{"id":2328,"date":"2014-06-02T16:00:11","date_gmt":"2014-06-02T23:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/?p=2328"},"modified":"2014-06-02T12:56:44","modified_gmt":"2014-06-02T19:56:44","slug":"x-men-days-of-future-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/2014\/06\/02\/x-men-days-of-future-past\/","title":{"rendered":"X-Men: Days of Future Past"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"X-Men<\/a><\/p>\n

Directed by: Bryan Singer
\nStarring: Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult, Peter Dinklege, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellan
\nRated: PG- 13 for sequences of intense sci-fi violence and action, some suggestive material, nudity and language<\/p>\n

Comic book fans are no strangers to \u201cretcon\u201d \u2013 short for \u201cretroactive continuity\u201d \u2013 that device long used by the major comic book publishing houses (among others) to change the events of past publications. Retconning is far more common than \u201crebooting\u201d a franchise, which is what most moviegoers are used to. Consider the Spider-Man films of the last fifteen years: three from Sam Raimi starring Tobey Maguire, then five years later, \u201cThe Amazing Spider-Man\u201d with Andrew Garfield. These weren\u2019t sequels, they just ignored the previous films and started over.<\/p>\n

The X-Men films have taken a different approach, creating prequels when \u201cX-Men: The Last Stand\u201d left things in a problematic state (several characters dead, and possible storylines from the comics nixed as a result). The newest film, \u201cX-Men: Days of Future Past,\u201d acts to retcon events from earlier films \u2013 as expected. As soon as it was clear that there was time travel in the movie and that both sets of actors were involved, it was obvious a retcon was in the works<\/p>\n

The plot is loosely based on the famous comics arc of the same name, but only in general terms. In the film, Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) is sent back in time from a dystopian future where mutants (and the humans who try to help them) have been nearly exterminated by powerful robots called Sentinels. His goal: find the young Professor X (James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender) and persuade them to help him stop an assassination which acted as the catalyst to get the Sentinel program off the ground.<\/p>\n

The broad strokes of the story are more than a little hokey, but the actors make things believable. Jackman is incredibly popular as Wolverine for a reason \u2013 he can be both serious and hilarious, and he does an excellent job portraying a simple, direct, violent man who has to stay hidden and use persuasion to accomplish his task.<\/p>\n

Of course, McAvoy and Fassbender are incredibly gifted actors, and like Stewart and McKellan, they bring their acting chops to the table even in a film most would consider lightweight. In 1973, Charles Xavier was a very different person than the Professor X we (and Wolverine) know. McAvoy manages to make him a petulant, angry young man without making him a ridiculous whiner \u2013 no mean feat. Fassbender\u2019s Magneto hasn\u2019t changed at all, however. He\u2019s still the angry, focused, completely determined man he\u2019s always been.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s only one scene in which Stewart and McAvoy interact (and sadly none for McKellan and Fassbender), but it\u2019s a joy to see two top-notch actors play the same person having a very difficult conversation with his younger self. The X-Men films have always taken themselves more seriously than those from Marvel Studios, but they wisely cast actors good enough to pull that off.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re a huge fan of the original story from the comics, you\u2019ll need to set that aside. This is a flick for people who like superhero movies and don\u2019t mind if the plot isn\u2019t an exact copy of the source material. If you aren\u2019t in that group of people, you should probably steer clear of \u201cX-Men: Days of Future Past.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Directed by: Bryan Singer Starring: Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult, Peter Dinklege, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellan Rated: PG- 13 for sequences of intense sci-fi violence and action, some suggestive material, nudity and language Comic book fans are no strangers to \u201cretcon\u201d \u2013 short for \u201cretroactive continuity\u201d \u2013 that device long used by the major comic book publishing houses (among others) to change the events of past publications. Retconning is far more common than \u201crebooting\u201d a franchise, which is what most moviegoers are used to. Consider the Spider-Man films of the last fifteen years: three from Sam Raimi starring Tobey Maguire, then five years later, \u201cThe Amazing Spider-Man\u201d with Andrew Garfield. These weren\u2019t sequels, they just ignored the previous films and started over. The X-Men films have taken a different approach, creating prequels when \u201cX-Men: The Last Stand\u201d left things in a problematic state (several characters dead, and possible storylines from<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2329,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/X-Men-Days-of-Future-Past.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2oSX4-By","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2328"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2330,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2328\/revisions\/2330"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}