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X-Men: Days of Future Past
155 Plays5 years ago
X-Men: Days of Future Past is now on Disney+, so we sat down and watched the extended Rogue Cut (spoiler: Rogue’s barely in it). We discuss the ups and downs of the X-Men franchise, how this movie feels like it belongs in a pre-Avengers world, and wonder why Fox executives can’t seem to manage to comprehend continuity across a handful of movies.
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Transcript
Character Introductions and Themes
00:00:21
Speaker
Hey. Hey, Logan. Hi, Jean. Kill me. I love you. Why are you poor? Poor man will pass me. No, I don't want your suffering. I don't want your future. Look past my future. Look for your future.
00:00:49
Speaker
That's it. That's it. That's it.
00:01:44
Speaker
Charles. Charles. So this is what becomes of us. Eric was right. Humanity does this to us. Not if we show them a better path. You still believe. Just because someone stumbles loses their way, it doesn't mean they're lost forever.
00:02:14
Speaker
We all need a little help. Oh, I'm not the man I was. I open my mind, and it almost overwhelms me. You're afraid? I'm sorry, bro knows it. All of those voices. So much pain. It's not that pain you're afraid of.
00:02:45
Speaker
It's yours, Charles. And as frightening as it may be, that pain will make you stronger. If you allow yourself to feel it, embrace it, it will make you more powerful than you ever imagined. It's the greatest gift.
00:03:12
Speaker
It's born from the most human power, hope. Please, Charles, we need you.
Podcast Introduction and Climate Change Discussion
00:03:47
Speaker
Welcome to the Superhero Cinephiles podcast. I am, as always, half of your host, Barry Constantine. And as always, I am the other half of your host, Derek Ferguson. How you doing today, Derek? Ooh, can't complain, doing all right. Staying out of the heat mostly, because we're in the middle of, because they say after three days of 90 plus degree weather, that it's officially a heat wave. So we are now in our fourth day of temperatures over 90 degrees.
00:04:18
Speaker
So, but all right, but it's okay with me. I stay, matter of fact, this is a good excuse for me to stay inside the house, watch some good movies, catch up on my reading and get some writing done. That's good. Yeah, we got a heat wave coming pretty soon here. They just read a headline before we got on saying like the next three months are going to be like the hottest on record in Japan.
00:04:38
Speaker
which I'm not looking forward to. Global warming exists folks. Yeah. Yeah. All these people who say like, Oh, look at this snowball. How can it be? I mean, don't even get me started. Yeah. Yeah. Apparently you had no, I mean, anytime somebody starts to guess, I said, well, this conversation is over because apparently you have no idea how global warming works. Right. Yeah. It's useless to talk to you. Yeah.
00:05:03
Speaker
Yeah.
Using 'Watchmen' in Education
00:05:04
Speaker
And so last night, actually, I had a little bit of a watchman reviewing because every week I teach this class where we use English movies to help teach students about English and see English being done in real time. So every month we do a different movie. We do split it up into four parts, basically. But every once in a while, we've got a chink in the schedule.
00:05:33
Speaker
We've got a break coming up because of a speech contest. So my co-worker said, why don't you do a, every time that happens, we do like a TV show. So my co-worker said, why don't you use a TV show? So I'm thinking like, oh, it's a good TV show. So I decided to do the first episode of Watchmen and show it to them. And of course they didn't understand a lot of what was happening because they have no frame of reference for this show whatsoever.
00:06:03
Speaker
But even that being said, I also kind of want to do it as a test. Like see like, well, would they like this? And turns out they loved it. They loved the first episode. Really? Yeah, yeah. They didn't understand a lot. And they're like, what is the thing with the squids and all this stuff? So they had a lot of questions about it beyond just like English. It's like I did my best to try and explain and lay the groundwork. And I also gave them, and I told them, because it just came out in video stores in Japan like about a month or two ago.
00:06:33
Speaker
Uh-huh. So the whole series, it's available for them to go rent if they want to, or even buy. And I also gave them Amazon links to both the original graphic novel, and also there's a Japanese translation of it as well. So I gave them a link to that as well. Yeah, see, Watchmen is one of those things that when you try to describe it, you sound like a bloody lunatic.
00:07:02
Speaker
I was definitely getting that feeling when I was, so I'm like, okay, so see, here's the thing. Back in the 1930s, there were these mass mystery men and women, and then there was a guy who got involved in nuclear accident, and then in the 80s, Nixon is still president, and this other guy who was also a superhero but didn't have any powers, he goes crazy and he decides to use a giant squid to bring the US and the Soviet Union together. And as I'm saying it, I'm like,
00:07:29
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. What am I talking about? I mean, when you say it out loud, you realize the absurdity of what you're saying. You say what way, you know, and then you look at people and, you know, which is why, you know, yeah, yeah.
X-Men Series Analysis: Impact and Characters
00:07:47
Speaker
All right now today we're talking about my pick and I chose this movie because it just came out on Disney Plus and also it turns out this is like the the 20th anniversary of the first X-Men movie which right you know a groundbreaking moment in modern superhero cinema because that basically
00:08:09
Speaker
told Hollywood that hey you know people have forgotten about Batman and Robin more or less so now we can make superhero movies again and they don't have to be campy or watered down we can treat the material seriously and that's what X-Men did which we talked about you know way back in one of our early episodes so this week we're talking about X-Men Days of Future Past which um
00:08:30
Speaker
It was kind of like, which also marked the return of the last appearance of the original trilogy actors, with the exception of Patrick Stewart and Hugh Jackman, who came back in Logan. And it also bridged the gap between this and X-Men First Class, which kind of gave the series new life after X-Men The Last Stand and X-Men Origins Wolverine kind of made people sick of them. Yeah, yeah.
00:09:01
Speaker
X-Men The Last Stand was not received well at all. No, no, no, no. Nobody. I mean, even the most rabid of X-Men fans. Yeah, and you're talking to one right here. And I was so pissed off by that movie. Yeah, I mean, that one was like, I mean, that was like, and remember, you know what? OK, I'm not as much a big X-Men fan as you are. But you know what? I do feel bad for people when their favorite superheroes come to the screen.
00:09:30
Speaker
And it doesn't live up to the expectations. Right. You know what I mean? Just because I'm not crazy about it don't mean I want you, I don't want you to see the best version of your character that you like, see up there on screen.
00:09:42
Speaker
And I mean, like, I mean, the last name was just, that thing was just all over the place and it was just. I mean, even beyond as an X-Men movie, because the X-Men series, you know, let's be honest here, it's not really a good adaptation of the X-Men comics and characters with a few exceptions, right? Like they do a good job with Wolverine, they do a good job with Professor Racks, they do a good job with Magneto, but everyone else is just kind of there and they're very different from how they are in the comics.
00:10:12
Speaker
Yeah, this is, okay, this is a situation where as Fox's X-Men series suffers from what, the same thing that Star Trek, because when you look at them in, okay, in a lot of ways, there are some similarities because like in Star Trek, they tend to focus on Kirk, Spock,
00:10:40
Speaker
Dr. McCoy. Right, especially in the movies, yeah. Right, and the others, they just, you know, they're just there. Right, yeah. Well, in X-Men movies, yeah, it's like Wolverine, Professor X, Magneto, and you know, yeah, and everybody else is just like kind of there. Right, yeah.
00:10:59
Speaker
with the exception of X2, which I really enjoyed. X2 is, I think, hands down, like the best of the, well, the best of the X-Men teen movies. Let's put it that way. Because if we're talking overall movies with X-Men characters, I think the two Deadpool movies and Logan are above all the X-Men movies. Okay.
00:11:20
Speaker
I can go with that. Because X2, yeah. Because the first one, as I believe I probably did mention when we did the X-Men, that was actually a Wolverine movie. Yes, starring X-Men. Right, yeah. To me, which is what the movie should have been titled. It should have been titled Wolverine and the X-Men. Right. Because that's what it was. X2 was more like a team X-Men movie. Yeah. First Class was like a team X-Men movie.
00:11:44
Speaker
right but I don't think even that one it does heavily favor Xavier and Magneto and some of those um some of those x-men they recruit which it seems like they just pick them out of a hat like you know you've got Darwin and Angel
00:12:01
Speaker
And they don't really have anything to do. And Banshee, like I thought Banshee was handled pretty well in that movie, but even he doesn't really have a lot to do after like the second act. And he becomes like a special effect. As much as I like that movie, I have to go with you on that. It's like they just took a dart and just put like a bunch of X-Men names up on the board and just threw a dart. And okay, well that'll be, okay, well he'll be in the movie and she'll be in the movie. It should be the strength of the whole movie.
00:12:31
Speaker
as with this movie, is that for some reason, and you know what, they should have took a hit with First Class and just permanently set the X-Men back in the 1960s. Because for some reason,
00:12:43
Speaker
The movie set and period seem to work better than the movie set in the modern era. Well, you know what? Actually, I felt the opposite. Like, I actually really found myself liking the future stuff a whole lot more, especially in the version we're talking about. So for those who don't remember from our last episode, we're actually talking about the extended cut, the road cut of this movie. Right.
00:13:04
Speaker
and which has a lot more stuff dealing with the future. And I found myself, like I really wanted, I really liked the, some of the young actors they got to play like the Future X-Men, like you have, you know, Fan Bing Bing is Blink, I thought she was great. Yeah. Omar Tsai is Bishop, especially in this cut, because he's got this, there's this really great part where, when Xavier and Magneto are there in the future, and they're talking about their plan to change history.
00:13:31
Speaker
And Bishop has this really great moment where he's like, wait, wait, wait a second. You're talking about basically erasing our existence. Like, yeah, some of us may not be alive. Some of us may not even be born. And just like that. And and then he's and then he, something I didn't pick, you didn't pick, you don't pick up on if you only seen the theatrical cut is that Bishop is apparently the leader of this X-Men team, because he says, look, my people have to vote.
00:13:56
Speaker
Right. Yeah. And you know, the guy does have a point because he said, OK, this is a shitty future. Yeah, but it's the only one I got.
Ethical Dilemmas in Media Consumption
00:14:06
Speaker
Right. Yeah. And you don't know the one you're talking about. I may not be.
00:14:11
Speaker
Not only that, but you don't know what you'll be replacing it with. What if you turn it into something worse? And I remember a friend of the show, Mark Buskett, he talked about this in his review. I'm not sure if he wrote a review or if it was just commentary on social media or whatever, but he mentioned that one of the things he didn't like about this movie is the fact that they don't address the ethics of that. And so in the road cut, they do a little bit, which I thought was a good moment.
00:14:40
Speaker
Well, yeah, I mean, you know, listen, any time you bring time travel into any movie, you are confronted with the ethical dilemma of you. Because basically, you're playing God. Right, yeah. Because whatever future you create or whatever timeline that you create, some people are going to be gone. Some people are going to be there. And you don't know who.
00:15:08
Speaker
what you're going to get. You're basically playing dice with the universe. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Which is what they do in this movie. They say, well, you know, we just got to throw the dice and just hope it don't come out in our favor. But yeah, that's what they do. They say, well, we hope it'll come out in our favor. But yeah, but you don't know. Oh, well, hey, six to one, half a dozen of the other one. But in my head, as I was watching this movie, I kept thinking about all the other stories that are untold.
00:15:35
Speaker
about that original timeline because they, you know, they end up succeeding and the whole timeline is erased. You know, for example, like what in this movie in the 70s, you know, Xavier is, you know, he's day drinking all the time. He doesn't have his powers. The school is empty, except for him and Hank. Magneto was imprisoned at the Pentagon. Mystique gets captured by Traste's men. And so I'm wondering, like, how do you get from that situation in 1973
00:16:05
Speaker
to the X-Men in 2000. Like what happened?
00:16:11
Speaker
between there, because there is a whole lot of story there that we never see, and now we never will see, because, you know, like- Like that we don't get, yeah. Right, like how did Mystique escape? How did Magneto escape? What eventually snapped Xavier out of his funk and then had him go on to recruit Scott and Jean and Storm and all of them. And to lead us to the point, and also to kind of have a repaired relationship with Magneto, because we see him at the beginning of X-Men,
00:16:39
Speaker
They're not as adversarial as they are in this movie. And they're on this one, right? Yeah. So what happened and those intervening, like, what, 30 years? That was what I kept running through my head. And that was the question I kept thinking. Well, see, you know what? And it's not a failure of this movie. I just want to be clear. It's not a failure of this movie. It's just something I kept wondering about. And I wanted to see those stories as well.
00:17:06
Speaker
No, it's not so much as a failure in that, you know what? And when you talk about the X-Men, you have to keep in mind that it's not like the MCU where they said, OK, well, here's where we're going to go. Basically, they took each X-Men movie as it came. Yeah, yeah. And they didn't really worry too much about what they had did beforehand. It was just like, OK, this is just like old school movie making.
00:17:32
Speaker
like I remember like back in the 30s when they would make like movies about the saint right okay now it was the same character in every movie but as far as any kind of continuity went well that was thrown out the window in one movie like the saint would be
00:17:47
Speaker
you know he would be in Palm Springs and he's engaged to be married and then something would happen and he'd get into this wacky adventure and it'd be over with and then he's still got the girlfriend then you have the next movie and he's not engaged the girl isn't there he's in Paris and there's no explanation as to what happened. The X-Men movies are kind of like that you know they're just like their own it's supposed to be a series but really they each movie is like his own separate thing
00:18:12
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And yeah, the only exception to that is X2 because it ends with the cliffhanger of Gene becoming Phoenix. But even that, that was just kind of like an afterthought, right? It was there and was clearly there to set up the next movie, but X2 still stands as a movie on its own. And then of course, you know,
00:18:36
Speaker
Fox didn't know if they wanted to do a third one, and then, you know, Singer went on to do Superman Returns, and then Fox got petty and decided, well, we're gonna do it without Singer then, and they tried to rush into a production. Had Matthew Vaughn signed on, and Matthew Vaughn's like, look, I can't do it in the amount of time you're given. So they said, okay, well, you're gone, and we're gonna go with Brett Ratner to rush it into production instead. Brett Ratner, who, and you know what?
00:19:03
Speaker
Nobody take this the wrong way because directing, I have a tremendous amount of respect for directors. Even guys like Ooey Ball. You know, I have a tremendous, but let's face it, Rhett Ratner is a popcorn salesman. He is, yeah. That's what he is. Don't get me wrong, he's a competent director. He brings movies in on time.
00:19:28
Speaker
with no controversy or anything like that, but he can't be said to have like a particular vision or a particular directorial style. Exactly. Yeah. No, he's the guy you bring in when you need to get something made under budget and fast. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly.
