We're back with a new episode that covers Bryan Singer's return to the X-Men franchise, Days of Future Past; Robert Stromberg's Maleficent, a revisionist take on Sleeping Beauty; and Doug Liman's action-packed Edge of Tomorrow, a sci-fi second cousin to Groundhog Day, starring Tom Cruise.
This is pretty loose, but there's still some good stuff. I wasn't feeling well (you can hear me sniffling, clearing my throat, and chewing on ice -- sorry about that), but since we had to postpone the recording a week so I could attend a bachelor party, I didn't want to push it any further down the road. I hope you enjoy it, in spite of that. Thanks to Cesar Alejandro from Film Smash for joining me and for carrying the conversation at some points.
Here's the breakdown:
00:00:01 Introduction
00:01:42 X-Men: Days of Future Past (mild spoilers)
00:42:44 Maleficent (major spoilers)
01:10:13 Edge of Tomorrow (mild spoilers)
You can also listen to this episode on Podbean by clicking here, or check us out on iTunes. Don't forget to comment below and share STF with your movie-loving friends!
X-Men looks great. Actors were great. It was an entertaining film. But it was easily the worst written/plotted/scripted film in the franchise (even worse than #3). Whoever wrote and/or edited this flick should be black-balled from any future projects. There were so many horrible contradictions in this film, it not only contradicted the previous films in the series, but even within this film itself. It would have been acceptable, if this was simply a re-boot of the series, starting from square one.....but they go out of their way to include the previous films, making this flick an incredible mess. Plus, you get newly made up powers for previoiusly established characters (anyone remember Superman's "fix-o-vision" in Superman 3?)). When did Kitty Pryde gain the power to send people back in time? When did Prof X learn how to come back from the dead? When did Wolverine get his metal back? How does Mystique's appearance-changing ability enable the Sentinals to absorb other mutants' powers? Did the writers get her mixed up with Rogue when they were plotting this????? (.....actually they did.....).
ReplyDeleteEven the film's climax is poorly thought out. Mystique is going to shoot Trask, kicking off mutant hysteria. We've got to stop her! O.k....but in the course of stopping her, Magneto threatens the entire U.S government cabinet with death. But Mystique saves the day by shooting him through the neck (and he somehow doesn't bleed out and die?), and she's a hero (after holding the President at gunpoint...on TV) WAIT.....WHAT?!?!?! Mutants just threatened the White House on national TV.....and dropped RFK Stadium on the White House lawn.......what idiot writer DIDN'T think that THAT would kick-start mutant hysteria????
And......in the end, everyone is alive again!!!! Yeah!....this one change to history immediately erases every bad thing that happened to the X-Men. Everyone's alive again! No Phoenix problems! hey, probably everyone loves mutants now too!
In truth, the filmmakers set themselves up for disaster at the very beginning by trying to incorporate both the older movies and First Class into one storyline. In the original comic story, Kitty Pryde (not Wolverine) is sent back to the present day (not the mid-70s).....if they would have stuck with that timeline, it would have been easier to keep everything straight.....but that would have left the First Class cast out in the cold. And this is apparently the wave of the future, because the next X-flick is suppposed to take place in the past also. And that's o.k., but please take a note from the Batman franchise and just stop referencing the old films.....
Watch this flick again. it's terribly conceived and insulting to your intelligence. Maybe Singer was too distracted by his lawsuits to care....
There are some leaps of faith, to be sure, but keeping things less complicated seemed more important to them than satisfying everything that would have needed an explanation to keep the cast of Singer's original around. (An approach I would have to agree with in this case.) Using Wolverine instead of Kitty makes sense, given their reasoning... and yours. The Mystique-Sentinel relationship didn't bother me, but I did question how she was in the "future" movies at all if she was captured and experimented on (presumably, she wouldn't have been released for any reason). It's safe to assume that Magneto would have been the one to re-apply the adamantium to Logan's claws since their interests are aligned here. As far as mutant hysteria is concerned, I'm not going to argue your point -- it's valid -- but at least the ending establishes that the "good" mutants are capable of thwarting the plans of the "evil" ones. Isn't that the environment Singer's first X-Men film was based in? Isn't that belief the very thing that keeps us from living in total fear?
DeleteI guess it just didn't bother me as much as it did you, Gene. Thanks for commenting. More importantly, thanks for listening!