passing the friendship test

I caught up on some movies this weekend. I saw the X-Men and Captain America movies in theaters, and I saw the second Hobbit movie on DVD.

All three were entertaining, and none of them were great. The two Marvel movies were an interesting contrast, in terms of serial storytelling. The Marvel Cinematic Universe films (Avengers, Iron Man, Thor, etc,) are obviously very carefully structured to work together, each one fitting into the sequence properly. On the other hand, the X-Men series has basically been assembled on the fly, by a series of writers and directors who have apparently been given a lot more leeway. This X-Men movie contradicts some of the earlier ones (some of which I think contradicted each other, too), and I have a strong feeling that the timeline makes absolutely no sense at this point (in terms of how old the characters are at different points, among other things).

Which just means that they’ve recreated, in miniature, the situation in the comic books themselves.  🙂

The weakness of the X-Men film is that the plot, involving a lot of time travel and such like, isn’t very compelling.  What the movie has going for it is Bryan Singer, who is the rare director who can handle action scenes and character moments with equal skill, and a really incredible cast. This basically a greatest hits collection of actors from all the previous movies.

It looks like the studio folks agreed with me that most of the new X-Men (and the new Brotherhood, for that matter) were complete duds, so they’re all gone. Havoc and Banshee and Emma Frost and whoever those other people were — all dead (except for Nicholas Hoult’s Beast, who was definitely the best of the newbies). Instead we get Stewart, McKellen, Lawrence, Fassbender, McAvoy, and Page. Plus some new people who look pretty interesting. (No spoilers — but it was pretty moving to see a few other faces, too.)

And, of course, there’s Hugh Jackman. I think people are so used to him at this point that they underestimate him — but he’s what holds this movie together (to the extent that it does hold together). He’s got to play Wolverine differently than before, much more of a leader and mentor, and he carries it off perfectly without betraying who the character was in the earlier movies.

The Captain America movie has a much more interesting plot (since it’s a lot clearer and more believable in terms of what failure might mean). People have compared it to various 1970s political conspiracy thrillers, and correctly so, but what it reminded me of the most was The X-Files. Because of the shadowy governmental conspiracy aspect, but also because it’s fundamentally about a partnership between a man and a woman, who are not romantically involved, trying to understand the conspiracy from different perspectives and using different approaches and philosophies.

This is even more rare than a movie passing the Bechdel test — a movie that proposes that a man and a woman can be partners and friends. Joss Whedon didn’t have anything to do with this movie, at least officially, but it was he who repositioned Natasha Romanoff so that this could be possible (I suspect Scarlett Johansson may have had something to do with it, too).

In Iron Man II, Natasha was basically eye candy — the men were mocked for ogling her, but the camera ogled her, too (did she really have to strip off in the back of that car?). There was none of that in The Avengers, and her interrogation of Loki may have been (well, other than Tony and Pepper 🙂 ) the best scene in the picture.

In The X-Files, the mantra was “Trust no one” (which is repeated here, under very similar circumstances), but both stories are fundamentally about two people who do trust each other, even as they are very suspicious of everyone else — and with good reason.

The good parts of the movie are the quiet parts, the parts which actually are about investigating the conspiracy. The bad parts are when it remembers that it’s also a big summer superhero movie, because the action scenes are dreadful — all shaky handheld camera work and quick cuts. There’s never any moment when you can actually tell what’s going on (though the auto chase scenes are quite a bit better than the fight scenes).

There’s an incredible scene in the X-Men movie where Quicksilver (a mutant with super-speed) basically breaks Magneto out of a super-secure prison by running around a room, sometimes along the walls, redirecting bullets in mid-flight and also generally goofing around with the prison guards (knocking their hats off, etc.). He’s moving so fast that everybody else is frozen in place, and he’s obviously having a great time — his enjoyment of his own abilities is infectious. In terms of action, that scene is better than the whole Captain America movie. Superhero movies are pretty somber these days, so there isn’t much glee — there isn’t enough “Hey, look at what I can do!”

The Hobbit movie was pretty good — about what I expected. I didn’t see the first one, but it was easy to follow, and it was good to see after the Captain America movie since Peter Jackson’s action scenes are also a pleasure to watch at this point (the first Lord of the Rings movie was iffy, but he’s learned a lot since then). There’s wit and tension and a real sense of danger and consequences, plus there’s fun (the dwarves escaping captivity in the barrels is everything it should be).

A lot of Tolkien purists have objected to the addition of Tauriel, a kick-ass female elf, but I was okay with that (only about 25% of the movie seems to come from the book anyway), but I did find it annoying that she had to have an unconvincing romance (plus a love triangle which was added in reshoots and which even the actress has complained about — apparently she’d been promised that there wouldn’t be one). As the Captain America movie shows, people can decide to do the right thing for reasons other than romance.

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