setsuled

It'd been a while, so I decided to watch the first X-Men film from 2000. I was surprised to find I enjoy it more now than I used to. Maybe it's the very fact that it feels dated, it's actually kind of refreshing.

You can see it's from a time when superhero movies weren't popular and there are all kinds of indications of that. From the constant, neurotic need to justify the code names with convoluted explanations and irony, to all the ways the film imitates non-superhero movies from the time. The fight scene between Wolverine and Sabretooth at the end feels a bit Matrix-ish. I've never bought Wolverine swinging around that part of the statue's crown on his claw.



I'd forgotten how dark the cinematography is on this first film. I think maybe it's because the Michael Keaton Batman movies had been the most recent popular superhero movies. And maybe it's there to hide cheap sets, too. Tonally, it's a mismatch with the X-Men. A colourful ensemble demands a colourful palette.



One thing's for sure, the casting remains almost impeccable. It's no wonder Kevin Feige's dragging his feet re-casting the X-Men for the MCU. Hugh Jackman, Famke Janssen, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, James Marsden, Anna Paquin--every one of them so perfectly inhabited the characters, bringing to life the comic book character or, where they do diverge, offering an interesting interpretation. The exception is Halle Berry who is a terrible Storm.



Like a lot of people, I feel Halle Berry is generally an overrated actress, but her Storm is a letdown for more reasons than that. She was my favourite character in the comics and to see this goddess reduced to an unremarkable young woman in a t-shirt is so sad. When she is finally reincarnated, I hope they do it right. Storm's gotta be big--big hair, decadent costume, voluptuous physical assets. I always though Beyonce was physically right for the part. If they could find someone with that body-type with decent acting chops, it would be perfect.

X-Men is available on Disney+.

I didn't honestly think I was going to like 2018's Black Panther. The trailers didn't look good, filled with lousy cgi, and I thought Chadwick Boseman's portrayal of Black Panther was the dullest part of Captain America: Civil War. But the film I saw on Friday was pretty enjoyable, largely due to an excellent supporting cast, particularly Lupita Nyong'o, Danai Gurira, and Letitia Wright. The story's central political conflict, though it owes a lot to the first Thor movie, was also engaging and provided an interesting commentary on contemporary American politics.



This is the shot I especially hated in the trailer. It's so clear every grouping of people on all the little outcrops aren't really there. The movie's shots of Wakanda, the fabulous secret high tech city, generally made me long for the gritty realism of Coruscant in the Star Wars prequels. The film would've benefited a lot from some actual African shooting locations.



I really don't understand why this film was shot entirely in Atlanta and South Korea. It wasn't long ago that Mad Max: Fury Road, a film shot largely in Namibia, was a smash success. My guess is Disney's insurance wouldn't cover African locations. The 1950s and 60s were filled with Hollywood films with real African locations, from 1950's amazing King Solomon's Mines to John Huston's classic The African Queen starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn. Ironically, the period so associated with soundstage exteriors has a more authentic location feel than this 2018 film.



But Black Panther is really a fantasy about the United States. Michael B. Jordan is another excellent member of the supporting cast, playing the villain Killmonger. His rise in the Wakandan government, overthrowing the anointed ruler T'Challa (Chadwick Boseman), will remind more than a few people of Donald Trump for Killmonger's ruthlessness and for the way the mechanisms of government and tradition compels people to automatically follow him. In fact, Boseman himself has pointed out similarities to Trump's election. To be fair, though, Killmonger seems like he's more capable of empathy than Trump. I suppose it's a bad sign when a guy named "Killmonger" comes off as more sensitive and altruistic than the U.S. president.



