X-Men Days of Future Past

So I went to go see X-Men Days of Future Past today and I had some… feelings about it.

Then I thought – I could share them! And so I will do just that. But with that sort of discussion comes spoilers – so be warned and proceed at your own risk!

All right, anyway, let’s talk about this film. I have yet to see an X-Men film I truly loved. I dig the comics, always have, but the films leave me kinda baffled in so many ways and this one is no different.

What it does do, for better or worse, is nail a lot of the feeling of opening a random Claremont X-Men issue without having read any X-Men comics before. That first flush of raw confusion that is mixed with a quick moving story so you’re excited to see what happens and who these people are.

Unlike the comics, however, they don’t bother to tell you.

We start in the future with a cast of X-Men that are never really introduced. If you read all the comics most of them will make sense, to a degree, but otherwise you’re lost and that’s your problem, the movie doesn’t care.

Kitty Pryde now has the power to send people’s minds back into their past selves, as well. Something that comes out of left field. I guess they could stretch it and say she phases you out of time and into your past self, maybe, sort of, kind of, but what? Anyway. They send Wolverine back so he can stop the operating incident that sets of the horrible future. Fine.

Except the past is full of things that already don’t match the movies we’ve seen.

I mean we have beast, who last we saw in First Class, was blue and furry and Xavier, who had lost the use of his legs, both fine. Xavier can walk and Beast is un-furred. This is because Hank has a formula that prevents him from going furry and curses Xavier’s spinal damage – but has the side effect of shutting down his powers.

What the holy fuck? Didn’t we have a whole movie about a mutant cure? And Hank had one all along? Huh? And why does it magically fix spines? How the holy hell does THAT work? Shut up, don’t worry about it.

This movie is full of that.

And look there is a lot to like. Whole scenes of fun and good times and X-Man-ish excitement. But it is all underpinned by this core of utter crud that it distracts me. And I am not recapping the plot just know it hurts me a bit in several directions at once.

And then we have the end – having saved the future Wolverine’s mind goes back 50 years into the future to his old present and everything is changed and only he remembers what the old future was. Except in the process he casually loses the last 50 years of memory.

He also has no problem with that. This from the guy who was a rage-machine because someone wiped his memories before. But this time? Eh., it’s fine, for the best tally ho, who cares?

it really just continues this trend, for me, of the movie not giving a damn. Which is a shame, because again – there were large bits I really liked. But this is what most of the X-Men and related movies have been for me – bits I liked wrapped in a taquito of Meh.

Also pretty much all the X-Men/Wolverine movies to date except First Class are wiped out and didn’t happen anymore and deal with that, Captain Kirk.

So yeah. Yeah. I just dunno, guys.