X-Men Days of Future Past

X-men : Days of Future Past

A decent movie, not quite as entertaining as Winter Soldier, but definitely worth watching.

Nearly every sci-fi or fantasy contemplates one important line: Who will the heroes go up against this time? Since the audience will already tend to know and be familiar with the heroes, to see what sets the tone of the movie it will turn to the antagonist. A writer may choose a machine or robot to be the antagonist for several reasons. However, in my opinion, a robot or machine is the most deceptively difficult antagonist to portray.  Why use the word deceptively? The choice of a machine as a nemesis seems easy. If there is no character or insufficient time is spent on the development of personality the excuse will be – well, it’s a machine. A machine is easy to duplicate, when the writer needs an army he or she need only copy and paste until there are enough of them; too much effort does not have to be expended to develop each individual character, history, personality, mannerisms and so on. Also when it comes to the ethos concerning the portrayal of death it’s easy to use a machine. When a machine is being ripped apart or dies the audience will tend to be less affected and view this death as an acceptable loss, after all a machine is not really a living creature – so what if it dies or conks out.  The most illustrious undertaking which demonstrates the difficulty with portraying machines on the big screen is the Star Wars prequel trilogy; another is the movie I Robot. One of the few movies where the use of a machine is successfully and exceptionally portrayed is the Terminator. When I saw that the writers had chosen machines as the nemesis in the most recent installment of X-men the immediate concern was execution. How effectively was this machine nemesis going to be portrayed? Would the same mistakes be made? The fact that the machines in X-men were the nemesis, yet absolutely no time was spent by the writer and producers developing a personality and character for them is an absolute no, no – a taboo. Instead the writers spend way too much time redeveloping personalities the audience, by now, should already be familiar with that of the Professor and Magneto. 

My analysis is that X-men Days of Future Past (DFP) is that it is not fundamentally about a huge battle to save the lives of mutants and humans from rampaging machines as is portrayed, rather its about how to transition the characters of Professor Xavier and Magneto played by Patrick Stewart and Ian Mckellen; older actors (who understandably may not be able to realistically play the action roles in the franchise much longer) to more youthful actors James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender. The movie therefore, at times,  becomes an elaborate self indulgence of these  two characters.  The transition from the senior actors to the more youthful actors could and should have been handled without interfering with what could have been a truly brilliant screenplay. For example, it would be easier to simply have had scientists at Xavier’s school synthesize an age altering drug from Wolverine’s blood that allowed Magneto and Xavier to permanently regress their physical age and appearance from the more senior actors to their younger selves.  Though the senior actors would be seen to transform into their more youthful selves the psychological conflict that could have been portrayed is the new temperance of the youthful mind and the senior mind attempting to coexist in the rejuvenated youthful bodies of Magneto and Xavier in the present day. These two minds would then be seen at conflict, learning from one another, youth versus experience with each winning in the appropriate situation. There would have been no need for the "back to the future stint". The audience would then accept that the new ad hoc present day actors are the younger construct of themselves. This approach would be more useful to the franchise as it means the presence of all four actors could be stretched as long as is useful. For instance, even though Xavier would be in his youthful body in the present day as McVoy there could be times he wakes up and thinks he is still Stewart and portrayed as such on the screen until he looks into a mirror and is startled to see his physical form is actually that of McVoy. For instance, McVoy in youthful anger is about to destroy an enemy without thinking then suddenly finds himself exercising restraint to instead extend a helping hand only to find he is doing so as Xavier. Only then does he realize the importance of restraint but now in his younger form played by McVoy. This is good story telling.

