X-Men Days of Future Past Review

I think we can all agree, X-Men: The Last Stand (X-Men 3, 2006) wasn't that great.  I might even go so far to say it sucked.  I think we can also agree, Wolverine: Origins (2009) sucked.  Of course you can disagree, and everyone is welcome to an opinion.  And my opinion is, if you enjoyed those movies, you are way too easily impressed by superhero movies... or maybe you just hate me. 

But not every X-related movie is horrible!  The original X-Men and X2, released by Twentieth Century Fox, were two of the more impressive superhero movies ever released... until Marvel Studios started producing their own comic book based movies.  So check your scorecard kids:

Marvel Studios  

Avengers, Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Hulk 

Awesome! 

Twentieth Century Fox 

X-Men, Wolverine, Fantastic Four 

Anywhere from cool, to meh, to sucks.

Sony Pictures 

Spider-man 

 ....don't get me started.

Now that we're on the same page in our comic books, where does this put X-Men Days of Future Past?

Starting in the future, we have giant creepy mechanical Sentinels pretty much destroying the world and wiping out everything they hate... and it seems they hate a lot of things, but mostly mutants.  So our heroes figure out a way to send Wolverine back to 1973 to convince younger versions of Professor X and Magneto to work together to stop all this from ever starting, even though they hate each other.

I used to read a lot of comic books, and I know someone talked me into collecting this particular storyline way back then.  At the time, I remember liking the idea, but was a bit confused by the details.  Maybe I didn't get it, because I wasn't a regular reader of X titles... or maybe because I'm not one of those 'smart' people.  So as confusing as the original concept may have been, DOFP made it all very cohesive and easy to follow for a simple guy like me.

As much as I appreciated this, I think many comic book purists might be offended by some of the changes... which is too bad, because it was presented very well.  And isn't putting out the best version of the story the most important aspect?

In the comics, I would expect them to follow every nuance of history they created, and stay loyal to the people who have collected this title for many years.  But in theaters, they are trying to reach a wider audience, and at the end of the day, they want to make money.  So taking a comic book frame by frame and making it into a movie is a great concept, but generally I don't think it works so well.  Why?  Because these might be new characters to some viewers.  Or maybe like me, they get easily confused.  Movies like Sin City and 300 are rare exceptions, partly because they don't have years of history and backstory to cover.  But even 300 needed to add a subplot with Leonidas's wife to give it more substance.  

In the end it's a simple equation:
Is your movie written well?  
If you answer yes, then those changes are acceptable and maybe even enjoyable.
If you answered no, then your movie really sucks AND you've made a lot of fans very angry. 

So thumbs up to Simon Kinberg, Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn for making a pretty good story.  Not great... but pretty good.

Bryan Singer also did a pretty good job as director.  He directed the original X-Men movies, and it shows how much he appreciates working in this world.  He made action sequences I could see!  Which is always nice and appreciated in a world of shaky cameras and split second editing.  I loved the future Sentinels, as well as their 70's versions too.  There was nothing overly artistic about his style, but he did the job well enough and told a decent story visually. 

The entire cast did a great job too, from Hugh Jackman (Huge Assman?), to SIR Patrick Stewart, Sir Ian McKellen, Michael Fassbender, James McAvoy and the mostly naked Jennifer Lawrence.  As much as I dislike Halle Berry being in this franchise, I'll even accept her here... barely.  EXTRA huge awesomeness to Evan Peters as Quicksilver!  I wanted more!

But I do have one small problem (no pun intended)...  Peter Dinklage.

Before everyone starts booing me and calling me a racist (or whatever I would be for not liking little people), I LOVE Peter Dinklage!  I think he is one of the best actors today, big or small.  I've loved him since the first episode of Game of Thrones and I really hope they don't kill him off any time soon.  I sincerely think his acting in DOFP was fantastic!  But... my problem is casting him as Trask.  The character from the comic is not 'height challenged'.  And the sad reality is, in 1973, I don't think someone with his height would have risen to such a powerful position.  In 2014, we are just beginning to accept people no matter their race, color, religion or physical appearance (and even today it seems like some still can't overlook those things).  So seeing him in this role, I needed more.  Maybe the writers dropped the ball here and needed to give us some background story.  Maybe more was written, but was unfortunately edited out for time.  I would have accepted him easier if we knew how and why he got to this position in the close-minded world of the 70's.

