Muppets and X-Men, Oh My!
May. 30th, 2006 11:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alixtiiThey're not even trying to hide the slash any more.
In Episode 25, Statler and Waldorf break up--I kid you not. Episode 24 has a nice parody of X-Men, but the real highlight is Poseidon: The Musical. I mean, there's no way you can pass that up; you just have to watch it.
Oh, Statler. Oh, Waldorf. Never failing to bring both the slash and the meta.
Oh, and speaking of X-Men: The Last Stand, I saw it.
Sentinel cameo: My girlfriend can attest at how excited I was when I realized they were fighting a Sentinel. And then it turned out to be in the Danger Room and I felt cheated. The exploration of those social dynamics is one I'd really love to see in an X-Men film--although I suppose not this one, as it already had too much going on.
And looking back, that entire scene had no point. It set up the "teamwork" and "best defense is a good offense" comments for later in the film, but otherwise it was a pretty much a Chekhovian gun that just didn't go off.
Erik: As usual for the X-Men films, Sir Ian's performance was the highlight--although as someone or other on the foflist pointed out, sometimes it was clear that even he had no idea what he was supposed to be feeling. Still he continued to be, for the most part, believable and sympathetic. The delightful thing about X-Men has always been that there are no bad guys as such. (Okay, when you need to have a comic or an episode or whatever coming out so often, one eventually has to turn to bad guys as such. But that's not what X-Men is about.)
The tatoo scene was wonderfully done in driving home that point.
I was in love with the scene (well, not really, but I was giving it the benefit of the doubt) at the end where is Erik is alone and playing chess until they had to cheapen it by turning it into a stupid cliffhanger instead of doing something artistic and symbolic. It really made the movie end on the downer for me, which is a shame because I'll forgive a lot if I excite the theatre going, "That was fun."
And morally speaking, Erik was right--use of the whatever that macguffin was (a potion? a solution?) as a weapon really did cross a line. I'm not sure when use of force becomes legitimate, but I can't blame him for deciding that it was then.
Charles: I don't know how I feel about this one except for saying that the scene after the credits felt cheap and stupid and not worth sitting through the credits. I liked Moira better when her cameo seemed random and surprisingly long--when not everything makes perfect sense, it enriches a movie. But no, this is the third in a movie franchise, and everything has to be embarassingly linear. (I suppose this is a blatant contradiction of my comment re: Danger Room as Chekhovian gun, eh?)
I only got slighty teary at the funeral scene (and that at the shot of the girl sitting in the window); they should have been able to affect me a lot more than that, as it's fairly easy to make me cry at moments like that. (I don't cry so much because I'm sad that he died as I do because I am jealous he was so loved. But here that love didn't really show through at all, and it should have.)
Rogue: I know I'm not the only one who expected Rogue to show up at the last moment and save the day with her mutant powers. And I'm all for having my expectations defied, but here it felt more like Rogue and everyone else were in two completely different movies, and I found it difficult to care about both of them at the same time. We really didn't need a B-plot.
And this means that movieverse Rogue is now radically and irrevocably (unless/until her powers return) different than comicsverse (and more importantly to me, cartoonverse) Rogue. As long as she had her powers, this was simply the story of Rogue before she absorbed Miss Marvel's powers. Now? *shrug*
And I would have killed for just one instance of Anna Paquin saying "Sugar."
Phoenix: So very blah. I was left missing Alyson Hannigan, who could turn evil in a way that didn't leave me feeling bored--or worse, confused. The use of Phoenix was a total waste in this movie, and it just ended up making her look pathetic.
Kitty: I'm a fan of Kitty Pryde, but I went into this movie disgruntled with her because the franchise already had two Kitty Prydes and I didn't see why it couldn't have used one of them instead of inserting a third one. But oh well.
As for the Kitty/Bobby/Rogue triangle, I don't really get it. Does Bobby even touch Kitty on the skin during the ice skating scene? It didn't look like they were doing anything that Rogue couldn't do. And the assumption that now Rogue doesn't have her powers, Kitty will disappear as a rival? Is pretty damn insulting to Kitty if one thinks about it. Presumably Bobby was interested in her as more than just a warm body that he could touch, right?
Which really makes me want to write post-movie Bobby/Kitty.Possibly culminating in Rogue/Kitty/Bobby, I suppose--perhaps only after her powers re-manifest?
And was Kitty's only (Doylist) purpose to be Rogue's rival? Because that's a pretty petty use of a character I like. I mean, Kitty put up a good show of trying to use phasing offensively, but really. And she's always had a solid presence in the movies; just count the number of offhand comments that are made about her. She just never had all that many lines until now.
Warren: Loved loved LOVED their use of Warren. Which is weird, because I don't care about the actor or character AT ALL, but the plotting was so tight in that part of the movie (and such a mess elsewhere). He played a very specific role and they didn't use him when they didn't need him and it worked so well. Restraint served them well here.
Don't get me wrong, there was a lot that I loved--I think this movie did a decent job of exploring issues of hate and intolerance, the action movie elements were diverting, the high schoolers were will-to-powery, and a lot of the character moments were really great. If they could have left me with a smile on my face(or, alternately, in tears), my overall impression would have been positive with flaws. As it is--
Well, there was still a lot that I loved. Most of the people on the flist seemed to either really like it or really dislike it, and I can understand why. Still, I find myself somewhere in between.
