ah, payday
Jun. 11th, 2014 05:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kindkitI finally got to see X-Men: Days of Future Past (and yes, I wore my Magneto t-shirt).
On the whole I liked it enormously. It had everything that The Winter Soldier didn't--a plot with some cleverness, dialogue with wit and naturalness, good acting by all concerned, and strong characterization even for the villains, whose motivations and humanity we could always see even when they were doing terrible things. No computerized Nazis or inexplicable secret societies devoted to "ending freedom" here. (Sorry, Cap fans. I get what you guys liked in your movie, even when I didn't like it myself. But really it's the X-Men mythos that speaks to me, not Captain America or the Avengers. And I will not deny that I think DoFP was objectively a better-made film that TWS.)
What I was most dreading was Mystique being shown as Erik's love interest, and I am so so SO happy that the movie gave us almost none of that (a few ambiguous lines, for whose ambiguity I am tempted to credit Bryan Singer with not wanting to take away the queer potential). Mystique was not the love interest, and so she got to be much more: entirely interesting and awesome in her own right and by/with her own agency.
Erik, on the other hand, felt somewhat sidelined in the second half of the movie, and I'm not sure I understand the reasoning behind the choices he made, starting with shooting Mystique and ending with announcing on worldwide TV that yes, mutants do want to take over the world. Now, admittedly, Erik is the type to make huge grandstanding gestures even at the cost of effectiveness, and his anger overrules his rationality all the time, but that seemed a bit excessive. Of course he had just spent ten years in a horrible little prison for a crime he never committed, so it wouldn't be surprising if he'd gone a bit . . . crazier. (Also, apparently spending ten years in prison makes your hair less blond and changes your accent. Who knew?)
The Charles/Erik stuff, what there was of it, was gorgeous. I loved the airplane fight, especially Charles's "you abandoned me!" which is so open and so. fucking. vulnerable. And of course the future scenes where they're sorry for losing so much time. Oh, boys.
Having said that . . . I never thought I'd come out of this movie wanting Charles/Hank fic, but I really do. Hank is so sweet and so devoted. And still in love with Raven on some level, but I can easily see their shared loss of Raven as something that draws them together.
Nor did the movie exactly lessen my pre-existing penchant for Charles/Logan. I love what Charles brings out in Logan, the protectiveness and admiration combined that's so different from what Logan feels for anyone else, even Jean. I still ship Charles/Erik above all, because they love each other more than either one has ever loved anyone else (I mean, that's canon), but I can see other ships happening during their long lives and many, many estrangements and separations.
Okay, um, non-shippy stuff. I liked Peter (Quicksilver) and thought the scene in his time-POV was brilliant. The nod to comics canon, in which Erik is Pietro's father, was cleverly done, and I'm also extremely glad that Erik being Peter's father in the movie canon is hugely unlikely, since Erik doesn't seem to have come to the US before1963 1962.
Speaking of canon: so, this movie has put the first X-Men trilogy out of continuity, yes? Even leaving aside the scene where Logan wakes up at the school and everything is hunky-dory and Jean and Scott and Xavier are all still alive (which is carefully left ambiguous so it could be a hallucination), I don't see this continuity being the one with the Mutant Registration Act, or the cure program, or for that matter Erik and Mystique working together and being close friends. I'm actually perfectly happy with two separate continuities, so it works for me. (Come to that, I'm not sure how the ending of X-3 produces a near-future world with a mutants-vs-sentinels war, so maybe the whole of the First Class verse was already set in the universe next door.)
ETA: I'm convinced that Erik was around somewhere in the happy-future Xavier Academy future. Just not on camera. But it's not really a happy future if Erik isn't with Charles.
Finally, can someone explain the post-credits scene to me? I have no idea what was supposed to be going on there.
After the movie I treated myself to ice cream at a new place near the movie theater. Their schtick is that they mix the ice cream fresh with each order and freeze it instantly with liquid nitrogen. It's a bit poncey, and also rather expensive, but the ice cream is fantastic. The texture is gorgeously creamy and the taste is wonderfully fresh and intense. I had the honey lavender, about which I was very excited because I love lavender ice cream and it's not easy to find. They offer a bunch of other cool flavors like honey rose, tamarindo, and Mayan chocolate (which I presume has chiles in it), so going there may be my new (occasional, because one small scoop costs as much as a pint of Ben & Jerry's) treat.
On the subject of prices: 9 dollars for a movie matinee? It's like they don't want people to go to the movies. And for some reason a number ofidiots confused parents had brought their small children with them. I don't care if it's rated PG-13, this is not a movie for your four-year-old! And the four-year-old in question proved it by talking quite a lot during the movie.
