phoenixastraea | Let's try this again, shall we? (Reply)

Well, I just finished the second of three exams for this week. Things are moving along; not swiftly, but they're moving. Yesterday was both tense and amusing due to the unanimous reaction from my Fem. Crit classmates. We were all intensely frustrated at the very notion of being given exams as graduate students; as I told my friend yesterday, I thought that they were "a trivial exercise in testing us on whether or not we did the reading". My Shakespeare final, however, was not trivial, in that it made us focus on 5 out of 7 short passages, on which we were to do close readings, contextual analysis, or intertextual analysis.The rubric was helpful, the texts were insightful, and the work itself worthwhile. The other one...well, that was more trivial in nature, testing us on 600 pages of reading, 6 novels, and one film after a 5 page paper, a 20-25 page paper, and a team-teaching exercise. I mean, really.

All griping aside, I have my EDIS work left to do and one 20 pager to finish up for Shakespeare.Good ol' Shax; never ceases to get the neurons firing. Amazing that after so many years of reading those darn plays, I continue to come back to them with new eyes. I suppose thats a real tribute to his power as a writer.

In other totally unrelated news, my aunt's birthday is today! Huzzah!

I've also decided on an iRiver T10 mp3 player. I've read many reviews on its long battery life, amazing sound, and general excellence. WOOT!

I also had the pleasure of viewing the X3 trailer, which you can now see at www.x3movie.com. I recommend viewing it in High Definition: its the only way to fly (Be Warned: You need Quicktime 7 to view the site). Seeing Jeannie alive and well thrilled me, especially when she blew the hell out of the infirmary door. They also gave her waist length hair, a MUST if she's to become Dark Phoenix, IMHP(urist)O. The young Angel (Ben Foster) also looks pretty good, or at least, his wings do. Kelsey Grammar is STILL an inspired choice; seeing him on screen made me REALLY miss his presence in the first two movies. I am concerned, however, with the incorporation of the mutant cure from Joss Whedon's run on Astonishing X-Men #1-6 with Chris Claremont's inspired Dark Phoenix Saga.

I don't think that these two plotlines will mesh very well, considering that this cure was created by an alien race in order to prevent a prophecy from coming true, which foretold a destruction of their planet by a mutant.Of course, this would only make sense if Jeannie had already gone Dark Phoenix on the universe's @$$ and inadvertently destroyed a world in her hunger.There would be no need for a cure if the universe didn't recognize the immense destructive force that a single mutant can have on extra terrestrial worlds. In short, Jeannie and Cure work as cause and effect. You see now how this makes no sense in the context of the third movie.If they do force these two plotlines together, I guarantee that it will be at Jeannie's (and the audience's) expense.

Call me obsessive, but I think the Phoenix Saga, truly beginning with Uncanny X-Men #101, was and is one of the greatest narratives in comic book history. It truly changed life for the X-Men and completely reinvented Jean Grey, making her even MORE of a beloved character by making her the most powerful damn mutant in the world.Hell, in the universe, even (now, don't get your panties in a bunch over my exclusion of Galactus; he's a cosmic force, not a mutant, whereas Jeannie is both( NananaNAna *pfffffffffffffffffffffttttt!*).I really don't want her time in the limelight to suffer because the execs at Warner Brothers and those producing the movie have decided to bite off more than they can chew for one film.

Another thing, I would have GLADLY gotten rid of Mystique in exchange for Nightcrawler. Now, I know that it doesn't work this way in the movies, but come ON, I want more Nightcrawler! I don't know what would be more expensive, though: Mystique's morphs or Nightcrawler's *Bamf*'s.

Either way, I can't wait for the movie to come out (May 26, 2006, baby!), though I will be watching with some trepidation.