X-Men: Days of Future Past (Movie Review)

Personally, I just really wanna see more of this guy. What a boss.

Let’s face it folks: We live in an age of film where the only two superhero franchises that are really causing widespread debate are Marvel Studio’s Marvel Cinematic Universe, for all the right reasons, and Warner Bros. ‘ DC Cinematic Universe for, let’s say, less commendable reasons.

“Dawn of Justice”? Holy God.

Often lost in the discussion, however, is the X-Men film series from 20th Century Fox, especially after it faded from the public’s collective memory after the massive turd that was The Last Stand and the final nail in the coffin that was X-Men Origins: Wolverine. The series has been reestablishing itself, though, with a great origin story in X-Men: First Class and the likeable action movie that was The Wolverine. In 2013, a massive publicity campaign was launched for the next movie in the series, the $225 million dollar budgeted X-Men: Days of Future Past, which incorporates the original actors from the original trilogy and the newbies from First Class. How did it work out? Well, at the very least, it ensured that Shawn Ashmore and Halle Berry remained employed for a bit.

 X-Men: Days of Future Past

Directed by: Bryan Singer

Produced by: Lauren Shuler Donner, Bryan Singer, Simon Kinberg, Hutch Parker

Screenplay by: Simon Kinberg

Story by: Simon Kinberg, Matthew Vaughn, Jane Goldman

Based on: Days of Future Past by Chris Claremont and Josh Byrne

Sequel to: X-Men: First Class, X-Men: The Last Stand, The Wolverine

Series: X-Men (Seventh installment)

Genre: Superhero

Starring: Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas  Hoult, Peter Dinklage, Evan Peters, Ellen Page, Halle Berry, Shawn Ashmore, Omar Sy,  Daniel Cudmore, Fan Bingbing, Booboo Stewart, Adam Canto, Josh Helman, Mark Camacho,                                                                                  Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen

Plot: The year: 2023. In this dystopian future, the mutants have been all but wiped out by murderous robots known as Sentinels, who were created in 1973 by a military scientist named Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage), whose Sentinel program was largely criticized by the American government until his assassination by rogue mutant insurgent Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), which convinced the people of the world to adopt it. After Mystique’s capture, her DNA was replicated for use by the Sentinels, who gained Mystique’s shape-shifting powers, making them into essentially the perfect mutant-hunting killers. After years of resistance , the only mutants left include Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), Magneto (Ian McKellen), Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) and Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page), who has the power to send another person’s consciousness back in time to deliver warnings.

Realizing that it’s not long before the Sentinels find their hideout in China and extinguish the mutants once and for all, he decides to send Wolverine back to 1973 in order to stop the assassination of Bolivar Trask from ever happening. In order to do so, Wolverine must team up with the younger version of the deceased Beast (Nicholas Hoult), the younger version of Magneto (Michael Fassbender) who has been incarcerated in the Pentagon as the suspected murder of President Kennedy, and the younger version of Charles Xavier, who, now jaded and cynical,  has shut down his X-Men and regained the use of his legs through the use of a serum, at the expense of his telekinetic powers.

I’ve gone on and on about how recent superhero movies have seemed to commit the same error of making themselves much more convoluted then they really need to be. Both of the superhero movies released this year prior to Days of Future Past (Captain America: The Winter Soldier and The Amazing Spider-Man 2) , while both at least enjoyable, suffered from this problem, although one of them definitely handled this problem a bit better than the other.

Can you guess which one?

And you’d assume that a movie like this one, involving time travel, of all things, would be no different. However you would be wrong. Stop being so presumptuous.

At no point did the film ever lose me through convoluted dialogue or sloppy editing. Nor was it full of elaborate, pretentious dialogue that requires constant hand-holding (Cough-cough. House of Cards). When you’re making a movie that features Wolverine beating the shit out of a bunch of dickheads, you don’t need to mix in a bunch of convoluted crap in to make it feel like the Dark Knight. This movie holds off on that, which is greatly appreciated. All you need to know about the rules of time travel in this universe is neatly explained right from the get-go.

The movie also maintains a crisp pace throughout its’ relatively short run-time of 130 minutes (Ten minutes shorter than the new Spider-man). I never got bored, or felt my mind wander as boring dialogue took over. The movie finds a nice balance between witty dialogue, dramatic exposition and kick-ass action scenes. Sure, it had the minimal amounts of superhero cheese, but hey, you’re not watching Dark Knight. A little bit of cheese every now and then isn’t going to kill you.

Well, not right away, anyways.

