BMM said:
Danoyse, this may not strictly be in response to your above post. I quoted it, but after typing, I'm not sure how much of it applies. I guess it is more of a response to some of the things that I have been reading over the past of couple of pages. I don't want you to think that I am trying to put words into your mouth.
Oh, don't worry...it's all open to interpretation.
I don't find the two situations regarding Jean Grey and Wolverine to be the same, which contributes to the reasons I do find Xavier to be out of character in The Last Stand. Xavier’s actions and motivations regarding Jean Grey are contrived, manipulative, pre-conceived and in the end, hurtful. This is not the case for Wolverine. Wolverine’s amnesia is not a result of Xavier’s actions. Likewise, it is not Xavier’s responsibility to simply solve Wolverine’s problems, nor does he. This a personal task suited for Wolverine and Wolverine alone. A psychiatrist/psychologist may know or realize the cause of a patient’s trauma, and although the psychologist may guide and help his patient come to a resolution, it is important that the patient come to his own resolution (a la a breakthrough). This is what Xavier is doing for Wolverine, and he is right in doing so. On a side note, I don’t believe Magneto is indicating that Xavier knew who Wolverine was before X-Men. I think Magneto is simply distorting what he believes are Xavier’s past failures (Jason) in an attempt to be hurtful.
I don’t find Xavier to be manipulating Wolverine in an effort to keep him as a member of the team. If he was, I don’t believe he would have let Wolverine go so easily at the end of X-Men. Also, I don’t find Magneto and Xavier’s speech in the prison in X2 to be a reflection of Xavier’s character. Rather, I find it to be a reflection of Magneto’s. Xavier states “Logan’s mind is still fragile” (and indeed it is) to which Magneto retorts, “Is it? Or are you afraid of losing one of your precious X-Men?” Magneto’s line is cowardly. It is an attempt to distract Xavier from the true matter at hand—Magneto has betrayed Xavier and does not want to admit it. Xavier is visibly hurt by Magneto’s fallacious insult, because despite how misguided Magneto’s ideals may be, Xavier considers him a friend, and does not believe Eric would stoop so low so as to pervert the sincerity of Xavier’s life long motivations simply for the means of a quick insult. This is what I gather from the disappointed look on Xavier’s face . . . but this look is soon replaced with one of shock when he realizes what Magneto is actually trying to cover up.
I don't think the two situations are exactly the same, either. Xavier had known since Jean since she was a child, he was the one that molded/altered her telepathy and personality. In a sense, he'd had control over her for most of her life. Whereas Wolverine, we're not really sure how much Xavier knew. Like you said, he didn't give him his amnesia. Jean even points out that "he may very well be older than you, Professor," which means that Wolverine's past is something that has always been well out of his control.
We just knew how much he was willing to give him about his past before letting him find out the rest himself. He even told him that if he read his mind again, "the results would be the same," basically telling Logan there was nothing else that he could find. In the prison scene, we found out Xavier knew much more and hid that from Logan. How would Wolverine had reacted if he ever found out that Xavier was holding things back from him? Probably the same way he reacted when he learned about Jean's mental blocks.
But I do think the scene in the prison was a shot at Xavier's tactics. You can see in X3 that they disagreed about the way Jean's mutation was handled. "One of his precious X-Men" could very well have been a reference to Jean as well as the current situation with Logan. Obviously, there were more important matters at hand in that scene, but at the same time...Xavier didn't have an answer for that.
When I saw X3 the first time, it did throw me to see Xavier lose his cool the way he did in the infirmary. But I didn't think it completely threw out his character from the first two...mainly because in the first two movies he was always getting incapacitated or captured for entire chunks of the movie where you didn't get to see him really lead the rest of the X-Men in a crisis situation. He really hadn't had scenes with Jean in either of the movies, so you know there was a lot about their relationship that was unknown, and it was open to just about anything in X3.
