X-Men: Days of Future Past (spoilers included)

Cafe Society
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I’ll probably have light spoilers in the first paragraph (not including this), but heavy spoilers in the last one. So, skip that last one if you haven’t seen it yet. This was well worth seeing. In the list of 2014 action movies I have seen. I would put this ahead of Amazing Spider-Man, but behind Captain America. (Watching the Guardians of the Galaxy trailer before the movie made me unreasonably excited to see that. I hope it lives up to the hype I have built up in my head.)

I went to see the movie at the 10 o’clock screening last night. It was very fun. It might be Singer’s best X-Men effort. He did a good job combining the worlds of his early X-Men movies with Matthew Vaughn’s X-Men First Class into one film. There were plenty of non-subtle signs that the film was set in the '70s, but it never felt like they were too over the top with it. The plot was similar to the comic book story of the same name, but different enough that you really didn’t have any idea where they were going with it, simply from the source material. The script itself was flexibly written. There were long stretches of dramatic dialog pontificating on the nature of a person and whether or not one could change their future, right alongside one liners about Wolverine’s claws and KAPOW action scenes that will knock you out of your seat. The design of the Sentinels both in the present, and in the future was pretty cool. Peter Dinklage as Trask was admirable. The character, as written, was excessively evil, but he was able to infuse humanity into the role. The rest of the cast was good, as well. In the future, it seemed like only Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen were given a chance to act (really. Why should anyone else bother when those two are there?). But, in the past, everyone had plenty of room for their roles and they all did a good job with parts that were well written.

MCU is doing the best job with their Marvel movies. Of course, they have more characters to work with, and they’ve enlisted some of the best talent out there to work on the films. With this and First Class, though, Fox has started to do a good job of putting together an X-Men universe. I don’t know if it will be able to withstand a movie a year. But, this was good enough that it’s making me consider to go back and watch last year’s Wolverine movie. So, we’ll see what the future will bring. And, I’m really happy to see Fox pick up doing an aftercredits scene. Although, one of you smarter comic book people is going to have to let me know what that was referencing.

Being a time travel movie they had plenty of chances to do winking references to future events. The end of the movie felt a lot like Marty McFly coming back home at the end of Back to the Future. Only instead of a truck, Wolverine got Jean Grey. Do you think Singer considering titling this movie “Fuck you Brett Ratner. I’m going to specifically make everything you did not exist?” and couldn’t use it because it was too long? I didn’t care for Last Stand, and I am glad Singer had a chance to come back and put things to how they were before he left. I wish a future movie with the original X-Men cast was planned, but I doubt that is going to happen. It was great to see Jannsen and Marsden reprise their roles, even if only for 2 minutes.

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I just got back from my showing, and I loved it. All of the action scenes were great, especially the opening one and the Quicksilver one. Whoever designed every move Blink did has played a lot of Portal :slight_smile:

Here’s a follow-up on the end-credits teaser: 6 Important Things About The End-Credits Teaser For "X-Men: Days Of Future Past"

I’ve never been an X-Men person (I’m a DC Junkie), so I didn’t immediately recognize who that was, either. I, um… actually thought it was a chick. With full, luscious, ScarJo lips. That dude has better lips than I can achieve with makeup.

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I really liked it.
It is an excellent sequel to X-Men: First Class but don’t hurt your brain trying to figure out how it fits with the rest of the X-Men film continuity.

Since I really have no complaints about the film as it stands on its own, I’ll get nitpicky about some series continuity issues. Maybe someone can point out to me that there’s something important that I just totally missed.

At the end of The Last Stand, we find out that Professor X saved himself from dying by transferring his consciousness into another body. At the end of the second Wolverine movie, we see the Professor (and see that Wolverine is surprised that the Professor isn’t dead) and the Professor has his pre-JeanMakeGoBOOM body. He says to Wolverine “I’ll explain” but his explanation must have come between the end of the that movie and the start of this movie- because the audience gets no explanation. They can’t have just completely thrown out The Last Stand because- until the completed altering of 1973- Jean and Scott are both still dead in “the present” as was also the reality in the second Wolverine movie (which, again, also shows that Wolverine thought the Professor was dead).

So, The Last Stand stilled happened (until “new 1973” anyway).