But the resemblance adds an interesting dimension to a plot otherwise strongly reminiscent of Kenneth Branagh's Thor. Arguably, both films are drawing on the Edgar/Edmund subplot from King Lear. One could very naturally give Edmund's "Why bastard?" speech to Killmonger, who is made T'Challa's illegitimate brother for the film:

Thou, Nature, art my goddess; to thy law
My services are bound. Wherefore should I
Stand in the plague of custom, and permit
The curiosity of nations to deprive me?
For that I am some twelve or fourteen moonshines
Lag of a brother? Why bastard? Wherefore base?
When my dimensions are as well compact,
My mind as generous, and my shape as true
As honest madam’s issue? Why brand they us
With base? With baseness? bastardy? Base, base?
Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take
More composition and fierce quality
Than doth within a dull stale tired bed
Go to the creating a whole tribe of fops
Got ’tween asleep and wake?



Oddly, Boseman's uninteresting performance actually makes him seem a bit more like royalty. Listening to his flat line deliveries reminded me of listening to Prince Harry and thinking, "This guy's supposed to be important?" It's also not unlike how Thor was meant to be sort of a good natured but simple minded fellow in the first movie before filmmakers decided to emphasise Chris Hemsworth's comedic talents. When the much better trained and charismatic Killmonger challenges T'Challa, a lot of the tension comes from how difficult it is to see why T'Challa deserves to be king instead of Killmonger. I would have really liked if the film included montages contrasting the upbringing of Killmonger and T'Challa, showing how Jordan struggled on the streets of Oakland before beginning the hard military training that led to him becoming a Navy Seal while T'Challa was doing . . . whatever a Wakandan prince is brought up doing. One suspects it's nowhere near as rough.



Since Wakanda doesn't exist, its isolationism and hoarding of its superior technology and resources as a country that was never colonised makes it more reminiscent of the United States than any African country and Killmonger's plight, coming from an impoverished lower class, gives his conflict with the Wakandan elite a resonance more like the poor working class who voted for Trump as, Michael Moore observed, a "fuck you" gesture to the paralysed Washington political machine.

The first part of Black Panther is a bit tedious, though, concentrating on ceremony and airless banter, like that moment in the trailer where T'Challa insists he doesn't "freeze". This stuff is finally replaced by a fun film when Letitia Wright is introduced as Shuri, T'Challa's sister, a tech genius who provides her brother with gadgets in a role very much like Q in the James Bond films.



Her teasing him drew the first genuine laughter from me. This is followed by the other highlight when Okoye (Danai Gurira), head of Wakanda's female militia, and Nakia (Lupita Nyong'o), a spy for Wakanda and T'Challa's love interest, join the Black Panther for his mission to South Korea, their personalities easily eclipsing his. I would so love to see a buddy cop movie starring Gurira and Nyong'o. Throughout the rest of the film, any time none of these three women are onscreen, I found myself impatiently waiting for their return. More than anything else, they're the ones that truly make this movie work.



Twitter Sonnet #1085

A line in straw presents the only shield.
The sensors broke upon beholding stars.
The rabbits green dispersed in barley field.
The wind contorts the wheat to drying cars.
A waiting ghost returns the mind to dawn.
A sprinkling starred the darkened forest edge.
Collected hues combine chromatic brawn.
The boulder 'neath the house is called a ledge.
A massive cursor moves the mouse anew.
In shapely time the pear's too like a watch.
Ordained for fast repast the snows accrue.
A dip between the wire hills was notched.
A paper rights itself on inky tracks.
The shelling front prepares for turtle backs.

A wealthy white American man with a van dyke, played by an actor who's also played Sherlock Holmes more than once, leads a fast paced life. His success has brought great hubris and then one day he's unexpectedly brought low, suffering permanent physical injury, but the path he takes to fix his body also helps to heal his spirit. Yes, I can only be talking about that well known Marvel superhero film. Doctor Strange from 2016.



So, yes, it's more than a little like Iron Man. Except Dr. Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) isn't quite as arrogant as Tony Stark, his injury isn't quite as bad, his road back doesn't seem like it was quite as difficult, and he never gets to kiss his love interest, Christine Palmer (Rachel McAdams).



