X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST (2014)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, sociological*

I first viewed the theatrical version of this film in 2014, and it's with a certain irony that I thought the film's greatest problem was its over-use of Wolverine as played by Hugh Jackman (whose presence almost seemed to be a creative talisman for director/co-writer Bryan Singer). Little did I guess then Wolverine's presence would be the least bothersome aspect of my review years later upon viewing the "Rogue Cut" (so named because that version re-instated several Anna Paquin scenes eliminated from the movie release).

In the comic-book narrative from which this film was adapted, the time-traveling action centers not upon Wolverine but on the junior X-Men member Kitty Pryde (who, in fairness, had barely appeared in the live-action films). A mature version of Kitty endures, like all other surviving mutants, a torturous existence in the future era of 2013, when America has become dominated by the merciless, mutant-hunting robots called Sentinels. The robots plan to extend their reach to other parts of the world, indifferent to nuclear retaliation. To rewrite the past so that this unlucky 2013 never comes about, Older Kitty sends her consciousness back in time, to inhabit the body of Younger Kitty and to convince the other X-Men to undo the events that led to the Sentinel-dominated future. The heroes do so by thwarting the attempt of Mystique and her fellow mutants to assassinate a U.S. senator. Writer Chris Claremont set his "modern era" in 1980, which was both the time when the issues were published and the period of America's Moral Majority, whose restrictiveness may have been linked symbolically to that of the Sentinels.

By the time of the DAYS movie, though, Singer and his collaborators had already "gone back in time" in a metaphorical sense with X-MEN FIRST CLASS. This film showed how a younger incarnation of Professor Xavier (James MacAvoy) and a separate band of mutant heroes-- including a younger Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence)--  had dealt with anti-mutant prejudice in 1962, at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Singer evidently decided to use the template of the comic-book narrative to make what amounted to a "sequel" to FIRST CLASS, so that he could follow up on the intertwined destinies of Xavier, Mystique and Magneto-- who are actually the ones who end up dominating the story far more than does Wolverine.

Thus, for assorted reasons, the time-traveler of DAYS-- Older Wolverine, whose consciousness goes back to inhabit the body of Younger Wolverine-- does not go back to 1980, but to 1973, which is glossed as the year when America began its withdrawal from Vietnam. Older Wolverine discovers that Magneto has been imprisoned for having slain "mutant" John F. Kennedy, that Xavier's school has almost closed and that Xavier himself has turned to alcoholism. Older Wolverine must convince Xavier to gather together what allies they can-- including The Beast, a version of Quicksilver, and the imprisoned Magneto-- in order to avert the dystopian future.

Mystique, sans any allies this time, is still one of the heroes' main targets, but this time, she plans to assassinate not a senator but the military scientist responsible for creating the Sentinels. Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage) has created his robots in order to appeal to the American military, embarrassed by the Vietnam debacle. Trask's assassination will still have the disastrous domino effect that the senator's did, though the President overseeing it all is not Ronald Reagan but Richard Nixon. Thus the X-Men must battle against Mystique, modern-day Sentinels, and Magneto, who of course does not stick with the heroes' game plan-- all while the surviving mutants in 2013 (including such luminaries as Storm and Colossus) make their last stand against the robot tyrants.

There are some promising developments in the Singer version of the story. In the comics, Mystique's decision to murder the senator for starting an anti-mutant campaign does not seem to jibe with her general intelligence: she acts as if she did not even consider the possibility of a negative blowback. However, in the movie Mystique has a more personal reason for wanting Trask dead. At some point, the scientist gains access to her shape-changer DNA. He then conferred some of Mystique's abilities on his automatons-- which, in a roundabout way, was the main reason that the Future-Sentinels were able to conquer America and annihilate most of mutant-kind. This gives Mystique a more relatable reason to want Trask dead even though she does not know the future-- though, to be sure, the power-transfer also results in making the Future-Sentinels rather sleek and feminine, which does not prove to be a good look for them. Trask, the substitute for the mutant-hating senator, actually does not hate mutants but has some vaguely-conceived idea of using them as a scapegoat that will supposedly unite humanity. But this notion is merely tossed out without any development.

The strangest thing about DAYS is that its bifurcated temporal structure causes the movie to shunt most of the main heroes associated with the success of the franchise-- except Wolverine-- into a future where all of their heroics merely constitute a holding-action. The main action takes place in 1973, but there's no ensemble of X-heroes there. Quicksilver-without-that-name is sidelined before the climax for no good reason, so that the only X-heroes able to fight Magneto, Mystique, and the Sentinels are Wolverine, Beast, and a de-powered Professor X. I understand that Singer really, really wanted to complete the dramatic arc of the characters he really liked. Still, the time-travel scenario has the effect of writing out most of the characters that the fans want when they see an X-Men film.

To be sure, the performers who get the lion's share of script attention-- Jackman, MacAvoy, Patrick Stewart (as Older Professor X), Lawrence and Fassbender-- are all exemplary. The time-reshuffling also allowed Singer to rework some of the unfortunate plot-decisions made in X3: THE LAST STAND. I'll confess that I was as taken with the rebirth of Cyclops and Marvel Girl in the end-cameos as any other fan. In X-MEN APOCALYPSE-- to date Singer's "final fling" with the franchise-- the writer-director followed through by including both of those heroes and a new version of Nightcrawler, though he still set the action in 1983, as if still seeking to avoid getting into a continuity-hassle with his movies of the 2000s. But APOCALYPSE at least had all of the heroes in the same time-frame as they battled Apocalypse and his Four Horsemen (one of whom was-- sigh-- Magneto again).

Having now reviewed all of Singer's "prequel films," I tend to think that despite some strong moments they represent a literal backward step for the franchise. That said, I respect that Singer wanted to get across some commentary on real historical events through the mutant-action lens, though, since X-MEN is a concept that arguably reflects a particular culture's sociological priorities more than do most superhero franchises.