X-Men’s Last Stand: One for Patriarchy
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Posted by Makani Themba Nixon May 29th, 2006 |
I came out of the latest installment of the X-Men movie series, “The Last Stand,” like most fans of the comic book: deeply disappointed. Some were upset by the limited screen time of aficionado favorites like Angel (precursor to Archangel) while others lamented the two dimensional vilification of Magneto, X-Men antagonist and leader for mutant self determination. My own issue has been smoldering over the entire series – the disempowerment and basic all around “girlification” of X-Men leader Storm.
Given the name Ororo, Stan Lee fashioned Storm much like the Yoruba-based deity Oya whose powers, like Storm, also include control over weather. Although Lee’s Storm hails from East Africa and Oya out of West Africa, Storm’s many Black fans have long reconciled the differences on their own terms through a growing body of writing on “fantasy noir” sites across the web.
Why would filmmakers cast the coquettish Berry to play the fierce and dominating Storm in the first place? Given the fact that the film was put out by Fox, one might suspect the worst. However, one can only surmise that the filmmakers thought that the only Black heroine to star in a major comic book franchise would be too much for moviegoers. And that’s too bad.
The comic book Storm’s cold blooded, self assured fearlessness conjures up more of a Grace Jones than the cowering, wimpy character Berry brings to the screen. According to a recent interview, Berry expressed concern about the role saying she hoped to do more than ‘go get the plane’ in the trilogy’s final installment (Washington Post, “Halle Storm,” May 27, 2006)
“All I ever wanted was for Storm to have a point of view. She’s a strong woman and a strong character — very opinionated while being the earth mother of the group. A woman who is from Africa, who has strong feelings about being in this country and being not only discriminated against but dealing with her mutation, which was revered in her country, but looked down upon in this one. All I wanted was for her to have a voice.”
And Berry does give her voice but one that bears little resemblance to the Storm that helped make the comic book franchise the most popular of all time.
X-Men creator Stan Lee first conceived of the series as an allegory about race relations in the United States. The two leading characters Professor X and Magneto represented Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X respectively and the emergence of mutants in his fictional world was a direct parallel to the struggle for racial justice in the real world.
The comic book deftly explored tensions between integration and self determination, of “otherness” and gender issues while providing some of the most interesting and complex characters in mainstream comic genre. Storm’s character was a bright spot in the relentless denigration of Black women in media. She is tough, unapologetic, strong; a warrior in every sense of the word.
The movie series has stripped Storm of her power and the storyline of all its potency. Lee’s artful portrayals of the complex relationships among mutants across the continuum of the political spectrum are reduced to two dimensional good versus evil. Exploration of important X-Men themes like self determination and the costs of assimilation are muted in favor of jingoism and patriarchy. Although the plot (based on the comic classic “Dark Phoenix”) offered plenty of opportunities to explore questions of identity and difference and still blow up enough stuff to make bank, filmmakers took the potent dilemma of a mutant “cure” and turned it into an hour long commercial for targeted bio weapons.
There is one woman with “power” in the film, Jean Grey’s alter ego Phoenix (played by Famke Janssen). To drive home the point that such power should be controlled by wiser, paternal forces, the plot was changed from the comic book to have Jean kill two key characters while “under the influence” of Phoenix. Presumably, viewers would have fewer questions about what side to choose if they made even her sexual urges evil. As a result, a story about fierce women and their struggle to step into their power becomes little more than anti-feminist propaganda.
With so few powerful images of women in media much less Black women, X-Men provided filmmakers with a rich opportunity. What they did with it is nothing less than travesty.
Want to let them know? Email the movie site or write Fox directly and click on the “Ask Fox” form on their site.
May 29th, 2006 18:57
Back in my 20s I read the XMen comics faithfully, so I too was disappointed in the choice of Berry for Storm. Storm was supposed to be a tall, stately, kickass woman with a “mohawk” haircut!
That said, I still enjoy the Xmen films because in Hollywood it’s still rare to see women who are so powerful and stand equal to the male characters — Jean Grey, a woman, was the most powerful of all XMen.
