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X-Men: Days of Future Past (Film Review)
So, a certain movie has arrived in my part of the world. Above cut I can say: loved it, loved it, and also, loved it. Not least while, fond as I am of Magneto/Xavier individually and apart, one of the things I appreciated most about X-Men: First Class was that it made Mystique the McCoy to their Kirk and Spock, so to speak, the third in a central trio instead of the sidekick position she had in the previous X-movies. Well, this one goes one step further.
Not "just" because it's Mystique who gets to make the big call and Mystique who saves mutantkind/ the world, but because the key relationship of the whole damm movie isn't Charles/Erik, it's Charles and Raven. It's the love for Raven that first gets 70s!Charles out of the cycle of despair, self-pity and self-loathing he's sunk into, but that's just the start. The problem between Charles and Raven in First Class hadn't been that he didn't love her (or didn't love her romantically as opposed to sibling-esque) but that he expressed it in a paternalistic fashion (with a sideline of contributing to her body issues), and that their entire relationship had been on his terms. Which is why the key thing Charles says to Raven in this movie in the climactic scene between them is "I tried to control you all my life, and that was wrong", and the key thing required of him is to surrender all control to her and have complete and absolute faith in her.
It did occur to me during watching that this film takes elements of more than one previous X-movie to twist, turn and (imo, of course), improse. Now, one of many, many things that I disliked about X3 was that a) Magneto abandons Mystique as soon as she's infected with the "cure", only moments after she saved him (again), and b) that she subsquently collaborates with the authorities against mutants, because hey, it's not like Mystique might have feelings about the mutant cause that aren't about Magneto. Bah. Boo. Days of Future Past takes the "Erik stabs Mystique in the back" plot but does it so much better, because a) he has a ruthlessly pragmantic and in character cause for this, to wit, preventing the future mutant genocide (and if its mutantkind versus one individual, then of course Erik would kill that individual, no matter who she/he is) and b) Mystique completely gets his reasons and it doesn't stop her one bit from fighting on behalf of mutantkind after he's foiled, because it's not about Erik (or for that matter Charles) for her, it's about saving mutants.
Another redo/twist, less obvious: I loved X2, but one of the problems is that while Jean gets to do the big heroic rescue (and death) at the climax, the preceding narrative isn't about Jean getting to this point. Jean's emotional dilemma in X2 before the big moment at the end is framed as being about her attraction to Logan. Here, Mystique saving the day (which comes without her dying, in case you're worried because of the parallel/contrast I'm drawing) in the big climax feels earned because she's established as the key to the whole apocalypse from the get go, and because her scenes with pretty much everyone (from the mutants she saves early in Vietnam to Trask to Erik to Charles) lead up to this.
Back to X3: wherein Logan getting basically Scott's role in addition to his own in the Dark Phoenix saga was another problem I had. Now, from the moment Wolverine was mentioned as being in this film it became clear he got the time travelling role which in the comics Days of Future Past Kitty Pryde has, and since I'm okay with Logan in an ensemble but not so keen on him as the hero of an X story (one reason why I didn't watch either of his two solo movies), this worried me a bit. However, the way this film uses him utterly works for me. Not least because it does tie back to X1 where the movies made Logan the introduction pov to the X-men, and there is a great counterpoint to this here. But also because Days of Future Past isn't about Logan's angst. (There are just enough callbacks to ensure the audience gets this is a Logan who's seen Jean die and has been experimented on by William Stryker, but no more than that.) He's focused on the preventing the apocalypse mission, and the dynamic he gets with a younger Charles Xavier is unexpectedly entertaining. Instead of overwhelming the story, he functions as a good chronicler between past and future - that is his purpose in the story, not to save the day, because, see above.
New characters: you could tell there were a lot of Game of Thrones watchers by their reaction the moment Peter Dinklage appeared on screen and one heard his umistakable beautiful voice. But one quickly got to see him as Trask, who, as villains go, wasn't presented as raving and spitting but in a frighteningly calm and rational manner. The other more-than-a-cameo ensemble newbie was Peter (sic, not Pietro) Maximoff, who does have an unnamed sister as seen in a late montage in the film (though we never see more of her than him hugging her while they watch Magneto on tv) and gets one line that's a heavy hint he may be Erik's son in this continuity after all, though Erik doesn't know this ("so your thing is controlling metal? My mother knew a guy who could do that"), but otherwise is very different from the comicverse incarnations of Quicksilver I've encountered. Not that I'm an expert, but the occasional Pietro versions I've read were all angsty in varying degrees, and most were angry. Meanwhile, movieverse Peter Maximoff is a cheerful brat who delights in his powers and is decidedly angst free. The audience in my cinema was amused and cheered him showing off his powers durin gone of the movie's set pieces, the gang springing Magneto from prison.
