Pre-Winter Soldier Marvel article roundup

I saw Captain America: The Winter Soldier last week, but have been holding off on posting a review until it's out in the US. That hideously long review will be up either tonight or tomorrow, but until then, here are some Marvel superhero articles I've recently written elsewhere!

Wolverine Fatigue -- Has Wolverine outstayed his welcome at the head of the X-Men franchise? (Hint: the answer is yes. Please hand the reins of this political oppression allegory over to someone who isn't a white hetero dude.)

Captain America as a modern-day hero of equal rights -- One of the reasons why I'm so fond of Cap fanfic, TBH.

Chris Evans and the gilded cage of Marvel movie contracts -- Chris Evans has said on multiple occasions that he wants to step away from acting, but is locked into a six-movie contract with Marvel. This article is a look at the various Marvel actors who have signed up for a decade of superhero movies, and may now be regretting it.

Why do film critics still think Black Widow is an eye candy role? -- I took a look at the reviews from film critics in well-respected newspapers and magazines, both for Avengers in 2012 and the earlier UK reviews for CATWS. A depressing number of of (male) reviewers described Black Widow almost exclusively in terms of her looks, even in CATWS, where she has second billing to Captain America. Bear in mind that Cap's outfits are just as tight and "sexy" as hers, and that Thor, Cap and Bucky have all now had relatively gratuitous shirtless scenes in each of their movies, probably putting them ahead of Black Widow in the eye candy stakes. It's really quite incredible how many professional film critics failed to comprehend Black Widow's true role in these movies, but instead interpreted her as a pouting, "leather-clad" badass -- a hilariously inaccurate summation of a woman who is specifically characterized as the most cerebral Avenger (i.e. beating Loki at his own game), and doesn't even wear a leather costume.

OK, that's all for now. If you haven't seen CATWS yet, here's my non-spoilery advice for what to look out for when you see it for the first time. If you've seen it already, check back later for my review, which will be approximately the same length as the Encyclopedia Britannica. My other Marvel movie reviews, including costume design analysis, can all be found on my Marvel tag.

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The costumes of X-Men: First Class, Part 2: Menswear.

Part 1: Womenswear.

OK, let's be real here. 99% of this section is gonna be about Erik and Charles, firstly because 99% of the movie is about Erik and Charles, and secondly because most of the other dude costumes are pretty dull. I mean, Darwin's clothes were inspired by Muhammed Ali, but in the end he was just wearing a tight polo shirt and jacket. And Havok's All-American Boy ensemble could easily have been the actor's costume from that Taylor Swift video. (N.B. This is irrelevent info, but I was totally shocked to discover that Lucas Till, the actor who played Havoc, is only 22, and therefore was 18 when "You Belong With Me" was filmed. I sort of assumed he was one of those Hollywood "teenage" actors who is actually 27, like the cast of Teen Wolf.)
Like many big blockbuster movies, XMFC's strategy was to hire a really great cast to prop up some exceptionally clunky dialogue. Actually, that counts for all the X-Men movies, but XMFC wins the prize for that scene where Magneto uses his powers to kill some former Nazis. When they ask, terrified, "Who ARE you?" he replies, "Frankenstein's monster," instead of the OBVIOUS COMEBACK of, "I'm the Master Race." I'm so frustrated by this scene!!!! Like, four exclamation marks worth of frustrated! Frankenstein's monster doesn't even make sense in context, whereas Erik describing himself as the Master Race is both relevent to the situation and accurately illustrate's Erik's own view of himself and mutantkind. Aaarrgh.

