What Movie Have you Seen Lately?

[regalia]

i just watched part of the movie EWOKS - CARAVAN OF COURAGE from 1982! oh my lord! i have no gender analysis, i just thought it was hysterical...

does anyone have any memory of this movie? yikies!

[ucfeminist]

I just saw "X-Men: The Last Stand" this past weekend. It was a war movie between homosapiens, bad mutuants and good mutants (typical us versus them mentality), yet very representative of things going on in our culture--the fear of the Other and such.

They find a "cure" for the mutant gene--a suppressant (turned into a weapon/shot from a gun) that transforms X-men (and women) into normal humans. This reminded me of one of my favorite shows, USA's the 4400. The goverment was afraid of the abilities of the "returnees" so they injected them with a suppressant that made them sick.

Of course, the mutant genre is not new (anyone remember "V"?), but do their special abilities and plots always have to run so close together? It seems like with the unlimited potential of a mutant race they could imagine some different types of superpowers aside from using wind, water, and fire to figure out more ways to kill someone...the creativity involved in murder never seems to be exhausted.

It tickles me that gender always remains fundamentally unchanged in mutant form. I'm always dissappointed by the shallow character development of female superheroes. Being the third X-Men film I wanted to be awed by the creative powers of the mutants and my husband's promise that a female (Gene) actually becomes the most powerful mutant (based on the comic books).

Interestingly, while the most powerful male heroes (i.e., Charles, Wolverine) are always in control of their awesome powers, neither Gene nor Rogue can control theirs. Gene's id emerges as a super-horny, rebellious storm of emotions, pissed off because Charles got into her head to put her 'in check' all this time. She can blow people to bits with a dirty look and since she can't control herself she must be killed. Gene's scenes of mass destruction reminded me of the old version of Carrie.

On the other hand, Rogue's powers don't develop at all and she can't touch her lover-boy or else she'll suck the life out of him. So what does she do? Guess! Rogue goes and gets the cure...

Hope I didn't ruin the film for anyone, but it really is so predictable--violence, destruction, death, and more violence and more glorified death...

[emaly]

I refuse to see the new X-men movie because of the absence of my fav character, Gambit, who was supposed to be in it. Geekery aside, I always was impressed by the X-men comic because it came out in the 1960's when the civil rights movement was going on. It very muvh reflected society at the time, and was poignent as well as packed with standard super hero action. The women in the comic are very strong and intelligent, especially Jean Grey. I think the movies just do a poor job of representing them as such. The movies all kind of suck at representing all the characters anyway... Hollywood has a way of f**king up books and comics with the exception of Sin City, maybe.

Another example is the DaVinci Code. It's a great book that I loved reading. The main female character in it, Sophie, is strong and intellegent in the book, basically a genius and very well developed as a character. In the movie, she is played by beautiful Audrey Tautou, who I love in all her french films. However, In the DaVinci Code, she reduced Sophie's character into an impulsive spaz and all the amazing things she discovered in the book were in the movie, discovered by Tom HAnks. I was disappointed. I kind of hate Ron Howard now.