33 thoughts on “Let’s Talk about X[-Men: Days of Future Past], Baby”

1. I love, love, love the new movie right up until the conference in Paris. Before that, you get the awesome portal-hopping fight scenes, all of the Quicksilver stuff, and the fun ’70s stuff with Professor X gone to seed.

   After that, the story fragments a little. I wish I knew better what Magneto was up to, so I would know how I felt about his solo mission. (Was I supposed to be happy that he was stealing the Sentinels?)

   But it’s worth it for the mega-happy ending. Welcome back, Cyclops!

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   1. My hope for Apocalypse is that the team consists of McAvoy’s Prof. X, Beast, Quicksilver, a young Cyclops and/or Jean, and… maybe one newer one?…with a little bit of Mystique thrown in (kinda think she should be doing solo mutant freelance freedom-fighting when the movie starts). A Wolverine cameo would be fine; maybe the next Wolverine solo movie that Jackman and Magnold supposedly want to do could be set concurrently or elsewhere in the eighties.

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   2. I’m not sure if I had your specific complaint about Magneto’s role in the back half of the movie, but I agree that the story felt a bit more diffuse after the conference. I followed along with the idea that, in trying to prevent Mystique’s actions, they ended up with the even worse scenario by setting Magneto free and directing him at the Sentinel threat (which would presumably result in an even swifter and greater backlash against mutantkind than the 40-50 years later holocaust we’ve already seen). Because of the rules they established (with the future not changing at all until Wolverine awoke), they were able to generate some suspense but they sacrificed the option of showing the consequences of the 70s action rippling forward, and I don’t think they came up with a particularly elegant solution to keep us cued in on just how the stakes were changing. So I knew that Magneto adding metal to the “space age polymer” Sentinels meant he could control them and that was bad, and I knew that Trask’s survival might have meant an accelerated timeframe for the Sentinel project, but the weight of those stakes didn’t really land until later than they probably should have.

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      1. I got all that in broad strokes, but I wish we were allowed in Magneto’s head more. He knew that the Sentinels were bad. He knew that Mystique’s actions would look bad for mutants and rally human support for the Sentinels. (He was willing to kill Mystique over that.) So, while I knew that him taking charge of the Sentinels was dangerous, I wanted to know why *he* thought it was a good idea. It wasn’t until he started speechifying at the White House that I got to hear his point of view.

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         1. I kind of get what you mean. It seems that young Xavier and Magneto want exactly the same thing, but Magneto suddenly decides to do his own thing because it doesn’t count if you don’t achieve your goals through murder.

            When he does explain what he’s doing to all the TV cameras, I still didn’t get why he didn’t think that murdering Nixon AND Trask on live TV would have a similar effect as Mystique murdering Trask in Paris.

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            1. Yeah, you’re both right that it seems like the movie lost track of his motivations there a little. Or rather, we sorta know them because they’re a generic version of his motivation through the whole series (Never Again; mankind should fear us enough to surrender/leave us alone), but when even Xavier and Beast aren’t wondering what he’s up to (fair enough, since X’s relationship with Mystique goes back much farther, but still…), it did feel like he was off doing his own thing a bit. When I said on Saturday that it felt like Fassbender had less to do this time, I think that’s what I was responding to. First Class had that dual hero/two stories colliding structure that really made those characters vivid and clear. After the Holocaust opening, Magneto is off doing his own thing but we understand perfectly what and why (and that scene in the South American bar is probably my favorite scene in any of these X-movies). In DOFP, he starts out in prison and we are led to him through the remove of Wolverine and Xavier.

               Also, I think I missed getting to see Magneto interact with other people for that stretch. Fassbender is terrific, and he crushed his scene with McAvoy in the plane & Lawrence in the phone booth, but when he was off getting his helmet and hotwiring the Sentinels I missed seeing him dominate a scene partner the way he did with the banker and Nazis in First Class.

            2. Pretty much any two shot Fassbender was in, my mind was screaming “KISS! KISS!”

            3. Jesse, Nathaniel, and Jonathan can tell you that I do this out loud.

            4. True — his implied critique of Mystique’s plan seems to be that she didn’t murder ENOUGH. And his solution to her shortcomings in the plan: murder her. I think it’s also a bit jarring because while we see Magneto murder a bunch of people in First Class, we also see him willing to work with Xavier, and we find out that he didn’t ACTUALLY kill Kennedy, he was trying to SAVE him, which makes him seem even more like a pretty reasonable dude. I think all would’ve been well if we’d gotten to see Magneto conduct more of his various international affairs (basically a section of the movie that serves as a sequel to that awesome section of First Class).

