katikat | 30 Days Relationship Challenge #3 (Reply)

Charles & Erik, X-Men: First Class

This is the movie that introduced me to James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender. And their casting? A stroke of genius! Their chemistry is off the charts. Whenever they are on-screen together, it's hard to notice anything and anybody else because their interplay is so intense, it's like they see only each other. The actors get along fabulously - they have the same sort of wicked sense of humor! - and I think it shows.

Erik and Charles are... They're amazing in this movie. I know that some fans of the first trilogy will forever swear by Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen but I'm definitely a McAvoy and Fassbender girl. Nothing against Stewart and McKellen, both amazing, fantastic actors, but XMFC's Charles and Erik feel much more intense and real. Especially Erik feels, for the first time ever for me, terrifying - the scene in the Argentinian pub made it clear exactly WHY Magneto becomes such a menace later on.

I've seen people describe Charles as arrogant - some Erik!apologists just love to make Charles an ass in their fics - but I don't see him that way. He's cocky and too self-assured, sure, and dangerously naive for thinking that people will be honest and logical and kind when faced with a change. Does that make him arrogant? I don't think so. When all is over and done, his way is still the better one, changing people's minds through education and support not by force and through genocide, the way Erik wants to take over the world. And, to be honest, I thought it was quite terrifying that after the film had aired, so many people condemned Charles and praised Erik for their attitudes. How is Erik's war on humans any different from what Hitler did? Boggles the mind.

But I think that's the reason why these two work so well together. Charles is too soft. Erik too hard. If they had stayed together, they might have done great things together, they might have achieved so much in their lifetime, they might have changed the world. And that's why it's so heartbreaking that they end up fighting each other in the end, it feels like such a loss...

It made me insanely happy when Jane Goldman, one of the writers of XMFC, said that this film is not really a prequel, it's a reboot, set in its own universe so what happened in the first trilogy might never happen in this timeline. I know that they are characters in a movie, not real people, but I got all sniffly with happiness when I read it because the way Charles and Erik's relationship ended in X3 literally broke my heart. That was so, SO badly written. Charles and Erik deserved much more - and it made me bouncy with glee when Michael Fassbender mentioned that, in his opinion, Charles would forever remain Erik's best friend. And when James McAvoy said that Charles would never have a deeper bond with anybody than he had with Erik - remember the scene on the ship, when Charles' mind latched onto Erik's?

As someone in their review of XMFC remarked, in the last battle, all the soldiers, both Russian and American, were saved because Erik loved Charles. How could you not love them, then?