X-Men: Apocalypse announced for May 2016
- Thread starter Dream
- Start date
I forgot to post this when it came out, another of Singer's Instagram posts, in this case the first on-set video of Sophie as Jean Grey. Movie Jean is interested in archery, apparently.
Beauty and a Beast wrapped in one
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Related, sort of: Berry is very much open to doing a solo Storm movie.
Geekosphere: "Ma'am... not so much, thanks."
Geekosphere: "Ma'am... not so much, thanks."
I'd like a Storm spin-off. I don't remember much of her background, but it's in Africa - maybe she could be called back by something in her past (giving a cameo to Alexandra Shipp as the young Storm). Throw in a new mutant character or two to expand the X-Men Cinematic Universe...
Actually she was born in New York City, to a Kenyan mother and an American father who moved to Cairo while she was an infant, but died soon thereafter. She grew up in Cairo as an orphan before winding up in the Serengeti, where she grew to maturity and mastered her powers.
No telling where Halle Berry's Storm is from, though. She had a faint African accent in the first movie, but had mostly lost it by the second, and there was no trace of it in the third.
I was thinking about it because I recently watched Simon Pegg in an absolutely wretched piece of racist garbage called Hector and the search for happiness where he visits 'Africa' with depressing results...
Both the X-Men Evolution and Wolverine and the X-Men animated series had Storm-centric episodes (both plotted or written by Craig Kyle) that portrayed "Africa" as a small, uniform place inhabited solely by backward, superstitious tribes. "African Storm" in the former had established a houngan from Haitian vodou, which is descended from West African culture, as the longtime archenemy of the East African Storm. And "Overflow" in the latter treated all of Africa as a single country that could potentially be entirely destroyed by a single really big storm. At least the Storm-centric episode in the '90s X-Men animated series gave us a brief glimpse of a major Kenyan city, though it set the rest of the episode in a small village and the savannah around Mt. Kilimanjaro. But acknowledging that Africa even has modern cities is better than most American film and TV portrayals of the continent manage.
The generic 'Africa' thing is just the same sort of lazy generalisation any 'foreign' country can expect. I spent a happy evening in the 1980's in a bar with the guests from the convention I was working at :
http://lewstringer.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/birmingham-comic-art-show-1986-booklet.html
Chris Claremont (born in London) obviously had current experience of England. Most of us working there looked like we were in Iron Maiden, but when the X-Men next visited England, the populace all seemed to be wearing bowler hats and carrying umbrellas. Maybe down to the artist I suppose, but...
http://lewstringer.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/birmingham-comic-art-show-1986-booklet.html
Chris Claremont (born in London) obviously had current experience of England. Most of us working there looked like we were in Iron Maiden, but when the X-Men next visited England, the populace all seemed to be wearing bowler hats and carrying umbrellas. Maybe down to the artist I suppose, but...
But that's just the problem -- the way so many people think of Africa as a single country inhabited by a single people, when it's actually the second-largest continent on the planet, and the most politically, ethnically, and climatologically diverse continent on the planet. It's not one country, it's over 50 countries, more than a quarter of all the countries on Earth.
I will say, Storm's travels through Africa were actually handled very well (in Lifedeath II). She comes across a village and there's a woman in labor in desperate need of medical attention. The village is outside dancing for the help of the spirits. She says that the woman needs a hospital and they respond "don't you think we know that? We have no vehicles and she wouldn't survive the trip anyway." It turned those assumptions of primitive Africa on its head. They weren't backwards and superstitious, they were essentially abandoned by the world and had no other option.
True. It's a situation that will (presumably) be overturned by Wakanda's portrayal in the MCU as a technologically advanced nation with a distinctive culture and identity.
Maybe I should have said 'the same sort of lazy generalisation that anywhere abroad can expect', rather than any 'foreign' country.
But it would be a mistake to assume that the stereotypes about Africa are no different from the stereotypes about, say, Italy or Russia. There's a deep-rooted legacy of racism underlying them, going back to the way the continent was portrayed by British and European imperialists and in Tarzan movies. It's far worse than just a lazy generalization. Granted, plenty of the people who buy into these stereotypes aren't really racist themselves, but they've bought into the old myths and assumptions without understanding their racist foundations.
The 'Tarzan movies' is a direct hit with me. I'm in my early 50's and vividly remember watching films made in the 30's to 60's when I was young. Being kind, there was some pretty broad stereotyping there. Being less kind, stupid, bigoted and downright racist isn't far off the mark.
The 'Boys Own' literature was even worse. I'd point anyone towards ex Monty Python star Michael Palin's fantastic 'Ripping Yarns' series for merciless (if somewhat affectionate) lampooning of the genre.
The 'Boys Own' literature was even worse. I'd point anyone towards ex Monty Python star Michael Palin's fantastic 'Ripping Yarns' series for merciless (if somewhat affectionate) lampooning of the genre.
