I managed to hit the gym and decided afterward that my reward would be to check out X-Men: Days of Future Past. As a long time X-Men fan (especially for Storm, whom I profess infinite geek love for), I was eager to check this movie out after seeing the gorgeous previews and hearing the clamors of applause around the net. Did it meet my level of expectations in what I would like to see in an X-Men movie?
This time around the X-Men delve into the Days of Future Past comic. I’ve only briefly seen a few of the comics whereas the bulk of my exposure was through the animated series from the 90s. But the main plot point that immediately deviated was once again placing all eggs into the Wolverine basket. Here, the character that should’ve been sent back was Bishop. While Bishop was introduced, he served practically no purpose outside of looking cool and acting as yet another token black man.
But that’s the start of millions of problems with this movie and the series for that matter. Immediately, we’re introduced to four new characters in Blink, Warpath, Sunspot and Bishop. Outside of showing some new powers, we have no idea whom they really are. There’s no character depth outside of their unique powers. But so what? In fact, this whole movie just keeps throwing people at you that offer little to no memorable scenes. It’s more like a buffet of colors and action without really allowing you to digest what’s going on and the severity of this series.
You’re taken to what seems like the future with a bit of expository. Men, of course, have fucked up by being paranoid and insecure with themselves, creating a Terminator style post-apocalyptic dystopia primarily run by highly adaptive machines called The Sentinels. The Sentinels in the movie seem like the Nimrod sentinel with their ability to handle any power that the X-Men throw at them.
But the real key here is that we see a more adult version of the kids from Charles Xavier’s school along with a united Magneto and Professor X. Naturally, people need to make the connection of the severity of the situation given how Magneto and Professor X have finally teamed up to form a final front against the Sentinels. Yet we’re not given any glimpse of how this happens, despite it being possibly the most character building aspects in the series that would make Magneto into more than a stock, bland villain.
Along with the aforementioned characters, we also have Colossus, Storm, Iceman, Wolverine and Kitty Pride. Sadly, Kitty Pride receives far more lines in the movie than Storm who is possibly one of the most important characters in the entire comic book series. What’s so disappointing for me as a die hard Storm fan is that Halle Berry herself mentioned in a quote from Wikipedia how we would get a better glimpse at her character and how she came about. Well, the only character development I saw was her becoming a mute. I mean, seriously. She has some of the most epic speeches and deliveries because of her regal character. Yet she’s reduced to another token character to give people “the feelz”.
Kitty Pride, now grown up (and grown out as she came out of the closet in public), shows very little outside of the fact that her mutant powers have vastly increased in power as she’s now capable of a small degree of time travel. They explain in a very confused manner that this group of mutant bandits are able to evade the Sentinels through Kitty’s ability. Somehow Bishop is connected in all of this but it really doesn’t matter because he does almost nothing in the movie. That’s because they’re saving up that special spot for Wolverine (aka all Disney’s/Marvel’s eggs in one basket Hugh Jackman).
Now, let me segue briefly here to talk about Hugh Jackman and my feeling for him and the actors. I think Hugh Jackman has done a marvelous job at really bringing Wolverine to life. It’s obvious that Wolverine is one of most interesting characters and that if the very first live action X-Men movie had failed in promoting that character, the entire franchise would falter. Unfortunately, Jackman had completely overshadowed everyone to the point where every single X-Men movie has been nearly exclusive to his story. Critical characters like Storm, Cyclops and now Bishop have all been cast aside because Wolverine/Hugh Jackman has dominated the series. I think it’s great that they broke Wolverine away from the franchise to make movies just in developing the character; however, the stories involved have been god awful to the point where Jackman’s showmanship has not been able to carry things through as well. That said, removing Bishop as one of the key players in this movie really hurt since it practically made him a pointless cameo and just did more to put too much dependency upon Wolverine/Hugh Jackman again.
