The X-Files: I Want to Believe

I've been watching a lot of the old "The X-Files" TV series lately. Taken episode to episode, it's often fascinating and sometimes brilliant, like a "Twilight Zone" revival with FBI agents Mulder and Scully serving as Rod Serling. Taken in toto, it's a frustrating thing and why, despite its occasional brilliance, I didn't become a "TruFan." I just never believed, not completely.

And I bring up those issues in this review, written at the time of the film's release.

"That's not within your perview, Doctor"

The new "X-files" movie, The X-Files: I Want to Believe, feels just like an episode of the old series. They've returned to their old "haunts" filming in Vancouver, Canada. The mystery--the disappearance of an FBI agent--is solved, but not resolved. And Scully and/or "Spooky" Mulder spend a lot of screen-time working at x-crossed purposes searching for someone or something in a vacated building at night, with plastic sheets, rebar and lots of back-lighting, or in dark, drippy labs (why is that dark?) and what look like dilapidated double-wides in the sticks.

And they're bickering. Just like old times.

When last time we left Fox and Dana (in the series finale) they were one happy family with baby William* squeezed between them for that kiss it took the entire series to come to.***** By that time nobody cared a rip about Mulder's UFO-abducted sister, the bees, black oil, ET's, super-soldiers, and the government collusion concerning...well, probably all of it. Everybody was so confused by that time, the only thing the audience knew for sure was that Mulder and Scully had to get together.

Dr. Scully (Gillian Anderson) is recruited by the FBI to find Mulder (David Duchovny) ("What are you, my booking agent now?"), living by himself in a remote ranch-house presumably decorated by John Nash. He's been discredited, brought up "on charges" by the FBI (it's never explained--Hey, it's "The X-files!" They don't explain anything!**), but they still want his help.*** The Fed's have a lead from a psychic that they want Mulder to check out. He's a de-frocked Catholic priest and convicted pedophile who sees vague visions that might give clues to the missing Agent--or not. It does give an opportunity for the FBI's two biggest doubting Thomasi--he, of religion, she, of the supernatural—to lock horns and debate the whole movie. A psychic priest? They probably haven't had this much fun since they saw The Song of Bernadette!

While Mulder mulls with Father Joe (Billy Connolly), Scully goes back to work as a surgeon at the cheery Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic Hospital, where her religion is tested with a patient who needs a radical stem-cell treatment, which gets the stink-eye from the father-in-charge, Father Ybarra. Scully threatens to take his objections to a higher authority. "I already have," says the priest.

While Scully deals with her perviews, Mulder deals with his perv's view, while we get to watch the perps do their dirty work, if we could only figure out what that was.

Creepy it is--you expect creepiness with "The X-Files," but there are none of those truly unsettling moments that trace an icy finger down your spine as the series could occassionally do. Nor are there any particularly good ideas that make you shake your head at the cleverness of the makers, those being "X-Files" veterans, Frank Spotnitz and Chris Carter. There's also a slight hint of homophobia, which might be attributable to its origins on Fox (20th Century Fox is the film's distributor).

 

But it's nice to see a continuation of the longest theological debate on television outside of Bishop Sheen. ****

I'd just like to see a question answered once in a while.

* A script complication dictated by Gillian Anderson's real-life pregnancy. Amanda Peet co-stars in this. She and Anderson must have compared stories of how a pregnancy can throw a TV series out of whack. Talk about yer complications.

** Consider yourself lucky to have the Credits! It's the only thing cut-and-dried in the movie!

*** If that doesn't make sense director Chris Carter defuses it somewhat at FBI headquarters by paying particular attention to portraits of Pres. Bush and FBI godfather J. Edgar Hoover. Oh, well...yeah...now it makes perfect sense!

**** And when you see it, be sure to watch all the ways through the credits for the answer to one question....

 

***** Again, this was written at the time of the film's release—there have been a couple more series continuations whenever schedules and salaries could be negotiated. But, even so, the ongoing story only seems to get more confusing—while simultaneously more internalized—than revelatory. 

