I raved about it there, but there's a B-story I always block from my mind, or deliberately don't pay enough attention to.
Starz has been playing it like crazy along with part 1 and 3 because of the leak that Beast is in "The Marvels".
Just like all 5 original Spideys played when "No Way Home" came out.
Anyway, because of its repeating, I can't ignore it anymore.
Gotta deal with it.
It's Jason Stryker.
Jason's plotline is all kids of fucked up.
Earlier in the flick, Charles makes a "joke" that he could make Wolverine believe he's a little girl.
Then later, we meet Jason Stryker.
He's a vegetable in a wheelchair that his own father has made that way by radical lobotomizing, and his telepathic inner-self is a little girl.
The implication being, Jason and Charles had a mind-fight, and Charles turned him into a little girl.
Me no likey.
If Charles can turn a cis to trans, then he can turn a trans to cis, straight to gay, gay to straight, and core identity is changeable, and the "pray the gay away" people are on to something.
But this stands not only in violent contradiction with the core morals of X-Men, but the very next goddamned movie.
The very next movie sees the creation of a mutant cure, and it's a blatant allegory to "pray the gay away" and the X-Men are against it.
So, here's my head-canon fix that gets this movie back on the right moral groove.
Jason was always trans.
The little girl was always her real self.
Let's call her Jaye.
Jaye's dad, William, brought Jaye to Charles to not just "cure" her powers, but to "cure" her transness.
Because William is a bigot in all the ways, because bigots always are.
Charles refused both.
And he couldn't have anyway.
Jaye later snapped, and made her mother kill herself.
So William says. He's not reliable.
William lobotomizes Jaye.
All this happens when Jaye is young, so she's frozen as the little girl.
She's not a grown ass man having some weird little girl fantasy.
Little girl Jaye is stuck.
Every aspect of Jaye's condition is due to William.
Not Charles.
Why does Charles crack that "joke" to Wolverine?
RL reason, to throw a raw steak to the rubes, to cover their tracks, which I take objection to.
That shit never ages well.
Never.
Granted, the Wachowski's weren't allowed to have a trans character with a female avatar-self in "The Matrix".
And this is exactly what Jason/Jaye is.
"The Matrix" was only 4 years before X2.
Maybe the bigots the X2 writers had to appease with a red meat distraction were studio suits.
Studio suits can be plenty bigoted, but they can also be cowards, who, anticipating the bigotry of audiences, can be every bit as bigoted in their appeasement tactics.
Maybe they felt like they had to make X3 about "pray the gay away" to try to fix this.
They were ashamed. I hope fucking so.
So how to reconcile Charles's "joke" in-universe?
Poking at Wolverine's insecurities, perhaps?
But then that makes Wolverine a transphobe.
But then that turns right around, and makes Charles not so great.
Granted...it really did used to be a thing in the 90's and 00's that gay/trans allies thought was okay, messing with the phobias of bigots.
Me still no likey.
My first crack at a re-interpretation is, "I can transform your whole identity, and make you into something sweet and docile".
But Jaye is anything but docile.
And there's a jillion horror movies with creepy little girls going all the way back to "The Bad Seed".
My second crack at a re-interpretation is "I can make you the opposite of yourself".
The opposite of a burly adult male is a little girl.
Whatever the case, it's an idle threat.
And a bad joke.
No matter how you slice and dice it
Especially considering what went down with Jaye.
My last ditch stab at it, and what I'm going with, is Charles just doesn't know how to handle someone like Wolverine, so he has a lapse, and plays dirty.
It's quick, it's behind closed doors, a lot of us say stupid shit behind closed doors, and Charles has made worse calls.
We need to remember Charles for how he handles the next movie, not this one dumb scene.
So, yeah, that's the best sloppy-solder jury rig I can do to it.
What do you think?
6 comments:
I only watched X2 once, but it was the only X-Men movie I ever cared for. I thought the first was a messy setup for a better movie (which we got) and the third one was a rushed conclusion. I didn't see the others. My opinion doesn't count at all, though, because I'm so far behind on these movies that I don't count.
Didn't X3 have Ben Foster playing some guy with angel wings who'd cut himself up? I guess that's not a metaphor for being trans but it's the closest thing I could think of to "pray the gay away."
Do not watch the documentary "Mister Organ." It is about this documentary filmmaker who finds himself "helplessly" getting "drawn into" the "web" of a "toxic narcissist," by which he means this New Zealand beardo who looks like a thinner Peter Jackson and who pretended to be royalty or scammed people who drove into the wrong parking lot or other Tom Ripley-level stuff that isn't.
Critics made this thing sound like a truly diabolical portrait of evil. But it's not, it's just some movie about some beardo.
YOU'VE BEEN WARNED KRAZY.
Ghostbusters - Man, black don't crack. Ernie Hudson doesn't look 80 does he?
The best X-Men movies-
X2, First Class, Days Of Future Past, Deadpool 1-2, Logan.
It helps to see "Origins: Wolverine" to get a credits joke in Deadpool 2, but it's not dreadfully urgent.
And yes, X3 had Angel cutting his wings off.
They sprout back though.
Both the movies and the comics have ret-conned him with Wolverine healing.
"Mister Organ" cheerfully avoided.
Re: Ernie Hudson being 80. Damn!
Just because I only/mostly blog about superheroes and horror here doesn't mean that's all I watch.
I watch plenty of indie, and critical darling, and awards stuff.
Just, like you, I have a helluva time finding really good ones that stick with me.
Saw "The Blackening" which is an all black spoof on horror tropes.
Kind of a mashup of Saw and Friday The 13th.
Done by Tim Story who did the "Barbershop" movies, and the first 2 Fantastic Fours.
Sounds good on paper, but the politics don't hit as hard as "Get Out" and the humor doesn't dare to get as goofy as "Scary Movie" so it can't decide which way it wants to go, and rides down the middle.
It's just okay. I didn't hate it.
Also saw "Summoning Sylvia" which is basically gay "The Blackening".
Individual scenes and jokes made me laugh harder than "Blackening" but the overall story is kind of cutesy-wutesy.
Take out the raunchy jokes, it could almost be a Disney movie.
That's my Halloween run-in with indie horror-comedy.
Probably should posted about it, but they were both "meh" so I couldn't work up the will.
I watched "Judas And The Black Messiah," where Todd from "Breaking Bad" offers a black car thief dude money to be a rat on Black Panther Fred Hampton, who ended up being shot about 100 times by corrupt cops in 1969 at age 21 while his pregnant wife slept next to him.
It was depressing as fuck!!!! Decent though.
I'll do "Killers Of The Flower Moon," and David Fincher's new movie "The Killer" with Michael Fassbender, but I definitely don't want to watch either of them in theaters!!!! KOTFM is 3 hours 26 minutes long.
Ernie Hudson is 77, not 80, but close enough huh? Shatner's 90.
Henry Kissinger died.
Good.
I'll put a "dead assholes" post up about it eventually.
I'll be sure to include the Anthony Bourdain quote about him.
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