While out in San Diego, Ariel and I took in “My Super Ex-Girlfriend.” I have to admit going in, I’m a sucker for Uma Thurman and Eddie Izzard. So I was predisposed to enjoy it, plus we had a good audience, plus my leg was hurting so I was doped up on Vicodin and probably would have applauded a Bush press conference. Thus I have to cop to the fact that I liked it, or at least I think I did.
But–and I’m probably going to do a more detailed “But I Digress” on this later–I find it interesting that fans deplored the scene in “Superman Returns” wherein our hero uses his X-ray vision and superhearing to spy on Lois and her family. “He’s stalking her” was the cry, and that was universally seen as A Very Bad Thing. But Thurman’s G-Girl not only stalks the boyfriend who dumps her because she’s a controlling, needy flake. She harasses him, destroys his property, and dámņëd near kills him. And it’s a comedy. It occurred to me that if you flipped the genders–if it was a girlfriend being harassed by an unrelentingly angry super boyfriend–there is absolutely no way it’s a comedy. It’s…I dunno…a thriller. A horror film. Anything except a comedy, because pìššëd øff girlfriend goes after guy = comedy, unless, y’know, the ex is Glenn Close. But if it’s pìššëd øff boyfriend going after girl, the threat aspect will completely overwhelm whatever comedy you’re going for.
You can do a comedy with a girl going after a guy (Super-Ex). You can do a comedy about a group of girls going after a guy (John Tucker Must Die). You can even do a comedy about a girl going after another girl or group of girls (Bad Girls). But a guy going after a girl who done him wrong? *Is* there a comedy–at least a successful one–ever made on that theme?
PAD
• 
Posted by JamesLynch
hanging your ex upside-down by a fire hose from the top of the Statue of Liberty.
Ummm, that was Professor Bedlam
BTW, Peter — i just used you as an example of a point i was trying top make in a rec.arts.sf.fandom discussion of Brroke McEldowney’s strips “9 Chickweed Lane” and “Pibgorn”…
I just remembered a Superman-as-stalker joke from before the movie. It was a stand up comic on Comedy Central talking about what it would be like to be the guy who dates Lois *after* Superman.
Basically the jokes revolved around getting intimate with Lois when a drunk Superman shows up at the door. It was pretty dámņ funny.
This question about this movie did occur to me, when I thought “Why did they have to make a FEMALE hero the crazy, possibly homicidal, stalker ex?” Then I realized – no, they COULDN”T do it the other way around.
If both had super-powers – yeah. Actually – duh – Buffy. Though she and Spike wasn’t a comdedic thing (well, for the most part; at least not by the time that they were really hitting each other)… If both are normal people, and both assulting each other – well, it has been done, as mentioned above, with “War of the Roses” – though, how enjoyable that thing was depends on the viewer… (“Mr. and Mrs. Smith” did work, pretty much – it was actually kind of female-positive, that she seemed equally able of kicking his ášš. But, unlike “Super Ex-GF”, it was a mutual attacking, and not ultimately supposed to be, unlike “War”, a comedy.) POSSIBLY if the male super-hero was established as being ineffectual and incompetent, you might be able to make a watchable stalker comedy. But if he were as powerful as Uma’s character appears to be in this movie? (Haven’t seen it; I thought it had potential at the time I saw the initial preview, but I’ve gotten more unsure of it as I’ve seen the direction they chose to take with the “my ex-girlfriend is a super-heroine” idea.) Flying, smashing walls, shooting things at his all-too-human ex-girlfriend, etc? I’m not sure that that would ever be workable. (And it may say something about the sexism still in our society that doing this to a man apparently seems so absurd that it can be done as a comedy.)
1
spoilers for the end of My Super Ex-girlfriend.
Technically speaking, this movie has both, girl stalking guy and guy stalking girl. Professor Bedlam was stalking and trying to hurt G Girl/Jenny.
I think for it to work the opposite.. the guys involved have to be clumsy oafs like in “Saving Silverman” or have guys with comical bad luck, like “There’s Something about Mary.”
