#reminds me of my astronaut soldier!!! i should post him here sometime

[ialreadyreadthatfanfic]

Charles Xavier Is A Huge Dick: The Movie

or,

X-Men: Dark Phoenix

Hey, if you haven’t seen the movie yet and don’t want to be spoiled, you probably should stop reading!

*

I watched the new X-Men movie. Not only I’m that annoying cinema-goer that sits behind you and mocks the movie audibly during the seance, oh no, I’m also that annoying cinema-goer that comes back home and makes a bitchy tumblr post about the movie.

But, guys, that was so bad.

First off: I’m convinced that upon reading the script, James MacAvoy and Sophie Turner instantly lost the will to act, because we’ve all certainly seen far better performances from both of them.

My other theory is that the director simply told them not to bother, because this was, as far as I can tell, a deliberate franchise-killer.

The scene-by-scene description of the train-wreck under the cut for the curious.

PROLOGUE

We open the movie with the scene where young Jean Grey and her parents are in car crash, because Jean Cannot Control Her Powers. The kid survives; the parents aren’t so lucky. This scene is generally inoffensive, if predictable.

From now on, young Jean Grey behaves like a kid-shaped robot. Someone please write her better dialogue.

Charles Xavier arrives at the hospital, confirms her parents are dead, somewhat unenthusiastically delivers some well-worn platitudes and whisks her away to his school.

Hey, mutant powers are like pens. Especially the ones you can’t control, because sometimes pens go on a rampage and stab people in the eyes, you know, unintentionally.

(No, seriously, they went with that metaphor.)

TITLES - BACK TO THE FUTURE - or 1992, I guess, one cheer for 90s nostalgia

In effort to remind us humans that as a species we did some cool things on our way to ruining the planet, we watch the launch of a space shuttle.

Suddenly Houston, we have a problem. A sentient solar flare or something is attacking the brave astronauts! Oh no! Who’re we gonna call?!

Charles Xavier!

Like literally, the Mr. President of US of A calls Charles Xavier, like Chuck, are you watching the TV rn?, and Xavier’s like, already giddy with anticipation, Why yes, Mr. President, I see you are in a spot of trouble, and Mr. President’s like, Sooo, Chuck, I literally HATE TO ASK, BUT... and Xavier’s like, practically bouncing with glee, BUT OF COURSE, X-MEN TO THE RESCUE!!!

So Chuck sends off his chicks. Nominally, the team is under Mystique’s command. There also Hank, and baby-faced Storm, and even more baby-faced Kurt Wagner, oh yeah JEAN, she’s there too bc PLOT, and Scott was along too. Did I forget anyone?

I forgot someone, didnt I?

OH YEAH, the Quicksilver was there too. Considering how cool he was in earlier movie(s?), it’s kinda sad that he’s largely inconsequential here and I forgot about his existence about halfway through.

Charles calls Houston on the Cerebro like a huge showoff he is, and the X-Men proceed to rescue the astronauts from weird-looking space cloud (which is of course the Phoenix Force, or whatever comics call it). There’s some cool looking scenes here where X-Men use their powers, but they’re just window dressing for the main plot:

Charles Xavier is being a huge dick, backseat driving this mission through Cerebro and not trusting Mystique’s judgement.

BTW, Mystique might be the only character in the movie who behaves like a sensible person, which is why she’s not there for very long.

Anyway the scene goes like this:

Mystique: we saved ALL BUT ONE astronaut! Coming back for that one guy is super risky and probably will only lead to more deaths! I’m cutting my loses like sensible field leader!

Prof X: OH NO YOU WON’T get back for that one guy or the whole mission is a failure!!!

Mystique: WTF??!! That’s crazy, we will get killed!

Prof X: But it’s better to throw away our lives than have less than 100% record on rescue mission, because if we give humans even slightest pretext, they will instantly revert back to hating us, see? The President will stop taking my calls, people will want to arrest us for property damage, and neutralize our powers and stick us in prison for mutants.

Mystique: ...seriously, why am I on your side again?!

