Film Overrated & Overhyped
Let's get this outta the way first. I dislike Bryan Singer's X-Men films.To me, they're bastardization of the comics I grew up reading, even the dated 90s cartoon was a more faithful adaptation compared to their live-action counterparts. My main issue is these films are too bland and average and far too reliant on Wolverine, with everyone else being relegated to side characters( especially Cyclop,POOR Cyclops),its these reason that I never refer to these films as simply X-men but rather Bryan Singer's X-Men.The only film that actually feels like a true adaptation of X-Men was First Class,which was mostly due to Vaughn's sharp direction(kudos for proving X-Men films can work WITHOUT Wolverine) despite some glaring character issues.
Now with all that said and after rewatching it, what is my final conclusion of this film? A giant resounding "MEH". The status quo has been restored and not for the better and once again, this film requires Wolverine to get the ball rolling despite the fact that there are infinitely more interesting characters with cooler powers that could pull it off plotwise.
Despite decent performances from most of the main cast,I found some of the characters thoroughly lacking,chief among them being Fassbender's Magneto,who has been downgraded to a straight up 2d villain instead of the great three dimensional anti-hero from First Class. However,Jennifer Lawrence's second turn as Mystique is actually the film's weakest link(even more so than Halle Berry), heavily phoning it in despite being a key player in the plot. Another fact that annoys me is how her powers are for some reason link to the future sentinels' creation(how 'bout Rogue's),plus her original/blue form is less scaly and merely looks like Lawrence in blue paint simply to cash in on Lawrence's popularity.
Film Good, But.....(Spoilers)
Right of the bat, this was a really good movie.
The acting was great by all parties, it had some great action and awesome character development.
But, it was just really slow-paced and lacked tension for a lot of the 70s sections. I know a lot of people loved this movie and think it's the best X-Men movie yet but I can't truly get into it. Plus, the Cosmic Retcon is BS
I'd rate it in the middle, slightly better than First Class (but I'd have fonder memories of First Class as it didn't have a mountain of hype it didn't live up to).
Film A sequel-prequel-reboot mish mash
This month, for all the X-Men fans that love the hyper-complex wacky time-travel comic book crossovers that only a detective can understand, comes a movie just for you: a sequel-prequel-reboot mish mash. Meet all the characters you have seen so far, in a story that mixes all their individual films timelines, and ultimately renders all of them obsolete... just like Crisis on Infinite Earths.
Behold an apocalyptic world, where Skynet is sending wave after wave of killing robots against all humanity just for kicks. Find out that, once again, circumstances force Wolverine to be the main character of the story, stealing the sportlight from Kitty Pryde. But hey, at least she had her revenge: she made him wake up right after having sex, instead of five minutes earlier. See Wolverine sent into another apocalyptic world, where Nixon is sending wave after wave of killing troopers against Vietnam just for kicks.
Watch yet another Wolverine movie with X-Men around him, an immortal man whose healing power prevents him from aging, but who inexplicably has his hair greying at the temples. He will meet the younger Charles Xavier, who will give him classes of being a jerkass. Without his mutant powers, they will get the help of Hulk Mc Coy and Peter Maximoff, who somehow escaped from the prison of Baron Von Strucker. Toguether they will take Magneto out of his prison... and by "toguether" we mean "Peter does everything". Follow them as Wolverine tells them that a political assasination made by Mystique convinced everybody that mutants are dangerous, which unleashes a dark and terrible future... and, to prevent this future, Magneto will out several mutants at the Paris Peace Accords, levitate a whole stadium across the Washington state, throw it around the White House, capture the president and have him beneath his boot. Way to go, Mags! Even your master plan in X3 made more sense than this! Pity the X-Men of the future, finally captured and brutally killed by the Sentinels; only that history was changed afterwards, so their deaths are just cheap drama.
