X-Men: Days of Future Past

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

Well, it isn't out yet, but based on the trailer, cast, source material, and director, I think this has a chance to be the movie of the year. It could also disappoint. I won't get a chance to see this one before mid June, but I am definitely in eager anticipation mode. In curious what some of the early impressions will be.

[I'm Murrin]

Thing is, I kinda suspect that the "future" parts of the film will be much smaller than the trailers suggest. I feel like it's entirely possible we'll get an opening half hour or so before Wolverine goes back, and then the only bit we'll see of the old cast will be that part where Xavier talks to his future self.

[Fist and Faith]

Probably won't see it. I was deep into comic books when the 2-issue story came out, and amazed the comic world. Such a good story, such good memories. But the changes I'm already aware of are going to ruin it for me. It may well be a good movie, but I'll be too annoyed.

[sgt.null]

well Wolverine sells better than Kitty Pryde, Fist.

[Hashi Lebwohl]

We were going to see it but the kids' bio-father changed his plans and they will be out this weekend. Maybe they'll be back on Sunday in time to go see it. Oh! Monday is a holiday so that will be perfect--no school for them and no work for me.

Excellent.

[I'm Murrin]

Had a thought re: the way they're rebooting this series.

The dystopian future in which we'll see the old cast X-Men in this film cannot be the future of the original X-Men trilogy, because the Sentinels are created in the 1970s. So the question is: Are the original trilogy films canon with respect to the new ones, taking place in the future that's created after Days of Future Past (without Sentinels), or are they going to carry on making films with the new cast that eventually overwrite the events of the original films?

If the future in this film had been the future of the original trilogy, this film would have been a good way to reboot into the new cast going forward. But because that can't be the case, it still leaves the old films in limbo.

[Orlion]

Frankly, I'm just sick and tired of Hugh Jackman's Wolverine.

[Menolly]

I'm not.

[Hashi Lebwohl]

Had a thought re: the way they're rebooting this series.

The dystopian future in which we'll see the old cast X-Men in this film cannot be the future of the original X-Men trilogy, because the Sentinels are created in the 1970s. So the question is: Are the original trilogy films canon with respect to the new ones, taking place in the future that's created after Days of Future Past (without Sentinels), or are they going to carry on making films with the new cast that eventually overwrite the events of the original films?

If the future in this film had been the future of the original trilogy, this film would have been a good way to reboot into the new cast going forward. But because that can't be the case, it still leaves the old films in limbo.

I don't think they are bothering with whether something is canon or not and no one is certainly bothering with whether or not there is one unified continuity--the films which already exist are proof of that. Consider:
in the original movie from 2000, Professor X tells Wolverine that Magneto helped him build Cerebro *but* in First Class we find out that Beast actually built Cerebro for the CIA before they even had a sufficiently-powerful telepath who could operate it correctly. So...it was just an experiment and they got only iffy results at best? How did Hank know to build it--was he on par with Howard Stark? Maybe he meant that Magneto helped him build *that particular Cerebro* but not the original one.
From Origins: Wolverine...sure, he hates mutants but did Stryker already have his son Jason at the time? If he hated mutants why would he send his son to Xavier's school? Why wasn't Stryker working with the CIA project since he knew more about them than they did? Why would he ever consider working with an obvious sociopath like Sabretooth, especially when he was killing the other mutants? Their powers are far too valuable to destroy when they could be studied and ultimately controlled or countered. Why wasn't Stryker working with Trask?
If the Sentinels were first created in the 1970s, then why weren't they used to go after the mutants hiding out in the Canadian forest before they descended to San Francisco to destroy the cure from X-Men The Last Stand? Why did Magneto destroy the Golden Gate bridge when he could have collapsed the structure of Alcatraz from a distance by crushing the metal in its infrastructure?
If Xavier could control both Sabretooth *and* Toad when they went to the train station to pick up Rogue, then why didn't he have one of them take Magneto's helmet off his head? If the helmet was all that stopped Xavier from taking control of Magneto's mind then this would have been a simple, clean solution.
If Magneto could control the X-jet and stop it in mid-air in during X-Men United then why didn't he stop it in mid-flight during X-Men, pull the wings off, and drop it into the Hudson Bay *before* the team got to Ellis Island? This would have slowed them down enough to stop them from being able to stop him....or he could have simply done away with them by crushing the plane and letting it sink.
If Stryker's mind-control formula worked so well on Magneto, Lady Deathstrike, Cyclops, and Nightcrawler then couldn't he have chosen a different mutant and finished the attack at the beginning of the movie? This would have given him the war he wanted more completely than what he actually got.

