At moments there was enough team work to call this X-Men
I saw X-Men: Days of Future Past last weekend. It was the first one in a long while I saw in the cinema and it was very entertaining movie.
With all the talk about how many mutants they squeezed into this it doesn't feel overcrowded at all. This means of course that most of the appearances are very short but everyone gets their cool moment.
[Spoilers for Days of Future Past]The whole film is choke full of references - from Charles and Eric playing chess to Wolverine getting flashbacks to the Weapon X when he sees young Stryker - and cool moments - especially the Sentinel fight scenes. From the old guard - Magneto, Storm, Iceman and finally Kitty Pryde to the just introduced Bishop, Warpath and most of all Blink - we get to see how cool their powers can be and it's pretty awesome. Blinks multiple interlacing portals are used very Portal like and it's really cool to watch. Quicksilver is as much fun as all the reviews say and has one of the greatest effects in the movie. His powers are also utilised to maximum - from vibrations destroying things to the running on the walls moving frozen objects part.
The Sentinels designs look very well. The 70 are a lot like the classic comic book design. The future ones look a lot like many recent designs (I think Thor 1 started it) which will probably date this aesthetic but they are still very cool and a pretty scary, unstoppable force.
The future at the end was a little too saccharine but the cameos at the end made up for all of it. I wasn't expecting it but I suppose it's a way of saying X3 didn't happen. Also it felt really good to see them both again.
Of course the plot is only tentatively connected to the comic book storyline. It's mostly done by eliminating female characters from the story. I didn't expect them to introduce Rachel but it seemed like the time projection powers have been given to Kitty as consolation prize (also because randomly picked Kitty Prydes managed to become famous in the meantime). I also wish they didn't cut Rogue out so completely. It would be nice if she could've been there with Logan since they shared so much in this movie continuity. There are five main characters in this story (the ones who stay from beginning to end of the main plot) - Xavier and Magneto (Past and Future versions), Wolverine, Beast and one lone female character - Mystique. She is the best part of the movie (not Quicksilver as many say even though he was the second best - Blink was the third). She is the one who does things, helps (her) people and changes the world but she is the only one female.
Logan and Hank are there mostly for exposition. Logan explains the plot so the band can get together. Hank is there to tell us what changed in the 10 years since First Class and take care of Xavier. The main bulk of the movie concentrates on Xavier and Eric and "wrongness of their ways". Both Magneto and Professor X spend most of the film wallowing in self-pity, anger and rhetoric and, of course the manpain. Each of them completely fails to save the world and both seem pretty delusional. Charles wants to forgive and forget all the Trask did to mutants even though the guy still bent on doing it again. Not even touching the fact that he never did anything while it was happening to people he knew. Instead he was getting jacked up on a drug that allowed him to walk and getting angry at everyone for not liking him more. Eric just goes on a rampage proving Trask right as if he's hell bent on making that Sentinel future happen (breaking him out of the prison just makes everything worse). I ended up deeply disliking both younger versions. Luckily sirs Patrick and Ian make everything better just by being there.
In this it seemed ridiculous that they could be the ones chosen to stop Raven. She is the one who rescues her fellow mutants from being experimented on (including her First Class classmate Havok). She finds out what Trask did to those he got in his labs. The fact that noone seemed to think that exposing him as someone who experimented on people and tortured them to death would be enough to stop him (at least back then the Senate (or was it Congress?) committees weren't completely evil as the chairman refers to the mutants as people and citizens). She kicks both Xavier's and Eric's asses and fights to make her own choices. I'm with everyone who wants her to get her own film.
So I agree with io9 that this is a very good action movie and I agree with The Mary Sue that there's too much manpain in it and with blastr that it could use some more Rogue and with tor.com about the awful track record Charles Xavier has with women in his life. I also agree with them that it's very fun to watch and you want more. So I'm now all excited about The Age of Apocalypse and the 80s. And that Mystique movie please (wouldn't it be fun if the X-Men universe would be the first one with a film about female superhero?)