I think the woman has to be the stronger character for it to work.
Now I haven’t seen this movie.. but it seems to me that the message is that women can’t handle having super-powers without letting their feelings taking control. You never saw Supergirl try and beat up her ex-boyfriends (except on the occasions where they did end up to be super-villains.. or.. colorful kryptonite was involved)
Now I haven’t seen this movie.. but it seems to me that the message is that women can’t handle having super-powers without letting their feelings taking control.”
What? That’s a rediculously huge leap from what’s shown in the commercials.
No, guys. The Worst First Date Movie ever: “Looking for Mr. Goodbar.”
I know, because it was the first movie to which I took my ex-girlfriend. Like the Diane Keaton character in the movie, she was a teacher of little backwards kids (Title 1 remedial reading in her case), and I had to apologize myself all over the place. “Of course, I didn’t associate that coke-snorting, cheap-affair-having, near suicidal character with you,” I said.
Funny thing was, she turned out to be a substance abuser (of alcohol), near suicidal when driving and an abusive controller. So maybe I should have paid closer attention to the movie.
George Carlin brilliantly observed that most comedy comes not from the topic, but from the humerous exaggeration of that topic. An incredibly depressing or serious topic can be made funny, depending on the spin: murder (most black comedies), nuclear war (DR. STRANGELOVE), racism (BLAZING SADDLES), rape (at least two good jokes on this in CLERKS), child molestation (HAPPINESS), etc. So, what’s a movie where women (yes, plural) are threatened with bodily harm/death and it’s a comedy?
THROW MOMMA FROM THE TRAIN.
It’s been a while since I saw this, but here’s what I recall. Billy Crystal is having problems with his ex-wife (played by Kate “Captain Janeway” Mulgrew) and Danny DeVito hates his domineering mother. DeVito sees STRANGERS ON A TRAIN when Crystal suggests seeing it (to improve DeVito’s writing) but DeVito thinks it means he should kill Crystal’s wife and Crystal should kill his mother. SO we now have two women in mortal peril from the men who feel they’ve been wronged.
So what happens? DeVito fails miserably at killing Mulgrew (though as he’s moving to push her overboard, he sees her shapely butt and cups his hands) and DeVito’s mother is such a powerhouse that Crystal gets his butt consistently handed to him. It’s a funny movie, no one gets killed, and in the end it all works out. But it does count as a comedy about, to paraphrase PAD’s origina thought, guys going after girls who done them wrong.
Posted by JamesLynch
George Carlin brilliantly observed that most comedy comes not from the topic, but from the humerous exaggeration of that topic. An incredibly depressing or serious topic can be made funny, depending on the spin
Kathleen may well have been around in the Old Days when i did what amounts to a stand-up routine describing how my right arm was (literally) shredded like hamburger when i went splat in a bicycle accident.
As a matter of fact, at a WorldCon somewhere or other, i was talking about it, and one of the women in the group asked me if i did or had considered doing standup. When i asked why, she said that she was an Emergency Room nurse in her home city, and, even though she could perfectly visualise the shape i must have been in, she was still laughing aloud…
Aside from the topic, Uma Thurman would make just the best ever SUPERGIRL. As I watched the film, I couldn’t help but visualize the G-Girl outfit as a Supergirl outfit. Does doing this film blow that chance for her? What a shame….
You can do a comedy with a girl going after a guy (Super-Ex). You can do a comedy about a group of girls going after a guy (John Tucker Must Die). You can even do a comedy about a girl going after another girl or group of girls (Bad Girls). But a guy going after a girl who done him wrong? *Is* there a comedy–at least a successful one–ever made on that theme?
PAD
Oh, there will be. Just wait until some big studio finally options the rights to my life’s story.
–Russ
It’s been a while since I saw it, but don’t Melanie Griffith and Harrison Ford join forces against Sigourney Weaver in “Working Girl” (and Ford is Weaver’s (ex-)boyfriend in that film)?
