A few belated thoughts on X-Men: First Class ...

I know the comics blogosphere has moved on to bashing/playing apologist for Green Lantern, but work and the odd business that comes with going on vacation has prevented me from being on time and possibly relevant. So let us travel weeks back in time and discuss X-Men: First Class.

First things first, I did like the movie. I've never liked the X-Men movies as much as the majority of the geek community but it was a large step up from X-Men: The Last Stand. What would have otherwise have been a mediocre reboot was elevated by the characterization of the central characters and the performances of James MacAvoy (Professor), Michael Fassbender (Magneto), Jennifer Lawrence (Mystique) and Kevin Bacon (Sebastian Shaw). I don't think it's a great movie, but it's an enjoyable movie, and considering I had low expectations for this movie given that it takes its title from a solid, unique X-Men comic series that this movie has nothing to do with I was overall pleasantly surprised.

Yet, I always have a certain problem with the X-Men movies ... nay, the X-Men franchise in general, and that's this. Now, let's say you're a preteen girl with limited funds. Let's say said preteen girl is interested in superheroes. She watches the 90s X-Men cartoon but for the backstory largely learns about said superheroes not from comics so much but from the trading cards and profiles she reads on the Internet. Basically, this is how it plays out.

Cards/Profiles: "Hey Kid! Look! We have girl superheroes! Lots and lots and lots of girl superheroes! We have ones that fly and ones that control the weather and ones that make fireworks and ones that fuck your shit up and eat a whole sun! Read us! We are fun! Come play with us forever!"

Actual Stories: "Giant mutant horde fights other giant mutant horde. Wolverine mostly does everything."

That's not to say that I've never enjoyed an X-Men story or never found X-Men stories that didn't follow that formula, but the first three X-Men films, as much as I liked aspects of them, were basically that formula. Also, did I mention Wolverine is my least favorite X-Man and Storm my favorite? Yeah. So I've basically been brokenhearted since 2000.

Still, for all the heavy focus on Wolverine, and as much as I appreciate how this movie focused more on XavierMagneto (they are one word) and Mystique, I still feel like the first three movies had more for my metaphorical preteen self than this one. Did no one in the boardroom go, "Hey, so ... in our metaphor for racism it seems like all the people who end up on the good side are white American males. Should we think about this?"

Granted, I'm far from the first person to complain about this and whatever I write here probably won't be as eloquent as what David Brothers said. But sheesh, we couldn't have even had a good team that spanned the globe, even the white parts of it? I know there were some bad accents in the last films but what is an X-Men story without terrible accents, anyway?

So given that in the end we close with no female superheroes, this is what we do have.

Mystique - Now, despite her small amount of lines, I've always liked the movies' Mystique. I even dressed up as her in high school, which was probably a bad idea given that I was too lazy to add the spines and didn't cut my hair so nobody knew who I was. (Some guys liked my costume, but probably for the wrong reason.) Still, as much as I appreciate what a good sport Rebecca Romijn was for wearing all that makeup and terrible contacts in the first three films, the future Katniss Everdeen was definitely a step up, and her storyline was compelling. It's essentially a tragedy (the girl who could have been good turns evil), although the star of the tragedy doesn't see it as one.

Emma Frost (January Jones) - On the other hand, Emma starts off as a bad girl who is powerful but underappreciated by her boss Shaw, who at one point requests she get him ice for his drink, spends many of her scenes in her underwear and the climax of the movie largely out of the action. In the end she switches to working for the other bad guy, most of her motivations largely unknown. I think the character of Emma Frost has been largely mismanaged in recent years, and this tepid portrayal didn't help. At least she got a decent fight scene.

Angel Salvadore (Zoe Kravitz) - Well, her makeup and the effects for her powers were nice. Unfortunately, as others have pointed out, this was the case of the only black female character turning evil soon after the one black male character is killed, and most of her motivations for doing so are not well developed.

Moira MacTaggart (Rose Byrne) - It's kind of standard that the role of the normal woman is diminished in comparison to the heroes, but despite Moira's importance to the plot in a lot of smaller ways, I came away without much of an impression of her beyond when Magneto choked her. Compared to the work done with Pepper Potts in the Iron Man movies and Jane Foster in Thor, I was rather bummed.

I am aware that a two hour movie isn't the time to have an in-depth exploration of every character's psyche, which is okay, but I do wish these movies ostensibly about teams weren't one-man shows. This movie does improve the formula by making it more of a three-person show, but I think my wish for a glorious team movie where all characters - male and female, all different races - get to shine is still a dream for the future.

***

By the way, not that this is related to anything said above, but Good God Internet, you are hard on Xavier.