So after doing some fancy calculations and new math, I would put X-Men: Days of Future Past as pretty good.  In the ever increasing list of superhero movies, this goes above Thor 1, and Iron Man 3. Dare I say above Iron Man 2?  Although Iron Man 2 had Scarlett Johansson... DOFP had a mostly naked Jennifer Lawrence.

Deeesher 

Hunger Games The Movie Review

Have any of you ever seen the movie Battle Royale? This was a Japanese movie filmed in 2000 by director Kinji Fukasaku based on a very popular novel. To summarize, in the near future, the Japanese government takes the lowest rated school of ninth-graders (i.e. having the most delinquents), ships them to an island and lets them fight... to the death!  It was amazing!  It was epic and intense and kept you guessing at every turn. The characters were interesting and it was just a good overall film.

Check out the trailer here:

On a side note, I wasn't as impressed with the sequel (Battle Royale 2).

But, I live in America, where we can't seem to come up with anything original or unique. So we rip off other peoples ideas and call it our own. And it seems most Americans are so desperate for entertainment, moviegoers will support anything Hollywood shoves down our throats hard enough.

Today's case in point: Hunger Games.

Hunger Games is based on a novel, where people in the future select children from ages 12 to 18 from each of the twelve districts to fight in the annual Hunger Games competition... to the death! Does any of this sound familiar?

Check out the trailer here and tell me which version of bloodthirsty children killing each other do you prefer, Japanese or American?

I had so many problems with this movie, I don't even know where to begin. But because I feel writing is so important to a movie, let's start there.

Call me silly, but I sort of like to be surprised or maybe kept guessing when I watch a movie. “What will happen next???” “Will they be okay???” “How will they get out of this???” After seeing this movie, I'm thinking about playing the lottery, because it really made me feel psychic! Somehow, (perhaps magically), I was able to predict nearly every twist and turn, even though the writing makes no sense!

Now in defense of Hunger Games, I have never read the original novel. Generally, American movies based on novels tend to be very loosely based, so there might be something with a bit more substance on the written page that never got conveyed. For example, why doesn't every town riot when their children are taken away to be killed? And this has been happening peacefully for seventy-four years? Or how can any 12 year old little girl expect to defeat an 18 year old boy in a death match? Or how can you realistically train children to become brutal killers in the space of three days? And beyond that, there is an endless stream of horrible cliche moments.

But let's just say for a moment, I can somehow ignore the aneurism the bad writing gave me, and let's examine the characters. Jennifer Lawrence plays Katniss Everdeen, and while she is not as horrendous to watch as Kristen Stewart (from Twilight), she is still extremely bland. Speaking of Twilight, of course there is a love interest! Josh Hutcherson plays Peeta. In terms of a love story, this one drifts somewhere between meh and forced. It's a half tic above Twilight. In other words, I don't hate the characters that much.

The rest of the cast got a paycheck. And for the record, I'm really starting to think Woody Harrelson is stalking me.

Then finally, we have director Gary Ross, putting the shaky cam icing on the top of a very bland cake.

Rotten Tomatoes gave this movie an 84%, and there are a few sequels in the works. Did I see a different movie than the rest of the country??? Can someone please tell me why this is so popular??? I'm not saying it's the worst movie I've ever seen, (that award is still held by Twilight and the George Clooney Batman and Robin), but this filled me with lots of WTF's.

So please, stop promoting movies with this kind of blah, and start supporting good writing, like Limitless, or Avengers, or Doctor Who, or Looper, or Zombieland,...

Or even Sharknado!

Deeesher