All that aside, Magneto and Professor X are probably my favourite superhero movie pairing ever. Tony Stark & Pepper Potts are awesome and Thor & Loki are a tale for the ages, but the epic intensity of the Erik/Charles backstory (or in this case, frontstory) is so brilliant that it makes up for any amount of terrible dialogue. Also, they're one of the few cases where I think it's completely legit to interpret their canonical relationship as a romance, rather than it being a fanfic or subtext-based construct. My general opinion on slash fandom (if you don't know what that is, google it) is that it's awesome, but some pairings are more canonical than others. Don't get me wrong, canon "evidence" does not make any pairing more or less valid because hey, it's fanfic, do what you like. But there are a few male/male pairings where I feel like you can just watch or read the original source material and be like, "Yes, this was definitely just going on offscreen" without any need to extrapolate further. Holmes/Watson, Remus/Sirius and Magneto/Professor X all come to mind.

I'd go into this in more detail here but a) this is supposedly a costume post, and b) I could probably write a book on this shit anyway. Suffice it to say that when people criticise the concept of slash fandom on the grounds that it's "misinterpreting close male friendships as gay subtext", I say, SO WHAT? Hollywood has major issues when it comes to masculinity, male friendship, and LGBT representation. Blockbuster movies are obsessed with close male/male relationships (whether it's the conflict between two men, or "buddy-cop" friendships), but is also obsessed with heterosexuality to the extent that it's vanishingly rare for a movie to star a man and a woman in the two lead roles and not have them hook up. When you spend half the movie developing the relationship between two dudes and coincidentally using tropes that would be interpreted as romantic if one of them were a woman, you can't blame people for reading it as "gay".

With Erik and Charles in the X-Men franchise, I think the canon is actually enriched if you watch it with the baseline assumption that they were in some kind of romantic relationship. It adds an extra dimension of tragedy to their story and helps explain their lifelong emotional connection, particularly since in the movie universe they only spent about two months as friends back in the '60s. Plus there's the fact that mutant rights is a clear allegory for LGBT rights (in Bryan Singer's movies, this was explicitly stated), and their first meeting is this wonderful scene where Charles saves Erik from drowning while telling him that he isn't alone. Stuff like this is why I consider X-Men to be far more of an "epic" than any other superhero franchise. While Superman, Batman, Captain America etc all save thousands or millions of lives, their battles don't span the world in the same way that an idealogical struggle like mutant/human rights effects the everyday lives of unseen characters on the outskirts of the fictional universe. Once you've blown up the alien spaceship hovering over Manhattan then the problem is solved, but there's no easy solution for societal problems like anti-mutant bigotry. For this reason I can excuse the X-Men films of quite a lot, because they reach further than the simple story of one hero's personal battle against a supervillain.

In XMFC, the costume design creates very clear links between the young and old iterations of Erik and Charles. With Erik, the biggest hint is his black/purple rollneck sweaters, which not only resemble the high-necked outfits worn by all movie supervillains since the dawn of time, but were also worn by Ian McKellen in the original X-Men trilogy. It helps that Michael Fassbender's preposterously lean, wide-shouldered physique is practically a fashion illustration brought to life, allowing him to get away with clothes that would make most guys look kinda silly. Magneto has always been a very stylish guy, and in XMFC he was purposefully modeled on Sean Connery-era James Bond.