I mean, look, we all agree that the prejudice metaphor has long been a part of the X-Men mythos but as a result of this it occasionally runs up into ideas that are rather retrograde, such as the idea of proving yourself to be the "good type" of minority. It's totally an issue that should be talked about, and is a problem to be expected, given that the principal creators of the franchise were 1960s-era liberal Jewish men and thus saw it through that lens rather than the lens of 21st century progressives. I do think that comics and sci-fi lean on racism as a metaphor in ways that are often uncomfortable and borderline offensive rather than working to make their stories more diverse (i.e. District 9 and James Cameron's Avatar), and X-Men can occasionally fall into the trap.

But are we really going to side with the guy who wants to solve the problem by killing many people and starting a war to kill many, many more? Don't get me wrong, I like Magneto, but the guy's least death-filled plan to solving this problem in the comics is to bring all the mutants to their own island. I do not think the best way to dismantle the kyriarchal system is to kill everybody or take your toys elsewhere. I find fandom painting him as the good guy who knows what's really going on and how to really solve the problems as a bit disturbing.

Yes, I was there when Xavier said things like "We have the chance to be the better man" or "They're just following orders" but Magneto also counteracts this and when he does Xavier has nothing to say. Xavier is a hero who is sometimes wrong, and pays the price for it, losing his best friend and sister. He lives in an imperfect story, but he's an imperfect character who suffers for his beliefs and mistakes, and I don't see how some in fandom seem to not find that compelling.

I enjoyed the ladies of Thor

I'm a little late to the party on this film, which came out in the U.S. last week. Yet last week was also the week that My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic ended its first season, and I decided I'd rather be timely on something that was over than something that would be in theaters for quite awhile. The perils of forcing/limiting myself to one post a week, I suppose. I wish I could do more. (I finished the first Portal video game this week and would love to talk about that too. Maybe at a later point.)

Anyway, given that I'm surely not the only person to wait to see a film until its second weekend in the theaters, I'll report back saying I genuinely enjoyed the new Marvel Comics movie Thor. Now, I've read quite a few comics with Marvel's version of the character but very, very few comics where he's the star, something I hope to remedy when I feel comfortable buying new books and comic book trades again (I have about 150 books to read and need to pay penance. No, that's not an exaggeration). So I knew the basics of Marvel Thor's powers and comic-book mythology surrounding him but very little about the specifics, and while I consider myself a comic fan I came to it as an outside observer, I suppose. (I also don't know much about the original Norse tales, for the record, but that may be for someone else to analyze.)

What I'm trying to say is, with few preconceived expectations, the movie is really fun. I know some people had trouble with the first thirty minutes, which largely takes place in Asgard. I don't quite understand this. The CGI renderings of Asgard alone are really impressive (I watched the movie in 2-D), and if they don't replicate Jack Kirby's drawings exactly they have enough of the feel. Plus, I like sparkly rainbow bridges, battles with Frost Giants and Anthony Hopkins' acting as the All-Father. Kenneth Branagh's directing makes these scenes shine.

I also like the beginning because it's a setup for Thor's (Chris Hemsworth) transformation from an arrogant man (or is it god?) into one who is genuinely good. I know some people are turned off by Tony Stark's arrogance in the Iron Man movies, which doesn't go away even after his transformation into a superhero. I think those who had an issue with Tony Stark will find Thor a lot more palatable. He comes off as genuinely interested in people and kind, especially when he smiles.

But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. Critics seem to have had better things to say about the rest of the movie, where Thor is banished to earth and spends a lot of time fighting hospital staff and acting like what everyone else in the movie thinks is a "crazy homeless person." There is a lot that's awesome about this part. People can debate over whether or not Natalie Portman makes a convincing astrophysicist, but I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised at the movie 1.) creating a scientific team of two women (Portman and Kat Dennings) and one older man (Stellan Skarsgard) and 2.) not having that older man be in charge.

This may be the time to say what I've been trying to say for at least five paragraphs: I really liked the female characters in this movie. I won't say it was so great it completely blew me away or anything like that, but in terms of that it was a solid movie. Portman's Jane Foster may not be my favorite superhero girlfriend, but she's up there. She's charming and funny and clearly feels deeply for Thor even though the movie itself is low on angst. She doesn't fight, but she doesn't have to be rescued, either, which is actually really refreshing. Her assistant Darcy, who also doesn't need to be rescued, provides a lot comic moments in the film, too.

And if you want women battling, there's Lady Sif (Jamie Alexander). Sif doesn't have a lot of fighting scenes, but she has just as many as the Warriors Three, Asgardian male warriors. In fact, while I'm not sure if it's this way in the comics, the movie goes out of its way to make Sif an equal to the Warriors Three, both in her fighting and her attitude.

