X-Men Days of Future Blah (SPOILERS)

I have not done a movie review in some time. So I thought I'd start off by completely dissecting the current flavor of the moment, X-Men: Days of Future Past. (aka DoFP)

SPOILERS AHEAD, YOU'VE BEEN WARNED!

If you couldn't tell from my title, I'm not overly impressed with this movie.

I have not been really impressed with ANY of the X-Men movies. But this isn't the post for that. I will restrict myself to issues I have with this movie alone, or at least issues this movie presents. This will be SPOILER HEAVY!

1. How Is Professor X Alive?

Last time we saw him in a scene in a movie (not a post credit scene) he was disintegrated by Jean Grey/Phoenix in X-Men: Last Stand (X3.) Then there are 2 post credit scenes featuring him. One at the end of X3 where we hear Patrick Stewart's voice come out of the body of a man whose face we never see. Okay, so his consciousness jumped bodies. Next we see a full fledged Stewart in a post scene in The Wolverine, rolling through a mentally frozen airport like he was on a dirt bike. This movie takes place a few years after the events of X3.

We next see him in DoFP. It's roughly 2023 (because 1973 is said to be 50 years ago,) and he is again fully recovered and looking like himself, with his full power set. Never is his resurrection/healing mentioned. We are to just accept he is back normal. Good ol' Chuck.

2. Where Did Kitty's Mental Time Slide Powers Come From?

Kitty has been consistently portrayed (across 4 movies by 3 actresses) to have 'phasing' powers. Where she and anything she touches become intangible. Suddenly, in the 2023 future she now has the power to send peoples consciousness back in time. Now, it's a pretty cool power. But, what?

I can see the story telling point of keeping her directly involved with the mission because in the comics she was the one who went back in time. That's fine. But where did this new power come from? There is no explanation. It's just there. And the excuse that, "it's just a movie," or that "they all have powers, why does it matter?" do not fly with me.

The powers are central to these characters. They may not fully define them, but they play a huge role in shaping each character. Suddenly a character that has appeared in 3 previous movies has a new ability and it's not even addressed how or why. A simple line of, "Due to my secondary mutation that happened a few years agao..." or something of the like would have explained it nice and neat. That'd be like Wolverine showing up suddenly with retractable wings from his elbows, or Iceman shooting laser ice blasts. Okay, new powers, fine. Why?

3. If Mystique Is The Key to the Future Sentinels...

Why does it take 50 years to exterminate the mutants? What happened with Sentinels from 1973 to any movie so far, that never mentions the Sentinels (aside from the Danger Room sequence in X3.) As far as any movie released so far, the Sentinels have never existed. Granted, they didn't know where this was all going 14 years ago when they made the first movie. But I'm not going into that in this post.

If Mystique is the key, and basis for how the future Sentinels work, how do they mimic powers? Are they in fact mutants themselves? Also, they look freaking silly. I liked them in The World's End, not so much here.

4. 1973 Beast's Magic Drug

Professor X is in so much pain after being shot, 10 years ago, that beast works harder to help him than he did to fix himself. And what he comes up with is a heroin like drug that cancels out mutations, temporarily, and therefor allows Charlie to walk.

Seems legit. Again, I know this is a movie where people fly, have claws pop out of their...knuckles (ugh) and all sorts of crazy stuff. But this is just pissing in my cornflakes man. I get not wanting to have a major character stuck in a wheelchair for an action movie. It would have severely limited him, or been a challenge. Guess what, that's what life in a wheel chair does! Maybe that point should have been thought out before putting him in the chair in First Class. A big problem with all the X-Men movies is they race to the payoff moments with out thinking them through. Again, that's a separate post.

Yes, Prof X gets the use of his legs back many times in the comics. But in this movie, the explanation works until you think about it.