At any rate, we get a few battle scenes to demonstrate the ferocity and capabilities of the Sentinels to demonstrate that they are the raw deal (not to mention the obligatory 3D masturbation moments) before Wolverine is easily sent back to the past. Now, here’s the thing. Kitty Pride mentions that she is capable of sending back people a few days, even weeks, which, considering her development as a mutant in that point in time is completely plausible. But she initially rejects the crazy notion of sending someone in the past decades because she doubts her own abilities. Again what we see here is just the lack of the director’s ability to execute on something non-trivial. If this feat is impossible, how can she do this in one shot? What makes it difficult? Just the number of years? This is something that recurs throughout the movie (and many movies these days where we know for certain that the heroes are going to succeed despite remonstrating the opposite of whatever obstacles will be presented).
Wolverine elects himself to perform the task as he physically is the only person capable of handling the journey due to his self-healing. The whole time travel thing makes absolutely no sense because it’s impossible to say if Wolverine physically goes back in time, mentally or what. The two time periods seem to run in parallel but that too makes no sense. When he wakes up, he no longer has his adamantine claws but more wooden or even bone structured claws. It’s really hard to say what they were. They looked plastic and cheap. The problem with his altered physical form is that it’s impossible to say if he simply unified with his body of the past. I assume that’s what happened but the explanation for the situation was so brief and confusing that I’d have to go back and review it a few times to be sure.
Nonetheless, that’s part of the poor film making process here. These little details really become irrelevant in the scheme of things because they’re just accessories to get to key scenes in the movie rather than trying to tell something coherent. It’s as if the movie makers decided to say “Fuck it!” and just figure that since the movie has the X-Men brand that people would buy the tickets and forgive whoever made this piece of trash because they’re going to throw in emotional music, tons of fake tears, explosions and a supposed darker theme because Batman did it 100% better.
The thing is that I felt confused leaving the theater because too much didn’t make sense like that aspect. The thing is that this aspect was from what I understand faithful to the comic. The animated series did so using Forge and a machine. Either way, you cannot make too many assumptions about your audience when it comes to things like this. Here, I just feel that the execution was poorly done.
At any rate, when Wolverine wakes up we get the typical head bashing so that he can expedite getting some wheels. Immediately, he goes to find Charles Xavier who “is a completely different man” than the one we’re used to in the future (as stated by future Professor X himself). Indeed, we see super hippy, drug addict Charles Xavier who can miraculously walk again. Apparently, his school has closed down and he’s depressed because of how he lost everything (namely Mystique and his legs). So he becomes a decadent drunk with an addiction to a drug that Beast/Hank makes to allow him to walk again.
When Wolverine shows up, Charles Xavier questions Wolverine’s intentions and even reiterates the only line Wolverine was given in his cameo from the previous movie (Fuck off!). Despite this, we spend very little time delving into why Xavier has all these doubts and only can tell from small glimpses that he’s suffering for some reason and are not really shown why he’s suffering. But he’s telling us he’s suffering and we should naturally accept and cry at the forerunners of emo that this guy is fucked up. Yes, we know he longs for Mystique and his legs but is that adequate enough to make us believe and feel his pain?
Somehow Wolverine convinces Xavier to hunt Magneto with the help of Quicksilver, who might’ve been the only new character that received any resemblance of development and made for an interesting person. Now, here’s where things start to get really dicey from the comic book’s perspective. Quicksilver is the son of Magneto but that part hasn’t been acknowledged at all. Yet he saves Magneto and the incident does not have him recognize the fact that Magneto is his father. Once he rescues his theoretical father he just vanishes and we don’t see him for the rest of the movie.
I will admit that Quicksilver was one of the few bright spots in the movie in how they utilized him. The slow motion scene was really well done, original and funny. But it just shows a gimmick for a single instance rather than converting his character into a major player with tons of potential.
Somewhere in there we go to Saigon and start following the Mystique storyline. We see Toad, Havoc (whom should be connected to Scott Summers but that fact has yet to be mentioned at all) and two others I don’t recall. It seems like the start of Brotherhood with Mystique leading the charge after Kevin Bacon’s group in the previous movie apparently bit it (btw happened to Emma Frost? That’s some real bullshit). She rescues her boys and meets up with William Stryker, who plays this on/off character in the movie, and we see early seeds being planted in his connection to the X-Men and Wolverine along with some hatred. This episode is brief but mainly used to demonstrate Mystique taking part in these events leading up to her attempts in assassinating Trask.