00:19:49
Speaker
And that's what he did, you know? So I really don't, you know, people say, oh, he did a horrible job. He did a terrible job. Well, considering what he had to work with, it's amazing he did a job, period. Yeah. I mean, look, he had a, he had a shit script. Yeah. He had a shit production schedule. There was, and it was just, he, and plus, you know, they wanted to make this big finale to the X-Men trilogy.
00:20:15
Speaker
with more characters and more stuff happening in that movie than in X2, but with a shorter runtime and a lower budget. And it's like, you can only do so much in that. And there was some good things about that movie. I mean, let's face it. Kelsey Grammer's Beast was great, even if his makeup wasn't that great. Right.
00:20:37
Speaker
But like you said, you made an excellent point. And I think that that was the case with that movie in that it was more about the studio wanting to thumb their nose at Bryan Singer and say, oh, we can make an X-Men movie. We don't need you. Right, exactly. We can make one bigger and better. I think it was more than that, yet anything else. Oh, definitely. Absolutely.
00:21:03
Speaker
They get, you know, hung up on their own guitar because strung up by their own guitar because then they end up falling flat on their face. But now we got to be fair. Brian Singer did go to them. My understanding is that he went to 20th Century Foxes and listened.
00:21:19
Speaker
let me go do Superman and I'll come back and do the X-Men movie. Yeah, he was willing to play ball because he said to them, are you going to do X-Men 3? And they said, well, we don't know. We're not sure. And then so Warner Brothers offered him Superman Returns. He said, well, yeah, I love the first Superman movie. Of course, I'd love to do that. And then Fox gets pissed off. They're like, well, wait, wait. What are you doing? You're our guy.
00:21:44
Speaker
You said you weren't sure if you're going to do it. What do you want me to do? Just wait around with my thought plan? Exactly. I got bills to pay. I can't sit around waiting on you until you decide to, you know, I went off and did another movie, which ain't nothing. And know what? Hey, any filmmaker worth his soul gets offered to do a Superman movie. Of course you're going to take it. Yeah. Sure. Why not? And you know what the funny thing is, is you know who one of the producers on the X-Men movies is?
00:22:10
Speaker
Who? Laura Shuler Donner, boy from Dick Donner, Richard Donner, who directed Superman the movie. And it was actually because after Superman Returns, he ended up developing a friendship with the Donners because, you know, that Superman Returns is basically a love letter to Donner's films.
00:22:27
Speaker
So he ended up developing this friendship with the daughters and that led to him coming back as a producer on first class and then as you know and eventually back as director for Days of Future Past and Apocalypse and then he was supposed to direct Dark Phoenix but then everybody found out that he was a disgusting pedophile so he wasn't anymore. Okay.
00:22:51
Speaker
Oh, you heard about this, right? That will do it every time. But you've heard about this, right? About Bryan Singer and his, like, and his issues? Oh, yeah. You know what? There was rumors about that going as far back as when he did the adaptation of that Stephen King book. Oh, really?
00:23:12
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, OK. I didn't know about that. Pupil, the app. App Pupil, yeah. Oh, yeah. There was stories going around about singer as far back as that. Oh, wow. I didn't know there went back that far. First time I heard something about it was probably, I think it may have been about the time this movie came out is when I first heard about the allegations. OK.
00:23:38
Speaker
Yeah, there was little whiffs here and there, here and there. But you know what? I mean, listen, the guy was cranking out success for movies. And unfortunately, in our society, success tends to lend people to turn a blind eye to what you're doing. In other words, if you're making a lot of money for certain people, I mean, for certain people,
00:24:02
Speaker
You know, they forgive a lot of sins. I mean, look at Jeffrey Epstein, right? I mean, the guy was the guy was convicted in court of this and then got this sweetheart deal where he got to leave prison for eight hours a day to quote unquote work.
00:24:19
Speaker
Yeah. And then he, that he gets out, he does like what it was like a year prison sentence or something, whatever bullshit it was. And then he goes back to New York and he's back hanging out with all these famous people once more. Yeah, exactly.
00:24:34
Speaker
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they forgive, they forgive a lot because of, I mean, you know, whatever reason, you know, I think a lot of times they just doing the same shit that, you know, or doing worse or whatever, you know, because my whole thing is original feather flock together. That's one of the theories of, um, because Epstein had all these, this recording equipment in his house.
00:24:58
Speaker
Yeah, like he had cameras everywhere and everything. So one of the theories a lot of people have is that he's got he had footage of like, you know, famous people engaged in some really heinous shit.
00:25:11
Speaker
Well, I'm convinced that he does. Yeah. Cause they said his house was wired up like, you know, mission impossible kind of shit was all, you know, he had it all. Yeah. Every room in the house wired, even the bathroom. Oh yeah. If you go down the Epstein conspiracy hole, man, it's like, there's, there are allegations that he was actually working for the CIA to get a blackmail on people and all this kind of stuff. So there, that's a whole thing in there. It's nuts. Like there are like whole podcasts devoted just to Jeffrey Epstein that are like,
00:25:42
Speaker
three times as many episodes as we have. But if you find, but if I could be permitted to dip into politics just for a minute, like when they have all of these people that are Trump's advisors and lawyers and all these people that associate with him, they all turn out to be felons and they go to jail, but Trump followers will keep insisting, well, he's the innocent man. He didn't, no, no, no, no, wait a minute.
00:26:09
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. If you're an honest man, why is it that everybody else, why is it everybody you know is going to jail? Yeah, exactly. Life don't work that way. Honest people don't hang out with people that go to jail. It's just that simple. Right, yeah. You know.
00:26:25
Speaker
If you're a crook, you hang out with crooks. If you're an honest man, you hang out with honest men. That's what you do. So, you know, so yeah, the whole thing that he went back and he was still accepted by all of these people. Yeah. That makes me think, okay, well, you know, they got some dirt that they doing too. Oh yeah, definitely. Because if you're doing something that I can't tolerate, why would I hang out with you?
00:26:49
Speaker
Yeah. It's just as simple. Unless, unless my association with you is of some benefit to me financially or otherwise. Right. And so we see a lot of that with, you know, these Hollywood types and, you know, the high society types like Epstein, like Bryan Singer. And, um, and yeah, and like, you know, this was like an open secret in Hollywood that Bryan Singer was, was a pedophile. He was abusing young men and just nobody cared. Right. And it's just, it's fucking sickening.
00:27:21
Speaker
Now, anyway, let's get back to the movie, because even though this is, you know, even though Bryan Singer is a piece of shit, this is a good movie.
00:27:31
Speaker
And let me just say for those of y'all listening, because now I know that some people out there say, well, if he's a piece of shit pedophile, why are you reviewing his movies and everything like that? The movies is one thing, the man is another. Right. Now, that's my personal feelings, folks. If you don't agree with it, I quite understand.
00:27:51
Speaker
We've had this discussion before about like Bill Cosby and maybe not on this show, but I know off the air we've had discussions about like Roman Polanski and that kind of thing. And everyone has to kind of judge for themselves. Yeah, exactly. Everybody's got to follow their own conscience. That's all I'm just saying. And same thing with like Woody Allen and all that. Like there are some people who say like, I will never again watch a Woody Allen or a Bill Cosby or Roman Polanski or a Bryan Singer movie ever.
00:28:21
Speaker
even the ones I've already watched. My rule of thumb is, now that I know what shit they're involved in, if they come out with any other movies, I won't pay to see those movies. I will not go to see those movies. But the stuff that I've already owned, the stuff I've already bought and paid for, I'm not gonna burn them, right? Yeah, yeah.
00:28:44
Speaker
And that's kind of my attitude. And that's real, yeah. Yeah, but like I said before, you know, this is something that everybody else has to work out for their own life. People get like all the times, I get this all the time, how can you watch this show? How can you read that book? Don't you know what? Yeah, but you know, listen, I already got the book or movie already. I'm not going to throw it away. Right. Yeah. But okay.
Unproduced X-Men Storylines
00:29:11
Speaker
Now that we've got the, okay, we got politics out the way. Well, there's one more political thing, although it's old politics and also connected to the conspiracy theory stuff, because actually when Matthew Vaughn was originally going to direct this as what you wanted, a movie that was all set in the seventies. I would love to see Matthew Vaughn do this. And what he was going to do is he was going to have, he was going to open with the Kennedy assassination.
00:29:38
Speaker
And we alluded to in this movie. Right. And the theory was that Magneto manipulated Lee Harvey Oswald's bullets to kill Kennedy in retribution for the murder of Azazel and Angel. And then Magneto, but then
00:30:05
Speaker
And the conspiracy theorists will insist that Magneto was trying to prevent the murder, and the true shooter was not Oswald, but Mystique in disguise, who, with the help of Emma Frost, framed Magneto and manipulated Jack Ruby into later murdering Oswald. So that was how it was gonna...
00:30:23
Speaker
It was kind of like a mystique offered to double as Kennedy and attempt to grab power, which, you know, backfires and leads to like anti mutant hostilities. And it was going to be like a lot of parallels with the civil rights movement and a lot of stuff like that. So that would have been an interesting movie to see. But what happened?
00:30:44
Speaker
Well, Matthew Vaughn didn't come back and Bryan Singer was hired to come in. And Bryan Singer thought this would be a good time to both give the original cast a send off with Days of Future Past and also advance the story of the new cast and kind of set them up going forward. Which I'm glad they did because one of the most interesting aspects of this movie that
00:31:11
Speaker
while I was trying to keep track of the incredibly convoluted storyline, is that you get to see the younger actors who play Professor X and Magneto playing with the older actors. And it's phenomenal how
00:31:28
Speaker
There really is no kind of, you know, usually when they get an actor that plays a younger version of the same character and then the older character, it's almost like they're two different people. Oh, yeah. Well, you know, what's really interesting is they released posters of this. Let me see if I can find it. I can send it to you in the chat. But there was a poster of Fassbender and McKellen.
00:31:52
Speaker
and like kind of cut together with like an X separating their faces. Yeah. And also like their face is kind of overlaid. So like the top half is like Fassbender, the bottom half is McKellen, and they do the same thing with Stewart and McAvoy.
00:32:07
Speaker
Now the thing is, Stuart and McAvoy, you can tell they don't look that much alike. But when they did it with Fassbender and McKellen, it actually fit together really creepily well. Yeah. Yeah. There is a great deal of result. I guess they got like the same bone structure or whatever. But there is, yeah. There is a definite resemblance between you. You look at Fassbender, they could easily play like father and son. Yeah, definitely.
00:32:32
Speaker
But yeah, McAvoy and Patrick Stewart, they really don't, yeah, they really don't look alike, but you know what, I'm gonna give it to, they pull it off through the body language and the way they use their voice.
00:32:47
Speaker
Well, I think I was not a fan of McAvoy in first class. I did not feel like he was really Professor X. Even as a young Professor X, I don't feel like he really... Because there was that whole thing where he's creeped out by Mystique's real appearance and that whole... I can't imagine.
00:33:09
Speaker
this guy who is saying, you know, hide who you are, hide what you look like, being the same guy who later rescues Nightcrawler from the mob and gives him this whole speech about embracing who you really are, right? There's a whole disconnect. And I can understand it if he kind of learns his lesson by the end of that movie, but he really doesn't.
00:33:33
Speaker
So that was my biggest problem with the characterization of him in first class. But in this movie, it's much better. Like I can see how this guy at the end of this movie grows up to become Patrick Stewart. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I mean, it's remarkable performance from both of them. And they even get a scene where they get to play with each other. Oh, that was a great, that was such a great scene.
00:33:58
Speaker
That was one of the best scenes from the movie. Yeah, when he's reading... Oh, here's the magneto picture I was telling you about. I'm gonna send this over to you so you can see what I'm talking about.
00:34:14
Speaker
But yeah, that was a great scene when he's reading Wolverine's mind and he gets a chance to communicate with himself in the future.
Time Travel Mechanics in X-Men
00:34:22
Speaker
Yeah, that really wonderful speech when, you know, Patrick Stewart says Patrick Stewart is so freaking inspirational like he's amazing and he says, you know,
00:34:34
Speaker
He just does inspirational speeches so well. And when he says to McAvoy, please, we need you to hope again, that was such a great moment.
00:34:46
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I'm sitting there, I'm watching it, and I said, wow. Because it's been so long since I've seen this movie. And I've never seen this cut, of course. This is the first time I've seen it. I didn't even know it existed until you told me about it. It's been so long since I've seen this that it was like watching a brand new movie, really, to me. And I said, oh, wow, that was a really powerful scene. I mean, there's a lot of powerful moments that's in this movie. You know what? It's a good movie, but I just feel that,
00:35:16
Speaker
it gets unnecessarily complicated. Yeah, yeah. At several points, you know, like with the whole thing, like, right? They gotta drop everything in the middle of everything that's going on and fly from China back to the United States to get rogue. Yeah, you know, that, the thing about, like, I like that sequence and I like that it should, we got to see more of McKellen in action as Magneto again.
00:35:42
Speaker
Um, but there are, there are some problems with that. Like you said, like the fact that they got to drop everything and fly back. But also there's this, they only go, it's only Xavier, Magneto, and Iceman. Like they've got a whole team of X-Men back there. There's a whole bunch of people that sit and want to stand around not doing it and take everybody with you. Or even if it's not everybody, like at least take Blink, who can teleport in and out of places.
00:36:05
Speaker
You know what, matter of fact, if I was in that situation, I wouldn't even go to the bathroom unless I had the teleporter with me. Yeah, hell yeah. You know, because if you take the teleporter with you, you always have an escape route. Right, exactly. So, yeah, and apparently they knew where Rogue was at all the time, but they said, well,
00:36:26
Speaker
I guess they didn't need her up until then, then they'd say, oh, well, we know where she's at. Oh, well, let's get there. I love that when Magneto was like, wait, you knew this all this time? I had her. Yeah. See, even Magneto had a problem with that. Wait a minute. You knew where she was at all this time? Yeah. Well, I mean, in Iceman's defense, he does say, look, we tried, but we couldn't get in. Although. Yeah, I sure you did.
00:36:49
Speaker
Yeah, although then you've got Xavier, he was like, well, I know some things about that. Why didn't you talk to the guy who friggin owned the house? Yeah, I mean, you know, come on. Really? Really? Yeah. You know, I think it really is. I think it was Iceman and Kitty were a little bit worried about Kitty was a little bit worried about Iceman going back to rescue his ex girlfriend. Yeah, yeah. Oh, that was funny.
00:37:14
Speaker
They said, wait a minute, you knew where she was at all this time. Yeah, but I mean, and it's what, it's like, what, like a 15 hour flight? Yeah. You know, from, okay. Let us say that given the capabilities of the X-Jet, okay, they can cut their time in half. We're still talking about a six or seven hour flight. Yeah, yeah. Both ways.