Mel Gibson’s Anti-Semitic Tirade During DUI Arrest … etc. etc.
Yeah, because that has a hellova of a lot to do with “My Super Ex-Girlfriend”.
I mock your attempt at posting! Ha ha!
No, the all-time worst date movie is WORKING GIRLS, an indie by a director called Lizzie Borden.
I don’t think you can include dark comedies in this list. The whole point of dark comedies is to push the boundries of what is acceptable to laugh at. My Super Ex-Girlfriend is being presented as light fun, not cutting and dark humor or even as satire.
Jon wrote (at July 29, 2006 08:41 PM)
In one episode of the TV show “Firefly” The main character tracks down, pulls a gun on, and punches out a women who, “done him wrong.”
“Done him wrong”, Jon? You sure you’re not stretching it a bit? Nevermind that the scene in question is not one played for laughs (it’s simply a bit of closure to that particular Saffron story, and serves to explain how they get the shuttle back). You make it sound like they were in a relationship and she simply left or betrayed him, which is a bit different from forcing him into a(n entirely fake) marriage, just so that she could disable his ship, (attempt to) kill him and his crew, and then steal one of only two shuttles on the ship.
Keep in mind that Saffron (one of my favorite characters from Firefly) was an extremely capable cold-blooded killer, one of the few characters who truly came across as being as devious (and possibly more so) than Mal himself. To remove that context and simply label Mal’s actions as “The main character track[ing] down, pull[ing] a gun on, and punch[ing] out a women who, ‘done him wrong'” is more than a bit sexist (especially because if it’d been a man who’d done the things she did, very few people would even have batted an eye).
PAD, it’s interesting you allude to FATAL ATTRACTION because a common theory about that film is that women identify with Close’s character and like that she’s *sticking* it to the adulterous jerk — until she goes after his family. That’s when she crosses a line.
Comedy/Tragedy is often about lines being crossed. THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY is a comedy in which three men are stalking a woman yet it manages to work as a comedy.
I think you can include dark comedies in the list, Peter David’s original post did not exclude black comedies, dark comedies, cutting humor or satire. Also “dark comedy” to some extent is in the eye of the beholder, for some people a comedy involving reckless endangerment of another person’s life would by definition be a dark one.
Matthew Broderick and Meg Ryan work together as stalkers to break up the relationship started by their ex-s in ADDICTED TO LOVE.
I’ll have to take PAD’s word for it (i.e. good movie; or, rather, one he liked, maybe), but there is no way I’m going to see it. The previews just leave me with a real bad taste in my mouth. “I knew you’d come back to me. That’s why I didn’t kill you.”
[knock, knock]Hello? Hollywood? SuperHERO(INE)!! Morals, ethics, truth, justice… all that!!
You want a comedy with a jilted ex- who’s also a superhero(ine); fine. But there’s plenty of gold to be mined without disregarding what truly makes a hero heroic.
Or, y’know, perhaps I’m just too old-fashioned for my own good…
I might have you all topped for Bad First-Date Movie.
I took a first date to see Dead Ringers under the auspices that Jeremy Irons’ performance was not to be missed. On the way home, not only did my date offer her opinions as to what my enjoying that movie had to say about my personality and the value I must place on women in general, she also listed multiple reasons as to why she would not be seeing me again socially.
It was quite the ride home.
Sounds like you dodged a bullet there, Kevin.
“[knock, knock]Hello? Hollywood? SuperHERO(INE)!! Morals, ethics, truth, justice… all that!!”
Well, that’s because the movie is part of two genres, superheroes and romantic comedies. Even though you’re right that it is extreme for a superhero, it’s perfectly in line for a romantic comedy. Look at How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days. That’s a movie about two people who lie to each other and treat each other like crap until they fall in love forever. A lot of romantic comedies are about over-the-top people doing bad things.
