The Quintessence of XMFC Cherik-ism (a bit of meta)
there's something violently appealing about a canon, and by corollary, a fandom that doesn't idealize the idealists....
Charles/Erik in the X-Men verse and particularly emphasized with XMFC, is "real" at a level that popular drama often isn't. From the beginning, it's a verse where love doesn't conquer all, where ideals fail, and hope disappoints. There's an inbuilt level of awareness in the fantasy of X-Men that's terrific and horrific only because entertainment (especially summer blockbusters) tend not to want to laugh at heroes or cry over villainsshush,Loki/Hiddleston-dom. The acting choices Fassbender and McAvoy make a difference in the characterization- in fact, it defines Erik and Charles. In XMFC, the brave can be foolish and the wise ignorant.
Disillusionment and cynicism constitute the major part of Charles/Erik dynamic. The conflict between Charles and Erik is not necessary that of the "idealist" Charles vs "the realist" Erik but rather between two characters who are both idealists pitted against the world. There's no rebel archetype who mock the idealist and comes off the better one. Both Charles and Erik suffer for their perception. If Charles thought that helping the government will benefit mutant existence Erik certainly thought the death of Shaw will allow him to protect and have a family with his fellow "better men". Charles and Erik are equals, friends, brothers...Their intimacy form at levels that could be easily glorified and was glorified in the movie. It ignores the essential disequilibrium between them in terms of goals and their past. And so, they tumbled headlong into each other (or love) and no one stopped them. The mansion was a remove, the walnut shell where their powers grow the best and where their vision for the future was at once vast and incredibly narrow. Like the madman Hamlet pretended to be, they carved empires in their infinite space and crowned themselves kings, but that space had been imagined, and they were only kings of themselves.
The disaster at the Cuba beach began in that mirrored room. The contained nature of Erik's confrontation with Shaw is echoed again in the trap Charles found himself in while inside Shaw's head. The coin pierced Shaw's skull and marked the moment when the first veil over reality is torn: Charles did not know Erik's agony and Erik did not know Charles'. There has been romance in the perfect understanding between them, but the romance does not persist. It becomes a memory, a past, subject to distortion by time. The mythological imagery and narrative form of the Beach Divorce (written up in another meta) becomes particularly apt.
Afterwards, the reality has to resume. Compromises are made. There will be Prof. X vs. Magneto, setting the perfect drop for a days of future past revisionism.
In short, reality hurts. XMFC turns superhero tropes on its head. I love it a lot.
And I want to write about how all this ties into the transformational theme people use in fics that's representational of change and illusion, but it's late I need to get up early to go to a Charles-less science conference, so let's pretend I did write that meta...