An aside, one of the Warriors Three (Tadanobu Asano as Hogun) is Asian, and Heimdall (Idris Elba) is black. I have no idea why a bunch of jerks got upset about one and not the other. I have a few theories but it doesn't really matter. Someone always takes the opportunity to act like a complete and total jerk in this situation, whether it's Michael Clarke Duncan as the Kingpin, Jessica Alba as the Invisible Woman or Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury (even if that has a reasoning in the comics), and they should knock it off. I mean, it's just unconscionable, especially because few of the same people who are upset about this were upset about Jubilee being played by a white girl in the Generation X movie (yet they'll always call upon that false equivalency, of course). Asano and Elba are both really good in their small roles and it would be better if the background characters were more diverse, anyway.

I guess if I have any complaint about the movie is that I don't have a whole lot to say about Loki. The plotline of the movie is good, but Tom Hiddleston and the character don't leave a strong impression. That's not to say I hated the character, but he seems rather small scale for a God and pales compared to other Marvel supervillains.

Still, I'd recommend it. Kenneth Branagh did a very good job. The sets are awesome, the main character is likable and the female characters are solid. See it at one point, even if you missed this weekend or the first it will still be just as fun.

This is not a Sucker Punch review but I talk about another Zack Snyder film

I meant to see Sucker Punch this weekend. No, really, I did. It was going to be great. Well, the movie probably was not going to be great but having just seen a sexploitation film like Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! it would have been a nice lead-in to something like Sucker Punch. How do they compare? How do they contrast? Where does one go wrong and the other right? Do they both go right? How about those Alice in Wonderland stories that are very similar? Will I ever get around to finishing that video game?

Alas, I went home to see my mother this weekend, and while I planned to see the movie while my mother was working at my aunt and uncle's yogurt store (it's in Red Bank, N.J. so stop by when you're going on your Kevin Smith-related field trip!) business has been slow during the cold weather so she texted me to come visit her at work. So, alas, Sad and Lonely Mom trumps Probably Bad Movie. Maybe next weekend.



But I guess this is a good opportunity to think a little about Zack Snyder, and his last movie I saw, Watchmen. Now, I love Watchmen. Like, really, love Watchmen. I was on a whole podcast dedicated to Watchmen and have a poster of Rorschach. I'm first and foremost a lover of the comic and will defend Rorschach as an awesome character to those who dislike him because damn it some characters are fascinating if they're not models of how one should behave, but I know some people aren't fond of it. And some really aren't fond of the movie.

But I think there's a lot to like the movie. I don't think they could have found more perfect actors for Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), Nite Owl II (Patrick Wilson, who did great despite maybe being a bit too attractive for the part) or The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) but the movie's not very good for women. I disagree with those who say the near-rape scene was sexualized; I actually thought it was the right type of brutal and harrowing. I did think the death scene of Silhouette and her girlfriend was sexualized, though.

I'll be first to admit the movie has its problems, though, and I'm not too fond of what ended up in theaters OR the really badly-put-together "Ultimate Cut" which has The Black Freighter cartoon clips inserted haphazardly into it, breaking up the flow to a crazy degree. Still, the "Director's Cut" hits a certain sweet spot. It's not quite as rushed and explains a little more. Also, it has a few more scenes of Laurie, my favorite character. Albeit not enough to redeem the pathetic portrayal of the character in the movie for me.



Malin Akerman as Silk Spectre II. I'm not sure what went wrong here. Akerman's something of a blank, and considering that Carla Gugino, who played the first Silk Spectre, did a pretty good job even with unconvincing old age makeup, I don't think it's Snyder giving her bad directions. Yet ... I don't think it's totally her fault, either. I doubt she made the decision to cut out some of the character's more aggressive lines. I doubt she made the decision to turn the character's already impractical costume into something that was just as impractical but in a different way. And I really doubt she made the decision to make the character a nonsmoker, meaning the character ends up pushing a button on the Owlship with a giant fire sign because it's fun, rather than because the character was looking for a light.

Like I said, the Director's Cut restores at least some of the character's edge, having her beat up one of the military men who are keeping her locked up in the base after Dr. Manhattan goes to Mars and handcuff him in the bathroom but it's still something of a waste. Especially because in a lot of the pre-release interviews Malin Akerman seemed really excited about playing the role and about the film itself. So it's a bummer that it all didn't come out so well.

Actually, it seems like a sad trend that women in superheroine movies seem to either be good at their roles and yet dismissive of comics or comics culture as a whole (Gwenyth Paltrow, Kirsten Dunst to a certain extent) or excited about comic books or playing a superheroine and then and then not so good at acting (Jessica Alba). Which sucks. And, like I said, I'm not sure whose to blame here, if the movies are casting the wrong people or directing them the wrong way or both. And the sort of blank faces of the girls in Sucker Punch I'm seeing in the movie posters don't lend themselves to me thinking this one's going to be much better.

