X-Men: Days of Future Past
[Warning: Contains Spoilers]
My blogging is a little behind again, so it may take a little extra effort to figure out what I want to say about this movie. I think we should start at the beginning; that's always the best place to start.
The film opens in a futuristic world that is so fictional that I couldn't help but ask, "How far into the future is this supposed to be taking place?" And the answer is apparently not as far as you'd expect it to be, since the characters are all ones we've met before and they're only older because of the time that passed between making the earlier movies and this one. Luckily, most of the movie is set in the past. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
In the future, mutants are being hunted by robots called sentinels. They apparently even started to hunt and kill people who might become mutants. The sentinels can absorb and use mutant powers, so Kitty Pryde saves the group by sending someone back in time to prevent them from ever being found by sentinels in the first place. Things are apocalyptic, and the surviving X-Men go into hiding in the mountains somewhere.
Professor X realizes that they can use Kitty's powers to go back and stop the sentinels from ever being made. Wolverine volunteers to go as his healing powers will prevent him from getting seriously hurt in the process. So he goes to 1973 to stop Mystique from assassinating the sentinel's creator and getting herself arrested, thus spurring on anti-mutant movements and providing the new creators with her DNA so that they can make the sentinels more advanced.
Things get interesting when Wolverine, his future consciousness now in his body in 1973, goes to get Xavier's help. Not yet a member of the X-Men yet, Wolverine is a stranger to everyone. He finds young Hank and Xavier alone in the mansion, Xavier drinking away his life while hank tries to help him. Hank found a serum to control his powers, and altered it to treat Xavier's paralysis but at the cost of his telepathy.
The guys recruit Quicksilver to help them break Magneto out of prison in the Pentagon, with the hopes that he can help, at least in dealing with Mystique. The best moment of the movie comes when Quicksilver runs around the kitchen messing with the guards who are shooting at their group as they try to escape the building. He turns people's weapons on themselves, knocks bullets out of the way, that sort of thing.
The next best moment comes when the men finally find and confront Mystique. She refuses to be dissuaded from her plan to murder, and a fight breaks out. Unfortunately, in that moment Wolverine's time travelling goes awry. He sees Stryker, remembers the experiments that the man performed on him, and then basically loses the connection with his past self when he passes out. Young Wolverine, not having all of the same memories, has no idea where he is and why, nor does he recognize the people around him. Xavier tells him that he was given some bad acid, and he passes out again.
Anyways, long story short, the situation gets much worse. Magneto shoots Mystique, she runs, he follows, and Hank tries to stop him from committing murder just to prevent another murder. People see them, cameras capture the scene. Not good. Wolverine finally regains consciousness in his younger body, but Magneto and Mystique have escaped. In trying to prevent the future, they cause it anyways. They seem dangerous, and Mystique's blood is collected because of her gunshot wound. It would appear that even the X-Men can only do so much to change time.
Magneto, obviously, doesn't stick to the plan very long and goes rogue. Xavier, obviously, comes around on his attempts to block out his pain and his powers (although this involves a weird telepathic conversation with his future self while reading Wolverine's mind...say what?!). There is a final showdown at the press conference to address the whole mutant-sentinel situation, and flash-forwards show that the situation in the future is getting worse very quickly. Like really bad, everyone dying kind of worse. Luckily, Mystique helps her old friends take down Magneto and rights the wrong that she otherwise would have caused in the future.
This is when Wolverine wakes up in the mansion in a new future where somehow everyone is alive, including Jean and Scott. I assume it's a time-ripple effect kind of thing. Mystique changed history, therefore everything changed. And by this point I no longer have any idea where we sit in the scheme of things, how the timelines all fit, when and where the following movies will take place (no, I still haven't seen them).
What I liked about this movie was getting to have the young and old versions of Magneto and Professor X because I love them both so much. Dislikes? Confusing timelines and not knowing what has actually happened in the rewritten past. I understand that this was an attempt to reboot/restart the franchise without ignoring the existence of the earliest trilogy, and it was clever enough. But it is a little frustrating to have them decide that the storyline of First Class is now the only one still relevant to any of the following films, since the events of X-Men, X2 and X-Men: The Last Stand have been erased. They were a little cheesy, but I loved them (mostly the first two). Nonetheless, this left me looking forward to future installments in the series.