This is going to sound super basic, but I enjoy Erik's costumes because someone has clearly sat down and really thought about why he'd be wearing those clothes. That isn't a criticism of costume designers in general, because in a sci-fi/action blockbuster like this there are often other things to consider when choosing the more everyday costumes. Unless otherwise specified, characters tend to be dressed as some combination of "cool" and "normal", which is why you see so many movies and TV shows where every single person is wearing some combination of jeans, t-shirt, leather jacket, and plaid shirt. You want your characters to look "normal" so audiences aren't distracted (particularly if the character is a dude), but you want them to look "cool" because they're superheroes or vampires whatever. This idea is upgraded somewhat when it's a movie where everyone is meant to be very rich: then they have to look cool and expensive, but are still rather unlikely to have much in the way of individual style or eccentricity. Anyhow, Erik is a snappy dresser, and the reason for that is... Nazis.
Erik came of age in a concentration camp. You better believe that as soon as he got his hands on some of that Nazi gold, he started spending it on personal luxuries like expensive suits, haircuts, hotels, and air travel. He also has an unusually high degree of personal vanity for a guy who isn't characterised as effeminate or overpoweringly showy, which is something you don't see much in movies set in the present day. He's self-contained to the point of obsession, which ties into his self-image as a superhuman and, later, as a leader of the mutant rebellion against the inferiority of humankind. Always clean-shaven and neat, his pocket squares are folded to a perfect right-angle, and he has an outfit for every occasion. Erik Lensherr is a construct of the well-dressed, well-prepared, well-travelled 20th century man, and I'm almost certain that he got many of those attributes just from magazines and 1960s advertising, because he sure as hell doesn't socialise. If this movie hadn't come out in 2011 then I'm sure we'd see him smoking some very classy cigarettes as well.
I suspect that some viewers had kind of a WTF reaction to James McAvoy's costumes in XMFC, purely because they are so frumpy and old-professorish. Personally, I thought they worked very well, mostly because of the fantastic characterisation decision they made for Charles as a young man. Despite the fact that he's a pivotal character in all the X-Men movies, he has virtually no personality as an old man. And that's fine! In fact, it's kind of the whole point of kindly old mentor figures. But seeing Charles in this movie, it was suddenly clear how he'd matured into the Professor X we know from 40 years in the future. Arrogant and douchey, yet well-meaning: the perfect stereotype of a priveleged young genius. In order to turn into the wise, inspirational (and ethical) old Professor X, he'd have to go through some serious shit first.
Charles' old-man clothes are perfect for an old-money Oxbridge nerd, but also help to highlight the differences between himself and Erik. As opposing forces, even their mutant powers clash: mental and physical. Charles cares far less about his image than Erik, partly because he can always tell what people think of him anyway, and partly because he was born rich and has the luxury of looking like crap and getting away with it. Posh Oxbridge professors can dress in rags because everyone knows that they're posh Oxbridge professors already. Also, they're above such frivolous things as fashion. Whereas Erik wants people to respect and envy him for his appearance, and takes enormous pride in his self-control and physical abilities. We do see Charles wearing three-piece suits, but that's because it's the 1960s when that kind of thing was the norm for businesslike occasions, and they're never as sleek or trendy as Erik's.

Schmidt/Shaw gets the silliest menswear in the movie, probably thanks to the comics. As the owner of the Hellfire Club, it's always been his job to wear totally OTT, dandyish costumes. Plus, villains generally get more fashion leeway than good guys, because Vanity Is Evil. With Schmidt, one also has to take into account that he's not necessarily wearing his own choice of clothes so much as dressing for the role of 1960s playboy millionaire. In order to be convincing as Sebastian Shaw he has to look flashy and wear all these hyper-masculine, hyper-trendy suits in luxury fabrics etc, but when you see him as Shmidt in the 1940s, he's very dowdy, neat, and dressed in the "costume" of an aging doctor, half-moon spectacles and all. Out of all the characters in the movie, the only three who seem to seriously think about their clothes on a personal level are Schmidt/Shaw, Erik, and Emma Frost.
Re: the actual X-Men uniforms, we have kind of a conundrum. On the one hand, they look heartwarmingly practical compared to the X-Men trilogy's black leather catsuits, BUT their actual creation is totally improbable. Not only are we meant to believe that Hank has multiple PhDs and the ability to be a geneticist and build Cerebro and a stealth jet by his mid-20s, but he creates an entire set of made-to-measure superhero costumes as well? And adjusts his own costume to fit his new body overnight? At least by the 2000s, the X-Men are an established team and can probably commission a professional to design their silly-looking fetish outfits. (Don't even get me started on the Days of Future Past costumes. WHO DECIDED IT WAS A GOOD IDEA TO PUT PATRICK STEWART IN BLACK PLASTIC BODY ARMOUR?)