Obvious touch is obvious but no less lovely: Hank watching an original Star Trek time travel episode (which keeps on running in the background - does 20th Century Fox have the TOS rights, I wonder?), because of course Hank is a Trekkie, and well, Star Trek wrote the book on world saving time travel.
Speaking of Hank, I wonder whether this movie willl inspire some Hank/Charles, what with them living alone together for years? Mind you, it's not an altogether healthy dynamic, what with Hank being basically Charles' heroin supplier (err, not literally, but the sci fi parallel to heroin, which they both use, is glaringly obvious and we do see Charles using the needle in classic heroin addiction fashion just in case we missed it) and Charles in his gloom and doom cycle which isn't helping Hank's own issues), but there's also strong affection, and Hank's not young enough to be a son figure in this continuity but around Charles own age.
Older Magneto and Xavier have relatively short roles, which on the one hand robs me of as much McKellen and Stewart as I want but otoh the emphasis in this story really needed to be on the younger incarnations who still can avoid (or not) making those mistakes. But hey, they're together in the future, making for a counterpoint to their post-bitter-divorce dynamic in the present. (I was a bit torn as to whether Charles' bitterness at first towards Erik was believable given this wasn't the case on the beach in Cuba, and I couldn't by the Kennedy assassination making such a difference to Charles (btw: as it turns out, Magneto was framed there!), but then years onheroin a drug which while restoring the ability to move takes telepathy away plus the Vietnam war and no more school to distract might do the trick. Also the part where being left crippled on a beach probably took a while to sink in in its full implication. Around half way, we're back to chess playing, though that's before Erik doublecrosses him again (see above re: Erik trying to kill Raven), and I definitely could buy Charles at that point isn't particularly surprised (not in a cynical way, btw, just, well, Erik). But as I said: if First Class was at its heart about Charles and Erik, Days of Future Past is at its heart about Raven and Charles, with Raven/Erik and Charles/Erik as secondary important relationships, and thus it's his relationship with Raven Charles tries to repair through the fillm.
As in every movie, most of the actors get their turn at playing Mystique, and I especially like the guy who plays her when she's impersonating a senior officer in Vietnam, who gets the balance just right between conveying to the audience that this is Mystique and not making it so glaringly obvious the other solidiers come across as dumb for not immediately noticing. Jennifer Lawrence, of course, does the majority of the character stuff (and at one point looks great in 70s fashion), and I thought did an excellent job at playing Raven somewhere between the young woman in First Class and the ruthless experienced operative in the first three X-movies. She's already somewhat hardened but still capable of being deeply shocked when she discovers the extent of what Trask has done, does on the one hand say "That's not my name anymore" when Alex Summers calls her Raven but on the other refers to Charles as family, the mixture of affection and anger (when he's doing his paternalistic thing early on) with Charles comes across as clearly as the mixture of first hurt, then anger and then cool resolution in her Erik encounter. There's even an echo of the playfulness she had with the other youngsters when she winks at Alex, while there's definitely the cold disgust experienced older Mystique has with her targets. Like I said, very convincingly Raven/Mystique in between. And when she has to make the big call, she's sublime.
Best 70s gag: when Future!Logan is temporarily knocked out of his younger body and 70s Logan is back with no idea who these people around him are, Charles comes up with the unbeatable: "You're having a bad acid trip."
Worst actor recognition on my part: I honestly thought they'd recast Bobby Drake/Iceman because Shawn Ashmore looks SO different with a beard and didn't find out differently until I saw his name in the credits.
Speaking of the credits: there is a post credit scene, but honestly, I fail at Marvel. I have absolutely no idea who that was supposed to be. Someone help and explain?
And finally: Mystique doesn't solely prevent the mutant apocalpyse in Days of Future Past. She also by her actions starts a new timeline in which, as Logan finds out, Jean and Scott are both alive in the present/future. This works for me, not just because I like Jean and Scott but because Jean's death at the end of X2 (and thus also her resurrection in X3) was the indirect result of Magneto and Mystique setting Charles up with Dark Cerebro and leaving him there to commit global genocide. Given all younger Raven, Charles and Erik learn in this film, and given the new dynamic they have at the end of it, I doubt this would happen. Hence no dead Jean and no dead Scott.