At least I heard they cut out the sex scene, right? Not that I thought the sex scene between Laurie and Dan to "Hallelujah" was that bad but maybe "You're My Thrill" might have been better considering that was the song actually mentioned in the comic book and ...

Oh, hold on, let me go to this Sucker Punch-related interview ...

EMILY [Browning, star of the film]: I had a very tame and mild love scene with John Hamm... I think it's great for this young girl to actually take control of her own sexuality. Well, the MPAA doesn't like that. They don't think a girl should ever be in control of her own sexuality because they're from the Stone Age... So essentially, they got Zack to edit the scene and make it look less like she's into it. And Zack said he edited it down to the point where it looked like he was taking advantage of her. That's the only way he could get a PG-13 [rating] and he said, "I don't want to send that message." So they cut the scene!

Actually, never mind. I'm depressed forever.

No, it's not "Twilight for Boys." Scott Pilgrim and the Bizarre Comparisons.

(Watch out for spoilers!)

Hello blogosphere! I apologize for being away for so long. I got a new job in June and so even the minuscule time I had put aside to build this blog was flushed away. Hopefully things will even out and I'll get back to posting on a semi-regular basis.

So, the Scott Pilgrim vs. the World movie has come and hopefully will still hold on in theaters for another week or two. Personally, if it doesn't, I say "que sera." Some seem to be upset about the low box office, but I'm not. I don't really see why the low box office is such a tragedy, at least for fans. Sure, it's upsetting for everyone who made it, but I don't think there's anything fans have to lose by it. It's not like Serenity, where the low box office meant the fans wouldn't see the story continue (at least not with real actors moving around and stuff - there's always comic books), or with The Golden Compass/Northern Lights, where the low box office meant the later books in the trilogy wouldn't be adapted. The Scott Pilgrim movie adapted the entire comic book series. The story is complete in book and movie form. There's nothing more to wait for. The only thing it could possibly affect is O'Malley's chances to get another work adapted if he makes another work worthy of adaptation, and I think by that point there may be enough X factors that the movie gets made, anyway. (I think Edgar Wright is popular enough not to be affected in the long run by this.)

Anyway, I liked the movie very much. I started reading the comic book series after the first trailer hit, but I had heard good things about it previously. It's a lot of fun. It's a series that takes the standard everyplot of a video game - male character fights baddies to save female character - and overlays it in an indie-comic style romance to awesome effect. Also, despite its plot's origin as a chauvinistic trope, the comic book has awesome female characters.

O'Malley makes a huge step toward mitigating the sexism of the original trope by not having the only female character be "the princess." We see all of Ramona Flowers' (said girl) ex-boyfriends and her ex-girlfriend, who Scott has to fight. Yet Scott also has his own exes to contend with (albeit not in a battling way) in Envy Adams and Lisa Miller, both of whom have unique goals and personalities in addition to their story function to throw Scott's hypocrisies in sharp relief. There's also ex-girlfriend and Scott's bandmember Kim, who is the character in the series I would have wanted to be a few years ago: not at the center of attention, but nevertheless a sarcastic commenter on the action -- the one who has the clear picture of the whole situation. Sister Stacey Pilgrim has a similar role, but nevertheless a different personality and she remains distinct from Kim. The series also doesn't stop from having a lot of minor women characters who don't do much and have more one-note personalities, like Julie Powers, but no more or less than characters like Joseph or Kim's friend who Scott can never remember. At any rate, there are many women "outside" the standard video game plot, many of whom are retained in the movie and ensure Ramona isn't "the girl character, so naturally she must be rescued."

And there are also two main characters in the movie and comic I haven't even discussed: Knives Chau, Scott's most recent ex/sometime stalker, and Roxy Richter, because even in the 90s you usually had at least one female villain in a video game. Both of these female characters are crucial to the plot, and deserving of full blog posts on their own.

Of course, there's also Ramona, who isn't just a princess ... or much of a princess at all. In addition to helping fight some of the evil exes herself, both in the comic and movie, she also has her own emotional journey to go through. Ramona is my favorite character in the series, and the one I, in the end, find I relate to the most. I like how in the comics one of the main points is how she's revealed to not really be a perfect dream girl, but sometimes an ordinary person who has to go to work and has annoying roommates and sometimes an outright bad person who makes hurtful decisions. Scott has to forgive her, but, just as Scott has a bad self to defeat - literalized in the nega-Scott, Ramona has her own past to get over - literalized when she breaks the shackles holding her to Gideon. Her victory is Scott's victory, but also their victory, and something that cements them as a couple. It is, unfortunately, something I believe the movie muddles at the end where Knives fights Gideon with Scott, but some of it at least gets in, and the movie does a good job at bringing out Ramona's good and bad sides.

I hope what I'm getting at is coming through - this is a franchise that isn't perfect, but it has a lot to offer to female geeks in its characters. So it's mystifying, and somewhat frustrating, to see this "Twilight for Boys" comparison to come up.

