X-Men: Days of Future Past

Reviews from the Dark Side presents
 X-Men:  Days of Future Past
Released 5/23/14

BRYAN SINGER IS BACK!!!  Now this statement can be considered good or bad depending on which side of the aisle you fall on regarding the X-Men franchise (one I'm sure Marvel Studios is salivating to get their hands on).  While it's widely considered that Singer's first two X-Men films have been the best in the series, he hasn't been without his detractors for the lack of character development or the liberties he has taken with the material itself.  Of course, fans have seen how the franchise can spin out of control without Singer at the helm with the much maligned X-Men:  The Last Stand (which I didn't think was awful, by the way), X-Men Origins:  Wolverine, and the somewhat tepid fan response to last year's, The Wolverine. 

With Days of Future Past, Singer has combined characters from the first two X-Men films along with characters from 2011's critically acclaimed X-Men:  First Class from director, Matthew Vaughn (and, hey, Singer was a producer on that one).  Based on one of the most popular stories in X-Men lore, DOFP stars Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellan, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult, Shawn Ashmore, Ellen Page (one of the few links to The Last Stand), and Halle Berry reprising their previous roles as our favorite heroic mutants (well, Magneto is debatable as far as being heroic).  For those not in the loop, that's a human being born with extraordinary abilities.

In a dystopian future, hunter/killer robots known as Sentinels have all but exterminated the mutant population and have also turned their attentions to normal human beings who are considered mutant sympathizers.  Barely surviving and still fighting the good, if hopeless, fight are a small band of X-Men who are cornered in Moscow.  After putting up a valiant fight, Colossus, Iceman (Ashmore), Warpath, Blink, and Sunspot prove to be no match for their invincible foes.  One X-Man, Bishop, is able to project his consciousness into his younger body in the recent past with the assistance of fellow X-Man, Kitty Pryde (Page, and how did she get this power suddenly?), to warn the group of the upcoming attack. 

The group rendezvous in China with Professor Xavier (Stewart), Magneto (McKellan), Storm (Berry), and Wolverine (Jackman) before the attack happens in Moscow.  There a plan is formulated. Since this present-day nightmare of mutant resentment and destruction can be traced back to one tragic event in the past, someone in the group must have their consciousness projected back decades in time to inhabit his/her younger body to try to stop the event from occurring.  It's decided that Kitty will send Wolverine back to 1973 to seek out a much younger Charles Xavier (McAvoy) and Magneto (Fassbender) to assist him in stopping the fateful occurrence.

 Said occurrence was created by the mutant shape changer, Mystique (Lawrence), after she fatally shoots military contractor and mutant experimenter/tormentor, Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage).  His execution fuels anti-mutant sentiment and breeds the creation of Trask's Sentinel program with an added bonus.  The Sentinels have proven to be almost impossible to defeat due to Mystique herself as the shape shifting adaptability of her DNA is captured and used to make the robots adaptable to any mutant power used against them. 

So, a battle is waged on two fronts. One in the future where the Sentinels have located the X-Men again and the ragtag band must hold them off long enough for Wolverine's mission to succeed (and the audience is already privy to how well the mutant offensive played out in Moscow).  The other battle is waged in the past where Wolverine has to not only convince an emotionally broken Xavier to help, but also to work with the man he deems responsible for both his emotional and physical condition, his former best friend.  Even getting to Magneto in this time period will prove difficult as he has been blamed and captured for committing another tragic event in world history. 

The one thing that struck me about DOFP is that it was an X-Men movie with Wolverine that wasn't solely devoted to the characterization of Wolverine.  Don't get me wrong.  I love Wolverine, and I'm a huge fan of Jackman playing the character.  However, I will admit the focus on Logan has been at the detriment of the rest of the cast more often than not.  DOFP is clearly an opportunity that both Singer and the franchise have taken to capitalize on the current success and popularity of Jennifer Lawrence.  It's mainly Mystique's movie.  And, as has mostly been the case, Lawrence is up to the task and more than carries her weight as a conflicted soul torn between two ideologies (Xavier's and Magneto's). 

I was also intrigued by the young Charles Xavier speaking of a mutant in conflict.  James McAvoy does a fantastic job depicting a man with so much self doubt and self loathing that he's pretty much given up on life itself.  He's a sharp contrast from the sure and decisive older version of Xavier played by Stewart

An unexpected strength of the film was the introduction of Peter Maximoff (Evan Peters) to the series as a supersonic mutant with no code name as of yet (although comic fans know him as a tweaked version of the sometimes X-Men ally/foe, Quicksilver).  He added some much needed comic relief to an otherwise bleak-toned movie.  I have to admit the still shots I first saw of the character and the snippets revealed in the trailers didn't have me expecting much from him.  But, Peters has arguably one of the best scenes in DOFP during the Magneto breakout.  It's such a clever and brilliant scene that you'll be applauding both the actor and director.

