- Location: Gig Harbor Galaxy Theatre
- MEMO FROM HUMAN RESOURCES, X-MEN UNITED, LLC
- Several senior members of the organization, including Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellan, Halle Berry, and Hugh Jackman, are retiring from the franchise. We have therefore scheduled a going-away party to take place in Summer of 2014. Naturally, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, and Nicholas Holt will be there, and we encourage you all to attend. Unfortunately, Anna Paquin will only be able to make a cameo appearance (and we are still waiting to hear from Rebecca Romijn). Additionally, in response to complaints about the lack of diversity at previous X-MEN UNITED events, we’ve invited Peter Dinklage, which we are assured is his real name, and ethnic-sounding actors Omar Sy, Bingbing Fan, and Booboo Stewart. Director Bryan Singer will also be present to answer questions (about filmmaking only, please!).
- Okay, I’m probably being a bit unfair here, but X-Men: Days of Future Past really does feel compulsory in much the same way as a yearly office party. All the characters are here for one last hurrah, out with the old and in with the new, the company pledges its commitment to diversity, etc., but wouldn't everybody rather be someplace else? The plot revolves around sending Wolverine (Jackman) back in time to prevent the assassination of Bolivar Trask (Dinklage) and thus forestall the eruption of, to coin a phrase, a robot-let mutant holocaust. Naturally, this involves breaking into the Pentagon to free mutant mastervillain Magneto (Fassbender) and employing the psychic machine Cerebro to track the original assassin, Mystique (Lawrence). There are further details having to do with a serum that suppresses mutant powers, about which the less said, the better.
- I should mention that this film contains precisely one spectacular scene. Impatient teenager Peter Maximoff (Evan Peters), known as Quicksilver to comic fans, is able to move with great speed, and this power is generally portrayed with him zipping around from place to place in a great blur. In the Pentagon escape sequence, however, the filmmakers make the creative switch to showing the audience what the slow-moving normal world looks like to such a fast-moving boy. Bullets ooze by like they're trapped in molasses, giving Maximoff plenty of time to arrange it so that guards punch themselves as he relaxes to the strains of Jim Croce's Time in a Bottle. I read that Singer filmed the scene at 3600 frames per second, but that hardly answers most of my questions about how it was made. One wonders if the filmmakers created such a brilliant sequence as a way of thumbing their noses at Marvel's independent version of Quicksilver set to appear in the Avengers sequel next year.
- Regardless, the fact that I can talk about a film's one great scene obviously suggests some problems with the rest of the proceedings. My biggest beef with X-Men: Days of Future Past is that its main characters make some really stupid decisions. Given that this is something like the seventh X-Men film, we've gotten to know everyone well enough that I feel comfortable claiming that Xavier would never voluntarily give up his powers, nor would Magneto leap at the chance to kill Mystique. Other events, such as Magneto levitating RFK Stadium, occur for no discernable reason other than the expectation that this must be an action-packed summer blockbuster. A further disappointment is that the terrifically designed 70's-era Sentinels are never properly deployed, whereas we see a little too much of the ugly, futuristic, CGI-laden ones. While I honestly am glad that Mystique is finally being given more to do, that the immensely talented Peter Dinklage was cast so perfectly, and that the future X-Men are more diverse, the fact is that this film disappoints at nearly every opportunity, future and past. If only they had trapped its great scene in a bottle and tossed away the rest.
- I missed returning actors Ellen Page, Shawn Ashmore, Daniel Cudmore, Lucas Till, Kelsey Grammer, James Marsden, and Famke Janssen. And new actor Josh Helman.
- The new Toad (Evan Jonigkeit) is obviously meant to look like Travis Bickle, which somehow works.