It's tempting to scream out, "But Scott Pilgrim is good and Twilight is not!" but these things are, of course, relative, and that's not helpful. It's not even why the comparison irritates me.

It irritates me because even if you go by the basest, broadest stereotypes of what male and female readers like in comics, Scott Pilgrim is for boys AND girls.

Before any Twilight fans jump on me for this (any more than they would have for saying the series is bad), I just want to say that yes, I know Twilight has some male fans - my brother likes the series far more than I ever will (and yes, he recognizes the problematic elements of the series). Yet, going by broad stereotypes, most males won't read a heavily romance-based story with a female protagonist where the men do most of their fighting off-stage.

On the other hand, let's look at the broad stereotypes of female comic geeks. First, most girl geeks read manga. Hey, Scott Pilgrim is in a manga-sized format! Most girls like romance. Scott Pilgrim is about romance! Girls like pretty clothes. O'Malley said in an interview with the now-defunct Comics Foundry that he puts a lot of care into how his female characters dress, and most of them wear hip, trendy clothes that usually aren't all about showing skin. Girls' first introduction to anime was usually Sailor Moon. Scott Pilgrim has a reference to Sailor Moon!

Honestly, there was a reason that when Dave Lizewski in Kick-Ass first got his blank-slate girlfriend into comics he did it with Scott Pilgrim. It's the type of comic - like Sandman or Blankets or Strangers in Paradise or any other popular comic without superheroes - that is traditionally considered girlfriend-bait. This status is so well known it was used in a movie that, while I disliked it, had a larger box office than Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and the reference to it was intended to send a specific message to its adolescent audience: "girls will like this comic."

So why don't the book's critics get that? Older critics can be excused from not knowing the intricacies of fandom but younger, geekier critics have no excuse. It's frustrating, and I feel like it's another sign of how female members of fandom are often unacknowledged by the mainstream at large. Even something that has all the stereotypical signs of being ours is not any longer.

Yet now that I've covered the "for Boys" aspect, it's time to go back to the "Twilight" aspect. I've talked about this a bit with MadMarvelGirl on Twitter and, yes, I can see it in the broadest sense. There's a love triangle at the center with one character who the protagonist perceives as perfect and another, younger character who the protagonist will never be in love with but doesn't want to hurt their feelings. There's wish fulfillment involved. It may be hard to see what the perceived "perfect" character sees in the rather ordinary protagonist.

Yet I still find these comparisons rather superficial, and more based in the fact that we as a culture have Twilight on our minds than anything else. It's like how fanfic writers somehow seem to draw connections between their favorite character on a television show and the latest Top 40 hit. The world gets colored by our obsessions, and whether we like or hate it we're obsessed with Twilight as a culture.

I do not think the biggest criticisms of the Twilight series apply to Scott Pilgrim at all, anyway. Twilight has been criticized for not being conscious of its genre ("Stephanie Meyer hasn't read Dracula! The vampires sparkle!"), whereas O'Malley is a consumer of comic books, manga and video games and peppers his work with references. Twilight has been accused of not treating the appalling actions of its characters as abusive or controlling and rather as "just fine" or not the big deal that they should be, whereas Scott's dating of a high schooler is criticized by all his friends and most of the characters have to deal with the consequences of their poor actions. Twilight usually fades out before any action scene but Scott Pilgrim revels in the action scenes and usually expends most of the creativity on them. Plus, both stories deal with very different types of inner angst - Twilight is about the rush of first teenage love whereas most of Scott Pilgrim's early twentysomething characters have all been burned by romance in some way, and all the characters in the triangle - Scott, Ramona and Knives - reach the end of their journey when they earn self-respect. Twilight's characters win when they find the only one for them - their victories are contingent on another person and Scott Pilgrim's characters' victories are contingent on themselves.

So to critics from a girl geek fan: Scott Pilgrim is not Twilight, and Scott Pilgrim is for us, too. Although that doesn't mean all girls like Scott Pilgrim ... or Twilight, for that matter.

Iron Man 2 and the Hype Letdown

I hadn't been extremely excited about the first Iron Man movie when it came out -- my previous experience with the hero was some crossovers, a few of the old comics I'd read off a CD of the first 10 issues of all of the major Silver Age titles and the '90s cartoon, which was just okay. (I mostly watched it for the Julia Carpenter Spider-Woman, who was incredibly dull.) Plus, I was cynical about comics in general at the time. Nevertheless, I ended up loving the film and, temporarily, became an enthusiastic comics fan again. I even found myself raising my hands and making a "wooo!" noise when the after-the-credits scene ended.