Not "just" because it's Mystique who gets to make the big call and Mystique who saves mutantkind/ the world, but because the key relationship of the whole damm movie isn't Charles/Erik, it's Charles and Raven. It's the love for Raven that first gets 70s!Charles out of the cycle of despair, self-pity and self-loathing he's sunk into, but that's just the start. The problem between Charles and Raven in First Class hadn't been that he didn't love her (or didn't love her romantically as opposed to sibling-esque) but that he expressed it in a paternalistic fashion (with a sideline of contributing to her body issues), and that their entire relationship had been on his terms. Which is why the key thing Charles says to Raven in this movie in the climactic scene between them is "I tried to control you all my life, and that was wrong", and the key thing required of him is to surrender all control to her and have complete and absolute faith in her.
It did occur to me during watching that this film takes elements of more than one previous X-movie to twist, turn and (imo, of course), improse. Now, one of many, many things that I disliked about X3 was that a) Magneto abandons Mystique as soon as she's infected with the "cure", only moments after she saved him (again), and b) that she subsquently collaborates with the authorities against mutants, because hey, it's not like Mystique might have feelings about the mutant cause that aren't about Magneto. Bah. Boo. Days of Future Past takes the "Erik stabs Mystique in the back" plot but does it so much better, because a) he has a ruthlessly pragmantic and in character cause for this, to wit, preventing the future mutant genocide (and if its mutantkind versus one individual, then of course Erik would kill that individual, no matter who she/he is) and b) Mystique completely gets his reasons and it doesn't stop her one bit from fighting on behalf of mutantkind after he's foiled, because it's not about Erik (or for that matter Charles) for her, it's about saving mutants.
Another redo/twist, less obvious: I loved X2, but one of the problems is that while Jean gets to do the big heroic rescue (and death) at the climax, the preceding narrative isn't about Jean getting to this point. Jean's emotional dilemma in X2 before the big moment at the end is framed as being about her attraction to Logan. Here, Mystique saving the day (which comes without her dying, in case you're worried because of the parallel/contrast I'm drawing) in the big climax feels earned because she's established as the key to the whole apocalypse from the get go, and because her scenes with pretty much everyone (from the mutants she saves early in Vietnam to Trask to Erik to Charles) lead up to this.
Back to X3: wherein Logan getting basically Scott's role in addition to his own in the Dark Phoenix saga was another problem I had. Now, from the moment Wolverine was mentioned as being in this film it became clear he got the time travelling role which in the comics Days of Future Past Kitty Pryde has, and since I'm okay with Logan in an ensemble but not so keen on him as the hero of an X story (one reason why I didn't watch either of his two solo movies), this worried me a bit. However, the way this film uses him utterly works for me. Not least because it does tie back to X1 where the movies made Logan the introduction pov to the X-men, and there is a great counterpoint to this here. But also because Days of Future Past isn't about Logan's angst. (There are just enough callbacks to ensure the audience gets this is a Logan who's seen Jean die and has been experimented on by William Stryker, but no more than that.) He's focused on the preventing the apocalypse mission, and the dynamic he gets with a younger Charles Xavier is unexpectedly entertaining. Instead of overwhelming the story, he functions as a good chronicler between past and future - that is his purpose in the story, not to save the day, because, see above.
New characters: you could tell there were a lot of Game of Thrones watchers by their reaction the moment Peter Dinklage appeared on screen and one heard his umistakable beautiful voice. But one quickly got to see him as Trask, who, as villains go, wasn't presented as raving and spitting but in a frighteningly calm and rational manner. The other more-than-a-cameo ensemble newbie was Peter (sic, not Pietro) Maximoff, who does have an unnamed sister as seen in a late montage in the film (though we never see more of her than him hugging her while they watch Magneto on tv) and gets one line that's a heavy hint he may be Erik's son in this continuity after all, though Erik doesn't know this ("so your thing is controlling metal? My mother knew a guy who could do that"), but otherwise is very different from the comicverse incarnations of Quicksilver I've encountered. Not that I'm an expert, but the occasional Pietro versions I've read were all angsty in varying degrees, and most were angry. Meanwhile, movieverse Peter Maximoff is a cheerful brat who delights in his powers and is decidedly angst free. The audience in my cinema was amused and cheered him showing off his powers durin gone of the movie's set pieces, the gang springing Magneto from prison.
Obvious touch is obvious but no less lovely: Hank watching an original Star Trek time travel episode (which keeps on running in the background - does 20th Century Fox have the TOS rights, I wonder?), because of course Hank is a Trekkie, and well, Star Trek wrote the book on world saving time travel.