What does Disney have against romantic subplots? Maybe there's one in the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie but I don't really want to see it to find out. To be fair, romantic subplots used to feel superfluous, as in Tim Burton's first Batman, but they could also be really wonderful, as in Richard Donner's Superman and Tim Burton's second Batman movie. Romance can be fun, you know.



Anyway. Doctor Strange isn't exactly bad--I guess it can't be since it so rigidly adheres to formula. Strange's smarm became really annoying really fast. I know I was supposed to find it funny when he called Wong (Benedict Wong) "Beyonce". But I just wanted him to get on with being an adult already.



And, yes, that's a Chinese guy, so much for the supposed white washing in the movie. Quoting Wikipedia:

The character is depicted in the comics as Strange's Asian, "tea-making manservant", a racial stereotype that Derrickson did not want in the film, and so the character was not included in the film's script. After the non-Asian actress Tilda Swinton was cast as the other significant Asian character from the Doctor Strange comics, the Ancient One—which was also done to avoid the comics' racial stereotypes—Derrickson felt obligated to find a way to include Wong in the film. The character as he ultimately appears is "completely subverted as a character and reworked into something that didn’t fall into any of the stereotypes of the comics", which Derrickson was pleased gave an Asian character "a strong presence in the movie". Actor Wong was also pleased with the changes made to the character, and described him as "a drill sergeant to Kamar-Taj" rather than a manservant. He does not practice martial arts in the film, avoiding another racial stereotype. Derrickson added that Wong will have "a strong presence in the Marvel Cinematic Universe" moving forward.

He does pick up a weapon, presumably to engage in a martial art of some kind, so this film was basically made by the Ku Klux Klan. Oh, well. But seriously, this movie was carefully measured and calculated at every stage to ensure you received the correct political balance in percentages designed to avoid any potential unpleasant suggestions or reminders of states of affairs based on practices resulting from institutionalised discrimination with roots going back to policies enforcing racism. Aren't you happy?



Tilda Swinton is really good as the Ancient One. I genuinely like the idea of a woman in the Obi-wan role for the male character but I wish there had been some resonance between the philosophy of her teaching and the manifestation of Strange's powers. The turning point for Strange is when she drops him on Mount Everest, forcing him to use his own powers to get back. I do like how all the magic looks like firework sparklers, it has a nicely tactile quality.



She tells him he has to defeat his ego to get back. But nothing about the scene actually shows how humility assists Strange in this task, nothing about his training actually makes him more humble. Magic in the film functions precisely like technology does in the other films, the little floating shield things are even rather like the floating computer interfaces.



The other major effect, of folding buildings, is taken right from Christopher Nolan's Inception. It didn't seem like anyone working on this film had a genuine desire to create a sense of magic. The astral projection stuff was kind of fun.



Strange is particularly annoying in the credits scene with Thor (Chris Hemsworth). I don't know why exactly his smugness is never as entertaining as Robert Downey Jr.'s as Tony Stark, maybe it's because there always seems to be a wounded quality to Downey Jr.'s performance, his arrogance consequently coming off as oddly vulnerable. But Benedict Cumberbatch is a good actor, maybe he'll do something better with the character in films from different writers and directors.

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot, Mads Mikkelsen's in the movie. He's good but he never has much to do. He has the distinction of being the only character to make any comment on Strange's name being, er, strange. Chiwetel Ejiofor is unremarkable as Strange's sidekick and seems like he's being set up to become another unremarkable Marvel villain to be tossed onto the pile.

Twitter Sonnet #998

A gentle step intrudes but waits for thread.
A kinder sort of fog consoles the crowd.
It's nothing like a row of petals shed.
The creature's eye uncorks a bubble shroud.
Molasses stems unfurl in potted ships.
Canals continue west while captains east.
A mountain range may lick its rocky lips.
The yellow tops of trees report a feast.
Encouraged by the swimming moose we sank.
On paper pulled from candy heads we ate.
No gunner goes for paper glued to tank.
In distant schools the bees would count to eight.
Descending wisps have hardened clouds to hands.
On faulty disks all hues turn into bands.