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[174] Romances
X-Men: Days of Future Past. It was a movie. I managed to keep my feelings under 2000 words?
Prefacing this by pointing out that I have the cover to Uncanny X-Men #141 on the wall above my damn computer. The X-Men are important to me, Days of Future Past is important to me, and my feelings on this entire franchise are conflicted at best. Now fuck, where do I even start?
I guess with... I liked it? I liked it a hell of a lot. There are a lot of caveats and asterisks that go with that, but it was a damn great movie. Expectations have now been shattered three times in a row, I will clearly never ever learn.
First up, the future X-Men. They were everything that all the mindless garbage cameos of X3 SHOULD have been, and then some. Completely recognizable characters doing fucking awesome shit with their powers, even if they don't get to ever be a focus or receive characterization. Bishop with a big ol' energy gun! Warpath! Blink, bringing the SINGLE COOLEST FUCKING VISUALIZATION OF A POWER ONSCREEN GODDAMN SO AWESOME. Kinda annoyed that they gave Sunfire's powers to Sunspot, what was the point of that, maybe they just wanted two dudes named Bobby bringing the fire and the ice, I don't know, NEVERTHELESS. ICEMAN HAD ICE SLIDES, EVERYTHING WAS WONDERFUL.
Fuck off, Storm. Just... ugh. Halle Berry, you are a walking tragedy, but I liked the homage to the original story in giving her a big dramatic sentinel goring. Would have preferred a vaporized Wolverine, obviously, doesn't get more iconic than that, but it also obviously wouldn't have worked with the story, so. You win some, you lose some.
On the surface, giving Kitty random time travel powers is pretty dumb, but seeing as it was entirely an excuse to give her a prominent role in the story that was originally hers? It absolutely gets a pass from me. It made the most sense to use Wolverine, honestly, and I still think Ellen Page is miscast (but as least she actually got to play KITTY this time), and this was just a nice way to not completely write her out of her own story, even if it was just pulled out of someone's ass.
Oh, and Colossus was also there. Right.
Watching them all gruesomely die twice over the course of the film was pretty redundant, but other than that, fuckin' loved the future stuff. Wolverine's grey temples! Such a little thing, but so weirdly important to me, and who doesn't love seeing Stewart and McKellan back in action again? Hitler, that's who.
Okay, on to the 70s stuff, the real meat of the film. I feel like there's nothing I can say that everyone else won't have already said, though? It was fucking phenomenal. Mystique being the emotional core of the film, this battle for her soul being the thing that drives the whole mess, that it really is all down to her at the end in a way that works both as a beautiful culmination of her relationship with Charles and a victory that is all her own, because it is all about HER agency and HER choices only SHAPED by her relationships, just. Gah. So good. SO GOOD. SUCH EMOTIONS, VERY X-MEN, WOW.
Like. Has there ever been a superhero film set solely in our own Earth with stakes that big? Where the consequences were so fucking epic and dire without feeling artificially inflated or blown out of proportion? I am honestly asking, because I seriously don't think I have ever felt that feeling of ENORMITY, like this is seriously the fate of EVERYTHING at stake here, in a film without the enemy coming from somewhere else entirely, space or another world, or crazy magic or just. Something else. This was huge, this was it, this was all-or-nothing epic stakes, all because sometimes people really suck. That shit is gonna stick with me.
2quick2silver is the hero we all deserve. I mean, I'm looking forward to seeing something closer to ACTUAL Quicksilver in Avengers 2, but this fuckin' Peter doof was the scene-stealing joy to behold everyone said he was. FOUR FOR YOU, EVAN PETERS. IF I COULD SAVE TIME IN A BOTTLE, INDEED. WHIP. LASH.
RIP Baby Banshee, we hardly knew ye. I think I'd be more upset if an actual A-lister like Emma didn't get the same treatment, making me feel like it wouldn't be as out there a thing to undo if they ever wanted to. Which, given their seeming refusal to recast anything, is maybe not as good a thing as I like to imagine? Begone, awkward wooden woman and mumbly teen, Emma/Sean forevah~
MINI RANT TIME
HOW THE FUCKING FUCK
DO YOU SET A MOVIE IN THE 1970S
AND NOT FUCKING USE DAZZLER
HOW
HOW
INK
FUCKING INK APPEARS IN A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE BEFORE DAZZLER DOES????????????
