X-Men: Days of Future Past
Directed by: Bryan Singer
Written by: Simon Kinberg
Recommended? As a movie, but not for its lessons
Wolverine goes back in time to stop Mystique from killing a scientist who tortures and kills and studies mutants. The scientist is doing these things so that he can build giant machines to kill all the mutants.
I dunno, maybe instead of going back in time to get Mystique not to kill the guy, Wolverine should have gone back in time even further and just killed the guy as soon as he became a violent bigot. Why is it right to go back in time to tell Mystique what she can and cannot do, but not to go back in time and tell Peter Dinklage what he can and cannot do?
I know it’s like, a really big part of the whole X-Men universe, but I just don’t understand why killing is presented as always wrong.
Honestly, the whole “we’re so powerful we don’t even have to kill humans” thing is almost what makes mutants so damn inhuman.
Even though it’s as pacifist as a nun in a Gandhi costume, it’s a really good movie. I like how stupidly long movies are these days. That sounds sarcastic but it’s not.
Outside of ‘The Usual Suspects’, Bryan Singer’s movies are a disappointment. Singer’s X-Men movies (X-Men 1& 2 and now Days of Future Past) are long, boring films that hardly do justice to the source material. Days of Future Past in particular has a deep women problem given the fucked up, paternalistic treatment it indulges in when it comes to Mystique (or Raven Darkhölme). Mystique is a deadly assassin, can mimic anyone, and his highly skilled in hand to hand combat, a born leader (who founded the Brotherhood of Mutants), and who is not a person to take shit for anyone. The fact that this overly competent person was constantly reduced to an object, whose “ownership” is essentially a competition between Magneto and Professor X was just irritating to watch. Fucking irritating. (Not to mention that, if you followed the X-Men comics, Mystique is MUCH older than both Magneto and Charles Xavier given that she is over 100 years of age).
Maybe it’s just me. The boring exposition about the “rules” of time travel (which is conducted by a character that suddenly seems to possess a power previously non-existent, without explanation, for the convenience of the plot), the ridiculous fact that Wolverine is not sent back simply to kill Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage) before he can initiate his ‘Sentinels’ program is a glaring point (and, that’s another thing, we are given ZERO motivation for the attitude and intentions of Trask and his animosity towards mutants, NONE), and the fact that Mystique is the one to acquire Wolverine at the end of the movie leaves Wolverines own “timeline” questionable (he still needs to become “weapon x” and gain his adamantium infrastructure). I could nitpick this shit to death but I am going to spare you that.
With all that being said, that scene with Quicksilver listening to Jim Croce’s ‘Time In A Bottle’ was inspired. The joy and playfulness involved in that scene stood out in stark relief to the ponderously “serious” nature of the rest of the film. That was a great scene and it seems like it’s coming from a different movie altogether. It’s a shame that there was not more of that kind of whimsy to offset the somber tones permeating the rest of the movie.