Today I was sitting in the theater, in the afternoon, by myself. A favorite thing of mine to do. I had too much popcorn and about 40 ounces of Root Beer - usually I'm a Coke guy at movies, but you know, variety, spice of life, whatever.
So I knew Woody Allen's new movie was playing out of town and I knew that Terrance Malick's new movie is just not in NC, at least that I can find. So on short notice I was left with basically two choices - new XMen movie or Super 8. All my instincts said Super 8, but then I remembered this horrible thing called Cloverfield, where people who were worried about dying still decided they should film things around them and do so with a battery that is unprecedented in the world I live in. So, I went with XMen, even though I haven't really liked any of the movies all that much, though I agree with the general consensus that the first two were better.
Now, I should also make one more mention - this post was going to be about how fucking annoying it is for people to play with their phones during movies, but two things happened: 1) the people who I was hating during the previews put their phones up and became decent movie people and 2) it's probably not as rhetorically funny as I think to point out that I don't think you should get the death penalty for beating a small child, but I do think you should die for interrupting my film.
Okay - so, the movie, which had been very well reviewed, (I do read reviews and think people who don't misunderstand the function of reviews, especially from talented people like Denby, Ebert, Travers, or if you're into old reviews Pauline Kael.) bored the shit out of me. I purposely did not stay home and rewatch Paris, Texas by the great Wim Wenders because I just wasn't in the mood for a tone poem, or whatever you would call that wonderfully slow, weird movie. I wanted a summer movie. And XMen was not the movie I wanted.
Now, I've been accused many, many times for hating on things that are really okay - and sometimes this is fair - like when I described Saving Private Ryan as "The Thin Red Line for stupid people," that was mean and unfair. However most of what I hate when I see a movie is laziness. And so much laziness comes out in Superhero movies.
So there I was, going - why do I never like superhero movies and then I realized that I love Tim Burton's first Batman, like his second one, loved Nolan's first Batman and really liked his second one. I also, love the Graphic Novel of The Watchmen, though the movie was just okay, and had a particularly bad soundtrack. Then the realization hit me when I realized how much I loved Robert Downey jr play Iron Man (in the first one). Most superhero characters and flat and dull and no story line can save that. Tony Stark likes to drink and loves women - I can totally understand these sentiments. Batman is conflicted in like 14 ways - and he's a ninja which is just cool.
The Xmen in the film today and most Superheroes in general are simply not interesting as people. They are predictable. It's not simply that it's a good vs evil thing, thought that's part of it - it's that their identity comes from something essential and they do not veer from it - that's perhaps what makes them least human. Perhaps that's why Watchmen, Iron Man and Batman are more interesting - they are all human - they can be complex and are hence capable of surprise.
On a side note - that's the problem that the origin story must always face - you must not reduce someone to some aspect of their past. Not because of some weird political reason that it excuses actions, but because it creates the idea that there is an unmovable, fixed essence to people. The idea of the fixed core is Plato; we must get over that. Now people are not a randomness either - Nietzsche says it best - become who you are. We are always moving, but how we move is complicated and best left for a later discussion.
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