Speaking of Hank, I wonder whether this movie willl inspire some Hank/Charles, what with them living alone together for years? Mind you, it's not an altogether healthy dynamic, what with Hank being basically Charles' heroin supplier (err, not literally, but the sci fi parallel to heroin, which they both use, is glaringly obvious and we do see Charles using the needle in classic heroin addiction fashion just in case we missed it) and Charles in his gloom and doom cycle which isn't helping Hank's own issues), but there's also strong affection, and Hank's not young enough to be a son figure in this continuity but around Charles own age.
Older Magneto and Xavier have relatively short roles, which on the one hand robs me of as much McKellen and Stewart as I want but otoh the emphasis in this story really needed to be on the younger incarnations who still can avoid (or not) making those mistakes. But hey, they're together in the future, making for a counterpoint to their post-bitter-divorce dynamic in the present. (I was a bit torn as to whether Charles' bitterness at first towards Erik was believable given this wasn't the case on the beach in Cuba, and I couldn't by the Kennedy assassination making such a difference to Charles (btw: as it turns out, Magneto was framed there!), but then years on
As in every movie, most of the actors get their turn at playing Mystique, and I especially like the guy who plays her when she's impersonating a senior officer in Vietnam, who gets the balance just right between conveying to the audience that this is Mystique and not making it so glaringly obvious the other solidiers come across as dumb for not immediately noticing. Jennifer Lawrence, of course, does the majority of the character stuff (and at one point looks great in 70s fashion), and I thought did an excellent job at playing Raven somewhere between the young woman in First Class and the ruthless experienced operative in the first three X-movies. She's already somewhat hardened but still capable of being deeply shocked when she discovers the extent of what Trask has done, does on the one hand say "That's not my name anymore" when Alex Summers calls her Raven but on the other refers to Charles as family, the mixture of affection and anger (when he's doing his paternalistic thing early on) with Charles comes across as clearly as the mixture of first hurt, then anger and then cool resolution in her Erik encounter. There's even an echo of the playfulness she had with the other youngsters when she winks at Alex, while there's definitely the cold disgust experienced older Mystique has with her targets. Like I said, very convincingly Raven/Mystique in between. And when she has to make the big call, she's sublime.
Best 70s gag: when Future!Logan is temporarily knocked out of his younger body and 70s Logan is back with no idea who these people around him are, Charles comes up with the unbeatable: "You're having a bad acid trip."
Worst actor recognition on my part: I honestly thought they'd recast Bobby Drake/Iceman because Shawn Ashmore looks SO different with a beard and didn't find out differently until I saw his name in the credits.
Speaking of the credits: there is a post credit scene, but honestly, I fail at Marvel. I have absolutely no idea who that was supposed to be. Someone help and explain?
And finally: Mystique doesn't solely prevent the mutant apocalpyse in Days of Future Past. She also by her actions starts a new timeline in which, as Logan finds out, Jean and Scott are both alive in the present/future. This works for me, not just because I like Jean and Scott but because Jean's death at the end of X2 (and thus also her resurrection in X3) was the indirect result of Magneto and Mystique setting Charles up with Dark Cerebro and leaving him there to commit global genocide. Given all younger Raven, Charles and Erik learn in this film, and given the new dynamic they have at the end of it, I doubt this would happen. Hence no dead Jean and no dead Scott.
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You know, I think there's always been some debate about whether Mystique collaborated in X3 - she sends them to the camp, but only Jamie Madrox is there, so it's unclear whether she knew that would be the case or not. I think. I haven't watched it in a while.
I can definitely buy Charles' initial venom towards Erik, given ten years of bitter introspection. (Erik on the other hand seems in perfect shape, mentally and physically, after ten years in a hole.) And yes, there should be Charles/Hank fic by the bucketload.
You're a lot more positive about Mystique's role here than I was, and I'm actually glad you brought up the points about it all still hinging on Mystique's decision, and that she saved the day without having to die or sacrifice her freedom. My problem was really with how they ended up at that point - Mystique's actions came across to me like a petulant young woman going against the two father figures in her life (okay Charles is her brother and Erik was probably her lover, but as you say, there's a distinct paternal bent to both relationships). She's told by multiple people not to do it, for good reasons, and has the chance to work alongside friends to take down the Sentinel program in other ways... and yet she perseveres.
Still, reasons aside, she's presented as super-competent as a spy working alone.