Not many feminist comic bloggers at the time agreed with me. While not a female-focused movie, I thought it made some strides in the right direction. Love interest/secretary Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) had the willpower, intelligence and wit to match the hero/her boss Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) and she was crucial to multiple elements of the crusade to save the day. I also appreciated greatly how the female journalist who Tony Stark loves-and-leaves in the beginning is not just dismissed as a stupid floozy but is the one to call Tony Stark out on his attempt to sell Iron Man as his bodyguard and not his alternate identity. I thought it undercut Stark's sexism from earlier in the movie. Others, though, thought the movie didn't do enough in that area and that Stark's sexism was still celebrated, and thus condemned the movie. I respect the opinion, although I'm still mystified why Iron Man was given the thumbs-down for something that might be a parody but The Dark Knight's use of the most cliched plotline for girlfriend characters (i.e. kill them for maximum angst) and shunting aside of a young potential Barbara "Batgirl/Oracle" Gordon in favor of a son who doesn't exist in the comics was pretty much ignored.

Anyway, I get off track. While I suspected I wouldn't like Iron Man 2 as much as I liked the first -- no hype can replicate the surprise of the first movie -- I nevertheless thought the women would continue to be awesome. So I'm sad to say I came away a bit disappointed.

Don't get me wrong, I liked the movie. It's fun. Downey is fun. Paltrow is fun. Cheadle is fun. Rourke is fun. It's a wish-fulfillment fantasy of the highest order -- I don't think anyone really believes a billionaire's spectacular super-suit would bring peace to the Middle East -- but the original comics require a large amount of suspension of disbelief as well. (I remember talking to a non-comics fan about the first movie and she told me she couldn't get past the terrorists letting Stark build his super-weapon right under their noses. I couldn't argue with it.) Overall, I liked it.

Still, I couldn't help but feel that Pepper lost a lot of her edge in this movie. I very much hated the last scene, when Pepper in full freak-out mode tells Tony she can't continue to be CEO because she worries too much about him and can't take the pressure. Then they kiss.

This came as a shock, and at the time I wondered where it had come from. Whenever I remembered Pepper in the previous scenes, particularly the one where Tony tries to win her favor with strawberries as apology for when he got drunk, made an ass of himself and fought with Rhodey. To me, it seemed like her curt refusal was evidence of her staying tough with a guy who hasn't quite done the right thing yet, even if she may be a little regretful about having to do so. Was I supposed to have seen it that way? Was that scene actually supposed to be about how she is clearly cracking under the pressure? Did I have an expectation of Pepper as a strong woman that perhaps did not exist?

I don't mean to say that Pepper isn't allowed to have moments of weakness. Far too often, lazy writers often try to show women are strong by making them flawless, and that doesn't make them compelling heroes. In fact, I'll admit it, I don't quite know who won that argument in the last scene. She did go through a lot -- maybe is deserving of a little bit of a freakout, and if she stays on as CEO for Iron Man 3 I really don't have much to complain about. Still, I found the last scene left a bad taste of my mouth.

And speaking of women who are shown to be strong by not having any flaws and being amazing law student/underwear model/trained in all manner of fighting arts/computer hacker/super spies ...

There is a lot to like about Natasha Romanoff/The Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), but as my friend Kayleigh said after we both saw the movie the same day, her character was mostly just "boobs and asskicking." I (and she) appreciated how the movie ended up beating the famous Bechdel's Law and had Natasha and Pepper work together and talk in a non-competitive manner, yet I felt a little let down. Even her big fight scene wasn't too much more than we already saw in the trailers. I'm happy she'll be in the Avengers movie, I suppose, but at this point that's only because the filmmakers seem to have no interest in adding The Wasp onto the roster.

I guess in the end, when it comes to women and this movie, I remain feeling let down, albeit not in a manner I expected. There were elements of the first movie that I could defend in contrast to Tony having stripper flight attendants in his jet, yet I don't know if I could totally argue that Pepper and Natasha redeem the sexy Iron Man dancing girls in this one. Oh well, at least War Machine only improved from his first appearance.

This Comic-Book Related List from a Mainstream Magazine Surprisingly Does Not Suck

Yesterday, Darren Franich of EW.com published an article titled 10 Comic Book Heroines We Want to See in Movies! and I have to tell you: it's really great. The choices are excellent -- from the obvious "Why didn't we get this five years ago?" Wonder Woman movie to the obscure-but-no-less-amazing Fantomah movie starring Lady Gaga! (Can she act? Does anyone care?) -- and the list is clearly written by someone who knows and loves comics.

I'm surprised at how good this article is because in my experience mainstream articles on comic books, even if they're not the obvious "Bam! Pow! Comics Aren't for Kids Anymore!" type, are usually written by people without a knowledge of the genre. Thus we get articles where Mark Millar can say he sets his comic books in the real world and the journalist will just write it down and Maxim can declare Robin the lamest superhero ever. Yet when you read the article you can tell it's by someone who has a knowledge of the original stories and who is thinking about these female characters as characters and franchise starters, not as a way to get a sexy actress into a skintight suit.

