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If you don’t know me or follow my ramblings, then know I am a loooooong time X-men comic fanboy. I have enjoyed and suffered through all the films to date. I now have watched Days of Future Past and have let it sink in a bit.
A quick look back first……
X-Men was a good beginning for the franchise
X-Men 2 was a great second film.
X-Men 3 was a pile of garbage! It was all but the death of the franchise.
X-men Origin: Wolverine was a train wreck of a Wolverine story.
X-Men: First Class was two short films mashed together. The first being a fantastic Magneto/Xavier origin buddy background tale. The second, an abysmal attempt at an X-Men team building, mutant pride, wyrd love triangle between Magneto/Mystique/Xavier and an attempt at mashing in all sorts of other X-Men stuff in the 60’s.
The Wolverine tried to steer the old Canuckle-head straight again, only to set it in Japan and I’m no fan of those Wolverine tales (well it was better than Madripoor I guess). Still it was a pretty meh! film and only descent when compared to the few preceding movies.
This being said, I walked into Day of Future Past with very low expectations. Why go then? Well moral imperative for one. I’m a fan of the merry band of mutants and I’ll follow them. Second, I have suffered through countless bad comic story arcs. What is another bad film in comparison? I mean they haven’t bothered with the drek that is the Phalanx, Onslaught, the Shi-ar or anything in X-Men space, Nimrod, the Goblin Queen, the Acolytes, anything with Stryfe/Cable or…ick…the Savage Land. The films aren’t at the level of bad yet. Plus there are sentinels and I had to see this classic villain on screen. This is also supposed to shore up the continuity problems with the mutant films. Finally, it is the return of Bryan Singer who gave us the first two films and he did fine with them. I could only hope it wouldn’t be as bad as his take on Superman.
Deep breath……………………
Days of Future past is based on a two issue tale where Kitty Pride’s 2013 mind is sent back into her 1980 body. Why? Well she is one of the few remaining mutants in a world controlled by the Sentinels (giant mutant killing robots). She is sent back to stop the assassination of Senator Kelly. This will stop the awful non-mutant Sentinel filled future and an eventual nuclear war.
Days of Future past the movie has the same dystopian future where the last few mutants are backed into a corner. It is up to Wolverine to have his mind sent back to the 70’s. Once there he has to stop Mystique from killing Bolivar Trask. If he dies, then the Sentinel program gets rolling and the future becomes a mess. Oh yeah! He also has to get Xavier and Magneto together again, because they can stop Mystique together. Then throw in some post Nam stuff, Willaim Stryker, Quicksilver, Nixon and off we go! Of course it is more in depth than that. The big parts of the story revolve around Trask wanting to kill all mutants or at best defend from and experiment on them and the Magneto/Xavier/Mystique non-love love triangle. Fixing this will stop the future from being just a giant suck fest!
Of course this leads to time travel as old Wolverine has his mind sent back into his younger self (via Kitty Pride’s new powers somehow) and he will get this all accomplished. Nothing can go wrong with time travel right? Well it gets real muddy real fast when you throw in a bit of wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff. See there is a fixed future and a mutable future, guess which one we with which we are dealing ( a hint….if you want more movies it has to be...?)? The time travel element is weak, but it is needed for the story.
The film lacks a true villain though and I was left not really disliking any of the “bad” guys. There is Bolivar Trask is mean because he hates mutants, or does he? Magneto is bad because he hates humans? The Sentinels are bad in the future, but in the 70’s are just following programs. Mystique is bad, because she is going to kill someone, yet she is doing it to save others (so she thinks). The military and government are involved, but not really good or bad. Drugs are bad. Mmm-kay. There is no true black hat bad guy. Instead we get a lot of grey instead.
I walked in hating this, but left surprised. I didn’t hate it. There was a lot I enjoyed. The Sentinel fights in the future are enjoyable. Especially when they throw in the crazy teleporting throughout the fight, thanks to Blink (why/how is she in this time-line?). The events with Quicksilver were pretty damn fun. Seeing some Sentinels doing stuff was good. As before the Xavier/Magneto story was good. Wolverine being sort of a straight man for them was enjoyable. This was not an adrenaline fuelled thrill ride. It was a time travelling X-Men tale that had a real comic book feel. It was more talkie than fightie. It did the best job possible
Now this wasn’t without some problems for me, but I’m of a different breed than most. I’ll try and get them out quick and not dwell on them too long. They range from nitpicking to glaring huge issues. Here we go…………… if all the movies previous are cannon as we were told…………..
Deep breath......................
How is Xavier alive after the events of X-Men: The Last Stand!?!?? Why doesn’t he look like the dirty old bum he swapped minds with in the post credit sequence?!?! Why aren't Wolverine's claws still bone in the future? How come Kitty Pryde has the ability to transmit mind’s back in time, when her mutant powers only let her phase through stuff?!?! Why are the Sentinels are more advanced in 1975 than anything we have in 2014? At the end of The Wolverine why were Magneto and Xavier recruiting Wolverine anyway? At the end of The Wolverine, it wasn’t a dystopian future when he was in that airport. Hell, they didn't even know they were going to send Wolverine back in time until a few seconds before they actually did it anyway. X-Men Origins: Wolverine showed us that Stryker recruited Wolverine and Sabretooth in 1975 after rescuing them from the firing squad in Vietnam, where they'd been fighting for some time. The two had been inseparable through the ages Yet in 1973, Wolverine isn't in Vietnam, he's bumming around New York and Sabretooth's nowhere to be found. If you introduce a guy who can literally stop/catch bullets while running, why doesn't anybody think to take him to Paris? Since that is where their entire future hinges on stopping someone being shot? If it's 1975, how come Quicksilver has those type of over-the-ear headphone that separate? You know the kind that popped up a few years ago? The original X-Men films indicated a relationship between Magneto and Mystique. Yet, the Professor X/Mystique relationship was never mentioned at all. Why was Blink in the future? She was Age o’ Apocalypse universe. The plot of Days of Future Past also hinges on the Mystique/Xavier/Magneto triangle but the only problem is that story has no connection to the Original X-Men Trilogy. Beast looks like a blue version of the old Wolfman. Like a really bad version of the Wolfman. The entire X-men franchise has been erased, save for the events of X-Men First Class and I’m happy and sad about that.
Well after that rant blast how/why did I like this movie? It was just a cheap mulligan for the franchise because the continuity of the films was a wreck right? Yes it sort of was. However, it was quasi-true to events in the original comic, or as close as it could be. I appreciated that. The Magento/Xavier story was compelling. The whole film had a very comic book reading and pacing feel. I also dug that. If it was a mutant mulligan then so be it. The franchise was off and awful. Bringing back the core was needed and now they can hopefully move forward in the right direction again. Hopefully. You have a reboot X-men universe. Hollywood don’t frak it up!
Plus the post credit sequence has me all a twitter with anticipation.
“En Sabah Nur!” “En Sabah Nur!” “En Sabah Nur!” “En Sabah Nur!”
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