X-Men Origins: Wolverine is pretty much completely thrown out altogether. This is fine by me because I hated that movie. In that movie, during Vietnam Stryker is much farther along in his military career than he is in this new movie. Also, in this movie Wolverine is working as a bodyguard in New York City in 1973- now, he very well may have been involved in the war in Vietnam earlier in the conflict but we completely jettison the history of Stryker getting Wolverine (and Sabertooth) out of a military prison after a failed firing squad attempt at execution. No more Wolverine leaving his time in Vietnam to begin working on Stryker’s team.

It’s in original 1973 that Mystique kills Trask- thus jumpstarting the sentinel program and the . . . let’s say “Police State” applied to mutants. The actual war on mutants with the super advanced sentinels started relatively recently- say, sometime after The Last Stand. Maybe just about to start at the end of the second Wolverine movie- in this new movie the “present” seems to be at least a few years after last summer’s Wolverine movie. HOWEVER, in the first X-Men movie the Mutant Registration Act seems to be the kick-off of the government’s actions to deal with mutants. It definitely does not feel like it takes place in a reality that was already 30 years into its sentinel program!

In the original trilogy, Mystique is devoted to Magneto- she practically worships him.
In X-Men: First Class, we see that there’s a good person deep down inside but we see character development that fully explains how she came to grow into her decision to turn away from Charles and to then follow Magneto. That should have been the first step on her path of devotion in following Magneto. Now we find out she was only with him for a year and then 10 years later is completely disenchanted with Magneto and the she turns on him at the very end!!! This character arc makes a wonderful sequel to First Class but it is a terrible prequel to the original trilogy. One could argue that subsequent events in their relationship were changed once he tried to kill her- but it is clear that she no longer intends to follow him even as they’re first reunited, even as she first finds that he is out of prison.

Stryker fishing Wolverine out of the river at the end makes for great prequel continuity . . . except we then see that it is not Stryker, it is Mystique disguised as Stryker!!! I’m not making any sense out of that.
Again, I loved it as a movie that stands on its own and it is a great sequel to First Class. I just felt like pointing out hard it can really hurt your brain trying to put it all into continuity.

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I’ve only seen the trailer for this one, but some of the things in there have got me thinking I may be disappointed. Are these issues addressed in the movie - no need to offer specific spoilers, just a simple yes or no should do:

1.) Charles Xavier is alive (as Patrick Stewart) - is this explained?
2.) Does old Magneto have his powers back? (We did see a glimmer of them returning at the end of Last Stand, so it’s not really a stretch if he does have them. But that means we can get all of the other mutants who were injected with the serum back too, right?)
3.) With both Scott Summers and Jean Grey dead by the end of the first run of movies, there’s no Rachel Summers around in future New York to send Wolverine (and that’s something else - there was a very good reason for Kitty Pryde to be the one to go back into her younger self, but that’s probably unfair to compare the comic arc with the movie) back into his younger self. Is there a new character introduced who has the ability to do this (I’ve read that Scarlet Witch is in here for a little bit), or is some other way this is done?

That should cover my biggest questions for now.

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  1. No. It is not explained.
    2). Yes. Old Magneto has his powers back.
    3.) Another character sends him back. And they give a good excuse for why only Wolverine can do it.
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Yes. He first shows up at the end of last summer’s Wolverine movie but it is not explained in neither last summer’s movie nor in this new one.

Yes, but that “glimmer” at the end of The Last Stand is the only explanation we get.

Another character does it.
EDITED upon realizing Sean Factotum wanted yes or no answers without spoilers.

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According to Wiki, the same actor is signed to play Quicksilver in the next X-Men movie too (and at the end of Days of Future Past he’s shown to have a little sister). I thought it was absolutely prohibited for both this franchise and the Avengers franchise to use any of the same characters (yes, I realize they’re technically not mutants in the Avengers movies.)

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Yeah. I don’t have anything for you when it comes to the first X-Men movie not having Sentinels (when they had them already in '73!) or why Professor Xavier was in his own body.

The Mystique thing makes sense to me. In the timeline where she kills Trask. She goes on to kill many other people before she is captured. Let’s say she kills Trask and keeps going down that road of killing for Mutantkind until Magneto gets out of jail somehow. When they finally meet she is a changed person too far gone to go back to her old self. (Until her son convinces her to throw Magneto down a shaft and she is redeemed for all times.) But, in the new, Wolverine improved timeline, she sees Professor X the same time as she sees Magneto, and he speaks to her better nature and brings the goodness out in her.
But, that really brings out another thing. In the original X-Men why isn’t Professor X pained every time he sees Mystique? Prequels ruin continuity every time! But, they are still fun.