Beast uses the same drug to 'hide' his blue furry form. Again, you don't want to hide your actor behind make up for a whole movie...think about it before hand. Also, having him essentially 'Hulk-out' when he's angry and ready to fight is just plain insulting. Sure, let him use the drug to blend into society when they went to the Peace Summit, or whatever. But to have him constantly 'normal' until he's angry was just poor writing and a cheap way to avoid the make up chair. If you didn't want Beast to be a blue fur ball, shoulda waited.

This is dangerously close to the Worthington "cure" from X3. Just saying.

Not to mention that his make up looks completely different from First Class. It looks worse, more human less Beast.


5. Jennifer Lawrence...sigh

I think Lawrence is a great actor. She's done fantastic movies and has a brilliant career ahead of her. So what happened in this movie? Mystique has the emotional range of a teaspoon in this movie. She was woody and bland. And the whole plot hinging on her deciding which of the men she was to follow was kind of...lame. She was established to be strong willed and powerful in First Class, and now 10 years later she's so damaged by Magneto that she's just kind of bouncing around on her own crusade, until the fellas show up to confuse her. Cause, she's a girl and clearly can't make life choices of her own without a man on the other side of those decisions.

Mystique and Jennifer deserved a better story.

Positives

I would like to pause a moment and point out what I did like about this movie. I really enjoyed the way they portrayed Blink and her powers. She was always a cool character in the comics that seemed to not get enough room to play with the others. But the way they used her here was impressive.

Quicksilver was one of my biggest fears going into this movie. I still think his costume looks absolutely ridiculous, but he was the bright spot of the movie. To bad they treated him like paper cup to be used once and thrown away. But you don't want to cut down on the big action scenes where '73 Wolverine and Beast fight a Sentinel for about 30 seconds.

Jackman, Fassbender, and McAvoy deliver some of the best acting in the entire series.

6. Magneto's Triumphant Ascension to Master of Magnetism and Computer Hacking!

We finally see Magneto ('73 Fasbender) become the mutant terrorist we know him to be. Ready to kill lots of homo sapiens for the sake of homo superior. The lifting of the stadium, working the metal into the Sentinels, and his whole attitude were fantastic (PS thanks for showing the climax of the movie in the trailers! I didn't see any of this coming.)

So, Mags has physical control over the big non-metal robots in 1973 because he works metal into their frames. Cool. That's bad ass. Turn their weapons against them. I can dig it. I'll even moderately accept that he can make the Gatling gun arm fire. But, here at the big climactic moment...he can voice command their functioning computer systems to target mutants? Really? (Also this is Mystiqe's finest moment of the movie, posing as Nixon, the guy they had playing Nixon was more emotionally engaging than Mystique through the rest of the movie.)

I was so into this scene until the computer thing happened. It makes no sense with in the context of the movie. Was it an out so Magneto wouldn't be personally responsible for attempting to kill Mystique by using the metal in the Sentinel? Or did he just randomly get control over computer systems like Kitty and her Mind Time Slide?


7. The Nitpick Section

All of Bryan Singer's little homages to himself/previous X-Men movies. The Danger Room "eye" opening. X's everywhere. Even Storm and Colossus' death's formed X's. Oh, yeah, and Colossus has metal skin right? Well, in this movie, his entire body is metal. He is ripped in half by Future Sentinels and instead of having gooey insides, it's that of solid metal. Possibly for ratings, sure. But why rip him in half, that was horrifying and unnecessary. That horrible funk music that was playing when Wolverine went out on the street in '73.

Wolverine telling Beast they were good friends. Really? Did you watch X3? They didn't seem to like each other! In fact, no one but Rogue and Jean seemed to like Wolverine in the previous movies. They seemed to put up with him while constantly being angry with him.

Bishop was a plot device who didn't say anything worth remembering. Warpath pretty much just snarled and flexed holding big knives. Storm was as pointless and ineffective as she has been in every movie, hardly befitting her true character. Iceman's ice slide was cool for about the 4 seconds of screen time it go. Did Sunspot even say anything?