Prof X: Just have Kurt take Jean to the shuttle and she’ll hold it intact while he looks for the guy! Raven, I want to remind you I can bitch at you telepathically anytime, anywhere, for the rest of your life!

Mystique: DAMN YOU FINE

So they do it. Kurt manages to rescue the guy, but not Jean. The shuttle blows to bits around her. We are supposed to be sad for 2 seconds there, but then the Phoenix Flare swallows her, she survives, X-Men return to Earth with the astronauts and are showered with praise from adoring masses who stand there with cutesy sings to welcome them upon landing. Whatever.

Jean has a conversation with Scott where they mack on each other and she reassures him She’s Never Been Better, Really, I Feel Great After That Traumatic Experience, and Scott is like, IDK but okay?? I guess??

And Hank checks her out too, and her power is OVER NINE THOUSAAAAND, but Jean’s like, chill, I feel greeeeeat, so Hank’s like, the only problem with this situation is that I need to design a better power-meter!! Ha ha!

Meanwhile, back to plot A, where Charles Xavier continues to be a huge dick. Mystique calls him out about his control freak thing, Charles responds by being a sanctimonious asshole because it’s not like he ever learns or grows as a person in these movies, you know, and Mystique basically throws her arms up and storms out, which is a good representation for audience reaction at that point. Her parting shot is one of like two good lines in the whole movie:

Mystique: And anyway, as far as I can see, the women saved the day again! Maybe you should think about renaming us X-Women!

The movie will shortly repay her for that, don’t worry.

Some other things happen. Creepy aliens looking for Phoenix Booster covertly invade Earth. Mystique goes to Hank and says, hey so Charles is being a huge dick and a total control freak. I’m kinda fed up with him, maybe it’s time to move out and start living our own life? To which Hank is like, IDK Raven do even have a life outside X-Men, and I don’t want to move out of my lab, and Mystique is like, ugh okay I’ll stay.

Jean gets upset at the party and pushes some people over in midst of Phoenix breakdown, which makes everyone panic. Charles notices that her power is now OVER 9000 and he can’t just go and fuck around in her mind anymore, so the logical solution is to use Cerebro to do that anyway.

It turns out that Phoenix thing not only amplified Jean’s power, it also dissolved mental blocks Charles put in her mind to hide a terrible truth from her: her father survived the car crash. In fact, with her powers, she can find her father right now! Jean, in midst of her generic emotional crisis, blows out of the school to do exactly that, because she feels alone and misunderstood and betrayed, man.

It turns out he willingly gave her up and I guess hates her because she caused the accident by putting her mother to sleep while driving. Jean is pretty upset and about to smite the whole neighbourhood, when the X-Men arrive.

This is how X-Men discreetly take care of their business: They suit up in their official uniforms and take their official super-advanced jet and land it on the street, so everyone around will know what’s up. The only thing they were missing while confronting Jean was the transparent with the word INTERVENTION.

Jean freaks out, X-Men try to fight her, they all cause maximum collateral damage possible, there’s police, Mystique tries to talk Jean down, Jean semi-accidentally kills Mystique by pushing her over and impaling her on some wooden debris.

It’s all very badly written and feels utterly cheap and is a total waste of character. Frankly, the scene made me angry and not much else. But since the whole movie revolves on the fact that everyone is an idiot, Mystique didn’t go there anyway, I guess.

Anyway, it furthers three things:

Plot A, Charles is reaching new heights of being a huge dick wherein he goes to sprout platitudes at Hank, who predictably doesn’t want to listen to him and lashes out, to which Charles reacts very maturely by being OFFENDED, because Raven was HIS sister, OBVIOUSLY he’s the MOST injured party here! (No, seriously, he pretty much says that).

Plot B, Hank needs to be a bigger idiot, to which we will come back in a moment.

Plot C, Jean Grey is now Public Enemy Number One and all people are back to hating humans! The President literally stopped taking Xavier’s calls, people want to arrest X-Men for property damage, neutralize their powers and stick them in prison for mutants.

Oh, and aliens are tracking Jean to get the Phoenix Power or whatever.