For the X-men to have really rocked, more time should have been spent developing the persona of the machines. What makes the Terminator the most successful portrayal of a machine or robot nemesis is the personality developed that becomes the machine. In this case Arnold’s. Without a fully developed personality the machine becomes a weak, forgettable nemesis, which is what becomes of the machines sent to destroy mutants in X-men.  Trask, played well by Dinklage, should have designed the machines around himself in the sense that when they went after the X-men Trask’s personality, thoughts and feelings should have been inside the machines and portrayed at important moments during battle. Like a master puppeteer Trask should have been able to control the movement and action sequences of the machines and his strength should have been the ability to simultaneously control an entire army of them through a mind link he, as a cutting edge scientist has invented.  He could have done this the way a conductor conducts an orchestra with all the passion, vigor, sweat and exertion. CGI would be used to overlay his interaction with the machines. When a machine is struck or injured Trask would react through movement and be in pain. As the machine drove a stake through Storm for instance the expression of deadly intent and rage would be on Trask’s face but also expressed through the machine’s features and actions. He would be the machines and the machines would be him. Having destroyed the mutants the decision to target humans would be Trask’s personal decision rather than an autonomous decision by the robots. Consequently, why Trask decides to begin targeting humans, his own kind, becomes part of the ethos of the story. What a fantastic portrayal this would be on the big screen. Dinklage is a master of the acting craft and would have played a conflicted man, an intellectual, a genius much like Xavier becoming increasingly maniacal in trying to justify to himself and to anyone (the audience) who will listen why not just mutants but part of humanity itself, that is the source of mutants, should be destroyed. To have an asset like Dinklage and not put his talent on exhibition in this way was a wasted opportunity. This storyline is not spent though, having failed to destroy the X-men using autonomous robots Trask could then use this to justify why he improves the machines so that he directly controls them so that they become an extension of his persona in a future installment of X-men, maybe even a sequel to DFP. This would indeed. be entertaining.

The development of mystique in this installment of X-men is excellent. She is not an appendage of the lead characters or male supers. She investigates. This quality also appeared to work for Gwen in Spiderman 2. This is important and it seems to explain why it is so difficult to portray credible female super-heroes who can play the lead role, as was seen in the epic failure of 2004’s Catwoman; it's all in the writing and directing. For female super-heroes the credibility of the character is not in her origin story, neither is it in how great her super powers are, how pretty she is, that she has an hour-glass figure  or who she can beat down. Rather it is in her ability to look for something difficult to find,  her ability to search for the truth, to want to gain answers, to place herself in danger if it will aid in unraveling what it is she wants explained – a “Nancy Drew” of sorts. A female superhero character may listen to instructions for example from Shield, even agree to them, but will be seen at some point not follow through on instructions as a result of stumbling upon something that does not tally with what she has been told. She is an investigator first, a super hero second. She needs to know more about what is going on around her. It’s important for producers and directors to remember this formula. A female super hero gains credibility by being written as a thriller, the action can be jaw dropping but must be secondary to how her story written. Whereas a male super hero gains credibility through action, while the thriller aspect, though secondary, needs to remain pertinent to his story to maintain cinematic momentum. No matter how sexy, beautiful,  powerful wonder woman is, she can even be seen to take on the entire Justice League and defeat them but she will still not be a credible super hero in the audience’s mind, for some unexplained reason, unless her role is that of a thriller. If she is shown first as an investigator of sorts and portrayed in situations of life threatening suspense using cinematic timing of a thriller then she is Wonder Woman.   A female super hero if portrayed fundamentally as a thriller can play the lead in a big budget movie. This is very important for directors, producers and script writers to understand. 