00:37:35
Speaker
Yeah. And you know, you don't want to make that flake a lot faster if they brought the fucking teleporter with, you know, I mean, I mean, I, you know, I'm watching it and I'm saying, okay, was this in the original?
00:37:50
Speaker
Theatrical version, or is this part of the, I guess, cause Rogue is in the end, it's called the Rogue Cut. Yeah, yeah, this was only in the, this was only, that's why it was called the Rogue Cut, because when the movie was, like right before it came out, Singer said that, you know, Paquin was supposed to be in it, right? She was supposed to have this extended sequence that involved her.
00:38:10
Speaker
And he said that, you know, it just wasn't quite flowing with the rest of the movie, so we had to cut it. And then later Fox, you know, said, well, let's put out a different version with that stuff in. And they also put in some other alternate stuff, like there's that extended scene in the future when Bishop's talking about the ethics of time travel. There's the scene when Mystique comes back to the mansion. That stuff wasn't really in the original.
00:38:35
Speaker
right okay so we get a little bit more of that stuff as well which i thought those those two scenes especially when the sea comes back to the mansion and when and the the extended stuff in the future um you know i it is obvious why they had
00:38:52
Speaker
why they wrote it that way to have Rogue come back was because they just wanted an excuse to have Rogue in the movie. Well, true, exactly. It was just like another way to have like another one of the veterans from the original trilogy to come back. And that's clearly what they were trying to do.
00:39:08
Speaker
I just thought it was an extremely convoluted way to get her back into the pot. Because like I said, the whole thing hinges upon this dire situation and, you know, time is of the essence and we got... Oh, wait a minute. Hold everything, please. We got to fly back to the X dimension to get roll. What? You got to do what? Okay. Second of all,
00:39:36
Speaker
I had a problem with them making Kitty the one. Where did she get the superpower to send people back in time again? That's another thing, right? They wanted originally, and they were thinking that they wanted to have Kitty be the one who travels back in time, just like in the original comic book. Like in the original comic book story, right. Yeah. Right.
00:39:56
Speaker
But, and then when they adapted this for the X-Men animated series, they had Bishop be the one who goes back in time for Days of Future Past. Okay. So they wanted, so Kitty and Bishop are basically there as nods to these other versions.
00:40:12
Speaker
of the story because you can't have, because the whole thing about Days of Future Past is in the comic, if you remember, Rachel Summers projects Kitty's consciousness back into her younger body. So Kitty doesn't physically travel through time. So they wanted to have some connection, they wanted to have Kitty involved somehow. So there's this idea that she develops this kind of secondary mutation where she can phase people through time.
00:40:42
Speaker
I'm not convinced, but I'm not convinced with it, but for the purposes of the movie, I'll go, and know it, it only reinforces, I think, my contention in that, you know, these movies, in a way, even though they're supposed to be part of a series, they're kind of like standalone, because, you know, unless you know, well, you know what, I guess it doesn't make a difference, because unless you know the comic book and you know Kitty Pryde and know her powers, it makes no difference to you. You just, you know, if you just come into this movie cold,
00:41:11
Speaker
you just say well these people have got all these crazy powers anyway so why shouldn't she be able to send? Well yeah I mean and nobody bats an eye about it right like when Wolverine asks what do you mean he said she sends Bishop back in time and Xavier says no she uses her powers to send his consciousness into his younger body and so and then it's just and then it's just kind of accepted like oh okay
00:41:33
Speaker
It's Star Trek Technobabble. Yeah, yeah. So like, yeah, people who aren't familiar with the comics or, and like, it's not like Kitty had a huge role in the last movies. Like she had cameos in X-Men and X-2, and then she had, when Ellen Page came and played her in The Last Stand, she had a little bit of a bigger role, but still very small in comparison.
00:41:53
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And you know what, considering what such a great character Kitty was in the comic book, it really is a shame she keeps getting the shaft in, I mean, you know, the movies. Well, I mean, basically all the characters do, right? The only ones who are really, who really get the kind of treatment they deserve are Xavier, Magneto, and Wolverine.
00:42:16
Speaker
I mean, once again, we have a movie where really Wolverine is the main character. Right. Yeah. Really. You know, I understand in this context, I do understand there is a good reason why you'd have Wolverine be the one who goes back in time. Like when they said because you're going back to the 1970s, you have to deal with projecting consciousness into younger bodies. So obviously, yeah, Kitty pride is going to be like, you know, what, 10 years before she was born. So right. Exactly.
00:42:43
Speaker
You can't send, what are you going to do? Send her back into her mother's body? So it doesn't really work that way. Cool. Yeah. I mean, you know, they do go through a considerable amount of wordage explaining why Wolverine has to be the one to go back because they say, okay, well, in case of any psychological damage, your mind will heal itself because he's got the healing factor.
00:43:03
Speaker
Right. So I said, OK, yeah. OK, well, I can go for that. And yeah, since this is the 1970s, he was around in the 1970s. He knows how to assimilate. He knows the clothing. He knows the slang. He won't stand out, unless he wants to stand out. He will breathe. The part that I really liked was when he got his shock was when he popped his clothes and it was the bone claws. Yeah.
00:43:27
Speaker
I love it. I literally was like, wait a minute. Yeah. He was like, well, what? And then it hits him. He said, oh, yeah, no. I didn't have bone claw. I didn't have the adamantium there. Right, yeah. So this is also, there's also a little thing that a lot of people have asked questions about, which I wanted to address. Because at the end of the Wolverine, if you remember, his adamantium claws were broken off. And he was using the bone claws. His bones were still adamantium, but his claws were just bone now.
00:43:57
Speaker
So a lot of people were asking like, well, wait, how did he get the adamantium back in his claws? So I think it's pretty obvious. You see at the end of the Wolverine, there's that scene where he's in the airport and then Magneto and Xavier come to him. And on the TV screen, they have the sentinels being unveiled.
00:44:17
Speaker
So that is set, what, about like 10 years before the events of Days of Future Pass, because that takes place in, the year came out, which is like 2013 or whatever. And then this movie takes place in 2023.
00:44:32
Speaker
So in that intervening 10 years, you kind of figure not only did the world go to shit, but you also kind of figure that, well, if Magneto is now one of the X-Men and they need Wolverine to be in top fighting form, yeah, Magneto is going to rebond adamantium to Wolverine's claws. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it'd be painful as hell, but he could do it. I mean, it's not like the bones, right? Because his bones are still adamantium. It's just the claws that need to be redone.
00:44:59
Speaker
Right. So yeah, so that I don't think it'd be as painful as like getting the whole bone treatment again. Because in the comic books, there was a period where we're showing Magneto, he drew all the animanium out of his body. Yeah, yeah, the fatal attractions crossover. And you know whose idea that was? Whose? It was Peter Davids, and he said it as a joke.
00:45:23
Speaker
because they were they were in the they were in a meeting like the the x-men writers and editors and everything and they were talking about the fatal attractions crossover and Peter David was already like on his way out the door with x-factor right he was getting tired of the editorial interference so he was about to leave that book and apparently he um they're talking about what do we do to make this matter to make this a big event and like what should we have Magneto do and then um
00:45:51
Speaker
And Peter David just kind of like, as a joke, he's like, we'll just take Wolverine's adamantium out of his body. And everyone's like, oh, that's a great idea. And Peter David's like, wait, what? No, I was joking. He's like, wait, what? Like, no, it'd be great if we take him. He's like, no, because then Wolverine wouldn't have a skeleton. He'd be a blob.
00:46:11
Speaker
I was just joking. Something you can't say around some people because they say, oh yeah, what? That's a great idea. Wait, what? No, no, no. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, but as I said before I started out and I lost the train of thought, I'm sitting there in this cut that I saw
00:46:38
Speaker
the road cut, it's like two and a half hours long. So there's a tremendous amount of plot here to keep track of, you know, because you got Wolverine going back in time and then he's got to rebuild his whole relationship with Charles Xavier all over again. For the first time. Right. Again, for the first time with the added disadvantage that like you said, I mean, well,
00:47:06
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. Well, they drinking is one thing, but Xavier is now like full blown out, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Plus, plus he's been using this drug that the beast
00:47:18
Speaker
came up with to control his own transformation. Charles is using it to suppress his psychic powers. Now, it has the benefit that it allows him to walk, but he can't do the Jedi mind like he used to do, or, you know, the telekinesis, everything like that. And can I just say that one thing cracks me up about the beast in these movies?
00:47:40
Speaker
Hank McCoy, apparently, is an expert in anything that the movie needs for him to be an expert in. Well, that's the same thing in the comics, too. I mean, it's always been that way. It's like Beast does so much.
X-Men vs MCU: Continuity and Adaptation
00:47:52
Speaker
Yo, guy. Oh, my God. I thought it was just a biochemist.
00:47:55
Speaker
He is, but he's also like an expert in everything else. Like for in the 90s, for a long time, because they had Forge around at first who was handling like technological stuff. But then eventually, Forge leaves the books and moves on to the X Factor titles. And so then Beast is basically doing everything. I mean, if you go back, there's actually they actually poke fun at one point because you got the Dark Beast from the Age of Apocalypse, the evil version who comes over from the
00:48:24
Speaker
the world where apocalypse ruled the earth. He comes over into the main universe and he ends up capturing and impersonating beasts in the X-Men. And there's this one point when he's thinking to himself, he's like,
00:48:40
Speaker
My God, can these people do anything by themselves? They rely on Hank McCoy for everything. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, in the movies, he designed the X plane. He's a pilot. He's an electronics expert. He's an engineer. He's a biochemist. In first class, he builds Cerebro.
00:49:02
Speaker
Yeah, and he builds, I say, wait a minute, is there anything this guy can't do? Yeah, yeah. Which is also another bit of a continuity issue because in the first X-Men movie, Xavier says to Logan, because Logan asked, well, how could, how would Magneto know how to block Cerebro? And Xavier says, well, he helped me build it. Right. And then in first class, it's, Beast already has it built when Xavier and Magneto meet him.
00:49:27
Speaker
And then also in the first X-Men movie, Xavier says when I was 17, I met Eric Lencher. But in this one, he's already finished his graduate studies at Oxford. So he's his mid 20s when he meets at Magneto. Again, I go back to the whole thing I was talking about earlier, where is that they don't really pay much attention to the continuity.
00:49:48
Speaker
between these movies, whereas with the MCU, there was a strict adherence. Oh, yeah. The continuity. But in this one, they played very fast and looser, which really surprised me.
00:49:59
Speaker
that they would do it considering that this was their big superhero franchise. And I don't know, Fox just was fumbling with it. In my opinion, they just fumbled it. Well, I remember when First Class came out, not even the producers knew what kind of movie they were really making, because you had
00:50:23
Speaker
I think it was like, you know, Bryan Singer said it was a reboot and then Laura Schuler Donner said, no, it's a prequel. And so it's this weird kind of, it's somewhere in the middle where it's like a reboot and a prequel at the same time. And so they, and I don't know why they went, had to make it so convoluted, just reboot the damn thing then. Yeah, just reboot the damn thing. Well, okay, when you get to the end of,
00:50:49
Speaker
this movie, you get the feeling that that's what they've done. They've, okay, we got a whole new timeline. We got a clean slate with all of the characters back. So now we're going to do it right. Right. Which was kind of what the idea was supposed to be. Like this was supposed to fix the timeline and address all the continuity problems and just be like, okay, from now on,
00:51:11
Speaker
we're going to do things right. Except then we got apocalypse and dark phoenix. And it's just like, how do you keep fucking this up? Oh, brother, you took the word right. That's exactly what I'm just getting ready to say. How do you keep fucking this up?
00:51:31
Speaker
I mean, it's the X-Men, right? I mean, the template is right there in its series, right? The 90s anime series. The template's right there. It tells you, the Dark Phoenix episodes, it was like, what, it was like four, it was like a four-part series they did. So that's like an hour and a half long.
00:51:49
Speaker
and it's a better dark phoenix movie than the two dark phoenix action movies that fox made and mind you wait a minute okay i watched dark phoenix last night i watched our movie that we're talking about i watched that today but dark phoenix was our last night now that's okay let me watch dark phoenix i watched it all i can say is for you x-men fans
00:52:10
Speaker
I hurt for you. I do. And I mean that with all sincerity. I'm not trying to be funny, because if they had done that to one of my superheroes that I love, I would be hurting. They did it to you with Man of Steel. Yeah, yeah, that's true.
00:52:26
Speaker
But I mean, yeah, you asked me, I saw Dark Phoenix, and I said, how in the world did this piece of shit ever get made? I mean, it was funny. After I watched it, I posted it online. I said, after the last stand, I didn't think it'd be possible to make a worse Dark Phoenix movie. Oh, yeah. I was wrong.
00:52:47
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, yeah. It's like they deliberately said, OK, we're going to make a worse movie than the worst Dark Phoenix. First of all, you know what? In order to do the Dark Phoenix saga right, you really have to take a couple of years and a whole bunch of movies to really do it right. It's impossible to do the Dark Phoenix saga in two hours. Exactly. Yeah. You can't do it. It's got to be like its own series of movies within
00:53:15
Speaker
a series of X-Men movies. Right. You have to have Jean first become the Phoenix, which is like a whole two-hour movie in itself. Yeah. And then you have to... And plus, both the Phoenix saga and the Dark Phoenix saga, they don't work unless you already have those relationships established. Because the whole heart of the Dark Phoenix saga, why it's such an important story, is because of the relationships, what Jean going evil does to the people around her. Exactly.
00:53:42
Speaker
If we don't have those relationships established beforehand, then I'll become a darn fiend that doesn't mean anything. Okay, but she just went wacky, you know? Okay, fine. Why should I care? I don't know her. I don't know these people. I don't know why these people matter to each other. Right. You know, it's not like, okay, by the time we get to
00:54:05
Speaker
uh, the infinity war, let's say fans says, we're on the edge of our seat because we care about these people. We know their relationships. Well, that was the same thing with, uh, that was the same problem with Batman V Superman. It's people were saying, well, what's better civil war or Batman V Superman? Like, well, civil war, because civil war builds off these, you know, by this point, you know, Iron Man and Captain America have had two movies interacting with each other and plus
00:54:33
Speaker
three movies in Iron Man's case on his own, two movies a cap on his own. So we built up these characters. We know what they're like. We've seen how they interact together. So when they go against each other, it has so much more emotional weight. Whereas then you go to Batman V Superman and it's just like, oh, by the way, Batman's been here for 20 years and now he's gonna kill Superman because he's a xenophobic asshole.
00:55:03
Speaker
Yeah, pretty much. And it's the same thing with the Dark Phoenix side. It's like, oh, Jean's all powerful. Oh, Jean's back from the dead. Oh, Jean's all powerful. Oh, now she's crazy. And now Wolverine's gonna have to kill her because, you know, and Cyclops doesn't matter.
