Author Topic: X-Men: Days of Future Past  (Read 5910 times)

FatherXmas

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X-Men: Days of Future Past
« on: May 23, 2014, 07:46:24 AM »
Of course a lot of the original story has changed from the comic but the gist of it is there.

This is how you do cameos of well known mutants.

Surprised by the number of familiar faces with 5 second cameos.

Quicksilver steals all the scenes he's in.  Not as dorky looking as that Empire cover, he pulls it off.

Needs more naked blue Jennifer Lawrence.

Scene after all of the credits for next movie.

Spoiler for Hidden:
YES!!  They've retconned all the previous older X-Men movies as well as the Wolverine movies.  No idea if Wolverine has adamantium anymore.
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Cinnder

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Re: X-Men: Days of Future Past
« Reply #1 on: May 23, 2014, 02:35:58 PM »
First Bryan Singer movie ever that's disappointed me.  His typical insight into depth and quirks of character peeked out only once or twice.  Perhaps hampered by a bad screenplay?

Quicksilver's main scene was the best part of the whole film.  As one reviewer said, it was as if it were a scene from a completely different film -- one we'd rather have been watching.

Tenzhi

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Re: X-Men: Days of Future Past
« Reply #2 on: May 23, 2014, 05:20:40 PM »
First Bryan Singer movie ever that's disappointed me.  His typical insight into depth and quirks of character peeked out only once or twice. 

If you've seen X-men, X2, and especially Superman Returns and this is the first Singer movie that disappointed you, then that sounds like a glowing recommendation to me.
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Cinnder

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Re: X-Men: Days of Future Past
« Reply #3 on: May 24, 2014, 01:11:17 PM »
If you've seen X-men, X2, and especially Superman Returns and this is the first Singer movie that disappointed you, then that sounds like a glowing recommendation to me.

Yep, if you didn't like those 3 films, then this one may be just what you are looking for.

I should, however, temper my original statement by saying I forgot he also directed "Jack the Giant Killer."

Kaos Arcanna

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Re: X-Men: Days of Future Past
« Reply #4 on: May 24, 2014, 08:55:51 PM »
I liked it.

I also liked the post trailer scene. :D

Nos482

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Re: X-Men: Days of Future Past
« Reply #5 on: May 25, 2014, 07:25:26 AM »
I liked it too, except for two little things:
1. not enough Quicksilver... and duct tape ;D
2. En Sabah Nur looked sooooo tiny.
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Mandu

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Re: X-Men: Days of Future Past
« Reply #6 on: May 26, 2014, 05:01:12 AM »
In my opinion the best X-Men movie so far.

Solitaire

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Re: X-Men: Days of Future Past
« Reply #7 on: May 26, 2014, 08:30:10 AM »
In my opinion the best X-Men movie so far.

Agree, really enjoyed this movie, of course best scene is Quicksilvers  :D

Microcosm

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Re: X-Men: Days of Future Past
« Reply #8 on: May 26, 2014, 05:00:44 PM »
I could have used more Colossus and Bishop, but it was very good. Certainly glad they used the opportunity to fix some of the crap the franchise did in previous films.

Arcana

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Re: X-Men: Days of Future Past
« Reply #9 on: May 27, 2014, 06:42:24 AM »
I really liked the future X-Men combat scenes; although darker (for obvious reasons) I think that's the best super-powered teamwork I've seen on screen yet; while the Avengers worked together, the X-Men looked like an extremely well-oiled fighting machine.

I honestly had no expectations regarding Quicksilver's appearance in the movie, but honestly Evan Peters blew me away in his scenes; I personally think his "prison break" scene is the signature scene of the movie.

Overall, no question I think this is my favorite of the X-movies.  Makes me sad we're never going to see Singer's version of Dark Phoenix.

Spoiler for Hidden:
YES!!  They've retconned all the previous older X-Men movies as well as the Wolverine movies.  No idea if Wolverine has adamantium anymore.

Spoiler for Hidden:
Its strongly implied that in the new timeline, there's no Weapon-X program so I'm guessing probably no adamantium.

Also, I liked the fact that in a sense, Singer was saying goodbye to his original baby the first X-Men movies and cast with this movie; as the current plan as I understand it is the sequel will focus on the Mcavoy/Fassbender cast, this was the swan song for the Stewart/McKellen Professor X and Magneto.

Spoiler for Hidden:
My interpretation of the ending is that this is the X-Men version of "happily ever after" where it seems the "X-Men" didn't  exist in their original form because there's no need: humanity and mutants are apparently coexisting peacefully.  Xavier's "I have a promise to keep" I think is a reference to Wolverine's request for Xavier in the past to promise him he will help guide them all, and Logan will now need that guidance given his time displacement.