In Episode 25, Statler and Waldorf break up--I kid you not. Episode 24 has a nice parody of X-Men, but the real highlight is Poseidon: The Musical. I mean, there's no way you can pass that up; you just have to watch it.
Oh, Statler. Oh, Waldorf. Never failing to bring both the slash and the meta.
Oh, and speaking of X-Men: The Last Stand, I saw it.
Sentinel cameo: My girlfriend can attest at how excited I was when I realized they were fighting a Sentinel. And then it turned out to be in the Danger Room and I felt cheated. The exploration of those social dynamics is one I'd really love to see in an X-Men film--although I suppose not this one, as it already had too much going on.
And looking back, that entire scene had no point. It set up the "teamwork" and "best defense is a good offense" comments for later in the film, but otherwise it was a pretty much a Chekhovian gun that just didn't go off.
Erik: As usual for the X-Men films, Sir Ian's performance was the highlight--although as someone or other on the foflist pointed out, sometimes it was clear that even he had no idea what he was supposed to be feeling. Still he continued to be, for the most part, believable and sympathetic. The delightful thing about X-Men has always been that there are no bad guys as such. (Okay, when you need to have a comic or an episode or whatever coming out so often, one eventually has to turn to bad guys as such. But that's not what X-Men is about.)
The tatoo scene was wonderfully done in driving home that point.
I was in love with the scene (well, not really, but I was giving it the benefit of the doubt) at the end where is Erik is alone and playing chess until they had to cheapen it by turning it into a stupid cliffhanger instead of doing something artistic and symbolic. It really made the movie end on the downer for me, which is a shame because I'll forgive a lot if I excite the theatre going, "That was fun."
And morally speaking, Erik was right--use of the whatever that macguffin was (a potion? a solution?) as a weapon really did cross a line. I'm not sure when use of force becomes legitimate, but I can't blame him for deciding that it was then.
Charles: I don't know how I feel about this one except for saying that the scene after the credits felt cheap and stupid and not worth sitting through the credits. I liked Moira better when her cameo seemed random and surprisingly long--when not everything makes perfect sense, it enriches a movie. But no, this is the third in a movie franchise, and everything has to be embarassingly linear. (I suppose this is a blatant contradiction of my comment re: Danger Room as Chekhovian gun, eh?)
I only got slighty teary at the funeral scene (and that at the shot of the girl sitting in the window); they should have been able to affect me a lot more than that, as it's fairly easy to make me cry at moments like that. (I don't cry so much because I'm sad that he died as I do because I am jealous he was so loved. But here that love didn't really show through at all, and it should have.)
Rogue: I know I'm not the only one who expected Rogue to show up at the last moment and save the day with her mutant powers. And I'm all for having my expectations defied, but here it felt more like Rogue and everyone else were in two completely different movies, and I found it difficult to care about both of them at the same time. We really didn't need a B-plot.
And this means that movieverse Rogue is now radically and irrevocably (unless/until her powers return) different than comicsverse (and more importantly to me, cartoonverse) Rogue. As long as she had her powers, this was simply the story of Rogue before she absorbed Miss Marvel's powers. Now? *shrug*
And I would have killed for just one instance of Anna Paquin saying "Sugar."
Phoenix: So very blah. I was left missing Alyson Hannigan, who could turn evil in a way that didn't leave me feeling bored--or worse, confused. The use of Phoenix was a total waste in this movie, and it just ended up making her look pathetic.
Kitty: I'm a fan of Kitty Pryde, but I went into this movie disgruntled with her because the franchise already had two Kitty Prydes and I didn't see why it couldn't have used one of them instead of inserting a third one. But oh well.
As for the Kitty/Bobby/Rogue triangle, I don't really get it. Does Bobby even touch Kitty on the skin during the ice skating scene? It didn't look like they were doing anything that Rogue couldn't do. And the assumption that now Rogue doesn't have her powers, Kitty will disappear as a rival? Is pretty damn insulting to Kitty if one thinks about it. Presumably Bobby was interested in her as more than just a warm body that he could touch, right?
Which really makes me want to write post-movie Bobby/Kitty.
And was Kitty's only (Doylist) purpose to be Rogue's rival? Because that's a pretty petty use of a character I like. I mean, Kitty put up a good show of trying to use phasing offensively, but really. And she's always had a solid presence in the movies; just count the number of offhand comments that are made about her. She just never had all that many lines until now.
Warren: Loved loved LOVED their use of Warren. Which is weird, because I don't care about the actor or character AT ALL, but the plotting was so tight in that part of the movie (and such a mess elsewhere). He played a very specific role and they didn't use him when they didn't need him and it worked so well. Restraint served them well here.
Don't get me wrong, there was a lot that I loved--I think this movie did a decent job of exploring issues of hate and intolerance, the action movie elements were diverting, the high schoolers were will-to-powery, and a lot of the character moments were really great. If they could have left me with a smile on my face(or, alternately, in tears), my overall impression would have been positive with flaws. As it is--
Well, there was still a lot that I loved. Most of the people on the flist seemed to either really like it or really dislike it, and I can understand why. Still, I find myself somewhere in between.