I could go on and on but what would be the point? No, the studios in charge of the movie rights of the X-Men characters have no overall plan like what the actual Marvel Studios is doing. Yes, they are doing a little better with these new characters but too much damage has already been done.

This has always been one of Marvel's weaknesses, though. Mutants--hated and reviled. Ick. The Avengers and the Fantastic Four--loved and adored by both the public and the government, give them whatever support they need. What? Really? To the average citizen they are all just people with powers so the source of the powers should be irrelevant--some of the Avengers are mutants, being born with abilities.

In any world, though, the emergence of metahuman abilities leads to only three outcomes: 1) all the metas work solely for the government, 2) there are two classes of metas--the underground and the government metas who go after them to imprison or kill them, or 3) the metas end up controlling the government. Every time I run the scenarios, though, 3 keeps coming up as the most likely. But I digress.

[Menolly]

Wait, now I'm confused.

While The Avengers and The X-Men are all Marvel creations, aren't they considered different universes? Things from The Avengers universe like the tesseract (or however that's spelled) aren't in The X-Men universe, right? At least in the movie versions, which is all I'm following?

[Akasri]

As I understand it, the movie rights for the Avengers and X-Men universes are owned by two different companies.

So you have two Marvel franchises seemingly existing in two separate universes. Compound this with the fact that Quicksilver will be in this new X-Men movie and also (possibly) in the next Avengers film, as a totally different Quicksilver.

So, they are in the same comics universe, but different movie universes... I think.

*edit* just read Hashi's long post above... so, yeah, what he said

[Menolly]

Hashi's post is what prompted my question...

[I'm Murrin]

Marvel sold off a lot of the movie rights to their characters back before they decided to start making the films themselves, and they probably won't get those rights back for a long, long time. In the comics, pretty much everything published by Marvel belongs to the same universe, and same with DC. It's a pet peeve for me because the overly convoluted and interconnected universes makes them less accessible to new fans.

I believe I heard that Marvel aren't allowed to refer to Quicksilver as Quicksilver in their own films because of this?

[Menolly]

Marvel sold off a lot of the movie rights to their characters back before they decided to start making the films themselves, and they probably won't get those rights back for a long, long time. In the comics, pretty much everything published by Marvel belongs to the same universe, and same with DC.

OK, so this makes sense to me, as someone who is only following the movies. I can keep X-Men and The Avengers universes easily separated.

That said, Guardians of the Galaxy looks really silly to me. Is it tied to The Avengers story-arc in any way? I'll see it if so, but will otherwise skip it.

...although I admit I had no interest in the Captain America franchise, but saw them since he is part of the The Avengers story-arc and enjoyed them immensely. Then again, I only went to see the first Iron Man because Beorn was excited to see it, and was hooked from the start. But I have yet to see any of The Hulk films. Are they enlightening to the overall story-arc in any way?

[Akasri]

That said, Guardians of the Galaxy looks really silly to me. Is it tied to The Avengers story-arc in any way? I'll see it if so, but will otherwise skip it.

As for the movie universe, I have no idea.

In the comics universe, I believe they have had connections with both X-Men and Avengers storylines, at least insofar as fighting villains who are also villains to the X-Men (Phalanx) and Avengers (Thanos).