X-Men: First Class

Written at the time of the film's release... 

 

"The X Factor"

or

"Don't 'X,' Don't Tell"

Movies from Marvel Studios seem to be running the pattern of "Star Trek" movies (at least in my eyes), the "even"-numbered ones tend to be best, while the "odd"-numbered ones are a little clunky.* That's certainly the case with the "X-Men" franchise. Bryan Singer's first film did a lot of heavy lifting adapting the comic to the screen, but there was a virulent strain of exposition, and some jostled positioning of the characters in what is essentially an action soap opera.  The best thing about it was its casting, but its big confrontation was poorly done.  X-II, also  directed by Singer, with all the introductions out of the way, concentrated on story and moved along smoothly with an emotional end-point that seemed to matter. Singer left to complicate the "Superman" movies, and left X-III in the hands of Brett Ratner, who produced a very expensive film that looked cheap, felt cheap and really screwed up the X-Men line-up. Ratner was required to use an expensive cast which ate up a lot of the film's budget, and the results on-screen suffered, despite the audience familiarity of the stars. There really didn't seem to be anywhere for another film to go, without some heavy gene-splicing of the cast.

So, here's the fourth "X-Men" Movie (we won't talk about X-Men Origins: Wolverine—we already have) X-Men: First Class, a sort of re-boot of the series, although keeping elements from the original films that everybody seems to like.  They could have easily made it an "X-Men Origins" film.  It starts where the first film began—at a concentration camp in Poland as Erik Lensherr (here Bill Milner, but he'll grow up to be Michael Fassbender**) watches helplessly (for the moment) as his parents are imprisoned in a concentration camp.***  The parallel story is of young Charles Xavier (Laurence Belcher, then James McAvoy ) who finds a metamorph in his kitchen (Morgan Lily, but she'll be played as a young adult by the ubiquitous Jennifer Lawrence), whom, recognizing a fellow mutant-traveler, he takes in as a sister.  Their lives progress and Lensherr, who has developed powers over metal, hunts down the Nazis (particularly Kevin Bacon) who killed his parents and tortured him, while Xavier attends Oxford with his "sister" Raven, achieving top honors—and why wouldn't he, as he can read minds and project thoughts. 

What is nice about X-Men: First Class is it takes real-world events of the time that Lee and Kirby were creating the series in the early 1960's—in this case, the nuclear gamesmanship of 1962 when the U.S. planted missiles in Turkey, which was then challenged by the Russians planting nukes in Cuba, thus lighting the match for the Cuban Missile Crisis in October of that year, which came within a sub-crew's breath of a nuclear X-change between the two very real "super-powers."  Singer is credited with the story, and however counter-intuitive it might have been to place it there (and it does create a couple of continuity errors), it "works" and works gang-busters.  With Singer's story and the direction of Matthew Vaughn (getting stronger and stronger with each movie), it feels more like a 60's groovy spy story than your standard super-hero fare, and for once—save for a poignant moment in X-II—the consequences of the plot really seem to matter.

Those familiar with the "X-Men" comics will know of "The Hellfire Club"**** and it turns out that organization of nefariousness and debauchery fits in well with the swinging '60's.  Led by Sebastian Shaw (Bacon), with henchmen Azazel (Jason Flemyng), Riptide (Álex González) and Emma Frost (January Jones), they've pulled the mental strings of military puppets on both sides to set up the nuclear stand-off, and as Shaw absorbs energy, a nuclear holocaust wouldn't kill him, it would only make him stronger.

Banding together with the CIA, (uneasily, except for agent Moira McTaggert—Rose Byrne and another played by Oliver Platt), Xavier joins forces with Lensherr, in classic "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" style, and begin recruiting other mutants to form a secret society of operatives hiding in the shadows to do undercover work against the Hellfire Club. Pretty soon, things become dire enough that they must come out of the cold and overtly take a stand, certainly taking their place among "the best and the brightest."

