XM: DOFP is quite possibly the oddest X-Men film so far. It is without question the best X-Men film yet, but it absolutely could not exist without those preceding it…which is really ironic in retrospect.
Significant Spoilers follow:
Anyone familiar with the original two-part comic story (X-Men #141-#142) upon which this was based will be right on top of it. In the original, Kitty Pryde winds up going back to her teen self in order to prevent the assassination of Robert Kelly which will in turn bring about an anti-mutant dystopia in the then far-off year of 2013. The film proposes the same concept as a way of joining up the X-Men prequel of “First Class” with the previous films. This obviously precludes using Kitty since she wasn’t born yet, and so Logan naturally becomes the go-to guy to make the voyage. Which makes sense since Wolverine is more or less the franchise character.
Some have complained that the script is difficult to follow, which is absurd. Hëll, next to “Back to the Future II,” it’s a cakewalk. The future sequences all occur during a sort of permanent nighttime while the past sequences, set in 1973, are bright and daylight, so you never get confused as to where you are.
Bryan Singer has apparently a good deal to make amends for, including abandoning the franchise in order to do “Superman Returns.” The result was two films that fans deplored: not only “Superman Returns” but also “X-Men 3.” He makes up for it in spades. I’ve been to multiple showings and at every one I’ve heard fans saying, “So X3 never happened! Fantastic!”
Granted, most of the cast members of “First Class” got shafted: I haven’t seen this many characters die between films since “Alien 3” knocked off Newt and Hicks. But the ones that are left make the most of it. Favorite scenes: Double Chuck as James McAvoy winds up face to face with Patrick Stewart, giving himself a pep talk across half a century, and an action sequence shot from Quicksilver’s POV in which the speedster (Evan Peters from “Kick-Úš,” not to be confused with Kick-Úš himself who is also playing Quicksilver next year) takes out an entire room of cops to the tune of “Time in a Bottle.”
And those are just the stand out moments in a film that is filled with them. Reviewers have been bìŧçhìņg about Jennifer Lawrence’s acting for some reason. It’s nonsense. She is the lynchpin of the entire film and her waffling between being Raven and the evil Mystique is beautifully played right through to the end.
Special mention should also be made of Mark Camacho, who between superb make-up and a fantastic vocal performance has put forward THE best Richard Nixon in film history.
Don’t expect all your questions to be answered. Remember how stunned Logan was to see Charles at the end of “The Wolverine?” How did Charles survive, you may ask. Good question: No clue. No explanation is offered. Where did Kitty acquire the power to project people back in time? That has nothing to do with her power set. Good question: No clue. So if that’s going to be a problem for you, consider yourself warned.
Is it as good as “Avengers,” the gold standard of superhero films? I would have to say so. The emotional power and the story it’s telling are deep and layered. Plus, hey: No Stan Lee appearance, but extended cameos by Chris Claremont and Len Wein! What’s not to love?
PAD
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I thought Quicksilver was the standout character here. Evan Peters has charisma to spare, and the character was written beautifully. I loved his line to Magneto (“You control metal? My mom used to know a guy like that.”) and the shot later of him watching TV with his little sister.
One thing, though. They kept saying that Magneto could control metal, when he is, as every comics fan knows, the Master of Magnetism.
Chronology-wise….(spoilers)…
I suppose you could argue that The Wolverine takes place in the altered present (we only see 1973 and 2023(?)) so arguably, Logan could be surprised to see Charles and Erik for other reasons than we suspected at the airport because in this reality Jean lives and therefore so does Charles?
We already know how Professor X lived. The very last scene of X-Men 3 showed him transferring into a comatose man’s body. The only question was how he got back into a body that looked like his original.
Of course, Wolverine might not know that. So if it weren’t for the issue of Charles having his old body back, I would totally expect Wolverine to be surprised, then Charles to explain it off camera. There would be no need to repeat for the audience what was already shown in X3.
I’ve read that some scenes ended up on the cutting room floor. I suspect that some of these omissions were answered in those scenes. The movie flowed pretty well without them, so fair enough.
I saw it with friends this weekend. One friend was a little disappointed. That’s just because he really liked ASM2 and was didn’t like how this was more serious. My other friend and I liked it a lot.
