Have you seen X-Men: Days of Future Past? Want to talk about it without worrying about spoiling who dies at the end for everyone else? This is your spoiler-police free safe haven.
Just in case the headline and intro weren't clear: THERE WILL BE SPOILERS EVERYWHERE. I cannot stress this enough. Well, I suppose I could just spend 20 paragraphs stressing it and then never actually say anything about the movie. That would be stressing it enough. I guess that second sentence was a lie. Spoilers.
For those of you who haven't seen the movie and don't care, I'll provide a SPOILER-FILLED synopsis of the latest X-Men movie right after this paragraph is finished.
INTRO: A dark future some ten or so years from now. Evil humans have completely blown the world to shit hunting down mutants who just wanted to hang out at the mall eating chili fries and be left alone. Bodies of mutants and human sympathizers are dumped into holes, rather than being recycled for food. Seems like a waste.
In Russia, almost all of the surviving X-Men hole up in Peter Rasputin's parents' basement, waiting for Mystique-brand sentinels to arrive. Twilight werewolf number three hears their approach, and the mutant heroes spring into action. Iceman, sporting a horrible "look how old I am" beard, turns to ice. Sunspot turns to fire. Colossus turns to metal. In a lonely offscreen corner, the mutant Rockboy turns into a rock.
An astounding action sequence ensues, powered by the purple porting portals of Blink, the second best thing about this movie. Mutants begin to die, but that's okay — plenty have died already anyway. Besides, it's all a delaying tactic so Shadowcat somehow send Bishop's mind a week into the past using beams of light from her hands, in order to warn them the sentinels would find them. So warned, the team is suddenly in a remote base somewhere else, because that's how time travel works.
If someone in the comments knows how the hell they justify this new Shadowcat power, let me know — right now the best explanation I've come up with is "fuck."
Professor X, Magneto, Storm and Wolverine arrive and a plan is hatched. Why don't they use the power Shadowcat shouldn't have to send someone back in time to make sure this whole sentinel future dealio never happens? All they need to do is make sure blue Hunger Games girl doesn't off Tyrion Lannister. Easy peasy.
Since the process would tear apart the traveler's mind they send Wolverine, who never had much of a mind to begin with. Logan falls asleep, and wakes up in the past. Naked.
INSERT NAKED WOLVERINE ASS SHOT HERE.
Oh yeah.
Wolverine travels to Professor X's school for gifted junkies, where he discovers the young Beast in human form. Seems Hank McCoy came up with a serum that represses his blue Beast form unless he gets angry, because Nicholas Hoult is an attractive young man and needs screen time without makeup on.
That same serum somehow allows Professor X to walk, though when he's on it his powers are also suppressed. Having suffered so much loss in X-Men: First Class, Xavier decides he'd rather be a walking junkie than a rolling telepath.
Wolverine convinces Professor X that he's from the future and Mystique must be stopped. Then he convinces him to help free the man who betrayed him, stole Mystique away and took his legs from prison. Wolverine is great at convincing.
And so sexy Beast, sexy Professor X and sexy Wolverine head off to the Pentagon to bust out sexy Magneto, stopping along the way to pick up goofy Quicksilver — the best thing about this movie. Turns out Mags has spent the past ten years in a concrete pit for assassinating Kennedy. Despite being confined in a cell with no visible means of waste disposal and no means to cut his hair or shave, Magneto's looking pretty good. This is reinforced by the multiple lingering closeups on his face throughout the rest of the movie.
The Quicksilver escape sequence is a thing of beauty. When the bumbling foursome is trapped by Pentagon security and the only way out seems to be Magneto doing creative things with cutlery, Quicksilver slips on his headphones and the entire movie turns into magic for a whole minute. Then we never see Quicksilver again until a speech at the end of the movie. Boo.
Meanwhile, Mystique has been around the world and she-she-she can't stop freeing mutants from persecution. As seen in several trailers, she saves Havok, Toad, Ink and someone I want to believe is Spike from X-Statix from being mailed to Tyrion Lannister for experimentation, and discovers most of the cool mutants from the last movie are now dead, including Banshee, insect Angel and Nightcrawler's red dad teleporter. She's so angry she could kill a guy, and then have her cells captured and used to create the shapeshifting sentinels that destroy the future.