There are probably a lot people who agree with you, Yogzilla. The movie is doing badly at the box office, and one of the reasons I’ve seen put forward is the combination of genres. Some people like superhero movies, some like romantic comedies, but not enough people want to see a combination of the two.
I think another problem is the Luke Wilson character. In the commercials all you see is G-Girl acting nuts. She may be the main character, but it seems like the guy is the protagonist. He’s the one who has to survive her, he’s the one who has the super ex-girlfriend. So what do we see him doing in the commercials? Not much. There’s nothing to make you think you’ll go to the movie and see him being an interesting character.
From a financial point of view, this movie about a stalker girl isn’t very successful.
Ok, I haven’t seen Super Ex….like most of America…going by the commericals, the guy isn’t a creep, though…he breaks up with Uma cuz it doesn’t work out.
In most of the examples I’m seeing of the Male being the “stalker”, it’s ignoring that the woman is cast in a negative light.
American Sweethearts…Catharine Zeta Jones is an awful #@$!@ in the movie. Not caring about anyone other than herself.
Serentity…Robin already pointed out that Safron was the all out villain of the episode.
Even Revenge Of The Nerds…to a large extent. the sorority girls aren’t innocent victems, but largely getting their cumupance for ridiculing the nerds.
As for Super Ex-Girlfriend…hmmm didn’t know Eddie Izzard is in it…and he’s awesome..but then again, the last movie he was in that started Uma Thurman was The Avengers….
Maybe that’s a good way to check out if she’s The One–take her to an entirely innapropritate movie and see if she reacts well.
Then again, if it’s AUDITION and she wants to see you again…maybe you should run. Far.
For your protection, more bad date movies: Once were warriors, Boxing Helena, I Spit On Your Grave, Bad Lieutenant, Last House on The Left, Cannibal Holocaust, The Cook the Thief His Wife & Her Lover, Salo, Eraserhead…
One of those was actually a first date movie for me. Fortunately she was more messed up than I was.
I had a bad date movie. I took a girl to see “Rising Sun”. Afterwards she kept asking, “Why did they have to show that scene of the naked girl being strangled to death over and over again?” I was very glad that wasn’t our first date.
Emilio Estevez’s role in St. Elmos Fire comes to mind. He was comic relief, and indisputably a stalker.
This isn’t a film, but in an early Bill Willingham Elementals comic, the comic relief bad guy Ratman is stalking Fathom.
The outcomes in the movie and the comic are remarkably similiar.
And both characters are treated with some degree of sympathy, at least that’s how it appeared to me.
The movie doesn’t turn me off because she’s a superhero. It turns me off because she’s a woman, or, more precisely, that particular woman: an over-the-top, needy, clingy psycho that I would never want to spend 90-120 minutes with.
And just because she’s a superhero, it doesn’t mean she’s a superHERO. So many superhero fans tend to emphasize the “hero” over the “super,” as though they only like the genre because it’s about heroes. But just about every work of fiction has a hero in one form or another. There are heroes in real life. I like superheroes because they’re SUPER, regardless of their stance on truth, justice, and so forth.
Anyway, I guess my point is that objecting to a superheroine in a comedic movie (one that’s not even based on a comic book) threatening to kill someone, as though “hero” is a rigidly defined word denoting an unwavering adherence to a strict moral code, seems rather silly. Just because she has superpowers and (presumably) saves lives, it doesn’t mean she has to be a moral person.
PAD,
I pointed out this gender inequity way back in the mid-1990s when you had a bulletin board on GEnie. (There’s blast from the past.)
The subject at that time was Lorena Bobbett who quite famously cut off her husband’s pëņìš. This act was the source of many jokes on the late night television shows and I pointed out that if the he had mutilated her, nobody would dare make any jokes.
George
I don’t think I’ve ever taken a woman to a movie on a first date. I usually would invite them out for coffee or lunch or something non-threatening. And I usually would try to avoid being her source of transportation to and from said date, just in case things went sour and I needed to climb out the bathroom window.