Going back to Xavier, Magneto and Wolverine, we see them tracking Mystique down as her assassination of Trask in theory provides the impetus to the whole Sentinel program. On the plane flight, we see both Xavier and Magneto exchange some arguments about what happened to Magneto’s bands, how they lost Mystique and the stupid idea that he was trying to prevent the JFK assassination. That last part about the JFK assassination’s connection to Magneto then him calling JFK “one of them” made me /facepalm because of how they tried appealing to conspiracy theorist and showing how the X-Men have been connected with all these odd events throughout history. It felt a little overwhelming in terms of all the implications and something that I just couldn’t buy.
Either way, the heated exchange enrages Magneto so we see him nearly tear up the plane. Fortunately, he calms down and they’re able to proceed. The main thing is how they move to France where there’s a peace summit showing how the Vietnamese essentially have beaten the Americans. Here, Mystique attempts her first major try against Trask where Trask essentially gives a FUD to other world leaders on why they need his defense technology for the human race to protect themselves against the mutants. The end result, of course, is a giant clusterfuck. Mystique’s plot is foiled with the X-Men intervening, Magneto continues being the new lone wolf, Mystique escapes despite having a bullet in her leg and Wolverine goes into an epileptic fit that nearly melts the whole X-Men’s plot for him to stay in the past as he longer is “at peace.”
Again, let me segue to that time travel idea in the movie. The notion of how he is in the past, yet somehow physical has a parallel session with Kitty Pride in the future is so disastrously wonky that it made my head spin. I mean, there are other moments where he should experience some form of distress while in the past. His encounter with Stryker leaves him extremely shaken up to the point of jeopardizing the mission. Why is it then when he’s shot out like a rocket, entangled up in metal by Magneto in an attempted drowning that he doesn’t suddenly warp back into the future? It’s stuff like that which made me want to punch the director out.
Either way, this horrible mess of a plot needs to head for a dramatic conclusion. Trasks get the okay for the budget for his sentinels, Magneto intercepts them and tries to appropriate them for his cause, Xavier has an impossible time reaching Kitty Pride and the X-Men in the future are running out of time. Future Profession Xavier has that moment where he’s able to somehow go back in time through Wolverine and connect with young Xavier. He gives young Xavier a message of hope, mostly in Mystique so that Xavier can reach her in a different manner.
At any rate, the past group goes to head off Mystique’s final assassination attempt at the White House while Magneto, impressively, grabs a whole stadium to lock President Nixon and various important people to send a clear message to the world about the arrival of mutants as the superior race. Wolverine gets tossed (which is good as the focus now can go back to young Xavier, Mystique and Magneto) and Mystique must make a decision to demonstrate that mutants can be the superior race through controlling their powers and exercising discretion. Naturally, she gives in to compassion and everyone goes home just as future X-Men are getting annihilated and Kitty/Wolverine are going to become ashes.
After the past is corrected, Wolverine reappears in the X-Men Mansion where only he apparently is aware of all that has occurred. We see numerous cameos including Jean Grey and Scott Summers and everything seems corrected. End credits leading to the last scene of Apocalypse.
Okay, now that we have the main plot out of the way, I want to first say that the plot was far too complicated and fused to together with a ton of duct tape. Somehow it managed to stumble through to the end but there were too many parts that were really aggravating and even confusing to watch/comprehend without looking things up for a second time. As I mentioned before, the biggest issue in this whole X-Men series is the fact that there’s just way too many characters thrown in at once with little to no development. As the series has progressed, it felt more like a name dropping thing you do at an investment meeting rather than something where the characters can be uniformly fleshed out.
Compare this idea to the way the Avengers has been done. The Avengers is the superior movie series thus far when comparing the two big comic series on screen with The Dark Knight/Batman being the overall game changer. But The Avengers and X-Men, I think are probably more comparable in that you have groups of super heroes tag teaming together in a single movie. The main reason The Avengers has worked thus far is that each of the main characters were given their own movies to develop, with the occasional cameo from the supporting cast. But by the time the first Avengers came to the screen, the audience had several reference points where the basic characters were fleshed out. Instead, The Avengers was about how they formed and would go on to work together as a team and developing that chemistry together.