00:55:22
Speaker
Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, you summarized it right. Like I said, I watched that last night. I honestly could not, at one point, I honestly could not believe what I was watching. I said, who made this movie?
Actor Performances in X-Men Movies
00:55:37
Speaker
It continually baffles me. And Patricia, she just says to me, just remember somebody got paid for that.
00:55:45
Speaker
Which is only gonna piss you off even more. Yeah, yeah. And she knows it, that's why she says that. And all right, so let's, we can talk, we can rant about Dark Phoenix another time, and I'm sure we'll eventually get there, I'm sure. Yeah, that's a good two hours right there. Oh, probably a good three hours.
00:56:11
Speaker
All right, so now I want to talk a little bit about Peter Dinklage because he was an interesting choice for Bolivar Trask. Extremely interesting choice. Yeah, because when everyone said Peter, when they announced that, because they first announced Dinklage was cast, but they didn't say who he was cast as. So of course, everybody assumes he's going to be playing puck from Alpha Plus. Yeah, of course. Yeah, racist bastards.
00:56:37
Speaker
So instead though, they find out he's gonna be playing Bolivar Trask. And you know, I think there's this kind of thing where it's funny how, I remember when Infinity War came out, there was talk on the internet, like, how do you think the conversation went with Peter Dinklage? It's like, they go to Peter Dinklage, like, we want you to play a dwarf. And Dinklage was like, yeah, what else is there? Like, no, we want you to play a giant dwarf. I'm listening. Yeah, they said it honestly.
00:57:08
Speaker
We can guarantee one thing. Well, what's that? You're going to be the biggest thing in this movie. Yeah. Yeah. You're going to be the biggest thing in this movie. And he did. And yes, he was. Yeah. You know. And they also, you know, that's one of the things I like about this movie is they don't treat Dinklage. Like, his dwarfism is not an issue. It's not a part of his character at all, at least not mentioned. Exactly. Yeah. Like, it's just who he is.
00:57:38
Speaker
which is how, no, it's how it's supposed to be. And that's one thing I like about him as an actor, because if you see most of his movies, nobody makes any mention of it. You know, I think there was only one, there was one movie, The Station Agent, where he runs into this little black girl. If you've never seen it, watch it, it's a terrific movie.
00:58:01
Speaker
And there's this little black girl that he makes friends with, and she asks him, well, are you an elf, or are you a leprechaun? Because she's never run into a person of his size, so she's trying to understand, because she's a child, she's trying to understand, well, what are you? You're the same height I am, but you're not a kid. But that's the only movie of his where I think that
00:58:22
Speaker
that was the issue. But usually in most of the movies I've seen them in, it's never an issue, which is how it's supposed to be, really. It is. Yeah, yeah. It's a refreshing thing, yeah, that nobody, you know, makes a big deal of how tall he is. What was that death at a funeral, which he was in both the original British version and the American remake. He played the same character. I don't believe they mentioned it in either of those movies either. Yeah. Yeah. Which, you know, just got to say, like, he was awesome in death at a funeral.
00:58:52
Speaker
I'm not sure if you've ever seen that movie. He's a phenomenal actor. And as a matter of fact, the only reason why I watched Game of Thrones, because I was never interested in watching it. Because it didn't, I don't know, for some reason, it didn't sound like anything until I found out that he was in it. And I like and respect him so much as an actor. I said, you know what? I'm going to watch just on the strength of Peter Dinklage being in it.
00:59:17
Speaker
It was okay. I liked it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Game of Thrones, I'm with you and like people look at me, look at me cross-eyed when I say this, but I could never really get into that show. And, but like Peter Dinklage is one of the reasons I've watched. I've only watched like the first four seasons. I haven't watched the move down past that yet, but
00:59:37
Speaker
Basically, it's just because of Peter Dinklage that I'm watching, because he's so good in that role. Yeah, yeah. And don't let me, oh yeah, I mean, Green with the, and don't let me get started on the episode. Now, I won't stop watching the episode where they had all the Black people worshiping the blonde white woman.
00:59:53
Speaker
That's another episode completely. Oh, God. I watched my blood pressure. Yeah. I watched my blood pressure. But yeah, he was a very interesting choice for this role, and a welcome one, because he was very, matter of fact, I really don't have a problem with any of the performances in this movie. Everybody was, you know, especially, I mean, you know, well. Well, I do have one, I've got two problems and I'll get to those in a little bit, but I wanted to keep talking Dinklage first.
01:00:23
Speaker
Okay, well, go ahead. Actually, that's three problems. There are three people that I got a problem with in this movie. But yeah, Dinklage, and I love that part when Stryker, and this is the younger version of
01:00:40
Speaker
Brian Cox's character from X2. Right, okay. I was trying to think of the guy that played him in the boat. I couldn't think of his name Brian Cox, thank you. Yes, I just wanted to make a mention of that, who in this movie is played by Josh Hellman, who was actually, guess who, do you know who was originally supposed to play in this movie, who was originally cast as? Who? A young Kane Marko, a young juggernaut.
01:01:05
Speaker
And then they decided to write Marco out of the script and they replaced him and they had him play Stryker instead Okay, so that was that was kind of a little interesting bit of trivia. I found when I was doing research for this but for for trask though, like he and there's that scene where Stryker says you really hate them don't you the mutants and and Trask is like no, I don't actually Right. I admire that
01:01:31
Speaker
Right? You know, I admire their, what they can do. I admire, and also, but he's like, but I see this as a chance for us to bring humanity together. Yeah. It's not just blind hatred, right? He's doing this because, so he's not really, it's the whole, the road to hell is paved with good intentions thing.
01:01:51
Speaker
Yeah, he's got a nice little ideology going there as he's saying, you know, that humanity needs something to hate, to unite it. Right, yeah. And he's not, and you know, it's, you know, cause I got Watchmen on my mind cause I did the class last night, but that's exactly what Ozzy Mande is thought, right? He's like, we have to, the only way to bring peace to humanity is to give them an enemy to fight.
01:02:18
Speaker
which, you know, that, which again is something that we have seen on our world in our lifetime. We have seen that dictators have used that to try to gain power to tell her, okay, well we hate them, you know, okay, well we hate these people. So we got to get together to gang up on these people and then everything will be okay. You know? Yeah. Yeah. Which is usually, you know, how we get in the world of shit, but
01:02:46
Speaker
You know, but yeah, it's a nice little speech he has right here. And again, I always go back to motivation. Because if you give me a motivation for why the bad guy is doing something, well, I'm going to go with it. I'm going to say, which is actually one of the best things about the X-Men as a series, in that you listen to Magneto, and then you see the shit that humanity does in this movie. And you got to say, you said, well, you know something? The guy does have a point.
01:03:14
Speaker
Well, I mean, even Xavier acknowledges that in this movie, right? He says to, after they break him out of the Pentagon, he says, like, you must think me a fool. Because what happens in the future is exactly what you said would happen. Bingo, exactly. Everything Magneto said that was going to happen, yeah, it did happen. So, you know.
01:03:33
Speaker
When he talks about, you know, defending mutant con and he does it, yeah, he commits horrendous acts and he murders people and everything. But, you know, you can't say that the man doesn't have a point. Right. Exactly. You know, and and pretty much everybody in this movie, they do have a valid point for doing what they do.
01:03:55
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Which is, I mean, you know, which I love. Give me a movie where I can see everybody's point of view. Good, good guys and bad guys. You know? Yeah, yeah. And this movie does a really good job with that. Even better than like X2, because in X2, Stryker was just basically, you know,
01:04:15
Speaker
you know, a bigot, right? He was, you know, genocidal bigot. That's basically what he was. He didn't really have good motivation in that movie. And despite like, and that's not the knock on Brian Cox, as he did a really good job with that role, but Stryker wasn't written in that movie to be this complex character. Whereas, they make him a lot more complex than he ever was in the comics. Oh yeah, absolutely. Cause he was, cause he was, cause he was just a Raven lunatic.
01:04:42
Speaker
if I remember right from the comics. Pretty much, yeah. And he got, and because that was back, he was in the era when, the original X-Men era, which was, you know, very much just the, as our Tom DJ says, punchy, punchy, run, run son. Well, that's when I, yeah, well, that's when I read the X-Men comics. I read the X-Men comics pretty much, even though I wasn't like a major fan of the X-Men, but I read the comic pretty much all the way
01:05:12
Speaker
back in the 70s. And I got like all the reprints of the early issues. And then, of course, during the era when John Byrne and, I mean, Chris Fairmont came along. Yeah. I read it then. But then it just got too convoluted for me. And there was too many ex-people to keep track of. And I said, no, I can't. I got to punch out. There's too many mutants. Too many mutants.
01:05:44
Speaker
But yeah, I remember him from the original comments when he created the Sentinels. And then he kind of like fucked up because it turned out his own son was a mutant. And then the Sentinels said, well, we're not taking orders from you anymore. Yeah, yeah.
01:06:01
Speaker
And they turned around and then of course Cyclops, he saved the day because he pulled the Captain Kirk on them and he induced them with logic to fly into the sun. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're kind of mixing two stories together. There's the original Sentinel story where the Sentinels did rebel and then
01:06:21
Speaker
Bolivar Trask ends up dying and then there's when in the Neil Adams Roy Thomas run is when the Sentinels came back and they were being directed by Trask's son Larry who was a mutant but he never knew it because his father had developed this medallion that he always wore that's a precious powers and yeah and these were more evolved Sentinels and so then you know Cyclops use his logic on them and they fly into the Sun
01:06:47
Speaker
Yeah, he convinced them that the sun was the source of all mutation. He said, so if you want to get rid of all mutations, you got to get rid of the sun. And the Sentinel said, you know what? That's a good idea. Let's go. And they all fly. And I said, wait a minute. That's a Captain Kirk. Yeah, yeah. He convinced logical machines to do something completely illogical. Yeah. Oh, man. All right.
01:07:10
Speaker
So the, the character, the performances I had a problem with. The first one is Nicholas Holt. Like I am sorry, but this, you know, milksop is not Beast. Not in any way, shape, or form is he Beast.
01:07:24
Speaker
Like Beast is, yeah, he's an intelligent guy, he's a geeky guy, but he's a jovial guy, right? He's fun, he's sarcastic. He's Kelsey Grammer. He's Kelsey Grammer, right, exactly. That's why Kelsey Grammer was such a good choice to play him in The Last Stand. Who, by the way, has a cameo in this movie at the end. Right, yeah. We see him at the end of the movie in the new future.
01:07:48
Speaker
Yeah, after the timeline has been restored or whatever, you know, he's walking down the hallway and Logan is looking at him in surprise and he says, top of the morning to you. Yeah, yeah, he's like, oh, you got a late start, huh?
01:08:00
Speaker
And just that instance, Kelsey Grammer gives a better performance as Beast than Nicholas Holt has done in what, like four movies now? Once again, you took the words right out of my mouth. I was going to say, in that brief cameo, Kelsey Grammer was more the Beast than that one in the cameo than this guy was in the whole movie. In all four movies, right? In all four movies, because he's the same in all four movies. And he's just a...
01:08:27
Speaker
And nothing against Holt, because I remember he was in Mad Max Fury Road. He was that- No, no, I've got nothing against him, but he's not Hank McCoy. When I look at him, I don't see Hank McCoy. No, he's completely miscast and the whole mystique love triangle or square or whatever it is, that's just another thing that's just like- Yeah, that felt like kind of, although me, I read it as that she was seducing him to try to get access to Cerebro.
01:08:55
Speaker
I, you know, I was not convinced at all by. Yeah. Yeah. But that's also, but they did that in first class too, where she has that thing with, she's got that romance with Beast, but then she's also got this weird, brother-sister thing slash pseudo-insestuous crush on Xavier, and then she also goes for Magneto, and it's like,
01:09:25
Speaker
You know, they go to so much effort to try to make Mystique a center point in these movies, because Jennifer Lawrence hit it big with The Hunger Games. Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, once she hit it big with The Hunger Games, because they do that, what is it, in the next one? Apocalypse. Yeah, Apocalypse.
01:09:52
Speaker
Okay. They transplant her character from the Hunger Games and give it to Mystique. Yeah. That's what they do, which I said, no, no, no, no, no. And also because, you know, Jennifer Lawrence didn't want to go through the makeup and because she had the clout, she almost never appears in her Mystique form after this. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And it's just like, you know what?
01:10:16
Speaker
You don't, the whole thing about the X-Men is it's an ensemble piece, right? Like Hugh Jackman wasn't Hugh Jackman when he played Wolverine. Wolverine made him into Hugh Jackman. So you don't need a tentpole actor for these movies. You don't.
01:10:34
Speaker
Listen, I agree with you 100%. I remember back when they first started making these X-Men movies, and they had a problem with Halle Berry, because Halle Berry kept pushing them that she wanted more screen time, and Storms have a love interest, and she should be leader of the team. And they kept telling her, well, Miss Berry, we didn't hire you for that. This is an Osama movie. It's not, you know.
01:10:58
Speaker
One person is not the star. Right, yeah, yeah. And as we saw, when she did get more screen time in The Last Stand, it was definitely not for the best. No, it was not. It was not. Some people are just not cut out for superhero movies and Halle Berry. And again, don't get me wrong, folks, I love Halle Berry. I've seen plenty of movies that I enjoy her in. But superhero movies are just not her thing, I don't think. Or I'll leave it this way. She hadn't found the right superhero character to play.
01:11:27
Speaker
Right. Yeah. So that was my issue with Nicholas Holt. Now, the other one, obviously, which I kind of hinted on was, you know, Jennifer Lawrence, because, as we've said, in this episode, and I think we also mentioned we did the first episode, the first X-Men movie, Jennifer Lawrence is not Mystique. You put it perfectly. They took Katniss and put her in these movies in blue paint. That's all she is. She's a blue painted Katniss. That's all she is.
01:11:56
Speaker
And it's just like all the depth of Mystique and like the whole, because Mystique is an interesting character, especially when you bring in, you bring in destiny, right? Or who could see the future. And because, you know, Mystique is working off future knowledge and the,
01:12:15
Speaker
The whole pansexual nature of her character, too, is also an interesting component when you bring in, especially because she's a shapeshifter, so that adds a whole other dimension to it. Yeah, hell yeah. The mind boggles with the possibilities. Well, actually, you know, that was Claremont's original idea, was that Mystique and Destiny were going to be Nightcrawler's birth parents.