I don’t get the complaints about Jennifer Lawrence either. I read an article recently about how people have decided that she’s not the Hollywood ‘It Girl’ anymore, so they’ve changed gears from gushing over her to hating her. Maybe that’s what’s going on. Personally, I always disliked the dead-eyed, silent assassin version that Rebecca Romijn played, even though I like Rebecca Romijn. I felt Lawrence was just giving us a version that isn’t emotionally dead yet, but she’s getting there. I liked her in this.
I was a *little* bothered that suddenly Kitty has time travel powers. I was less bothered by it than I was when Emma Frost suddenly got diamond skin powers in the comics. Maybe one prepared me a little for the other. There were other plot omissions, like how future Wolverine got his claws back, but I didn’t care. The movie is set slightly in the future, and I expect stuff to be different in the future.
It seems that a lot of people missed out on the fact that there was an after-credits scene in The Last Stand, which features Xavier awakening inside the body of the comatose man that Moira McTaggart was examining earlier in the film.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSkn3KYwmtc
It is confusing that Charles is in his own body afterwards, but only if you think too much into it. I didn’t allow the matter to hinder my enjoyment of the film.
I’m aware of that end but as you say, it’s unlikely that the body was an exact unwalking duplicate.
PAD
Maybe one of the writers is a Zelazny fan; in Lord of Light, which featured a fair amount of consciousness transfer, Yama explained to Sam that everyone really only has one body image; if Sam’s current body were somehow made physically immortal, it would eventually look exactly just Sam’s original body. Maybe a similar thing here.
More likely, though, wizards did it.
Andy
Apparently the DVD commentary says the body he took over was his comatose twin brother.
I do realize that 99.9% of the people who watched the movie (including myself!) did NOT listen to the commentary.
I’m pretty sure the man in the bed is Patrick Stewart. I just popped in my X-Men The Last Stand DVD and checked both the after-credits scene and the scene where Professor X is telling a group of students about this man and it does appear to be Stewart himself in the bed.
Also, in one of the commentary tracks for the classroom scene, co-writer Zak Penn (I think it’s him) says the person lying in the bed “is not some random person.”
I didn’t watch the entire movie, just checked out those scenes, but I seem to recall that it’s stated somewhere that the man in the bed is Xavier’s twin brother. Which would explain why he looks the same; but wouldn’t explain why Professor X can’t use his legs in his new body.
But then maybe some “Superboy punches” made their way into the X films. After all, in the flashback scene in The Last Stand a younger Professor X, as played by Patrick Stewart, was walking; but in both X-Men: First Class and Days of Future Past Professor X lost the use of his legs when he was even younger (and played by James McAvoy).
So who knows how much of The Last Stand remains “canon”, even without the changed history regarding the Sentinels and the war? Maybe Wolverine was just surprised to see Professor X and Magneto together at the end of The Wolverine.
One definite change concerns the relationship between Wolverine and Beast. Originally, they met for the first time in The Last Stand, but because of Wolverine’s sojourn to 1974, Beast has now known him longer.
Of course, since the Wolverine of 1974 wouldn’t know anything about the experiences of his future self, Beast could have known who he was in their meeting in The Last Stand and just pretended (along with Professor X who “introduced” them) that he didn’t.
By the way, the proper pronunciation of “Xavier” is “Zavier”, not “X-Zavier.” I know; I graduated from Xavier University. It’s annoying that people, including Patrick Stewart– who really should know better– have gotten that wrong.
Anyway…
I saw Days of Future Past on Friday. All in all, I liked it. Like Tom Keller, I’m also not sure what Magneto’s plan regarding the stadium and the White House was; but maybe, as the Rev. Wulff suggests, he was letting himself be defeated by fellow mutants so that humans would see that some mutants are “good guys” and some are “bad guys.”
Not sure how well such a plan would work, since Jeremy Arnold has a point about Nixon’s paranoia. Never mind that mystique was only targeting Dr. Trask and that in her mind Nixon (like Vir in Babylon 5) probably wouldn’t have been important enough to kill. Nixon would have believed he’d been the target, even if Mystique had killed Trask and walked away.
But then maybe Magneto figured he could either easily defeat the “good guy” mutants if necessary or that he’d eventually convince them to come over to his way of thinking. Either way, the long-term threat of the Sentinels would have been eliminated.
If I’d been Magneto, I don’t think I’d have shown myself. I’d have let everyone at the White House think the Sentinels had gotten out of control, discrediting Trask and his program. After all, if no one saw Magneto in the vicinity, Trask wouldn’t have any way to support his statement if he claimed the Sentinels were being controlled by a mutant. All available “evidence” would show that they were unreliable.
