X-Men: Days of Future Past (Film Review)
May. 22nd, 2014 08:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakSo, 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.
no subject
Date: 2014-05-22 08:29 pm (UTC)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...
no subject
Date: 2014-05-22 08:35 pm (UTC)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.)