I think its also a subtle apology of sorts for the Last Stand (which he didn't make, but might feel a little guilty for being a little responsible for); by bringing Jean and especially Scott back and giving them a new future, it almost seems to give the finger to that movie and its events.

Fridge horror moment:
Spoiler for Hidden:
That very same happy ending is almost certainly about to be erased at least temporarily by the Age of Apocalypse, if that movie even remotely follows the rough outline of the original comic story.

Magus Prime

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Re: X-Men: Days of Future Past
« Reply #10 on: May 27, 2014, 03:13:01 PM »
I enjoyed it.  Still coming to terms with having to relax on the continuity.  i.e. why can Xavier still walk and use his powers when he and Magneto first visit Jean?  I knew going into it I'd have to be forgiving but there's just so many errors!  In any case, any scene with Blink in it was my favorite.  Obviously, someone was a Portal fan.   ;D  Thankful it wasn't "The Wolverine Show".

Arcana

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Re: X-Men: Days of Future Past
« Reply #11 on: May 27, 2014, 10:15:06 PM »
I enjoyed it.  Still coming to terms with having to relax on the continuity.  i.e. why can Xavier still walk and use his powers when he and Magneto first visit Jean?  I knew going into it I'd have to be forgiving but there's just so many errors!  In any case, any scene with Blink in it was my favorite.  Obviously, someone was a Portal fan.   ;D  Thankful it wasn't "The Wolverine Show".

Minor spoilers:



Fridge logic: in the original history where they didn't prevent the (no spoiler) critical event, eventually Xavier hits rock bottom and decides to climb out of his drug-addled seclusion and reconcile with Erik, at least temporarily, to try to restart their original mission to seek out and help mutants.  At that moment in time (late 80s perhaps) Xavier is only using the drug as Beast recommended: enough to allow him to walk, but (very minor spoiler) not enough to completely shut his powers down.  Eventually though, like most drugs, Xavier builds up a partial immunity to it and has to take so much to restore his ability to walk it also affects his powers too much, and he decides to forgo the drug.  Thus, in the 70s he is what we see in DoFP, in the 80s he is what we see in Last Stand, and in the 90s he's become what we see in X-Men.

As Magneto says near the end of the movie (paraphrased) "so much wasted time."

Addressing a different question, how did Xavier come back at all in the Wolverine stinger and Days of Future Past?  Upon reflection, it makes sense: at the end of Last Stand its suggested that Xavier somehow transferred his consciousness to the coma patient being treated by Moira.  Question: why was Moira treating a basically brain dead person?  Maybe because while he had serious neurological problems, he also had the x-gene for telepathy: his brain had no consciousness but he was never observed to have zero brain function because he was still able to react telepathically to other people.  And that's how Xavier was able to transfer to him specifically: not only would Xavier not be destroying another person's consciousness by taking the body over, it was a body he could get to because it was itself a strong telepath he could reach.  Why is Xavier still paralyzed at the end of The Wolverine?  Because he had not long ago possessed someone that had been bed ridden all his life and had various neurological problems.  The body itself probably had little ability to use its limbs and it probably took a lot of effort and practice just to be able to use its arms.  Walking was out of the question.  Why does he look like his old self?  He looks like Xavier because Xavier was *projecting* his original appearance to Wolverine so he would recognize him at the airport.

But why does he also look like himself in Days?  Think about how the X-Men were fighting in the future, and how perfectly they were coordinating their fight.  Xavier had them mind-linked.  So to all of them, he also looked like his original self because he was projecting that image to their minds automatically.  He still can't walk because physical therapy sessions to build up his legs and neurological ability to walk was probably not a priority by that point.

Magus Prime

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Re: X-Men: Days of Future Past
« Reply #12 on: May 28, 2014, 03:41:40 AM »
Yeah. Okay. We could run with that or.......

How about each director didn't give a crap what their predecessor established in the previous film and made up their own thing with impunity and so what we're left with is a tangled convoluted mess?

Arcana

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Re: X-Men: Days of Future Past
« Reply #13 on: May 28, 2014, 05:10:31 AM »
Yeah. Okay. We could run with that or.......

How about each director didn't give a crap what their predecessor established in the previous film and made up their own thing with impunity and so what we're left with is a tangled convoluted mess?
Some of the glitches are admitted mistakes, as in Bryan Singer himself admitted to some of them.  But as an objective statement, yours is at best an exaggeration.  Vaughn did seem to care enough about making contact with the previous films while starting from a clean slate: if he literally didn't care at all, Xavier would not have been paralyzed at the end of First Class.  Why bother if there's literally no concern for connecting to the previous material?  He probably did the same thing lots of us did and blocked out Last Stand, which showed Xavier walking in flashback.  Singer also tried hard to at least attempt to smooth over some of the discontinuities; Hank's drug actually provides the means to connect Xavier being paralyzed at the end of Vaughn's First Class and Xavier being not paralyzed in the flashback of Ratner's Last Stand.

