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revdorothyl at 05:01pm on 14/06/2011 under movie reviews
revdorothyl at 05:01pm on 14/06/2011 under movie reviewsI've been meaning to add a comment about the young Charles Xavier (so brilliantly played by James McAvoy in the new film) to my earlier, oh-so-brief review, and decided now's as good a chance as any.
One of the many things I liked about this film was that though the young Charles Xavier was depicted brilliant and kind (in an often oblivious, too-privileged-to-really-get-it-sometimes sort of way), he could also be shallow at times (those pick-up lines . . . seriously?!) and blind to other people's pain and trauma or to the fact that other people's perceptions of human nature and the way the world works might actually be more accurate than his own.
Charles really didn't get the pain Raven was experiencing or the real reason for it, nor did he seem to spend much energy or time trying to understand what she needed from him as an adult that might be different from what she'd needed as a hungry child pilfering from his mansion's kitchen. He had Raven neatly filed in a box, already, and expressed mostly annoyance whenever she reacted in a way different than he'd expected or required.
And though Charles could show great insight into unlocking Erik's power without recourse to Shaw's methods of pain and rage, and could be truly empathetic when opening up one bright, shining memory from Erik's childhood, he was still blithely inclined to discount Erik's well-founded warnings about how badly normal humans could and would respond to an overt show of mutant powers, no matter how well-intentioned.
In spite of being a telepath, young Charles showed a tendency to live too much inside his own head, seeing the world as he wished it to be and unaware that his perceptions of the way the world worked were based on an extremely privileged and sheltered upbringing, no matter how deprived he might've felt in terms of mother love, etc..
The film did a fabulous job of setting it up so that the ricochet bullet which robs him of the use of his legs in the final climactic scene becomes in a real sense the fulcrum point in Charles' transformation from overconfident, brilliant rich boy to the worldly-wise, extremely patient, and unflappable Professor X. It seemed as if that scene of devastating loss is what gives Xavier the ability to truly, deeply empathize with the suffering and anger of other mutants -- like Wolverine and Rogue in the first film -- while holding firm to his own moral code. He becomes a true mentor to other mutants, instead of just a researcher doing lab experiements with them to try out his theories.
Anyway, that's how it seems to me.
One of the many things I liked about this film was that though the young Charles Xavier was depicted brilliant and kind (in an often oblivious, too-privileged-to-really-get-it-sometimes sort of way), he could also be shallow at times (those pick-up lines . . . seriously?!) and blind to other people's pain and trauma or to the fact that other people's perceptions of human nature and the way the world works might actually be more accurate than his own.
Charles really didn't get the pain Raven was experiencing or the real reason for it, nor did he seem to spend much energy or time trying to understand what she needed from him as an adult that might be different from what she'd needed as a hungry child pilfering from his mansion's kitchen. He had Raven neatly filed in a box, already, and expressed mostly annoyance whenever she reacted in a way different than he'd expected or required.
And though Charles could show great insight into unlocking Erik's power without recourse to Shaw's methods of pain and rage, and could be truly empathetic when opening up one bright, shining memory from Erik's childhood, he was still blithely inclined to discount Erik's well-founded warnings about how badly normal humans could and would respond to an overt show of mutant powers, no matter how well-intentioned.
In spite of being a telepath, young Charles showed a tendency to live too much inside his own head, seeing the world as he wished it to be and unaware that his perceptions of the way the world worked were based on an extremely privileged and sheltered upbringing, no matter how deprived he might've felt in terms of mother love, etc..
The film did a fabulous job of setting it up so that the ricochet bullet which robs him of the use of his legs in the final climactic scene becomes in a real sense the fulcrum point in Charles' transformation from overconfident, brilliant rich boy to the worldly-wise, extremely patient, and unflappable Professor X. It seemed as if that scene of devastating loss is what gives Xavier the ability to truly, deeply empathize with the suffering and anger of other mutants -- like Wolverine and Rogue in the first film -- while holding firm to his own moral code. He becomes a true mentor to other mutants, instead of just a researcher doing lab experiements with them to try out his theories.
Anyway, that's how it seems to me.
(no subject)
(no subject)
And you could see why -- no matter how much they disagreed or actively battled one another in later years -- Xavier still genuinely regarded Magneto as a friend, because he knew that it wasn't only Erik's choices that had caused the original rift between them, but also his own short-sightedness and overconfidence.
Erik was, in a sense, the most grown-up of the mutants we cheered for in this film, and not only by virtue of being perhaps 10 years older than Charles. It was just that Erik had -- by way of Shaw's 'torture-excused-as-mentoring' during his formative teenaged years -- grown up with an irrevocably (if understandably) dark view of the world and an inability to genuinely emotionally connect with anyone except Charles . . . whom he then locks out, symbolically and mentally, by adopting Shaw's shielding helmet.