Going for a wider audience with the title reference to a Moody Blues lp. Anyway, Erin and I went to see the spectacle of our longing today.
A mezzo audience, theatres don’t seem to be crowded anymore. Short wait till previews. Only three movies to look forward to, or not. The first was a noisy Scarlett Johansen vehicle. The concept is a little fuzzy, something about her character getting kidnapped, and a bag of something placed surgically in her stomach. Oh, that old plot. The bag ruptures, thereby giving her super powers. Basically you watch to enjoy Scarlett looking like Scarlett, and the gymnastic mayhem her character perpetuates. Luckily I’ve seen enough. I mean, I sort of accept Scarlett as a capable implementation of the usual road, but this movie can’t possibly want anything.
Another movie shows a rascal hoodlum being trained as a government assassin. Look, there’s no balance here at all, it’s mindfuck for violence, with stray jokes to make it all okay. Their lordships Michael Caine and Samuel Jackson cannot make crap like this better. Another fury comes our way but at the moment I cannot recall what misery it releases.
So X-Men. The movie begins in The Matrix, to wit: a dark, dystopian world in which robotic warriors annihilate mutants, and everybody. A stupid, confusing scene of the remnant X-Men fighting off the robots, called Sentinels. It’s a mess. Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan play Dr Xavier and Magneto, now elderly but friends. The only answer is to send someone back in time and prevent um Mystique from killing the inventor of the Sentinels, back in 1973. Yeah, sure. See, Ellen Page has some sort of power that, well it’s like this, um… Okay, it is Matrixy. Wolverine gets the nod because he’s so healthy. She puts him to sleep and his mind goes back to 1973. I guess mine does that occasionally, as well.
Big fail, not to exploit the music and culture of ‘73. The only thing Forrest Gump got right was the tunes of the era.
Wolverine wakes in bed with some 1973 female. He slips naked from the bed so that we can peruse most of the acreage of his jacked body. Hugh Jackedman. He looks like a professional wrestler, ready to explode. It is funny that acting chops emanate from that puddle of improvement. His mission is to find the young Charles Xavier and stop Raven/Mystique. Wolverine finds Xavier and Beast at the now closed school. Xavier is deep in self-pity. Eventually he comes around enough to join Wolverine in trying to get Magneto to help. Magneto is imprisoned under the Pentagon. Not clear why they need Magneto.
Wolverine enlists the help of someone who will eventually become Quicksilver. He’s just a slacker kid but can move faster than the eye can see. The scenes with Quicksilver are played for laughs, a super powered stoner. Pretty easy getting Magneto out. A bunch of guards convene with pistols blazing. Here Quicksilver enters Matrix slo-mo, tipping bullets seemingly motionless in mid-air so that they stray from their targets and so forth. Funny scene. After this, he’s about done.
A problem with the X-Men is that there are so many of them. Most are spear carriers. Several, like Wolverine, Magneto, and Mystique, get to chew the curtains. The rest are stand ins for something eventually to happen. Mystique is played by Jennifer Lawrence, who I glean is Hollywood something. My meager inventory of either sides with Scarlett, if we demand competition. Lawrence looked roped into sentiment.
Mystique fails in her attempt to kill the Sentinel inventor, at the—no kidding—Paris Peace Talks. She and Magneto reveal themselves as mutants, and that sets Richard Nixon to greenlighting the Sentinel program. This Nixon looked like 2nd rate Vegas comedian. For some reason, Magneto lifts a baseball stadium and drops it around the White House, where the Sentinels are displayed. Show off. This is a scene full of… scene.
At this point, Mystique almost kills the Sentinel maker. Thru the good offices of Dr Xavier and Wolverine, she chooses not to pull the trigger. Whew.
In the future, a gazillion Sentinels locate the remnant X-Men in their Chinese Fortress of Solitude. This brought to mind the scene in the Star Wars Thrillogy when the Jedi are killed off Godfather-style. X-Men as a rule hold their hand palm forward to exert their power. Pity the poor actors hung upon these pegs. Halle Berry looked like exerted Hollywood featurette, star power being a mere visual. A lot of yelling and vague ministrations as the Forces of Good flex their steroids. Good Lord, it is the inside of a chocolate éclair!
The Manichean bullshit here is American dream. Mutant Republicans and/or Democrats get to save their party platform by being right. Murder is right for the right reason. Everything is good if you’re right. Wolverine wakes up and the world is okay again.
Look, we don’t need physics, it just holds us back. And we don’t need empathy, where’s the thrill in that? Accusations that the director committed sexual assault on a teen kind of adds to the privilege of righteous mode. Look, there is no moral basis to this movie. It is just flickering electrons with commercial intent. How could we even ask those electrons to care for the endeavour? We are intent to blink as hard as we can.
I think it is time that Marvel start eating its own entrails, and not ours.