My obvious solution would seem to be going later, but there are still usually a bunch of kids in the audience, because kids apparently don't have bedtimes anymore. And if you go really late, which is difficult for me because of my working hours, then you get a bunch of rowdy teenagers and drunk college students who make as much noise as little kids. /curmudgeon
On the whole I liked it enormously. It had everything that The Winter Soldier didn't--a plot with some cleverness, dialogue with wit and naturalness, good acting by all concerned, and strong characterization even for the villains, whose motivations and humanity we could always see even when they were doing terrible things. No computerized Nazis or inexplicable secret societies devoted to "ending freedom" here. (Sorry, Cap fans. I get what you guys liked in your movie, even when I didn't like it myself. But really it's the X-Men mythos that speaks to me, not Captain America or the Avengers. And I will not deny that I think DoFP was objectively a better-made film that TWS.)
What I was most dreading was Mystique being shown as Erik's love interest, and I am so so SO happy that the movie gave us almost none of that (a few ambiguous lines, for whose ambiguity I am tempted to credit Bryan Singer with not wanting to take away the queer potential). Mystique was not the love interest, and so she got to be much more: entirely interesting and awesome in her own right and by/with her own agency.
Erik, on the other hand, felt somewhat sidelined in the second half of the movie, and I'm not sure I understand the reasoning behind the choices he made, starting with shooting Mystique and ending with announcing on worldwide TV that yes, mutants do want to take over the world. Now, admittedly, Erik is the type to make huge grandstanding gestures even at the cost of effectiveness, and his anger overrules his rationality all the time, but that seemed a bit excessive. Of course he had just spent ten years in a horrible little prison for a crime he never committed, so it wouldn't be surprising if he'd gone a bit . . . crazier. (Also, apparently spending ten years in prison makes your hair less blond and changes your accent. Who knew?)
The Charles/Erik stuff, what there was of it, was gorgeous. I loved the airplane fight, especially Charles's "you abandoned me!" which is so open and so. fucking. vulnerable. And of course the future scenes where they're sorry for losing so much time. Oh, boys.
Having said that . . . I never thought I'd come out of this movie wanting Charles/Hank fic, but I really do. Hank is so sweet and so devoted. And still in love with Raven on some level, but I can easily see their shared loss of Raven as something that draws them together.
Nor did the movie exactly lessen my pre-existing penchant for Charles/Logan. I love what Charles brings out in Logan, the protectiveness and admiration combined that's so different from what Logan feels for anyone else, even Jean. I still ship Charles/Erik above all, because they love each other more than either one has ever loved anyone else (I mean, that's canon), but I can see other ships happening during their long lives and many, many estrangements and separations.
Okay, um, non-shippy stuff. I liked Peter (Quicksilver) and thought the scene in his time-POV was brilliant. The nod to comics canon, in which Erik is Pietro's father, was cleverly done, and I'm also extremely glad that Erik being Peter's father in the movie canon is hugely unlikely, since Erik doesn't seem to have come to the US before
Speaking of canon: so, this movie has put the first X-Men trilogy out of continuity, yes? Even leaving aside the scene where Logan wakes up at the school and everything is hunky-dory and Jean and Scott and Xavier are all still alive (which is carefully left ambiguous so it could be a hallucination), I don't see this continuity being the one with the Mutant Registration Act, or the cure program, or for that matter Erik and Mystique working together and being close friends. I'm actually perfectly happy with two separate continuities, so it works for me. (Come to that, I'm not sure how the ending of X-3 produces a near-future world with a mutants-vs-sentinels war, so maybe the whole of the First Class verse was already set in the universe next door.)
ETA: I'm convinced that Erik was around somewhere in the happy-future Xavier Academy future. Just not on camera. But it's not really a happy future if Erik isn't with Charles.
Finally, can someone explain the post-credits scene to me? I have no idea what was supposed to be going on there.
After the movie I treated myself to ice cream at a new place near the movie theater. Their schtick is that they mix the ice cream fresh with each order and freeze it instantly with liquid nitrogen. It's a bit poncey, and also rather expensive, but the ice cream is fantastic. The texture is gorgeously creamy and the taste is wonderfully fresh and intense. I had the honey lavender, about which I was very excited because I love lavender ice cream and it's not easy to find. They offer a bunch of other cool flavors like honey rose, tamarindo, and Mayan chocolate (which I presume has chiles in it), so going there may be my new (occasional, because one small scoop costs as much as a pint of Ben & Jerry's) treat.
On the subject of prices: 9 dollars for a movie matinee? It's like they don't want people to go to the movies. And for some reason a number of
My obvious solution would seem to be going later, but there are still usually a bunch of kids in the audience, because kids apparently don't have bedtimes anymore. And if you go really late, which is difficult for me because of my working hours, then you get a bunch of rowdy teenagers and drunk college students who make as much noise as little kids. /curmudgeon