Wolverine played by Jackman is a triple threat super hero, however, my view is that Wolverine is one character that for me has not been translated well from the comic to the big screen. The mystery is why? This can be easily explained. Imagine that before you went to bed you put on your pajamas. Then the next day you woke up in the morning and went to work in your pajamas. Then you went on family vacation in your pajamas. How would this work for you? It would create many social problems for you wouldn’t it? Well this is the problem that the Wolverine character in Marvel Comics faces. Wolverine in X-men DFP was more believable strangely enough not because he was unsheathing his blades and angry, rather it was due to the fact that he was calm and reasonable most of the time. Go figure. Wow, he finally took off his pajamas. Maybe super heroes are just regular everyday people with powers. If this true then the persistent tension in Wolverine’s form, muscles, facial expression even when he is casual is fundamentally wrong. He has too much swag all the time and is therefore in pajamas all day long, all night long throughout the movie. The only character with perpetual sideburns, showing off muscles at every pointless opportunity that comes to mind is Johnny Bravo; except that he is the star of comedy not action. A hero should ideally occupy two states, his or her natural form and the transformed state. If a hero or mutant cannot transform but remains constantly in the “hero”, mutant state or Johnny Bravo state, that is,  is always in their pajamas, then technically they cannot blend in with normal society and are not a hero but an aberration or nuisance. This is the problem with Wolverine – he always seems to be Wolverine; there is no significant transformation from human to super-human and this on the big screen makes him a boring anomaly audiences fail to process. When Jackman is not Wolverine he should not look like Wolverine. He should take off his pajamas. Even the way his hair is always curled up in the sides like a wolverine should be stopped, slick his hair down a little, anything! Give him an afro if necessary, shave off his beard and sideburns or trim them down to almost nothing but make him take off his pajamas – make him different for different scenes i.e. hero or natural.  If he takes off his shirt when he is normal make sure his veins are not popping and muscles are not ripped. Make his personality more subdued, edgy but amiable like a normal person. There must be a distinct change when he enters the Wolverine state; even if he is bald, his hair is slicked back or disheveled it should begin to grow and move into the Wolverine “hairstyle”, if he is clean shaven his facial hair should start to grow until it forms the sideburns and beard, this is when his eyes should become intense and have that glint, his muscles and veins should then go from being relaxed to being amplified and pumped, and importantly this is when his temperament should change from easy going with an edge to having an extremely  short fuse. How can Jackman lying in bed half asleep, woken up by an alarm clock still have veins popping and muscles ripped like he’s been doing extended reps all night at the gym in his sleep? That’s just plain stupid, its over-kill – why can’t he take his pajamas off like every sane person? When he goes back to his normal form (take off his pajamas for crying out loud) all these should recede; even his facial hair, (especially those iconic sideburns - let him only have those when he is transformed). The side-burns need to disappear when he is not Wolverine, instead give Jackman a fresh, attractive modern look for his face and hair that looks nothing like when he powers up into Wolverine. Remember side-burns like that are not a modern look, its a 1960s Elvis-like look that interferes with the ability of the audience to relate to him today. Model the everyday appearance to how a normal person would look in 2014. When he begins to transform those who recognize what’s happening to him should begin to react apprehensively and if its at an inappropriate time ask him to calm down; which he can be seen to do with tremendous effort to rein in the testosterone. Also the transformation can be deployed as an animalistic sixth sense which Wolverine can use to warn everyone that something is about to happen; when they ask him what; he replies he doesn’t know but goes into full transformation just before a stealthy nemesis strikes. His ability to heal should also be factored into the transformation; yes he can heal when in the natural state only it takes longer, but if he is injured and transforms he can heal almost instantly. As a result if he gets shot or mortally wounded while normal the director then puts him through phases of transformation into Wolverine as an opportunity to demonstrate this process. For instance in DFP when the gangsters bust into his room and begin shooting, the bullets should first have hit him while in his normal form. He should have gone down. Then in rage transformed as he leaped back to his feet with the bullets popping out with the transformation. To heal rapidly he has to transform or he could go into a coma or near death state it takes time to recover from. Therefore, if he is mortally injured but doesn’t have the will to transform due to emotional turmoil it becomes life threatening not just for him but for those around depending on him to save them. This makes for good story telling. Make him take off his pajamas and the Wolverine character will be restored to its full glory.