Yes, her power was deemed “out of control,” and several characters attack Prof. Xavier for his paternalism in trying to decide what’s best for her. And one of the central tensions of the plot is whether and when it is appropriate to control others’ power or self-limit one’s own. The film seemed to say that sometimes you’re damned if you do and damned it you don’t — there are always sacrifices to be made.
Well, I’m proving my self a sci fi geek here, but I certainly agree about Storm!
May 29th, 2006 19:00
Sorry, I meant to say BUT several characters attack Prof. Xavier….
May 29th, 2006 20:01
Hi!
It’s true that in the movie several characters attack Professor X but in the comic book series, Jean does not kill her comrades. The question of whether her power should be “controlled” or not is much more, er, gray. I felt that the movie used the murders to solve the puzzle for viewers instead of leaving it more open for us to contemplate for ourselves. The same with Magneto — little gray there as well. I can’t help but imagine what it might have been like if the filmmakers stayed truer to the original plot. Would it have been as comfortable to accept that everything worked out for the best? And would Phoenix’s struggle to step into her power be better explored? What if Storm was really Storm on the screen? In these times, there was certainly something important to learn from all of that. Sad thing is that we’ll never know.
OK, I guess I earned my geek creds with that one (smile). Thanks for your comments!
May 29th, 2006 22:14
As a geek-by-association (many friends and also my boyfriend play role playing games, read comic books, obsess over Lord of the Rings and etc.), I enjoyed reading your comments, Makani and Miranda — i’ll be interested in seeing what I think if my BF drags me to XMen at some point…
May 30th, 2006 16:49
I haven’t read the comic books — and so didn’t know about the background of the Storm character, which is very interesting — but I loved the first two movies.
One of many disappointments for me in this third installment was how absolutely passive (except for the occasional kill) Jane Grey / Phoenix was. After she took up with Magneto, she seemed content to stand around in the woods, looking pretty if slightly menacing in a crushed velvet-y dress. Huh?
May 30th, 2006 20:10
As a comics reader, I have yet to see the movie, but I wanted to make a few points:
1. Stan Lee didn’t create Storm. Len Wein and Dave Cockrum did. This might sound like a minor point, but it’s not; the X-Men originally saw print in 1963, when they were essentially entirely WASPs. In 1975, when the X-Men had been a dead property for some time, Cockrum came to Marvel with a bunch of character designs and was teamed with Wein to resurrect the title, giving it an international flavor. (The original “All-New!” lineup had a Russian, a German, an Irishman, an African (Storm), a Japanese man, a Canadian,a Native American and good old Cyclops, the token WASP. It’s honestly only at this point that any kind of real “multicultural” idea came up in the title. At best, Lee signed off on it, though he had little to do with the day-to-day running of Marvel at the time.
2. I’m consistantly amused at how various groups have “claimed” the X-Men as their own. Lee said in the 70s that the book was based around race relations and the current popular “wisdom” is that the strip is “obviously” an allegory about gay/straight relations. But, looking at the original 60s stories, one sees the idea of people who look like anyone else, but who must hide who they are to fit into society, except for a small minority who want to seperate themselves from society at large. And then you remember the book was created by two Jews. Admittedly, that might be me simply claiming the book for myself, but it’s certainly just as much of a valid read of the original concept.
3. Again, I’ve yet to see the movie, but in the comics, Jean Grey/Phoenix couldn’t handle her god-like power and destroyed an entire populated solar system. So killing a few people because she couldn’t handle it is actually kind of watered down. (The comics did make a point that no human could have handled the power.)