IT'S THE FUCKING 70S;LFKJA;SDLFKJA;DLSFKJA;LDFKJSA;LDFKJSA
Phew. Okay, I feel much better now.
Dat ending. Mmmmmmmmmmmmrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Apparently a lot of people were jazzed about it? But for me, it ended up serving as this giant fucking buzzkill after all of the awesome. I was into it, yay, the day has been successfully saved, oh hey it's Kelsey Grammar, that's neat, but by the time Jean showed up all I could think about was how much I really, really, really don't want to watch another one of these movies again. Which, naturally, leads into the far greater issue of my nebulous feelings about this franchise as a whole.
I love this movie. I love First Class. When they first came out, I loved X-Men and X2. Looking back....
They are still really good movies. X2 in particular remains a great film on its own. But they were the first of their kind. They were the first Marvel movies on the scene, not counting Blade (who deserves his own mention for coming first, but that's a whole different genre). But they came before the MCU films (and to a lesser extent, Raimi's Spider-Man movies before that) proved that we can have our heroes on the screen without compromising them, without putting them in drab black leather and toning them down for the screen. And every time the fun and excitement of The Wolverine or DoFP brings it back around to those first movies with their mediocre-at-best casting and weird random character choices (something that even the last three films that I have loved have kept up), I just get so bummed. I liked those movies when they were all we knew we could have, when it just neat to see these characters on screen in any capacity, but that was almost fifteen years ago, and it just feels like no matter how hard they strain to inject all this wonderful life into the series, they remain shackled to those (comparatively) dull beginnings. And that sucks.
Not helping matters is how far removed so many of these characters, both the great (MYSTIQUE I WILL SHOUT IT FROM THE ROOFTOPS) and the lousy, are from their comic counterparts. As long as this series goes on, I will never get a movie featuring the team/characters that have always been the most important to me in comics. And I just... I HATE that I end up resenting these films for everything they aren't when so much of what they are is AWESOME. I want, so desperately, to just love them on their own merits, but as long as it feels (however unjustly) like they're somehow keeping the world from getting "proper" X-Men movies, it's so hard.
I just want to live in a magical world where I can have two franchises, one featuring the characters that I love, and this fantastic anything-goes AU film world that we've been getting ever since First Class. Until that somehow happens, my entitled fangirl ass is just doomed to be forever conflicted about these movies.
Oof. Okay, that is enough crazy rambling, I think.
MY QUESTIONS:
Are they just ignoring Nightcrawler's parentage, or can we assume that Mystique has had him already with Azazel dead?
DAT DUN DUN DUN ENDING. Mystique picking up Wolverine! WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? Do... do we now have a Wolverine sans Weapon X backstory? BECAUSE THAT WOULD BE KINDA HUGE WHAT DOES THAT EVEN ENTAIL AAAAAAAAAAAAH I NEED MORE
I'mma need them to go ahead and make it clear that it's gonna be the past cast still in center stage for Age of Apocalypse so I can know if I care or not. Because the whole period piece angle is far and away the best thing this series has going for it right now (not that the rest isn't great, IT IS, but the 60s/70s settings are just the fucking best I will cry if we lose them so soon and McAvoy and Fassbender and that can't be it it just cannot), so. Yes. Please let that ending just be Singer saying goodbye to his original cast. I need this.
WAS ABOUT TO HIT POST WHEN I THOUGHT OF SOMETHING :O
possibly i am just reaching because of banshee, but
four dead mutants explicitly shown/mentioned/harped on: banshee, emma, azazel, angel
four fuckin horsemen?????????
Prefacing this by pointing out that I have the cover to Uncanny X-Men #141 on the wall above my damn computer. The X-Men are important to me, Days of Future Past is important to me, and my feelings on this entire franchise are conflicted at best. Now fuck, where do I even start?
I guess with... I liked it? I liked it a hell of a lot. There are a lot of caveats and asterisks that go with that, but it was a damn great movie. Expectations have now been shattered three times in a row, I will clearly never ever learn.
