An Update and some X3 Thoughts

I see by strolling by my own damn blog that I never really mentioned that the B and I managed to get back home safe and sound. Flying with the baby on my own was a little challenging, but she made it as easy as possible, and I didn't lose any expensive electronics this time around.

I am really glad to be back, but I miss everyone I visited, too. It's an interesting dichotomy.

We celebrated by going to a couple family dinners, and then to see X3 tonight, leaving the B with her aunt and uncle for a couple of hours. It's always hard to leave her, but I managed to do it, and I liked X3. I like the X-Men in general, although I never actually owned any of the comics myself. I had a friend who liked to read a couple of the titles I bought, like Sandman and Hellblazer, and I got to read a few titles they bought, and the X-Men series was one of them. Boy, that one can bankrupt you with all the spin-offs, I'll tell you.

I have personally always enjoyed all the fun characters of X-Men, but really appreciated it more for the themes of ethics, tolerance, power, and politics that you could always find there. I've always found it easier to confront those issues from a fresh perspective when they are taken out of the context that you usually encounter them in. I used the same analogy to explain to a friend of mine who doesn't enjoy science fiction why they might consider watching something that isn't "realistic"—the story may not be something you could walk out of your front door and see in real life, but the issues, conflicts, and dilemmas encountered within may illustrate things about the very nature of those things that you would be blind to if you encountered them in a more familiar setting.

On that level, the movie didn't disappoint me. I think it struck a very careful balance between blowing things up and making me think about the tougher issues they touched upon.

(very minor spoilers, more for general X-Men storyline tendencies than for the X3 movie itself)

On the surface, you could take in an X-Men comic book or movie that deals with "normal" people freaking out about the more powerful X-Men mutations. "If you could stop someone from having the power to walk through walls, shouldn't you?" you might think. Yes, that would be a lot of power for one person to have, as seen through the eyes of a regular joe schmo human.

But then again, isn't a powerful intelligence just as scary for someone of average or below-average intelligence to behold? I've known some frighteningly brilliant people in my time; people you might sit down and have a conversation with and find yourself feeling relieved that they seemed to be nice people, because if they were evil, they could probably bring the whole world down around their ears.

So what's the difference, really? I know they make the "oppressed peoples" thing really obvious with Magneto and his backstory, but they are important questions. Almost every war is fought over a difference between two groups of people, and it's insanity to kill someone because they do some random thing in a different way than you do. In this way (spoiler, highlight to read) watching Magneto give his speech to the mutants in the forest in X3 and watching him become just like the very man he hated, Hitler, was pretty jarring. (spoiler over)

Or maybe it's just a dumb comic book movie and all the true intelligencia are tittering at me behind their palms. Whatever. (Or as Brad might say, brick wall.)