4. I’d agree that the movie’s handling of Storm hasn’t been the best, but I really don’t see how that differs from the comics that much–at least, from the comics before I stopped reading the book back in 1987. Admittedly, by the mid-80s, Claremont had turned Ororo into the stereotyped “strong” character (the Storm/Callisto thing holds up particularly poorly), but she was still considerably more cardboardy than, say, Kitty Pryde.She went from being someone unsure of herself in the 70s and early 80s to the standard Claremont “strong woman with the uber-sensitive side” by the mid 80s. And, when she lost her powers, she was still shown as needing a man (Forge) to help her regain her confidence. I actually think (in the first couple films, anyway) Hallie Barry did a decent job with what she was given and was at least as true to the character as, say, Anna Paquin was true to the comic book Rogue. (Of course, I also have to go on record as thinking the “mohawk” Storm to be kind of silly.)
So yeah. It’s certainly possible I’ll have a more specific and cogent reaction once I’ve actually seen the film, but I suspect to be underwhelmed in general, so possibly not.
Now, if you want to talk about a comics property with lots of strong female characters, we could discuss the upcoming Legion of Superheroes cartoon….
June 1st, 2006 12:44
What Jonathan said, only I’d add to that last sentence “…or the current DC Comic BIRDS OF PREY” which is written by a woman and on which my husband is one of the artists.
My assumption has always been that Halle Berry was tapped to play Storm because she’s probably the hottest “name” among black actresses. But I suppose she wasn’t really when the first X movie came out…
June 2nd, 2006 01:56
finally a feminist take. thank you.
i’ll add my thoughts too. here’s my read on the movie.
if jean/phoenix represent women… if men allow women to realize their full selves/power, destruction will be let loose. she will kill even people she loves. women are incapable of self-control… and the world will end if women are to have too much power. this is why the professor must control (i believe he used the word “cage”) her and not allow her to fully realize herself. also… it’s really disturbing that her last words are “save me,” at which point wolverine had to kill her. if you can’t control her… kill her, especially if you love her, becuase you’re doing your masculine duties in saving her.
June 2nd, 2006 12:47
I was also really disappointed in this third installment of the X-Men movies, because I thought the first two were much more nuanced and way less bombastically macho. The problem with the movies, as opposed to the comics, is that within the exception of a few main characters (mostly Xavier, Magneto, and Wolverine), NONE of the characters are developed enough, and that necessarily made especially fascinating ones like Storm seem like little more than administrative-assistant eye candy.
However, X3 was definitely the most dismissive of the female characters. One thing I also noticed was that in the two major fight scenes between the X-Men and Magneto’s crew, the only person Storm fought directly with was the “bad” mutant female of color (whose name escapes me, but the one with the tattooed cheek). The scenes seemed to suggest that they HAD to fight each other, as the only two women of color there. Maybe I’m being sensitive, but it seemed too obvious to be coincidental.
June 2nd, 2006 13:54
Azeisler: If it was Callisto that Storm was facing off with (finally going to see the movie tonight, honest), the idea that they “had” to fight each other is directly connected to the original comics, where the two had a serious rivalry that included a “classic” issue where the two fight. So it would be a bone thrown to the comics fans (”Callisto and Storm! Cool! Wonder if they’ll do the face-off thing?”), not a “women of color” thing.
Of course, in the comics, Callisto was white, so hey.
June 13th, 2006 12:54
Although I can see the cause of some viewers’ disappointment here, my interpretation of the film was that it was professor x’s oppressive treatment of jean that created the terrible ‘phoenix’. What was Wolverine’s take on the issue? ‘Sometimes when you cage the beast the beast gets abgry’, or words to that effect. Yes, Jean wealded dreadful destructive powers, but I saw the point as being: if she hadn’t been restrained these powers would have been channeled responsibly. The guilty party wasn’t phoenix for being an empowered woman, but rather Prof. X for being an oppressive patriarch. To me, this seems like a feminist point of view.
I also think Storm in X3 is closer to the comic version than in X1 and X2. I was pleased.
June 17th, 2006 21:19
Since this whole business of the Professor “controlling” Jean’s power seems to have originated with this movie (in the comics Professor X helped Jean Grey achieve her potential and become stronger), I agree that the movie goes out of its way to portray female power as threatening and in need of male control. It also gives the impression that the Phoenix is Jean’s “dark side” rather than the separate, alien (as in from space) being it was in the comics.
