One of the main things I feel the need to talk about is essentially what this movie accomplished, though I'm not entirely sure how in a few cases, as others like me are confused. The film served as a reboot to the x-men film franchise, or so it seemed, but I'm not sure what cast they'll be going with for the forthcoming X-Men: Apocalypse. As in, I'm not sure if they will return to the original cast, or stick with the first class cast, or again, do both somehow. The current cast list seems to suggest, as of right now (May 24, 2014), that it's just the first class cast.
I can't speak much to the storyline of the comic, as I'm not exactly familiar with how it goes, I do know the basics given that I've only read it once, but there are quite the lot of differences, but not that it matters too much. No comic book movie has been a direct adaptation, everything, so far, has fallen more along the lines of an appropriation to the stories of the comics. I don't mind the changes made, that I can recall, but being a bigger fan of pretty much every one of the X-Men, over Wolverine, it gets tiring seeing him take center stage all the time, which is perhaps why I enjoyed First Class so much, he only had one scene in the whole movie. A pointless scene, but still, only one. Don't get me wrong, I still like Wolverine, just not as much as every other X-Man.
The two most notable changes are the fact that Wolverine becomes the main character of the story, and not Kitty Pride (Ellen Page's character), and that the Sentinels are so damn small.
Here's a future Sentinel (only slightly smaller than the movie's past Sentinels) fighting Colosus.
And here is Wolverine and Cyclops fighting three Sentinels from the comics.
That's possibly my "biggest" pet-peeve with the movie, the sentinels aren't the towering monstrosities that they once were. They are still regarded as a threat in the movie, very much so, killing off the majority of the future team, a few times. I also kind of hated the fact that the new X-Men of the future were just kind of thrown into the film, Warpath (two lines, maybe), Blink (who doesn't have a line to my recollection) and Sunspot (for that matter, neither does this guy) were just kind of there, they had no character development and no real character to speak of other than being X-Men and that they don't like the Sentinels. The audience never cares for these new characters, so when they die, a few times, no one cares. Further, (a new) Toad, Spyke and Havok are all at a military base and are rescued by mystique, but for no reason, they serve no other purpose to the narrative than Mystique wanted to rescue them and Jennifer Lawrence can have more screen time (not that I'm complaining about that).
More J-Law is never a bad thing.
She, and Peter Dinklage sort of steal the show, but the later show stealer could just be due to my personal bias and love for that man.
Peter Dinklage has been stealing the show for years. He's my favorite character in Elf, and Game of Thrones, But here, he places somewhere around third place. Because J-Law and M-Fass (I feel like I should have just wrote Michael Fassbender, but there's no going back now, I'm dedicated to the M-Fass) are too amazing. Michael Fassbender is like my favorite actor right now, so he'll always be my favorite character in whatever he does, even when he's whipping slaves and just being a despicable human being.
Don't mind me, I'm just levitating.
With just a swing of my arms, explosions!
Piss off knaves!
It's only fitting that Magneto is the best character to come out of these X-Men movies, regardless of the movie. Whichever one it is, Magneto is the best damn character there is. Ian McKellen was the best thing going in the first three films, and Michael Fassbender is just the best thing going anywhere. Also, i didn't hate Quicksilver as much as I thought I would, and it's nice to know that Magneto is still his father, or at least it's implied to be that way, through a joke - but where the hell is Scarlet Witch? She's Quicksilver's twin sister, and is no where to be seen, the girl he was holding while watching the TV is apparently, just his younger sister. Apparently a scene alluding to her, perhaps even featuring an image of her (it's hard to tell with this guys vague wording) was cut from the film (source). So not only was a scene featuring Anna Paquin actually doing something cut, but so was Scarlet Witch, not that I care much, neither was necessary - but hell, at least mentioning her existence would have been nice.
I also thoroughly enjoyed the mixture of shaky and steady cam. Shaky cam only coming in when we take on the perspective of a 70's camera man looking through the camera. It's magnificent, because it's kind of snubbing the way action movies use shaky cam all the time, and saying you can only use it when you are taking on someone's point of view, through a camera. It was marvelous and I loved it, especially the fact that it took on the old Academy aspect ratio of 1.375:1.
I find myself stuck in another hard place as I'm now recalling how much I didn't like Godzilla's treatment of Elizabeth Olsen's character. And now that I know how the film has treated two, and potentially three female characters, I have to admit that I am not happy with this. I didn't really think much of it until now, and honestly it isn't coloring my opinion of the film, but more of my opinions of Hollywood in general. I feel as though this is the main reason I'd rather work in the independent sector, because scripts that treat women properly and don't just toss female characters aside - but I'm also getting the feeling that Hollywood is the place I need to be, so that I can have a hand in changing this. How well that will go however, is impossible to know.
The film reminded me a lot of what Joss Whedon did with The Avengers. It was filled with in jokes, and some subtle humor, though admittedly not quite to the quality that Whedon is capable of. It felt like a comic book movie, and that's all that really matters to me. I've had my misgivings about the direction that the non-marvel studios movies may be heading, but at least I know now that the X-Men films, as long as they remain with Bryan Singer, are in good hands. As it is, we don't know anything about Singer's personal life aside from the accusations, accusations are just that, accusations. They have no immediate merit in truth, and frankly should not be taken as such until they are proven to be true. Even then, I'm not sure I'd want the X-Men film franchise in the hands of anyone else, except for maybe Matthew Vaughn.
So again, I have the same basic qualms that I've had with movies for years, they just don't seem to know how to treat women as characters. Ellen Page (Kitty Pride) does not interact with Halle Berry (Storm) or Fan Bingbing (Blink). There is no female X-Man in the past for J-Law to even interact with, so there's that, on that basis alone this film fails the Bechdel test. But as I've always thought, a films failure to meet the requirements of the test never correlate to how good said film is. As is the case with this film, as so far it was my favorite movie in the X-Men franchise, and my favorite of the summer blockbuster season so far. However the 30th's A Million Ways to Die in the West. may change that, despite it's not being a "blockbuster" so to speak.
X-Men Days of Future Past gets an enthusiastic 9/10.Go see it yourself if you don't believe me.
Now we play the waiting game for X-Men: Apocalypse in 2016. That Teaser, at the very end of the credits, got me all hyped up for it. Seeing the aforementioned young Apocalypse and his four horsemen in the background. I just can't wait.
So until next time, here's a video to help you along the wait for Seth McFarlane's next picture.
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