Jeans next move is to go visit Erik Lehnsherr, who is living like a hobo in Genosha with a handful of like-minded mutants. She wants to ask him for life advice, I guess, because when Charles Xavier is being a huge dick and hiding your memories of your childhood trauma from you without your consent, Magneto is the only alternative.

Too bad she wants advice on Not Killing People With My Powers When I’m Kinda Upset With Them. It’s unsurprising that Erik Lehnsherr, who spend his whole life Deliberately Killing People With His Powers Because He Was Very Upset With Them, can’t really relate.

This upsets Jean further, and she demonstrates that by attacking US soldiers who came to Genosha to arrest them and doing her best to kill them. Then she flies off to drink in a bar, where an alien picks her up, because it wants to show her the whole wide world or something.

Let’s come back to plot B for a moment, which is Hank being an idiot. Hank is very distraught and wants to kill Jean. So Hank goes to Magneto.

Hank: I want to kill Jean and I need your help with that.

Erik: Wait, what? Why?

Hank: She killed Mystique!

Erik, already frothing at the mouth: ...let me grab my I’m Being A Huge Idiot Helmet, Hank, and we can commence the business of killing.

So the aliens are pitching their “Let’s Re-Create The Earth In Your Image” campaign to Jean, which can be done only in a New York townhouse, specifically in a very special bedroom (...oh hey, I didn’t pick up on that creepy vibe until now!).

Jean is largely convinced, because in this movie characters just go back and forth as the plot demans.

So both Charles and Erik with their lackeys track down Jean, and have a huge fight in front of the above-mentioned townhouse, with lots and lots of collateral damage while they debate who is right. Before that, Erik has the second good line in the movie, which is used to rightfully call out Charles:

Erik: You’re always sorry and there’s always a speech. But no one wants to listen anymore.

Anyway, X-Men and the mutants beat up each other, Erik gets into the house and fails to kill Jean, then Charles gets in the house and tries to talk down Jean, which is followed by perhaps the most genuinely disquieting scene in the movie, in which Jean uses her telekinesis to destroy the wheelchair and force Charles to walk up the stairs.

They have an exchange that is supposed to be hopeful and heartwarming and so on, but by this point I’m fed up with this world movie.

Jean rejects the aliens��� campaign, so the alien head honcho attempts to suck out the Phoenix Dust out of her, and partially succeeds, but is interrupted midway and knocked out. All the mutants are arrested, put into special shackles restricting their powers and put on a train which is going straight to special prison for mutants.

Don’t worry, we’re in the last stretch.

Aliens need the rest of Phoenix Macguffin, so they ambush the train. There’s a big action scene, everyone is fighting the aliens, there are a few cool shots but beyond that I’m blanking. In the end Jean awakens, wipes the floor with the aliens, and when the alien head honcho tries to emotionally blackmail her into not eviscerating its hide, she grabs it, flies up into the sky and explodes them both.

Much sad. Very sacrifice. Such tears etc etc etc.

AN EPILOGUE, FINALLY

The situation returns to the status quo, except some people are dead.

The humans were about to lock up mutants in a prison like five minutes earlier, but nobody mentions that. Guess everyone forgot about that.

As far as I can tell, nobody except X-Men noticed that Earth was about to be invaded by aliens.

The school is renamed after Jean Grey.

Hank is the new headmaster. On his desk, a cheesy nostalgic photo of Mystique.

Charles, despite seemingly getting a pass on his dickishness on every turn in this narrative, is Worn Down By His Losses and retires. He occupies his time by brooding morosely at a cafe in unspecified European-looking country.

Erik finds him there. He is disproportionately cheery, like a man who after decades of pining finally is in a place where he can bully his longtime crush into a reluctant chess date, which he proceeds to do.

Camera pans up, to the sky. The sky gives us Phoenix Force-shaped wink.

THE END

[nathanjhill]

Are you salt?

Isaiah 58:1-9 & Matthew 5:13-20

Last month, my family and I crowded into the Old Greenbelt Theater to watch Hidden Figures, the new hit movie about the untold stories of three African American women mathematicians who worked for NASA at a critical time when America was trying to put their first astronaut into space.

This movie hit all of my buttons - it’s a story about space, science, math, courage, strong women, and strong faith.

