X2: X-Men United(2003)
25/07/07 22:22
I thought
it was beneath me to review films based on comic
books in this blog. Only the subtlest of super-hero
action films have a queer subtext. The rest of them
might as well be produced by the LOGO channel.
But:
Recently I watched X2: X-Men United with my friend Joe .* Joe is fairly hip to all things filmic. For example, he actually volunteered to go with me to David Lynch’s Inland Empire even though he’d seen it before AND it’s over three hours long AND it’s so obtuse it still doesn’t have US distribution. Joe likes his subtext. He didn’t understand why you would file X2 in the same section as Kiss Me Guido until he watched it with me.
The movie starts with this Patrick Stewart monologue that, if you replace the word “mutant” with “homosexual,” reiterates the position that activists for same-sex marriage have been putting forth for the last twenty years. If you’d like to play along at home replace mutant with queer or homosexual all the way through the film. Check it out—mutants feel accepted at boarding school. Mutants devastate their parents when they reveal their true nature, and their families can’t understand what it means to be a mutant (concerned mom: “have you tried not being a mutant?”). In some cases, like Rogue and Iceman, mutants must struggle to find ways to be affectionate without endangering one another. The X-Men are so gay that that the battle between the two mutant groups breaks down into assimilation (we want to be boring married people like you!) versus separation (fuck you and your stupid St. Patrick’s Day parade!). Magneto, the separatist, recruits Pyro, a mutant who controls fire, and doesn’t care about fitting in with the rest of humanity. Needless to say, Pyro is the Lance Bass of the bunch.
I thought it was so impossibly queer that surely Christian Fundamentalists would hate it. They do, but only because evolution and a Catholic both figure prominently. The fact that that said Catholic, Nightcrawler, is played by Alan Cumming decked out in bedazzled leathers and a bad German accent doesn’t seem to trigger any alarms with the Army of the Saved whatsoever.
The matter of X2’s queerness is, for me, so transparent, that on my last viewing I moved on to more complicated questions. Specifically, I tried to discover whether or not Rebecca Romijn used an ass double. As you enjoy X2, a far more serious treatise on gay marriage than the recent I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, take a moment (frame by frame, starting at 1:40:43) and contemplate that blue ass. Whose is it? For me, that’s where the real mystery lies.
Out of a possible 5 Highrise Running Shorts I give it a 5
*Names may have been changed to protect the innocent.
But:
Recently I watched X2: X-Men United with my friend Joe .* Joe is fairly hip to all things filmic. For example, he actually volunteered to go with me to David Lynch’s Inland Empire even though he’d seen it before AND it’s over three hours long AND it’s so obtuse it still doesn’t have US distribution. Joe likes his subtext. He didn’t understand why you would file X2 in the same section as Kiss Me Guido until he watched it with me.
The movie starts with this Patrick Stewart monologue that, if you replace the word “mutant” with “homosexual,” reiterates the position that activists for same-sex marriage have been putting forth for the last twenty years. If you’d like to play along at home replace mutant with queer or homosexual all the way through the film. Check it out—mutants feel accepted at boarding school. Mutants devastate their parents when they reveal their true nature, and their families can’t understand what it means to be a mutant (concerned mom: “have you tried not being a mutant?”). In some cases, like Rogue and Iceman, mutants must struggle to find ways to be affectionate without endangering one another. The X-Men are so gay that that the battle between the two mutant groups breaks down into assimilation (we want to be boring married people like you!) versus separation (fuck you and your stupid St. Patrick’s Day parade!). Magneto, the separatist, recruits Pyro, a mutant who controls fire, and doesn’t care about fitting in with the rest of humanity. Needless to say, Pyro is the Lance Bass of the bunch.
I thought it was so impossibly queer that surely Christian Fundamentalists would hate it. They do, but only because evolution and a Catholic both figure prominently. The fact that that said Catholic, Nightcrawler, is played by Alan Cumming decked out in bedazzled leathers and a bad German accent doesn’t seem to trigger any alarms with the Army of the Saved whatsoever.
The matter of X2’s queerness is, for me, so transparent, that on my last viewing I moved on to more complicated questions. Specifically, I tried to discover whether or not Rebecca Romijn used an ass double. As you enjoy X2, a far more serious treatise on gay marriage than the recent I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, take a moment (frame by frame, starting at 1:40:43) and contemplate that blue ass. Whose is it? For me, that’s where the real mystery lies.
Out of a possible 5 Highrise Running Shorts I give it a 5
*Names may have been changed to protect the innocent.
|