For those wishing for a tighter continuity between the events in the franchise, you can rejoice.  DOFP effectively reboots the X-Men timeline.  So, if you have a bad taste in your mouth from X-Men Origins, The Last Stand, or even, The Wolverine, let's just say they didn't really happen (although I'm still trying to wrap my head around if The Wolverine should be included in this list).    You can now watch the X-Men movie saga through four movies (First Class, X-Men, X2, and X-Men:  DOFP).  And, this brings me to one of my problems with DOFP.  Not so much a problem as an observation really.

As a continuity buff, it's just a little too messy to say, "Here, audience!  Remember these good things that Singer did/has done, but not the bad things that he didn't touch."  In some ways, it's better to make a clean break and reboot the whole franchise a la Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy or Marc Webb's Amazing Spider-Man series (although that one hasn't been as well-received as hoped for), and the reboot of Star Trek.  A new director with a new set of ideas and a tightly-woven story can do wonders for an ailing franchise.  What Singer is attempting to do is reset on the fly. 

I particularly have trouble reconciling where/if The Wolverine fits into the current continuity at all having just been released a year ago.  Wolverine has bone claws at the end of that film, yet he has adamantium claws again in DOFP.  We also know that Professor Xavier and Magneto seek him out in the mid-credits scene advising that they need his assistance to stop a grave threat to the mutant race.  Logan is understandably shocked to see Professor X as he remembers him being obliterated in The Last Stand.  So, how much time has actually passed between the end of The Wolverine and DOFP?  We know the world isn't in ruins in The Wolverine, yet, everything has gone to Hell when DOFP begins.  When/how did he get the metal claws back?  Why does the Professor exist in his own body again?  Okay, that last part can be explained away if the Last Stand never happened, but it was still a story I would have liked to have seen pursued.  Also, Professor X and Magneto are two of the smartest men on the planet.  They couldn't have come up with a plan to stop this mess before the near-obliteration of mutantkind?  Wouldn't Mystique have killed Trask before X-Men and X2 took place?  Yet there was no mention of this in the first two films.  And, on a smaller note, just how did Magneto gain control of Trask's experimental Sentinels anyway when the robots supposedly "don't have an ounce of metal in them."  No metal?  It kind of defeats Magneto's power wouldn't you think?  It's almost as if the powers that be are trying to make the pieces fit where they don't. 

I know these are inherent problems when dealing with time travel and, it appears in this case, alternate timelines.  It doesn't always make a lot of sense and you can give yourself a migraine trying to figure it out.  It's not that these questions kept me from enjoying what DOFP was.  It's just that I would have liked for the pieces of the puzzle to fit a little more perfectly than they did.  It's something I'm really going to have to get over when the next Star Wars movie is released next year. 

I've mentioned this before, I believe, but given what Singer is attempting to do with the franchise, it bears repeating.  If The Avengers franchise has done nothing else, it has forced movie studios to look at this genre of film as more than stand alone, special effects extravaganzas.  Rich movie universes with strong storytelling are being mined from super hero material that was once considered to have fringe fan bases.  In addition to the aforementioned Spider-Man franchise under Marc Webb, we have Warner Brothers/DC Comics ready to do the same thing with the Justice League in a couple of years.  Continuity makes for tighter storytelling and endless possibilities from these characters' long histories.  Super heroes have gone mainstream.  It's the Golden Age for someone like me who grew up with the material.  And, fortunately, there's no end in sight.

Days of Future Past is a strong outing for Singer to get the franchise back on its feet and rolling in a clear direction.  With the reset button pretty much being pushed, the director has also given himself access to a few more pieces on the chessboard.  Pieces that had perished previously.  He has done the best he can to right certain things that happened when he wasn't in the driver's seat short of truly starting over from scratch.  Since he will be in charge for the next X-Men film in 2016, I'm sure Marvel's mighty mutants will be in good hands yet again.  Hopefully, there will be some development of other characters that haven't been given a chance to shine as of yet (Storm, Rogue, I'm looking at you).

As with most Marvel-related movies, there is an additional scene after the end credits that introduces the next "big bad."  It's not a jaw-dropping scene by any means, but it is an important one when you hear the chant, "En Sabbah Nur."  Yep, just let the Apocalypse out of the bag there.