I also find this article significant because it's by a mainstream source and it naturally assumes that audiences want to see good movies about superheroines. Since Warner Brothers apparently can't, this is also something remarkable.

Some years back, I was interviewed by a Canadian newspaper about superheroine movies, and why they didn't do well. Is the public not interested? the reporter asked. Is it sexism? I told the reporter the reason why most superheroine movies don't do well is that they are bad. It's not that nobody wanted to see Catwoman, Elektra and Supergirl fighting bad guys, but Catwoman, Elektra and Supergirl were not good movies, so nobody went. Unfortunately, that's never the message studio executives get.

I unfortunately can't see that mentality changing any time soon. Even when women turn out to be the big spenders for a franchise, like the unavoidable Twilight series, Hollywood tends to be tone deaf. Still, it's nice to have an acknowledgement that yes, the audience for superheroine movies is out there, and from such a major source as Entertainment Weekly as well.

Also, I don't know about Franich but I want a She-Hulk movie. Preferably a meta-one where our heroine teases Edward Norton about Fight Club and breaks the fourth wall. Hey, I can dream, can't I?

The Kick-Ass Movie is Not Feminist (and Neither is Hit-Girl)

(In-depth spoilers for the movie follow.)

I do realize I'm late in discussing this, and the reason is because for a long while I didn't want to see this movie. I'm not a fan of Mark Millar. His Marvel Knights Spider-Man was okay but he never seemed to get the character's voice completely right and I really hated Wanted (although, to be fair, more of that has to do with the art than his writing) . I haven't read the Kick-Ass comic, either.

Yet I eventually changed my mind after I read essays and exclamations proclaiming Hit-Girl as a feminist character. This did not sound convincing to me: a young girl who is superheroing because her "Big Daddy"has groomed her to be a killer is inherently a character without agency and thus not feminist. Still, I decided to see the movie for myself and found my opinion changed from "That's not feminist" to "No, really, that's not feminist."

I can see why people would want to think it is, and why people would like Hit-Girl. She beats up a bunch of bad dudes, does it better than most of the male superheroes in the story, makes semi-clever quips while doing it and does it (ostensibly) wearing clothes that don't sexualize her. I can see where that appeals to the id brain of most female superheroine fans, and I will admit I'm not totally immune.

But as I said in my last post, sometimes the way to tell if a work is feminist is not how the story treats its heroine, but how it treats the other women in the story. So we're going to talk about them before we even get to Hit-Girl.

The movie begins on a bad note for women. It starts with our hero, Dave Lizewski (played by Aaron Johnson), describing his life as a comic book-reading loser who can't get girls and who masturbates all the time. Dave gets explicit about the latter point, describing how he fantasizes about his teacher: an older, buxom white woman. The film then shows Dave's fantasy wherein the teacher urges Dave to touch her breasts, and then takes off her shirt and unhooks her bra. The film cuts away before she can take reveal her breasts, but has no compunctions about cutting to a photo of two topless African tribal women on Dave's computer. In his voiceover narration, Dave explains his interest in the black women by saying, essentially, that he'll masturbate to anything -- with the clear implication that for anyone to find such women sexy is unthinkable. Essentially it's anti-feminist on two levels -- for one, it upholds the offensive double-standard that "white women's breasts are pornography, black women's breasts are anthropology" and also specifically codes an interest in black women as less desirable than an interest in white women.

Then there are the girlfriends in the story, Dave's girlfriend Katie and her Asian-American friend, who becomes a girlfriend for one of Dave's friends. Neither of these girls are real people, but are a male geek-specific fantasy of how some male geeks hope girls will act when they start dating them.

Katie is a beautiful blank slate of a girl, the type imagined by the myriad and maligned "How to Get Your Girlfriend Into Comics" essays. Her one unique interest (if you don't count "lattes") -- working at a methadone clinic, only serves to code her as "kind" and to connect her to the main plot of Dave fighting the mafia. Other than that, her role is to breathlessly state how amazing it is now that Dave is introducing her to the amazing world of comics. "I love Scott Pilgrim," she says breathlessly, "but I'm not into that superhero stuff." Although it's okay, after she's read what are considered the "girlfriend bait" comics, there's a scene later where she tells Dave "I really enjoyed those Ditko-era Spider-Man comics you gave me" as he rubs self-tanning oil onto her nearly-naked body.

An aside: There's a subplot too complicated and offensive to explain right now about how Dave is able to hang out with Katie because Katie thinks he's gay. Yet no intelligent straight woman who has respect for her gay male friend would ask him to rub tanning oil onto her body. Most gay men will see it as a cheap, titillating ploy for a girl to get an attractive guy's hands on her but make it "okay," and will ditch her for a woman who sees him as a real person and not as a handbag or a living slash fanfic fantasy posthaste.

