“The relationship between Charles and Erik has been integral to the series since the beginning. Why do you think that after nine movies that still resonates so strongly with the audience?” [x]
Just because someone stumbles, loses their way… it doesn’t mean they’re lost forever.
~gentle gasp~
Got carried away writing about X-Men: First Class for my Real Blog, before remembering that this is supposed to be a review, not a recap.
But I have no self-established rules in place to keep me from posting indulgent summarizing shit over HERE…..
But let’s back up, and try to take this chronologically until the romance plot just subsumes everything anyway. We begin, once more, in Poland. Using what looks to be perhaps the same footage? Ballsy, if so. Nothing says “half-reboot” like revisiting your exact some opening and then not doing a time-jump. But then again, this is the franchise that is going to just bring all its actors together in its next time-line warping installment, so I should really expect this of them. Anyhow, this time we stay with young Erik Lehnsherr while he meets the terrible Nazi doctor Sebastian Shaw, in a scene that I nearly had a heart-attack over for an absolutely breathtaking bit of perspective-shift that I’ll not ruin for anyone who hasn’t seen it. Oh Erik, what wickedness has been done to you.
Very little, on the contrary, has been done to tiny Charles Xavier, privileged poppet of the upper class, meeting a little blue mutant girl in his kitchen and just straight-up adopting her as his sister because who cares if he’s twelve and can’t do that, he’s Charles Xavier and believes in magic. When he grows up he also believes in genetics, and that the best way to flirt with girls is to talk about their “groovy mutations.” Amazingly, this appears to be a go-to line with Charles, as he tries to use it a second time on Moira MacTaggert, cute as sin and Not Here For This Right Now, when she brings a problem to him in the shape of four very powerful, very dangerous mutants trying to strong-arm the Cuban Missile Crisis into an actual crisis. Not so groovy, this.
Of course, the leader of these renegades is the same ageless Sebastian Shaw who tortured our Erik, now grown into a beautiful brutal Nazi killer questing for blood vengeance. And this brings Erik right into Charles’ arms — directly, in fact, when Charles feels him in pain during a Shaw-hunting catastrophe at sea, and just dives in to save him. Charles urges him to calm his mind, literally these are the words he uses, and Erik does. Erik thought he was alone, literally these are the words he uses. He is sure not, and part of what he is not alone in are THESE FEELINGS. And before you know it they’re calling each other “adorable” and “marvelous” and road-tripping around the country together rescuing mutant teens.
jessicapava replied to your link: Watch Log
this is so not the point but one of my favorite parts of x1 is when logan twirls around the statue of liberty’s crown spike by his claws. it’s like watching history. The Evolution Of CGI As Seen Through Human Bodies. remarkable.
THUMBS UP.emoji
I would also like to give a special shout-out to the moment in X2 when that tot is standing in the hallway of the X-Mansion in his lil socks and the wildlife documentary behind him goes “…the babies are helpless.”