X-Men: Days Of Future Past makes me uncomfortable

Earlier, after my first viewing of the new X-Men film, I set fingers to key and cranked out thousands of words about how much I enjoyed the film. And I do. The good parts are very good. Just like Rogue, Wolverine, and Nightcrawler, Quicksilver gets an introduction that ensures viewers never forget him.

Days Of Future Past

They say that the two most powerful words in advertising are “new” and “free”. Well, thanks largely to my habit of collecting rewards points and buying all of my tickets to films, I was able to redeem the offer of a free ticket last Thursday. Which made X-Men: Days Of Future Past the obvious choice to see.

Rather than give a detailed review, I am going to reflect on my reactions to the content.

How to “read” X-Men (like a mutant).

In a matter of months, the first X-Men film to feature Bryan Singer at the helm since 2003 will be released. This has brought forth a deluge of X-Men related posts on Fudgebook and other such publicity. But just like there is a How To Read Donald Duck in which analysis of Disney’s material is taken to extremes, I think it is worth taking a look at X-Men for similar reasons.

Offensive language. Real offensive language, I mean.

In the constant back and forth about the use of so-called “person first” language (that is, “person with autism” or the like), a dangerous gambit or concession emerges. The “person first” camp, with all of their smugness and self-entitled ignorance of the implications, like to tell us that it is up to what the individual prefers. This seems perfectly reasonable at first, in spite of how some of them attempt to use this as a platform from which to bully us into adopting it. But just like “person with blackness” or “person with Hebrew” or “person with Chineseness”, to cite just a few potential examples, are unacceptable and not a matter of preference, neither is “person with autism”. I do not care what you have to say for yourselves, “person first”ers. I could be the only autistic individual in the world who feels this way about your separationistic language. That would only mean I am right, and everyone else is wrong.

Much ado about nothing: Christopher Nolan’s Batman films…

I will come out and say this off the bat. I do not “get” the hero worship of the director named Christopher Nolan. No, wait, let me rephrase that. I get it just fine. It is just that once I get it, I do not want it anymore. As I have mentioned, I have insulin-dependent diabetes. I have had it since I was a little shy of ten years old, and have been promised an imminent cure ever since. So when I tell you that “…it’s time for my shot…” offended me more in that moment than two Rain Mans put together, I want you to understand my full meaning here. People who crap on that Christopher Nolan is some awesome director who can not do wrong can blow me. Their opinion has less meaning to me than the life of Jenny McCarthy.