I didn’t have a problem with Kitty having the power to send Wolverine’s consciousness back into his younger body. Mainly because I’ve never read the various X books (save for one or two issues years ago), so I didn’t have any preconceived notions about her abilities. I suspect it wouldn’t have been a problem for most of the audience, either. as PAD noted in his “Ultimate Marvel and redefining Comics for Adults” column, the various X titles were apparently not all that accessible to new readers in 2000. I suspect that hasn’t changed in the interim. I’ve no clue who most of the characters in the future scenes are (other than those from the previous films) and I doubt most people in the theater did, either. They were probably just enjoying the film.
I guessed correctly at Bishop’s identity, having seen him in a comic (or an ad for a comic or some such), but I’ve no idea what his real name is or his powers or how true to the comics the character is in the film. And it doesn’t matter. The films are their own thing.
Still, it would be a smart move on Marvel’s part, however (and DC’s with respect to their films), to not only encourage movie-goers to read the comics, but also make the comics accessible to the general public.
Rick.
Not having seen DoFP yet, myself, it’s my understanding that the confusion comes, not from having missed the post-credits sequence in Last Stand, but in that the time travel shenanigans of DoFP erases most, if not all, of Last Stand’s events. Thus, people are unsure of why Wolverine would be surprised to see Xavier alive.
–Daryl
Logan’s surprise at the end of The Wolverine happened before the time travel of DOFP. Logan’s reaction to the new timeline happens at the end of DOFP.
Gotta say, I was kind of disappointed. Mostly with the ending. Magneto’s plans, evil as they are, will usually work. At the end of this movie, I couldn’t even tell you what his plan IS! If his plan is to kill the President and a bunch of other people and that will make humans leave mutants alone, uh, are you nuts, Eric? If anything, this will make the Sentinel program be even more accelerated! Can anyone tell me what he was thinking?
The plan might have been for the X-Men (if you want to call them that in this movie) to appear to win, thereby showing the government “You don’t need giant robots to stop ‘evil’ mutants, there are other mutants that will rise to the occasion.”
Oh! There was one plot hole that bugged me.
“These sentinels don’t have any metal in them.”
Really? So they don’t have wires or circuitry?
Yes, but they may be made of a metal that is non-magnetic. A few already exists : gold, for exemple, if I’m not mistaken. And it’s used in wires and circuitry already.
I did a double take at Kitty’s time travel powers, but just figured they didn’t want to mess with a time machine or anything like that. I rationalized it as an extension/expansion of her phasing powers because maybe they kind of shift people ever so slightly in time? I dunno. Worked for me.
I really enjoyed the movie; my only real complaint is it should have been rated R. (spoilers) Having anyone, but especially recognizable heroes, ripped in half, beheaded and dismembered I think earns that. Even though it’s ultimately a parent’s responsibility, we know people will think “comics” and “PG-13” and bring younger kids
No, it doesn’t earn it for a specific reason: No blood. Characters were dismembered and stabbed and all sorts of horrible things, but they didn’t bleed a drop. The lack of blood was the reason it didn’t get an R.
PAD
They certainly used every cuss word in the book!
(not that I mind- I was just surprised to hear them, that’s all)
PG-13 movies get to use the F-word exactly once. It’s a strangely precise rule, considering that the rules on violence are so slippery. Avengers almost got an R rating for having the blade go through Coulson’s chest, even without blood.
Yeah, I was surprised by how disturbing some of those death scenes were, especially Colossus, Warpath, and Iceman. I was troubled by them even as an adult; as a kid, I would have been traumatized.
Hey! I read an interview done with some of the folks from the film and they said the explanation for the Prof’s body is that they figured there was a mutant who could do something like that (I would assume Masque) and that that was what had happened. Explained in the movie? No. But it fits more or less. As for Kitty’s new ability, they said they took liberty from Grant Morrison’s run of X-Men with the secondary mutation, saying she could phase people through physical matter, the leap would be should could now phase people’s consciousness through time and space (?). As a geek, I get it, but still….it should somehow both have been addressed.
I wish Mark Camacho had played Nixon in the Watchmen movie. The Watchmen Nixon was obviously overlu-made-up. But then so was Carla Gugino as the aged Silk Spectre.
I’ve always taken that while Kitty can phase through solid objects, that with focus she can phase through time itself. At least that was how I rationalized it.