On one of my first dates with my current girlfriend (five years and still going strong, thanks for asking even though you actually didn’t), we went to see “The Mummy Returns.” I later learned from her that she was only acting scared during certain scenes so she’d have an excuse to hold my arm. I, of course, was completely oblivious.
Bill Mulligan: “For your protection, more bad date movies: Once were warriors, Boxing Helena, I Spit On Your Grave, Bad Lieutenant, Last House on The Left, Cannibal Holocaust, The Cook the Thief His Wife & Her Lover, Salo, Eraserhead…”
I saw “The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, Her Lover” in college and I remember thinking, “What the HÊLL was THAT all about???” I mean, that movie accomplished the impossible: it made nudity and sex boring!
Bill Mulligan: “Fortunately she was more messed up than I was.”
If that’s true, then thank God you escaped with your life!
Posted by Robert Fuller
The movie doesn’t turn me off because she’s a superhero. It turns me off because she’s a woman, or, more precisely, that particular woman: an over-the-top, needy, clingy psycho that I would never want to spend 90-120 minutes with.
An old, crude joke: Q: What’s the difference between a toilet and a co-dependent? A: The toilet doesn’t follow you around when you’re not using it.
While i greatly enjoyed the film — rather more thab i did Superman Returns, in retrospect (SR is like Lenin’s Tomg — a beautiful seting for True Believers to come and gaze upon the mummified remains of one once great…) — about a third fof the way in, i began wondering “How did the screenwriter ever meet —?” (Again, referring to old Atlanta days, Kathleen may be able to guess who “___” is; seems at first acquaintance a happy, cheerful, cute girl, who, as you become more and more acquainted with, turns out to be more and more messed up.)
While i’ve never heard that she stalked anyone, i’ve had conversations with her (bearing in mind that she was never my girlfriend, just a friend) amazingly like some of the ptotagonist’s conversations with G-Girl in her secret identity…
(BTW — does “Super Ex” have any specific comics industry connections? I was struck that the company he worked for was “Cockrum Design”…)
Claypool is shutting down, Soulsearchers is ending 🙁
http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=78910
[Now I haven’t seen this movie.. but it seems to me that the message is that women can’t handle having super-powers without letting their feelings taking control.”
What? That’s a rediculously huge leap from what’s shown in the commercials.]
Then we must be watching different commercials. I see the commercials where she throws a shark thru his window and tosses his car around, flies thru his roof, hangs him upside down from the statue of liberty.
She’s one of the reason we have the Super-Hero Registration Act.
“Then we must be watching different commercials. I see the commercials where she throws a shark thru his window and tosses his car around, flies thru his roof, hangs him upside down from the statue of liberty.”
None of which makes any statement whatsoever about women in general.
They showed one woman acting a certain way. That doesn’t mean they think all women would act this way. If a movie has a redhead as a villain, that doesn’t mean the director is saying that all redheads are villainous. If a movie shows a Chinese man who owns an advertising agency, that doesn’t mean there’s a message about all Chinese people wanting to own advertising agencies.
The commercials show one person acting crazy. To take that as a message about how all women would react to superpowers is a gigantic leap.
“I saw “The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, Her Lover” in college and I remember thinking, “What the HÊLL was THAT all about???” I mean, that movie accomplished the impossible: it made nudity and sex boring!”
I LOVE that movie. In addition to being a gorgeous piece of filmmaking, it adheres to my rule: no movie that ends with an act of cannibalism can be bad, unless that movie stars Anthony Hopkins (i.e. Hannibal and Titus).
The conversation on June-March relationships seems to have died down so I will start it up again.
While female teachers who sleep with their male students do get arrested, the male students can be congratulated by society for their achievement.
I can’t imagine a parallel to Garth Brooks’ country song, “That Summer”.
I went to work for her that summer
A teenage kid so far from home
She was a lonely widow woman
Hëll-bent to make it on her own
We were a thousand miles from nowhere
Wheat fields as far as I could see
Both needing something from each other
Not knowing yet what that might be.
