matthew vaughn | Heroic Times

“Along with me I’m gonna need a scientist, an engineer, and of course, a black person to sacrifice himself in case something goes wrong.”
– Eric Cartman, SOUTH PARK, season 9, Cartman’s Hippie Exit Strategy 2006

I don’t even like/watch South Park but that quote is funny and sad because it’s true.

Here it is 21st century and writers/filmmakers from Frank Miller (SIN CITY) to Matthew Vaughn and Jane Goldman (X-MEN FIRST CLASS) are still crafting films that still perpetuate this bigoted vaudeville/black-face denigration of minorities, particularly Blacks as either victims/sacrifices, hors, criminals, or comedy relief or some effed up combination of the four.

I hear all these people saying X-MEN FIRST CLASS was the best movie of 2011. Are you effing on crack?! This goes to prove what Leroi Jones/Amiri Baraka said in an early age… if you live all your life with lies it becomes hard to see anything that has nothing to do with those lies.

I’m saying a population that watches American Idol and thinks X-MEN FIRST CLASS is a good movie and that their country is a democracy, the cowboy on the white hat, has perhaps lived with lies too long. And therefore can’t see the concentration camps paid for with American Tax dollars, and the 24 hour propaganda machine, and how many of us are being herded into new millennium Dachaus.

I’m saying that twisted facts are easy offshoots… of twisted fictions. The dream being father to the reality.

So needless to say Matthew Vaughn’s new X-MEN FIRST CLASS movie will get as much theater money out of me as his first one, which is to say none. I’m drawing the line in the effing sand, I refuse to pay theater prices for any movie made after 1970 (revival films being excluded) that a/ has less than two characters of color and/or b/has characters in boring, tired stereotypical roles.

Which means I’m not going to see effing DIARY OF A MAD BLACK WOMAN or PRECIOUS either. I don’t need that crap. Give me instead more OBSESSED and more TAKERS and more BLACK DYNAMITE and more BLOOD AND BONE. Any of those movies are worth a dozen times predictable crap like X-MEN FIRST CLASS (I caught it on DVD from the library, if anyone was wondering).

And what makes me the maddest about that movie is it plays lipservice to liberty and inclusiveness, using Kennedy’s speeches for God’s Sake, and invoking the age of the 1960s, while presenting a completely 50s based message of ethnic characters ‘get in the back of the bus’. And the horrible thing is so many eyes can see this film, and not see it, not see its messages, its bigotry, its failings. Can honestly crank out odious crap like that and think they are somehow being liberal??? Absolutely amazing.

It concerns me that a whole generation is growing up, somehow blind to how off the beam America isn’t just getting… but is. Even to shows like COMMUNITY (see my discussion of) which is dazzlingly bigoted. And the onus isn’t just on the creators, it has to be on the stars. Seemingly the ethnic actors these days are devoid of the social conscience of a Poitier or a Belafonte or a Williamson, and this new generation just takes roles without any larger conversation/consideration about being used as a modern step and fetchit.

Sure you risk being fired if you speak up, but you risk something worse if you don’t. Your soul. You risk walking around like all these sheep, raised and reared on lies, and unable to see anything… if it has nothing to do with those lies.

Here endeth the rant.

Well I finally got around to watching both THE SOCIAL NETWORK and X-MEN FIRST CLASS. They were both from day one not on my must see list. The hype machine notwistanding, I’m relatively good at being able to look at previews/trailers and being able to smell a film that really isn’t worth my theater dollars.

And unfortunately having seen both films (rented them from the Library for $1.50), I was correct to avoid them in the theater.

THE SOCIAL NETWORK is the better of the two, and is in fact better than I thought it would be, I mean a film on FACEBOOK, comeon. However David Fincher does make this an interesting film throughout, however it never really becomes more than that. It’s not a film I’m going to return to, or have any desire to watch again. So a good film, but by no means a great or memorable film. David Fincher exploded with his 2nd film SEVEN (easily his masterpiece), and I was quite enamored of the films immediately following that, THE GAME, FIGHT CLUB, and to a lesser degree PANIC ROOM.

Unfortunately every film since, has been a little less effective and less interesting than the one before… from ZODIAC to BENJAMIN BUTTON to now SOCIAL NETWORK, there’s a gradual but definite decline.

David Fincher I once considered one of the best directors working, but I just don’t see it anymore. Though I hold out hope that THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO shall be a return to greatness for him, being the first film of his in over a decade that I’m actually excited by the trailer. Time will tell. But as far as SOCIAL NETWORK, it’s a Grade: B at best, a capable enough film but not something I’ll be purchasing.

That brings us to Matthew Vaughn’s X-MEN FIRST CLASS, another hailed film that the trailers to me looked awful. I had some issues with Matthew Vaughn’s KICK ASS but overall it was a good, and well done film, capably written. The main problem I have with X-MEN FIRST CLASS is the very stereotypical and boring and to an extent offensive choices it makes, in terms of script and story beats.

The clue is really in the number of writers who worked on the script and story, something like half a dozen writers… never a good sign. I have a lot of problems with the film, but the main thing is this: it is so heavy handed, unsubtle, and so… by the numbers it’s insulting. Here’s a movie about embracing differences, and how do we do that… by pulling the old, to the point of decrepitude bigot writing ploy of killing off the sole Black male character and making the sole female Black character a hor and a villain.

It’s just unworthy of all involved to crank out such stale stereotyping, and that it takes six writers to do so is just sad. People bash on X-MEN III, X-MEN III is a masterpiece compared to this.

Some good performances and a nice beginning unfortunately can’t rise above a halfbaked plot, and creaky dialogue. Final Grade: C-/D+. Catch it for free.

So both films I ultimately suggest, watching if there’s nothing better on, and you can catch it for free, but otherwise… Avoid.