X-men: Days of Future Past

The Greatest Do-Over in Cinema

I was planning on doing a whole series of posts on all the X-Men movies before Deadpool vs. Wolverine. I ended up with two, and this one came in just under the wire. Maybe someday I’ll go back to it, but for now, make sure you catch up by reading my post on X-Men: First Class here:

Also, do this:

Now that the plugs are out of the way, please get your Deadpool & Wolverine primer here while I wax philosphic on one of my favorite comic book movies, and maybe one of my favorite movies of them all: X-Men Days of Future Past

When I was about ten, I read Marvel’s Secret Wars maxi-series, and was introduced to a lot of cool superheroes, and I guess comics in general. Some I recognized from appearances in cartoons like Incredible Hulk and Spider-Man & His Amazing Friends. Those were the gateway drugs which got me hooked on the Uncanny X-Men.

Even though Stan Lee pioneered the philosophy that every comic should be written as if it was the reader’s very first one, X-Writer Chris Claremont didn’t always adhere to it, I guess, because there was about 20 years of X-Men history that I was completely unaware of, and it was constantly referenced. For one, there was a character, Rachel Summers, who said she was from another timeline. I was ten years old. What the Hell was another timeline?

If you click that iconic cover and buy something, I might get a prize!

As I continued reading, I discovered Rachel was from the Days of Future Past timeline, which referred to a two-issue story arc in the X-Men published in 1981, where an older version of Kitty Pryde was sent back through time into her young body to stop the assassination of a senator by a mutant. The assassination caused quite a bit of uproar, as soon after the Mutant Registration Act was ratified, which eventually lead to a mutant genocide, then World War III, and then basically the mucking up of everything. After that storyline concluded, somehow Rachel ended up traveling through the multiverse and ended up in the main Marvel timeline. That’s a whole crazy story in its own right, but one for another time. Maybe X-Men ‘97 Season 2?

The point is that Days of Future Past was a seminal moment in the X-Men mythology, so it was almost inevitable that they would make the storyline into a movie. Obviously, some changes would probably be made, but as long as they stayed true to the original idea, it would be fine, right? Maybe not, because when fans recalled X-Men 3, and saw how they mangled the Dark Phoenix Saga, they had reason to be skeptical. 

Still, one change that I don’t think anybody had an issue with was making Wolverine the central character who traveled back through time. So at the end of The Wolverine, Logan’s second solo adventure, we saw Professor X and Magneto (with Sirs Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan reprising their roles, no less) recruit Logan to stop “a weapon that may bring about the end of our kind.” Because I had been burned by a couple bad X-Men movies, and had just sat through a decent but not amazing Wolverine solo flick, I had forgotten how cool a scene that was. Especially since the last time we had seen those two amazing actors in those roles was 7 years prior, in the aforementioned despicable X-Men: The Last Stand. 

The exciting thing about this movie that there was a possibility, if you knew the comics, that history could be rewritten, and that the horrible ending of that horrible movie would be erased from the cinematic timeline (I wish I could erase it from my memory as easily, like totally Eternal-Sunshine-of-the-Spotless-Mind it). Fans were also promised a combining of the two generations of X-Men casts: the younger versions of Charles Xavier and Magneto, played by James MacAvoy and Michael Fassbender, as well as the classic ones,  Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan. Halle Berry even came back to reprise her role as Storm for this one, and she was pregnant at the time. They were bringing out all the big guns.

One big gun that they pulled out but ended up on the cutting room floor was Anna Paquin’s Rogue, which is sad because if you watch The Rogue Cut, which I highly recommend you do, she plays a very integral part of the movie. In the movie version, it is actually Kitty that uses her powers to phase Wolverine back into his younger body. However, during a particularly hairy incident in the past, Logan becomes distressed and frantically waves his claws around in the future, giving Kitty a nasty gash on her side. In the Rogue Cut, some of the X-Men journey to the mansion to free Rogue and have her use her powers to switch off with Kitty and keep Logan in the past. Unfortunately, a Sentinel latches on to their jet and that’s how the bad guys are able to find them in the end. There’s always something.

In my post about X-Men: First Class, I wrote about how well the movie captured the dynamic between Charles and Xavier and Magneto, and how they were friends but had opposing views on where mutants should stand in society. This time around, their philosophies are basically the same, but a lot has changed in the ten years since these two first met in First Class. Most of Charles’ students were drafted into service during the Vietnam War, so the school was essentially shut down, although that wasn't the only reason. Charles himself has fallen upon hard times. Raven leaving him to side with Erik sunk him into a deep depression. Also, he has Hank, his only remaining student, develop a serum that allows him to walk, but it alters his DNA and inhibits his use of his telepathic abilities. He never comes out and says it, but he is suppressing a part of himself so that he can walk.

Erik is also in a rough place, literally. He was imprisoned for assassinating John F. Kennedy. Much like how the first movie had mutants involved with the Cuban Missile Crisis, this one has mutants affecting history as well. Charles, and the world, apparently thinks that Magneto used his powers to alter the course of the bullet, giving credence to the famed Magic Bullet Theory (which is the only way that theory actually makes sense.) Magneto claims he was actually trying to save the President, because he was “one of us,” a mutant, which may explain why he was so young and good-looking. He had the same powers as Kevin Bacon in First Class.  