The stinger! The Egyptians were chanting EN SABAH NUR, which is the name of the villain known as Apocalypse (the kid moving the pyramids), who was the first ever mutant and is immortal and has various awesome powers and is a major villain from the comics. And the next movie is called X-Men: Apocalypse. So I think you can see where this is going.
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I wonder how / why Charles got off not!heroin in the regular timeline. I suppose the same way / reason any drug addict gets clean. Or maybe the serum stopped working. (Which might also explain the permanently blue Beast in the "present", but in addition Hank could just've decided to be himself.)
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re: Mystique's collaboration (or not) in X3 - I only watched it once, and many years ago, so I can only go by memory which is vague.
My problem was really with how they ended up at that point - Mystique's actions came across to me like a petulant young woman going against the two father figures in her life (okay Charles is her brother and Erik was probably her lover, but as you say, there's a distinct paternal bent to both relationships). She's told by multiple people not to do it, for good reasons, and has the chance to work alongside friends to take down the Sentinel program in other ways... and yet she perseveres.
Well, if I recall correctly neither Charles nor Erik told her what their plan for preventing the Sentinel program was. Well, Erik's plan after his plan A (killing Mystique) didn't work out and became redundant because Trask had gotten hold of her DNA already. I don't think Charles had a plan as such, given that he'd been told by Logan only that Mystique killing Trask was what triggered the whole ghastly development and if that could be prevented it wouldn't happen, so basically the two things he offered earlier was to say "don't do it" and "come home". To which, yes, she responded badly, but I don't think it was just because she didn't want to be bossed around by Charles (or Erik) anymore. If Charles had said "don't do it because we'll do such and such instead", I think she still would have probably have seethed at him but would have gone along. She really had an urgent need to do something.
Erik being in top shape after a decade of imprisonment: so much so that at first I thought they must have caught him only recently, but then the movie later had Charles and Erik mention that he really did get imprisoned that long, so I've got nothing.
Stinger explained: oooohhhhh! Okay then. Thank you for explaining.
Charles/Hank: good to know I'm not the only one who sees it here!
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Well, he did get a look at Phoenix!Jean and Logan killing her in Logan's memories. Plus he realised before ever meeting Jean he'd been wrong in how he treated Raven, which while far from identical from the young Jean question was also about control. So yes, chances are he worked out another way to deal with Jean's inner Phoenix.
I wonder how / why Charles got off not!heroin in the regular timeline. I suppose the same way / reason any drug addict gets clean. Or maybe the serum stopped working. (Which might also explain the permanently blue Beast in the "present", but in addition Hank could just've decided to be himself.)
While Hank deciding for himself and Charles deciding losing telepathy permanently is just not worth it would be the saner solution for how it happened in the original timeline, I strongly suspect the serum stopped working and the two of them were forced to deal with a returned and this time permanent loss of lower body movement and a constant Beast shape respectively, which made them sober up, so to speak. Also with the Vietnam war over there would be students in need again as an incentive to STAY sober (instead of Hank looking for the next serum).
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I do want to know where Raven learned all the crazy martial arts moves, though!
As I said over in my post, I think Erik's plan with taking over the Sentinels and turning them on the humans was a great one... if he'd stopped there and made it look like the Sentinels were faulty and Trask was incompetent. But Erik doesn't really do subtlety. *drops a football stadium on the White House* Yes, you may be right that Mystique just took what they were saying as "let's do nothing" rather than "let's not kill Trask, but we'll figure out something else". Even though doing nothing would apparently have been just as good.
I assume Erik had nothing else to do but lots of bodyweight exercises. For ten years. Jumping jacks? No exercise yard for him. I was mainly surprised that he seemed mentally/emotionally pretty unfazed (as in, no more unbalanced than usual).
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Hank just developed an even larger dependency on twinkies instead. And yes, I can see Alex showing up at the school (with Scott?) and Peter Maximoff coming there because of some scrape, and word of mouth bringing other kids who need somewhere to stay... And that all forcing Charles to adopt some responsibility again. Plus I'm sure he would've wanted to find Raven at some point.
(And Erik breaking out from the Pentagon in the regular timeline might have prompted Charles to clean up too.)
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As I said over in my post, I think Erik's plan with taking over the Sentinels and turning them on the humans was a great one... if he'd stopped there and made it look like the Sentinels were faulty and Trask was incompetent. But Erik doesn't really do subtlety. *drops a football stadium on the White House*
He. Yes. Oh, Erik. He really does have good ideas in a crisis, but he so needs someone sensible to talk things through and stop at the point where he goes into grandiose megalomania. I must admit when Raven basically threw him at Charles' feet saying "he's all yours" I did have a huge smile on my face, though. :)
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re: Logan's memories - moreover, the implication was that younger Charles not only saw the memories but did have a real telepathic contact with older Charles for a short while. Now if I were older Charles with decades of experience, I'd have left some "when you meet Jean, do not try to repress the Phoenix!" instruction along with the pep talk just in case.