And, the Mystique Stryker rescues Wolverine from the Weapon-X pain, so he never goes through that process and has bone claws forever and ever. That’s what I took out of that scene, but other than that I’m not sure.

Yup. That is exactly what I read. As long as they don’t mention that they are Mutants MCU can use them as much as they want.

I really though Quicksilver was awesome in this movie. The actor was great, and the interaction he had with all the characters was wonderfully funny. But, his inclusion (well actually, exclusion) was a weak point for me. “Hey, we just met this character who is awesome and can stop bullets and get into places we can get into and totally kick ass! And, now we are going into a really difficult mission. So anyway. Goodbye Quicksilver.” I guess they didn’t want to get this teenager into harm’s way. Or maybe they thought Magneto might lead him to do bad things. I don’t know. But, wouldn’t he have been useful when Mystique jumped out that window?

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If you’re going to nit-pick continuity errors, remember that we DO count X-Men, X2, and The Wolverine, but NOT X3 or X-Men Origins: Wolverine!

It’s getting just to be like comics, pick and choose continuity :slight_smile: (Also ignore that scenes from X-3 and Origins were used in Wolverine flashbacks.)

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I think that article is pointing out that the ending of Days of Future Past gets rid of X3, not that it never existed in the first place. As you said, Wolverine remembers events from that film happening in this one.

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Well, that would be right kind of her but she really doesn’t know who Wolverine is. In 1973, as far as she knows Wolverine is just the new muscle that Xavier travels with.

She’s done her own research over the previous 10 years as to who are the big threats to mutants, but Stryker hasn’t yet begun the mutant focused part of his career- other than working for Trask (when Mystique steals Stryker’s mutant detainees in the beginning of the film, Stryker is only there to collect them upon instructions from Trask). So she doesn’t even have reason to recognize Stryker as someone anyone needs to be rescued from- the Mutant X program is just a glimmer in Stryker’s eye at this point.

[QUOTE=pricciar]
Goodbye Quicksilver." I guess they didn’t want to get this teenager into harm’s way. Or maybe they thought Magneto might lead him to do bad things. I don’t know.
[/QUOTE]

Wiki says that Quicksilver made a comment in the movie alluding to knowledge that Magneto is his father. Whatever it may have been, it flew past me. Anyone catch it?

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Yep. Quicksilver says as an aside that his Mother used to know a guy that could control metal. You’re not alone, I went with two other people and the post film pub discussion revealed that only two of us picked up on it.

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Favorite “little” moment from the film - Wolverine visibly prepares himself for a grilling as he’s about to walk through a metal detector and… nothing! Loved his moment of “Oh, right.”

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I really enjoyed this. It worked as a sequel to First Class and as a link to the original run of movies. And for a movie with two eras, young and old versions of characters and and end of the world story line, it felt very tightly constructed.

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Why? Adamanitum does not show up?

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Doesn’t have it yet.

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In the movie (and in the comic storyline it’s based on), time travel consists of sending one’s consciousness back to their past body. DoFP takes place before Wolverine had his procedure done in the late 70’s/early 80’s. He has his healing factor and bone claws, but not adamantium skeleton.

With Mystique recovering Wolverine at the end of the film instead of Maj. Stryker, I wonder if that is implying that Wolverine will now never have been involved in the Weapon X project.

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And also his surprise when his bone claws appear instead of adamantium covered ones.

Additionally, I was surprised at how much abuse his bone claws could handle when attacking metal. Surely they should have broken?

In other news, right-clicking shows that OSX can spell-check adamantium correctly. Awesome.

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Who was sitting in Peter’s lap? Wanda is his twin. It couldn’t have been Polaris, could it?

Looking forward to the follow-on from the end credits scene.

I’m hoping that Mystique took Wolverine somewhere where he can get adamantium bones and claws without the pain involved from Stryker.

Will they find Jason Stryker and help him, now that he isn’t brain wiped yet?

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I am wondering how they will handle Apocalypse. As I recall that was another Time Travel story. I can’t imagine they will do a second one.