I'm a fan of the comics (if ASM was my first love, UXM was my second) and 90s cartoon series. I was a fan of Singer's solid, but limited X-Men and a big fan of X2. I would have loved to have seen what he would have done with X3 and I'm sure Singer wishes he could travel back and time to prevent that abomination and erase Superman Returns. Between X3 and Origins, I thought the franchise was dead.
I was an enormous fan of First Class. At the time it was released I believed it was the best "film" of the series mostly because of how incredible Fassbender was and how his action devoured everything else on screen. That said, First Class completely changed much of the established canon from the films and it was going to be a real uphill battle to "fix" the continuity problems the filmmakers created. I saw a point somewhere about how Marvel has pretty much mastered cinematic universe building and it is now the standard all other franchises must live by.
Days of Future Past wasn't a masterstroke by Fox / Singer: it was their only play. They had so thoroughly fucked up character origins (two Moira's, two Trask's, different stories for how Xavier and Magneto met, different background's for Raven, etc) that they had no other option but to completely reboot the series.
Don't get me wrong, there's still a lot of issues with the X-Men continuity and the only way to make sense of it is to completely ignore events and dialogue from the earlier films, but I think they're at the point now where they can say "only First Class and Days of Future Past are Canon, so consider the other films alternate timelines or glorified fan fiction." So that's where we're at there.
I haven't said a thing about the film yet, so let's get to that. I'm one of those fans that can appreciate comic adaptations even if they don't line up exactly with comic lore as long as the quality of the storytelling is high and the sacrifices and changes made are understandable. From that standpoint, I don't think there's anything "wrong" with the adaptation of this classic story to film. The story decisions (sending Wolverine back and not Kitty, making Trask the target and not Kelly) make total sense, and the twists (the future actually gets fixed, Mystique and Eric aren't close yet, etc) work just right. There was this dork in front of me at the theatre that literally went on a 10 minute rant after the credits rolled bitching about how Kitty shouldn't have had this new power and how Magneto should have killed Wolverine by sending him into space and yada yada yada. It was like watching Comic Book Guy bitch and it was the most juvenile shit I've ever heard. It's a movie about people that have the ability to transform into ICE and manipulate the weather. Is it so unbelievable for me to buy that a woman who can walk through solid objects might also discover a way to transfer someone's consciousness through time? Jean Grey is a telepath and a telekinetic so why can't Kitty have multiple powers? In short, who really gives a shit about this sort of stuff if it serves the purpose of the story. Singer wanted Kitty to play a role in the time travel as a shout out to the original story and so she got this new power. End of story.
I think it's the best film in the series. Singer gets the best performances out of his casts and there are several very poignant scenes between key characters this go around. The script drags in a few spots to move the plot forward, but it's rare for comic book movies to bat 1.000 in this category, especially with such a complex plot involving time travel. This movie feels like it has the franchise on its shoulders and bears the weight very well.
Things I especially loved:
- Quicksilver's scene rivals Nightcrawler's as the best action piece of the series
- Ottman bringing back the X2 theme - got me totally hyped and finally happy to hear a comic book movie repeat a familiar tune
- Jennifer Lawrence - lots of call backs to X2's Mystique and certainly the most complex we've seen the character portrayed
- The ending in the future. It was absolute sheep nerdgasm type stuff. Mouth agape and nerd teary-eyed that Singer pulled it off
- Future battle scenes - most X-men-like action the series has seen. The teamwork in the sequences was pulled right from the panels and the cartoon
- Linking Eric to JFK and the mutant "problem" with the Nixon tapes
- Allowing the old cast to end on a high note
Things I would like answered:
- How does this effect Wolverine and Weapon X? Will he ever get experimented on?
- I want to know the details of how Xavier came back.
- Give me a solution, any solution, for the black Trask and the old / young McTaggert
- What the hell's the deal with Sabretooth? Give me some definitive word on whether or not I should ignore Origins' version of all events
- I don't care how Wolverine got metal claws back. I'm going to assume his ally who can manipulate metal had something to do with it
Funny enough, if there's any series that would benefit from a "special edition" it's probably this one. I'm sure Singer would love to pull a Lucas and edit lines of dialogue and change entire scenes to get the ship properly righted.
I'm going to check it out again tomorrow and update thoughts and see if I can spot more easter eggs.
EDIT: Saw it again and like it more. I really need a copy of this to scan for easter eggs. Things move too quick to catch files Mystique is going through, etc.
http://popwatch.ew.com/2014/05/23/x-men ... ture-past/
Surprisingly, EW has one of the best breakdowns of the current X-Universe. At the very least, it's a good read.