Ah, Emma Frost

[selenak]

I wake up and find not one but two great stories incorporating Emma Frost into the X-Men movieverse. One deals with Scott between movies 2 and 3, and also answers the question as to whether no one tried to help him:

Let Go

The other is set post-X3 and gives us an encounter with Mystique:

Under the Skin

This is as good an excuse as any to post some of my favourite Emma Frost quotes from Astonishing X-Men, which made me fall for the character.

(Logan and Scott fight after Logan taunted Scott about Jean):
Hank: What's this all about?
Emma: What do you think? Superpowers, a scintillating wit and the best body money can buy, and I still rate below a corpse.

The Emma Frost kind of threat to Mutant-Hating-Person-Who-Annoyed her:
Emma: Tell me, dear Walter, would you like the spend the rest of your life obsessed with the works of Leroy Neiman? I mean, sexually?

Emma, reformed (?) villain, about herself: Being an X-Men means a lot to me. But it doesn't always agree with me.

Couple-talk, Emma and Scott style:
Scott (re: dealing with the Cure crisis): We're getting nowhere, Emma.
Emma: Patience, Darling. You're doing fine. Of course Kitty thinks I'm mentally controlling everything you say.
Scott: But you're not, right?
Emma: You will never see me naked again.

Emma meets Dr. Kavita Rao, inventor of the "cure":
Emma: Nothing but noble intentions. You're a veritable Oppenheimer. What's next? Eliminating the gay gene?
Dr. Rao: Homosexuality doesn't represent a threat to human existence.
Emma: We're clearly watching different televangelists.



Ord (menacing villain of the day) to Emma, who has changed to diamond form and is standing next to Dr. Rao: Miss Frost, there is no substance on earth this blade cannot cut through.
Emma (putting Dr. Rao in front of her): Good to know.



Mysterious Hellfire Club Member, as Emma is on her way to Scott as ordered by the Club: I know. The others don't, of course. Not even Cassandra, the great psychic, truly understands what's going on with you and Summers. You really love him.
Emma: With all my predator heart. (goes in to twist Scott inside out)

Comments

[likeadeuce.livejournal.com]

ahh, Emma. The movieverse could have used a dose of her.

Central casting, what do you think? Tricia Helfer?

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Tricia Helfer would be great (though they'd have to change Emma's nationality then, but hey, why not, they did it John Constantine, too, and besides, there is the horrible image of casting Gwynneth Paltrow because she can do British accents, and she'd be dead wrong for the part!). And yes, the movieverse could have...

[ion-bond.livejournal.com]

Oh, thanks for the quotations. She is delicious.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

*fangirls Emma* You're welcome.

[gehayi.livejournal.com]

I don't even KNOW Emma Frost, and I love her. What a great character.

Who is Leroy Neiman?

[selenak.livejournal.com]

It's obvious that Joss has a great time writing her.*g*

Leroy Neiman (http://www.leroyneiman.com/core.htm). Incidentally, I had to look him up as well when I read that issue of Astonishing X-Men.

[skywaterblue.livejournal.com]

From your mouth to God's ears.

[thran.livejournal.com]

I've read little enough X-Men comics that Astonishing was my first encounter with Emma... and yeah, Joss only had to nudge me a little to make me fall in love with her. First issue, seriously.

:)

[gelliaclodiana]

Emma: Patience, Darling. You're doing fine. Of course Kitty thinks I'm mentally controlling everything you say.
Scott: But you're not, right?

This is one of my favorite exchanges between them, especially because (at least as I read the panel) there's this really long pause before Scott's line.

And the final line you quite just twists me up. Poor Emma, to have to do that out of love.

[thesecondevil]

But Emma's not British she's from Boston, and if one thing confuses me about Astonishing X-Men is that Joss thinks she is.

[ayrdaomei.livejournal.com]

**laughs** Someone on my f-list had an animated icon of that Emma-Scott exchange about her controlling his mind and I just laughed and laughed. I haven't touched any of the X-books since highschool, but I may need to remedy that.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Same here. I've read more now, but pre-Astonishing, the only X-Men comic I had read was God Loves, Man Kills, so thanks to Joss, it was love at first sight.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Joss Whedon's first arc, Gifted, is out in a collection, so you can have just a look at the next bookstore. Not that I'm pimping, or anything.*g*

[selenak.livejournal.com]

I read the panel the same way - or rather, panels, since we first get one for Emma's remark, then a single one without dialogue where Scott just looks and you see his mouth twitching a bit, and then a third panel where they have the last exchange.*g*

And yes, amen. That's what you get when Joss Whedon writes your romantic relationship...

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Then our Mr. Whedon has misled me, clearly, and the last impediment to casting Tricia Helfer is gone!

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

You know, I'm reading the Morrison X-Men books at the moment, and what's putting me off the Whedon ones following is the reports that Whedon's making Emma uncomplicatedly evil again. Is that true? And if so, is it another strike for the "Whedon thinks sexually-active mature women are evil" allegations?

[thesecondevil]

He is a tricksy man that Mr Whedon and Tricia Helfer as Emma would be inspired. Hopefully if there's ever an X4 he'll get to make it and he'll cast Ms. Helfer after seeing her in BSG.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

No, it's not true. Jury is out at the moment whether Emma is playing her own game or the Hellfire Club's, but she's anything but uncomplicated; she has also been shown doing what usually gets ignored in action scenes, saving innocent bystanders while the characters duke it out, her affection for Scott is portrayed as genuine throughout, and she usually gets the best lines.

And if so, is it another strike for the "Whedon thinks sexually-active mature women are evil" allegations?

That would be the theory which somehow manages to ignore Zoe, Inara, Nandi, Joyce, Jenny, Nina (unless Nina is too young to be counted as "mature"?) and anything-but-a-virgin Virginia, right?

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

Point taken about the sex aspect. I still have qualms given her Morrison-period characterisation and Whedon's tendency to unveil charismatic, self-serving, morally-ambiguous misanthropes as Actually Very Evil.

[queenspanky.livejournal.com]

You picked out all my fave quotes from Emma - she's totally fabulous. And very vunerable for a woman who can turn herself into an organic diamond. I feel that Joss is writing her as almost fated to be villainous, that she doesn't really want to but sees it as her true path.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Mmmm. Former villain, blond, in love with leader of good guys, given to sarcastic quips, showing something of a lack of remorse when confronted with former victim, former victim annoying fans of blond sarcastic former villain by remembering what villain did in his/her hayday... isn't it more likely that Emma is his Spike rather than his Knox equivalent?

Sorry, couldn't resist. (Seriously, though, neither Morrison nor Joss invented the character. She had her history long before they showed up on the scene.)