On the other hand, I didn’t see a simple good vs. evil dichotomy between Xavier’s position and Magneto’s. IMHO, the existence of the “cure” and its potential use against mutants weighs heavily in favor of Magneto’s approach, and Xavier’s admission that he’s been “caging” Jean made me root for Magneto’s side for awhile. In fact, neither Xavier nor Magneto knew how to deal with the Phoenix, though both thought they knew best. I don’t see how the message that Xavier was right was forced down the viewer’s throat — one could as easily conclude that neither of them should have meddled. I certainly don’t see how the movie portrayed everything as having “turned out for the best”. In fact, it was a complete downer, except for that chess piece moving at the end.
I suppose it’s off-topic to say how disappointed I was in the portrayal of the Beast.
June 20th, 2006 07:57
To be sure, the movie is an interpretation of the comic book. It’s the director’s take on the Phoenix saga, which you need to go and read if you really want to have an informed opinion about Professor X’s so-called caging of feminism and all that nonsense. The point is that the director was given liberties much like the comic book writers have been given liberties.
As for the comments about storm, it’s really just colorstruck nonsense. The real reason why Halle is catching flack is because some folks don’t consider her black enough to be Storm. Consider this: real X-Men fans didn’t particularly care for Hugh Jackman as Wolverine because he’s too damn tall and skinny whereas the comic book Wolverine is short and stocky. Yet, Jackman has made Wolverine into something all his own and I can appreciate that as a fan — finally.
Yet, back to Halle, let’s give her some credit. Sure, Angela Bassett would have looked like a better Storm because of her dark skin, but behind the scenes would she have had the pull that Halle had to even get Storm the exposure she got? I don’t think so.
So, the hatin is unwarranted in my opinion. With so many super heroes fightin for screen time, it wouldn’t have mattered who played Storm; the script still would have short-changed her.
And if we want to talk about feminism, let’s talk about Catwoman and how Halle broke ground as being the first female superhero in a movie where no men had superpowers unlike the X-Men, Elektra, Sin City, Fantastic Four, etc. Apparently, Hollywood doesn’t think women can carry the superhero role by themselves. At least, Halle showed it could be done.
June 20th, 2006 08:59
I appreciate all the comments on the piece. One small reply to Senacle, though. I understand that the movie is an adaptation of the comics, which is precisely why I was disappointed with the gaps between the two which to me seemed to be more than artistic but undermined some key, important aspects of the narrative as it is in the series over time.
As for the comments re: Halle Berry playing Storm based on her skin color or that they were, “colorstruck” completely misses the point. It was not about pigmentation, it was about the capacity to bring Storm’s fierce and powerful personna to the big screen. Truth be told Angela and Halle are not that different in skin tone but Angela Bassett has a virtousity in performance that I think would have brought a fuller sense of Storm to the screen. Nothing to do with skin color.
BTW, the term “colorstruck” refers to when one favors lighter skinned over darker skinned people. It’s the limited capacity to see beauty and goodness in darker skinned people. It’s used to describe a kind of internalized oppression among Black people that would be the opposite of valuing Grace Jones’ physical beauty FYI.
Glad you enjoyed the film. Clearly, you were the audience they were shooting for and it’s great you were pleased.
best,
m.
June 21st, 2006 17:41
Hi
I have to do a media studies exam on friday. Critical research on women in film. This has been a major help. I stumbled upon seeing X-men last week and I would have to agree its all pretty shifty to me! ‘Somebody slap her she’s hysterical!’ I remember watching the cartoons when i was little but can’t really remember much about story so I can’t argue about accuracy, but yeah deffinately…Thanx proff X! Thanx Wolverine! Thank God you saved me from myself!!!!!!!!
cheers, helped alot
pip*
June 23rd, 2006 02:16
Halle Berry being cast as Storm was an insult. It was Fox’s way of completely dismissing the hard work of other young, FAR better suited black actresses just to grab the one who could rake in the most money - and by coincidence is also the most untalented, overhyped POS actress that black Hollywood ever produced. Hugh Jackman was hardly a household name. Neither was Anna Paquin, Famke Janssen or James Marsden, so the “big name” argument doesn’t hold weight here. Halle is too short, too frail, and too light (yes, I said it) to be taken seriously as Storm. And that wig doesn’t help. Neither does her incredible shrinking accent. It’s true that Jackman doesn’t look a thing like Wolverine - too tall, too scrawny, WAY too pretty - but he embodied Wolverine. That’s why he was let off the hook, while Halle was never accepted as Storm.