The rest of the movie is basically Magneto proving to everyone that breaking him out of prison was an incredibly bad idea. When the team confronts Mystique in Paris, Magneto attempts to secure the future of mutant-kind by killing her, because he's a giant dick. While Wolverine deals with the trauma of encountering a young William Stryker — now on his third actor — Magneto puts a bullet in Mystique's leg, which gives Tyrion Trask the DNA he needs to create those super sentinels without the pesky dying part. Magneto also makes Beast into an art installation, and the press has a field day.
Time travel is never the answer, kids.
Wolverine convinces Xavier to give up the drugs for the sake of redeeming his blue, shape-shifting friend. This involves young Xavier entering Wolverine's mind and using it to communicate with old Xavier, which is a thing telepaths can do and no one can tell me otherwise.
Pretty much the same guy right there.
While this is going on, Tyrion uses the hysteria caused by the Paris incident to convince Richard Nixon to approve his early sentinel prototypes, which Magneto finds and tampers with because again, he's a giant dick.
Using Cerebro, Xavier manages to track down Mystique, speaking to her through various stolen minds as she makes her way through an airport. While his pleas do not sway her from her cause, he does manage to catch a glimpse of her plane ticket — she's heading to Washington D.C., where the sentinels are about to be unveiled to the public in a grand ceremony.
Could they have just shadowed the guy she was planning to kill? Sure, but Cerebro and stuff.
The big day arrives. The sentinels, incredibly powerful and untested war machines, are being revealed to the public via a special event in Washington D.C., where nothing could possibly go wrong. Unless you count Magneto taking control of the sentinels. That's a thing that could go wrong. Or Mystique infiltrating the White House panic room after Xavier stops her from killing Trask. That's a wrong thing as well.
At least Magneto isn't listing an ENTIRE FUCKING SPORTS STADIUM and using it to encircle the White House. Oh wait. Well damn, what are the odds.
Meanwhile, in the dark future, the Mystique-flavored sentinels have found the X-Men's secret hiding spot. In another thrilling action sequence featuring nearly enough Blink but not really, Storm dies horribly, making this the best X-Men movie of all time. Shadowcat, who has apparently been shooting time beams into Wolverine's head for days now, is at her breaking point. It's just about time for Logan to wake the hell up. But first...
Magneto broadcasts a passionate speech to the mutants of the world, asking them to join his brotherhood — COMIC WINK. Wolverine comes at him, but Mags impales him on some rebar and tosses him into the river. President Richard Nixon confronts Magneto, only it's not President Nixon — it's Mystique!
The audience finds this out when the incredibly brave Beast uses his magical serum to turn himself back into a human, leaving the only mutant targets still standing (Professor X is trapped under debris) Magneto and girl-Nixon. As Magneto dismantles the metal-infused sentinel, Mystique uses the distraction to shoots him in the neck with a plastic gun, neutralizing the guy everyone should have left neutralized in the first place. Taking off his helmet so Xavier can control Magneto, she turns to take out Trask. She kills him, and the world is doomed.
Just kidding! She is convinced by Professor X to play the hero, strengthening human/mutant relations and ensuring the dark future will never come to pass. Hooray!
Wolverine wakes up in the future — but it's all changed. Jean Grey is alive. Hooray! Scott Summers is also alive. Boo. Kelsey Grammar makes an appearance, as does Anna Pac-man's Rogue. The second two X-Men movies have effectively been retconned out of existence (the first still happens, because Rogue has her white streak.)
Then there's an awesome dance party. Or there would be, had I directed this movie.
All-in-all not a bad film, don't you think? They've basically reset the pins so Apocalypse can come along and knock them down in the next one.
Now that the folks that didn't want to see the movie are all caught up, let's talk. What did you like? What did you not like? How does Wolverine's ass compare to yours? Do you feel bad for bad-mouthing Quicksilver for the past year?