Bullet Points: X-Men: Days of Future Past

I’ve always been a bit of a comic book nerd. I got my first comic when I was in 1^st grade (a Teen Titans one) and my second comic was during Bane’s run to end The Batman. I’ve always had more of an affinity for DC but Marvels has kicked their ass when it comes to the film versions so I usually never miss any of the comic book movies. That makes it a bit sad that the X-Men rights still haven’t reverted back to Marvel. FOX has done them no favors with the franchise and I don’t think I’m alone when I say they need to hit the “restart” button as soon as possible. That isn’t to say that I haven’t enjoyed some of their movies but how many times can they tell the same story? As long as Hugh Jackman can get down to 4% body fat I suppose.

The Gist: The world is in shambles in the future and mutants are almost extinct. The remaining few fight back with little hope. The engineered Sentinels continue to wipe them out on a daily basis. The mutant race, survived by Professor Xavier and several other X-Men, decide that they need to send one of their own back 50 years into the past and stop the death of the Sentinels creator Bolivar Trask, which led to their creation and the eventual death of countless mutants. In the past, Wolverine must convince a down trodden Xavier and a criminal Magneto to work together to stop Mystique from assassinating Trask.

The Cast: Good God. This movie should have been so much better. The feeling that they were trying way too hard was present in every single scene. I didn’t hate the movie, but I can’t say that I really liked it either. It felt like they tried so hard to fit Hugh Jackman and Jennifer Lawrence into a story that didn’t really need their characters. If they had just stuck to the comic I’m sure it would have turned out just fine. I, for one, am not really a fan of Jennifer Lawrence anyways (except for her self-portraits, if you know what I mean) but giving such a sizable role to a character that wasn’t really all that interesting feels like a studio option just to get her name on the poster and to sell tickets. I actually like Jackman as Wolverine. He’s too tall, of course, but the dude is jacked and obviously enjoys playing the character. That is way more than I can say for Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart. I felt like they showed up on set simply to hang out with each other and collect a check. Also, hey, let’s fit every single person in the series to date in the movie. Yay!

More like Huge Jacked Man! Am I right??

The Villain: Much like every other single X-Men movie, humans are the enemy. They can’t make a movie where a bad guy is the “bad guy” cause they need to show how humans are bullying these poor mutants that are trying to kill people and lifting baseballs stadiums up to kill people. Just a side thing but why was the baseball field worker laying down chalk on the lines in January? There wouldn’t be a baseball game in January. Peter Dinklage plays Bolivar Trask. I think they were trying to be somewhat ironic cause he’s a dwarf and he’s trying to kill mutants. How clever. He develops the Sentinel Program to find and eradicate mutants. That seems like a highly-expensive program when only a few mutants were even known to have existed at that point.

Thanks Obama…

The Action: There were some cool action scenes. The future fight scenes with the Sentinels looked pretty. It was nice to actually see the mutants use their powers to fight for once. The key is for the mutants to have to fight some sort of robots in order to allow them to kill tons of stuff without actually showing blood or a normal person dying or something. I liked the scene where Logan first went back into the past too but every other past scene was just Prof. X being a pussy and them wasting time while Kitty Pryde bled to death in the future. Let’s talk about that for a second too. They made this big deal out of sending someone back into the past that far but it took them all of 6 seconds to actually do it. And it worked on the first try. Well done, I guess. The Quicksilver scene was probably the coolest of the film. He looked like a total idiot but they did a great job of using the character for the 7 minutes of screen time that he got. Why not bring him back at the very end to save the President or something? He could have run to D.C. in like two seconds if he wanted to.

Another action packed scene featuring two of the most powerful mutants in the world.

Take it Home:

• Gross: Just watching a Bryan Singer film makes me sick to my stomach after the things that he’s allegedly done.
• Blue balls: When Mystique turns blue and says something about him not finding her pretty was funny but inaccurate. I’d say most guys would still be into a little hanky-panky with a hot naked blue chick.
• Reboot please: There are very few series that I wish would get a reboot but this is one of them. All of the actors are too old and I know Hugh Jackman is a machine but he can’t keep getting into incredible shape every 4 years for the rest of his life.
• Cop out: {SPOILER ALERT} Bringing back all of the old actors is the biggest cop out ever. Can no one ever die? I’m surprised they didn’t show Toad and The Blob working in the school’s cafeteria at the end.
• My Super Power: If I had to choose one power it would be indestructibility. You could never really lose a battle and it would be a really cool way to impress your friends. “Hey, wanna see me impale myself on those picket fences over there?”

Rating: 3.25/5