It's your classic "oppressed minority" story (something Lee and Kirby knew all too well when they were doing the comics—both were Jews, which was common among the pioneers of the creators of the superhero comics genre), but during the 60's it was a civil rights metaphor that only became more overt as the years went on.  Singer pitched his initial The X-Men concept as a "meeting between Martin Luther King and Malcolm X," but it was more than that; Singer gave it a "hiding in plain sight" slant towards gay rights that involved not only opposition to the mutants but out-right hysteria (something the scenario buys into with the "recruitment" angle, long a charge of anti-gay paranoia).

So, you have a superhero flick that acknowledges its comics roots by employing a style from the movies of its origin's time-frame, with a rather clear-eyed look at a real-life crisis (mutants weren't involved, although I've always had my suspicions about Robert McNamara), some nice performances, grand-standing direction, good action set-pieces, and a few nice surprises for fans of both the comics and the previous films.  X-Men: First Class manages to be more than the sum of its parts, certainly the best of the series and among the best of the genre, thanks to its scope and style and its own undefinable, uncanny "X"-factor.

The First "X-Men" comic (from 1963)

* Iron Man being an exception.

** Fassbender is terrific, playing contained rage and menace throughout, but when he lets go with the emotional histrionics, there is just enough control to it to make you worry what would happen if he "really" let go.

*** They even use Michael Kamen's music from the first film in the scene.

**** Although writer Chris Claremont and artist John Byrne cite "A Touch of Brimstone"—a controversial episode of the British TV series "The Avengers" (and it's important to make that distinction with Marvel)—there's been a long history of actual Hellfire Clubs. 

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Noooooooo! Written at the time of the film's release....

Shmukt!: Claws for Alarm

   

When the X-Men movies lost its chief stylist Bryan Singer to do Superman Returns it was a double disappointment. X-Men III: The Last Stand was the most expensive movie ever made—at the time), and looked terrible. Top-heavy with stars that not only bloated the budget but capsized the script to fulfill their demands, it brought the X-series to a sad ending, x-hausted, x-cessive, and x-cremental (while Superman Returns felt like going to The Church of Kal-El and Klan).

 

Time to re-boot, so here we have, rising as he always does from his own ashes, "Wolverine Begins" with Hugh Jackman reprising his break-out role. It's a smart move. Jackman was "the" star of the "X-men" movies and after the first, they were tailored for him, like his strategically ripped wife-beaters. One is hard-pressed to think of another movie where he is used so effectively (and succeeded at the box-office).

But this is a curious re-boot. At a time when most super-hero movies are dusting off the cliches, X-Men Origins: Wolverine (the title says it all) coats itself in the dust and the muck and the mire and revels in it. For instance: there is not one, but two scenes where Jim Logan (Jackman) looks up at a conveniently omniscient overhead camera and yells his frustration to the skies and his x-communicating God.

 

Are you kidding me? Hasn't that shot been decommissioned after all the easy laughs it's garnered on "The Daily Show?"**

It has. But nobody told director Gavin Hood (Rendition). He seems unconcerned about cliches or recycled material (or "sell-past" dates), as the movie lurches like lead villain Sabretooth (Liev Schreiber, but it was Tyler Mane in the original where they didn't know each other) bounding from one bad idea to the next, linked as they are by that most mainstream of transitions—the one-to-one dissolve. We get a lot of them in the Main Title. After the Bruce-Wayne-Meets-Oedipus childhood trauma opening, Hood shows the brothers Logan fighting in war after war, guns fading into guns and helmets into helmets. It's quite "artily" if unimaginatively done,* but Hood keeps using it until you start looking for the detail he might use in the next transition. Flames? Ocean waves? How about a dusk to dawn transition? That hasn't been done since...well, since I started writing this.

