On Demand: X-Men Days Of Future Past
X-MEN : Days Of Future Past
It’s not often that a film as well acted and directed as X-Men : Days of Future Past comes across as so annoying. But that was the general feeling I had sitting in the theatre: Annoyed. While I admit it is almost impossible to separate the fan boy in me from the guy who wants to see a decent movie side of me, I have in the past been able to enjoy storylines and characters in comic book films that differ greatly from the source material and I am well aware that to be translated to the medium of film from the page of a comic book at times charterers and plot must be altered.
I really struggled with X-Men Days Of Future past. Not just because it differs so much from the classic Chris Claremont /John Byrne storyline from the comics but because even in it’s own cinematic mythology it seemed to go out of it's way to make the mutants who are women and people of color margenilized. This despite the fact that in the source materia this film is based on a lot more non white guys get to save the wolrd.
(Being a female or person of color in this film means injury and or death. You can run but you can't hide from the script)
Some History: X-Men Days of future past was a 1981 comic book story arc from Marvel's Uncanny X-Men comic. It was written by Chris Claremont and drawn by John Byrne and is arguably one of the greatest (Along with the Phoenix/Dark Phoenix Saga’s) X-men story- lines of all time.
The original story concerned a dystopic future ruled by the mutant hunting Sentinels. Here Rachel Summers the daughter of Cyclops and Jean Grey with some help from Franklin Richards send an adult Kitty Pryde back in time to avert the assassination of the man (Senator Robert Kelley) who would eventually create the giant robotic Sentinels. These giant robots would end up oppressing both mutant and human alike and bring an end to humanity. Flatscans. Always fucking shit up. What are you gonna do?
(Wolverine's fate in the comicbook)
Kitty (a 13 year old girl) had her mind transfered into her past self by Rachel (A powerful twenty something year old woman) and helped a past X-Men Team (led by Storm again a powerful African American woman) fight The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants (led by Mystique a brilliant and capable woman) who was being advised by the blind slightly older Destiny (again female. Sense a pattern?. This was not only a Kitty Pryde story it was the first one featuring the now iconic X-Man and seeing a 13 year old Jewish female computer expert with the power to phase help save the world was a breath of fresh air.
Days Of Future Past the movie does away with such refreshing and uncommon diversity and instead replaces time traveling Kitty Pryde with time traveling over exposed Wolverine.
Instead of being a ruthless powerful leader of the Brotherhood Mystique in this film is pretty much a lone rogue agent, more of a plot device than a character a person for Professor X and Magneto to save/and or kill and the reason humanity ends up in such a shitty state. In fact all the key decision makers in this film are white guys. The charatcers with the monologues and motivations explored in great detail are the white guys. The heroes who get to do all the cool stuff like plase staduim around the white house, break into the pentagon at super speed, time travel to save the world? White guys. Well that is up until five minutes before the end This movie takes the younger versions of Professor X and Magneto and teams them up with Beast and a time traveling Wolverine with a small assist from Quicksilver to run around the 1970's Marvel Universe attempting to tame the out of control blue woman Mystique from her own unstable emotional state which of course will lead her to doom the world to dystopia because she can’t control her feelings. Women. Sheesh.
(The only X-woman who is allowed to speak more than 3 lines of dialogue in a row has to be naked and blue.)
And what becomes of the major players from the comic book story arc? Kitty Pryde the star of the original comic is reduced here to mutant time elevator operator spending the entire film sitting and holding Wolverines head and projecting his consciousness into his past self to save the world. He accidently stabs her as thanks. She has no fight scenes little dialogue and little screen time. What a waste of not only a great character like Kitty but of an Oscar caliber actor like Ellen Page. Oh and considering the fact that never once in her 35 year exsistence has Kitty Pryde ever exhibited time projection abilities her role is is even more perplexing..
(In the original comic Rachel sends Kitty On a journey to save the world)
(In the movie she is Logans nursemaid )
Storm who was the leader of the team and led the assault on the Brotherhood in the comic-book version of this tale has 3 lines in the movie shoots lighting twice, manipulates wind once and then dies. Her screen time is pretty much a cameo.
From team leader and key member...
To cannon fodder....
In fact all of the mutants who are not good looking white guys are relegated to cameos; glorified minority special FX left to show off some pretty awesome CGI but ultimately die in the future. Most die twice. Oh and the women and minority X-Men don’t just die twice after uttering lines like "times up" "Sunspot!" and "They are here". They are massacred in an over the top mean spirited orgy of mutant death (Blink an Asian heroin and Storm an African American female deaths are both of course slightly phallic while Native American Warpath gets his face burned off). In fact all minority mutants end up blown up, frozen stabbed shot and ripped apart. Again we get to see this happen twice. The only two X-Women we don't see die onscreen (Kitty and Mystique) are still stabbed and shot (onscreen) and remain injured throughout.
While all the carnage in the future is going on the 4 white guys go on a road trip where Professor X cries, Magneto and Quicksilver get to be bad asses all the while Wolverine quips.
What adds an extra layer of annoyance to these already annoying demographics is the fact that the X-men comicbook in the 80's was the place to find powerful interesting female mutants. Claremont (who has a small cameo as a army general) has created so many vital X-woman its frankly uncanny. He created Mystique, Rogue, Kitty, made Marvel Girl Phoenix, created Dazzler, Psycloke, Emma Frost the list goes on and on. X-Men was the comic where at times the women on the team out powered and outnumbered the men. In this film they join the mutants of color as cannon fodder and plot devices. It completely took my joy out of watching this film. The second time Blink was skewered through her body I just wanted to go home.
(My name is Blink. I have hella potential but in this film I am only used as a glorified special FX. My only lines are "arrrg" and "eek"!)
And it’s a real shame because there are good things in this film. The acting is top notch the action sequences especially the Pentagon break in and the fights with Sentinels in the future are amazing. But again its essentially a movie about 4 white guys saving the world from an emotionally out of control blue women while the brown and black and yellow folks in the future get their faces burned off. That’s the movie I saw.
And let me add that given the history of Brian Singer and guys accusing him of casting couch tendencies there is another aspect of the film that was viscerally distasteful. The Beasts lips look just like James Marsdons (Cyclops) lips. (Stay with me here) Young Magneto and Xavier and Old Wolverine and Beast and Quicksilver have homoerotic overtones in their chemistry. Then 5 mins in I realized what was bothering me about those 4. They all shared an esthetic that screamed "I feel asleep at a Brian Singer pool party". Basically it seemed like he gave screen time to guys he wanted to fuck. But I guess Hitchcock did the same thing.
After that drink we all got sleepy and woke up with starring roles coincidently replacing the women and people of color who were the main protagonist in this story in the comicbook/cartoon versions.
(above) Nick Hoult as The Beast. Singer seems to have a "type"
James Marsdon. Singer seems to have a type.