One of the main characters, Katherine Goble, a so-called “human computer” with incredible math skills, was more than just equipped with an incredible brain - she also had determination, guts, grit, and a little saltiness. In the movie, she gets assigned to help the team working on the right rocket and trajectory to get the Apollo space capsule into orbit. Her task is to simply check the math, but she does more - and gets herself into a little trouble.

Let’s watch a clip from the movie.

Hidden Figures - "Russian Spy"

Disciples pastor Rev. Dr. Alvin Jackson posted on Facebook after he saw the film, and he couldn’t help but preach. He said the movie about three strong, courageous black women who just went and did their job each day, reminded him that, “CHANGING THE WORLD OFTEN HAPPENS NOT BY THE HEADLINERS, PEOPLE OUT FRONT, BUT BY HIDDEN FIGURES, PEOPLE IN THE BACKGROUND WHO JUST DO THEIR JOBS, DOING ANOTHER'S DAY'S WORK.”

In these past two weeks, when we have been bombarded with daily executive orders from our new White House administration, as anxiety continues to rise like a flood, as protesters have gathered at airports while refugee families have been turned away, as our Facebook feeds have lit up with partisan arguments, I am so thankful for the hidden figures who have continued to quietly go about their jobs and make sure most things keep running while the nation experiences a little turbulence.

Yes, while our attention is focused on the very vocal leaders of our nation and world and their 140 character missives to the masses, so often, it is the people in the background, the stories you may overlook, the people who don’t get book deals who end up keeping this broken world from exploding into flames and mayhem, who hold up our mess to the light.

And so this morning, I ask, are you salt?

Can you turn to your neighbor and ask them, “are you salt?”

To get scientific here for a minute, the truth is every human being can answer that question with a “YES”. Biologists tell us that every human being is roughly .15% salt, sodium chloride, spread throughout our bodies, captured in our cells, part of the fragile mixture our bodies need to survive.

But when Jesus stood on the mountain that day and spoke his famous sermon in the Gospel of Matthew, he was not talking about the chemical balance of your body - instead, he was saying something important about who his disciples were to be in the world.

“You are the salt of the earth.”

Salt had a lot of uses in ancient Palestine, just as it does today, so his followers were intrigued. What did Jesus mean?

Salt was a food preserver, important in a time with no refrigeration, as a way to keep your groceries from going bad.

There are stories of special kinds of rocks with salt deposits that were cherished in Jesus’ time as places to store perishables.

Salt was also a spice, a way to season a dish, turning something bland into something delicious.

I fondly remember a trip to Thailand with my wife to visit my uncle and my aunt, and one day as we enjoyed a gorgeous morning at a hotel, we were brought trays of fresh pineapple, just so tender and ripe. And next to the fruit were these little bowls with a mixture of salt and red pepper flakes to dip the fruit into. And WOW - the flavor and sweetness of the fruit came alive. That’s the power of a little salt!

Salt was also valuable in the ancient world.

There are legends that Roman soldiers got part of their pay not just in coin but in salt, which then becomes a sort of root word for “salary” which we still use today.

Salt could even be used as a weapon of war.

Ancient stories telling of conquering armies sowing salt into the fields of their enemies to prevent them from growing crops, including Abimelech, a judge in Israel, who sowed salt after there was an uprising against him.

The question for Jesus’ disciples - and for us today - is what kind of salt are we supposed to be in this world. Are we the kind of salt that helps prevent things from going bad or prevent bad things from growing? Are we the kind of salt to bring some goodness and flavor to the world, to help others see the worth of Jesus?

Christians for a long time have wrestled with this.

I grew up in rural Oklahoma, a conservative part of the country, where a lot of Christians were committed to creating a separate kind of culture - Christian schools, Christian radio stations, Christian stores, Christian newspapers, Christian tv channels, even Christian chewing gum - all in a bid to be the kind of salt that preserved their values and the things they cared about. And no doubt, there is some good in that strategy, because, as Jesus asked his disciples, if salt loses its saltiness, what good is it? Sometimes, we Christians have to huddle together and be together when times are tough.