A lot of the problem is that Marvel—"The House of Ideas," as it likes to trumpet—has culled so much from other stories that the whole Wolverine opus reads like a Reader's Digest Omnibus of Comic Literature. Logan gets recruited to join a Dirty X-Dozen black-ops unit, then declares himself "Wolverine no more" and becomes a lumberjack (and that's okay) until his school-teacher gal-pal is killed, and he swears revenge (cue the overhead camera and the underhanded cliche). 

He then submits to a "Frankenstein" experiment under the control of his former superior Stryker (Danny Huston, prequeling for Brian Cox), that coats his skeleton with indestructible adamantium. He escapes Stryker, and hides out with an old farm couple, the Kent's...er, no, the Hudson's, before being attacked—again—and hooking up with Gambit (Taylor Kitsch) for a full assault on the villain's headquarters, where like Spartacus, he leads a "mutie" revolt, that includes a young Scott Summers (Tim Pocock, looking like Ben Stiller rather than James Marsden). 

Ryan Reynolds' first depiction of Deadpool, an event which he never forgot and has inspired countless jokes about Hugh Jackman, as well as a very popular larky film about the character—...oh, and Deadpool 2.

 

There are lots of Marvel folk appearing (briefly): Bolt, Deadpool, The Blob, Agent Zero, and Kestrel. The inconsistency with their comic-book counter-parts will drive some fan-boys nuts (not to mention Wolverine's brylcreemed pompadour from the first two films is gone, too). This fan-boy had trouble with the fights, all based on other movies: the war action from Saving Private Ryan (by way of Crank), another based on John Woo's hyper-dramatics and aerodynamics, and another, straight out of the "Star Wars" prequels. 

So much recycled material to so little effect. Using the character's own onomatopoeia, it's ten pounds of snikt!TM in a five pound bag.  

"C'mere, Kid. Got a lousy movie to show ya!"

* If you ever want to see it done to death, check out Danny DeVito's direction of Hoffa. 

** A word of explanation from 2021: This refers to "The Daily Show" when Jon Stewart was hosting it...he'd make frequent use of an overhead shot (in moments of duress) and scream to the heavens "Noooooooooooooo!" Often they'd put a reverberating echo on it (That's how it SHOULD be done!)

*** Spoiler Alert: Good place to put spoilers, isn't it? In case you think you're missing something, you're not. There's a cameo by Professor X (Patrick Stewart reprising his role), although why is Scott (Cyclops) the only guy X was reaching out to?—seems he could have contacted all the escaping mutants (because it would have killed the suspense is why), and the by-now standard "Marvel Tag" at the end of the credits is no big deal—Wolverine at a bar: "Drinking to forget?" "No. Drinking to remember." Supposedly, there are three others. If they're all that "good," don't bother collecting them all.

X-Men: Apocalypse

Deus X Menschina 
or
Apocalypse Then and Now (I Am Third)

At one point in X-Men: Apocalypse,* young mutants Scott Summers, Jean Grey, and Kurt Wagner are seen out doing "teen" things and are coming out of a theater showing Return of the Jedi. Jean Grey has the line "Let's all just agree that the third film in a trilogy is always the worst."

Cute line. Very meta. The third of the X-Men films—the one not directed by Bryan Singer (who directs this one) was indeed the worst film of the series. That line made me laugh, but I also thought it was a bit snarky. And premature. And a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. The problem is when you point out something's flaws most of the fingers are pointing back at you, even if your mutant hand only has three fingers.

After all, this is the third film in this current incarnation of the X-Men franchise (2.0 on this one) and although we might not all agree, it is the worst film of this trilogy.

Not that it's bad or incompetent. Director Bryan Singer has done four of the six films and is quite gifted (he keeps coming back to the X-Men franchise because his ambitious, non-genre films don't quite do the business)—in fact, he's so talented that he's managed to do so many of the films of this franchise without seeming to go stale. Of course, he's helped by the voluminous story-lines and characters of Marvel's diverse Mutant-line, and that, after just three films, the series went through its first re-boot, going back to the past to mine history stories of the characters already established in the first X-Men film back at the turn of the century.

