his memory after being given an adamantium skeleton. No, wait, false alarm, it's after... what the fuck is a memory bullet?"
And you know, call me crazy, but I think that if First Class totally rewrote both Hank and Raven's story arcs, then added another character to the cast just so Raven had a female love interest, these people would just say "Oh, they're pandering to the fanboys with hot girl-on-girl action. We wanna see McAvoy and Fassbender make ooooooooooout!"
ETA: Also, it freaks me out a little when people go "dude, Magneto was right, Charles just wants minorities to kowtow to The Man, the poser." Since the entire point of the movie, and the character, is that Erik ends up becoming exactly what he hates, hat and all. I.e., a Nazi. His philosophy is literally "Aryans Mutants are the superior race! We've been oppressed by the Jews humanity for too long! We must wipe out all inferiors if we are to be free!" Sure, his intentions are noble, but in the end, he'll still sacrifice a child's mother right in front of the boy an innocent teenage girl to get what he wants.
And while Erik is trying to commit genocide, Charles is the one breaking into the White House and calling out the President--which works (even discounting X3, by the end of X2 the X-Men still go back to their school and live in peace). It's not that he's non-confrontational, it's that he's not a total jag-off about it.
Not to mention that Mystique's sexuality mainly comes up with Irene Adler, who, to be fair, has the pretty out-there power of seeing the future, which would be a little weird in the realistic Singerverse. "I see that Logan is going to lose his memory after being given an adamantium skeleton. No, wait, false alarm, it's after... what the fuck is a memory bullet?"
And you know, call me crazy, but I think that if First Class totally rewrote both Hank and Raven's story arcs, then added another character to the cast just so Raven had a female love interest, these people would just say "Oh, they're pandering to the fanboys with hot girl-on-girl action. We wanna see McAvoy and Fassbender make ooooooooooout!"
ETA: Also, it freaks me out a little when people go "dude, Magneto was right, Charles just wants minorities to kowtow to The Man, the poser." Since the entire point of the movie, and the character, is that Erik ends up becoming exactly what he hates, hat and all. I.e., a Nazi. His philosophy is literally "
And while Erik is trying to commit genocide, Charles is the one breaking into the White House and calling out the President--which works (even discounting X3, by the end of X2 the X-Men still go back to their school and live in peace). It's not that he's non-confrontational, it's that he's not a total jag-off about it.