In any case, if you consider Xavier being able to walk in the Last Stand flashback an error, that's really more of a glitch between First Class and Last Stand than the fault of Days.  In Days of Future Past Hank explicitly tells Logan that his drug is capable of allowing Charles to walk while still allowing him to use his powers in at least some fashion, but Xavier is deliberately overdosing on the drug because he *wants* his powers shut off.  He goes cold turkey in Days rather than backing down to the dose Hank recommends almost certainly because he knows he is in effect addicted to the feeling of having a quiet mind, and cannot go half-way.  Days addresses the glitch of why Xavier is paralyzed in First Class but walking in the Last Stand flashback; it doesn't specifically introduce a new error.

Magus Prime

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Re: X-Men: Days of Future Past
« Reply #14 on: May 28, 2014, 07:06:27 AM »
But as an objective statement, yours is at best an exaggeration.

But... but... that's exactly what happened.  Ratner, in his infinite wisdom, saw fit to divert from Singer's vision and took the liberty of killing off Jean, Scott, and the Prof.  Vaughn further compounds things by making Emma Frost a player even though another version of her appears in Wolverine.  Also, Raven and Charles turn out to be childhood friends, an alteration completely divergent from Singer since this was something he never intended.  And to add insult to injury, Singer craps on himself by making a new Toad who looks nothing like Ray Park's Toad.  I'm sure explanations can be given via flimsy speculation or retcons or disregarding a whole movie or two and whatever else have you.  My point is we shouldn't have to work this hard for things to be congruent.  I'll say it again.  The whole thing's a mess.  And it's because each director didn't care what was established by the director before him.  No exaggeration here.  I'll concede there's more to it than just that but at its very core and if we're being completely honest with ourselves, Singer, Ratner, and Vaughn had their own stories to tell, inconsistencies be damned.

Tenzhi

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Re: X-Men: Days of Future Past
« Reply #15 on: May 28, 2014, 12:02:30 PM »
Who needs explanations?  Just accept that things are as they are and move on, no work necessary.  The moment you understand a comic book universe it all gets rewritten, anyway.
When you insult someone by calling them a "pig" or a "dog" you aren't maligning pigs and dogs everywhere.  The same is true of any term used as an insult.

Arcana

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Re: X-Men: Days of Future Past
« Reply #16 on: May 28, 2014, 07:32:43 PM »
I'll concede there's more to it than just that but at its very core and if we're being completely honest with ourselves, Singer, Ratner, and Vaughn had their own stories to tell, inconsistencies be damned.
A charge I can level on essentially every X-title writer as well.  So the movies are in good company.

doc7924

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Re: X-Men: Days of Future Past
« Reply #17 on: June 08, 2014, 04:24:13 PM »
One thing I don't get from this film.

Assuming this is the first time they go to the past and change it - then in the original timeline, which has the first three films, where are the Sentinels?

They had them in 1973 and they used DNA to make the adaptive ones - then why weren't then persecuting mutants in the original films?


Tenzhi

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Re: X-Men: Days of Future Past
« Reply #18 on: June 08, 2014, 11:09:00 PM »
One thing I don't get from this film.

Assuming this is the first time they go to the past and change it - then in the original timeline, which has the first three films, where are the Sentinels?

They had them in 1973 and they used DNA to make the adaptive ones - then why weren't then persecuting mutants in the original films?

Because a Lannister pays his debts.
When you insult someone by calling them a "pig" or a "dog" you aren't maligning pigs and dogs everywhere.  The same is true of any term used as an insult.

Kaos Arcanna

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Re: X-Men: Days of Future Past
« Reply #19 on: June 08, 2014, 11:22:11 PM »
In a Danger Room scene in one of the movies, Logan decapitated a Sentinel (standard purple version from the comics) offscreen with only the giant head showing up.

In the original films, Mystique made it to the present without dying so something changed the timeline BEFORE (relatively speaking) Mystique ever killed Trask.

Oy, time travel can give a guy a headache.

Shenku

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Re: X-Men: Days of Future Past
« Reply #20 on: June 08, 2014, 11:41:16 PM »
In the original films, Mystique made it to the present without dying so something changed the timeline BEFORE (relatively speaking) Mystique ever killed Trask.

I don't recall them saying she died in any of the movie's explanations/flashbacks, just that she was captured and imprisoned.