Magneto's mad at mankind again. Jeez......He's like an old man with a property line.

The break-out star of that film was Hugh Jackman, who caught a lucky break when he was cast last-minute to replace Dougray Scott, who couldn't get out of his Mission: Impossible II schedule (John Woo was running a bit late). The series then turned into "Wolverine and Some X-Men" and the swarthy, schnikting Canadian went on to his own (muddled) film series, with returns to his adamantium roots.

And because you can't make an X-Man movie without Hugh Jackman...

It fell to director Matthew Vaughn to re-invent and recast the "X-Men" films with the well-done X-Men: First Class film, which showed you could make an interesting X-Men film without Wolverine, which allowed Singer to come pack to the franchise and bridge the new X-Men with a final bow from the old cast and move forward with tales of the "lost years" of the group before its 2000 debut. The series now serves the function of filling in the holes of the group's history puzzle, the cinematic equivalent of putty.

Havoc gets something off his chest

Given that, there's not much the series can do, and so the latest presents an "Untold Tale of the X-Men" digging up a story of the original mutant from Egyptian times, a priest (Oscar Isaac), known as Apocalypse, with four mutant acolytes, who has found a way to transfer his life energy into a new host to become, for all purposes, immortal. At the point of transfer, he is buried in his temple (at the machinations of some rebellious Nile-lists) and imprisoned for hundreds of years (despite the powers he supposedly possesses) until he is released during the Reagan years to try to re-establish his world-wide rule.  Lucky for him, such a being as Professor Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) exists that he might be able to achieve mental control over the entire human populace.

You can tell the bad guys from the good guys in the X-Men movies by a simple visual representation:
The bad guys make dramatic entrances with low camera angles
The good guys just sort of amble on-set.

His first step is to establish his "four horsemen" which he does by accentuating the powers of mutants Angel (Ben Hardy), Ororo (or as she's called "Storm," now played by Alexandra Shipp), Psylocke (Olivia Munn), and Magneto (Michael Fassbender), who is once again polarized against mankind for one more crime against him. Magneto seems to attract bad human behavior as well as metal.

"Meanwhile," back at Xavier's School for Gifted (and Callowly Attractive) Students, they're picking up new recruits: Havoc (Lucas Till) brings in his brother Scott (Tye Sheridan) who has begun to shoot destructo-beams from his eyes (you know those teenage hormones); Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) has rescued a fellow blue mutant named Kurt Wagner (Kodi Smit McPhee), Nightcrawler, a devil-tailed transporter (*BAMF!*) from a German mutant fight-club; Quicksilver (Evan Peters)—who must have grown into the Russian accent he had in Age of Ultron—runs in just in time to have an extended super-speed demonstration when the School is attacked (again—"once every two years" as they said in Deadpool).

And then there's little Jean Grey (Sophie Turner), the Princess Elsa of the X-Men (who seems to be preparing to star in a Disney musical called "Flamin'"), who is reluctant to give full throttle to her powers (and since they're bringing it up, you know that it won't be long before she lets "it" go). When Xavier is abducted from the School (Hey! Ally Sheedy teaches there! Where's Judd Nelson?) by Apocalypse (after hacking into his brain to launch all of Earth's nuclear missiles into space—Hey, thanks, Apocalypse!), he is transported to Cairo, while the Egyptian King uses Havoc to destroy the X-Mansion—cue Quicksilver for the rescue.

While the students are standing around moping about the school being destroyed, not thinking about how they're super-powered so they might (ya know), clear some debris, then eventually make a trip to Home Depot to buy some cement for a foundation or something (even an impromptu frisbee game might be appropriate instead of just hanging around doing nothing..."mutant kids these days"), Col. William Stryker shows up in a Huey and kidnaps (let's see) Beast, Raven, Quicksilver...and non mutant CIA agent Moira McTaggart (Rose Byrne), either because he knows of them, or they're the ones who seem to have the least lethargy of the mutant lawn ornaments. Cyclops, Phoenix, and Nightcrawler go off in hot pursuit (*BAMF!*)

"Meanwhile," back in Egypt, Magneto is convinced to start building Apoc's city and temple from all the metal building materials in the world, causing world-wide destruction (evidently Singer didn't get the memo about extensive casualties in super-hero movies and to stage these things AWAY from civilization!). Once his temple is constructed, he intends to take over Xavier's body in order to be able to have control over EVERY MUTANT IN THE WORLD...In the world...in the world.