On the other hand, the X-Men has primarily been about Wolverine’s episodes and now the younger Magneto and Professor Xavier with Mystique thrown in as characters with some personalities. Certainly, those characters are all very important but it’s really blasphemy that people such as Cyclops and Storm barely do anything when they’re the two main leaders in the X-Men. How can any sane film director fuck that up so badly?
Even the teenage angst filled X-Men Evolution animated series has been far superior to the movie series. While it’s unfair to compare a TV series to a movie series, the main device in dealing with all the characters in the show that the animated series had used is focusing on 1-2 characters per episode and letting those characters really shine and demonstrate their capabilities as well as their growth with their abilities. The ending to the series was excellent as we saw how the teenagers managed to grow up to take on the converted leaders of the X-Men.
In the movie series, there hasn’t been much if any growth for the characters. We see more of certain characters like Wolverine but we don’t see a lot of character growth. Most of the movies dilute the characters down so much it becomes nearly impossible to get emotionally invested in any person, even favorites like Storm for me. I mean, it’s cool seeing some sort of epic fight scene where you get everyone together and let them show off. But in order to get there, you first have to plant enough seeds everywhere then slowly draw them together.
I think the one thing that they need to do to the series outside of finding a new producer and director is to get a whole new cast. Michael Fassbender, Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen are pretty much keepers. But the rest have to be pretty much thrown away. Jennifer Lawrence is a very pretty girl but she can’t act worth shit. I had such a hard time buying her version of Mystique; instead, she just seemed like a brat as opposed to a conniving, brooding, complex character. As much as I think Halle Berry is gorgeous and a lovely Storm, the truth is that she hasn’t been able to take the character to the next level. It’s a shame too because she looks really good as Storm; but just like Jennifer Lawrence, looks shouldn’t be the only aspect to carry one in a role.
Of course, the one that they absolutely need to rehaul is Cyclops/Scott Summers. The way they have him portrayed as this silent, stiff, lawful good, paladin nerdjock has set the character up for failure. That allowed Wolverine to unfortunately dominate the series and turn one of the most important characters in the entire X-Men series into someone non-existent. And even if I don’t care for Cyclops, others have done such a good job in making the character tolerable even enjoyable like X-Men Evolution.
I’d love to see them bring back Rogue. But they need to switch out the actress. X-Men Evolution turned Rogue from the simple Southern Belle into a very distant, emotional emo/goth girl that played one of the most important, if not the most important roles in the entire series when she saved everyone with her powers. I would really love for them to bring that character into the fold and work on that.
Also, Emma Frost/the White Queen is someone that was just used for eye candy. The White Queen has such a presence in the comics and makes for an excellent villain. But they gave that role twice to people who were physically gifted (in terms of strict looks) but had no acting skills whatsoever. Imagine if they had Charlize Theron for the White Queen; she would turn that role around VERY quickly.
Now, overall would I recommend this movie? It depends on what you’re looking after. If you’re a die hard X-Men fan, you’ll have real mixed emotions. The movie series != the comic series != the animated series. This version of the X-Men has tried like other movies such as Batman to take a slightly darker tone. But I don’t think they did a good job in executing that tone. So if you’re looking for a competitor to the Dark Knight, this definitely isn’t it.
If you enjoy the X-Men enough and want to see what happens next, this movie is fine. You can’t let the horrible plot, the void of character development and frequent bad choices in actors detract from a generally fun movie. It did feel deflating at the end and too rushed but the path getting to that point can be interesting at times.
For myself, I saw it in 3D and it’s the first recent 3D film I’ve seen. As a person with poor vision, I couldn’t tell at times what I was seeing. There was just too much going on visually and I couldn’t absorb everything easily. Some parts of the film just looked blurred and I couldn’t tell if that was intentional, my position in the theater or my bad eye sight. In some ways, I regret not just seeing the normal version because I felt that the 3D did a lot to distract me. It was interesting as an experience since I’ve never seen films like this before. But as someone who wears glasses, I found wearing another set of glasses to be extremely cumbersome to the point where I don’t see it as a good motivation for me to go to theaters.
I’ll probably buy it on iTunes once it comes out as I want to try checking out the things I missed. Movies like this for me are good “dinner movies” since they’re mostly about just fun action. But again there’s not a lot of depth to it overall.