Hey, I LIKED Hannibal and Titus!
If you liked Cook/Wife/Thief/Lover try The Pillow Book by the same director. Beautiful made, frustrating to watch at times, and it proves again that Ewan McGregor is one of our more fearless actors.
Sigh. I suppose I’ve now been branded some kind of horrid Philistine because I couldn’t appreciate “The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, Her Lover.”
I’ll admit, I’m not that much of a film buff. I love comic books. I could talk all day about them as an art form. Film? I can enjoy a good movie, but I just can’t get passionate about film as a medium. I almost never go to the movies. I’ll rent/buy some of them on DVD, but not many.
Admittedly, it’s a vastly different movie, but I also couldn’t get through “Basic Instinct,” a movie which also made nudity and sex boring. I was watching a rented videotape (this is back when we used such primitive technology) and I stopped it halfway through and took it back to Blockbuster, half-tempted to demand a refund.
I mean, the plot and dialog were idiotic to the point of promoting brain damage in the audience. It was so mind-numbingly bad that not even the nudity could rescue it. That’s saying a lot, because I like nice bøøbìëš. I really, really, really like nice bøøbìëš.
But not at the price of having to watch the entirety of “Basic Instinct.”
Oh, God, that means I like a good plot better than I like a good pair of bøøbš! What’s happened to me?????
Claypool is shutting down, Soulsearchers is ending 🙁
So, do we get to blame Diamond’s monopoly for this?
Scavenger –
well, I certainly was not ignoring that Catherine Zeta-Jones’ character was cast in a negative light in “America’s Sweethearts”. The fact that this or other examples where the female stalking victim is portrayed in a negative light does not mean they don’t count just for that reason (that would be shifting the goalposts). One might almost be tempted to come up with a rule based on “America’s Sweethearts” and “My Super Ex-Girlfriend”: Stalking is funny if the woman is cast as the villain. If one ignored the examples of the movies where stalking is portrayed as funny where the male victim is cast in a negative light.
On the other hand, isn’t it funny how disproportionate it all can become in some of the examples of women cast in a negative light being stalked? John Cusack’s character in “America’s Sweethearts” is only marginally less of a self-centered jerk than CZ-J throughout the movie. Didn’t see “Revenge of the Nerds”, but I have to wonder if it wasn’t way out of proportion to the sorority girls’ “offense”. And in “A Fish Called Wanda”, the audience cheers at a professional criminal trying to kill a harmless old lady. (In the DVD commentary, John Cleese noted with slight amazement that all it took to turn the audience against her was to have her be a little rude to a passer-by in her first scene, while the test audiences were so taken with Palin’s character even though he is objectively a cold-hearted killer (of humans), that they had to change some of the later scenes with Kevin Kline in Palin’s favor).
John –
I also read that the media in general treat cases in which female teachers seduce their students as much more “newsworthy” than male teachers doing the same, and thus they devote a lot more attention, space and air-time to them.
Eric & Jason –
the more important question would be of course if this is a part of a bigger trend, in other words
1. Are there more movies where we see superheroines losing control, proving unable to handle their superpowers because of their emotions?
2. Are there movies where we see male superheroes acting that way?
The answer to 1. would begin: “Why, only this year we had X-Men 3, where Rogue saw no other way to get out of the emotional frustration caused by her powers than to get rid of them and where Dr. Jean Grey, who acted perfectly rational in X1 and X2, went on a homicidal insane rampage, killing both her lover and her mentor. (Hmm, with X3 and “My Super Ex-Girlfriend” we once again see proof of Karl Marx’ adage that everyhing in history happens twice, first as tragedy and then as farce).
As for 2. I don’t really think so (The Hulk does not qualify, in his movie version(s) he is not a superhero, but a monster, thus the point of reference would really be Dr. Jekyll and werewolf movies). “Spider-Man 2” may come closest, but even though he experiences psychological problems, Peter Parker never for one moment stops acting rationally.