To what end is hard to fathom besides absolute power for absolute power's sake...(not unlike the current presidential campaign). But, Apoc's determined to do it, and so once the Phoenix/Cyclops/Nightcrawler team rescue the Mystique/Beast/Quicksilver/CIA gal team from Stryker—and prompt a Wolverine cameo by releasing Weapon X from Stryker's mutant experimentation facility (check off the X-Men Origin: Wolverine gap from Singer's list**), all the X-ers go to Egypt to have the final showdown so they can end the movie, while the countdown ticks as Apocalypse does his "katra" transference to Professor Xavier—a process that is so elaborate and time-consuming that it provides that much more time for it to stop.

Can't we just throw a SWITCH or something?

The fight is pretty perfunctory, mutie e mutie, where folks get dirty, but that's about it, so you can be assured that the next movie will be just as crowded (especially considering that the contracts for Lawrence, Fassbender and McAvoy are up with this film). Opponents are paired up, without much cross-fighting, ala Civil War, so this movie has the appearance of being behind the curve despite it being in production simultaneously—it's just that the Roussos decided they'd do everything CGI rather than green-screen like Singer does...probably because they were more interested in a really cool battle royale than identifying the participants.

The Apocalypse group all make big dramatic entrances, and the rookies have to find their courage, which they do the closer the near-misses come, and, as these things go, they find that they are most effective if they put their differences aside and work together, but they have to be convinced to do that (like they do every movie). This is usually where the X-Men movies cheat a bit by making the motivations as simple as "you don't HAVE to do this..." (the conversation I usually have with myself before going to an X-Men movie). The transitions are a little quick and convenient, but when you've got people who have mental powers, I guess it's a bit easier. Evidently Professor X wanted me to spend my money. Jerk.

Dramatic entrance: check

The thing is the film is really hollow. There's lots of sturm and drang, but very little of consequence that doesn't involve property damage happens—we're spared seeing the casualties of all that metal extraction (which, although it gets repetitive and numbing to see, not to mention a bit of a cheat) to the point where you think that world is absent of anybody but X-Men. The biggest result of all of this is a new X-team is configured and Professor X loses his hair. Not sure a multi-million dollar movie was needed to mark that event (although I can't remember the last time I saw a movie about male pattern baldness).

Dramatic entrance: check

The most frustrating thing about X-Men: Apocalypse is its seemingly incomprehensible sense of loyalties. In the Marvel Mutant Universe, you are either an activist or a commingler, a radical or an appeaser, Malcolm X or Martin Luther King. Professor X is always among the latters, but the more radical types like Magneto and Mystique are the agitators, until such times, that is, as the movie-makers deem them to be hypocritically antithetical. Convenient to do so, I'm sure, but it sure makes those characters look like flakes, or at the least weak-willed flip-floppers. 

ZAP! "Missed"
ZOTZ! "Missed."

You don't need mutant genes to do that. Heck, that trait is all too human. And I'm sure the convictions will stick as long as the writer-directors aren't in some sort of creative jam. They appear to be in one now, as X-Men: Apocalypse fulfills its own critique of being the worst of its trilogy.

 

* Although I've taken to calling it "X-Men: Isaacalypse."

** Wait, wait, wait...Professor X appeared in that film and he looked like Patrick Stewart. Now, at the same point in time, he looks like James McAvoy. There's a discrepancy in the continuity cameo continuum.

