Wow. One of the most inspired ideas ever. You have actors who played the X-Men characters in the present day, actors who played them in a prequel, and a famous X-Men story involving time travel. Let’s tell that and get the whole gang together!
Although it’s not clearly explained how we went from the normal-looking present day of the The Wolverine stinger to the post-apocalyptic one here, what we see is too captivating for me to care. In the early 2020s, sentinels created a half-century earlier to wipe out mutantkind have also turned on humans who could potentially breed mutants, leaving the whole world at the mercy of the sentinels. The catalyst was ironically Mystique’s killing of the sentinel inventor in the early 1970s, as that emboldened support for the program among humans who felt mutants had proven themselves evil.
Professor X wishes he could go back in time and try lovingly talking sense into his foster sister, but Kitty Pride (the then-Ellen Page) says her ability to send people back in time would ravage their body beyond repair if they went that far back. Enter Wolverine, whose body of course can heal itself.
Kitty was the one sent back in time in the original story, but it’s no surprise that the filmmakers foregrounded Jackman over Page, whose career had peaked with Juno over a half-decade earlier.
Still, I’m glad Kitty nonetheless got to play a significant part in the powerful present-day portion movie. So did Professor X, Magneto, Iceman, Colossus, and Storm.
The movie is mainly set in the past, though, and focuses on Wolverine, Magneto, Professor X, and Beast, with some help from new mutant Quicksilver (Evan Peters), attempting to track down Mystique and talk her out of killing Trask (Peter Dinklage). All the major characters have their memorable moments and arcs, and seem fully in control of their own destiny, with the film overall making a deep statement about the power of choice, both good and bad.
This all leads up to the perfect ending.
***SPOILERS***
We see that the mutants live happily ever after, with Charles’s school thriving and the older mutants, even Wolverine, teaching the current kids. We get back Famke Janssen and James Marsden in cameos, and the love triangle is actually perfectly resolved once and for all. We also get cameos from the actors playing Beast (not sure why Kelsey Grammer was uncredited though), Colossus (who first became a significant character in The Last Stand), and Rogue. In the latter case it was surreal seeing the onetime co-protagonist of the series reduced to a non-speaking role, and I thought that might have been due to Anna Paquin’s schedule being filled by her True Blood commitments, but apparently there’s a “Rogue Cut” that adds 17 minutes of footage and fleshes out several characters. While I didn’t watch that for this post, because I already own the original cut on Amazon Prime and that cut is free on Disney Plus, as much as I loved the original version and as much greater as I heard the longer cut is I’m gonna have to buy that one day!
The only thing I might add is that older Charles and Erik talked, when thinking death was impending, about how many years they wasted fighting and younger Charles later said they would all be together in the future. It would have been really nice if we also saw Magneto in the mansion at the end. Even more so, it would have been awesome to see Rebecca Rojmin returning as Mystique, the only surviving main character from the original not brought back in her older form. For that matter, maybe they could have said that since mutants and humans are apparently living in harmony, there was no needs for any of the previous films’ battles. Toad, Sabretooth, Pyro, etc. could have been living in the mansion with the others. Maybe some of my quibbles will be addressed in the longer cut. No big deal though, given how much I loved this film as is.
***SPOILERS***
I was a little peeved that the only nudity we got in any of the main X-Men films was of Hugh Jackman, even though most comic book fans are male. and here in particular we had to stare at his ass, even though it’s a PG-13 movie. It made more sense when I realized the director is gay. Regardless, glad Bryan Singer added to X2 and First Class with another masterwork. This was the most successful film in the franchise, deservedly so, and also the most critically acclaimed until Logan came along.
Looking forward to discussing Logan, but two other movies come first.
Bottom Line: Fun times.
Up Next: A spin-off.
Questions? Comments? Feel free to write below.
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