We also learn that Erik and Raven have parted ways, but she is still on a crusade to help mutants everywhere. In fact, when we first see her, she is impersonating a general in Vietnam who was part of a project that was experimenting on mutants for a young William Stryker, the big bad in X2: X-Men United. She frees a cadre of mutants from their lab, including her former First Class-mate Havoc, and one who looks to one day become Toad from the original X-Men film (All of the connections are really cool to me). We learn that her quest takes her down a dark path, and as in the comics, she is the assassin that triggers the global shitshow. In the movie, it is not a senator, however, but she instead assassinates Bolivar Trask, the creator of the Sentinels, which is the trigger event that plunges the world into chaos.

So this is what Logan is tasked with, bringing all of these people together so that the world doesn’t devolve into a nightmare. Honestly, it is never fully explained to him or to us why it requires Charles and Magneto working together to stop Raven, but older Charles and Magneto (Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan) convince him that it has to be that way. I always figured that they just finally realized they were better together. 

The thing I always liked about this movie is that, while there is a decent amount of action, the main battle is not a physical conflict, but an emotional one. Through the course of the movie, Magneto has decided that the only way to save mutantkind is to stop the Sentinels altogether, and killing one man just ain’t gonna cut it. During a display of the Sentinel’s power put on by President Nixon on the White House lawn, Magneto decides to display some power of his own. He takes control of the Sentinels, holds the President and his cabinet hostage, and turns on all the news cameras present to send out a message to his fellow mutants: no more hiding. He is about to kill the President when Raven, disguised as Nixon, stops him with a plastic gun, no less. She is then about to turn that gun on Trask, when Charles telepathically begs her to stop. He could use his powers to freeze her, but instead he freezes all of the men, and leaves the choice up to her, hoping, even knowing, that there is still good in her. Charles realizes his mistake from First Class,, that he had always tried to control Raven, in the name of trying to help her. Leaving the choice up to her, even if it meant that Logan’s world could suffer the consequences if he was wrong, was the right choice. When Raven drops her gun, the future is changed.

See, despite all the hubbub about Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, this movie is about Charles Xavier, and his struggles. He never fully admits it, but when Erik asks him what happened to his powers and Charles explains that his spinal treatment changes his DNA, Erik is aghast. In Erik’s mind, it is obviously better to be a mutant, so even the ability to walk would be a noble sacrifice. Charles, however, was seemingly growing weary of always hearing other people’s thoughts. Plus, without Raven as a calming influence, he just couldn't deal with it anymore. As the two old friends debate who has lost more, Charles finally lets loose and berates Erik for taking “her away,” and abandoning him. Erik then lists off most of the cast of the last movie, and then states that they are all dead. Basically, while Charles was dealing with his personal stuff, the government was going around butchering and experimenting on mutants. He rightly points out that they were the ones who went around discovering all these mutants, and it was their responsibility to protect them, but, “Where were you Charles? Hiding… Pretending to be something you’re not.” And the final dagger is when he tells Charles that he, in fact, had abandoned his fellow mutants. It’s a tough pill when the bad guy is right.

In the end, Charles telepathically links, through Logan, to his older, balder self, and the older self helps him, like he was one of his students. Young Charles says that he can’t bear to feel the pain of others when he opens his mind, but bald Charles tells him that it is not their pain that he is worried about feeling, but his own. Once he is strong enough to face his own pain, and once he realizes that facing his inner pain will make his mind even stronger, then he will be able to shoulder the pain of others. And more than that, it is a responsibility for him to do so. It is his responsibility to give them hope. And not just mutants, but everyone.

In 1973, Charles allows Raven and Erik go their separate ways. Hanks asks him if that is the right move, and he replies that there will come a time when they will all be together, and he calls back to what his future self told him about hope, and says that he has hope for them. Hank then asks about Logan, which is a nice segue into perhaps the greatest scene in any X-Men movie: Logan awakes in his bed, in the mansion, in a new and different future, and the hallways are filled with students, many of whom are his old comrades. And as he sees them, we get to see them again, as well. We see Iceman & Rogue, cavorting like they did back in X2. We see a Kelsey Grammar-voiced, furry Beast walking down the hall, heckling Logan. And we see Jean Grey, who had died years earlier at Logan’s hand. We even see Cyclops, who had met an ignominious demise in X-Men 3, off-screen, because the filming had gone on so long that James Marsden had to go work on another project. It is a redemption for Wolverine, the character, and for the X-Men franchise in general. It may be the greatest reboot in movie history. It wasn’t done by recasting or re-imagining. It was an actual time travel story taken right out of the comics, and done so well that it worked seamlessly into the larger storyline. And it wasn’t like it was a money grab because they never even used most of those characters again.

Until now. Tomorrow I will be seeing Deadpool & Wolverine, and there is a promise of a lot of cameos, X-Men and maybe even others. I read one post that said the whole movie is just to service the cameos. But even if that is true, for those brief moments that they are on-screen, I am sure I will enjoy it. If it is anything like this one, I definitely will. (If it stinks, then I may look like an idiot, but it wouldn't be the first time, so…)

Thanks for reading and enjoy Deadpool & Wolverine! And again, if you are an X-fan and want to catch up on some of my Summer Reading List:

Astonishing X-Men Vol. 1: Gifted - We all knwo Joss Whedon is a creep, but it’s a fine story and the art by John Cassaday is tremendous

X-Factor by Peter David Omnibus - Peter David wrote something like 170 issues of X-Factor over different stints. This is some of his best work and the seminal run for these characters.

Wolverine: Old Man Logan - Required reading. It’s gross at some parts, but still amazing

Thanks again! Talk to you soon!