Starring: a nude time-traveler. A nude blue terrorist mutant. Magneto the Grey. The head of Richard Nixon, along with his body. Hulk Mc Coy. Papa smurf. And... wheels!
So... the pyramids were built by a mutant? I knew it! Insane theories, one; regular theories, a billion.
Film X-men Days of Future Retcon
"I don't want your suffering. I DON'T WANT YOUR FUTURE!"
Those lines from the trailer? Young Charles Xavier was seeing clips from X-men 3 and Wolverine origins. Thankfully those are Retcon thanks to time travel plot.
Wolverine is the guy they send back in time because, of course he is. He isn't the all consuming black hole he was in X3, in fact the height of his usefulness is as Mr. Exposition who tells the past characters what they need to know. This means characters not restricted by a pg-13 rating get to shine; Beast, Bishop, Blink, and best of all Quicksilver(who steals the show) Storm is also in it, and given her own badass moment, but thankfully given no lines so HalleBerry can't fumble through them.
On to the sentinels; They've always been considered deadly in comics, where every future with them in it being the end of the world. But they look like big goofy purple dildos, not something you could take seriously in live action. Not in this movie, though. Half the death toll in the future, must just be from heart attacks when seeing the sentinels up close...that and overexposure to purple mood lighting. Action is...Avengers-ques, as all comicbook movies must be now, so expect disaster movie destruction.
Peter Dinklage isn't the only thing X-men took from GameofThrones, viewpoint jumps from character to character, past and future and is all the better for it. Even wolverine can't be said to have more screen time than anyone else, so you're never watching a boring scene, that just won't end.
I consider it a flaw, but you may not; Peter Dinklage's character isn't given as much screen time and despite creating and pushing the sentinels through congress his position as Big Bad is debatable. Despite the film revealing him as a Mad Scientist who performed fatal experiments on mutants, who WILL be the cause of the BadFuture; he's...human like the rest of us. And thus could have been played by anyone—literally anyone, I'm glad Peter D got a role in a big movie, but his acting chops weren't exactly strained. May be intentional?
Movie involves time travel so you will walk away with Fridge Logic about the TimeyWimeyBall it's inevitable. I'm gonna go ahead and call it, this is the best X-men movie.
Film The interbetweenquel
X-Men Days of Future Past is a really solid movie. It's like if X2 and First class had an offspring. Being that those are the two greatest X-Men films, that's a good thing. The thing that keeps me from going gaga over it is that it feels like a set up film. I think the people making these things realized that X3 had tainted the franchise for a lot of people. This movie feels like it's there to wash the bad taste of X3 out of everyone's mouth. It's there to fix the timeline and to allow the franchise to go in a whole new direction without truly rebooting. The problem is that it's not really an X-Men movie. After First Class, the X-Men disbanded, so we don't really have an actual team of X-Man, we have Charles, Logan, and Hank, who are briefly aided by Quicksilver, trying to save the world. Logan tells Charles about how he needs to form the X-Men, but that doesn't actually happen in the film. I think that Apocalypse will be a better film, as we'll see the origins of the X-Men proper. 9/10 from me.
Film Too Good To Care
So the short of this film is, it's really, really fun. It's got very little focus on action, but what action there is, is incredibly creative and well-choreographed. I want more Blink because every time she used her powers it was beautiful and clever. Yet, that's just a dressing, the meat of the film is a handful of close and interesting people having very powerful character moments with each other.
This is a film that shows that Xavier wasn't born wise, he earned his wisdom and it was a hard and painful experience. Mystique isn't 'one of the Brotherhood' because there isn't really a Brotherhood in this film. It's lazer focused on her experiences in the world and her connection to Xavier and Magneto. Magneto is yet again excellent with that powerful Frenemy dynamic. Most of all this is a film about having hope in people even when it's hard. Wolverine actually works here because it's an older, wiser Wolverine put in a position to play the mentor role to someone going through the same sort of impulsive stage Wolverine is famous for. Even Quicksilver, despite appearances, is an total scene stealer!