However, I’m equally as disappointed in black people who seem to think that the only person suited to be Storm is Angela Bassett - a 5′4″ woman who is nearly fifty years old. (Don’t even get me started on Grace Jones. That had to be a joke, and I love Grace.) Are we also turning blind eyes to our up-and-comers? A shame, because we have some great ones out there. Gina Torres would’ve been an excellent choice, especially with her sci-fi filmography. Nona Gaye looks so much like a Storm prototype that it’s almost unreal, and anyone who saw her in “Ali” knows that she’s got serious potential. Aunjanue Ellis, N’Bushe Wright, Naomie Harris, Sophie Okonedo…even Gabrielle Union or Sanaa Lathan, for heaven’s sake. There are more great black actresses than Angela Bassett, folks. Time to start supporting them.
June 25th, 2006 12:03
Grace Jones probably gets brought up because she was clearly the physical model for the “Mohawk” Storm in the ’80s. (I’m completely blanking on the artist at the time–Paul Smith?–but I remember reading comments from Claremont about how he wanted to make Storm more like Jones, fwiw.) I’m honestly surprised you can be shocked that the studio, which was taking a HUGE chance with the first film, would cast as many bankable stars as they could in it. Anna Paquin, for example, was the only one in the film who could be advertised as an “Oscar winning” actress. I don’t know if she was a household name, but I’d certainly heard of her. Halle Berry, at the time, was an up-and-comer; most of the people you mentioned were certainly not well known–remember, this is 2000 we’re talking about. (Gina Torres, for example, had her best part in a little-watched TV series called “Cleopatra 2525;” pretty much no one had heard of her.) As you point out, James Marsden was only known for indy stuff, Famke Jannsen for all kinds of smaller parts (although one of those was as a Bond girl) and Hugh Jackman was an unknown (in the US). The studio had every right to believe the film could flop, since the only “superhero” film that hadn’t in recent memory had been a flop was the original Matrix (which was still in production when X-Men was cast). I can’t blame them for grabbing box office names like Berry, Paquin and Stewart. (I don’t think I can even count Ian McKellen in that list; again, not exactly a household name at the time.) I don’t think casting Berry as Storm was an intentional insult to anyone. You can dislike Berry’s performance, you can say she was miscast, but I don’t think you can really make the case that there was any kind of evil studio conspiracy here.
November 25th, 2006 04:35
I actually liked all of the movies, but the last x-men movie just threw me off a bit. Why in the hell would you kill off scott, make it appear as though jean killed off the professor, not have jean look anything like the pheonix, and then bring the professor back in the end? What the hell kind of writing is that? I mean Jean looked like a zombie wanting to eat flesh rather than destroy her fellow x-men counterparts and mankind. She looked disgusting. As far as Halle Berry playing Storm, I actually had no problem with that. I think her character wasn’t as developed as the others and in return they gave her shitty lines and little screen time. I don’t think Angela Bassett would have made a better Storm either. She’s too muscular and far too old. Storm has a more feminine look to her, but her power is what makes her strong. I think for any black actress to play storm they have to have her mindset in tact. They have to make Storm believeable, and Halle has done that most of the time. At times Halle just looked stupid saying crap I know was probably written for her to say in a maybe thirty seconds. I am tired of Halle being portrayed as an asexual, mammy type character in the movies though. She’s always there to help and lift others spirits, but she can never be allowed to fall in love. Rogue can love the ice man, wolverine can love an already taken woman who is Jean, but Storm is to be alone and there for teaching and fighting only. I understand that x-men along with my girl Storm are nothing but mere fiction, but at least put more thought into the movies. Don’t kill off characters that also make x-men what it is today. That was just a dumb move among the writers of x-men last stand. Hopefully when they decide to make an x-men 4 I won’t be as pissed off as I was with the x-men 3 movie.