First up, the future X-Men. They were everything that all the mindless garbage cameos of X3 SHOULD have been, and then some. Completely recognizable characters doing fucking awesome shit with their powers, even if they don't get to ever be a focus or receive characterization. Bishop with a big ol' energy gun! Warpath! Blink, bringing the SINGLE COOLEST FUCKING VISUALIZATION OF A POWER ONSCREEN GODDAMN SO AWESOME. Kinda annoyed that they gave Sunfire's powers to Sunspot, what was the point of that, maybe they just wanted two dudes named Bobby bringing the fire and the ice, I don't know, NEVERTHELESS. ICEMAN HAD ICE SLIDES, EVERYTHING WAS WONDERFUL.
Fuck off, Storm. Just... ugh. Halle Berry, you are a walking tragedy, but I liked the homage to the original story in giving her a big dramatic sentinel goring. Would have preferred a vaporized Wolverine, obviously, doesn't get more iconic than that, but it also obviously wouldn't have worked with the story, so. You win some, you lose some.
On the surface, giving Kitty random time travel powers is pretty dumb, but seeing as it was entirely an excuse to give her a prominent role in the story that was originally hers? It absolutely gets a pass from me. It made the most sense to use Wolverine, honestly, and I still think Ellen Page is miscast (but as least she actually got to play KITTY this time), and this was just a nice way to not completely write her out of her own story, even if it was just pulled out of someone's ass.
Oh, and Colossus was also there. Right.
Watching them all gruesomely die twice over the course of the film was pretty redundant, but other than that, fuckin' loved the future stuff. Wolverine's grey temples! Such a little thing, but so weirdly important to me, and who doesn't love seeing Stewart and McKellan back in action again? Hitler, that's who.
Okay, on to the 70s stuff, the real meat of the film. I feel like there's nothing I can say that everyone else won't have already said, though? It was fucking phenomenal. Mystique being the emotional core of the film, this battle for her soul being the thing that drives the whole mess, that it really is all down to her at the end in a way that works both as a beautiful culmination of her relationship with Charles and a victory that is all her own, because it is all about HER agency and HER choices only SHAPED by her relationships, just. Gah. So good. SO GOOD. SUCH EMOTIONS, VERY X-MEN, WOW.
Like. Has there ever been a superhero film set solely in our own Earth with stakes that big? Where the consequences were so fucking epic and dire without feeling artificially inflated or blown out of proportion? I am honestly asking, because I seriously don't think I have ever felt that feeling of ENORMITY, like this is seriously the fate of EVERYTHING at stake here, in a film without the enemy coming from somewhere else entirely, space or another world, or crazy magic or just. Something else. This was huge, this was it, this was all-or-nothing epic stakes, all because sometimes people really suck. That shit is gonna stick with me.
2quick2silver is the hero we all deserve. I mean, I'm looking forward to seeing something closer to ACTUAL Quicksilver in Avengers 2, but this fuckin' Peter doof was the scene-stealing joy to behold everyone said he was. FOUR FOR YOU, EVAN PETERS. IF I COULD SAVE TIME IN A BOTTLE, INDEED. WHIP. LASH.
RIP Baby Banshee, we hardly knew ye. I think I'd be more upset if an actual A-lister like Emma didn't get the same treatment, making me feel like it wouldn't be as out there a thing to undo if they ever wanted to. Which, given their seeming refusal to recast anything, is maybe not as good a thing as I like to imagine? Begone, awkward wooden woman and mumbly teen, Emma/Sean forevah~
MINI RANT TIME
HOW THE FUCKING FUCK
DO YOU SET A MOVIE IN THE 1970S
AND NOT FUCKING USE DAZZLER
HOW
HOW
INK
FUCKING INK APPEARS IN A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE BEFORE DAZZLER DOES????????????
IT'S THE FUCKING 70S;LFKJA;SDLFKJA;DLSFKJA;LDFKJSA;LDFKJSA
Phew. Okay, I feel much better now.
Dat ending. Mmmmmmmmmmmmrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Apparently a lot of people were jazzed about it? But for me, it ended up serving as this giant fucking buzzkill after all of the awesome. I was into it, yay, the day has been successfully saved, oh hey it's Kelsey Grammar, that's neat, but by the time Jean showed up all I could think about was how much I really, really, really don't want to watch another one of these movies again. Which, naturally, leads into the far greater issue of my nebulous feelings about this franchise as a whole.