Speaking of the dialogue, the movie hits the perfect balance between dark and funny, with most of the humor being provided by Hugh Jackman (Once again excellent as everyone’s favourite Canadian rage-monster), who provides surprisingly well-done quips and banter. and Evan Peters, who easily steals the show as everyone’s favourite new  X-Man, Quicksilver. Peters, otherwise known for his roles in American Horror Story  and Kick-Ass (Before he wisely jumped the ship of the latter franchise) brings his knack for comic timing to the table, which works all too well with the character of Peter Maximoff, who ends up having what could possibly be one o the best scenes in the entire movie.

My one problem with the character of Quickilver is the way that he is left behind by Wolverine and his berry band o’ mutants once they’re done using him. Couldn’t they have used somebody who can move at light-speed? I feel like that would’ve been extremely useful.

As for the rest of the giant cast, there isn’t really a weak link among the bunch. Jackman and Peters are great before, as mentioned, and Booboo Stewart, Shawn Ashmore, Halle Berry, Ellen Page, Fan Bingbing and Omar Sy and company, while they may not have all that much lines, do what is required of them, which is, look cool in action scenes, and stand around stoically.  Patrick Stewart an Ian McKellen (Old Xavier and old Magneto) are great in their limited scenes in this movie, and Peter Dinklage does good work as Bolivr Trask even if I was a bit shaken by him using his natural American accent instead of the English one he uses in Game of Thrones.

The best performances in the movie, however, clearly belong to the characters returning from First Class. James McAvoy is downright fantastic as the cynical younger version of Charles Xavier, as is Michael Fassbender as the radical mutant idealist known as Magneto. The scenes between the two can be downright heartbreaking, as the two old friends continuously butt heads over their extreme ideological differences, but remain painfully aware of the bond they share as former brothers in arms.

Nicholas Hoult (Beast) is good as well, but his real-life girlfriend, Jennifer Lawrence is pretty damn great. Nobody’s gonna scream “Oscar” this time around, but she did a fine job considering that a) I didn’t find her too be that good in First Class and b) Her character, Mystique, is disappointingly one-note this time around, and basically serves as a plot device to move the story forward.

And hey, when it comes to one-note characters, you could do a lot worse than casting the most bankable movie star on planet Earth right now.

 

Overall: Side-stepping the many dangers that come with making a large-scale superhero movie like this, Days of Future Past is an action-packed, dark, and surprisingly funny film, and is comparable to The Avengers when it comes to sheer enjoyment level. It’s not exactly Dark Knight (The best superhero movie ever), and The Avengers is still superior in my mind, but hey, when Wolverine is tearing a bunch of punk-ass motherfuckers to shreds, who needs that “Why so serious” bullshit?

Rating: 9.5/10

And, for what it’s worth,  the Sentinels now top my list of movie robots to be fucking terrified of.

 

 

 

 

 

The Scale Of Douchiness- (Quadruple Feature!) Emma Roberts, Amanda Bynes, North Korea and Rolling Stone Magazine

The best part about writing about douchebags is that you never run out of source material. Case in point, for the very first edition of the SoD, I have four subjects! Oh, how I love the shittiness of humanity!

That’s right Kony…Keep those blog hits flowing nicely…

SUBJECT: Emma Roberts

Goddammit Emma, why’d you have to be so adorable? It just makes my job that much harder!

Douche-Crime: Beating up her boyfriend, fellow actor Evan Peters (American Horror Story).

Well shit, that makes sense, I guess.

Douche Points Awarded: 2/2

Severity Douche Points: 1.5/2. It wasn’t close to being a Chris Brown-style beatdown, but there isn’t too much of a gray area when it comes to beating somebody up Either you beat the living shit out of them or you don’t.

Frequency: First-time offender. However, may happen again, considering that they are still together, apparently. The joint statement read that they “are working together to move past it.” 1/2

Circumstances: None revealed yet, but it’s highly suggested that the assault wasn’t justified. 2/2

Overall Douche Rating: 6.5/8 (Definite douchebag)

It’s completely possible that Roberts just lost her cool at Peters, as people in a relationship are likely to do. However, it’s also not out of the question that this may be a recurring, theme. Plenty of young actresses tend to become mentally unstable as they fly through puberty, much like our next douchebag

AMANDA BYNES

Part of me knew that she would be on my very first edition.

Douche-Crime (This time): Tweeting, after getting her head shaved earlier this year because it was damaged by salon treatments, on her schizophrenic clusterfuck of a Twitter account that “Not having hair makes [her] feel like a cancer  patient.” She later tried to explain herself, claiming that the tweet was meant to be read “Not having hair makes her feel like a  Cancer: Patient.” (As in the astrological sign) In addition to being a bullshit excuse, it bears mentioning that Bynes is an Aries. 2/2

Severity: 1/2. Try to remember that some retard posting idiotic tweets

Frequency: 2/2. Chronic offender. By now, the thing that comes to mind whenever anyone mentions Amanda Bynes  is not her dead-in-the-water acting career, but her crude, offensive, unintentionally hilarious and all-around insane Twitter account. Some other gems of hers include:

“I have no clue [why people say I’m insane]. Every time I’ve heard it, it came from an ugly person’s mouth, so I don’t care.”

