Movie Critics Thread

[Paulbot]

I finally saw X-Men: Days of Future Past last night. Freakin' awesome!

One question though...

How come Professor X has his original body in the future? I remember him being disintegrated in X3, and I know that his consciousness was transferred into that brain dead patient -- so how does he still look like his pre-disintegrated self? Have I missed something?

Take your pick:

a) The brain-dead patient was Professor X's twin brother.
b) The brain-dead patient was a shapechanger
c) After awaking the Professor went and visited the Morlock known as Masque who made the new body look like his old one.
d) Professor X mentally projects an image of his old body so people recognise him
e) The film makers decided to not bother explaining it

[GoktimusPrime]

^lolol, I think I'll go with option E.

[kurdt_the_goat]

I watched all of the X-Men movies recently and have to say, if their community is anything like ours, i bet there are countless threads on continuity issues and plot holes!
That said, i still enjoyed Days of Future Past, and next to The Wolverine i felt it was about a thousand times better.

[Lint]

Take your pick:

a) The brain-dead patient was Professor X's twin brother.
b) The brain-dead patient was a shapechanger
c) After awaking the Professor went and visited the Morlock known as Masque who made the new body look like his old one.
d) Professor X mentally projects an image of his old body so people recognise him
e) The film makers decided to not bother explaining it

I think the 'official' story is A, it is Xavier's brain dead twin who is brain-dead because Xavier was so powerful he stole all his brainwaves whilst sharing the womb. Though accepting why someone would bother to rear a brain dead child to adulthood and the fact that this twin body is also coincidentally wheelchair-bound requires a stretch of believeability.

[Bartrim]

Take your pick:

a) The brain-dead patient was Professor X's twin brother.
b) The brain-dead patient was a shapechanger
c) After awaking the Professor went and visited the Morlock known as Masque who made the new body look like his old one.
d) Professor X mentally projects an image of his old body so people recognise him
e) The film makers decided to not bother explaining it

You forgot f) a wizard did it.

[Paulbot]

...and the fact that this twin body is also coincidentally wheelchair-bound requires a stretch of believeability.

In the comics, back in the 80s, Professor X was killed when a Brood took over his body. His mind was transferred into a perfect clone of his body. Despite the clone body not having the injuries of his old body, he found he couldn't walk. His mind was so used to his legs not working it took him quite a while for him to overcome that.

But eventually he did and he was walking around quite merrily, until his possessed son broke his spine many years later.

Given the apocalyptic introduction of the sentinels he may not have had time to 'get over it'. Or he was unlucky enough for a sentinel to get him at some point.

It would have been better for Magneto to be in the chair (as in the original DOFP story).

You forgot f) a wizard did it.

Well Gandalf was in the movie, although he calls himself Erik these days

[XMan]

The official explanation from Singer was "X-3 no longer exists nor happened."

[Bartrim]

I love how they said "we are not rebooting the X-Men franchise". We will just use time travel to erase all the bits you don't like.

[GoktimusPrime]

I watched all of the X-Men movies recently and have to say, if their community is anything like ours, i bet there are countless threads on continuity issues and plot holes!
That said, i still enjoyed Days of Future Past, and next to The Wolverine i felt it was about a thousand times better.

I don't think that fans of other franchises are any less nitpicky than ours. But we generally don't hear as much vehement criticism over these films because, IMHO, they are generally better made films than Transformers. They are still generally character-driven stories (e.g. X-1 was Rogue's journey, X-2 for Wolverine etc.). The stories take themselves seriously, they're not throwing product advertising in our faces all the time, and the stories flow coherently without stalling the story with immature frat boy "humour", shameless gratuitious body shots etc.

The official explanation from Singer was "X-3 no longer exists nor happened."