I love this movie. I love First Class. When they first came out, I loved X-Men and X2. Looking back....
They are still really good movies. X2 in particular remains a great film on its own. But they were the first of their kind. They were the first Marvel movies on the scene, not counting Blade (who deserves his own mention for coming first, but that's a whole different genre). But they came before the MCU films (and to a lesser extent, Raimi's Spider-Man movies before that) proved that we can have our heroes on the screen without compromising them, without putting them in drab black leather and toning them down for the screen. And every time the fun and excitement of The Wolverine or DoFP brings it back around to those first movies with their mediocre-at-best casting and weird random character choices (something that even the last three films that I have loved have kept up), I just get so bummed. I liked those movies when they were all we knew we could have, when it just neat to see these characters on screen in any capacity, but that was almost fifteen years ago, and it just feels like no matter how hard they strain to inject all this wonderful life into the series, they remain shackled to those (comparatively) dull beginnings. And that sucks.
Not helping matters is how far removed so many of these characters, both the great (MYSTIQUE I WILL SHOUT IT FROM THE ROOFTOPS) and the lousy, are from their comic counterparts. As long as this series goes on, I will never get a movie featuring the team/characters that have always been the most important to me in comics. And I just... I HATE that I end up resenting these films for everything they aren't when so much of what they are is AWESOME. I want, so desperately, to just love them on their own merits, but as long as it feels (however unjustly) like they're somehow keeping the world from getting "proper" X-Men movies, it's so hard.
I just want to live in a magical world where I can have two franchises, one featuring the characters that I love, and this fantastic anything-goes AU film world that we've been getting ever since First Class. Until that somehow happens, my entitled fangirl ass is just doomed to be forever conflicted about these movies.
Oof. Okay, that is enough crazy rambling, I think.
MY QUESTIONS:
Are they just ignoring Nightcrawler's parentage, or can we assume that Mystique has had him already with Azazel dead?
DAT DUN DUN DUN ENDING. Mystique picking up Wolverine! WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? Do... do we now have a Wolverine sans Weapon X backstory? BECAUSE THAT WOULD BE KINDA HUGE WHAT DOES THAT EVEN ENTAIL AAAAAAAAAAAAH I NEED MORE
I'mma need them to go ahead and make it clear that it's gonna be the past cast still in center stage for Age of Apocalypse so I can know if I care or not. Because the whole period piece angle is far and away the best thing this series has going for it right now (not that the rest isn't great, IT IS, but the 60s/70s settings are just the fucking best I will cry if we lose them so soon and McAvoy and Fassbender and that can't be it it just cannot), so. Yes. Please let that ending just be Singer saying goodbye to his original cast. I need this.
WAS ABOUT TO HIT POST WHEN I THOUGHT OF SOMETHING :O
possibly i am just reaching because of banshee, but
four dead mutants explicitly shown/mentioned/harped on: banshee, emma, azazel, angel
four fuckin horsemen?????????
no subject
NAILED IT. Nailed it all, really. You're obviously more invested in the comics than I am (not through a lack of interest or caring on my part, just through a lack of having gotten there yet) but on the whole, I agree with so much that you've said and I'll be pretty gutted if we're done with McAvoy and Fassbender. I wonder what you think of the rumours of a Mystique film in the same way Wolverine has his own? This was WAY more Mystique-centric than I expected and I was pretty fucking delighted as a consequence. I expected a lot more Wolverine with the way it was being marketed here, but it's possible that's because Hugh's Australian and we flock to our own...
IDEK what else to say except WHIP LAAAAAAAAASH and I get a real kick out of mutants having fun with their powers when they can and what does it say that I already have item post ideas for Raven when/if I get her? W h a t d o e s i t s a y?
Oh, no, also, I'm bummed that the jFK thing wasn't elaborated on more but hopefully we get that in deleted scenes/whatever extended edition Singer has planned, because, you know. The promotional materials with the bent bullet were fairly fucking obvious about who it was AND I WANT MORE TO DO WITH THAT, THANKS.