 

And don't even get me started on this Sean Williams Scott/Kellan Lutz version of Stryker...



8. The Finale...and Apocalypse

I did not see this coming. So kudos for you keeping it under wraps. Somehow, by not killing Trask in '73 (an event that is never mentioned or discussed, despite it being the very epicenter of their bad future) everything goes right with the world. Jean doesn't go Phoenix crazy, therefore Cyclops and Prof X are fine too. Rogue shows up for 2 seconds just to hold hands with Iceman (who had been clearly with Kitty through all the Future story arc.) So, did the "cure" story in X3 never happen? What else never happened?

Granted, I like the scene with Prof X and Wolverine at the end. I would have been thrilled if that's all we saw off the 'fixed' future. While seeing Jean and Cyclops was a surprise, I have to wonder...why?

Then we cut to the post credits scene. Now, it's no secret Singer is doing an Apocalypse story next. So it makes sense that the post scene would reflect/suggest that. I wanted to be excited. I never thought I'd see Apocalypse on the big screen. But then I see Apocalypse on the big screen. He's making a pyramid with his mind like a kid with Lego bricks. The giant stones are just swirling around in the air like leftovers from Transformers 2. What? When is this happening? There is no context or reason to be interested. If you don't know who Apocalypse or En Sabah Nur are, you have no idea what is going on. Sure, the final shot of four dark horsemen on the next sand dune was cool, but I don't know why I should care.

Especially after the finale when everything seems hunky-dory. Apocalypse is supposedly going to be another First Class sequel, set in the 80's. Okay, but clearly they get through it just fine as shown in the finale. None of the major characters will be in serious jeopardy, and they all survive to get to that idyllic X-Mansion scene just moments ago, where...30 year old Rogue and Iceman are still students? Cause...is that a fixed 2023? or 2013? Who knows?


So there it is. I tried to keep my comic fanboy reeled in and work off mainly movie material. It's certainly not the worst X-Men movie out there. But I don't really consider any of them to be good. And I'll tell you why next time.

For now, thanks for reading...if you made it this far.

-Jesse

This Geek Thing

I've had some thoughts on this whole Geek discussion that's going on, so here they are.

As defined by dictionary.com

geek

 [geek]  Show IPA Slang.

noun

1.

a digital-technology expert or enthusiast (a term of pride as self-reference, but often useddisparagingly by others).

2.

a person who has excessive enthusiasm for and some expertise about a specialized subject oractivity: a foreign-film geek.

3.

a peculiar or otherwise dislikable person, especially one who is perceived to be overly intellectual.

Origin: 
 1915- 20; probably variant of geck  (mainly Scots ) fool < Dutch  or Low German gek

I left out the fourth definition. Follow the link if you want. It's interesting if you like getting funnel cake.

For a majority of my life the second two were how I primarily heard the word being used. I can't pin point the first time but it was probably in elementary school. So somewhere in the mid to late 80's. By this point I probably already was the 2nd option. I was very enthusiastic about most cartoons. Especially He-Man and Transformers, or any cartoon with animals.

At age 9, while walking with my sister-in-law to a park, I was talking excitedly about something, and she called me weird. Since it was said pleasantly, I said, 'Thank you!" I embraced that description.

Later I would get into Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (something that solidified one of the longest and best friendships of my life.) In middle school I got into comic books (particularly X-Men) and movies. I never stopped liking one thing in favor of another. I just added to my interests.

I was always on the outside. Besides a few friends that had the same, or at least similar interests my only other friends during middle school and high school were my friends from my church youth group. 

Even there I was on the fringe because I always had my backpack with my sketchbook and comics with me, and I'm sure other reasons. At school, being a Christian and into comics had me sticking out like a sore thumb. I didn't care. I didn't like the things I did for anyone besides myself. I wasn't making a point. I just like what I like.