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Mystique does seem to have been on one huge self-improvement course. I wonder if her adaptational abilities make it easier for her to learn languages.
If Erik could even stop and take a breath before the grandiose megalomania, it might help. I'm not sure older!Erik ever learns this either. The Statue of Liberty scheme sounds like something Mystique would seriously roll her eyes at.
So what's your thinking on what Mystique winds up doing with Wolverine? Does Wolverine not get his adamantium in the new timeline, then? Obviously Logan still winds up safely at the school and as a decent human being and so on, while Mystique's elsewhere and probably not teaching algebra, but I can't help thinking she must've had Nefarious Plans.
...also I assume Erik must've told her where to find Logan? I don't think anyone else knew where he was.
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I wonder where Erik building the Blackbird comes into all of this. Well, maybe it doesn't any longer, of course, but the entire Erik/Charles relationship is defined by periods of friendship broken up by periods of putting on silly costumes and trying to destroy the world, so it could still happen.
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He's just a big gesture kind of guy!
Wolverine: search me. I wonder whether letting Stryker's eyes flash yellow, thereby indicating he's Mystique, was a last minute addition and the original intention was to show Logan's still due to get the Stryker adamantium treatment? Because I can't think what Mystique at that point would want with him - other than needing him as canon fodder in case Nixon decides to go for the sentinel option after all, obviously Wolverine would be a good fighting addition if the brotherhood is recruiting again (and 1970s Logan has no idea that Erik is responsible for his stint at the bottom of the river), but that's assuming Raven and Erik make up very quickly after the big show down.
Mind you, given that Logan's time with Stryker and the subsequent amnesia before running into Marie happened with Stryker in his middle aged Brian Cox shape, not in his young man shape, it still may in the new timeline, even if he hangs out with Mystique for a while. Not because Raven or Erik would be keeping stuff from him - younger Erik didn't hear anything from older Logan other than that they had their run-ins in the future but ended up fighting the sentinels together, and Mystique never talked with Logan anyway. (Though wasn't there one trailer in which they had a scene?)
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the entire Erik/Charles relationship is defined by periods of friendship broken up by periods of putting on silly costumes and trying to destroy the world
I think that will remain the same in any timeline. (Especially the costumes. Older Erik even wears a dramatic opera coat during the sentinel apocalypse!) Which is why older Charles didn't even bother to warn younger Charles that Erik would double cross him now and then when they're on the same side and not to let that get to him too much anymore, because he knows younger Charles knows that by now already.
...do we think Hank was a virgin before he and Charles started to have sex now and then during their time as not!heroin addicts together? Because he came across as somewhat virginal with Raven, and afterwards would have had hangups because of his Beast shape...
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This is indeed an eternal truth.
Hmm. Well, there were apparently other students for a while, and who knows what kind of relationship he might have had with them. I agree that his new physicality plus the fallout from his one attempt at a relationship with Raven would tend to suggest some celibacy. I think it's really unlikely that he would have had sex, post-Cuba, with a non-mutant. So... not knowing who the students were and so on, it's very possible Charles was the first. (Although Hank would vehemently protest that of course he wasn't, and Hank is very experienced tyvm.)
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Even if Erik offhandedly mentions, "Logan? Oh, I threw him in the river", why does Mystique want him? Unless she's working with Charles... Which would make more sense, actually, because Charles knows Logan has to be alive and would want him back, yet can't very well just go dredge the river for him. Mystique can do it under some kind of official guise. But if it's just a case of getting Logan out of the river, why pretend to be Stryker specifically? I guess Mystique may be keeping an eye on Stryker's activities, but... The pieces don't seem to fit together.
What you suggested about the eye flash actually makes much more sense. But I'd tend to assume Singer has plans to pick up on all this in the sequel. Maybe.
