REVIEW: "X-Men: Days of Future Past" Gives "Avengers" a Run for Its Money

[Lady Warp Spasm]

This was...disappointing.

[PwrdOn]

preach it my mutant brother.

You're not one of those U-Men are you?

[CliffHanger2]

The movie was pretty damn good, no ok it was excellent. I would for once like to see Colossus really cut loose in a movie though.

[JaggedFel]

Yes racial allegory but with straight attractive white people so u know u actaully give a D***. I am not giving Singer an award for massive amounts of cultural appropriation without decent representation for any oppressed minority group besides Jews.

[KungFuTreachery]

Days of Future Past > Any Marvel Studios movie EVER

You know what I remember about the Winter Soldier? Punching
The Avengers? Punching+awful jokes
There's substance in Days of Future Past. And whoever says there's no action or mutant fighting, clearly wasn't paying attention.

I think you missed the substance in Winter Soldier if all you remember is punching. Military Industrial Complex, Project Paperclip, NSA spying, Patriot Act, DHS corruption, etc.

Days of Future Past was great, and had a lot of subtext as well, but I recommend re-watching Cap 2 after reading about Project Paperclip in particular.

The racial allegory is so strong is this, and honestly he does it with more subtly than Nolan.

Nolan movies literally have characters telling you exactly what the themes are. Kinda defeats the purpose of "sub"-text.

On a completely different note: Did everyone else assume Magneto was lying his ass off when he claimed to Charles not to be guilty of what landed him in prison?

I have a theory that Magneto was trying to alter Winter Soldier's bullet, but the Comedian got the killshot from the grassy knoll.

[JaggedFel]

I think you missed the substance in Winter Soldier if all you remember is punching. Military Industrial Complex, Project Paperclip, NSA spying, Patriot Act, DHS corruption, etc.

Days of Future Past was great, and had a lot of subtext as well, but I recommend re-watching Cap 2 after reading about Project Paperclip in particular.

Yeah WS had plenty of political subtext.

[thejka]

I haven't liked a single Bryan Singer directed X-Men film and this film does not change that. The fact that you can count the amount of lines all the X-Men of color in this film had on one hand shows you Singer still doesnt get the X-Men. The actions of First Class Magneto in the third act completely ruined the film for me. As well as the lack of DOFP X-Men development. But I did like this take on Mystique.

[AcesX1X]

Yes racial allegory but with straight attractive white people so u know u actaully give a D***. I am not giving Singer an award for massive amounts of cultural appropriation without decent representation for any oppressed minority group besides Jews.

storm, bishop, sunspot, and warpath were four of the only surviving future x-men left.

[Kalen O.]

storm, bishop, sunspot, and warpath were four of the only surviving future x-men left.

Whose sole purpose was literally to die graphically over and over again. There was not a single moment of characterization for any of those characters. Not quite an effective argument against his point.

[Starleafgirl]

storm, bishop, sunspot, and warpath were four of the only surviving future x-men left.

Not to mention Blink. I mean, I haven't seen the film yet, but she was definitely in the future sections of the film and played by a Chinese actress, so.... lol.

[HowitzerJoe]

Whose sole purpose was literally to die graphically over and over again. There was not a single moment of characterization for any of those characters. Not quite an effective argument against his point.

There was no time in the film to establish characterization for everyone. And they really aren't required for the point of the narrative. The film is really about Xavier, Magneto, and Mystique's relationship and how it's led to this dark future.

[Kalen O.]

There was no time in the film to establish characterization for everyone. And they really aren't required for the point of the narrative. The film is really about Xavier, Magneto, and Mystique's relationship and how it's led to this dark future.

None of that actually negates Jagged Fel's point that for a franchise whose entire existence is one giant discrimination allegory, all of the major players from day one have been straight white people, other than Storm, who easily remains the least developed of the original cast.

You can't use the limitations of the movie to explain away the lack of characterization for those characters, because the movie only played out the way it did because of Singer's creative decisions, and thus are dictated by his priorities. He's the one who shaped the plot, determined the screentime per character, etc. Just because there was no room for their characterization AS IS doesn't mean there was no room if Singer had made different creative decisions.

Not saying he should have done differently one way or another, its not an argument I'm willing to invest in at this point. All I'm saying is you can't point to the characters of color as an example of diversity and then say, oh, there just wasn't time to develop them, when the reason there wasn't time to develop them further is Singer chose to focus on other characters, aka the white characters Jagged Fel mentioned. Its an inherently flawed defense, is all I mean. No characters were REQUIRED for the narrative. The narrative was clearly shaped to fit the characters, not the other way around. If you think otherwise, you obviously haven't read the original story.

[HsssH]

Well First Class setting with no people of colour wasn't set by Singer, you can blame that other guy for that. If you looked at the original DoFP future time line, IIRC, had only one non-white survivor - Storm. Nobody forced him to include characters like Bishop or Warpath for the future scenes nor anyone forced to have a black mutant at the military camp. Yes future guys died, but thats how original storyline went. Lots of people complain about Fox/Singer changing whatever they want, but I guess problem isn't that they are changing stuff but that their changes are not what some of us would have changed.

I also disagree that if you want to comment on racism you need poc. Reason why X-Men comics worked (originally they didn't have many non-white characters and even now they have only few established ones) was that many of the mutants were nice looking white girls/dudes yet racists turned on them because their genes were different. Difference, often, was not physically noticeable.

[Kalen O.]

Well First Class setting with no people of colour wasn't set by Singer, you can blame that other guy for that. If you looked at the original DoFP future time line, IIRC, had only one non-white survivor - Storm. Nobody forced him to include characters like Bishop or Warpath for the future scenes nor anyone forced to have a black mutant at the military camp. Yes future guys died, but thats how original storyline went. Lots of people complain about Fox/Singer changing whatever they want, but I guess problem isn't that they are changing stuff but that their changes are not what some of us would have changed.

I also disagree that if you want to comment on racism you need poc. Reason why X-Men comics worked (originally they didn't have many non-white characters and even now they have only few established ones) was that many of the mutants were nice looking white girls/dudes yet racists turned on them because their genes were different. Difference, often, was not physically noticeable.

Eh, I'm not complaining about anything. I'm just recognizing that the movie is what Singer wanted it to be, and that means he's equally responsible for the inclusion of characters like Blink and Bishop and the exclusion of characterizations for them. The two go hand in hand, because both were equally his creative choices. Fox and Singer decided they wanted to adapt Days of Future Past. The characters 'required' for that narrative are Kitty, Rachel, etc. Fox and Singer didn't want to use those characters. They wanted the story to be about Xavier, Magneto, Mystique and Logan. So they wrote a narrative to fit those characters. Great. Fantastic. All I'm saying is exactly what that means. They chose the characters they wanted the story to be about, and wrote a story to fit that. Which means, they could have chosen different characters to focus on, and written a story to fit that instead. *Shrugs* All I'm saying is let's all recognize that we're talking about actual creative decisions here, not some binding narrative framework that took the option of focusing on a couple PoC characters away from Singer.

[kalorama]

Well First Class setting with no people of colour wasn't set by Singer, you can blame that other guy for that.

Not really. Singer was a producer and played an integral part in shaping the story, including determining the cast of characters.

But, really, this whole debate is something of a dead end because, when looked at through clear eyes, the whole idea of the X-Men, in any form or medium, being an allegory for racism is more a great sound bite/marketing hook than an actual reality.