2. Also, it is a little tiresome that every major X-Men member in the ’70s is somehow in lurve with Mystique except Wolverine. (Shame that she chooses…Azazel? Saber tooth? Not my choice given the options available to her.)

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   1. The X-Men are to Mystique as film critics are to J-Law.

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   2. Mystique isn’t really a one man women. She can’t be too tied down, she’ always on the run.

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   3. Ah, but that was comics-Mystique that hooked up with Azazel and Sabertooth. I’d say the movies have only presented her as having had something with Magneto (and of course you’re right that Beast clearly carries something of a torch and Xavier has complicated feelings for her).

      But of course we all assume that she’s just going to end up with Gambit, right?

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3. This movie had a lot to love, the Quicksilver set piece was my favorite (I’m invariably a sucker for slo-mo scenes set to iconic songs, c.f. Mad World in Donnie Darko, such scenes are inevitably melancholy, I think because the viewer is pulled so far away from “real time”). But I was then disappointed that Quicksilver vanished from the movie (though his presence could have distracted from the main character dynamics). I think they !finally! got Beasts’ blue fur/makeup right, although it still looked a little odd on Kelsey Grammer; I don’t think the Beast continual metamorphoses was necessary but perhaps they thought it was too hard to relate to him while blue (also Hank has become one of those characters who is apparently capable of any scientific feat, a dangerous path to go down). I was hoping for a real fight scene with the present-day Sentinels, alas.

   But my main complaints end up being how generic and taken for granted all the post-apocalyptic image was. Does the sun never shine in the future? Can you not come up with imagery that doesn’t wholly duplicate the Terminator and the Matrix? Can you at least construct/explain a chronology that makes sense? Like where did all the humans go, how many years has it been, considering that everyone looks pretty much the same (I mean Magneto is still alive, and in the present day he’s already in his 70s.) How/when did the Sentinels become self aware and self-reproducing? I just don’t think the film can get away with shrugging these details away.

   And the Wolverine ending was a perfect transition/explanation to his captivity with Stryker, inserting Mystique into that scene needlessly undermined/confused the moment.

   But all the fan service and cameos were great without being too gratuitous, and I thought it was a perfect way to ret-con away the major flaws of the third movie.

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   1. Quicksilver will supposedly feature in the next movie; I assume they wanted to leave room for the more established characters, although obviously he would have been a great help to them at almost any other point in the movie.

      I agree that it would be great to see a post-apocalypse that doesn’t look like all other post-apocalypses. I do think they were relatively clear on the timeline, which in this case might just make things more confusing. I believe someone said the “future” was 50 years from 1973, which puts it in 2023. Ah, but remember that the first X-Men never specified a year; it came out in 2000 but was only tagged “the not too distant future.” For the sake of argument, say that movie takes place around 2007 or 2008. This means the Sentinel-driven apocalypse happens about 15 years after the first movie… which is also about the same amount of time that has elapsed since the first movie was released (that is, in Stewart and McKellan’s lives). So that more or less works out.

      Of course, Magneto is a tween or young teen during WWII. So that still means he would be in his nineties during DOFP. Because we don’t catch Professor X at a hard date until 1962, it’s a little easier to swallow: he could be in his early twenties then (a stretch for grad school, but he is an ultra-powerful telepath/genius), which puts his birth around 1940, which means he’s “only” in his eighties in DOFP. Then again, he and Magneto never look ten years apart, either in their Stewart/McKellan or their McAvoy/Fassbender guises. Suffice to assume, then, that both of them are able to live longer thanks to their mutant abilities — which has not been stated in the movies, but doesn’t seem like a stretch to me. I’m not sure how telepathy or mastery of metals would help you live longer but I can buy it.

