A LESSON UNLEARNED

 

So I just saw the new X-Men movie, Days of Future Past.

Now this movie is based on one of Chris Claremont's classic story arcs from the comic The Uncanny X-Men in the early 80's and because of its iconic status it was one of the natural stories that would be chosen for Marvel Studios to bastardize in the disastrous X-Men movie franchise.

However, for this movie, the filmmakers, specifically Bryan Singer (the director of X-Men 1 & 2), have chosen to use this story as a vehicle to retconn the entire series and try and correct some of the mistakes of the earlier movies (specifically X-Men 3 and Wolverine Origins).

At least that's what I thought was the purpose of this movie.  And for most of the movie it does exactly that.

Except for X-Men:  First Class (which I thought was abysmal due to all the changes they made from the comics), all the X-Men movie continuity is wiped away paving the way for new movies to be made with James McAvoy (a terrible choice for Prof X - why isn't he bald?), Michael Fassbender, and Jennifer Lawrence and a whole new set of X-Men (or old X-Men played by new younger actors) until...

the very end of the movie

when...

THEY REESTABLISH THE OLD CONTINUITY!!!

Wait...  What???

I just spent two hours watching all the movie continuity wiped away only to see the original actors from X-Men return? 

That makes absolutely no sense!!!

Not only from a story perspective but from a film-making continuing movie franchise perspective.

Where does the franchise go from here?

Do they make new movies with the old cast?  Do they make new movies with McAvoy, Fassbender, and Lawrence?  Do they make new movies combining both casts in some kind of dual story (perhaps involving Apocalypse, which they totally crucified in the end credits sequence - Since when can Apocalypse build pyramids with his mind or whatever?  It didn't even look like Apocalypse.  Terrible.)

The movie should have ended with the future timeline disappearing and Logan being rescued from drowning and captured so that he can get his adamantium. 

And why have Mystique be Stryker there at the end?  That makes no sense either because presumably she would rescue Wolverine and then he would get his adamantium some other way.  

And why does Logan wake up in that new timeline and can't remember anything?  Did his consciousness jolt from the boat in the past to the future where everyone is back alive and well.  It doesn't make any sense.

Time-Travel.  Yeesh.

Had they ended the movie with Logan waking on the boat with no memory of the future, they could have made a new movie where Prof X (James McAvoy, hopefully bald at this point) assembles the original X-Men along with Beast who would still be there. So you could recast all the original X-Men (Cyclops, Jean Grey, Iceman, Angel) and perhaps have them go after Magneto (who Charles let go free at the end of Future Past which also doesn't make a whole lot of sense).

Imagine this in a new movie:

It begins with confused images of Wolverine getting his adamantium and metal claws 

Then you tell the story of the original X-Men (the original five) and how they go after Magneto whose doing some dastardly deed perhaps molded on X-Men #1 where he goes after nuclear missiles but they fail to stop him. 

Simultaneously, you tell another X-Men story with the older cast (Storm, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Thunderbird, Sunfire (was that Sunfire in Days of Future Past or Sunspot, I couldn't tell), Cyclops, Jean Grey, Kitty Pryde, and maybe Rogue) once more against Magneto but this time they succeed in stopping him with Wolverine saving the day making a triumphant entrance.

Or something like that.  I'm just kind of thinking out loud at this point.

I guess they are going to make an Age of Apocalypse movie next which could also work in different time periods because he is immortal.  You could have the young/new cast fight him and barely defeat him only to have him return to harass the older team where they win.

It seems to me that since they re-presented the older actors in the same parts and are once again stuck in the same continuity that they could also tell new stories with the same cast and not mess things up like they did with the original X-Men movies.  The way to not mess things up is to stay as close to the comics as they can which is why I proposed telling an origin story of the original team (except for Iceman which they can't fix now because its established in Days of Future Past that he is already there as a young man, so they can't make him an original X-Man - see, once you start changing things, you have to keep making changes until you are so far from the comics that nothing makes sense - like X-Men: First Class and then you have to reboot the entire franchise)

I don't know if any of this is making any sense but all I do know is that in an effort to correct past mistakes they made in story, casting, and characterizations they ended up not learning from their own past mistakes and therefore no lessons were learned and the X-Men movie franchise is still just as mired in confusion as it always was.

Too bad.