Anyway, eventually Dave tells Katie he's straight and he's Kick-Ass, and unlike in the comic they get together. In their first love scene, Dave and Katie share a kiss, and then, like a romantic, he goes straight for the tits. Because that's what geek romance is really about, right? The guy finally getting to touch the breasts that have eluded him for so long. You may think I'm being pedantic or a prude about this, but nothing else happens in the scene. Katie doesn't try to touch him -- she just basically smiles like she's doing him a favor. The scene is not about two people who love each other getting together. It's about how Dave gets to touch tits -- that's its entire point.

About Katie's friend, all I can say is she and Dave's friend get together, even though Dave's friend sniffs her hair like a creepazoid when she's not looking. Later, he says "I'm going to explain comics to you" and she sits next to him and listens with wide eyes as if she's a five-year-old. Later she's hanging off him.

So, really, that's how the Kick-Ass movie treats its adult women: as blank objects of desire to be filled by geek males with their own interests, or freaks.

And now (finally) Hit-Girl. As I mentioned earlier, she's capable and strong. I liked her. She and her father are the best parts of the movie, and Chloe Grace Moretz and Nicholas Cage put in really funny performances. If the tone of the movie didn't wildly vacillate between a humorous dark parody of superheroes and a "serious" exploration of what superheroes would be like in the real world, I might have liked them better. But the movie wants you to see Hit-Girl's story as one of a child who isn't allowed to be a child by her revenge-driven father who makes killing a game to her, but also be gleeful about a child brutally murdering mobsters. It wants to eat the cake and have it, too.

Some will say I don't get it, because they mistake this hypocricy of tone Millar employs as satire or a joke on the reader. No. It doesn't work. This movie doesn't work. You can't claim this is a realistic movie and then have the hero fly in to save Hit-Girl on a jetpack.

Defenders of the movie have also said critics of the movie are only offended because Hit-Girl is female, and they would be fine if a young boy was brainwashed by a parent or parental figure into being a superhero. For one, I would not be. For two, the problem for me does not lie so much in the concept but, as I mentioned before, how it's presented. One of my favorite DC characters is the Cassandra Cain Batgirl, who was raised by her father to be a killing machine from a young age, but that story had a consistent tone -- Cassandra's upbringing is explicitly exploitative in the text, and her father is considered a supervillain, not a superhero like Big-Daddy. Also, what makes Cassandra a superheroine is how she eventually struggles to be independent and have her own agency (consider that her father took away her power to speak and she has had to fight to win it back). Hit-Girl does not have this agency.

Now, I don't mean to suggest that Hit-Girl has to become traditionally heroic to be a good character. I also do not necessarily need every superhero to be a good person -- I love Watchmen's Rorschach. If Hit-Girl were just an exploited child with an incomplete set of morals and that was seen as a horrifying thing, I'd probably be fine. But, like I said, the movie thinks what happened to her wrong but also thinks she's the coolest, and that's just messed up.

I also want to address a common claim I've heard: Hit-Girl is feminist because she's a child and thus can't be sexualized. I've heard this a lot and it is ridiculous. How low are our standards for superheroines that "she doesn't show cleavage" is the dealbreaker? And how does having a character too young to have cleavage solve that problem? It's like slash fanfic writers who say what they write is feminist because they can have romance without women characters and thus without gender differences. It's not solving or fighting the problem, it's sweeping it under the rug.

And it's not even true. Society has certain expectations for what little girls are supposed to look like and how they are attractive to adults, and Hit-Girl meets those expectations. Her superhero outfit has a skirt. When not in costume, she wears her hair in pig-tails with bows. She's constantly smiling and speaks in the cheerful, adoring voice of a good little girl. At one point, she dresses up to fight bad guys wearing a Catholic schoolgirl uniform.

I am not saying that any of those things in of themselves are bad or that this movie is somehow obscene or pedophiliac for presenting Hit-Girl this way, but I would also argue that cleavage and women looking sexy in of themselves are not bad, obscene or pornographic. I'm just saying it's there, and it is what it is.

One could also say that Hit-Girl defies these expectations by being tough and using profanity, but while I like pretty, dress-wearing warrior princesses (Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland movie is underrated), you could argue that buxom women in spandex beating people up is also defying some expectations. Honestly, they're both rather ordinary at this point.

But for those unconvinced, I offer up a scene with Dave's before unmentioned second friend. At one point in the story he sees a video of Hit-Girl fighting and declares, "I want to marry her!" When Dave's first friend reminds the second friend that Hit-Girl is 11, the second friend says, "I'm going to save myself for her."

Think about that scene and tell me again Hit-Girl isn't sexualized.