      There’s also the matter of the assertion that this assassination by Mystique had already happened in the previous movies’ timeline (an obvious retcon but always a fun thought experiment to see if a retcon actually worked). This means the sentinel program would have already been in the works thirty-plus years before the events of the first X-Men movie, during which there doesn’t appear to be a sentinel program. But I assume that Mystique’s successful assassination of Trask hurt the mutant cause more in the long-run. So she stopped the sentinel program from developing in the seventies, but perhaps it continued in secret, using the Mystique genetics, and wasn’t unleashed until sometime after the events of X-Men 3 (perhaps after the “mutant cure” turned out not to work?) — and maybe it then accelerated far faster than it would have otherwise. In DOFP, when the assassination is prevented, Trask nevertheless rolls out his sentinels — the clunkier and more robotic models. Maybe if he had been killed, those robotic models would not have been rolled out, but his people would have retreated and experimented with the deadlier, scarier sentinels capable of wiping out mutant sympathizers, future parents of mutants, etc. So the “old” timeline would look like this:

      1962: The events of X-Men: First Class.
      1969 or so: Mutants are drafted en masse into Vietnam — and then captured/experimented upon.
      1973: Mystique kills Trask and is captured.
      1973-1980: Mystique is the subject of experiments later applied to the sentinels.
      1980s: Mystique escapes (maybe also breaks out Magneto?), having become even more militant following her imprisonment and torture and even more sympathetic to Magneto’s cause.
      2007ish: The events of the first X-Men movie.
      2008ish: The events of X2.
      2009ish: The events of X3 (the first three movies could conceivably take place within about a year of one another but I’m giving them some more breathing room).
      2010: The mutant cure is found to not work as well as advertised, and in the aftermath of the mutant-led attack on Alcatraz, the sentinel program is rolled out.
      2012 or thereabouts: The events of The Wolverine.
      2014: The Wolverine credits’ stinger wherein Professor X and Magneto have teamed up to recruit Wolverine, mobilizing against the growing sentinel threat.
      2014-2023: The sentinel situation does not improve. They start targeting humans, etc.
      2023: The events of DOFP.

      It’s all pretty silly, of course; it’s clear that they write these movies based on what they want to write and try to kinda-sorta fit in later (or just ignore what doesn’t make sense). But I do think there is time enough for DOFP’s post-apocalyptic landscape to have developed.

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      1. If we’re going to be super nerds about this, the movie does put a date on when Prof X meets Raven as a child–a title card says “Westchester – 1944.”

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         1. Ah, you’re totally right! So I guess that does make Xavier and Charles approximately the same age, as he seems maybe a touch younger in that scene than Charles is in the 1944 WWII material, but pretty close.

            Say they’re both 12. This makes them right around 90 in 2023. Not impossible. Mutant aging! I discovered in my Wikipedia research that the Mystique of the comics is at least 100, which I guess makes her age-appropriate for both of them.

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         2. Yeah I was going to point that out. Tying Magneto to the Holocaust and then wanting to create a parallel story structure with Xavier’s life/development creates a real problem the longer anyone wants to set the stories in the present. And my real problem with the depicted apocalypse was that I can buy that timeframe for wiping out mutants, but not really for humanity itself. Apart from the laziness of the aesthetics, I think at this point the “machines become self aware and then realize they should wipe out humans, which also means that all scenes will be filmed at night” should be completely avoided.

            Also, I completely missed the kicker at the end of Wolverine. That might have put things in place a little better for me.

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            1. It would be hilarious if you find out that dark Matrix-y post-apocalyptic landscape is like, just the cities, and most of humanity is actually not wiped out by sentinels, but living out in the suburbs, being sure to think anti-mutant thoughts.

      2. I thought what you laid out about how the Sentinels were developed was something they said or at least implied during Charles’ voiceover. I could be wrong on that and just filling in like the movie begs you to do.

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      3. I love this, and I’m glad you did it. It’s exactly the kind of nerd bookkeeping that stirs my blood and warms my heart.

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   2. To be that guy: the Original Days of Future Past had that bleak post-apocalyptic look before any Terminator or Matrix movies were produced. Along that line: like a lot of comics nerds don’t appreciate Lichtenstein, we also wish The Wachowskis weren’t hailed as such visionaries when they borrowed all of their best ideas from comics.

      Your other complaint is spot on. I found myself spending a lot of time not really into the movie because I was trying to think how it would all work timeline wise.

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4. I’ll hit your questions first

   –Is McAvoy now officially your favorite Professor X?

   Yes, but it’s kind of an unfair competition. Stewart is a near perfect embodiment of establishment Professor X. He’s never given as much to work with as McAvoy has in this movie. I really liked the payoff for Charles in this film (which is to say, he admitted he was kind of a dick in First Class).

   –Quicksilver: Everyone’s new favorite X-Man? I never read any comics with him. What’s he like in them and how might he be different in The Avengers 2, which somehow also has the rights to use him?