December 30th, 2006 17:15
[…] X-Men’s Last Stand: One for Patriarchy Makani Themba Nixon, May 29 […]
July 11th, 2007 22:19
[…] In X-Men’s Last Stand: One for Patriarchy, Mekani Themba Nixon criticizes “the disempowerment and basic all around ‘girlification’ of X-Men leader Storm,” voicing many of my own misgivings about the movie version of the character. […]
March 6th, 2008 01:39
A *bit* late getting here, but stumbled onto this a la Google. Anyway, I was also very disappointed with the portrayal of Storm througout the movie series: She didn’t have a lot to do, it’s true, but X3 makes it especially blatant: *anyone not Wolverine* was relegated to a “get the plane” role. I don’t think that was sexism so much as plain bad writing: A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and Mr. Ratner knew a little: Wolverine’s really popular. So he made Logan the entire movie, made the whole thing be about his godlike unstoppability as he searches for Jean and then leads the final battle. Cyclops gets *vaporized* early on. Iceman only gets to pick up his schoolyard rivalry from where it left off in the first five minutes of X2. Professor X’s role was written in the style of the “let’s turn him evil!” arcs like Dangerous and Deadly Genesis, in which he’s a ruthless manipulator. Angel’s scenes from the trailer turned out to be *all* of his presence. The others get to zap Magneto’s teenage mutant ninja redshirts in the fight but have no real development. Heck, even *Logan,* for all his screen-hogging, was used for his coolness factor *only* and wasn’t nearly as interesting as in X1 and X2. Not every instance of a female character getting short-changed is sexism, let alone a grand “sexism is right” statement. Sometimes bad writing is just bad writing. Let’s not forget who got to rescue Leech from no less than the Juggernaut (comics fans know what it takes for the *entire* team to deal with him.) The very female Shadowcat had the privelege of being the only non-Logan X-Man who got to do something important. But I digress. The worst thing they did to Storm was to remove her history. in X1 and X2, she was written as a person who’d grown up under years of anti-mutant persecution, and had plenty of anger and fear towards humans despite being devoted to Xavier’s dream. (Well, she was hinted to be. “I guess… I fear you.” “Sometimes, anger can help you survive.” Somehow I doubt that came from being *worshipped as a goddess* since her teens, and her troubles from before that having nothing to do with her mutant status.) That is not an uninteresting character, and I was hoping to see more of that character’s development when they said more Storm in X3. But it isn’t Storm.
June 27th, 2008 22:22
I’m even later in getting here but I think it’s worth pointing out that in the movie, the following fates await the female characters:
-Mystique: Loses powers because she saved a Magneto (man) and is then subsequently rejected by said man.
-Rogue: Takes the “cure” so that she can touch Bobby (I don’t care what she said, if it wasn’t for Bobby, it was clearly for some other man).
-Storm: Relegated to seeking out and fighting the “other Black chick” in every fight scene.
-Jean: Ugh, need I go there? Her “impulsive” (aka destructive) personality comes out after years of it being controlled by Prof. X (man) and is then seemingly reawakened by a would-be sexual encounter with Wolverine (another man). By the end, she cannot, as she did in the comics, take her own life in a heroic, lucid moment, but instead has to tearfully ask Wolverine to “save [her].”
Give me a break!
Kitty was the one example of a female character not getting completely mistreated by this movie. But one out of five is nothing to brag about.
Also, don’t get me started on the racial issues in the movie (why are all but one of Magneto’s thugs, at least the ones who get dialog, minorities?).
Disliked this movie for the hackjob it did on the comics, the bad writing and the oversimplified plot. Hated this movie because of its racial and sexual politics.
September 30th, 2009 05:39
Nice post! Just one question, is this linked to what Alex Tenns was speaking about on his blog?