X-Men: Days of Future Past

Class-Reunion
or
"Well, It's Complicated..." (All My X's Live in Excess)

Bryan Singer returns to the super-hero franchise he started 14 years ago, and abandoned to make the almost fetishistic Superman Returns leaving "The X-men" in the hands of director Brett Ratner to the series' detriment. It was given a shot of mutated adrenaline a couple years back with Matthew Vaughn's spirited re-boot, X-Men: First Class, which had fun re-tooling the series' DNA, featured some inspired re-casting, and also had a bit of fun poking fun at the film's 60's setting .

Now, as if to atone, Singer is back and has combined both versions of the X-men series (Vaughn was going to direct, but begged off to helm previous collaborator Mark Millar's new The Secret Service adaptation) in X-Men: Days of Future Past—somewhat based on the storyline by writer Chris Claremont and artist John Byrne (the major difference being that Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page) does not go back into the past to set things right, Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) does, presumably because the character is so popular—popular enough to have his own rather unexciting film series—that the film-makers hedge their bets by using their "big gun." Page's Pryde merely provides the transportation, spending the entire movie hovering over Jackman in what seems like a waste of the character and the actress.

"I see bell-bottom pants!!"

The movie revolves around events that we've not been privy to in the previous "X-men" movies. Since 1973, the American government has had a program in place to take care of the "mutant" problem; an American industrialist, Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage, at rather low wattage) has designed a squad of robots, the Sentinels, to eradicate all "muties," using information he's acquired studying the blood of one mutant in particular, "Mystique," the shape-shifting assassin Raven Darkhölme, originally played by Rebecca Romijn, and for the past played by Jennifer Lawrence.  Her murder of Trask in '73 accelerated the program, and has led to a genocide of all mutants...and quite a few humans suspected of it. 

Pres. Nixon (Mark Camacho) rolls out the Sentinels in 1973

Now, in the present day, when the Earth is devastated by the results of the Sentinel war, only a solid paragraph of them are left, led by Professor X (Patrick Stewart), Magneto (Ian McKellan), Storm (Halle Berry), Wolverine, Pryde, as well as previously seen X'ers Collossus (Daniel Cudmore), Iceman (Shawn Ashmore), Sunspot (Adan Canto), Warpath (Booboo Stewart), Blink (Bingbing Fan) and a new member, Bishop (Omar Sy). We watch as most of them are taken out by Sentinels with the ability to absorb mutant powers, giving Kitty and Bishop enough time to transport their consciousnesses back in time to warn their younger selves that the attack will take place to avoid it.

Sunspot takes on a Sentinel: Forget this ever happened because it didn't.

A neat trick that.  But one wonders where the duplicate Kitty's and Bishop's are. (Answer: there aren't any, their consciousnesses only went back and erases all presence of their existence at that point in time and place, but then the Sentinels shouldn't be there, either, as there's no reason for them to be). One wonders, also, why we've never heard of any Sentinels in the previous X-movies, considering they've been around since 1973. One can explain it away by saying, it only happened because X-Men: First Class happened—even though it should have happened, anyway—or one can presume that each movie is its own pocket universe, separate and distinct from the others, except that we've seen events from this series affect other events in subsequent films (they're even reprised here in flash-backs) and...

Well, it's about this time that one should suffer a headache like you have an adamantium claw stabbing through your skull—I began to ponder why Daniel Craig has never run into Sean Connery, but that's another series and another alternate universe—and one should really focus on the film, despite the fact it has worm-holes and fluctuations in the space-time-film continuum you could drive a Sentinel transport through.