   Technicality: Quicksilver was never an X-man! I still wouldn’t count him as one after this.

   His most dominant personality trait in the comics is extreme arrogance, like a spoiled prince. He has no time for all these damned slow people. I liked how they kept the arrogance, but portrayed it as more of a youthful invincibility thing. Still don’t get the outfit, especially for the 70’s.

   The rights thing: so Quicksilver is a mutant who debuted in X-Men as part of Magneto’s Brotherhood and was eventually revealed to be Magneto’s son (also spends some time in the 90’s in X-Men spinoff X-Factor). That being said, he renounces his evil ways fairly quickly and has spent much more time over the years as an Avenger. I would say he’s probably more closely associated with The Avengers franchise. Fun fact: He also married Crystal of The Inhumans, which if I had to guess as a group would fall under the Fantastic Four license (Inhumans first show up there and Crystal dated Johnny Storm before she settled down). I guess your actual question was how the rights are split and I guess I don’t know. There are few characters as equally a part of more than one Marvel ‘family’ than Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, so I guess this is just an extreme case.

   –By actually doing a time-travel story that changes whether previous movies have happened or not, did the X-Men series actually and possibly accidentally become the most comics-faithful movie series ever?
   I’ve felt this way about X-Men every since “You’re a dick.”
   I think more to your point, however, is that it was already there with how convoluted their movie continuity was. Way to really JJ Abrams this one, Singer!

   –Who do you want to see on the team in X-Men: Apocalypse? And what will be credit-teased in that movie? X-Men Origins: Gambit?

   Will they really do Apocalypse? I feel this has got to be more of Thanos mic-drop situation. The most popular Apocalypse story is another dark future/alternate timeline story, so I don’t see them doing that. A lot of his other stories are really Cyclops-centric, but not in a way I find interesting or plausible given how ‘realistic’ these X-Men films are in comparison to the comics. A lot of them also involve Cable, which no thank you.

   Separate from that question, if they keep going down this decade road and it’s the 80’s, Jesse’s idea of older first class mixed with young second class makes a lot of sense. If I am being truthful with myself, however, I want full on pop star Dazzler regardless of it makes sense or not. She was a originally a disco star, but I would really enjoy her as a Debbie Gibson or early-Madonna close (or if you wanted to not have the cast be all white, go for more of a Lisa Lisa, Gloria Estefan, or Prince protégé vibe). Maybe work Longshot in there if you’re going to be sensible and make the film Dazzler-centric. As for characters who are unused in the films to this point, Forge could be really cool.

   Credit tease: Old Man Logan. I know they have contracts or whatever for a solo Gambit movie, but I’m still skeptical that’s happening. They could also take a note from the ASM2 Playbook and just show part of a scene from the Sinister Six film out of context.

   –There are now seven X-Men movies. Rank ‘em out!
   The first four are tough to rank.
   X-Men
   First Class
   X2
   Days of Future Past
   The Wolverine
   X-Men Origins: Wolverine (though my enjoyment of this one is much greater than how good it actually is)
   Dental Surgery
   X3

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   1. Re: Apocalypse
      It certainly doesn’t seem to be equivalent to what Marisa referred to as the Thanos mic-drop (assuming Whedon does indeed bail out after Age of Ultron), since they announced a while back that the next film was going to be titled X-Men: Apocalypse, with the same creative team on-board (at least Singer and Kinberg), and then included the character in the post-credit sting. And I don’t remember if it was announced at the time, or just chatted about in interviews, but the notion of it taking place in the 80s and featuring bigger ’10s-style action and destruction was definitely part of that initial burst of information about the sequel.

      Re: Quicksilver
      As far as the rights business goes, it sounds like Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch are two of a relatively short list of overlapping characters that could pop up in different studios’ films (though everybody seems noncommittal as to what any of the other characters would be). I find this stuff interesting (we run into it with Muppet stuff sometimes). I’ve definitely read references to Marvel Studios having/developing the Inhumans, and I wonder if the reports about Avi Arad insisting that Sony’s Spider-Man will always be Peter Parker should have included whether Sony actually has access to Miles Morales (I’m guessing maybe not, since he was introduced long after that deal was made? I’d at least be curious to hear; could Marvel Studios throw that character into one of their things?). I assume there are lists of characters somewhere at each of these studios, and I also assume that the specific production entities don’t actually know everybody they have access to until they decide to use them and have to run it by legal. (Also, I feel like there were reports that the use of Quicksilver in X-Men was kind of a political bird flip to Marvel, as they’d announced Whedon wanted to use him in Age of Ultron, the relationship between Fox and Marvel was really icy, and then Team X-Men changed the character from the Juggernaut to Quicksilver and got theirs out first.)