I suppose it's possible that she was killed because something/someone had changed events before Logan, but since I don't recall any actual mention of her death, what's to say they couldn't have simply kept her alive during their research of her DNA allowing for Magneto to eventually find and free her and thus allowing her to be present for the original 3 movies... But since they essentially hit the massive restart button on the franchise, that's all moot point now anyways, isn't it?

Arcana

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Re: X-Men: Days of Future Past
« Reply #21 on: June 09, 2014, 06:21:24 AM »
One thing I don't get from this film.

Assuming this is the first time they go to the past and change it - then in the original timeline, which has the first three films, where are the Sentinels?

They had them in 1973 and they used DNA to make the adaptive ones - then why weren't then persecuting mutants in the original films?
Its possible in the original timeline they were kept more secret.  In fact, until Wolverine started tampering with the timeline, the movie suggested that the US government was going to pass on the Sentinel project and Trask was going to other governments to fund the research.  Its possible in the original timeline when Trask was killed his researchers continued the project in secret for a substantial amount of time, because they knew the old Mark I Sentinels were already obsolete due to Mystique's DNA.  Without Trask himself trying to evangelize the technology the Sentinel project basically went to sleep until much later.

Arcana

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Re: X-Men: Days of Future Past
« Reply #22 on: June 09, 2014, 06:31:39 AM »
I don't recall them saying she died in any of the movie's explanations/flashbacks, just that she was captured and imprisoned.

I suppose it's possible that she was killed because something/someone had changed events before Logan, but since I don't recall any actual mention of her death, what's to say they couldn't have simply kept her alive during their research of her DNA allowing for Magneto to eventually find and free her and thus allowing her to be present for the original 3 movies... But since they essentially hit the massive restart button on the franchise, that's all moot point now anyways, isn't it?
Trask himself says he wanted a lot of tissue samples from Mystique, including brain tissue.  And he had a history of killing the mutants he experimented on.  But its possible in the original timeline where he was killed that the scientists that continued his research were more cautious, not wanting to kill the golden goose, and kept her alive.  Eventually, we know Magneto himself escapes confinement (because he also is free in the 90s at the time of the first X-Men movie) and with Magneto on the loose, its possible he somehow managed to break Mystique free as well.

There is the question of why Magneto allowed the Sentinel research to continue; if he manages to free Mystique at some point then its likely he knew she was being held by scientists.  But its possible he didn't know what their research was about, and didn't care at that time - he might have thought it was base experimentation of the kind he himself suffered in the past.  In fact, there's a subtle (unintentional) hint that Magneto *did* know at least some of what was going on.  In X2 Magneto is shown to be aware of William Stryker and at least moderately familiar with some of his activities.  Perhaps when Trask died in the original timeline its Stryker that initially continues working with Trask Industries, before eventually branching out on his own when he decides that the Trask goal of creating adaptive robotic Sentinels - a task that is taking decades - is not the answer, and he decides to form the Weapon X project.  There's a certain logic to Magneto freeing Mystique from Trask Industries when Stryker was still there and thus aware of his proclivities.  When Stryker's research facility was destroyed and Stryker himself (probably) courtmartialed from the military at the end of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Magneto probably thought he'd heard the last of him.

doc7924

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Re: X-Men: Days of Future Past
« Reply #23 on: June 09, 2014, 11:36:20 PM »
Its possible in the original timeline they were kept more secret.  In fact, until Wolverine started tampering with the timeline, the movie suggested that the US government was going to pass on the Sentinel project and Trask was going to other governments to fund the research.  Its possible in the original timeline when Trask was killed his researchers continued the project in secret for a substantial amount of time, because they knew the old Mark I Sentinels were already obsolete due to Mystique's DNA.  Without Trask himself trying to evangelize the technology the Sentinel project basically went to sleep until much later.

That's not even getting into the fact that there was an African American Trask alive and well in one of the other films.
That cannot be explained by any kind of time travel by Wolverine.
Nor can it explain 2 different Moira MacTaggerts both the same age in 1973 and in 2003 or so.

Sadly First Class made a mess out of the continuity.
Its too bad since they could have had a nice continuity with al the films -

Kaos Arcanna

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Re: X-Men: Days of Future Past
« Reply #24 on: June 10, 2014, 12:11:19 AM »
That's not even getting into the fact that there was an African American Trask alive and well in one of the other films.
That cannot be explained by any kind of time travel by Wolverine.
Nor can it explain 2 different Moira MacTaggerts both the same age in 1973 and in 2003 or so.

Sadly First Class made a mess out of the continuity.
Its too bad since they could have had a nice continuity with al the films -

Trask could have had children or siblings, or a living spouse.

As for the Moira ... I wouldn't have made her a secret agent in First Class, but it is relatively possible that the doctor version was a cousin or other relative named after First Class' Moira.