The Dark Lord of the Sith says:

***3/4 stars

Ratings Legend
Zero *= Don't waste your time. Pure dreck! Dreck is too good for this! Blind me please!
1 *= Fuggedaboutit!
2 *= Average, Mediocre, Nothing Special
3 *= Good viewing. Much better than a poke in the eye.
4 *= Great. Could possibly foot the price of a non-Matinee.
5 *= Pure eye candy. Hall of Fame material here.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2

Reviews from the Dark Side presents
 The Amazing Spider-Man 2
Released 5/2/14

It's now here!  The start of the 2014 Summer movie season officially begins this weekend with the release of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, the sequel to the somewhat maligned 2012 reboot of the Spider-Man franchise.  Marc Webb returns as director.  Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, and Sally Field reprise their roles from the first film with some notable additions to the cast, including Oscar winner Jamie Foxx and Dane Dehaan.  Reviews I've read of the movie have been very mixed to this point.  Then again, they were mixed for the first Amazing Spider-Man (to a lesser extent) which I loved.  As a lifelong Spidey fan, this is one I've anticipated since the beginning of 2014, especially after seeing the insanely action-packed trailers.  In this Avengers-laden movie world, can anything capture the imagination of moviegoers quite like Marvel Studios has in recent years? 

Let's get this out of the way early.  ASM 2 is not the near masterpiece that Captain America:  The Winter Soldier was, but, it's pretty...spectacular (thought I was going to say "amazing" didn't you).  It's a nice blend of comedy, action, and sadness.  If you're a longtime Spider-Man fan, you probably already know what I'm alluding to with that last word.  But, more on that later.

In ASM 2, we find Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) becoming more comfortable in his role as the amazing wall crawler and defying the promise he made to his girlfriend's, Gwen Stacy's (Emma Stone), dying father to keep his distance from her.  It's a promise the responsibility-conscious Peter finds to be a heavy burden as he does secretly agree with Captain Stacy despite his love for Gwen.  Add to this his continued bewilderment of his parents' abandonment many years earlier and Peter is an emotional mess despite the happy-go-lucky visage he has as Spider-Man.

Peter's emotional well-being isn't destined to improve as an old friend has returned to New York.  Harry Osborn (Dane Dehaan), who has been stashed away in boarding schools abroad for a decade, has come back to New York to pay his respects to his dying father, Norman (Chris Cooper), the CEO of the infamous Oscorp Corporation.  Never any love lost between father and son, Norman advises the same disease that is killing him is genetic and will also kill Harry unless he continues to develop the experimental research at Oscorp.  Part of that research is experimentation started by Peter's late father, Richard.  Despite past friendships, Peter and Harry will reunite in a deadly way. 

Meanwhile, an electric engineer at Oscorp, Max Dillon (Jamie Foxx), has grown an unhealthy attachment to Spidey after the web slinger saved his life.   Dillon's fragile mental health is taxed even more when an accident at Oscorp transforms his body into pure electric energy.  Hero worship turns to hatred after a misunderstanding between Dillon and his idol in Times Square which gives Spider-Man a new, powerful enemy and gives Harry an instrument of destruction that can be used to his advantage. 

I think the best way to complete this review is to separate what worked as opposed to what didn't (or maybe could have been done better).  Let's start with the negative.  This is the one thing that worried me when I first knew of the reported cast of ASM 2.  Multiple villains in movies such as this rarely work.  The inherent problem is that each character's motivations aren't clearly defined and origin story seems rushed.  Although Webb handles this issue better than most I've seen, the same problem still exists.  I wish movie studios would learn this lesson.  Super Hero movies are better when you focus on one protagonist vs. one antagonist.  The only time multiple combatants don't feel contrived is when there is supposed to be a team concept behind the characters as with the Avengers.  Another reason Avengers worked so well is because Joss Whedon didn't have to deal with origin stories.  Marvel Studios had already taken care of those in previous movies so he could devote adequate screen time to each character.  I think this would work with villain team-ups that aren't naturally reliant on a group setting.  Introduce them in one movie and then bring them back in later ones as fully realized characters whose evil shenanigans can be focused on. 

Max's/Electro's transformation from lonely hero worshipper to murderous villain seems rushed.  It may not be as off-putting as Anakin Skywalker's harsh transformation into Darth Vader, but there wasn't much chance for development of Electro's character to make the transition very meaningful. His rage seems like a tantrum from a petulant child more than truly being angry at Spider-Man.   Ol' Max has just about the neediest personality in reality or fiction.

