X-Men: Days of Future Past came out last week. It’s been super well received and has become Bryan Singer’s biggest box-office debut to date (even bigger than Jack the Giant Slayer). But like most big blockbuster-y type films, a lot in the movie didn’t seem to make much sense. Here’s some of that stuff:
WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS
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–At the end of X-Men: The Last Stand, Professor Xavier had died, but it was teased that his consciousness was implanted into a guy in a coma. Did they give that guy plastic surgery to look like Patrick Stewart and then cripple him? If so, that’s really fucking weird.
–Why do they make these movies an allegory for various civil rights struggles? In interviews, Bryan Singer has said that his portrayal of Bolivar Trask is based on Hitler, but I feel like if Jews had the ability to kill people with their mind, history would feel VERY differently about the Holocaust. Same with the comparisons the movies draw between curing gay people and curing mutants. If Cyclops had an unexpected seizure in Times Square, he could accidentally kill hundreds and hundreds of people. Why wouldn’t you support curing him?
–What does “Days of Future Past” mean?
–Beast invented a serum that cures paralysis. Kinda dickish for him to not make that widely available, no?
–Why don’t Kitty Pryde’s clothes fall off when she passes through objects?
–If Kitty Pryde is able to pass through objects and transfer that ability to others, why doesn’t everyone just grab on to her whenever there’s a Sentinel/any kind of danger around?
–Magneto implies that he had sex with Mystique, but when she’s in her natural state, she has no genitals. Is she hiding a vagina somewhere that I can’t see? Can Mystique only have sex when she’s morphed to look like another person?
–Why does nobody in the past have any questions for Wolverine about what happens with culture or technology or fashion or politics in the future?
–Why does nobody find it gross how much of an egomaniac Professor X is? He has an X-shaped fountain in his driveway and stained glass windows with X’s in them. Can you imagine if someone you knew did that? Barf.
–Are Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan meant to be 50 years older than James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender? They have aged well.
–Why did they cast an erect penis as Wolverine?
–What is Quicksilver listening to during the kitchen scene? Does he have some kind of pre-Walkman device that plays music at 500 times speed?
–Why are people so bad at shooting Mystique? There are at least two points in this movie where she is in a room full of armed men and gymnastic-kicks her way out of it.
–Couldn’t Kitty Pryde have taken them into an underground cave system with no entrances to do the time-travel thing? Or like, a nuclear bunker or the subway or anywhere that isn’t on top of a mountain?
–Why send Wolverine to that specific moment a day before the event that changes history? Why not send him a few years further back? He could kill Peter Dinklage as a baby or something. Or even, like, kill his grandfather just to be safe.
–If Wolverine doesn’t age, why does he look so much older/more ripped than in previous X-Men films? Obviously I get that Hugh Jackman is a real person and has to age, but why have that line where someone mentions the fact that he doesn’t age? Why not just not bring it up? Or CGI his wrinkles out?
Wolverine in 1973 and Wolverine in 1999. He really doesn’t age!
–Why does the world shown in the X-Men movies look exactly as it looks in reality, where there are no mutants? For instance, why has security not been adapted to take mutants into consideration? Like, why is Nightcrawler able to teleport into the Oval Office to attack the president in X2? Why is Mystique constantly able to morph her way through security by pretending to be other people? They’ve know she has that ability since the 70s, surely there’s something they should be doing to counter that threat?
–Magneto frequently moves pieces of metal that are more than 100-feet away from him (the stadium, for instance). So why did keeping him 100-feet under the Pentagon matter at all? Couldn’t he just drag every metal object in the Pentagon down on top of him?
–Why does Mystique always un-morph during her evil missions? Wouldn’t it have been way less risky to just stay as Peter Dinklage the whole time she was robbing his office?
–Can Mystique morph into anyone? Why doesn’t she morph into a preemie baby and hide herself in a trash can or a drawer whenever trouble comes her way?
–I guess she can morph into anything, since she’s always morphing into sexy-ass Jennifer Lawrence when she wants to “pass as human.” Is Jennifer Lawrence some projection of her ideal body type? Is there someone out there that looks like Jennifer Lawrence that Mystique is impersonating?
–Since when did Mystique become the most important character in the X-Men universe? (I guess when Jennifer Lawrence won an Oscar?)
–How can you explain America not winning the Vietnam War if they had superpowered mutants on their side? Did the Viet Cong have mutants too?
–Why didn’t the US military use the Sentinels against the Viet Cong? That might have been an easier sell for Trask if he wanted to get his program up and running.
–Why did nobody ever mention to Wolverine that Magneto had been falsely imprisoned for the assassination of JFK? I feel like that’s a story I would tell all the time if it had happened to me.
–Why does Magneto only sometimes gesture with his hands when moving metal objects? Because it looks cool? Is he being vain?
–How did Mystique find Magneto in the Paris subway? I know she answers that question by saying, “You taught me well.” But like, what did he teach her? What skill could she possibly possess that would help her track someone down with no information like that?
–Why didn’t James McAvoy take some of his serum to Paris with him? Who knows how long he might be there.
–How does Magneto fuse the train tracks to the Sentinels without being able to see them? Was he psychic in the 70s?
–Why would Peter Dinklage appear at that event knowing that Mystique is out there trying to kill him and could literally be anyone?
–Knowing that Mystique, who, again, can be ANYONE, is out there trying to kill him, why didn’t Peter Dinklage have that mutant detector thing constantly switched on? Waiting until you’re locked in an underground bunker with a bunch of people to bust that thing out seems really dumb.
–How is Magneto controlling the Sentinel’s computer systems?
–Do Wolverine’s magical healing powers include “not drowning”? Like, seriously. How long was he down there before Stryker/Mystique found him?
–Why would they cancel the Sentinel program in the end? A dude just lifted a stadium up WITH HIS FUCKING MIND and tried to kill the president, and he’s still out there on the loose. But because his plan failed they decide to cancel the security measures designed to stop him? OK!
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UPDATE: We originally titled this post “What the Fuck Is Going on in X-Men: The Last Stand?” because we are idiots. Like the plot in Days of Future Past, that title didn’t make much sense. So we’ve fixed this post.