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      1. For Apocalypse – I’m really taken aback by how much info has come out about a movie that probably doesn’t even have a first draft of a script done. I just wouldn’t be surprised or disappointed if plans changed somewhat in the next year. They’ve just given themselves so many restrictions by what type of story they could tell if they stick to these parameters.

         The real elephant in the room is whether Singer will be back or even working in the future.

         The Miles Morales thing is interesting. If Marvel does have access to him, I’m guessing they can’t use the costume or most of his supporting cast. The thing that leads me to believe that Sony may have access to Miles is that First Class used some X-Men that were created a little more recently (Darwin and Angel Salvadore).

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         1. Yes! I also thought it was weird that they were announcing so much about the sequel to this movie so long before it’d even been released. And of course their plans for a sequel could change (Singer does seem like a bit of a question mark), but at the very least you figure they have McAvoy, Fassbender, and Lawrence for another movie and will want to make use of them. And as for the restrictions they’ve given themselves, with Mystique and Magneto unseen and uncommented upon in the Happy Future, they could also take the opportunity to write them out and resolve those stories/relationships (and sell a “First Class” trilogy boxset). And I think the appeal of continuing their tour through American fashion is such that the “set in the 80s” brief will stick around too.

            Plus, they’ve traditionally shown a real willingness to ignore any continuity issues, so those restrictions might not matter so much. And anyway, I think they really amount to just not killing off any of the characters we saw in the school at the end of the film?

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            1. Not knowing much about the Apocalypse character, it seems like he would be pretty easy to write into a new story that doesn’t rely on the dark/alternate timeline. You just have the story be about stopping Apocalypse from doing whatever he would do to bring about that possible dark timeline (without the usual warning from the future to do so). It would also be great to use Magneto in a story that doesn’t necessarily have Magneto either being the main bad guy, or turning on everyone by the end.

               I’m a little uneasy that Kinberg, who seems to have done a serviceable job on DOFP, has become (necessarily) the de facto creative spokesperson for the series. I want some reassurances that if Singer isn’t able to do this, they go back to Vaughn or someone similarly inclined (though some online speculation seems to be that Vaughn kinda got shunted aside from this last movie when they got Singer back and it became DOFP, not just a First Class sequel? I hope that’s not true, and also that would seem weird because both directors have story credits on each other’s recent X-Men movies! I’d hope that indicates some degree of cooperation).

            2. Something that I may have implied but not said before is that I don’t particularly like Apocalypse as a character. I agree that they need to bring in another heavy and they’ve run through most of the good ones (without going into space or The Savage Land), so an original Apocalypse story makes a lot of sense. That being said, I just don’t know what you do (besides maybe Dazzler, Longshot, and Forge go to space).

5. Singer as Action Director
   Maybe this one will prove persuasive enough, but I suspect that if the Nightcrawler sequence in X2 (or the mansion raid) didn’t satisfy in this regard, he might be back to square one again for the next film. I’ve been thinking this complaint might stem from (or at least be weirdly bolstered by) the fact that his movies have tended to peak early with regard to their action sequences. The Quicksilver sequence is fantastic and the Sentinel fighting is exciting, but the finale in Magneto’s stadium is more about emotion than action (the right choice, but not as thrilling or memorable as those others). But I think I’m generally not as high on Singer as you guys, and I still really dug some of the action here, so I’ll try not to complain in advance next time!

   McAvoy as Professor X
   Yeah, I’m with Rob. Stewart is obviously terrific (and his scenes with McKellen were always highlights of those movies), but McAvoy is given a much more dynamic version of the character.

   Quicksilver
   I’m with Rob again here, in that I didn’t really care for the look of the character so much, but I got a kick out of the performance and of course loved his big sequence. I was sorry to see him go, and the way that he was introduced and then dismissed really made his role in the film feel kind of modular and replaceable (even without knowing that it was originally a different character it makes total sense…could have been anybody!).