That’s what comic-geeky me figured. Kitty’s power is to “phase” freely thru physical matter. One could extend that to it’s full potential (something done with several characters in comics before, starting with Swamp Thing)
Sp it turns out she’s really able to phase freely not just thru space, but thru time. (It’s just another dimension, after all.)
Can anyone tell me what Magneto was thinking at the end? When I saw him hiding the steel inside of the Sentinels, I thought he had a clever plan to make the Sentinel program blow up in Trask’s face and discredit the whole thing on national TV while the X-Men save the day. Clever move, I thought. Maybe not the most dramatic, but clever and sensible.
But… then he moves RFK stadium around the White House to create a cage and begins to execute the President and his cabinet in the name of all mutants. This was an idiotic move for a character who’s supposedly highly intelligent.
It made the eventual resolution with Mystique saving the President hard to swallow because now we’re supposed to believe that the notoriously paranoid Richard Nixon would just accept that he was nearly assassinated by a godlike mutant and forgive all of mutantkind because one of them saved him (then let his would-be murderer get away scott-free to do it again)? Really?
This rang very hollow for me and tarnished so much of an otherwise decent film. If anything, it seems it would have led him to begin a war on mutants in earnest and escalate things to a level that would make the Sentinels look like Care Bears.
At least the movie undid the godawful X3 and Wolverine movies, so there’s that, but where do they think they can take this now that the reset button has been hit? With all of these actors aging quickly, becoming more expensive, and tiring of the roles, the reunited cast of Singer’s earlier films can’t really be counted on to carry this series much further, and what now becomes of the First Class cast, most of whom died off camera as you pointed out?
I liked it, but I’m left scratching my head about so much in this film…
One thing I’ve learned to accept in real life is that intelligent people are not exempt from making idiotic moves. If anything, they’re just better at rationalizing them.
Thank you! That’s my gripe about the movie as well. And, now that I’m thinking about it: How did Magneto help them AT ALL?! He started screwing them over immediately and was no help with Mystique!
I couldn’t understand out what Magneto was trying to accomplish at the end either. I think I figured it out, though.
He’s been consistently played, chronologically after First Class, as being of the opinion that war with the Humanity is inevitable. I think that he was trying to accelerate the start of the war to a time when mutants had a distinct advantage. Killing Nixon might have thrown the U.S. Government into Chaos and he had just shown that he could control the Sentinels despite the precautions they’d taken to specifically protect them from him, so the whole program is probably going to be junked. If there’s going to be a war anyway, he probably figured that it was better that it happen in 1973 before humanity became more technologically advanced and thus more capable of fighting mutant powers.
Just my two cents.
I’m pretty sure that the cast from the original trilogy is now retired from the franchise. Their role in this flick was to get the audience to buy into these newer characters (Faasbender, McAvoy, Lawrence, etc): especially since First Class wasn’t a huge ticket mover
Moving forward, the next films out will probably introduce a younger Storm, Cyclops, Jean, etc. played by new/younger actors.
I loved this movie, which was a nice surprise since my initial reaction when it was announced was that it was going to be terrible. After giving the series a fresh start with “First Class”, why go back to the muddled continuity of the original series?
I was glad that they did. The film takes the core of the original two-part comic and ties it into the film series nicely. The idea that Xavier’s dream is essentially stillborn after world events divide the team gives the movie emotional weight. We’re disappointed that the optimism of the first film is lost, but we’re supposed to be.
I didn’t mind the unanswered questions. Clearly some time has passed between X3 and the future timeline, and it’s a big, crazy, mutant and mad-scientist filled world. Kitty’s new powers make sense; we have already seen other mutants develop additional powers and refine the ones we have (Jean Grey, Ice Man discovering his ice form, etc). As for Xavier’s return to his body, I was more than happy to just go with it.
It made sense that 70’s Magneto would go for a dramatic display of defiance after learning what the future holds. After all, in his mind this is proof that he was right all along, so why hold back? Actually, using the Sentinels against humans was a smart plan to discredit the program. Future Magneto sees his own role in the dystopia that came later, but this Magneto is young, arrogant, and prone to extravagant displays of power. If this film has a fault, it’s that the story forces Ian McKellan to be more subdued, a shame because it’s always a treat to see him play Magneto with Shakespearean grandeur.
Truly a remarkable movie!
Hugh Jackman clearly has the acting chops to carry the movie!
The ending where he is overcome by seeing Jean (and even Scott) was quite touching!
As PAD said, this stands right next to Avengers!
