From Buffy to Juno: A Series of Loosely Connected Tangents

In the absence of Netflix, I’ve recently been downloading a fair amount of television shows and movies via bittorrent to keep myself and Bronwyn entertained. Catching up with Weeds was our latest endeavor, but now that the season’s over I’ve started hunting around for other diversions. I’ve never been much of a comic book reader, but ever since Buffy and Angel took to the page I had been making monthly pilgrimages to Golden Apple in L.A. to read about my heroes’ latest exploits. Of course, that was interrupted by my move to Japan but through the magic that is the internet I can download scans of the issues. The first part of this week I spent my time getting myself up to date with Buffy Season Eight, Angel: After the Fall, and Spike: After the Fall.

Finishing the latest issues of those titles, I continued indulging myself in Whedon-y goodness by reading Joss’s run writing The Astonishing X-Men. Being a Whedon fan, I had purchased the trade paperback of the Astonishing X-Men a long time ago when buying my usual Buffy and Angel comics, but had never cracked so much as the shrink wrapping. What a shame. I’m not a huge follower of the X-Men oeuvre - I’m familiar with the major characters, watched the animated series back in the ’90s, and watched the first two live-action movies - but I still found The Astonishing X-Men very accessible, and, more importantly, entirely awesome. The story was rich and engaging, the writing was witty, fun, and full of self-referential humory goodness that is signature Whedon, and the characters textured and complex. This lead me to watch the third X-Men movie, X-Men 3: The Last Stand. Not nearly as… uh… rich, but a fun action and special effects fest nonetheless. I was surprised to see that the character Shadowcat, who had only a token appearance in the previous two films, played a principle role in the movie. Similarly, in The Astonishing X-Men she was the central figure.

Shadowcat’s super power is the ability to “phase” herself and anything with which she comes into contact, making her intangible and allowing her to pass through solid objects. It seems a very passive power. That is to say, it’s unlike many of the more aggressive powers that allow one to blow things up or shoot fireballs or move things with one’s mind. Most often, her power is used self-defensively - protecting herself from physical attacks as the assailant passes right through her - or for reconnaissance, or for search and rescue.

If we wanted to apply a gender to Shadowcat’s power, it would certainly fall on the feminine end of the specturm. On the flip side, you have characters like Wolverine, probably the most famous of all X-Men, who rips and shreds in a berserker rage and whose tenuously tamed aggression seems always on the brink of unbridling. While Shadowcat’s power is undeniably useful, she’s not really a “front-liner” (though correct me if I’m wrong, because again I haven’t really read any of the other X-Men comics). Even in The Astonishing X-Men, one of the super villains labels Shadowcat a “non-combatant.” So knowing Joss Whedon’s most common theme in his works (strong female characters, duh) it’s completely appropriate that he would opt to focus on Shadowcat and feature her powers front-and-center. I wouldn’t want to give up any spoilers, but it should be fairly obvious by the close-up framing of her face in the first frame after the title in issue one that Joss is going to turn the whole “passive, non-combatant” thing on its head and Shadowcat’s going to be the hero at the end of all this.

Anyways, that was kind of a tangent that I didn’t entirely mean to get in to. The point is, more or less, that I really like Shadowcat now. And who should play Shadowcat in X-Men 3 but Ellen Page. I didn’t expect that, because later that evening Bronwyn and I had planned to FINALLY watch Juno. We had yet to see the movie despite the fact that a couple of songs off the soundtrack played a very prominent role in our wedding ceremony music. At any rate, it made for a very Ellen Page-y day, which is not a bad thing because I think she’s friggin’ awesome. We first saw her in Hard Candy and her performance in that was remarkably mature and frighteningly intelligent. Her role in Juno was no less satisfying. She may not have won an Oscar this time around, but give it a couple of years and I think she’s going to be an absolute superstar.

So that’s what I’ve been watching and reading. Anything worth recommending? I suppose having gone the six-degrees-of-separation route of:

• Buffy comics
• Joss Whedon also wrote Astonishing X-Men
• X-Men 3 and Astonishing X-Men featured Shadowcat
• Shadowcat was played by Ellen Page
• Ellen Page was the star of Juno

The next logical step would then be… watching Arrested Development again?

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