But then Jesus shifts his teaching in the next few verses and begins to describe his followers as light - “You are the light of the world.” Light, like salt, enhances life. Because of salt, our food tastes better. Because of light, we can experience the beauty of the world all around on a bright day and witness the dazzling mystery of stars overhead at night. And when our lights shine, when our saltiness brings out the best in others and in our world, the glory of God shines through us.

Like that image from the clip of the top secret material being held up to the light, when God’s light shines, the evil and hatred of humanity cannot be redacted or hidden or covered up.

In this scripture, Jesus is issuing his followers irrevocable VISAs that give them permission to be engaged in this world, bringing flavor and zest and illumination to a dry and weary human family.

”Are you salt?”

Here’s the thing I love about salt — most of the time, you look down at your food, and you don’t even necessarily know it’s there. You have to read the label or recipe to find out how much is in a serving.

But you always know when it’s missing.

Sometimes, as Jesus followers, we are called to be at the forefront - to organize, to preach, to teach, to stand out on the corner and shout for justice, to put our bodies on the line. Rev. William Barber, a fellow Disciples pastor, said this week in an sermon, “I can’t trust a pastor that isn’t willing to go to jail.” He’s right - our faith doesn’t do anyone a bit of good if we are so quickly willing to lose our saltiness when the going gets tough.

I couldn’t help but think of my friend and colleague, Rev. Brian Adams, who was willing to put his faith, his saltiness, on the line for the poor, the sick, and the outcast. With the excitement of these last couple of weeks, I know if Brian was still with us he would be marching everyday, letting his feet and body be his prayer that God’s glory may shine through. A couple of weeks back, when I went down with other clergy to pray at one of the Senate buildings, I asked God to give me the same courage God gave Brian, the same kind of salt and light. Maybe that should be all of our prayer.

But most of the time and for most of us, we are called to be the kind of salt that people may not even see at first glance, like those courageous, faithful women in Hidden Figures, going about our daily work and doing it with integrity, compassion, and persistence to enliven this fragile world with home cooking. We become the quiet but courageous vessels for change to come to our broken world.

For those dismayed by the travel ban, the vitriol among friends, the anxiety and nervousness of this time, and the anger and hate spewed about, our mission to join with God starts small.

I heard some speaker say once, “A Christian’s first mission field begins at home.” How we treat our spouses, our partners, our children, and our neighbors says everything about whether or not we are indeed salt of the earth. This week, your mission project may begin there, to sow some peace in fractured relationships at home.

But if not there, this image of “salt” challenges us to continue to rid ourselves of this notion that church is what we do on Sunday mornings or when we come to this church building.

We are salt when we are out there beyond those walls, when we are in our work places, when we are crunching numbers to put a man on the moon, when we are turning the other cheek after someone slings a racial slur in our direction, when we speak out for the child who deserves a second chance, when we dare to voice a generous welcome to a refugee family or an international student who doesn’t know if they are welcome here, when we eat less so others may eat more, when we scrub a shower bathroom so our next homeless guest can get cleaned up, when we write letters and make phone calls demanding more integrity and more compassion from our leaders, when we choose to step away from Facebook and engage with love over coffee and prayer, when shine light on hatred at our doorstep, and especially when we proclaim that Jesus came not to tear down but fulfill all of God’s law, a law that means love.

Brothers and sisters, are you salt?

The prophet Isaiah tells us what salt looks like in the world - not a fickle, bland religion that dwells in meaningless rituals and worship - but a faith that is bursting with life and light and generosity and love and courage for those who hurting, cast out, and afraid. What kind of faith does God want from us?

From the Message translation, the prophet says, speaking God’s words to us:

to break the chains of injustice,

get rid of exploitation in the workplace, free the oppressed, cancel debts. What I’m interested in seeing you do is: sharing your food with the hungry, inviting the homeless poor into your homes, putting clothes on the shivering ill-clad, being available to your own families. Do this and the lights will turn on, and your lives will turn around at once. Your righteousness will pave your way. The God of glory will secure your passage. Then when you pray, God will answer. You’ll call out for help and I’ll say, ‘Here I am.’

“Are you salt?”

Thanks be to God.