Honestly, Marvel and DC have both so corrupted their universes' timelines I can't keep up any more. I just go watch the movies and eat some popcorn

[I'm Murrin]

Guardians of the Galaxy seems to be part of the overall set mostly in that it'll probably introduce some of the alien races and characters that'll be important. It also looks like it could be a pretty fun movie.

Also: Karen Gillan as a bald blue alien villain.

[I'm Murrin]

I just got back from the film. I enjoyed it, though it was pretty good.

Non-spoilery, on continuity:

It seems the original trilogy of films take place in the bad timeline with the Sentinels. The handwavy explanation for it seems to be that they spent 50 years developing the Sentinels before unleashing them. So this film serves as a complete timeline reboot that undoes the original films.

Spoilery bit on continuity:

Spoiler

This thing about the 50 years and the Sentinels not being around during the original films doesn't make sense, because they already have working Sentinels in 1973. They may be early models and laughably easy for Magneto to subvert, but they exist, and they wouldn't spend 50 years working on the updated models and just leave the originals in storage.

Questions that remain, after the events of this film:

Spoiler

- If Mystique replaced Stryker when they were pulling Logan out of the water, does this mean new future Logan doesn't have his Adamantium skeleton?
- Is he really going to just wake up one morning and have no memory whatsoever of the last 50-70 years? That seems a bit crappy for both him and the alternate him he's suddenly jumping into.

[dANdeLION]

I saw it yesterday, and liked it a lot. The Quicksilver scenes were especially great.

[Orlion]

That said, Guardians of the Galaxy looks really silly to me. Is it tied to The Avengers story-arc in any way? I'll see it if so, but will otherwise skip it.

...although I admit I had no interest in the Captain America franchise, but saw them since he is part of the The Avengers story-arc and enjoyed them immensely. Then again, I only went to see the first Iron Man because Beorn was excited to see it, and was hooked from the start. But I have yet to see any of The Hulk films. Are they enlightening to the overall story-arc in any way?

For the Second Avengers movie? Probably not much. But events will probably be important for the Third Avengers movie and it will probably be the only movie until Avengers 3 where you will get any thing with Thanos in it.

[Hashi Lebwohl]

Yes, Guardians of the Galaxy ties in with Iron Man/Thor/Captain America/Avengers--the Orb they are going after is one of the Stones which both the Collector and Thanos want. The only thing I don't know right now is whether the Collector is working for or against Thanos but I would wager "against"--if he knows of Thanos he knows what kind of use he would make of the Stones and no one, especially the Collector, wants anything to do with that. This is the sort of continuity and linked stories you get when you have only one person in charge of the overall movie projects--a nice, neat package.

This is what Fox is trying to do with X-Men, which is why this movie happened the way it happened. This wasn't a retcon--which I despise--but a reboot, a la Star Trek.
The Sentinel program could have started as known history at the beginning of DoFP states--Trask dies, Mystique's DNA is used to give Sentinels the ability to adapt, and really bad things happen after that--but then the program ran into production/technical problems, loss of funding, or some other situation which is never revealed. However, after the events of the second and third movies--an attack on the President coupled with the massive destruction in San Francisco--I suspect the program was brought back online and advanced relatively quickly, leading to the events presented in this latest movie. This makes perfect sense--Stryker's method of using mind-controlled mutants is too risky and unpredictable but robots, who may be programmed with specific orders and protocols they cannot disobey, make for a cleaner solution. This also gives a plausible explanation why Sentinels were not in those movies--they weren't needed at the time.
Now, though, not only will Sentinels never be needed but the events of the first three movies will never--and have never--happened, except for Logan and the glimpses Charles saw; after 1973 the program is permanently mothballed, especially with how they behaved at their unveiling.
Stryker, on the other hand, is a mystery as of yet. Is he alive? Will he send Jason to the school? Will his research projects also get shut down? If so, then the events of Origins: Wolverine will also never happen, except for the early parts when they are in Vietnam. Stryker didn't seem to recognize Logan so I need to rewatch that movie to straighten out the timelines there. If his research got shut down after 1973 he will still have access to adamantium but Three Mile Island wouldn't happen the way we saw it.