My blogging is a little behind again, so it may take a little extra effort to figure out what I want to say about this movie. I think we should start at the beginning; that's always the best place to start.
The film opens in a futuristic world that is so fictional that I couldn't help but ask, "How far into the future is this supposed to be taking place?" And the answer is apparently not as far as you'd expect it to be, since the characters are all ones we've met before and they're only older because of the time that passed between making the earlier movies and this one. Luckily, most of the movie is set in the past. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
In the future, mutants are being hunted by robots called sentinels. They apparently even started to hunt and kill people who might become mutants. The sentinels can absorb and use mutant powers, so Kitty Pryde saves the group by sending someone back in time to prevent them from ever being found by sentinels in the first place. Things are apocalyptic, and the surviving X-Men go into hiding in the mountains somewhere.
Professor X realizes that they can use Kitty's powers to go back and stop the sentinels from ever being made. Wolverine volunteers to go as his healing powers will prevent him from getting seriously hurt in the process. So he goes to 1973 to stop Mystique from assassinating the sentinel's creator and getting herself arrested, thus spurring on anti-mutant movements and providing the new creators with her DNA so that they can make the sentinels more advanced.
Things get interesting when Wolverine, his future consciousness now in his body in 1973, goes to get Xavier's help. Not yet a member of the X-Men yet, Wolverine is a stranger to everyone. He finds young Hank and Xavier alone in the mansion, Xavier drinking away his life while hank tries to help him. Hank found a serum to control his powers, and altered it to treat Xavier's paralysis but at the cost of his telepathy.
The guys recruit Quicksilver to help them break Magneto out of prison in the Pentagon, with the hopes that he can help, at least in dealing with Mystique. The best moment of the movie comes when Quicksilver runs around the kitchen messing with the guards who are shooting at their group as they try to escape the building. He turns people's weapons on themselves, knocks bullets out of the way, that sort of thing.
The next best moment comes when the men finally find and confront Mystique. She refuses to be dissuaded from her plan to murder, and a fight breaks out. Unfortunately, in that moment Wolverine's time travelling goes awry. He sees Stryker, remembers the experiments that the man performed on him, and then basically loses the connection with his past self when he passes out. Young Wolverine, not having all of the same memories, has no idea where he is and why, nor does he recognize the people around him. Xavier tells him that he was given some bad acid, and he passes out again.
Anyways, long story short, the situation gets much worse. Magneto shoots Mystique, she runs, he follows, and Hank tries to stop him from committing murder just to prevent another murder. People see them, cameras capture the scene. Not good. Wolverine finally regains consciousness in his younger body, but Magneto and Mystique have escaped. In trying to prevent the future, they cause it anyways. They seem dangerous, and Mystique's blood is collected because of her gunshot wound. It would appear that even the X-Men can only do so much to change time.
Magneto, obviously, doesn't stick to the plan very long and goes rogue. Xavier, obviously, comes around on his attempts to block out his pain and his powers (although this involves a weird telepathic conversation with his future self while reading Wolverine's mind...say what?!). There is a final showdown at the press conference to address the whole mutant-sentinel situation, and flash-forwards show that the situation in the future is getting worse very quickly. Like really bad, everyone dying kind of worse. Luckily, Mystique helps her old friends take down Magneto and rights the wrong that she otherwise would have caused in the future.
This is when Wolverine wakes up in the mansion in a new future where somehow everyone is alive, including Jean and Scott. I assume it's a time-ripple effect kind of thing. Mystique changed history, therefore everything changed. And by this point I no longer have any idea where we sit in the scheme of things, how the timelines all fit, when and where the following movies will take place (no, I still haven't seen them).
What I liked about this movie was getting to have the young and old versions of Magneto and Professor X because I love them both so much. Dislikes? Confusing timelines and not knowing what has actually happened in the rewritten past. I understand that this was an attempt to reboot/restart the franchise without ignoring the existence of the earliest trilogy, and it was clever enough. But it is a little frustrating to have them decide that the storyline of First Class is now the only one still relevant to any of the following films, since the events of X-Men, X2 and X-Men: The Last Stand have been erased. They were a little cheesy, but I loved them (mostly the first two). Nonetheless, this left me looking forward to future installments in the series.
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