Formula: X-Men / Back to the Future
Why I Saw It: When these movies click, they can be my favorite in the genre.
Cast: That's the big appeal of this one, right? The best of the old and the best of the new.Hugh Jackman bridges the gap between the two casts and he's never been better (or somehow, in better shape) in the role. For the second time, Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy excel in the unenviable task of playing Magneto and Prof. Xavier, this time with Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart offering direct comparison. It's nice seeing Jennifer Lawrence again although she's weird in this role. I don't get the menace of Raven/Mystique that Rebecca Romijn brought to it, probably because, since it is J-Law in the blue makeup, they give her more dialogue and story than she needs. Nicholas Hoult reminds American audiences that he's still around, waiting for someone a role fitting his talent. Peter Dinklage is, essentially, the villain who they don't bother developing into a rounded out character. Pretty much everyone else in the universe shows up for at least a scene. There's a lot of masters being served (or underserved) in this one.
Plot: Finally, the sentinels! Even as a non-Comic reader I know that we should've seen the sentinels before now. The plot centers around a time-travelling (a power that Kitty Pryde turns out to have. Who knew?) plan that transports Logan/Wolverine back to 1973 to stop a series of events that lead to the creation of the sentinels. From there, it's a matter of getting the gang back together and really, saving everyone from themselves. Meanwhile, the future group (Storm, Ice Man, Kitty Prye, Iceman, Bishop, Colossus, Magneto, Prof. Xavier, and other's I'm forgetting) hold off the sentinels for as long as they can. It's a much more effective blending of the old and the new in the series than I expected allowing Bryan Singer to successfully have his cake and eat it too. The only downside is that it left me wanting a full movie with each cast rather than this 70/30 split with 1973 dominating the time.
Elephant in the Room: Time travel? There's never going to be a good way to do time travel that's going to be scientifically sound (which makes sense since, you know, we can't travel through time), so the best you can hope for is something that doesn't distract you for too long. Having a world of mutants helps make anything more plausible and they come up with an explanation tailor-made for Wolverine where a person's consciousness is sent back in time to take over the body from the past. It's still not a pretty explanation but it's functional.
Movie Theater MVP (Most Valuable Patron): I'm awarding this to the woman sitting behind me who, whenever they put the name of the city their in at the bottom of the screen, she would repeat it out loud. Normally, this would annoy me, but each time she'd say it with such wonder, like she'd never heard the word "Moscow" before that I had to smile.
Movie Theater LVP: The ass-hat who thought that because he dimmed to screen a little no one would mind if he checks his email for 10 minutes. I was in such disbelief that he was being such a prick that I forgot to say "Hey, dumbass! This is a one screen experience" or something clever like that.
To Sum Things Up:
The X-Men series should be a lot bigger than it is. 2000's X-Men kicked off this superhero craze that have defined cinema for a decade and a half. X2 used the freedom afforded by the success of the first movie to build the franchise into something big, messy, and crow-pleasing. Nine years, one failed re-imagining of the Phoenix saga, 2 disappointing Wolverine stand-alones, and woefully overlooked prequel later, they really needed this movie to finish the story and hit the reset button, giving them their own "Phase 2" like the Disney Marvel movies. In that respect Days of Future Past is a complete success, ignoring individual plot mechanisms that don't entirely follow. Now, the series has the luxury problem of too many good actors to populate a movie with and the freedom to go in whatever direction they want. It's hard for me to talk about the movie on its own because it very clearly is functioning as a "let's get things back on track" story that is needed to setup X-Men Apocalypse as the kind of slug-fest that could bring it to an Avengers level (even if $600 million is a little unattainable). So, as a piece of franchise building, this movie is very effective, and as a stand-alone experience, it is exciting enough to keep you entertain from start to finish while not requiring any sort of deep comic knowledge.
Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend
No comments:
Post a Comment