If only someone could explain to me why all the reviewer love to put the most spoilerish picture at the beginning of their reviews?
With all the talk about how many mutants they squeezed into this it doesn't feel overcrowded at all. This means of course that most of the appearances are very short but everyone gets their cool moment.
[Spoilers for Days of Future Past]The whole film is choke full of references - from Charles and Eric playing chess to Wolverine getting flashbacks to the Weapon X when he sees young Stryker - and cool moments - especially the Sentinel fight scenes. From the old guard - Magneto, Storm, Iceman and finally Kitty Pryde to the just introduced Bishop, Warpath and most of all Blink - we get to see how cool their powers can be and it's pretty awesome. Blinks multiple interlacing portals are used very Portal like and it's really cool to watch. Quicksilver is as much fun as all the reviews say and has one of the greatest effects in the movie. His powers are also utilised to maximum - from vibrations destroying things to the running on the walls moving frozen objects part.
The Sentinels designs look very well. The 70 are a lot like the classic comic book design. The future ones look a lot like many recent designs (I think Thor 1 started it) which will probably date this aesthetic but they are still very cool and a pretty scary, unstoppable force.
The future at the end was a little too saccharine but the cameos at the end made up for all of it. I wasn't expecting it but I suppose it's a way of saying X3 didn't happen. Also it felt really good to see them both again.
Of course the plot is only tentatively connected to the comic book storyline. It's mostly done by eliminating female characters from the story. I didn't expect them to introduce Rachel but it seemed like the time projection powers have been given to Kitty as consolation prize (also because randomly picked Kitty Prydes managed to become famous in the meantime). I also wish they didn't cut Rogue out so completely. It would be nice if she could've been there with Logan since they shared so much in this movie continuity. There are five main characters in this story (the ones who stay from beginning to end of the main plot) - Xavier and Magneto (Past and Future versions), Wolverine, Beast and one lone female character - Mystique. She is the best part of the movie (not Quicksilver as many say even though he was the second best - Blink was the third). She is the one who does things, helps (her) people and changes the world but she is the only one female.
Logan and Hank are there mostly for exposition. Logan explains the plot so the band can get together. Hank is there to tell us what changed in the 10 years since First Class and take care of Xavier. The main bulk of the movie concentrates on Xavier and Eric and "wrongness of their ways". Both Magneto and Professor X spend most of the film wallowing in self-pity, anger and rhetoric and, of course the manpain. Each of them completely fails to save the world and both seem pretty delusional. Charles wants to forgive and forget all the Trask did to mutants even though the guy still bent on doing it again. Not even touching the fact that he never did anything while it was happening to people he knew. Instead he was getting jacked up on a drug that allowed him to walk and getting angry at everyone for not liking him more. Eric just goes on a rampage proving Trask right as if he's hell bent on making that Sentinel future happen (breaking him out of the prison just makes everything worse). I ended up deeply disliking both younger versions. Luckily sirs Patrick and Ian make everything better just by being there.
In this it seemed ridiculous that they could be the ones chosen to stop Raven. She is the one who rescues her fellow mutants from being experimented on (including her First Class classmate Havok). She finds out what Trask did to those he got in his labs. The fact that noone seemed to think that exposing him as someone who experimented on people and tortured them to death would be enough to stop him (at least back then the Senate (or was it Congress?) committees weren't completely evil as the chairman refers to the mutants as people and citizens). She kicks both Xavier's and Eric's asses and fights to make her own choices. I'm with everyone who wants her to get her own film.
So I agree with io9 that this is a very good action movie and I agree with The Mary Sue that there's too much manpain in it and with blastr that it could use some more Rogue and with tor.com about the awful track record Charles Xavier has with women in his life. I also agree with them that it's very fun to watch and you want more. So I'm now all excited about The Age of Apocalypse and the 80s. And that Mystique movie please (wouldn't it be fun if the X-Men universe would be the first one with a film about female superhero?)
If only someone could explain to me why all the reviewer love to put the most spoilerish picture at the beginning of their reviews?