I feel like Spider Man Brand New Day's attempts at trying…
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I feel like Spider Man Brand New Day's attempts at trying to be morally complicated are missing with audiences
Not ALL audiences, just the category of people who think "The Grey sisters are pure evil and can't be sympathised with". I loved the movie, and I know loads of people did, and it's made a massive amount of money. I'm addressing a certain group of people, and encouraging a fairer analysis than they are giving it:
You can argue that the film just simply should have been written differently to compensate and there is an argument to be made that the film's depiction of Jean Grey between acts 1/2 and act 3 needed more connective tissue. That it seems possible that they wrote a lot of her actions before deciding that they wanted her to end in this better place morally, but they didn't go back and change what she did to perfectly line up. So you have a very dark, seemingly twisted character that the film then turns around and argues is not all bad and can go in a positive direction.
I'm not going to suggest they switch the character altogether, because then you'd probably have to write a different third act. The point is more so, I get the sense that people think that just because the presentation in the third act is what it is, that it means the movie is unaware of what Jean Grey did in the first two.
It isn't. The point of the third act is that this is a problem that Damage Control created, and they have no clue how to deal with Mutants in a way that doesn't then result in more problems. What they did resulted in Jean becoming determined and vengeful, and she has no clue how to use these new mutant powers in conjunction with her feelings of determination, powerlessness and anger.
It becomes obvious that both sides are in the wrong in some fashion, both Jean and DC represent extremes that meet and create a multitude of harm. The film never remotely suggests that anything that Jean did was correct, merely that this circumstance is not completely black and white. If Brand New Day believed that Jean was in the right, then the third act wouldn't involve her having to be stopped (admittedly non violently). She'd just be allowed to do what she does and the film would never remotely question it or depict it as something that needs correcting.
Had you specifically sanitised Jean's actions, whilst it might make it easier to empathise with the character, it would result in someone who wasn't actually doing that much wrong, so Peter's own storyline would lose its foil and there'd be less impact in that character's soul being put on the right path at the end. Characters have to do genuinely bad things to learn from them.
I also want to talk about Sarah Grey too. Plenty look at that flashback in the park and just automatically think that Damage Control are in the right to capture her. Beyond the fact that again, them doing that leads to the events of the film, you're obviously supposed to be thinking of the absence of Charles Xavier and how the sisters have literally nobody to guide them. The point of the scene is not "They're so innocent and did nothing morally dubious", it's "Here's what happens when you have nobody to step in and help these young people, and the only response is to treat them like they're trying to kill people"
I think the reason why perhaps making Jean Grey do what she did through the movie is not landing with people is because it's taking away people's autonomy, and obviously that isn't a good thing. It does tie in somewhat to Peter's storyline with MJ, but I do think that this aspect of the story could have held back more in it's depiction because that is a sensitive topic in the real world. At the same time, it might have also softened the movie's edges. Maybe the film had to show the worst and most irresponsible version of her powers as a way to connect to what Peter is going through and the lessons he always had to learn in every movie.
The point is that Brand New Day actually is trying a level of morally complicated storytelling that suits the X Men property, but it isn't working for everyone. At the same time, claiming the film is worse off for not being more black and white speaks to the fact that we've had decades of movies where the sympathetic anti villains/heroes do nothing all that wrong/conveniently die as a form of atonement, or we have villains who are straightforwardly evil and the circumstances behind their actions are never questioned. So when Jean Grey subverts both of those things, it feels wrong to a lot of viewers. You go "Well, she was doing all of this, and her sister did what she did, they're bad people"
#movies #video
Not ALL audiences, just the category of people who think "The Grey sisters are pure evil and can't be sympathised with". I loved the movie, and I know loads of people did, and it's made a massive amount of money. I'm addressing a certain group of people, and encouraging a fairer analysis than they are giving it:
You can argue that the film just simply should have been written differently to compensate and there is an argument to be made that the film's depiction of Jean Grey between acts 1/2 and act 3 needed more connective tissue. That it seems possible that they wrote a lot of her actions before deciding that they wanted her to end in this better place morally, but they didn't go back and change what she did to perfectly line up. So you have a very dark, seemingly twisted character that the film then turns around and argues is not all bad and can go in a positive direction.
I'm not going to suggest they switch the character altogether, because then you'd probably have to write a different third act. The point is more so, I get the sense that people think that just because the presentation in the third act is what it is, that it means the movie is unaware of what Jean Grey did in the first two.
It isn't. The point of the third act is that this is a problem that Damage Control created, and they have no clue how to deal with Mutants in a way that doesn't then result in more problems. What they did resulted in Jean becoming determined and vengeful, and she has no clue how to use these new mutant powers in conjunction with her feelings of determination, powerlessness and anger.
It becomes obvious that both sides are in the wrong in some fashion, both Jean and DC represent extremes that meet and create a multitude of harm. The film never remotely suggests that anything that Jean did was correct, merely that this circumstance is not completely black and white. If Brand New Day believed that Jean was in the right, then the third act wouldn't involve her having to be stopped (admittedly non violently). She'd just be allowed to do what she does and the film would never remotely question it or depict it as something that needs correcting.
Had you specifically sanitised Jean's actions, whilst it might make it easier to empathise with the character, it would result in someone who wasn't actually doing that much wrong, so Peter's own storyline would lose its foil and there'd be less impact in that character's soul being put on the right path at the end. Characters have to do genuinely bad things to learn from them.
I also want to talk about Sarah Grey too. Plenty look at that flashback in the park and just automatically think that Damage Control are in the right to capture her. Beyond the fact that again, them doing that leads to the events of the film, you're obviously supposed to be thinking of the absence of Charles Xavier and how the sisters have literally nobody to guide them. The point of the scene is not "They're so innocent and did nothing morally dubious", it's "Here's what happens when you have nobody to step in and help these young people, and the only response is to treat them like they're trying to kill people"
I think the reason why perhaps making Jean Grey do what she did through the movie is not landing with people is because it's taking away people's autonomy, and obviously that isn't a good thing. It does tie in somewhat to Peter's storyline with MJ, but I do think that this aspect of the story could have held back more in it's depiction because that is a sensitive topic in the real world. At the same time, it might have also softened the movie's edges. Maybe the film had to show the worst and most irresponsible version of her powers as a way to connect to what Peter is going through and the lessons he always had to learn in every movie.
The point is that Brand New Day actually is trying a level of morally complicated storytelling that suits the X Men property, but it isn't working for everyone. At the same time, claiming the film is worse off for not being more black and white speaks to the fact that we've had decades of movies where the sympathetic anti villains/heroes do nothing all that wrong/conveniently die as a form of atonement, or we have villains who are straightforwardly evil and the circumstances behind their actions are never questioned. So when Jean Grey subverts both of those things, it feels wrong to a lot of viewers. You go "Well, she was doing all of this, and her sister did what she did, they're bad people"
#movies #video
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