College saw me finally adding the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit offically to my geekhood. I had grown up with the animated movies, but never read the books. So I made sure I read them before the movies hit. Now, they are probably the biggest area of my geek knowledge.

I was in college before I started self-applying the term 'geek.' Before then I was just weird. I wasn't a geek because I was ostracized, I was ostracized because I was a geek. 

Then the 2000's came. Huge successful movies about comic book heroes started getting made. X-Men, Spider-Man, Batman relaunch, Watchmen, and eventually TV shows like Heroes . My particular brand of geek was getting noticed. And I was okay with it! I didn't care that now new people were learning who the X-Men were. Even if they messed them up in the movie.

Being a geek wasn't a status or desirable thing. It was just a broad descriptor for people really into specific things. Geek wasn't pointed at comic books and super heroes alone. You could be a music geek, game geek (now gamers) or whatever.

Next came The Big Bang Theory. A show about 4 geeky nerds who live in LA. It's a funny show. I enjoy it a lot. I don't think it accurately portrays anyone I know that is into comics or other geeky stuff. It got the concept of comics and geeks into a wider pop culture dialogue.

Then Patton Oswalt puts out a blog post about being an 'otaku.' Saying he's not a geek, but was 30 years ago when it wasn't cool. This post kinda made me mad.

Frankly, I'm not of the mentality that being a geek is something to hoard. I'm sorry for all the people out there who were physically/emotionally bullied for having interests in the 'not normal.' As far as I'm concerned being a geek wasn't some sort of anti-establishment, proto-hipster way to like things that weren't popular.

Being a geek means you really like something and have a wide and specific knowledge base in that subject. Geek is a generic term. It is not limited to comic books, or video games or anything. I'm sick and tired of all these people who are upset that what they like is suddenly widely popular. It doesn't change what you like! Unless you only like those things because there was limited interest in it.

I don't know what to tell you then.

Right now there is a trendy fad to be geeky or nerdy. It might last a long time. It might not. Why does it matter to you if someone else claims to be a geek? If you've been a geek your whole life, and meet someone who is just now discovering these things, are they not allowed to consider themselves a geek too?

Why is calling your self a geek some sort of victim of bullying or being ostracized merit badge?

And for all the 'fake' geek stuff. Yes, I do believe there are people who are fake about being a geek. Just like there are people who are fake about what sports team they like, or what their religious beliefs are. Every sub-culture, category, and social group has people who make them look bad, and don't really belong in that group.

Let's not become the bullies and jerks we endured. Excluding others just because they didn't go through what we went through. That's a Magneto thing. And despite current alignments. He's a bad guy. You want to keep geekdom different from all the other groups out there? Be accepting!

Your type of geek might be very different from my type of geek. Good! Cause if we all liked the exact same thing...fill in the creepy utopian controlled future story of your choosing!

So lets stop all these rants about how popular culture has killed being a geek. All the things geeks love are still out there. So embrace what you love and let other embrace what they love. And when this trendy fad passes, we can continue on...hopefully with a few more geeks by our side!

Geekfully yours...

grace, peace + hope

-Jesse

Nostalgic Momentum

It's the far side of Summer and my favorite season is merely a few days away.  The weather has been quite cool for the better part of the last week, and it's just the kind of atmosphere to send one strolling down memory lane.

That and the past four months seem to be beating me over the existential head with that concept of nostalgia.

It all started just before the move back to PA.  I had purchased the album Build a Rocket Boys by one of my favorite bands, Elbow.  It was a bit tougher to get into this album than the bands previous work.  But there was something in it that tugged at me.  It's mellow tunes seemed to rewind time and take me back to days gone by.

As I kept listening to the album after the move, it started to sink in that this album was a nostalgic look back on life.  Times of childhood adventures and the rosy colored memories of the "good-ol-days."  It also made me miss my new family in Illinois (yes Deeter's this means you) and all the people I love there.  If you're thinking, "Does he mean me?"  If you knew me while I lived in the Plainfield area, yeah, I mean you.