Finally, we come to the work of art that is the Magneto Makeover. This was like the worst post-breakup fashion mistake ever, and I fucking love it. In a beautiful transition from "angry young Nazi-hunter" to "megalomaniac leader of a fashionably-attired terrorist organisation", Erik gets rid of his boring old human suits and dons a maroon jacket and floor-length cape. Also, no sooner has his best (and only) friend been shot in the spine, than he rushes off to concentrate on the important things: detailing his new helmet with shiny magenta accents.

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The costumes of X-Men: First Class, Part 1: Womenswear.

Sometimes I feel like superhero fandom is suffering from some kind of intricate mass delusion regarding X-Men: First Class. Specifically, that it's a good movie. Because it's not. It's just not. But I love it anyway! Half of it may be trash, but the other half is heartbreaking doomed romance and clumsy-yet-effective political allegory. And McAvoy and Fassbender are really excellent casting, which is just as well because it takes serious acting chops to make some of their dialogue sound plausible. NEVER FORGET that this is the movie that forced Kevin Bacon to utter the line, "Turn the nuclear reactor up to 100% and make sure I'm not disturbed."

The best way to appreciate XMFC is to remove your brain with an icecream scoop and concentrate fully on the agonising Romeo & Juliet-style romance between Magneto and Professor X. It is beautiful. It is timeless. They could have cut out every other character (except maybe Raven and Oliver Platt) and I would still have queued up to watch the Doomed Mutant Terrorist Soulmates show on opening night. Also, if you're focusing on the Charles/Magneto stuff then you're less likely to notice this movie's main flaw: the fact that it's intensely terrible when it comes to The Gurlz.

Raven is the main female lead, and is simultaneously the best and worst-written of the ladies -- mostly because Moira's primary job seems to be Emoting At Stuff (Rose Byrne was tragically underutilised in this role), and Emma Frost is the archetypal amoral vixen character. With Raven, many aspects of her character are perfectly understandable in a really, really depressing way. For example, when she starts wandering around naked it really kind of makes sense, at least from the perspective that Erik is a douchenozzle who takes advantage of her low self-esteem and desire to be recognised as a mutant and an adult woman. Yeah, right, becoming a nudist is definitely a way of showing "pride" in your mutant side, I'm so sure. The fact that she's blue does not make one iota of difference to the fact that some dude just told her the best way to be proud of her body was to walk around naked for the rest of her life.
But while that does make sense (ERIK, YOU'RE A DOUCHE), Raven's relationship with Charles is kind of baffling. At most she's five years younger than him, but he treats her like a child -- presumably because physically, she ages slower than he does. It's understandable for her to be frustrated by his patronising attitude -- particularly since if he's in his late 20s, then she's at least 22 years old. However, their final scene was just bizarre. While it's easy to understand her being drawn to Erik (ie, someone who represents a more radical view of mutant freedom, and "respects her as an adult"), it's just plain inexplicable for her to leave her brother dying alone on the beach while she swans off to be Magneto's naked sidekick for the next 50 years. Emotionally, this did not ring true to me at all. Yes, she might have left him to join Magneto, but she wouldn't have left him bleeding to death with a broken spine.
I don't watch Mad Men, but the presence of January Jones leads to some inevitable side-by-side comparisons, particularly when it comes to the movie's aesthetic. I have to wonder if January ever wanted to criticise the 1960s-era costumes and set design in XMFC, because they're really not very... accurate. Not that this matters as much as in Mad Men, since a) it was probably a purposeful design choice, and b) XMFC technically takes place in an alternate universe, so even if the Cuban Missile Crisis etc did take place, it's reasonable to assume that fashions would be slightly different. However, there's another, rather more serious comparison you can make between X-Men and Mad Men: the way each one treats its female characters.