Furthermore, I find that the same prison conversation speaks volumes regarding Xavier’s character. In reference to Stryker’s son, Xavier states, “I wasn’t able to help him. At least not in the way his father wanted.” This notion regarding Xavier’s resolve is further displayed later in X2. Xavier rebukes Stryker, stating, “William, you wanted me to cure your son, but mutation is not a disease.” Moreover, Stryker notes that Xavier was more afraid of Jason than he was. Despite this fear, Xavier still refused to give Jason and his father an easy way out. Xavier’s convictions are strong. I find these examples to be especially relevant concerning Xavier’s unwavering principles, which is why I find his characterization in The Last Stand to be unsound.
Again, I think Jason was also psychotic, and it was something Xavier couldn't help. Stryker saw them as one and the same, and wouldn't agree with Xavier when he said he couldn't make that better. Xavier blocked Jean's telepathy, he didn't make it go away. Perhaps he couldn't.
Whatever had happened...Jason was later used as a tool to make Xavier destroy millions of lives. I'd have to think that after an experience like that, he would be so uncharacteristically adamant about the steps he took upon Jean's return to block her telepathy, and not be so patient about whatever Logan had to say about it.
Stryker had that relationship with Xavier, plus everything he had mined from Magneto. You saw in the scene where Mystique is at his computer that he had tons of files on all of the mutants--how much did he get from Magneto? He told him enough about Cerebro that it's entirely possible he'd unwillingly told Stryker how Charles was able to block the powers of a mutant as dangerous as Jean. And if that was true, why couldn't he have done the same for his own son?
I don’t find Xavier’s actions in The Last Stand to follow previous logic nor do I find it matches his previous characterization. As is noted in the above conversation, Xavier’s actions regarding Jean Grey completely conflict with the convictions of his prior incarnations. In The Last Stand, Xavier is deceitful and manipulative. He fears Jean, and in an attempt to quell her power, he fragments her mind, which ultimately ruins both of their lives (not to mention puts a serious dent in Xavier’s honesty and trustworthiness thereby questioning the sincerity of his motivations regarding his dream—and that kind of deviation is a problem). To make matters worse, he continues to subversively manipulate Jean throughout the rest of her life. Perhaps I would find this newly revealed insight better if I didn’t think it conflicted with everything established in X-Men and X2, particularly his measures concerning Jason and Wolverine.
And still, I didn't there was enough about Xavier's relationship with Jean in the first two movies for his behavior in X3 to be so totally out of line. Shocking and deceitful, yes...but not quite tossing everything else out the window either.
We were joking during Magneto's speech in the forest, with Jean alongside him, that he was in wayyyyy over his head here. Which to us, kind of validated why the professor took the steps that he did. The problem was we didn't know enough about what was happening to Jean to know who was doing the right thing.
I think The Last Stand would like to think itself clever by trying to imbue the situation with a sense of irony, but instead I find it to be the result of sloppy storytelling in an attempt to side-step an otherwise potentially difficult explanation of the Phoenix (or one that didn’t fit the pre-ordained parameters of the story). Xavier’s revelations are quick blurbs in the movie and they don’t seem to fit well to me. I could do my best to spin the scenes in an attempt at making the movies coalesce, but I don’t find them to fit the honesty or tone of the characterizations in the previous installments. The genuineness of Xavier’s principles as shared with Magneto in scenes such as those previously mentioned don’t mesh well with the explanations given in The Last Stand. Xavier’s beliefs regarding Jason/Wolverine and Jean are polar opposites to me, and I don’t find that one lends itself to the other.
The thing was, according to the movies...there were no parameters. You literally had to watch X1 with the commentary track on to know that the fleeting glance Jean gives at the end of the Liberty Island scene was the beginning of her transformation. You saw her powers evolving in X2, but there was no clear explanation of what was happening--except that she couldn't control them. Xavier and Jean didn't even have scenes together to discuss what was happening.
What you did know in the first two movies was that Xavier had held things back from Logan about his past. He'd had a student that he couldn't help, who later used him to kill millions. Now Jean is back with what he knows are catostrophically dangerous powers, and he's trying to block them and not care if anyone else thinks less of him for it.
It was always an ongoing argument between him and Magneto. I think if Wolverine had come to Magneto first, Magneto would have told him everything he wanted to know to get him on his side. But Xavier got to him first, and I'm sure that definitely ticked off Magneto enough to take the potshots he did in the prison scene. They're both incredibly manipulative.