Anyway....i digress. Long story short--the first three movies now never happened, which is great for some characters and...well, actually, I can't think of any character who will be in a worse position for all those events not to have happened.

I concur with dANdeLION--Quicksilver had great on-screen presence, delivered his lines wonderfully, and his clowning around really sold the audience (well, at least the audience I was in). Not only will we see him again--that particular actor in that particular role--but he may even be trending positively enough that he could get his own spin-off movie. Note: his power is definitely not merely super-speed but the ability to alter his rate at which he progresses through the "thermodynamic arrow", the general flow of time. No matter how fast you are, you can't go fast enough to make bullets slow down to the point where you can move them mid-flight.

Blink: now she is thinking with Portals. Just out of curiosity, though, what would have happened had she opened a portal on a Sentinel, aligning it so that she gets a cross-section of it, then immediately closed the portal? Wouldn't she have cleanly sliced it into two parts?

Wouldn't Leech, whose real name escapes me, the kid from X-III who cancels out powers, run the risk of being drafted by the government for use against a dangerous mutant outbreak or rampage? Train him to fight, give him a little body armor, then send him in with a couple of guns to take out anyone regardless of their power level?

Did this also reboot/retroactively cancel out Wolverine, the movie where he squares off against Silver Samurai? (A movie I have not seen.) Technically, it should.

I looked for anachronisms but I didn't see any glaring ones. Yes, lava lamps were still very much in vogue in 1973. The clothing was correct, as were the cars. Maybe when the DVD comes out one or two might show up when I freeze the screen.

The Avengers raised the bar for superhero movies; this one meets the challenge. This is also another reason they are trying to make the movie universe more cohesive--competition.

Potential mistake: since the CIA knew of mutants since 1962, wouldn't the government have drafted a team of them not for military use but for spying and/or taking down--or bringing in--the rare random mutant?
Another possible mistake: they have a small team of mutants serving on the front lines in Vietnam? Those soldiers would never be sent home--they are far too useful and/or powerful, regardless of how high-level the research on them was going to be. (Well, maybe with direct Presidential approval....) Besides, what lame-brain was in charge of that team? Unless the VC had their own mutants or had some on loan from the Chinese, a team of mutants should have completely turned the tide of the war effort...unless a moron was in charge.

As far as the whole "waking up and not remembering the last 50 years of actual history"....well, when the timeline diverged enough so that the events at the beginning of DoFP no longer happen, he "woke up" at the same point in time as when he was first sent back--the connection got broken. He remembers it how it was, so it is a new world for him. For us, too.

Quicksilver mistake: he wouldn't have been able to play Pong that quickly--he would have been moving faster than the primitive computer components could respond. Also....he must be a sloppy thief if the police know him so well that his mother asks "what did he steal this time?" when she answers the door. It should be relatively impossible to catch him without fingerprints--video surveillance which existed at the time would be far too grainy to catch good pictures of him, especially at his speeds.

Geography mistake: they say they are going to Washington, D. C. but then they show the Pentagon. That building is located in Arlington.

Military mistake: they would never have housed Magneto where they had him held. Too risky--had he managed to escape before he did then he could have done an incalculable amount of damage on his way out, as he collapsed the entire structure by compressing its infrastructure. No, he would have been in a concrete bunker at some remote base in Arizona, New Mexico, or Nevada.

There were some losers in this movie, though. Specifically, most of Magneto's team from First Class. I can readily see how capturing the others was possible but how in the heck did they manage to catch Azazel? Short of arranging a meeting with him so that you know where he will be and you can plant two or three long-range snipers, it is typically impossible to detain a teleporter. They had to, though, otherwise Magneto would have remained in custody for no more than two or three days.

A very enjoyable movie--go see it. I didn't even spoil anything, which can sometimes be a problem.