“Rihanna you look so ugly tryin to be white.”

Yep, total Uncle Tom, right here.

“I’m 27 and don’t like when press talks to my parents. My parents are almost 70 years old. We are no longer on speaking terms. I would rather them be homeless than live off of my money.”

“I only have hot friends. They have my back until I die.”

“Everything is connected and connection is everything.”

“I want Drake to murder my vagina.”

“I’ll post ugly pics of @Drake every time I see one! Not hard  ”

“Chris Brown beat you because you’re not pretty enough.”

“Barack Obama and Michelle Obama are ugly!”

“Hey @Barack Obama… I don’t drink. Please fire the cop who arrested me. I also don’t hit and run. The end.” 

“I have no clue [why people say I’m insane]. Every time I’ve heard it, it came from an ugly person’s mouth, so I don’t care.”

To “American Pie” star Jason Biggs: “You’re so ugly I won’t talk to you.”

Adam Sandler-ish? Maybe. Ugly? Fuck no.

And my personal favourite:

“Chrissy Teigen, you’re not a pretty model compared to me,I signed to Ford models at age 13. I don’t looks up to you beauty wise. I’m far prettier than you! I’m offended that you’re saying I have a mental illness when I show no sign of it. But thankfully not one man that wants me wants you and you are an old ugly model compared to me!”

For those who don’t know, this is Chrissy Teigen.

“Look! Look at this ugly piece of shit!”

And this is Amanda Bynes:

“I’m very aroused.”

Circumstances: 2/2. Let’s see…. No one but her accesses her Twitter account, which means that she intentionally posted it.

ODR: 7/8 (Major Douchebag)

Sure, she’s just a has-been celebrity and who gives a shit, but that doesn’t make her any less douchey or her comment any more douchey and ignorant.

I try to be nice to our next douchebag, but they’ve finally crossed the line. Presenting…

ROLLING STONE MAGAZINE

Douche-Crime: Previously just a magazine with terrible music coverage and a socially liberal political slant (And yet, they back Obama), Rolling Stone decided to run a story about Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving Boston Marathon bomber. This would have been okay if they didn’t depict him as some sort of indie pop star. 2/2

Severity: 2/2. Truth be told, I do think the story needed to be run. From that I’ve heard on the Philip DeFranco Show, it’s a pretty informative, well written article.

But for God’s sake, did they have to run this picture? It’s bad enough that some freaky teenage girls are starting to turn him into a teen idol.

I can’t think of a joke here, this is fucking horrifying.

Couldn’t they have picked a different cover? Something that’s edgy, but not overly offensive? How about a photo of a rescue mission, or of the EIGHT YEAR OLD BOY HE MURDERED.

Henry Rollins did a spoken word piece on how death and violence are being “sexed-up” by the media. (Army ads, video games) I’m not here to tell everyone to not play Call of Duty, because it’s fun as hell, but they’re still glorifying violence any way you spin it. That magazine cover doesn’t make Tsarnaev look like the terrorist that he is, but a cute, tortured artist. That is not good. Those idiot teenagers I mentioned will not look at that cover and think “How could a regular, American kid be so horribly twisted.” They’re more likely to think “I hope he escapes custody, I wanna bang him.”

Frequency: 0.5/2. One-time thing, but they haven’t been good enough to apologize.

Circumstance: 1/2. It WAS their fault  that the cover was run, but I get what they’re trying to say with it: “How could such a sweet, peaceful American kid turn out to be such a monster?” They probably could’ve picked a better picture to convey that image, though.

ODR: 5.5/8 (Douchebag)

I think the story needed to be told, but I think Rolling Stone had the chance to present their message better and blew it badly. I just hope the “Free Jahar” people grow the fuck up before they do something horrible.

And, speaking of fucked up cults nobody likes… Our forth douchebag of the day!!!

NORTH KOREA

Douche-Crime: Transporting missiles across the Panama Canal and trying to riot when Panamanian authorities boarded the ship. Missiles are bad, m’kay? 2/2

Severity: 0.5/2. Sure, missiles aren’t always a laughing matter, but they are in the hands of a country that think that a twenty-something fat man is the reincarnation of the sun go or whatever the fuck they’re telling them now.

Frequency: 2/2. Kim Jong-Un is always trying to test his might against the powers that be, even though it really is hard to be intimidated by someone who looks Chaz Bono with allergies.

Circumstances: I dunno, Kim’s just an asshole. 2/2

ODR: 6.5/8 (Definite douchebags)

Cheers!