   Comic Bookiness
   Yeah, even before the Great Time Travel Retcon Erasure of the other movies this series seemed to have a real comic book continuity thing going on, with a seemingly willful disregard for what had been established in previous films. In fairness, Marvel Studios did a bit of this when Iron Man 2 and The Avengers seemed to contradict Tony Stark’s appearance in The Incredible Hulk and they actually put a short film on one of the DVDs to clean up the continuity snafu, which is pretty nerdy. But X-Men gets points for basically a complete continuity reboot using time travel, which is probably nerdier.

   Apocalypse
   As Rob alluded to, I can’t imagine that they’ll really adapt “Age of Apocalypse.” And if he doesn’t know another suitable famous Apocalypse storyline then I certainly don’t. But that won’t stop me from speculating!

   Presumably Apocalypse will be pursuing his agenda of actively advancing evolution at the expense of any humans or mutants who can’t survive. If he recruits/assimilates his Four Horsemen from the existing ranks of characters (especially since they’ve already killed off so many in the First Class era that Xavier might care about) I’ll guess that it’d be:

   Wolverine (perhaps as a way to give him his adamantium claws back and give him angst and whatnot in lieu of the Weapon X stuff?)
   Mystique (a central conflict of this First Class series is over her heart/mind)
   Magneto (would he be sympathetic to Apocalypse’s goals or horrified by the extremes he’s willing to go? plus, Magneto is one of the characters we don’t see in DOFP’s super happy future, so might he die in this movie? how long does Fassbender want to play this role?)
   Havoc (who else is left? I’m leaving Beast on Charles’s side, because he’s going to need some allies we already know)

   That pretty much leaves Beast and Quicksilver as the existing characters left to be X-Men in the movie, which may well provide the opportunity to introduce new characters like Gambit or new versions of people like Cyclops or Jean Grey or Storm.

   I’m not sure if there’s a big 80s bit of history they would tie it in with the way they did in First Class or DOFP (the Cold War might be useful for an Apocalypse story, but could feel like a retread of the Cuban Missile Crisis stuff).

   And for the post-credits scene, maybe Doop?

   Rank all seven X-Men movies
   I think this is how I stand now:

   First Class
   Days of Future Past
   X-Men
   The Wolverine
   X2
   The Fun Parts of X-Men – Origins: Wolverine (the credit montage! Keamy as the Blob! is that it?)
   The Last Stand
   The Rest of X-Men – Origins: Wolverine
   The End of The Last Stand

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   1. Doop! It’s perfect timing with Edgar Wright leaving Ant Man.

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6. I never ranked them myself, but I think, as with Wes Anderson movies and They Might Be Giants albums, it’s easier to go in tiers or pairs:

   X-Men: First Class + X-Men
   X-Men: Days of Future Past + X2
   The Wolverine
   X-Men Origins: Wolverine
   A swift kick to the neck
   X-Men: The Last Stand

   DOFP really does feel like the X2 of this cast, in that it’s bigger and splashier in a lot of ways, but the earlier movie in both cases has a little more intimacy. I saw some online complaints (especially regarding Singer’s possible plans to re-originate Jean Grey and Cyclops next time) that all of these X-Men movies wind up being about the formation of the X-Men… but as I said in my X-Men essay, I think it’s because these characters are well-suited to economical origins and then bouncing off each other. So while some other superhero movies have a little bit of “now that we’ve got the origin out of the way…” in their sequels, the X-Men origins (but not the X-Men Origins) are often the most fun.

   The Last Stand is a less crummy-looking movie than Origins: Wolverine, but O:W doesn’t angry up the blood as much because (a.) who cares and (b.) they did a totally fun Wolverine solo movie afterwards.

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   1. I never did my own ranking, either, and I agree that pairs/tiers are the way to go.

      X-MEN: FIRST CLASS and X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST
      Fun, period stories told with the higher-wattage cast.

      X-MEN
      Great character stories somewhat hampered by a low budget.

      X2 and THE WOLVERINE
      Both have one or two fun action scenes wrapped in a bunch of stuff that bores me. X2 is slightly better, but The Wolverine is nothing to me except the bullet-train sequence.

      X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE and X-MEN: THE LAST STAND
      Blech.

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      1. I feel like this tiering business is cheating.

         I also feel like there’s not enough love for X-Men Origins: Wolverine

         I KNOW there is perhaps maybe too much love for X-Men Origins: Wolverine. I re-watched it again somewhat recently and it was as I remember for the most part. Not that great with some funny/ridiculous set pieces. I had completely forgotten that Will.I.Am was in it.

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