01:12:39
Speaker
Right. I remember that. And Mystique was not going to be Nightcrawler's mother, but his father. His father, yeah. Yeah. That was his original plan. And Marvel at the time, they're like, no. No, no, no, no. Yeah, no, no,
Comic Book Storylines and Adaptations
01:12:55
Speaker
no. What are you talking about? We sell this shit to kids. Yeah, you're like, no, no, no. We're not having Mystique transform into a man and infect Nate Destiny. No, we can't do that. So instead, and so actually it wasn't Claremont who eventually revealed it. It was eventually
01:13:10
Speaker
one of the writers in the early nineties that might've been Liddell or Niecy Acem, but I'm not sure. But anyway, they revealed that Mystique was Nightcrawler's mother. His father was unnamed for years. And then when, oh God, the guy who came on, Chuck, whatever his name was who- Oh, Chuck Austin. Chuck Austin. Oh my God. He did the Draco story where he introduced Azazel as Nightcrawler's-
01:13:39
Speaker
Probably the most controversial X-Men writer in X-Men history. I wouldn't even say controversial, I'd say just the most despised flat out. Because controversy implies there's a different opinion. In your opinion? Oh my God, he was the worst, absolute bottom of the barrel, worst writer who had ever touched the X-Men books. I mean, there was, okay, so the whole thing with Azazel is he was,
01:14:08
Speaker
An ancient mutant was banished to another dimension. And he was like the king of a group of other devil looking mutants who were posed by a group of angelic looking mutants, which Archangel was a descendant of. And they had shunted them into this other dimension. And Azazel needed to have children to create a portal
01:14:39
Speaker
to his dimension. Okay. But he could still cross over dimensions to impregnate these women. So why did he just stay at our dimension?
01:14:50
Speaker
That's what I'm saying. Okay, go ahead. Okay. And yeah, the whole thing was like they were, Chuck Austin was trying to build to this story where archangel was like the destined king of these angelic mutants and nightcrawler was the destined king of these demonic mutants. And they were supposed to fight. And it was just a, thank God he never got to that bullshit because he did this whole thing where archangel developed this power where his blood could heal people. And also,
01:15:19
Speaker
He said mutants bizarrely could not get AIDS. Polaris went insane. Archangel and Husk entered in a relationship despite them being like 20 years apart in age. And in one issue, Archangel and Husk have sex in the air above Husk's family. All right. King. Oh, God.
01:15:50
Speaker
I mean, I didn't read any of this guy Chuck Lawson stuff or anything like that. The only thing I know is that whatever his name was mentioned, people would spit on the ground.
01:15:57
Speaker
Oh, God, yeah. Very good reason. Right now. Now, Grant Morrison is a controversial writer, because there are people who like and hate his X-Men run. Oh. Chuck Austin, everybody just fucking hates that. Everybody. I could not find one person that had a good word to say about it. Eventually, he was like run out of comics, wasn't he? Pretty much, yeah. He went from the X-Men, and then he did a brief Superman run.
01:16:25
Speaker
And then he got fired from that. He also did a brief Avengers run, which was also not that good. He brought in a new Captain Britain for some bizarre reason, because I don't know why, and then had Hawkeye suddenly, out of nowhere after years of working beside him, suddenly he has resentment against Hank Pym, because he hit Jan that one time. And then him and Jan are having an affair, and just like, ugh.
01:16:54
Speaker
What? Okay. He was like, remember how you talked about the whole Stan Lee and the soap opera thing? Yeah. Chuck Austin was like that on steroids. Wow. Yeah. Like the one, the only, the only good thing he did was in the early part of his X-Men run, he had a, he had a redemptive story arc for Juggernaut that was handled pretty well.
01:17:16
Speaker
That was the only good thing he did. After that, it just kind of went completely off the rails. I've always thought that Juggernaut would be a good character if he could be rehabilitated. Well, I mean, yeah, because the thing about Juggernaut is, you know, he's basically just a mercenary. Yeah.
01:17:38
Speaker
And, you know, there's that there are the times when he's like, there's that the, you know, one of the one of the best juggernaut stories ever when he and Colossus get into a bar fight. You remember that one? No.
01:17:51
Speaker
Okay, so it was a Claremont issue. It was after Colossus had broken up with Kitty and they go to a bar. I remember that. Wolverine and Nightcrawler take him to the bar to kind of drown his sorrows. And the Juggernaut just happens to be there in civvies on a date. And him and Colossus get into an altercation and they get into this bar fight.
01:18:18
Speaker
And afterwards. Oh, I remember. And Wolverine just led some fight. Nightcrawler was there to do something. Wolverine said, nah, let him fight. He deserves it. Right. He deserves it. It's his fault. He started the fight. And then at the end, Wolverine comes up to Juggernut and Juggernut says, hey, he threw the first punch. And Wolverine's like, yeah, I know. And then they just part ways based on that. Right.
01:18:40
Speaker
Okay, yeah, now I remember. Yeah, because the neck crawler is saying, oh, oh, we ought to do something. He's going to kill him. Wolverine said, now let me use his ass cake. Yeah, yeah. He's acting like an ass anyway. He's acting like an asshole. He started, he threw the first punch. So he let him see what it feels like. Yeah. Which is a very Wolverine thing for him to do. Right. Yeah. Like that's one of the reasons why that's such a good issue.
01:19:04
Speaker
Because it shows like, you know, that juggernaut is not just about killing superheroes all the time. Right. Also, it shows that Wolverine understand, hey, look, yeah, our boy through the first punch, you were even though you're even though you're a dick, you were in the right this time. Yeah. And know what?
01:19:22
Speaker
When nobody is on the clock, we're all just supposed to be having a good time. You know, let's call it truth. So next time we meet, we'll be in costume and we'll take care of it then, you know. But for now, everybody go their own separate ways. Yeah. There was a, because, you know, over at the fanfic site we used to write for Marvel Omega, there was this redemptive story arc for Juggernaut that someone had done years ago. And so that was picked up on.
01:19:46
Speaker
So when a guy came in and wanted to use Juggernaut as a villain, I think the writer's name was Wesley Overholtz, who passed away a few years ago actually. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can't remember the cause, but yeah, he passed away a few years ago.
01:20:02
Speaker
Yeah, the name is familiar, yeah. Really productive, really nice guy, really productive. Like, he wrote a lot of stuff for the site, so. Yeah, yeah. Good writer, too. Like, really good writer. I'm starting to hear that. Yeah. And, you know, he's one of those guys, too, because who would take, like, these characters that nobody else was touching? Right. And he would write stories about them. So, like, you know, like, we talked about everybody wants to write Batman or the X-Men or whatever. He was like, no, no, I want, like, the third-string characters.
01:20:32
Speaker
Which was, and a lot of the newer characters that were made like, you know, in recent years, like the secret warriors and that kind of stuff. So yeah, he was really, really cool guy. But he wanted the juggernaut to be a villain. And then, you know, I told him, you know, well, here's what has been done with the character so far. And, you know, he'd gone through his redemptive arc, and he comes up with this, and he's like, all right, well, you know what I think I'm going to do? And I'm going to say that it's not that he wants to be a villain, it's just that he needs money.
01:21:00
Speaker
And this is, and the only way he can, he can get paid is by being a mercenary for supervillains. Right. Okay. Yeah. And there's the scene where like the, the, I think it was like Roxxon was employed and they're like, you know, well, you know, go kill them. And he's like, he's like, Hey man, I know you're paying me, but I didn't pay, I didn't sign on to kill any kids.
01:21:20
Speaker
Yeah, okay. So yeah, so there was like, it was, and just in that little bit, you know, we showed like how Juggernaut could be a much more complex character than just, you know, smash, smash, smash.
Villains with Ethical Boundaries
01:21:31
Speaker
And I always like to see that when they showed that even though there's a supervillain, there's a line that they won't cross. Right, yeah.
01:21:38
Speaker
You know, I remember there was one issue of the Teen Titans where they were fighting the new brotherhood of evil. And one of the members in there in the church, and she stopped saying, she said, whoa, whoa, stop. Wait, we ain't fighting here. And they said, what are you talking about? She said, no, there's a church. We're not fighting in a church. Right, yeah. Take that shit outside. And that stood out for us. OK, see, I like that because, you know,
01:22:04
Speaker
You should have, okay, good villains to me, they have a line that they won't cross, like Dr. Doom. Okay, Dr. Doom, bad as he is, he doesn't lie. He won't lie to you. He won't lie. Also, not only that, but he will not let any harm come to Susan Richards or her children. That's his line. He'll beat the shit out of Reed and Ben and Johnny all the live long day. He'll torture them to death. He'll resurrect them and kill them again.
01:22:34
Speaker
No, there's no limit with those three. But when it comes to Sue and Franklin Valeria, he's like, no. Nobody touches them. Yeah, exactly. If you touch them, you answer to me. And he lets that shit be known, too. Yeah, yeah. You know? So it's good that you have villains, that they have a line that they don't cross. You know, like, just like you said, with a juggernaut, I said, listen, yeah, OK, listen, I do a lot of things, but I'm not killing no kids. Right. Or like in The Godfather, when Vito Corleone is like, look,
01:23:04
Speaker
We don't sell drugs to our own people. That was his line. He's like, we do not do that. And which there was an actual historical, supposedly that was the actual reason why the mafia worked so hard at keeping drugs out of.
01:23:26
Speaker
you know, Manhattan and, you know, New York and Miami and, you know, major cities, the cities where they had influence back then. Supposedly that was actually the reason why they worked so hard at keeping the hard drugs out because they knew there was no way to control that.
01:23:41
Speaker
Well, I mean, then that goes back to the history of organized crime. Because if you don't want to think about the history of organized crime, they started out as protection groups because the cops weren't going to protect the Italians or the Irish or the Chinese. So they formed their own protection societies. And then over time, they needed money and they kind of got drunk on power and they started turning to prostitution and alcohol and racketeering and gambling to fund their organizations.
01:24:11
Speaker
And another example, the movie Scarface, that there's a guy that they have to blow him up. So they put the bomb in his car, and they're following him, and they're getting ready to blow him up. And then Tony Montana, played by Al Pacino, he sees that there's kids in the car. He says, now listen, we ain't blowing up no kids. He said, well, we can kill this guy later on. Right, yeah.
01:24:35
Speaker
okay he may be a drug addicted piece of shit but you know he still got a line he won't cross he won't kill no kids exactly yeah no he says no we're not killing this guy he said we'll kill him later well and uh magneto's got well not in these movies because we talked about in the first movie how he's a hypocrite with draining rogue to to power his machine but but in the comics like he
01:24:59
Speaker
There's this really, like probably the best, one of the best magneto, maybe the best magneto story ever written was I Magneto. It was a one issue story where he, it's the one where he destroys the Russian sub and where he has like nuclear weapons and he's about to launch them.
01:25:18
Speaker
Kitty intervenes, and he thinks he's killed her. And he is devastated. And Storm comes in. She's like, I swear, if you've killed that woman, I will kill you. And he says, you know what? If she's dead, I will let you. Yeah, OK. And it was all the more powerful, which he didn't know at the time. But the fact that Kitty is Jewish as well, just like he is. Right, right.
01:25:47
Speaker
So it was even more powerful when you take that dimension into it as well. And it was one of Claremont's best stories you ever wrote. Well, see, that was the thing back in the day when Marvel started. And Stan Lee, who was a pretty well-read guy, he understood that, OK, even if you had the worst of supervillains, if you gave them a touch of nobility and gave them their own code of honor that they adhered to, that would elevate their character.
01:26:16
Speaker
instead of like the cackling super villain that Fences like, when you think of the motivation that Lex Luthor had back in the day, well, he hated Superman because Superman made him lose his hair. Yeah. I mean, really, seriously? Yeah. You know, so they had to change that, you know, later on when comics grew up a little bit. But Stanley realized that right from the beginning that, okay, yeah, if you give
01:26:40
Speaker
of the villains, a little bit of nobility and give them their own code that they follow that elevates them and even puts them a little bit of a head of the superhero sometimes. Right. Yeah. Like they would stop fighting and say, okay, listen, there's innocence around here. Oh, don't give me that. You want to take over the world. Yeah. I want to take over the world, but I don't want to kill innocent people while I'm doing it. Right. Okay. Well, you know, taking it back to Dr. Doom, there's the whole thing where like his people
01:27:10
Speaker
that they view him as a benevolent dictator. They love him. Yeah. But yeah, he's a dictator. But you know what? Economy is good here. We've got work year round. We've got plenty of food. Everyone's taken care of. In his country, everybody works. Dr. Dew has a universal health plan. He has weather machines that control the weather, make it perfect.
01:27:36
Speaker
The only thing you have to do is obey him implicitly. Yeah, yeah. It works out. Yeah, he's actually, that's actually what Stanley Kubrick thought the world needed was the world needed a benevolent dictator.
01:27:51
Speaker
Well, he said that was the only form of government that would actually work. Listen, I keep putting in applications for the job, and they keep turning me down. Oh my god. No, no, no, no. You would go drunk on power in 10 minutes. Me? Yes. Oh, yeah. Come on. Go ask Patricia and see what she says. Listen, after I finished slaughtering the first million people, I would slow down. They would just be an example. That's all.
01:28:20
Speaker
A lot of damage. A lot of damage, that's all. Too many, listen, too many people in the world anyway, overpopulation. They're more familiar. No, okay. They just so happen to be the people you got a problem with too. Listen. Everybody died anyway, so.
01:28:44
Speaker
Anyway, um, now the other, like I mentioned three people, the other performance I did not like was Evan Peters as Quicksilver, which I know it sounds like sacrilege to a lot of people because a lot of people like loved him in this movie.
01:28:57
Speaker
just like with Nicholas Holt and Jennifer Lawrence, Evan Peters is not playing Quicksilver. He's playing impulse, basically. Right, yeah. When I think of Quicksilver, and again, mentioning Peter David again, he did some of the best work on his character, because there was this really famous issue of X Factor he did. I think it was his last one, actually.
01:29:21
Speaker
Doc Sampson comes in to give the whole team a psychiatric evaluation. And he sits down with each of the members individually. And they kind of reveal to him their own insecurities and the stuff they keep hitting, like the fact that strong guy, right? He's this guy who absorbs kinetic energy and it makes him stronger. But the thing is, because of that, because his body is deformed like that, he's in constant pain all the time.
01:29:48
Speaker
Ah, right, that's the, okay, that's Scott with the goggles and- Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. And- Oh, Hawke, yeah. And multiple man who, you know, Jamie Madrox, who, you know, can make dupes of himself, but he's never, because the dupes have their own personalities, their own, their own, you know, their own characters, basically. So he's never sure if it's, if he's really who he is,
01:30:19
Speaker
or if he's like, and it's like this. He doesn't know if he's the original. Well, not only, not necessarily that he doesn't know if he's the original, but he never knows if his thoughts are his own or something from one of his dupes that he's absorbed. Gotcha. So it's like this constant insecurity he has. But, you know, Polaris, you know, obviously struggles with a lot of things, havoc as well with burdens of leadership and being in Cyclops' shadow. But the best one, the best one hands down was what he did with Quicksilver.