I was fortunate enuff to attend the NY Premiere of X-Men: DoFP at the Jacob Javits Center a few weeks back. All the stars were there and I had a great spot lined up along the fencing to toss a few words and snap pics.
Now up until this point I had totally stayed away from casting/spoilery internet stuff so I had no idea who was in the movie except for the obvious big guns. So is it weird that when Peter Dinklage walks up to me, my first reaction is ‘oh I didn’t know Pip the troll was in this. Guess PAD called that one.’
On Charles body swap…the comics show he often projects appearances into people minds to hide costumes or Kurt’s blue skin. My theory is that he was actually in his replacement body from X3 but projected his old appearance/likeness into everyone’s mind.
Well all the plot holes and hand waving was worth it just to get Cyke back..
It’s probably a good thing that they showed Wolverine surviving his plunge into the depths, (even if I’m not sure he actually could,) as otherwise there could have been an alternative reading to the ending that Wolverine actually did die, and that this was him being reunited with everybody in some form of afterlife! Especially since it was shot in a very dream like way..
(Apologies for mistyping my name when I tried to post this earlier, but anyway spoilers ahead..)
Well all the plot holes and hand waving was worth it just to get Cyke back..
It’s probably a good thing that they showed Wolverine surviving his plunge into the depths, (even if I’m not sure he actually could,) as otherwise there could have been an alternative reading to the ending that Wolverine actually did die, and that this was him being reunited with everybody in some form of afterlife! Especially since it was shot in a very dream like way..
I explained Kitty’s new powers to myself like this: Her known ability it to phase through matter, which can be seen as a mastery of space, in that she’s able to occupy and pass through the same space as another object. So what if in the future she learns that her powers aren’t just limited to phasing through, space, but through time as well? It’s not a stretch to assume that her powers can’t cover both halves of our 4D reality. This allows her to phase a consciousness through time, and that solves that.
I explained it this way:
.
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The film makers wanted to give a nod to Kitty, acknowledging that she was originally the person who traveled back in time. So they gave her the power to do it.
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(It’s similar to the way that they had bishop act as the person who traveled through time for short distances).
And hasn’t Quicksilver always been a rather haughty, arrogant fellow? Here he seems to be channeling Impulse!
My fear is that Quicksilver, who is now experiencing a Loki-like surge in popularity after this weekend, will be taken from All-New X-Factor and placed on a title with the words “X-Men” on the cover. It would make good business sense for Marvel, but sucks for us X-Factor fans.
What they should do is promote Quicksilver on the covers of X-Factor (All-New X-Factor: featuring Quicksilver).
Same fear with Gambit: it was recently announced that Tatum Channing is the new Gambit: expect the character to get super popular again.
They might move Gambit to a more high profile X-book, but I’m not that worried about it since the X-Men films are made by Fox and not by Marvel Studios. If anything, Marvel and Disney are happy that he is less in the spotlight and not ‘promoting’ films made by a competitor. I’m a bit worried about Quicksilver though since he is appearing in Avengers 2 next year.
At the very least, I’ll keep enjoying the current X-Factor stories (which are just so much fun to read, definitely one of the best series that I’m reading) and not worry too much about what might or might not happen.
I think X3 left me feeling kind of wounded. That’s why the epilogue to DOFP was such a relief to me. It was exactly what I wanted the movie to do, but didn’t dare hope for due to past disappointment.
Speaking of “hope,” does it seem lately that Marvel and Marvel-based movies are responding to Man of Steel? First there was the whole Captain America *not* snapping Bucky’s neck, then there’s DOFP’s use of the theme. I don’t think I realized how crucial hope was to the superhero mythos until Man of Steel delivered on the exact opposite.
On the point raised earlier that Xavier is pronounced ‘Zavier’ and the poster being annoyed that Patrick Stewart gets it wrong. It is clear that he has been told to pronounce it as X-avier for the films. Because he pronounces it as ‘Zavier’ in interviews.
And does anyone know where Quicksilver got a Walkman and in ear headphones from in 1973? I know Sentinels didn’t exist then either before anyone makes that comment.
Well, the kid in the Towering Inferno (filmed in 1974) had an earphone radio. I guess Quicksilver got a similar model, a portable radio and earphones (which BTW have been around since 1943).
Whatever he has, it’s clear he’s modified it to play really, really fast.
How else could it get thru much of Time in a Bottle in the fraction of a second it took him to take out the guards?
He had it on fast forward.