But my journey doesn't end there.  The mere concept of moving back to my home town was like diving into a gargantuan pool of yesterday.  Despite things being so different, so much is the same.  I'm sure I drove some friends crazy with my, "That's different," or "What happened to the...?" and "That used to be a...," comments.  Driving through old neighborhoods, visiting once familiar places was great and plumbed the depths of my memories.

Then you factor in some of the movies this summer.  Many were based in the past, or had throw-back scenes.  Captain America, X-Men: First Class, Transformers, and Super 8.  Granted I didn't live in any of the time periods of these movies, but the "remember when" feel they had got to me.

It was Super 8 that really struck a chord in me.  The events of the movie taking place roughly a month before I was born made me remember photos of my brothers and sister from that time.  And there were a lot of things in it that I would remember growing up.  Star Wars (and the world at large) had yet to be subjected to the word "prequel."  The TMI incident, Rubik's Cube (which I've learned was an anachronism in the movie,) and just the over all feel of the setting reminded me of my childhood.


Just this past weekend (Sept 16-18) brought two huge pieces of childhood and youth back into the forefront.  Star Wars was released on Blu-ray chock-full of bits and bobs from a long time ago.  That and The Lion King was just re-released in theaters.  (Yes, I'm 32 years old and not ashamed to say I saw The Lion King with my mom.)  Ok so that wasn't really "childhood," but it came from a great summer that I spent with my brother in Florida.  Still nostalgic.

A few other things:

I made a trip to New York City (for less than 24 hours) but it had been over 20 years since I was last there.  It took me back to walking the bustling streets with my dad and brother.  Remembering that I had actually gone up in the Twin Towers.

Reconnecting with childhood friends back in this area has been a real trip down memory lane as well.  Especially hanging out with my good friend Shawn (check his blog out at OctoberSon over in the links to the right!)

It's been twenty years since this zarking good friend gave me a firm introduction to the art and stories of comic books.  And here I am again 20 years later, hanging out with this same friend, geeking out over movies, getting comic books, eating pizza, and laughing like mad men as we bounce creative ideas off each other like a proverbial beach ball.

I've realized though, that I'm not just reliving the past.  Cause that wouldn't be a good thing.  All this stuff coming back, or taking me back, or however you want to say it...is actually moving me forward.  Unlike the Metallica song, the memory does more than remain.  It's propelling me forward.  It's reminding me who I am, what I love, what moves me.

I've been asked a few times why I chose to move back home.  To some it just seems backwards.   Why go back?  Why give up a good thing I had in Illinois for uncertainty?  Why back to a place I had been instead of a new place?

Well, this is why.  The nostalgic momentum.  I didn't know that would be the result of the past four months.  I didn't know what was going to happen when I loaded up that truck and drove out of Joliet.  I had plans and dreams and schemes...some are still in place, others have been passed by.

The biggest prompting, however, was God.  There was no writing on the wall, no burning bush, no vivid dream and interpretation.  I just knew it was time to go.  The direction wasn't clear, but the prompting to pack up and go was clear.

When I think back to those years in the early 80's especially, I may have been a naive child, but there is something to be said about that kind of innocence and acceptance.  It was a time before the divorce, before my family moved to every corner of the country.  The internet was still a decade off, and there was still a mystery to the world on a vast global scale.  Cellphones didn't fit in your pocket, if you could even afford one.  Optimus Prime and Snake Eyes didn't have lips, and Anakin was an old guy who looked like your grandpa.  

So, here I am, the far side of summer.  The music of Elbow, Giacchino, and Williams twisting out of my speakers like auditory pavement under the rubber bike tires of my memory.  They carry me back across the season, the miles, and the decades.

I'm a 32 year old boy in mismatched clothing, socks half-way up to my knees and big dreams in my heart.

Grace, Peace, & Hope
-Jersey