When making a movie set in 1960s America, it makes sense to include some period-specific sexism -- particularly when it's a movie that focuses on certain groups being oppressed by the patriarchy. X-Men is an ideal opportunity to slip in a couple of casual references to everyday sexism and racism, to highlight their similarities with anti-mutant xenophobia. Instead, you get things like Moira McTaggert infiltrating the Hellfire Club by taking off all her clothes to reveal a convenient set of perfect lingerie (including garter belt!) that allow her to pretend to be a hooker. While there are probably some people who are ready to go undercover at the Playboy Mansion at the drop of a hat (or skirt), that list begins and ends with Lady Gaga and people on their way to a hot date. Not a businesslike CIA agent on a stakeout with a male work colleague, who has now seen her in her underwear.

I can almost guarantee that someone will end up haranguing me in the comments section for being a prude, but seriously: if you're a female CIA agent in the 1960s, it's not a good idea to strip to your lingerie while sharing a car with a male work colleague. He's vanishingly unlikely to be impressed by your ingenuity, and will most likely report back to your bosses, some of whom may literally have been born in the 19th century. The perfect icing on the cake of Moira's "character arc" (LOL) was when Charles removed her memories without her consent, leaving her mumbling about a ~half-forgotten kiss~ in front of a room of old CIA dudes, who promptly turned to each other and were like, "THIS is why we shouldn't allow women out in the field."
And then there's the Angel Salvatore situation. In the X-Men comics, Angel is not a stripper. So why is she a stripper in the movie? What reason is there? Pro-tip for any filmmakers out there: if one of your female characters is a stripper or sex worker for no apparent reason... maybe reconsider and make her a bartender or bus conductor or something. This kind of thing is the reason why there are only about three actresses in Hollywood who have made it to 30 without having to play a stripper or a prostitute.
To me, the most surprising thing about Angel's transformation from sulky highschool dropout to sassy go-go dancer was the fact that, at the time of the movie's release, I don't remember people being particularly bothered by it. I'm certain plenty of fans were bothered by it, but nowhere near at the levels of the vocal douchebag contingent who thought it was sacrilege to cast a black .guy as Heimdall in Thor -- despite the fact that Idris Elba is as close as you're likely to get to a demigod in real life. Additionally, the combination of the underwear (or semi-underwear) costumes worn by Emma, Angel and Moira are the point where I start to lose faith in the original excuse of, "It's an alternate universe, so things don't need to be historically accurate!"
The way "1960s" costumes seem to work in this movie is that the menswear is relatively accurate, because for men, 1960s style is all about harking back to an era were Men Were Men. Back in those days, Don Draper and James Bond could order sixteen martinis and a new pocket square from room service, and not have anyone bat an eyelash. However, 1960s womenswear just doesn't have the same connotations, and most of the womenswear in XMFC was altered to make it look more appealing to modern standards of beauty. Most noticeably, the bra shapes. It's absolutely plausible to include a scene where a bunch of Playboy Bunny types are entertaining gross old dudes in a members-only club, but the girls would all be wearing bullet bras, would have ~trendy '60s hairstyles (WHERE WERE THE BEEHIVES??), and would probably be about 15 lbs heavier than the modern-day models they hired as extras in that scene.
With the exception of Emma Frost, most of the womenswear in this movie was kinda meh to me. No disrespect to the costume designer, who has done amazing work on a bunch of movies like V for Vendetta, Hellboy 2, and Stardust. It's just that the way I see it, the filmmakers went out of their way to create a "best of both worlds" scenario: 1960s sexism allowing them to include a scene where a whole bunch of women strip down to their underwear for male entertainment, but 21st century standards of beauty so the (male) audience can appreciate it on the same level. Emma Frost was great, though. She's pretty much the only character you can get away with dressing in a white leather miniskirt and a white bra for everyday wear, because that's just how she rolls. Which begs the question: why bother with extraneous eyecandy scenes like Moira's CIA lingerie mission in the first place?

The menswear, on the other hand, is excellent. More on that in Part 2.

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