01:30:49
Speaker
And, and Samson opens the interview by saying, you know, you know, Val Cooper, who's their superior in the government, she says, you suffer from PMS. And he says, what? And he says, Pietro Maximoff syndrome, a tendency to be haughty and arrogant. And he says, and he gives this great
01:31:07
Speaker
description of what it's like living as a speedster he's like he's like well how do you feel if you're standing in bank in line at an ATM and the person in front of you doesn't know how to do it or if you're in a coffee shop and you're waiting in line for like 10 minutes the person gets up to the front and they don't they only then is when they start looking at the menu decide what they're gonna want Jesus
01:31:28
Speaker
And he's like, well, yeah, I'd be annoyed, maybe angry. And he's like, right. Now imagine if every single moment of your life was like that.
01:31:39
Speaker
because Quicksilver thinks it's superhuman speed. So for him, it's nothing but people who can't handle ATM machines, people who don't know what to order. That's his entire life. That's everybody he interacts with. And it was such a brilliant explanation of why he is the way he is. You know what? Yeah.
01:32:04
Speaker
If you've ever been online at McDonald's, and you've been online for 10, 15 minutes, and then the person is for you, now they get up there, now they're reading the fucking menu. What was you standing in line all this time for doing? Oh my god, it drives me nuts every time. Oh, I just want to pull out a gun and shoot that person in the head. You've been standing, and McDonald's hasn't changed the menu in 50 years. Yeah. And you know what, there's an episode of Scrubs when
01:32:29
Speaker
Dr. Cox, he's talking about things he says like, he says like, you know, there should be a law that if, if you're standing in line 10 minutes, and then only when you get to the front of the coffee line, you decide what you want, I should be legally allowed to kill them. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. See, this is why I need to be a benevolent dictator in charge of the world, because that would be one of my first laws I pass. That's not benevolent. That's not being benevolent. If you're killing people,
01:32:58
Speaker
It's benevolent for me. I didn't say I was necessarily going to be benevolent for other folk. But what's the point of being a dictator if you can't do things that is benevolent toward you? See, you're missing the whole point, Perry, of being a benevolent dictator. That's not a benevolent. That's the opposite of a benevolent dictator. The point of a benevolent dictator is they have to be benevolent for everybody.
01:33:24
Speaker
Now see, I was going to make you my minister of popular culture. Keep talking. So I'm going to be in one of the first pogroms, I guess.
01:33:40
Speaker
But yeah, but, uh, but yeah, once you put it in that context and see you put that, okay. They put that in the context that anybody can relate to. Cause we've all been stuck in that situation. I hate it. Oh, the people like when I go to the self checkout thing, Oh my God, people who don't know how to work. These things insist on going to the self checkout. Yeah.
01:34:06
Speaker
Oh, please. If you don't know what you're doing, go, hey, it takes too long with the cashier. Yeah, but it takes twice as long for you fumbling around with this damn thing. Yeah, yeah. And then still, a cashier has to come over to help you with it anyway, so you don't mess up. Yeah.
01:34:25
Speaker
Go ahead. No, just, and so, and so, but that is such a great way of looking at Quicksilver. And that's what I really liked about Age of Ultron is they, Aaron Taylor Johnson portrayed Quicksilver as Quicksilver. Yeah. Yeah. He was good. I liked him. He was great. He was amazing. And Evan Peters is not Quicksilver. I'm sorry. And now they're saying that, you know, Evan Peters is apparently going to have a cameo as Quicksilver in WandaVision, the upcoming
01:34:53
Speaker
where um and the the whole thing is like he's probably gonna be playing like quicksilver from an alternate reality right and he was good because you know what he brings a nice little fun bit to this movie at a point where we
01:35:09
Speaker
need to loosen up, I mean, you know, like a little bit. So, you know, they go to his house and they meet him and, and everything. And he's doing all these super speed stunts, like you said, like impulse. And in this movie, when they go to break Magneto out, they have one of the best depictions of super speed I've ever seen on film. Yeah. Yeah. Like that scene is great, but it's just, it's just for me, it's still great on me because he's not Quicksilver.
01:35:34
Speaker
Oh, no, he's not. He does a good job as impulse. But again, I just come back to the whole thing that it just keeps ringing in my mind over and over again. He's not Quicksilver. He's not Quicksilver. And that just bugs me about it. And matter of fact, if they were going to make a Flash movie, I would rather see him play Wally West or whoever
01:36:01
Speaker
than Ezra Miller. Rather than the guy that they have now. What's his name? That was an industrial movie? Ezra Miller. Yeah, Ezra Miller. Yeah, I'd rather see him. Because he's got more, I don't know, he acts more like a speed. I mean, I don't know any speedsters, but if I did know any guys that ran at super speed, he strikes me as that guy. Yeah, yeah.
01:36:24
Speaker
You know, he's really good. I like him. But like you said, it's miscast. And then he's like a throwaway character because, OK, well, we got you. You helped us break that. And instead, because it seems to me, bringing the speeds, super speed alone would be really useful. Yeah. They just had to take back the rental car. They said, well, I think that's one of the problems with that scene in the Pentagon is, yeah, it's a great way to depict super speed. But the problem is, for him to be able to do all that stuff, also,
01:36:53
Speaker
I don't know why he's listening to music in that scene because he's moving too fast actually before he'd be done before the song even hit his first note. Right. But that's the problem is he moves too fast because he can do all this stuff in the blink of an eye
01:37:10
Speaker
then if you keep in the rest of the movie, there's nothing, there's no plot there, because he could just solve everything on his own. Well, see, that's always the problem with super speed anyway, because if you got, okay, like the Flash, see, I've always liked the fact that Quicksilver could only run but so fast. Right, he can only run supersonic. Right, so, okay, so there is a way to stop him. But when you have somebody like the Flash who can run like,
01:37:37
Speaker
He runs faster than the speed of light. How do you stop a guy like that? I could never write stories for a character like that because everything would be over before I got started.
01:37:50
Speaker
You know, I mean, I remember back to DC used to do the thing where they used to have the races with him as Superman, you know, trying to be the fastest man on earth. And I said, well, if Superman beats him, then he really isn't the fastest man on earth, is he? You know? Yeah.
01:38:08
Speaker
You can't legitimately call him that now, Candy. And to say to me, well, yeah, well, he's got to be faster than Superman because that's his thing. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. You know, if you take that away from him, then, you know, well, what do we need you for? We got Superman. He's faster than you. Right. Yeah. Yeah. You know what I mean?
01:38:27
Speaker
But yeah, this guy in this movie, yeah. They just give him the keys and say, OK, well, take back the rent the car for us. And he says, OK, fine. I said, why don't you take the super speedster along with you? I know, yeah. Yeah. It's another one of the, it's a logic problem that the movie creates for itself just so they can have quicksilver in the movie. Right, yeah.
01:38:49
Speaker
And also, wouldn't it, I mean, he's already let numerous people at the Pentagon see his face. Wouldn't there be a problem with somebody trying to identify him? Because you did just break out the guy that allegedly killed the president of the United States? Yeah, I'm guessing not a lot of 20-something guys with silver hair are in the DC area. Yeah, that's what I'm kind of figuring. Especially because the cops already know who he is.
01:39:19
Speaker
Because when his mother answered the door, she's like, you know, the cops are here again. Well, what do you do now? Yeah, exactly. She just goes back to the living room to her drink and watch on the TV. And she says, OK, well, he's OK. Well, he's downstairs. He's in the basement. Don't get it. Yeah.
01:39:34
Speaker
And he just assumes that they're the cops. Yeah, yeah. Awesome. Did you notice, they also had, there are two cameos in that scene as well. One is the little girl who is supposed to be Polaris, Lorna Dane. Oh, okay. And then, because she says, the mother says, go upstairs and bug your sister.
01:39:53
Speaker
That's Wanda. That's Wanda, right? Yeah, yeah. So that was two little cameos. There they are. Oh, OK. Yeah, because the mother just said it. She's like, oh, she has some buggies. She said, she bugs me. Yeah. It's so cute. She's like, I'm a princess. What are you? She's like, I'm a Wolverine. And she's looking back at him like, yeah, OK, what's that, baby? Yeah, yeah. Oh, God.
Magneto's Character Depth
01:40:19
Speaker
All right, now I think we got to talk about Michael Fassbender, because
01:40:24
Speaker
Like I said before, like McAvoy took a while for me to grow on and even still like still kind of if you had it, but fast fender as a young magneto is just, you know, he's the VIP of this series. Well, yeah. Yeah. I mean, if there's anybody that came out of this movie, besides you Jackman as a star, it was him, Michael fast fender. Yeah.
01:40:47
Speaker
I mean, and we'll talk more about this when we talk about first class. But in fact, my whole thing is I want to see a movie where it's just Michael Fassbender as Magneto Nazi Hunter. Well, that's what I wanted to see. So first class. That's definitely what I wanted to see. I wanted to see, listen, stop this movie where it's at. Never mind. I just want to see him hunting down Nazis. Exactly. Yeah.
01:41:13
Speaker
And yeah, and he does such a good job in this movie. And the great thing is even with everything that happened between him and Xavier in first class, he still has genuine affection for Charles. Well, what I like is that there are points in the movie where they're on the plane and they're
01:41:38
Speaker
There, okay, I saw at least about two or three moments where it looked like he had genuine concern for what happened to his friend. Exactly. Because he's looking at him and he said, yeah, you know, this guy is really off, you know, and then they're having a nice little conversation and yeah, you know, Fassbinder, I mean,
01:42:00
Speaker
For some reason, he seems to be able to tap into the whole psychology of Magneto even more in a way than I think Ian McKellen does. Oh, definitely. I agree with that. Yeah. Yeah. He gets Magneto on an emotional level. Ian McKellen, I think, is more like an intellectual philosophical
01:42:22
Speaker
you know, type of level. He gets them on that level. Absolutely. But with Pathfinder, it's more like, which of course fits in with the fact that he's younger. And younger men and women tend to run on emotion. You know, it's only as we get older that we start to get more contemplative. And, you know, we use intellect and experience, everything like that. But younger people tend to run on high octane emotions. And that's what, you know, Fassbender does as Magneto. Because, you know,
01:42:52
Speaker
there's a sort of joy and well not really joy but there's a sort of oh I can't think of the emotion when he's using his power like when he lifts up the entire stadium yes yeah it's like he's like he's just doing it and
01:43:10
Speaker
is spectacle. One of the criticisms I had about McKellen is that he didn't really have that kind of like grand look. And that might be more on to direction because he was able to do the grand gesture stuff perfectly in Lord of the Rings.
01:43:27
Speaker
he just wasn't he didn't feel like he didn't have like that epic kind of like gestures what really fast better really manages to nail that yeah that's what okay that's what i was you yeah you got what i was trying to go for he's a more epic magneto yeah yeah kellin is kind of subdued and stuff and you're absolutely right if you look at lord of the rings he can do the epic stuff right does it there
01:43:52
Speaker
They just didn't give it to him to do in the X-Men. No, I think it was last stand when he moves the Golden Gate Bridge and like the look on his face when he's doing this, it almost looks comical. Yeah, yeah. It just looks so good. It's such a goofy expression. It doesn't help that helmet looks like it's two sizes too small.
01:44:14
Speaker
He's much more better with doing Magneto when Magneto is being a-strategous, you know? And he's using his powers, but like in small, like he doesn't use them like in big showy, flashy ways. It's very subtle how he uses.
01:44:32
Speaker
his powers, except for fast man. I like when he's walking down the hallway and he's got the two steel balls in his hands. And that's all he needs. Yeah, exactly. He takes out all these guys with just the two steel balls. And he's just like the epitome of badassery in that scene. Oh, man. He's got that pimp hat on and everything like that. Yeah, the sunglasses. Magneto the pimp.
01:45:02
Speaker
Ah, Mystique, where's my damn money? Yeah. Like, Nita wants his money. All right, what else I wanted to talk about with this?
Wolverine and Professor X's Bond
01:45:20
Speaker
Oh, well, I mean, we haven't really talked that much about Jackman, but I think it just goes to show that, you know, it's Hugh Jackman, right? I mean, it's, well, I mean, at this point,
01:45:32
Speaker
just saying that you Jackman is playing Wolverine, you need to say no more. He does, you know, he knows this character by this time, as well as he knows himself. Yeah. So he plays him. But I think that with this movie, and matter of fact, I had wrote something on
01:45:52
Speaker
the RFB group, Superhero Centrifile, for those of you who don't know, we have a Facebook group where you can go and leave comments and recommendations and all that kind of stuff. But when I watched this movie, I immediately wanted to watch Logan because the first time I saw Logan, I said, okay, well, yeah, well,
01:46:13
Speaker
Okay. I really couldn't see why Professor X and Logan would end up together. They would be like the last two. Okay. You made the comment. You made the comment. You said, well, he's the last one, you know? Yeah. Okay. But still, you know, look, but however, I'm watching this movie and a lot of what they said and how they acted toward each other in Logan resonated with me from this movie.
01:46:39
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Because I'm watching their relationship in this movie. I'm so, oh, okay. Because now, because at the end of the movie, when, okay, Wolverine wakes up and everything is back the way it's supposed to be, or even better it's supposed to be, because everybody is alive, except for Bishop.
01:47:00
Speaker
So he was right. He got screwed. Yeah, we don't see any of those other X-Men in there. No, no, no. They just killed them all off. Jesus. Yeah, Bishop was right. They got screwed. So he goes and he- Nobody ever listens to the black guy. Nobody listens to the brother. No.
01:47:17
Speaker
He goes and he meets up with Professor X and Professor X, you know, he sees something different about him and he says, oh, shit, he says, well, welcome back. It seems like it's so funny because it's like a switch goes off and Patrick Stewart plays it brilliantly, right? Because one moment he's like the pissed off boss who's like, you're late for your class, what the hell?
01:47:41
Speaker
again. Yeah. Yeah. Again, he's pissed off for real. Yeah. Cause he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, oh, so I guess it worked out. He's like, I guess you did. He gets it worked out or something. He's like, what worked out? He's like, what, why are you even here? Don't, don't teach your fucking class. What's wrong with you? What have you been drinking up all night drinking again, going out and playing saber tooth again. And he's like, he's like, what were you doing? He's like, wait, I teach classes. And we're ready to smile it. Yeah. And then he comes from behind the chair with the floating chair.