X-men, like many other such franchises, struggles with a major problem, namely how to handle death. If a hero or nemesis can’t die then the action loses some of its edge. However, if a hero or nemesis dies then it is the loss of an asset, an extremely valuable character and their abilities. Very elaborate and complex stories are created (often involving time travel as we see in X-men DFP)  to bring back fallen heroes and nemeses. Most of this is unnecessary. The solution to this is for every individual manga, franchise or comic book universe  to have a third character adding a third point to the hero and anti-hero duality but who is independent of their contentions. This third section of the triangle is a "resurrector" or “resuscitator”. He or she has the ability to bring anyone and anything back from decrepancy, from the dead or to temporarily pull a super-hero from the future into the present. The "Resurrector" is introspectively the author or team that creates the comic inserted in the comic itself in order to remain fully in control of where the story can go.  In the Marvel Universe or X-men for example, the Resuscitator can be a mutant that has gained the ability to reach beyond the shadow of death where past and future have no meaning to retrieve anything organic or inorganic, be it flesh or machine and bring it back to life brand new with all its memories, with nothing lost,  in all its former glory. The Resuscitator has the power to temporarily or permanently restore anything that has been used (spent, decayed, destroyed be it towns, people, buildings, technology) to the way they were in their most glorious form. He or she is able to heal any wound or sickness and re-energize or re-invigorate any creature organic or inorganic that has become exhausted as a result of expending all its energy. There is no limit to the number of times the Resuscitator can bring anything back and it does not matter how long it has been dead for. The Resuscitator can be harmed, injured, even die, but is always able to revive himself or herself. His or her apprentices have similar powers but are much weaker or have much greater limitations. Depending on his or her disposition the Resuscitator is never permanently on any side, but often chooses to stand by and watch, support the heroes or support the anti-heroes if need be.  In a battle if a fighter is killed then mysteriously reappears in battle, is destroyed then shockingly or woefully appears fully healed to continue fighting during the same brawl; then the contender whether nemesis or hero should be able to stop, take a breath and discern they are living their worst nightmare:  a foe who somehow has managed to get the Resuscitator on their side in a battle. Developing the mystery, persona, intrigue, back-story,  visage of a “Resuscitator ” as a character is the pure delicious fun of every individual franchise, but most importantly it is a cinematic and story telling tool that removes the problem of how to bring back fallen heroes, how to insert interesting heroes from the future into the present or how to utterly destroy places and explain how and why they were completely restored. This allows authors to write to the very edges of their craft, cracking open suspense, thrill and mayhem they may not have been able to before since there is now in place a tool for restoration. The “resuscitator” character's role is to change the course of a story and take it logically in any direction the author or writer chooses, with impunity. This enigmatic character existing in its diverse universes is essential to every franchise as it is an indispensable tool in the literary craft of manga and comic books. To have a franchise without it is like having a vehicle with no mechanism for steering. In changing the course and direction of a story the Resuscitator could also at times seem to act with a personal cause; for instance being intrigued with “balance” bring back infamous anti-heroes in a time of peace or renowned heroes in time of anarchy simply because of his or her belief that, at times, there is a need for equilibrium. In resuscitator "lore" it is almost impossible to find the “resuscitator” and his or her apprentices unless they want to be found. With all the heroes defeated by a nemesis; a new hero can appear resuscitated from the past or pulled in from the future to help the fallen heroes. This enigmatic resuscitator character removes the tricky, but necessary problem writers face of allowing heroes and villains to die, bringing members of the anti-hero and super hero universe back as many times as is useful or is necessary thus allowing interesting stories and confrontations to be told. A great deal of destruction takes place during altercations between super heroes and their nemeses, many innocent bystanders may perish; the Resuscitator is a decent way of restoring these lives and the destruction as he or she generally holds the belief that innocent people should not suffer as collateral damage when those in the super hero universe bring about chaos. Though this pertinent character has not been fully developed into an enigmatic super hero in any franchise thus far an example of this kind of indispensable writing tool, is the collection of dragnonballs in DBZ by which the summoned dragon, Shenron, is able to completely restore destroyed lives and infrastructure by granting wishes. It allows super heroes and villains in DBZ to go all out since the writer knows, no matter how much destruction there is in the story the counter to it is that there is a mechanism by which this negative portrayal of death and destruction can be and will be reversed. For the resuscitator story and role to be accepted and understood the audience should be groomed to the point were when they see a person,  machine, object, hero or nemesis from the past or future or that died is restored and living again  they expect that the Resuscitator or an apprentice had a hand in it. Therefore, it is not an anomaly. An example is the return of Jean Grey in X-men DFP, the audience upon seeing her would have gripped their seats in excitement knowing that her appearance would mean that the resuscitator was nearby and could soon appear on the big screen. 

The other problem with X-men in general is clearly Xavier’s confinement to a wheel chair. There are simple ways around this. A special motorized leg-suit can be worn by Xavier that looks like spandex or rubberized leggings such as those scuba divers wear with circuit-like glowing print on it. These allow him to walk, run, even perform above average feats and go on some missions. The catch is that it does not restore feeling to his legs. Consequently Xavier, despite having these on prefers to remain in the wheel chair. He can be seen to say on screen something like; Interestingly, it is not on my feet, but on my wheel chair that I feel the most powerful. Xavier can be heard to say; Even though I can walk, I know that these are not my legs that are propelling me, there is no feeling, I still long dearly for my old true legs. This means that he can walk, but in reality it’s not him walking it’s the specially designed lower hero-like body suite under his trousers. The franchise is able to maintain the iconic wheelchair look, but should he be knocked off the chair or physically attacked it explains why he will be able to get up and walk, even run and jump with remarkable agility. Xavier can even be shown standing at a function; meeting and greeting dignitaries, but when the function is done ask for his  wheeled or floating wheel chair to be brought to him. When the audience sees this they understand why despite being able to walk he asks for his chair.