This did happen in X-Men: First Class because they mention it in X: DOFP

Besides, you could miss some neat stuff. Let's just say that Wolverine goes back in time (his consciousness, katra, ch'i, whatever) to try and talk some sense into Charles Xavier/Professor X (James McAvoy) and Erik Lehnsherr/Magneto (Michael Fassbender) and maybe knock Mystique's Trask-targeted bullet out of the air, to stop the Sentinels before they start. Going back to the overgrown School for Gifted Youngsters, he finds a disengaged Charles Xavier, giving up his powers for the use of his legs by way of a serum taken from the blood of the Beast (Nicholas Hoult), who is care-taking him. Wolverine being Wolverine, this leads to a fight—he seems to fight with everybody here—before persuading Xavier, Beast and a young mutant named Peter Maximoff (Evan Peters) to break Magneto out of a non-metal high-security prison deep underneath the Pentagon. This leads to the best sequence of the film: Maximoff is "Quicksilver," a teen-aged speedster who does everything very, very fast; in the blink of an eye, he can do dozens of things while we, the normally-paced, are just starting the thought of it.

The Quicksilver messenger service

In the midst of the Magneto-break, Pentagon guards burst in with their plastic guns (which Magneto can't manipulate). As Maximoff puts the ear-buds of his Walkman (not invented until 1978, but then he's very quick) into his ears, the guards fire, and Maximoff takes off, running around the room, literally around the circular room, the images super-slowed down, so we can see everything he's doing to foil the guards. Set to a dreamily perfect song (from 1972 and I won't spoil it, although I'm not so sure Maximoff would listen to it), the scene is perfect and may be the best representation of super-speed put on film (and hey, I was a fan of The Flash, growing up), done with a reckless glee and amusing execution. 

The nearly-nude Mystique's action scenes need to be very carefully 
choreographed, even in the Nixon Oval Office.

Would that the rest of the film live up to that sequence. But, as you can guess from earlier in the review, there's a lot of stuff going on, some of it rather arcane, a lot of which we have to take on faith. And Singer is not the most reliable director for that, quite deliberately. His M.O. is to withhold information, to disguise intentions, and, often, to go for the highly dramatic just to pull the plug on it, ramp up the tension...and needlessly. Watch how he handles Wolverine's slashing and stabbing of victims (off-screen), how he shows the nearly naked Mystique in battle (mostly from the top, and if any leg action is required, everything waist-level is kept in darkness (even in well-lighted rooms—one can't veer from a PG-13 rating) Time-travel is his perfect trick, because he can do something over-the-top and then say "see, it never happened." 

Meeting of the X-minds: McAvoy and Stewart play the same role in different times.

Which leads me to suspect the motivation for doing this film—and this story—to begin with. Why this one, and why now? The answer must be with Singer's presence directing. It's been stated that this one is the "last hurrah" for the original "X-men" cast (they'll continue with the "First Class" McAvoy, Fassbender and Lawrence) and one must admit that Ian McKellen is indeed getting a little long-in-the-tooth to be cavorting around and levitating. I suspect that this was Singer's chance to "make things right," using the time-travel scenario as the catalyst to tweak the X-men Universe. He does more than that, for this film and the entire series, in a coda that cures all sorts of Wolverine's flash-backs from this film. Maybe it is atonement, after all.*  

But, in its sloppy rush to a satisfying ending, it left me with a bunch of questions. Does Wolverine have his metal claws back (he had the adamantium sucked out of him in the last "Wolverine" movie, and has bone claws throughout this one)? Is this the last we've seen of the Sentinels? Did Magneto cause the gaps in Nixon's secret tapes? Just how many people can they pack into an X-men movie (including cameo's?) Do I toss the old X-men movies in my DVD collection since this one makes them mute..uh, moot? 

To paraphrase The Usual Suspects: Is the greatest trick Bryan Singer ever pulled to convince the world they don't exist?**

Roll-call (L->R): Colossus, Blink, Sunspot, Quicksilver, Rogue, Charles Xavier (the younger), Iceman, Magneto, Wolverine, 
Magneto (the younger), Mystique, Professor X, Beast (the younger), Storm, Kitty Pryde, Warpath, Bishop
 (and believe it or not, they left "a couple" out).
Clip and save for reference in the theater.

* Which makes it doubly appropriate that James McAvoy is here.

** And, oh yes, there is an "End-Credits coda" but unless you brought a "Marvel-zombie" to the theater with you, there is no way you will understand it.