Yeah, but wouldn't that only happen in the new universe (Universe B) created from the collapse of the primary universe (Universe A) after thwarting Mystique's assassination of Trask? I can understand Xavier looking like his original self when we see him greeting Wolverine at the end when he wakes up in the 'future' (from 1973's POV), as he is now in Universe B and Universe A no longer exists. That was the objective of the mission to begin with; it was stated that Wolverine would be Universe A's sole survivor; the rest of the X-Men from Universe A were willing to sacrifice themselves to create a better Universe B. They mentioned it from the POV of "not remembering" the events of Universe A, but arguably the Univ. A characters would simply cease to exist (along with the rest of Univ. A) and be replaced by their counterparts from parallel Universe B. So I still don't understand how Xavier still looks like Patrick Stewart when we see him existing in the future world of Universe A, since in that reality, his body was destroyed.

Which also leads me to another question. We see both Univ. A and "pre-Univ." B Wolverines switching between each other, particularly in the scene when he encounters William Striker and momentarily reverts back to being Wolverine B before Wolverine A reasserts himself. We then see Wolverine being thrown into the river and then Universe A is destroyed. Then decades later, we see Wolverine A wake up inside Xavier's school for the first time since his drowning in 1973 and Xavier initially regards him as Wolverine B, but later realises and acknowledges him as Wolverine A.

Huh?! Did the drowning somehow surpress Wolverine A's consciousness, allowing Wolverine B to continue living up until that point, only to be replaced with Wolverine A? And while Xavier was glad to see Wolverine A's 'return,' doesn't that mean that Wolverine B is "dead"? Unless Wolverine B was a jerk and Xavier was glad to see the back of him. Or even weirder, if Wolverine begins alternating between being Wolverine A - who has all the memories of Universe A (future war with the Sentinels, Dark Phoenix etc.) happening, and Wolverine B, who would be completely oblivious to all this since it never happened in his world!

[Paulbot]

I'm going to put on my nitpicky X-Men fan hat, let me try to sort it out.

Which also leads me to another question. We see both Univ. A and "pre-Univ." B Wolverines switching between each other, particularly in the scene when he encounters William Striker and momentarily reverts back to being Wolverine B before Wolverine A reasserts himself. We then see Wolverine being thrown into the river and then Universe A is destroyed. Then decades later, we see Wolverine A wake up inside Xavier's school for the first time since his drowning in 1973 and Xavier initially regards him as Wolverine B, but later realises and acknowledges him as Wolverine A.

Huh?! Did the drowning somehow surpress Wolverine A's consciousness, allowing Wolverine B to continue living up until that point, only to be replaced with Wolverine A? And while Xavier was glad to see Wolverine A's 'return,' doesn't that mean that Wolverine B is "dead"? Unless Wolverine B was a jerk and Xavier was glad to see the back of him. Or even weirder, if Wolverine begins alternating between being Wolverine A - who has all the memories of Universe A (future war with the Sentinels, Dark Phoenix etc.) happening, and Wolverine B, who would be completely oblivious to all this since it never happened in his world!

This might be easier with drawings.

Once the apocalyptic future was erased, Kitty was no longer sitting there keeping Logan's mind phased back to 1970-whatever. So it snapped back to his body at the relative time it left with all the accumulated memories etc. His mind didn't stay in 1970.

The 1970s Logan woke up, found he had a bunch of missing time, but ended up following the same path to Weapon X and Canada and Rogue and an ambush by the Brotherhood that led him to the X-Men in the 'original' timeline. The only difference this time would be Professor would be more familiar with him (thanks to their time together) but know that it would be many years yet before the time travelling mind returned to where it had left. Xavier realises this has finally happened when he sees Wolverine at the end of the movie, and can finally talk to him about what happened back in the 1970s because the Wolverine that showed up with Rogue was there only in body (for the most part).

So come the end of the film Wolverine is returned to his body at the time he left, with all the memories of his timeline, overwriting the memories in the body of the Wolverine that had lived the changed history between the 70s and today. He's surprised to see characters back from the dead but as far as they are concerned they were talking to him yesterday. This would be considered a killing of the Wolverine that lived through the altered history from a philosophical debate.

He may indeed have both sets of memories but the ones from the original timeline are currently dominant, but nothing a telepath couldn't help him sort out.