Cesare

pearlo:

RANDOM TANGENT: The thing about Charles being blasé about his powers in the beginning of the movie is that it’s … really hard to tell which of the moments actually make sense with his character, and which of them are just the writers going “Oh, hey, we better establish now that he’s able to do this so things make sense later!”

I feel this way especially about him freezing everybody but Moira so they can talk - it doesn’t actually make sense. Not even in an abuse of power way, just in a “that seems kind of unnecessary?” sort of way; he could have just as easily spoken to Moira without freezing everybody else on her floor. But, well, it’s really important that we know that he can do that from the beginning, since it is so central to the climax with Shaw.

The mind control thing with the man in black does make sense with Charles’s general, uh, problems with boundaries, though. But it still kind of serves that double purpose of letting us know that yep, he can do that, too! Not actually bluffing with Erik outside the CIA facility.

Very true. To be honest, I think Charles gets some of the worst writing and certainly some of the worst lines. I love the satellite dish scene as much as anybody, but “the point between rage and serenity”? Isn’t that just apathy? And after the beautiful moment when we see Charles bring a memory up for Erik, and we see them react, and it’s really lovely and poignant and it’s totally clear what just happened, they thud on top of that with Erik: “What did you do to me?” / Charles: “I accessed the brightest corner of your memory system.” CLUNK. Even with the fanwank that Charles is a scientist and telepathy has made him somewhat socially atypical, still, accessed the brightest corner of your memory system? Give McAvoy a BAFTA just for plowing through that line without calling undue attention to its batshittery.