Bill, to me the most fascinating thing about Basic Instinct was that the filmmakers actually thought the audience would find Glenn Close’s character sympathetic, that we’d be rooting for her to win (which, in the original cut, she did, sorta).
I don’t think you need to worry about not getting Peter Greenway’s movies. very much an acquired taste.
Bill, I am astonished that I must correct you about movies! After all, you’re an amateur filmmaker who played a key role in the creation and production of the soon-to-be-released “Second Death.”
Glenn Close was in “Fatal Attraction.” “Basic Instinct” starred Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone, and featured the now infamous “Sharon Stone leg-crossing-with-no-panties-on” scene, along with a lot of really, really, reeeallllyyyy crappy plotting and dialog.
While we’re on the subject, I also tried to watch “Striptease” and “Showgirls” and couldn’t finish them because they were so incredibly STUPID.
I am starting to feel ashamed of myself. What kind of a man am I?????
“Why, only this year we had X-Men 3, where Rogue saw no other way to get out of the emotional frustration caused by her powers than to get rid of them”
Having not seen X3 yet, I need a little help on this. Were there any male characters who wanted to get rid of their powers? I know that Beast has been through that more than once in the comics.
Menshevik: “Why, only this year we had X-Men 3, where Rogue saw no other way to get out of the emotional frustration caused by her powers than to get rid of them…”
I may be on thin ice here. I haven’t seen X3 (I’ll buy the DVD eventually).
But Rogue’s powers don’t merely cause people to hate and fear her; they deny her the experience of physical intimacy. That’s a burden that none of the other X-Men bear; even Cyclops can enjoy a physical relationship with Jean Grey (as long as he doesn’t lose his ruby quartz glasses!). I can see anyone, male or female, wanting to be rid of a limitation like that.
I was so disgusted with myself for mixing up Basic Instinct and Fatal Attraction that I went back to sleep for a few hours. In my defense, I have a cold and I just randomly take pills from the medicine cabinet to make it go away or, at least, enter a new reality.
And it makes sense now, since Instinct is quite skippable while Attraction is a well made little thriller.
Bill –
that is correct. And one could imagine someone wanting to get rid of that kind of power irrespective of gender (even though in the comics Rogue – who has a somewhat different character from the movie version – always opted to retain her powers in spite of their downside when it came to the crunch), but it so happens that in X3 the only major character who actually opts for using the Cure is a woman. The two major male characters who consider using it – Angel and Beast – don’t.
Similarly, one could easily imagine a jilted male superhero stalking his ex-girlfriend (e.g. Batman, having been left by Vicki Vale subsequent to Tim Burton’s “Batman”, especially given how paranoid he should be about people knowing his secret ID), but so far such a scenario has not been done in a movie, AFAIK. (Superman handily avoided it in “Superman 2” thanks to his power ex machina, the amnesia-inducing Super-Kiss).
It also happens that the only character who opts for the cure is one that has a really good reason for doing so. Taking that single event as an example of a larger trend isn’t a very strong argument.
Superman himself went nuts in Superman 3. If you want to disregard Rogue’s extenuating circumstances and just say “they showed a female acting that way,” then Superman’s exposure to funky kryptonite has to be regarded the same way. Rogue was shown regretting her powers, Superman was shown abusing his.
G-Girl is a crazy superhero. True. However, there have also been bad examples of male heroes. Take the show “The Tick” for example. The Tick himself was nuts and needed constant supervision. Bat Manuel was a lowlife, though a lovable one. Meanwhile the woman in the group, Captain Liberty, was the most competent hero. The cartoon series was even more that way.
Whether or not female superheroes get treated equally to male heroes is definitely a very important question. It just needs to be treated fairly. Pointed to one side of the argument and listing examples while ignoring the other side doesn’t make much progress. I’ve seen two different articles recently about how Joss Whedon is a bad person for killing so many strong women in his shows. Neither of those articles mentioned at all that he’s also killed at least a half dozen strong men in the same shows. Thus, those articles are hard to take seriously, even if they do have good points.