Harry Osborn is a more fully realized character whose motivations are clearer and more understandable as a desperate young man driven to insanity by internal and external factors.  Yet, even his transformation deserved a little more than the three minute screen time it received (anyone remember Venom from Spider-Man 3).  What makes this transformation memorable is the impact it delivers.  Harry maybe should have just been the mastermind behind Electro in this film or should have been the only villain.  His villainy could have been more fully developed in either of these scenarios. 

There is a small segment featuring the Rhino where Paul Giamatti is chewing up the scenery in a mechanized battle suit.  Fortunately, this segment is very brief and exists only to see some great scenes of Spider-Man in action.  The suit doesn't work as it's just a big, loud clanky thing.  It's a bit of a waste of a classic, if minor, villain.

As for what the film gets right, there's much to be excited about.  ASM 2 is first of the five Spider-Man films made where I can say Spidey felt completely like Spidey.  On the one side, you have Peter's vaunted sense of responsibility on display which causes as misery to him as any beatdown he may receive from the villain of the week.  It's no different here as defying his promise to Gwen's father weighs heavily on him and he denies himself happiness out of his desire to protect those he loves. 

This time, however, Spider-Man is back to his old wisecracking self.  Attempts at this have been made before, but this time, it's fully realized.  Even Webb's first ASM depicted Peter as more of an angry, smart-ass teenager than the funny wise guy he normally is. What Webhead fan wouldn't have a mile-wide smile when he refers to Electro as "Sparkles?"  Some of Peter's interactions with his Aunt May (Sally Field) are the funniest in the film.  The whole chimney scene is short, but packs an amazing comedic punch.

While I do wish that someone could figure a way to give the audience a more classic Green Goblin look, I will admit that Marc Webb handling the issue as a physical transformation for Harry was far better than the silly bodysuit and mask from Sam Raimi's first Spider-Man film (boy that thing was awful).   The transformation was creepy and a full representation of Harry's descent into madness.

Speaking of the Goblin, I would be remiss in not mentioning Dane Dehaan's performance as Harry Osborn.  Dehaan plays Harry with charm and smarminess at the same time.  You feel for his plight, yet you are always aware of an underlying maliciousness inside of him.  It's an intricate mix that Dehaan pulls off quite well.  He's a very good young actor who can definitely do justice to angst-ridden characters (see Chronicle if you haven't).

The movie's heart comes from the relationship between Peter and Gwen.  A problem with most super hero films is the lack of chemistry between hero and love interest.  Think about it for a minute.  Have any of the Batman movies had a strong leading lady as the hero's love interest outside of Catwoman who really is an antagonist in those movies?  Jane Foster in the Thor movies?  Not really.  Mary Jane in the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies? Meh.  Pepper Potts from Iron Man?  OK, but not spectacular.  Any of the Lois Lanes?  Margot Kidder maybe.  Kate Bosworth not at all.  Amy Adams, too early to tell.  Garfield and Stone have an easiness and timing with each other that is unparalleled in this movie genre.  It probably helps that they are a real-life couple, but, it's a refreshing change to see two actors that do act like they should be together.  And, without trying to give too much away, makes the climax all the more gut-wrenching. 

The action scenes which is the meat of any super hero movie are absolutely insane.  Again, Spider-Man's movements, while always handled very well previously, felt more like Spider-Man with all the inhuman movements a character like this should have.  Webb also added a very nice touch in the Times Square scene with Electro where the wallcrawler detected all the potential dangers in his immediate area in a slow-motion sequence.  For someone who can move as fast as he can, I'd imagine that's how the world would look much of the time. 

While there are some weaknesses to ASM 2, the good far outweighs the mediocre.  While not my favorite Spider-Man film overall, it deserves more than a dismissive look.  In addition, you're introduced to the first stages of a contained Spider-Man universe that Sony is attempting to create, a la Marvel Studios' Avengers universe.  You're going to see some familiar objects when Oscorp opens its "Special Projects" vault.  There's also an allusion to something very "Sinister" coming Spidey's way in the future.

ASM 2 was a great way to kick off the Summer.  I hope it has a good fate at the box office.

The Dark Lord of the Sith says: 

*** 1/4 stars

Ratings Legend
Zero *= Don't waste your time. Pure dreck! Dreck is too good for this! Blind me please!
1 *= Fuggedaboutit!
2 *= Average, Mediocre, Nothing Special
3 *= Good viewing. Much better than a poke in the eye.
4 *= Great. Could possibly foot the price of a non-Matinee.
5 *= Pure eye candy. Hall of Fame material here.