As a big fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I’m one of those who would love to see all of the Marvel properties revert back to Marvel because they have proven themselves to be such better stewards of them. The most egregious offenders are of course Spiderman and the Fantastic Four, but given the existence of such turds as X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine, this includes the Marvel stable of mutant characters as well.
Then along comes Days of Future Past and all of a sudden people are saying how its an Avengers beater and is giving Marvel itself a run for its money. Maybe the X-Men franchise might actually be better off in the hands of 20th Century Fox after all. So I knew that I had to drag myself to watch this in the cinema even though it isn’t MCU.
After watching this I have come to two conclusions: one, this really is a good Hollywood action movie and two, the X-Men would still be better off back in Marvel’s hands. The reasons for the first one speak for themselves. This is an ambitious story of epic scope that thanks to time travel is played out simultaneously on two parallel tracks, a crazy big cast of superpowered characters played by multiple big-name stars, and it somehow manages to not fall apart under its own weight.
True, the writers of this one made some concessions to get things to fit right. In the comic version of the story, it’s Kitty Pryde whose mind is sent back in time due to the power of Rachel Summers, the daughter of Scott Summers and Jean Grey. But this story is very much a case of the film’s writers working with the mythos instead of against it. It manages to work in both the classic Sentinels as well as a more fearsome for the film version. It cherry picks its way through six films worth of back-story and does a good job of keeping the good and throwing out the bad.
It has some really good action movie scenes, most notably those involving Quicksilver. The final epic fight is as spectacular as any you could want though I especially liked the first fight in the alternate future that also serves to introduce a whole bunch of new characters and what they can do. Fan Bingbing’s Blink is especially cool in how she uses her powers in conjunction with those of the others, in combos that seem copied right out of the Portal videogame. It’s fast-faced, filled with appropriate tension and excitement, everything an action movie ought to be.
Yet while it avoids making any egregious mistakes, it’s just not as good as it could be. Having Quicksilver break Magneto out of prison is fun, but didn’t we already have a break-Magneto-out-of-jail scene in X2? Magneto’s motivations are vague and poorly communicated to the audience. Killing the president and his top advisers on live tv seems likely to push humans towards building Sentinels instead of against it. Mystique’s alienation from both Xavier and Magneto feels contrived too. She wants to kill Trask but not anyone else? And she can’t talk to either of them about it?
This contrasts with how the MCU does things. While the X-Men films have been been happy to include as many characters as possible, the Marvel films have tended to be rather parsimonious with them. A visible effort is made to ensure that if new characters are added, the film must be able to give those characters the space and time needed to be develop and flesh them out. In this film however, after wowing audiences with Quicksilver, the film makers then proceeded to put him away, probably because he was too powerful and would have ruined the rest of the story. It’s an unsatisfying and cheap move.
One reason why the studio keeps tripping itself up like this is because under its stewardship, the X-Men would be better described as Wolverine and Friends. All of the focus keeps staying on Wolverine. As good as Hugh Jackman is in the role, it’s just too much of a good thing. Audiences never really get to connect with other characters. This is especially disappointing after X-Men: First Class which looked like it was set to build Professor X into a strong character in own right and then in this film, he takes a back seat to Wolverine once more.
The Avengers sure didn’t have this problem even though I could easily how Robert Downey Jr. could have stolen the show as Tony Stark. Instead, while Stark had his share of scene-stealing clowning moments, Joss Whedon made sure that all of the characters still have enough scenes in which they interacted with each other without Stark being there to establish their personalities and individual identities clearly in the audience’s minds.
The result is that while the film is solid entertainment, it doesn’t quite manage to provoke the instant thumbs-up enthusiastic joy that the Marvel films do. The best of the X-Men films are only about equivalent to the mediocre MCU ones. And this means that they should return to Marvel, where they can grow and be integrated with the other characters in the wider Marvel Universe.
Of course, this isn’t very likely and apparently the next film in the X-Men franchise might be an Age of Apocalypse storyline which would get even me excited. The series will continue to be successful for a good long while and this means 20th Century Fox has every incentive to keep hold of the property. At the same time, the party can’t go on forever. The first X-Men was released in 2000 and it was the film that kicked off our current golden age of superhero movies. This means that the actors are aging. Hugh Jackman can’t play the Wolverine forever and so they’ll have to do a reboot eventually. That would be the perfect time for the grand reunion to happen.