I've been looking forward
to Days of Future Past since I first heard about it. Sure I was gun
shy after The Last Stand, but with it's wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey
aspects it seemed to be just the thing to get the series back on
track. I liked First Class, really, but it wasn't the same as the
original series. James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender were great,
Jennifer Lawrence and a lot of the other young mutants were fine, but
it was missing something. I had wanted to see a good Emma Frost and
Sebastian Shaw (and maybe even a good Hellfire Club) for a long time
and didn't get them. But after not getting the things I wanted from
The Last Stand or the Wolverine origins movie I wasn't really
surprised that I didn't get what I was hoping for. It wasn't a bad
movie, it just wasn't great. And as far as getting the X-Men series
back to it's own origins, and back on the right path Days of Future
Past was great to me.
Was it perfect? No, but what ever is? It undoes a lot of foolish damage caused by The Last Stand and Origins: Wolverine in one fell swoop, and that makes it great even if nothing else about it was meaningful. But besides pleasing a bunch of angry nerds it actually does some things very well. Not everything I'll grant you, but a lot of things.Things like the picture below:
First and foremost let's
just say that this is very loosely based on the story of the same
name from the comics. Or the 90's cartoon. I hadn't read the comics
as recently as I'd seen the cartoon so in my mind it should have been
Bishop doing the time traveling. After a quick re-read I realized
that it should have been Shadowcat instead. But who really wants to
watch a full length Kitty Pryde movie? Maybe somebody does, but not
me. And I guess most of the world didn't either or else they wouldn't
have chosen Wolverine to replace both her and Bishop by instead
sending him to the past. Maybe they gave her those nifty new sending
people back in time powers to make it up to her. So in the future
Sentinels are super robots that are killing or capturing most of the
mutants and sympathetic humans in the world. We get to see a little
bit of some cool new mutants, and others have finally come in to
their full powers. Bishop isn't used as well as he could be, but I
guess they didn't know what else to do with him. I also wasn't sure
why Warpath was there. He's supposed to have some decent powers, but
here you really only see him use a few. His most valuable asset seems
to be super vision so that he can see the Sentinels coming a long way
off. Seems kind of pointless really because you know who else can see
a long way? Any other mutant with a telescope! I did particularly
like the inclusion of Blink, and how they used her powers in fights.
Seriously. It was better than Nightcrawler BAMF-ing all over the
White House, and I think we can all agree that was pretty awesome.
There are lots of fabulous looking special effects used in this
movie, but the future fighting is fantastic looking. It seemed almost
like there should have been a whole lot more of that future stuff
because it felt cut short. Maybe they left it on the cutting room
floor (where I heard they left most of Anna Paquin's scenes. I think
she's been naked so much in True Blood that the producers realized
that nobody would recognize her wearing clothes anymore), but I could
have done with more Iceman and his ice slides. And I definitely
wanted more stuff like Colossus using Blink's powers to do a sort of
modified “fastball special”. I'm hoping for an extensive set of
deleted scenes in the DVD release.
So Logan Marty McFly's his
way back in time to the 70's to stop Mystique from ending the world
by killing Tyrion Lannister. I mean, Peter Dinklage, since he's the
one who creates the Sentinels. Magneto is in prison, Professor X is a
little bitch, and everyone else is dead or too young to help. I have
to admit that I was a little confused at first when Magneto said that
Angel was dead. Once I realized he probably meant Angel Salvadore I
was surprisingly relieved. I was never a big fan of Warren
Worthington III, but with the Age of Apocalypse story coming up next
I was kind of hoping to see him as one of the Four Horsemen. They may
not even go that route, but it would still be neat. Wolverine is just
Logan the entire movie because he really doesn't get to be his usual
short-tempered and violent self most of the time. He has to play
peacemaker, and friend, and sometimes uses angry dad voice. Besides a
few short fight scenes he only sort of takes part in (mostly getting
beat up) he doesn't do much of the same thing we're used to seeing
from him. I guess that can be a good thing if they're trying to give
his character more depth, but after seven or so times playing
Wolverine we had a feel for him. Changing him up now feels off, and
maybe why he wasn't supposed to be the one time traveling in the
first place.
I really liked how
Mystique finally starts to get a little of the bad-ass fighting style
she was known for in the first two movies, and the Quicksilver bit
was hilarious and too short. James McAvoy and Patrick Stewart
face-to-face was one of the best moments, but Michael Fassbender and
Ian McKellen as Magneto were both under used. But so were many
characters. Havok, Toad, Sunspot, Beast (actually getting to be Beast
and not just Hank McCoy). Oh, and Storm, but I don't care about her under use.
Magneto was there for
most of the movie, but it was really more about Logan trying to help
Xavier while everyone else brooded or tried to kill stuff. Peter
Dinklage was also good, and the fact that he's a dwarf made his
motivation for wanting to wipe out mutants much more complex that it
might have been otherwise. I don't want to give away the ending for
anyone who hasn't seem it yet, but a whole lots of wrongs have been
set right by the time the credits roll. One of the afterthoughts I
had that won't spoil anything for anyone is that this movie takes
place during the Vietnam era. According to Origins: Wolverine he and
Sabertooth were fighting in the Vietnam war, and under house arrest
(presumably for being unruly mutants) when Stryker finds them. Since
Logan isn't anywhere near Vietnam, and Sabertooth is nowhere to be
seen we can assume that a bunch of crap from that movie has been
undone as well. That means in an upcoming movie we could get a proper
Blob or even Deadpool (joy!). I'd like a proper Gambit too (unlike
many of my friends I am a Gambit fan), but since Channing Tatum is
up for the roll I would gladly forgo that pleasure. Better no Gambit
than Channing Tatum as Gambit.
Sure it drags in some
places, and the time lines tend to get a little too wibbly-wobbly. I
love it more for what it has given the series the potential to be
that for what it is itself, but it's still a good movie. And it's a
very good X-Men movie. And now that The Last Stand never happened we
shall henceforth refer to this movie as X3, and never speak of the
other again.
No comments:
Post a Comment