X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST (2014)
If you asked me what my favorite part was of Bryan Singer’s much buzzed about X-Men: Days of Future Past, I’d be hard-pressed to tell you. If I thought really, really hard about it (perhaps pressing my index and middle finger to my right temple and mustering my most constipated expression would help), it could be that I felt an enormous amount of glee at the audacious (and rather ingenious) move by this film in essentially erasing the clusterfuck that was X-Men: The Last Stand, a film which I have repeatedly tried to block from my memory to no avail. It’s a smart move. After all, everything that has come to pass after X2: United was disappointing (yes, even X-Men: First Class). It seemed only right that a studio determined to mimic Marvel’s success with their superhero franchises would want to reset the audience’s expectations. And now here we are, with the newest installment from the X-Men franchise, and I find that the bubblegum stuck to the bottom of my shoe is far more interesting.
The story is set in a future where mutants and the humans who aid them are being persecuted by sentinels, creations of extremist scientist Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage) as part of his effort to stay what he thought would be the inevitable extinction of humans in the face of the the clearly genetically superior mutants. In this future, so few mutants are left, and we are introduced to what will be the core of the X-Men: Kitty Pryde/Shadowcat (Ellen Page), Blink (Fan Bingbing), Bobby Drake/Iceman (Shawn Ashmore), Bishop (Omar Sy), Colossus (Daniel Cudmore), Sunspot (Adan Canto) and Warpath (Booboo Stewart). They have survived as long as they have because Kitty can send someone’s consciousness into the future as sort of an intel-gathering expedition, bringing them back in time to warn the X-Men of impending sentinel attacks. But it’s only a temporary fix, and at this point the X-Men are only surviving, seemingly without any plan to defeat the sentinels and secure their future’s race. Professor X (Patrick Stewart), Magneto (Michael Fassbender), Storm (Halle Berry) and Logan/Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) join the party and come up with a plan for Kitty to send Logan back to the past to stop the creation of the sentinels. It must be Logan, we are told, because his regenerative powers can handle the trauma of time travel. Logan must convince the X-Men of the past - which include young Charles Xavier (James McAvoy), young Erik Lensherr (Michael Fassbender) and Hank McCoy/Beast (Nicholas Hoult) - to stop Raven/Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) from assassinating Trask (which becomes the catalyst that greenlights the sentinel program).
Following so far? It’s a fairly straightforward concept that’s been done before in films like The Terminator, so executing it seems like a pretty simple task, but when you have a cast of 20+ superheroes, things can get a little dicy. When Logan arrives in the past (the 70s, to be exact), he sees that his work is cut out for him, because the X-Men have never been further apart. For the most part, the film stays in the past, with Logan painstakingly trying to convince a disillusioned Charles Xavier that the fate of the mutant race lies in his hands. The story occasionally jumps to the future, as the mutants there hold their ground against the siege of sentinels. The condensed version of this story doesn’t seem so bad. It is, after all, based on an actual storyline from the X-Men comic books (although in the original plot, Kitty was supposed to be the time traveling heroine, not Logan). The execution, however, wasn’t the best, with the film lacking in emotional oomph and any real excitement. The story also went at a strange pace, with some parts feeling incredibly slow and uneventful, while others seemed rushed and incomprehensible. It lacked a sense of urgency and desperation that would have helped highlight the mutant struggle. While it was great to see the classic X-Men thematic emphasis of opposing viewpoints between Magneto and Professor X, overall I felt that the film suffered from a haggard energy, never making any big impressions or challenging the audience in any way. The most touching part of the whole series remains, by far, Jean Grey’s sacrifice at the end of X2, and since then nothing has managed to outclass or outweigh that image.
Read on for more (but be warned: possible spoilers under the cut).
Interestingly, a part that I thoroughly enjoyed in the film involved the one character I thought this movie would fuck up, and that was Quicksilver (played by American Horror Story’s Evan Peters); although I have no idea why they keep calling him Peter, when Quicksilver’s name is Pietro (Pietro too foreign-sounding for them?). Quicksilver is enlisted by Logan and Xavier to help them with a jailbreak of a most elaborate nature. In the 70s, Magneto is imprisoned underneath the Pentagon after he is accused of assassinating JFK. Since Mystique is presumed to still be working under Magneto’s control, his efforts are thought to be required. The jailbreak is incredibly entertaining, with Pietro’s mischievous demeanor taking center stage. Despite Quicksilver’s horrendous outfit, he injected a fun, dynamic energy into the movie that the rest of the story severely lacked. Peters does a good job with the role, and part of me wished he stuck around a bit longer.
The second highlight that was mildly interesting was the course correction of the franchise’s timeline. After the X-Men of the past succeed in thwarting Mystique’s plans to assassinate Trask, the sentinels become a mere memory. Logan then wakes up to what would now be the present, finding the original X-Men circa X2: United alive and kicking. Everyone from Rogue (Anna Paquin) to Cyclops (James Marsden) and (be still, my shipper heart) Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) seem blissfully happy (or ignorant) at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. This was an exciting move, because it acknowledged how poorly-executed the X-Men franchises after X2 were, while sending a quiet “fuck you very much” to X-Men: The Last Stand director Brett Ratner and his clueless cohorts. What’s interesting, however, is that it is presents something of a conundrum. Returning the original group of X-Men (Storm, Jean Grey, Cyclops, etc) also brought brought back their original actors, and curious minds want to know whether we will see more of them in future installments (especially now that Apocalypse is in the mix) or whether we’ll revert back to the First Class cast.