01:48:09
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And then he says, and then he says to him, he's like, well, I'm going to need some help with that. He's like, what are you talking about? What, why are you bothering me with this stuff? Then he's just like, you know, help with history, like the past 50 years or so. And then it's like, Stewart plays an activity. It's like a switch goes off. He's like, Oh,
01:48:27
Speaker
And he's like, well, welcome back. And then it's like his whole personality changes from that point. Yeah. Yeah. That's why I love that scene so much because it's a complete and you can see it on his face and in his eyes because he's had to spend this whole time dealing with a Wolverine that don't remember what he remembers. Exactly. Yeah. So now it's like he does have his friend back now. Yeah. Yeah.
01:48:50
Speaker
you know because and he's looking at him and he's saying yeah he's saying oh we got a lot of catching up to do so there's an added layer to their relationship that he doesn't even have with Jean Scott right but he has with Wolverine because they've been through an experience that only the two of them remember well even even that even with Hank he doesn't have that same thing because like because he saw the future
01:49:14
Speaker
Yeah. He made contact with himself in the future. He saw what the world is like. He saw Wolverine's memories of that time. So only the two of them are the only ones who know about this other timeline. They're the only ones. So that gives them such a unique bond that he doesn't have it. So of course, they would end up with each other. Yeah, yeah.
01:49:37
Speaker
you know, at the end. So that's why I wanted to watch Logan again, because I said, okay, now I can't watch, now that I've seen this, I can't watch that movie without having what resonates in this movie, you know, that won't carry over into that movie now, Logan. Yeah. Also, I was, you know, it's, you know, it's tragic though, is that Logan is set only six years after this movie.
01:50:06
Speaker
So in six years, everything went to shit. Everything went to shit pretty fast. Yeah. No wonder Logan's so pissed off in that movie because he's like, I went through all this effort. I went back through fucking time. And now six years later, it all gets fucked up. Yeah, exactly. What the hell? What did I do all those stuff for?
01:50:32
Speaker
I mean, it's not as bad as it was an other timeline, but this still ain't a lot of fun either. Yeah, yeah. Oh, man. Poor Logan, you just you just can never catch a break. Oh, Logan, poor guy, you know, poor guy.
01:50:52
Speaker
All right. So what else have we not covered about this? You're talking about the logic holes again. There's something else, because Magneto throws Wolverine into the river, or the Potomac, I think he throws him into, right? Yeah. He throws him into the river. Oh, yeah. And it's like, what? A week later, they fish him out, and he's still alive? Wolverine's healing factor doesn't mean he doesn't need to breathe.
01:51:21
Speaker
But wait a minute, not even that. How does Stryker know that we need to throw him in there? Well, it's not Stryker. It's Mystique, which makes no sense. But then that makes no sense in the next movie because they completely dropped that subplot. And Mystique has nothing to do with Weapon X.
01:51:36
Speaker
Yeah, that still makes no sense that she, yeah, it still makes no sense that she found, you know, yeah, it makes no sense at all. Yeah, it's one of the, it's one of those, you know, annoying things that just, just does not work. Also, when, when Beast uses the serum on himself to, to trick the sentinels. Yeah. The serum doesn't erase his, his mutant gene.
01:52:01
Speaker
Right so it all it does is depower him so they should still be able to see that it's a mutant that's not it just doesn't fit Yeah, the sentinels should still he should still be registering as a mutant right exactly. Yeah, so Yeah, so yeah. Oh, yeah that yeah, I was watching that so wait a minute that doesn't make a lick of sense. Yeah, but however I Do give this movie props? Uh next to
01:52:30
Speaker
X2 and, of course, First Class, which is my favorite one out of all the X-Men movies. But this one is just as good as those two because I do like the epic feel of the story. We go from the future to Vietnam to 1970s Washington. There's a good epic feel to this story. And even though
01:52:57
Speaker
Okay, this is a movie that you really do have to pay attention to as you usually do whenever time travel is involved because there's a lot of characters in here. There's a lot of moving parts that you got to keep track of with them having to go get Magneto and then they have to go back to Washington and then they have to
01:53:16
Speaker
get the plans for the Sentinels, and then you got Mystique, she's running her own thing, and then Magneto, he breaks away from them, and he goes off and does his own thing. So there's a lot of moving parts in this movie, but the good thing about it is that it does, matter of fact, I would go as far to say that this is the only truly epic X-Men movie out of all the X-Men movies. I understand what you're saying, but I think X2 has more of an epic feel to it.
01:53:48
Speaker
Because one of the things about this movie is that I think it would be, I think I'd have a different opinion of it if it came out before Avengers, right? Because this feels like a movie that should not be, this feels like a pre Avengers movie, right? The kind of superhero movies you would see before the Avengers showed us what was possible.
X-Men Movie Critiques and Legacy
01:54:11
Speaker
Right. This still feels like the old way of making superhero movies, where it does, you're right, there is kind of this epicness to it, but at the same time, it does feel like kind of a stripped down epicness, like it doesn't have that same like, it's not what I expect from superhero spectacle, right? It ultimately just comes down to Beast and Wolverine fighting off some gunfire in the epic showdown.
01:54:39
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Whereas they should be fighting a whole army of sentinels. They're fighting one. Right. And, you know, when you think about X-Men versus the sentinels, you think the X-Men versus all the sentinels, like all the X-Men, all the sentinels. So it does feel kind of stripped down when you focus it just on Wolverine and Xavier and Magneto and Mystique. And you know, he's just kind of hanging around there.
01:55:03
Speaker
Okay. And know why I go with your point and I, you know, I got my own point, which I just said, but know what? I agree with your point 100%. Because here's the thing about the X-Men movies.
01:55:15
Speaker
They're movies that really didn't live up to the potential that they had. No, no, not at all. Because 20th Century Fox didn't know what they had, and they mishandled it. Exactly. And every opportunity that they had to make a truly great X-Men movie, they dropped the ball every single time. So you have X-Men movies that
01:55:35
Speaker
okay you come away saying okay that was great oh shit but that was bad okay well he was good but damn what the hell is she doing you know see what i mean there's a love-hate relationship i have with almost all the x-men movies exactly the the exceptions are the the solo movies like dead the two deadpool movies logan and to a lesser extent the wolverine like those ones i almost universally love
01:56:01
Speaker
Yeah. But I quibble a lot with the other movies. Yeah. I don't know what it was with Fox, but they did not see the potential. Or they just said, you know what? They didn't give a shit. But they squandered something that could have been really something special. Because there's a lot of special moments in all of these movies. There's a lot of special moments in this movie. And in fact, you know what did kind of get it a little bit more?
The Gifted TV Series Recommendation
01:56:27
Speaker
Was the TV show, The Gifted.
01:56:30
Speaker
I'm not sure if you ever, it was, you know, the really cool thing, cause it started off when it was announced that it was, that the focus was going to be on this family. They find out their kids are mutants and they're running from, you know, mutant hunters basically. But what actually did become a much bigger focus than anybody thought was they hook up with this mutant underground, you know, resistance group. And it's, and it consists of like the kind of X-Men you wouldn't see in the movies. So like Thunderbird is the leader.
01:56:59
Speaker
Oh, cool. And then you got Polaris in there, you got Blink is back in there, although this time she's played by Jamie Chung, because you can't get Fan Bing Bing to come in for a TV show. Yeah, so I mentioned Polaris. The Stepford Cuckoos from Grant Morrison's runner there. All these minor X-Men characters, and they're handled so well. I love Thunderbird in this series. He was so good.
01:57:29
Speaker
The guy who played him and he's got this whole relationship with, with Blink and it's just, it's handled so well. And it was such a good use of these characters that usually get the shaft in these movies. Like at best they'll appear, like Blink had quite a lot to do in this movie, but she has like no lines really. No, yeah, I don't remember ever saying anything. She had like maybe one line, she says something, that's about it. And it's like a throwaway line that could be, that any character could say. Right, exactly. It wasn't meaningful.
01:57:58
Speaker
Right. But she has such a big part to play in The Gifted. And Jamie Chung does a great job. Blair Redford plays Thunderbird. And again, who ever thought Thunderbird who was killed off because like in the first issue because Chris Claremont thought he was too redundant. Right. And he becomes like the heart and soul of this TV series. Oh, okay. See, it's definitely worth checking out.
01:58:25
Speaker
I'll have to look it up and see. Well, I'm sure I could find a streaming somewhere. I have to check it out. I just never watched it. It might be. Well, because, um, uh, you don't have Hulu, but I think, like, because Disney owns all the Fox stuff now, it might be out of Hulu. Oh, okay. I'll check it out there. I've got Hulu. Oh, okay. I thought you, I thought you didn't have it. I've got Hulu. I'll check it out.
01:58:46
Speaker
Yeah, because it sounds interesting. But yeah, but these movies, you know, and I mean, I can't fault the budget because they obviously spent a shitload of money making these movies. I don't blame the actors because the actors, even the ones that you've said that we don't like, you know, they're not phoning it in. What falls down is the writing. There's no paying attention to continuity. And, you know,
01:59:13
Speaker
them treating these movies. Like I said, ostentatiously is supposed to be part of a series, but they got too many holes in the continuity that you go from what, especially if you watch these movies back to back. If you watch these movies back to back, you would do nothing but just be writing down, okay, well that, okay, they screwed that up. They screwed that up, they screwed that, yeah. Okay, I just checked, it is on Hulu. Oh, okay, cool.
01:59:40
Speaker
So yeah, definitely worth watching. Okay. But yeah, it's a good movie and I do like that they made an attempt to try and right the ship and try and make sense of the mess they had made. But it's like we said back when we did, when we talked about the first X-Men movie was,
02:00:01
Speaker
I can understand why continuity gets convoluted in the comics because you've got, you know, what, like 50, 60 years of history to try and, you know, follow. Right. But this, they had what, five movies? You couldn't sit down and watch five movies before you made this? This is what I'm saying, you know.
02:00:23
Speaker
I don't know. But the weird thing is some of you got the same people working on it. So it's like you don't remember what movie you made 10 years ago. This is exactly the same people.
02:00:36
Speaker
Even if you just went back and watched the previous movie, that's okay, we gotta make sure that, you know, this hooks up with what happened in life. But it's like nobody said, they said, what the hell, let's just go make a movie. And then, especially after watching Dark Phoenix last night, watching this was like watching Citizen Kane. This is Citizen Kane compared to Dark Phoenix. One other thing I wanted to mention was like,
02:01:04
Speaker
I cannot stand Daniel Cudmore as Colossus after seeing how well Colossus was done in the Deadpool movies.
Character Portrayals and Missed Opportunities
02:01:13
Speaker
Because it's just like this guy they got here in this weird like metal skin suit, it just, that is, who doesn't do anything really. Well he's another throwaway character. Yeah. He doesn't say anything, yeah. And it's just, when you see him in Deadpool and in Deadpool 2, you realize, man, what a wasted opportunity.
02:01:32
Speaker
Yeah, they really don't do anything with him in this movie. On the other hand, they had the best representation of Iceman's power in this movie. I said, oh, wow, this is massively cool. He was doing the ice slide thing. Yeah, yeah. I remember when the last stand was the first one where he actually ices up, and it looks so cheesy and fake. Yeah. But here, it did look good. And I like that. I've always liked Sean Ashmore as Iceman. I wish he had more to do.
02:02:02
Speaker
If they were going to make an Iceman movie with him, you know what? I think I will go see it. Yeah. And I like him with the beard too. Yeah, me too. Yeah. He was good. He was good. And I did like, and I thought Omar Tsai, even though he's in a very small role as Bishop, I thought he did a really good job with what little he had. Yeah, again. And one of the things I like they did with him is,
02:02:30
Speaker
when he absorbs the... He uses the gun to channel his powers. I thought that was a really good use of the gun. Yeah, yeah. Like he tells somebody, you know, to hit him. Right, Sunspot, yeah. Yeah, because Sunspot hits him and then you see that the gun, he's... The power flowing through him and he's using that as well, which is a very good visual. And yeah, it's one of those characters, yes. Matter of fact, you know what? If they had had... If they had ever did a Bishop and Blink movie, I would've went to see it.
02:03:00
Speaker
Oh, you know, that's what I'm saying. I wanted to see more of those two in particular. Yeah, I wanted to see more of those two. Yeah. They were both really good. The others, you know, I can take them early and they didn't really have a whole lot to do. Yeah. But Bishop and Blink were really well done. And, you know, I would have, I would have paid good money to see more of a focus on them in this movie than Beast and Mystique.
02:03:25
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I would have loved to see more with them. You know what? And if somebody had had any sense, they would have did a spin-off TV series, say, OK, well, we're going to do a whole series about, you know, that timeline. Well, the gifted is kind of, it's not the same timeline, but there's a lot of similarities. Like, it's not as post-apocalyptic. But, you know, the X-Men are gone. The Brotherhood is gone.
02:03:53
Speaker
mutants are being hunted by the government. And the Hellfire Club actually is a big part of that show as well. And they're handled so much better than they were in first class. So yeah, the gifted show, it's got a lot of that same band. And it does, like I said, you do have a lot of blink in there. You don't get Bishop, but you do get Thunderbird and Polaris. So it's a really good watch. Oh, OK. Thank you for the recommendation. Yeah, yeah.
02:04:22
Speaker
I'll have to put that on my already extensively long list of shows. Yeah, I know, right? Please. I'll tell you about that. I got shit on Netflix that's been on there for 10 years I haven't watched yet. Yeah, yeah. And also, the Sentinels in the Future, you know what struck me as them? It's basically The Fury from Alan Moore's Captain Britain one. Really? Yeah, and you look at The Fury. I'm not sure if you've read Alan Moore's Captain Britain. No.
02:04:51
Speaker
Okay, so in his Captain Britain run, there's this robotic creature called the Fury. And it was created by Jim Jaspers, I believe. And it's basically this, it's an Android that can adapt to anything. And it's basically designed to be like a hero killer.
02:05:17
Speaker
And just the look of it and everything, like you look up the fury, I'll send you an image of the character. But this is basically the Sentinels of the future. You know what I was thinking of when I was seeing how they was adapting to all of that? I was thinking of the, what is it, the Adaptoid.
02:05:38
Speaker
The super adapter? Yeah, that's similar to it as well. And also there's some of like the phalanx type stuff in there. There's a lot, it seems to be drawing from a lot of different sources, but I think visually it looks the most like the Fury. So I just sent you the link to an image in the chat.
02:05:53
Speaker
And then also the way that it's head opened up so it could fire that blast, what reminded me of the executioner, destroyer. Yeah, the destroyer, excuse me. Yeah, I was thinking that too, which we did last week. It was a lot like, yeah, well, that's probably why it hit me. I said, oh shit, that's just like, yeah, that's like the destroyer. Yeah.
02:06:15
Speaker
All right. Yeah, I think that we pretty much said everything there is to say about this. Like I think this, it's a good movie. Like you said, it is definitely in the upper reaches of the X-Men movies, but like with all the X-Men movies, it just feels like there are so many missed opportunities.