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On a Watsonian level, Mystique working with Charles in this case would be the most sense making, yes. re: younger Erik's state of knowledge about Logan's powers, he didn't see them on display (solely the non-metal claws coming out in a fight), Logan just said they were both survivors. I suppose Erik could make an educated guess based on the fact Logan was the one sent back in time and on Logan not having permanently blood knuckles, but then again, he says "so much for being a survivor" when throwing Logan into a river, which would indicate he doesn't expect him at that point to come back. Mystique on her own has zilch idea about what's up with Logan, unless there's a missing scene they're saving for the dvd to explain it all. (I.e. a meeting between Mystique and Wolverine during this movie there he tells her something to intrigue her enough so she goes to the trouble of retrieving him.) Whereas one should think Charles would at least bother to wonder what the hell happened to Logan and to not want to see him on the bottom of the ocean, had access to Erik's thoughts again after Mystique took the helmet away and with the repaired state of relations could have asked Mystique to help getting Logan out of the river at least.
Why Stryker instead of impersonating random waterpolice cop: my fanwank would be that it has something to do with the newspaper article about Trask getting arrested for selling industrial secrets. I mean, that looks like a frame job to me, and playing Stryker would give her access to Trask in order to do it.
...but that's all awfully complicated and headache inducing. I maintain my Doylist theory is right.
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I saw the trailer some weeks ago and immediately thought of you. (I also thought I might give the movie a try myself if I find the time since I quite liked X-Men: First Class when it came out some years ago.)
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Speaking of missing scenes, where do you think Anna Paquin's missing scene went? I assume it wasn't at the end, given that she had a main credit and was announced for the movie, unlike Grammer/Janssen/Marsden. But if she was in the "future" I don't know where she would've fit in that wasn't as a part of all the X-team. Rogue really should've been depowered in the future too. (Although Charles should've been dead, or able to walk, depending how you look at it.)
Oh, and our Charles/Hank thoughts are echoed by Patrick Stewart. Sort of.
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Re: Rogue, well, since Magneto is at full power it's a safe bet that that small hint in the chessboard scene at the end of s3 was indeed the first stirring of the "cure" losing its effectiveness and everyone's powers, including Rogue's, coming back. So I'm assuming she had a scene with the team in the future, perhaps using everyone's powers to fight the sentinels until one of them got her.
re: Charles, older Charles shouldn't be in his Patrick Stewart shaped body, but in whoever played the comatose guy, and who wants that? I am so not sorry that timeline just got wiped out, let me tell you. Thank you, Mystique.
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See, they shouldn't have gone with the "shooting Trask will result in tons of Sentinels and a postapocalyptic future!" They should've told Mystique, "shooting Trask will result in X3!"
I assume all this means that the first Wolvie movie didn't happen either, which is helpful. (Although more-or-less the same events may have happened in a different way.) This may be the first time that a time-travel movie actually fixed continuity.
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You'd think so, but Arwen was actually in Helm's Deep, i.e. Liv Tyler did film several battle scenes, before they decided not to go there in The Two Towers and pixelled her out of all the battle scenes she's in. That being said, my guess would be that Rogue does early on in the future, yes, not least because it would add poignancy to Wolverine seeing her alive and well at the end. As for Anna Paquin's place in the credits, again, see Liv Tyler in the LotR movies where she got one very high up there - I think she was fourth or fifth named - which in no way reflects the amount of her actual screentime. If you have a good agent and a good current Hollywood standing...
They should've told Mystique, "shooting Trask will result in X3!"
But then she'd gone with Charles or Erik immediately and it would have been a much shorter movie. :)
This may be the first time that a time-travel movie actually fixed continuity.
No kidding. BTW not having watched the two Wolvie solos I wouldn't know what happened in them anyway...
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Perhaps there was a scene with her attempting to infiltrate the Evil Humans of the future, and thus doing what I complained we didn't see: a plan for the X-Men that didn't involve repeatedly dying or this relatively crazy time-travel scheme.
I haven't seen the second Wolvie solo either, so I'm not sure how it fits in. I think I heard he has the bone claws in that one too, though. Plus I think they're doing a sequel to it, so presumably it's still canon and in line with DoFP.
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Which I think really is a big weakness for a player whose plan has complicated consequences like Mystique. Charles doesn't make his case well when he tries to talk her out of her plan, but generally vigilante assassination rarely works out in history. I like Mystique being badass (though I hate the choreography of her fighting), but I wish she, in the role of an international spy, had considered a more, uhm, subtle course of action, regardless of her relationship with Charles.
(But from a Doylist perspective, it's probably the logic of blockbuster movie that there demands opposition = killing, instead of something less flashy like Mystique sabotaging the Sentinel design and/or Bolivar Trask's reputation.)
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1) It's a shame that Erik is squarely in the irrational zone (tactics is never his strong suit but what he does in this movie is excessive).
