So it came to pass that someone I know said, "We watched X-Men: First Class and Days of Future Past the other day and they're really good films." ... Disbelieving this nonsense statement, I suggested to the wife that we watch them again. So for the last two nights, while Wimbledon buggers up our viewing schedule, we revisited the world of mutants for what will probably be the final time (or at least until the MCU revives them or we accidentally watch Age of Apocalypse...).
X-Men: First Class is a typical Matthew Bourne film. Like Guy Ritchie films of the Noughties, Bourne films have a kind of motif and he usually has Jane Goldman along in some capacity. The first thing you notice about it is it doesn't really feel like any previous Fox X-Men film. It's obviously a prequel to the first three, but it also feels quite fresh. I think it also features the very first 'fuck' in a Marvel superhero film (but I could be wrong about that) in a humorous Wolverine cameo.
The problem with First Class is its inconsistency; it jerks around from being a recruitment film, a spy thriller and a scene setter for what was to come while also ensuring that what had already happened in the future (the three X-Men films) would seem slightly wonky, but no one anywhere wants to try and untangle the mire that the X continuity in films ended up being.
James McAvoy is great as a flamboyant and dashing young Charles Xavier; Jennifer Lawrence (still not quite A list celeb) is a sexy Mystique and Michael Fassbinder is okay as Magneto and the three make a good team to start with, but Eric's ego and megalomania seems to forever get in the way of a reasonable character and things start going to the way of the pear around the time Magneto decides that the man he's been trying to kill for the last 20 years actually had an agenda he believed in.
Kevin Bacon isn't a very good Sebastian Shaw - in the same way Guy Pierce didn't make a great villain in Iron Man 3 - and the transformation from concentration camp scientist to fully-fledged, extremely powerful mutant is never explained or explored; presumably Shaw was a mutant back when he was a Nazi and German, but as one of the earlier X films featured people being turned into mutants it was difficult to differentiate. In fact, his Hellfire Club team of proto-evil-mutants were in general a bit lame and like earlier versions of later mutants and at times it did feel like we were in for a repeat of the lo-quality special effects we suffered in the very first X-Men film.
However, the pace of the film far outweighed the one that came over a decade before, even if Shaw was just the first 'Magneto' in his recruitment drive of 'evil' mutants and there was a degree of the formulaic about all of it. The premise that the CIA would allow mutants to be part of their organisation as quickly as it was portrayed seemed... convenient... and oddly enough the forces of the USA and USSR turning against the mutants that had just averted WW3 seemed trite and... convenient.
It was an enjoyable film and we both felt that while we remembered chunks of it, we'd forgotten enough for it to feel fresh and new again. The special effects were impressive, even if you do feel as though the majority of the major mutants don't transfer their powers well to the screen. Xavier holds two fingers to his temple and reads minds; Lensherr holds his hands out in front of him and manipulates metal and the mutants chosen to be the proto-X-Men and Brother of Evil Mutants (a name that really needs to be made obsolete) were visually stunning, but quite naff at the same time, if you know what I mean. In the end the Cuban missile crisis is averted by mutants but with catastrophic consequences for the two main protagonists.
As a prequel and a reboot it worked incredibly well, except at the time (2011) I'm not sure what people thought it actually was and whether it would make much sense in the scheme of things. It was what followed that made things slightly confusing...
X-Men: Days of Future Past is one of those films. What do I mean by that? You know, those films you think you've seen but very quickly you're wondering if your mind's been wiped. From the opening scene to the mini post credit scene it was a new film to us, because, we think it was a new film to us. Films we've seen but forgotten often throw up scenes or something that ticks the box, pulls the lever and you go, 'Oh yeah, I remember now' or you simply remember a scene and then a few later and realise that the first time you watched it there was little impression left. This was different. This was inexplicably the first time we've watched it.
How something as remarkable as us having missed the 5th film in a 7 film franchise could have happened is something I expect won't be explained too easily, but while the wife had a faint recollection of the scene with proto-Quicksilver, she admits that might have been from a trailer or a film review, because the rest of it and there were many memorable scenes you couldn't imagine forgetting. But, whether we'd seen it or not was immaterial, apart from the fact I kind of wish I'd seen it before because we both reckon it was the best X-Men film of the lot. Top cast, easy to follow only slightly complicated/convoluted story, and an epilogue that effectively ended the franchise (and allowed them to start again). It would have been a great place to have stopped and had they stopped we wouldn't have had to suffer the talentless Sophie Turner as junior Jean Grey.
Now, another reason why we realised we hadn't seen it was the previous night we were hypothesising about the MCU's take on the X-Men and mutants and I said, "I'd hope that the sentinels will finally get an airing; they've been ignored by the films and they're by far the biggest threat." This is an important throwaway line.
Days of Future Past starts in the future and we're back with Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen, Huge Ackman, Halle Berry, and some new mutants fighting ... sentinels, giant adaptable robots that learn the abilities of the mutant they are attempting to kill, adapt them and then use them against their prey. Sentinels have always been beatable, but they've always carried that cold emotionless vibe that the best villains often have.
There's a host of A list celebs involved in this 5th film in the franchise, original director Bryan Singer is back, it's a time travel film and it felt like fun from almost the word go. It starts with Wolverine from the future travelling back in time to inhabit his own body in 1973 and then tracking down Eric and Xavier to get them to help him stop Mystique from assassinating a man whose death will result in the near extinction of all mutants and their sympathisers in the not too distant future - approx next year or thereabouts.
My main quibbles with it were the (here's that word again) convenient plot devices that felt forced, like horror films where there's no mobile signal or no one has a mobile phone with them; in this case effectively writing off 10 of the 11 years that followed the Cuban Missile Crisis. Charles, no longer crippled, is strung out on a serum that takes his telepathy away and replaces it with the ability to walk (?!?) but now has no school for gifted youngsters - because of Viet Nam. Eric's apparent involvement with the killing of JFK and subsequent 10 years in high security metal-less incarceration and - Raven - Mystique's conversion from reasonably sane mutant to the wrong side of a wronged Magneto barking, other than that it's a cracking film that rocks along like a express train and does a really good job of flicking back and forth between the future and the past and bringing even more A listers into the film.
The scenes in the future are suitably dark, brooding and apocalyptic. The sentinels are impressive and these largely unstoppable killing machines make very final foes. There's a Terminator vibe going on and a small liberty with Kitty Pryde and an additional power - to transfer the consciousness into the same body in the far flung past and only Logan - Wolverine - has the physiology to withstand such stress so it's up to him, in his 1973 body, to track down all the necessary players and ensure that Mystique doesn't kill the man whose death leads to the future we're witnessing.
What follows is a slightly kooky caper involving prison breaks, flying sports stadiums, some extremely funny lines and the Nixon administration being led down a destructive path by Tyrian Lannister. There's much more than that, it is absolutely jam-packed with killer moments; it's a cleverly constructed story with a satisfying ending. It's the perfect place to stop.
Why didn't they stop!?
I'm sure had I seen this film I wouldn't have had such major problems/reservations with how the MCU will handle mutants and been so down on all of them - there are at least two X films that are worth watching and I've never felt X-Men: Last Stand was as bad as many people said; as I pointed out many months ago, I enjoyed that more than the more critically acclaimed prequels.
Days of Future Past isn't the comic of the same name, but it does do an excellent job of recreating the Claremont/Byrne swan song without there being much similarity.
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