The acting is freaking fantastic. The Magento's and Xavier's are naturally fantastic, but Beast really steps up his game from First Class and Ellen Page manages to do a lot with just a few glances.
What's interesting is, the film is full of inconsistencies and absolutely no-one cares (Spoony liked it!). I think the reason it works is because none of the inconsistencies ever get in the way of what the film wants to do and it always makes it clear that they just want to get past that detail so they can get to the good stuff. We're telling a time travel story, but we're not really interested in how it happens, so this character whose not used elsewhere in the film can now send people back in time okay? This confrontation between Charles Xavier and the world is going to be great, can we not worry about why Quicksilver didn't show up? He's not important to the film anymore.
Plot Holes don't have to be a problem in themselves. It's a problem when it obstructs the storytelling, or isn't good enough that people want to see what happens next.
2nd greatest X-Men film after First Class (First Class' character stuff goes a little further). But if you prioritise a light tone in superhero films, this is probably no. 1
Film Excellent Movie! Bleak but Full of Hope!
So we just came back from seeing this movie. And what can I say? it was excellent!
The premise is this: we see our favorite X-Men— but not all of them— in a Crapsack World of the bleakest kind. They are being terrorized by murderous Sentinels who hunt mutants. Shadowcat and company devise a gambit of Inception proportions to change the past, so that the future will change as well. The Sentinels are incredibly deadly. There's no other way.
What comes next is a story of redemption, of opposing viewpoints, of trust, strategy, friendship, and conflict.
The good: everything was pretty good. I know a good chunk about the X-Men universe, but I'm no buff! So I wasn't hung up on things that weren't exactly the same. What I do know is that if you haven't seen it yet, see if you can spot Cable in the crowd, and Bishop at the beginning; correct me if I'm wrong when you come back.
There was a lot of philosophical talk about human nature. Wolverine, Charles, Eric, Hank and Mystique all have to face this question in the movie. Can people change? Needless to say, we see a lot of change, and a lot of not changing from the main cast here. There is hopping back and forth between the past and present, but it is done very well, and it flows. You are never jarred from past to present; the transition makes sense each time. There is also a theme of Good vs. Evil in this story. And a lot of grey area.
The fighting is excellent, but sweetly withheld in quantity. It's balanced very well. Expect a lot of subverted and zigzagged Curb-Stomp Battle scenes.
The acting and casting was nice. Evan Peters makes an appearance as a surprise I think! What a hottie. And he was brilliant and hilarious! You'll love him! Hurray for Peter Dinklage, btw! He does a bang up job as Trask, who isn't as villainous as he is misguided. The real villain though...? Ambition Is Evil for real.
The bad: Well, the only bad thing is that Wolverine is at center, sort of. It's not really bad; he has been hogging the X-Men spotlight too long. But he did a bang up job. The other bad thing is that... I don't care for Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique, but that's neither here nor there at this point.
It is a great movie. You'll like it, hopefully. I enjoyed myself a great deal! I'd see it again actually.
Film The movie that made me love X-Men even more
X-Men were my second favorite thing about Marvel Universe (if my memory serves right). This movie just cemented this (also the reason I hate current Marvel Comics (not Studios, to which I feel indifferent at worst), since they are outright burying them for Inhumans).
Good:
- Cast: Cast of the old and new? Super awesome. Especially Hugh Jackman, Michael Fassbender, Patrick Stewart, Ian Mc Kellen, Evan Peters and James Mc Avoy. Though, it's a shame that some of the cast (both old and new) couldn't return for various reasons. Then this would have been THE ultimate superhero reboot film.
- The whole bad future: The sheer bleakness and desperation found in no other superhero films.
I loved it. Thanks, Sentinels. All-powerful and many in numbers. They just easily surpassed Terminators as the scariest robots.Meh:
I don't have many bad things to say about this movie. 9/10 definitely.