Other than these two highlights (and my thorough enjoyment of Hugh Jackman’s ass), there was nothing of great import in the film. Aside from a slew of continuity headaches, I did not care for the way Mystique was handled in the film. It’s understandable why her character gets special treatment; she is, after all, the reason why everything goes to hell for the mutants. Add to that the continually rising stardom of Jennifer Lawrence, and it makes sense that Mystique gets so much more face time. Was this face time particularly good? Not at all. Her impersonation of a Vietnam War soldier to break out mutant comrades Havok, Toad, Ink, Spike and others went on for too long for something that was only meant to allude to Trask’s horrific mutant experiments. This exposition could have been been done in a much more elegant and evocative manner. Why not have Mystique sneak into Trask’s lab and discover her fallen comrades there? It would have not only helped the audience understand Mystique’s deeply felt convictions about killing Trask, but it would have also given us some insight into the character of Trask himself (which was a terribly underwritten character completely unworthy of Peter Dinklage, by the way). Mystique’s seduction of a Vietnamese soldier was also quite laughable, and I can honestly say that I never want to hear Jennifer Lawrence speaking Vietnamese (or any other language for that matter) ever again.
The whole Mystique intervention involving Charles and Erik was also incredibly cheesy and tedious, the back and forth in this love triangle getting less and less interesting as it went along. It was a mistake to make this aspect of the film about Mystique wanting to do things her way instead of being manipulated by either Charles or Erik. It robbed the audience of the ability to truly empathize with her. Her crusade was actually a legitimate one; she wanted to save mutants no matter the cost. Her folly was in being shortsighted about it, not realizing the big picture and how instrumental her actions would be in altering the fates of mutants. It’s a little odd, however, that the film ends with Mystique impersonating Stryker (who gives Wolverine his Adamantium claws) as she fishes an incapacitated Logan out of the Potomac. It may have been Bryan Singer’s way of making the timeline coincide with X2: United, but it’s still confusing, especially when there was a deliberate parting of ways between Mystique and Magneto (he did, after all, try to kill her). Basically the question is: if the ending was meant to align X2 to X:DOFP, are we to believe that Mystique just forgave Erik for trying to kill her in X:DOFP (because she works closely with him in X2 to get rid of Stryker)? Wouldn’t it have made more sense to have Stryker fish Wolverine out of the Potomac, made especially poignant because of Hank McCoy/Beast’s theory of the immutability of time? It would have delivered the message that while Logan may have helped save the mutants of the future with his trip to the past, he still couldn’t escape the inevitable trauma he would experience under the hands of William Stryker.
Performances were strong, especially from James McAvoy and Hugh Jackman, however Michael Fassbender seemed to me a bit strange in this one. His Magneto was sort of just there (the same can be said for Nicholas Hoult’s Beast, who was really just there for decoration, and to shoot Jennifer Lawrence goo goo eyes at the end). While part of me enjoyed the contrasting scenes in past and future, with the X-Men of the past embroiled in bitter arguments while the mutants of the future fight as one cohesive team, I wasn’t impressed by the action scenes in X-Men: Days of Future Past. I would have liked to have seen more teamwork between the future X-Men. The action sequences between them when they fight the sentinels were forgettable and sort of awkwardly timed. I found that the future bits of the film were severely lacking in this kinetic energy. Even the part where Ellen Page’s Shadowcat is hanging on for dear life after she’s lost a lot of blood thanks to Logan’s dream-state clawing was sort of just ignored by everyone else in the room. My preference would have been for the X-Men of the future to reinforce their battlements slowly but surely, prepared to give their life so their pasts may be changed. Instead, all they do is sort of hang around uselessly, looking ominously in the distance as Kitty does all the work. Gradually showing the future X-Men preparing for a last stand, as if all hope was lost, would have given the film that emotional oomph it so desperately needed and given the actors something to do besides stand awkwardly to the side watching Logan on a stone slab. Would it have killed them to give Storm an anecdote to tell her former students? Give her something to reminisce before unceremoniously falling to her death? Still, the film wasn’t completely devoid of emotion. The somber exchanges between Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart were evocative, and I liked the contrast between the Magneto of the past opposing Charles Xavier at every turn and the Magneto of the future prepared to die for Professor X and his mutant comrades.
Overall, while X-Men: Days of Future Past provided an entertaining romp in period drama with its venture to the 70s, there was an emotional disconnect to these characters that I was surprised by. As someone who grew up reading X-Men and watching the cartoons, I have a personal connection to these stories and really want them to succeed. Part of me doesn’t get the sense of love for these characters from the films any more. Part of me was sad that Kitty was never given her due as the real hero of this storyline, and being the medium for Logan’s trip to the past was, I suppose, somewhat of a consolation prize. Given all the product marketing for these films prior to release (don’t get me started on the Carl’s Jr. Mystique and Colossus commercials), it just makes me uncomfortable to see this franchise be nothing more than a moneymaker for FOX. I do, however, remain excited for its potential, given the rewriting of the timelines. There is still a possibility that it could get better. Funnily enough, that message - “We can only hope that it gets better” - is closer to the X-Men I know and love than the last two films were.