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And the JFK thing, yes! I'm glad it came up, but it would have been cooler to see more of it just because this gimmick of having the X-Men play roles in all of these historical events is at once so goofy and so delightful, I GENUINELY LOVE IT. Like a bunch of mutant Forrest Gumps.
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Right? Kind of like what I love about the opening of Watchmen and the idea of them always being there satisfies my comic/superhero love AND my history geek. I think we'll get a lot in the extras (or I'm hoping) since so much was put into the stuff before the movie and it looks like a ton got cut. ROGUE CAMEO, FOR EXAMPLE. Blink and you might have missed it.
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and we don't talk about the watchmen opening >_>
(don't like the movie, but that opening is so fucking perfect, i cried a lil bit in the theatre when I saw it >_>)
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but yeah it all ended up turning on her and that is woooooonderful, she chose the better path, X-MEN AS IT GETS MOTHERFUCKER, like you said, huge stakes, the whole of the future, and it comes down to Mystique choosing not to kill a dude. A M A Z I N G.
Like I would've been more excited to see her at the mansion at the end than Rogue and the miscast squad (heck, if she did join the X-Men she'd be filling her reformed villain slot???), like, Jean showed up and I was like 'eh The Wolverine was a really great goodbye to you, didn't need to see you again. Scott okay, I guess, you, eh.' Because yeah, the only characters I have an emotional connection to... were still alive. And now The Wolverine is sort of out of continuity, boo. WHERE IS YUKIO, I CARE MORE ABOUT YUKIO THAN JEAN.
INTERESTING POINT ABOUT THE HORSEMEN. what a fucking random horsemen squad that would be.
MYSTIQUE SPIN-OFF. Or in the next Wolverine movie, PREFERABLY SPIN-OFF.
But yeah, like... now that we can have bright costumes in superhero movies I want them, y'know? The leather made sense for ~the future~ but I fear that the next movie will do it anyway whatever time period it's in. HAVE SCOTT SAY THEY NEED TO ASTONISH THEM. DO IT ASSHOLES.
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I mean, I guess The Wolverine is still in continuity in his head if nothing else? So there's nothing to stop him from hitting Yukio up again if he wants to, I guess. But yeah, BIT OF A BUMMER, THAT.
what a fucking random horsemen squad that would be.
In other words, PERFECTLY IN LINE WITH EVERYTHING THESE MOVIES CHOOSE TO BE.
MYSTIQUE SPIN-OFF, PLEASE. And then put her in the damn Charming Potato Gambit movie, have her give him some kittens.
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ahahaha I just realized that with the continuity changes Wolverine is now completely unaware of a broad swathe of his own history again. so x-men much amnesia
So they could fill in that, too, maybe I guess. WHATEVS MYSTIQUE SPIN-OFF. KITTENS ALSO.
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Random aside, Wolverine started going grey really suddenly in the movies, didn't he? Because movie future is nowhere near as far ahead as comic future. Guess they had to compensate for using actual actors over so many years somehow. XD
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he just dyes it because he thinks it makes him look distinguished
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Man, that just makes me wonder if we'll see any of the future X-Men again since why shouldn't they all be around? Blink was really fuckin' cool, okay
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And I mean, it's Age of Apocalypse, she is AoA more than anyone else, really.
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like, Nightcrawler Attacks the White House is of the best scenes of powers onscreen ever, and he just has smoke instead of cool pink/purple portal javelins, FUCKING DO IT, SINGER
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They pulled the trigger on this new timeline, let's flesh it out, some! Instead of just going back ten years so that Singer can relive his glory days, bleeeeeh.
BUT HOW DO YOU SKIP OVER THE 70S AND NEVER ONCE USE DAZZLER
FUCKING INK? REALLY????
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SCOTT AND JEAN ARE ALIIIIIVE
Like, I've never been a big Jean fan, but THE LEADER OF THE X-MEN LIVES
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UGH. Fucking 70s and no Dazzler makes me ragey. I'm just...I don't even know what to do with these movies anymore. BUT Mystique and Xavier being pseudo-siblings makes the whole having Charlie Xavier thing with him EPICALLY FUCKED UP. Which is how I love my X-Men.