Back When We Were Friends.

The Madlab Post Blog, which is written by Nicole, who is a host of the A to Z Challenge in April, is also putting on a weekly Monday Challenge that takes you to the movies.  This is always stimulating.  It makes a person put on the memory cap and dig around in there for appropriate movie material.

I have actually devoted a full hour to thinking on this subject already.  I know.  The subject matter for today is Between Friends.  The goal is to find a movie that has a theme in it or a plot device that has two friends divided by someone's decision.  That decision alters the nature of the friendship, either forever or for a while.  In either case, it set them at odds and puts a real strain on the friendship.  It is that not-so-gentle reminder that we do not live in a vacuum, and people can and will respond to what we do.  In other words, our decisions do have consequences.

Some of the movies that came to my mind were plausible for this theme, but I hadn't seen them in so long that I didn't feel comfortable discussing them in a blog.  It was a reminder that I did need to watch them again, though.

So, what did I choose?  X-Men: First Class.

If you have watched the X-Men movies, then you know that The Professor and Magneto are Enemies in the later movies (or the original movies... yeah, it gets confusing).  This is despite that the fact that they both have Powers, or are Mutants.  Whatevs.   X-Men: First Class is the movie that goes back to the beginning to when they were friends and shows how that relationship disintegrated.  It really was devastating.

The Dilemma

Charles, later to be known as the Professor, always believed that Mutants and regular old human beings could co-exist.  He thought that there was good in most people, and that the ones who were evil were the exception, rather than the rule.  He didn't see the War as being between Mutants and Humans.  It was more of a Good vs. Evil thing.  You fought Evil wherever you found it, whatever Face it wore.  Eric, later to be known as Magneto, had a very difficult childhood.  It was so much easier just to hate Magneto on principle before this movie...:sigh:  He watched his mother die in a concentration camp BECAUSE Shaw, another Mutant, suspected he was a Mutant and wanted his abilities to come out for exploitation purposes.  So, Eric was raised by Evil.  Meeting Charles was his best shot at ever coming out on the side of Good.  However, his judgment scales were always a bit tipped the other way.  In his mind, it was always Class Warfare with Humans on one side and Mutants on the other.  His finger was always on the trigger.  On the one hand, he liked the idea of Charles, but what he really wanted was to sway Charles to his way of thinking.  If Eric could make Charles see that he he was right, then his Rightness was Assuredly Right.  The problem was that Charles was never going to believe that it all boiled down to Humans vs Mutants, and Eric was never going to believe that in the end it was anything but Humans vs. Mutants.


The Boiling Point

At the end of the movie missiles were bearing down on the Mutants.  In Eric's mind, this all served to prove his point:  It really was Humans vs. Mutants.  Charles made the argument that "someone" gave an order and a person on the ship followed an order, but that didn't mean thousands of people needed to lose their lives.  This was when everyone had to choose up sides.  Eric, with his power of moving magnetic objects, could easily do what he wanted with all of those missiles.  (Stupid order.)  After he made his choice is when chaos erupted among the Mutants that changed not only the direction of the friendship between Eric and Charles, but Mutant Interaction for years.  Instead of solidarity, Mutants would spend the remaining years fighting each other to come out on top and garnering power. 






What movie scenes have YOU seen where a disagreement between friends changes the nature of their relationship going forward?