2) I like that Charles gets angry and scared when his worldview is challenged instead of being eternally forgiving and compassionate. I know Professor X's schtick is to be wise and comforting, but it must get really frustrating when many people around you from all sides seem hellbent to mess things up for mutants and non-mutants alike.
3) I wish the choreography of Mystique's fighting were less, uhm, fanservice-y and faster. The focus on her ass and crotch makes me uncomfortable. Also, I don't know martial arts so I can't comment if her moves make practical sense; but I feel all the spinning and cartwheeling slows the pace of the fight down, thus making her less convincing a fighter.
Not really relevant to the movie, but I am currently in Saigon and thus get a kick out of watching Trask and the mutants clashing around what seems to be the Paris Accord negotiation, and Mystique breaking Alex and co out of that base.
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Probably; in a tv show she'd have the time to do both. Then again, Magneto actually does a good job of ruining Bolivar Trask's credit with the government and the sentinel design... and then sabotages himself via football field and not knowing where to stop.
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re: Vietnam, there's probably meta to be written on how the second trilogy (assuming it'll be one) uses American history - so first you get the Cuban missile crisis, which is generally seen as a tense moment but one where cooler heads prevailed over warmongerers, i.e. something optimistic in pop culture, and then you get the Vietnam war, key to the big US self image challenge - i.e. Americans no longer able to see themselves as a) winning and b) being the good guys. If WWII is treated as the "good" war in the public consciousness, with clearly drawn good/bad lines, Vietnam is the by now classic pop culture "bad" war. (In the US: WWI has that honour over here in Europe for a few decades longer, but that one doesn't seem to register much in America.)
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Also McKellan/Stewart (it will be very interesting to me to see the older and younger versions juxtaposed, I think--and hopefully not as jarring as it was in the Star Trek reboot!) and time travel (whoo!) and avoiding some of the mistakes of the past (while, I'm sure, finding new and interesting ways to fuck up). I like very much that this is being billed as a sequel to both the first three X-movies and to XMFC, since I really did like the ones with the older cast. Well maybe not the last one so much, but definitely the earlier adventures.
Of course I come at this with very little knowledge of the comics--one picks the spouse's brain on occasion but still--but it's nice to hear that people who do know the backstory think it turned out pretty well! :D
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Re: the use of history in the second X-Men film series, I found this article on the series' marketing strategy, which also touches on the topic: http://www.dailydot.com/geek/x-men-movie-marketing-websites/. Now that you mention it, a compare and contrast with Captain America franchise, which is also drawn heavily from history, will be interesting.
I personally find the use of historical events in the new X-Men rather crude (the decision by both the US and the Soviet Union to fire the missiles in First Class is really heavy-handed in rushing the conflict between Charles and Erik). But being Vietnamese (though I study and work abroad), I do have an instinctive chill in seeing Havok being sent to the battlefield because it's been basically hammered into me how horrible the war was. So I guess it's effective.
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(Which, btw. is a great way to make up for the fact that I had failed to recommend The Hunger Games to my father early enough so he could see Catching Fire while it was still playing in cinemas. I don't think there's any doubt from whom I have inherited the more fannish traits of my personality *g*)
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And speaking of Raven, I loved and adored how everything was so focused on her and that her making the world-saving decision was predicated upon Charles making the first step to repair their relationship. I love the Charles/Erik relationship, but you're right, the focus was on Charles and Raven for this one, as it should have been.
I loved the Star Trek bit, too. That was great.
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And speaking of Raven, I loved and adored how everything was so focused on her and that her making the world-saving decision was predicated upon Charles making the first step to repair their relationship. I love the Charles/Erik relationship, but you're right, the focus was on Charles and Raven for this one, as it should have been.
Back when First Class was announced I was hoping it would rekindle my love for the X-movieverse and thought it had a decent shot at it due to providing me with the Charles/Erik backstory. But what I hadn't expected at all was the much bigger role for Raven. I mean, I loved her in the first trilogy, too, but she only had one sentence in the first movie and while being awesomely competent in the second, had just one scene (the one with Kurt) about her own ideas re: mutant kind as opposed to scenes about Erik). Quite different from the overall narrative treating her as a main character, with more than one relationship in her life and with her own emotional and intellectual development, instead as the sidekick to a main character. And that change/new element - Raven/Mystique as there from the beginning of the story, just as Charles and Erik, with her own issues, becoming her own type of mutant activist and having complicated relationships with them both (and one with Hank) without being defined by one of those relationsphips alone, that was such a great, great surprise.
...and how long has it been since a sibling relationship was treated as key to a fantasy/sci fi movie? (Other than Frozen, of course.)