The fight choreography in X-men DFP is not bad. The opening sequence is well delivered with super heroes that have complementary powers gathered into one team. This allows them to work together. Speed is portrayed decently by a young fellow, but why is his hair turning grey? Already? He's just introduced his powers to the audience for goodness sake and they already have a serious weakness like that? The greying hair side effect prematurely introduced like that is like having a bad after taste before you've even had chance to swallow your drink. In an earlier analysis of Spiderman 2 I alluded to the need for producers and directors to study Kishimoto's work. DFP portrays speed well in Quicksilver's movement, but the portrayal is too commercial, lacks finesse and can still be improved on. By commercial I mean whacking the tennis balls back and forth, comically making the guards punch themselves.This is meaningless speed. It lacks finesse in the sense that it lacks a sincere objective; there is no dramatic delivery like the magician yanking the table cloth and the audience gasping in surprise, expecting the cutlery to come crashing down, only to find it is standing perfectly still on the uncovered table. This is finesse. There is speed but it ends with a slomo or dramatic stillness that sizzles.

In the area of music the franchise has not invested sufficiently in developing other genres. Or is it that it has not invested enough in how to properly integrate them into this movie genre. There is general orchestral music for the score without distinct elements of R&B, Hip Hop, Country, Rock etc to jazz up the score and make it more appealing to the current generation that has been nurtured on this type of music. More work needs to be done collaborating with up and coming artists or bands to improve this underperforming side of this genre of movies. The approach to the score of a comic book portrayed on the big screen should, in my opinion, not resemble conventional methods of creating scores for other movies. Comics are essentially a moral universe that attempts to teach the reader, who may be any age, something important. Therefore, it is not enough to just have an instrumental score. The score should speak to the audience conveying the unfolding drama and its, message and tone. An example to use is probably Lord of Rings, when the Steward of Gondor asks Pippin to sing him a song. When Pippin sings, his tone which can be viewed as representing the instrumental conveys the mood and his words convey the message of what is unfolding on the screen. Personally this duality is what I would expect predominantly from the director of the score of a comic book based movie. The words and voice should take precedence over the instrumentals throughout the score. This voice and what it is saying and ensuring the audience hears it in a way that flows with what is happening on screen is what the director of music should be focusing on for this genre of movies, not just the staccatos, tempo, violins and wind instruments used to define the score of other movie genres.  For instance a voice can be heard beginning to rap or sing a-capella, without instruments as a brawl starts to unfold. The audience is expected to hear the meaning in the words as they relate either to why the battle is being fought or how its going to go down. Then the instrumental joins the voice.This methodology is part of the comic book lore, but its currently not really being adequately applied by any studio engaged in this genre of movies.

Once again as is expected of these super hero franchises there is very little real diversity. An effort is made to have diversity in the secondary mutants observed in the battle at the beginning of the movie, but these are secondary characters that will have no strong bearing on the unfolding story. In this sense Winter Soldier thoroughly trumps X-men by introducing Falcon. International audiences are rubbing their hands together in anticipation of the momentous arrival of Black Panther in the Avenger franchise. Yet they continue to watch him standing by the bleachers kept out of the game. This is an unused ace Marvel Comics  has up its sleeves. The apparent fear of the Avenger franchise to bring in Black Panther, apprehensive that it will heighten racial or some other tensions or is inappropriate because of his back-story is bogus hoopla. Keeping Black Panther out of the Avengers and out of the big screen Marvel Comics super hero playing field seems to resemble a re-enactment of keeping Jackie Robinson off the baseball pitch. Like Jackie Robinson everyone who it's not important to has a good reason why Black Panther should not be allowed on the pitch and Marvel Comics seems to be buying into the nonsense. This is like being on your way to the Fast and Furious set and somebody is telling you to park your Bugatti because its too fast and makes too much noise. What?!! Are you crazy? Let’s hope the Black Panther delivers an almighty smack down,  turns the Avengers heroes inside out like an earthquake and is given a resounding introduction by the director, producers and writers of this story who are being hoodwinked into delaying his arrival. Let Jackie Robinson play, dammit. Be smart – don’t be fooled, into further delaying the big screen debut of this long overdue mega hero. What a fantastic opportunity to blow the box office through the roof and generate serious revenues for Marvel Comics, lets hope it won’t be wasted or mishandled as they did with Falcon.  

On the cupid front, X-men DFP handles romance with the same clumsiness it was portrayed in Winter Soldier. Since there is a kiss in Winter Soldier, albeit a forced one between Cap and Black Widow, Winter Soldier trumps X-men DFP in the romance department. Writing  romance into an action/thriller without subtracting from the rapid pace of a thriller is very skillful and requires a writer who knows his or her craft or else they will leave It out altogether in the movie or fumble through it. For top marks all the boxes have to be checked and if the romance does not add to the cinematic tension in the story being told, then not all the boxes are ticked and it’s not a job well done. 

On the whole despite its shortcomings X-men DFP is fun to watch, I would definitely recommend you go see it.