02:06:31
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, that's, like I said, that is my main problem with the X-Men movies is that there's so much in them that, and you look at it and you say, damn, you know, well, they could have did this and they could have done that. They could have went this way. They could have went that way. And it's just like a lot of missed opportunities. But I will say I did not let that stop me from having a good time watching this. Like I said, it's,
02:07:01
Speaker
I do recall seeing this in the theater. I didn't go to the theater to see it, but that was like the only time I've seen it. So watching it today was like watching a brand new movie. And I had a very good time watching it. Well, especially because this is a slightly different version than what you saw in the theater too.
02:07:18
Speaker
Well, you know what? That was so long ago, I didn't even remember what wasn't in there and what was in there. I pretty much guessed that because I didn't want to look it up. I just wanted to watch the movie called, I pretty much guessed that since it is called the road cut, that that whole sequence where they got to go get road, that wasn't in the theatrical.
02:07:37
Speaker
Right, yeah, yeah. And it's funny, they call it the road cut because she just doesn't really do much in this movie. She doesn't do, after all of that stuff, they fly all the way for her to come back over and she really doesn't do anything. Again, it's a throwaway character that has what, like one or two lines. Yeah, but I do like it for the, I do like this version better, even though you're with calling it the road cut, it's kind of a misnomer, but
02:08:05
Speaker
But I do like it because we get that more extended stuff in the future, which I thought was the more interesting part of this movie than the past stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is not a completely worthless X-Men movie. I mean, none of them are worthless. Well, except for Dark Phoenix.
02:08:23
Speaker
Oh, yeah, well, Darth Vader, yeah, yeah, Darth Vader, yeah, I would stay away from that at all costs. But yeah, but yeah, but this one, like I said, I, you know, I had a good time watching this. It's a good movie. Yeah, it's a fun movie. It's good. I'd probably rank it below X2. And yeah, so I think X2 is still like the pinnacle of the series, at least for the team movies, like from the solo films, obviously,
02:08:50
Speaker
I'll take the Deadpool movies and the Logan movie over this. Okay. Well, yeah. Yeah. I mean, as much as I don't care for Deadpool, yeah, I would have to say that if you're talking about like different entertainment value, yeah, you'd probably be better off going with those. Well, also the Deadpool movie, they embrace the source material in a way that none of these movies really did. Well, yeah. Yeah. I mean,
02:09:21
Speaker
from my limited knowledge of what I know of Deadpool and what I've read of him, they nailed that perfectly. They just like, you know what it is? They're not afraid to embrace the goofiness.
Embracing Humor in Superhero Films
02:09:31
Speaker
Exactly, yeah. Of the character. And this, you know, like, okay, like in this movie, you know, they tend to take it a little bit too seriously. All the extra movies, yeah, they take it way too seriously and they're trying to,
02:09:47
Speaker
they're trying to avoid a lot of the stuff that they think is too silly. But like the Wolverine movies after after origins, they kind of they embrace a little bit more because you got Wolverine fighting a guy in a giant samurai suit of armor. Right. Yeah. I mean, you got to I don't know. Sometimes I think that you can bend over backwards too far trying to be serious with a superhero movie where you get to the point where you take all of the elements
02:10:18
Speaker
that we enjoy. Okay, on a certain level, you got to embrace that goofiness. And I think even guys like Alan Moore and Grant Morrison have said this, that's the essence of superheroes. Well, Moore I think doesn't quite, I think Moore understands that, but he doesn't like it. Whereas I think Morrison revels in that.
02:10:43
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you got to embrace the goofiness. Yeah. Yeah. In order to enjoy it. But I don't think that the X-Men movies, like I said, Fox. OK. They just wanted to have a superhero franchise so badly. Well, they never really learned the lessons that the rest of the world learned from what the success of the MCU was. Right.
02:11:11
Speaker
You know, lots of other people, they learn their lessons. Like on the CW, the Berlanti-verse shows, they learn their lesson, because Arrow was very self-serious in its first season. Oh, yeah. And after Avengers, they started lightening up, and they started embracing the superhero aspects. And then you get to Flash and Supergirl, and then you get all the way to Legends, where you've got giant stuffed animals fighting giant demons.
02:11:39
Speaker
Yeah. And they just come big. They're like, all right, you know what? We're embracing it full on. Same thing with the MCU, right? You had Iron Man and Incredible Hulk, where they were much more grounded movies. And then Thor tried to be a little more grounded. And then after Avengers, they're like, you know what? Here's a talking raccoon with a gun and his best friend who's a walking tree. Bingo. Yeah. And everybody.
02:12:07
Speaker
And everybody went with it. And DC learned it too, because you had Man of Steel, The Dark Knight trilogy, Man of Steel, Batman v Superman, Suicide Squad, all very grim, all very trying to be very grounded type movies. And then that didn't work. So then you get to Aquaman and they're like, here are sharks, here are battle sharks, and an octopus playing the drums. Yeah, and even before that, Wonder Woman. Wonder Woman, yeah.
02:12:34
Speaker
Yeah, Wonder Woman was a little bit lighter in tone. Oh, yeah, definitely. You know, they said, OK, well, we're going to be a little bit lighter with this. We're going to have some fun with this. Exactly. And yeah, I mean, like Aquaman, like I said, a lot of people that I know, they thought Aquaman was a Marvel movie. They didn't know it was a DC movie. And then you get to Shazam, and it's big with superpowers.
02:12:55
Speaker
Yeah. Well, it's full blown nuttiness. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. And there is definitely something to be said for, cause there's a surety in that. There's a confidence in that when you embrace the goofiness. Exactly. And it's like these X-Men movies, they don't have that same confidence. No, they don't have the confidence to be fun. Right. Exactly.
02:13:17
Speaker
You know, this is a serious movie about serious things. And that's why everybody gravitated to Deadpool. Even like you, who's not a fan of Deadpool, you still like that movie. Yeah, it was a nice goofy movie. It was. And I think people gravitate towards that because they completely embrace it. There is nothing but confidence in that movie, and especially in Ryan Reynolds' performance.
02:13:48
Speaker
Like he's breaking the fourth wall every time he's making jokes about Green Lantern that only comic fans will get. He's making jokes about, you know, which professor, McAvoy or Stewart and all this kind of stuff, right? He's just completely embracing it. And you know what? Okay. I love about that movie is that it didn't slow down to stop and explain everything. Right. You know, if you got it fine, if you didn't get it either. One thing that I always hate is when
02:14:16
Speaker
people put like Easter eggs and stuff, and then they explain what it is. Well, no, you don't get it. You know, if you've got to explain it. Exactly. Yeah. It's like a joke. If I tell a joke and you don't get it, and then I have to explain the joke to you, well, then it's not funny.
02:14:32
Speaker
Right. Like, when Wade Wilson says, you know, please don't make the super suit green or animated. Like, they're not going to stop and explain that, oh, by the way, Ryan Reynolds is in Green Lantern and they used an animated costume. Right, exactly. The joke falls flat that you do that. If you don't get it, well, you know what, that's your hard line.
02:14:52
Speaker
Or also when he's, when he's, when he makes the, I mean, he uses a deep cut, you know, he asks, you know, is it basil faulty, right? Who the hell is going to pick up on a faulty towers joke? Exactly. Exactly. You either get, you know what, you either get it or you don't. Exactly, yeah.
02:15:09
Speaker
But you know what? We're not going to stop. We're just going to keep on going. Exactly. Which is the best way to treat that kind of material. Now, I know people that, you know, they argue with me all the time. Well, no, they should make the material accessible to everybody. Well, it is accessible. Yeah.
02:15:26
Speaker
I mean, well, the thing is, it is accessible. Like, if you don't get the faulty towers joke or the Green Lantern joke in Deadpool, it doesn't stop your enjoyment of the movie. You don't have to understand those things to enjoy the movie, but it enhances your enjoyment if you do get it. It is not the fault of the filmmakers that you are an uncultured barbarian.
02:15:50
Speaker
go get some edumacation, for God's sake. But that's what a good Easter egg does, right? It's there as a treat for the people who have read the comics and are familiar with it materially. Exactly. Right. But it doesn't get in the way of the story. Right. It's not for everybody. That's why it's Easter egg. It's not for everybody. Exactly. Like, you know, you look at those
02:16:14
Speaker
the parody movies like Epic Movie and everything after like the scary movie franchise and all that stuff. Those movies are so terrible because it's just reference after reference with no story in it. Yeah. It's nothing but like an hour and a half Easter egg. Exactly, exactly. Which is why nobody watches those movies now. They have no value to watch over again.
02:16:40
Speaker
Right. Now you compare that to something like not another teen movie with with Chris Evans was in that one. Now that's a funny parody because it actually has a story behind it. And it's not just Easter egg after Easter egg. Right.
02:16:58
Speaker
All right, so I think we're, now we're talking about parody movies. I think we're pretty much done. Yeah, we don't win about as far left field as you can go. Exactly, yeah. All right, so this was, any final thoughts about Days of Future Past? I think we've probably said everything we had to say. Yeah, listen, I had a good time watching it. Thank you for recommending it, because like I said, I haven't seen it in years.
02:17:26
Speaker
It was an enjoyable two and a half hours. And even for somebody like me who is not a fan, but again, something that I've said before, and I'm not gonna go into it now because we already about, this episode is gonna be as long as the damn actual movie that we're talking about. I think we're almost longer actually.
02:17:45
Speaker
But I've always enjoyed the X-Men. I think the X-Men make more sense in their movie incarnation than they do in the comic books, because then it's just X-Men. They don't have to compete with 10,000 other superheroes. And the whole conflict between them and humanity, to me, it makes more sense when it's just humans and mutants.
02:18:08
Speaker
Well, we actually had this, I'm not gonna reiterate that debate now, but we actually had a little debate about this when we talked about the first X-Men movie. So if you're interested to hear our different points of view of that, go back and listen to, I think it was episode five. Yeah, I think that's what it was. It was one of the early episodes. Yeah, and we had a really spirited debate about that, which is a lot of fun. Yeah.
02:18:30
Speaker
And you make a good point, you make a good point. Like I think you can do it with the other superheroes and we'll see how it works out when the X-Men finally come to the MCU. Yeah, I'm very interested in seeing how they do that, how they introduce mutants into
02:18:49
Speaker
you know, the MCU and seeing how they handled the X-Men and how they interact with, you know, the other characters now. Yeah, same here, same here. Yeah, so that pretty much does it for Days of Future Past. You know, it's a good movie. It's worth watching. It's one of the better X-Men movies. Even with its flaws, it is still a good movie. It's still entertaining. But that was my pick for this week. So now we're tossing it back to you. What are we watching next time?
02:19:18
Speaker
Well, you know, I had something else picked out. But while we were in the middle of discussing Bryan Singer and how flawed this movie is and other X-Men movies that are flawed and everything, I said, you know what? Why don't I continue with that theme? And let's go with another flawed Bryan Singer movie, which is, of course, Superman Returns. Oh, OK. That sounds like a good one.
02:19:43
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Cause that's a, that's a movie too that like a lot of people hated when it came out. You and I, we had a different opinion. We both, we both liked a lot of parts of it, even though it is flawed in a lot of ways. It's flawed in a lot of ways, but it's flawed for, and also because as you and I have said many times, the one thing about that movie that you can't say is a problem with it is Brandon Ralph.
02:20:06
Speaker
Right. And this is one of those movies that's kind of been experienced a renaissance, at least in terms of browse performance, because of the fact that, you know, Zack Snyder had dropped the ball so spectacularly with Superman in the DCU movies. Right.
02:20:24
Speaker
And with Brandon Routh's success as the Adam in the CW, and then when he got to reprise the role of Superman in Crisis, people are starting to go back and looking back at Superman turns like, oh, there's actually some good here. We actually. Well, that's another thing. Yeah, that's another thing. I think this movie is experiencing a little bit of a renaissance. People are
02:20:45
Speaker
Uh, there are a lot of people that dismissed it before, but they're going back and they're reevaluate, which is something that people do because a lot of times in order to really evaluate something objectively, you got to give it time. Exactly. Yeah. You know, so, and I think that this would be the perfect time for us to look back at it and evaluate it. Okay. And not only, uh, not only is it, um, Brian Singer, but there's also another problematic aspect in that, which is, uh, Kevin Spacey.
02:21:15
Speaker
Oh, yeah, yeah. So we can talk about that stuff. Oh, yeah. All right. So that does it for us. Thanks so much for listening. You head over, as Derek mentioned before, we got the Facebook group, Superhero Cinephiles. Also, because we asked our listeners what they want us to do for our impending anniversary episode, and they said that they want us to do commentary of a movie, like record.
02:21:43
Speaker
as comment in real time as we're watching the movie. So we're gonna be doing that, but we gotta have a movie to talk about, and we want you guys to decide that movie. So if you go to the Superhero Cinephiles group, or you go to our Twitter page, SuperCinemapod, you can post a request. Let us know what movie you want us to talk about to comment on for our anniversary episode, and then we'll, once you get some suggestions,
02:22:10
Speaker
We'll put up a poll, have people vote on it, and the winning movie, that's what we'll talk about. That's it. See how simple that is? All you got to do is just go and give us suggestions. Exactly, yeah. Yeah, so superherocentafiles.com is our website, and you can find links to everything from their Facebook group, Facebook page, Twitter, Instagram, you name it.
02:22:33
Speaker
drop us a line, any of those places. We got a contact form on there as well. And, you know, leave us a review on iTunes. You go to our Apple podcast, whatever they're calling it this week, but you go there, even if you, you know, you leave a review, you give us a five star rating. Those ratings help boost up the podcast and they'll start showing it to more people, which means we can get more listeners. So, and that's always good for us as well.
02:22:56
Speaker
Absolutely. All right. Thanks again. And we will talk to you next week when we revisit Superman Returns. Okay. Thank you. Good night and God bless. And remember, as always, wash your hands, wear your mask, and don't make any unnecessary trips. You don't have to. Absolutely. Thanks so much.
02:23:21
Speaker
Thanks for listening to the Superhero Cinephiles Podcast. If you have any questions or comments about this or any other episode, or if you have a superhero movie or TV show you'd like us to cover in a future episode, you can email us at superheroescinephiles at gmail.com, or you can also visit us on the web at superheroescinephiles.com.
02:23:41
Speaker
If you like what you hear, leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts. Each review helps us reach more potential listeners. You can also support the show by renting or purchasing the movies discussed, or by picking up our books, all of which can be accessed through the website, as well as find links to our social media presences. The theme music for this show is a shortened version of Superhero Showdown, a royalty-free piece of music, courtesy of pheasantudios.com.