Thursday, June 01, 2006

X men (and women?)

Over the weekend I saw X-men: The Last Stand.

I am a huge fan of Hugh Jackman. Heck, I went and watched Kate & Leopold - and I am a huge anti-fan of Meg Ryan - all because of Hugh Jackman. Hugh Jackman has talent: he can sing and dance, and if he's directed well, he sure can act. He's chosen - or had chosen for him - some pretty awful movies (Kate & Leopold, some Dracula movie I can't remember the name of) and I've seen almost everything he's been in. I contemplated going to see "The Boy from Oz" because Hugh Jackman was in it. Lucky for me, the tickets were way too expensive. I'm sure I would lose what little coolness credibility I had ...
Other male actors whom I have weakness for
- and will watch almost any movie that said male actor is in -
are:-
David Wenham,
Daniel Day Lewis (where has he gone?)
and Brendan Fraser.
Yeah - go figure. Call me shallow if you will.
I can take it.
It was great to see, in X-men, many Asian actors playing multifarious (and nefarious) roles. I mean, if it's a movie about mutants, well, Asians qualify, right? Seriously, it was great to see the diversity of roles in the movie played by Asian actors, for whom their Asian-ness (Asianity?) was not central to their character. Just an Asian face being a reporter and another Asian face being a mutant. Ooh, and look - that's another Asian being a mutant. But that's okay because in this movie the mutants are like, way cool, man.


Now I do have a gripe:
where were all the women in the corridors and oval rooms of power?
Being the secretary and the reporter, that's where.


So, X-men producers. I see why you've named the movie (and comic and TV cartoon series) for just one gender.


You just can't win them all, can you?

6 comments:

Cee said...

Oh, what was that movie called? Ah, Van Helsing, that's right. Really, really awful, but unintentionally amusing as well, I found.

I'm looking forward enormously to the X-Men movie - which means I just need to get off my arse and head to a theatre to see it, really. Was it decent mindless fun? Are you the right age that you were an X-Men fan as a kid (and are therefore cross about them stuffing up all the proper storylines)?

Oanh said...

that's it's name... blocked it out and couldn't be bothered looking, either. I disagree! Van Helsing was truly just awful.

X-men was excellent. Great fun, not entirely mindless and well scripted.

I am a little too old to have loved the series as a kid (you know, getting into early teenage years when you're too cool for anything your brother was into); so I have enough familiarity with the characters, but obviously not enough to be upset by the storyline - which I thought was actually very good (subject to some rather silly things).

Of course, I don't have any critical judgement with X-men. I never walk out of an X-men movie thinking: hmm, this was interesting, that was done well. All I think is: what mutant power would I have?

Cee said...

Yeah, I forgot how ancient you are ;-) I suspect I would have been a massive fan if I grew up with a TV, or access to comics, or something.

I always thought Rogue was totally ripped off. What a crap superpower. And Storm's weather thing never seemed like much fun either. I reckon I'd pick cool claws like Wolverine, or Mystique's shape-changing stuff. I always had a thing for blue skin.

Anonymous said...

did you stay til after the credits finished? there was an extra scene. i missed it and am sorely tempted to go back now...

Oanh said...

Cee - I'm so conflicted about what mutant power to have ...

Yes, Laziicat, I did.

I felt very gratified because I ALWAYS stay for credits. :-P (unless I really need to use the bathroom...)

Cee said...

I didn't stay after the credits, and had to do an awful lot of searching around until I found someone who actually described what happened afterwards. (Laziicat - if you're desperate to know, try here)

 
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.