Seems like Marvel is trying to figure out where to place the credits now. Half my comics had them up front with the recap page and the other half, on the final page.
The issue really picks up once Rachel and Kurt meet up. Before that, we are shown Kurt and Wolverine in the Danger Room. This is after Wolverine has lost his healing factor and is now wearing a new armor costume – which looks horrible here. I’m sure that’s not Nauck’s fault as the costume doesn’t look very good. Like a black version of Shocker’s costume but it looks pretty lackluster.
Kurt is trying to find a weakness in the armor. Wolverine gets set off into a berserker rage as he really doesn’t want to be reminded of his lack of healing factor as it keeps tripping him up. He’s not used to being so vulnerable. He also isn’t use to being able to pop his claws and not have any repercussions of doing so.
Wolverine pops his claws, at Kurt, and comes charging at him. Storm, Beast and Cecilia Reyes, who have been monitoring this session come running down. Wolverine is bleeding all over the place.
Can’t believe Kurt is back to the land of the living, and is spending time with his ol’ friend, Wolverine, and his friend tries to kill him in a simple battle stimulation. Good grief!
Storm cools Wolverine down by casting a giant rain storm. I really like the panel of Kurt and Storm, with their hair wet.
Rachel telepathically speaks to Kurt as he is hanging from the ceiling in one of the many hallways of the Jean Grey School. The latest mutant going by Sprite, is frighten of his appearance – a call back to when Kitty was frighten by his appearance.
Rachel and Kurt go back to his apartment that Storm set up for him. In the back, is a poster on his wall that is the cover to the original Excalibur first issue. Which how does that work, in-universe, did they pose for that? An artist rendering? I don’t own this issue for the poster alone, or at all.
Rachel and Kurt are talking about where Kitty is nowadays. Kurt knows now that Kitty is off with Cyclops and his school. I wish we were getting Kurt and Kitty at the moment but Rachel and Kurt is fun to see.
Eventually, Kurt makes his way to Amanda Sefton’s apartment. Which is a complete callback to the Paul Smith era, so of course, I love it. He is on her couch, with a Bamf doll and ten actual Bamfs. Which is a fun modern take on it. What isn’t a fun modern take, is Amanda’s latest hero costume. What is going on there!?! Like a lady version of the Punisher costume with a cape and I don’t know. It seems too much.
Amanda’s apartment gets attacked. Kurt thinks it is an attack on him but it turns out it is an attack on Amanda. Kurt drops a wall on the foe.
The foe teleports away. Amanda wants to find her mother, Margali, to make sure this isn’t an attack on all mages. Kurt agrees to come along, so that is how this title becomes a global title.
Screenplay Ashley Edward Miller, Zack Stentz, Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn
Story by Sheldon Turner and Bryan Singer
Premiere Date June 3, 2011
I own the cover seen above.
For whatever reason, we didn’t see this in theaters. I asked my wife and we couldn’t figure out why we didn’t go. I know I was keeping up with news and would have liked to have seen it. I wasn’t doing anything silly by boycotting it or wasn’t going to support a film that didn’t have Kitty Pryde in it. I’m not that much of a loon.
Once it came out on DVD, I made a point of buying it that Tuesday. It still took us until Saturday to watch it but the important thing is to buy it.
Looking at the films that came out Summer 2011, we didn’t see any of them in the theater so it was probably just a busy time.
Vaughn was suppose to be the director of X-Men 3 but had to pass on the opportunity. The only film of his I have seen is Kick Ass.
They decided to not keep the X fade from the FOX logo. That is a shame but it was such a small detail before.
Onto the film!
The film opens as the first X-Men film did. Poland 1944. With Magneto has a boy, at the concentration camp as he is separated from his family. He holds his hand out for them and causes the metal fence to move until a soldier hits him in the head with the butt of a gun.
The man in the window watching the scene unfold is Kevin Bacon as Sebastien Shaw. When they announced Shaw and Emma Frost as the villains of the film, I was excited. Finally a film where Magneto wasn’t the threat – though he is still in the film. Plus, Kevin Bacon!
As a child of the 80s, Kevin Bacon has always been a force in my life. Then I learn of the “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” game and sough to watch all of his films and see how good at the game I could be. I was much better at it when I was younger. Nowadays, I’ll try to get everyone to Sleepers or JFK and call it a day. Someone once tried to stump me once with Bill Crosby but luckily I remembered Meteor Man that also had James Earl Jones in it.
I, myself, am five degrees of Kevin Bacon. I was in Comic Book the Movie (for like a second, I’m sitting next to Mark Hamill at a panel) who was in Jay and Silent Bob Strikes Back with Judd Nelson who was in St. Elmo’s Fire with Demi Moore who was in Few Good Men with Kevin Bacon. There might be a faster way.
Kevin Bacon films that I’ve seen are – Animal House, Diner, Footloose, (Planes, Trains and Automobiles if it counts) Tremors, Flatliners, JFK, A Few Good Men, Apollo 13, Sleepers, Picture Perfect, Wild Things, Hollow Man, Loverboy (which he directed his wife in, also a weird film) and Crazy Stupid Love.
Making the list, along with Sleepers and JFK – Flatliners, A Few Good Men, Apollo 13, Wild Things and Crazy Stupid Love are all good connector movies. Essentially any film that has Bacon and at least four other big name actors (or actors who would later be big names).
I am such a fan of Flatliners! Probably one of my favorite films that I have yet to own. I’m waiting for an awesome anniversary edition to come out with at least some special feature involving the cast.
We see Shaw for only a split second as lightning strikes and we transition to Westchester, New York 1944 with a young Charles Xavier waking up. He heads downstairs to the kitchen where his mother offers to make him a snack. His mother wouldn’t even know how to make a snack, she would have the maid do it. Then we see a very young Mystique, going by Raven – the codenames will come later. I really don’t care for the nude twelve year old version of Mystique. If only the first movie had her wearing the classic white dress with skull belt, we wouldn’t be subjected to seeing this.
Xavier offers her anything she can find, to eat as well as that she doesn’t have to steal ever again. A friendship is formed!
Back to Poland. Shaw brings in young Magneto to have him display his power before him. Young Erik can’t do it. Shaw brings in Erik’s mother, he will kill her on the count of three if Erik hasn’t moved the coin by then.
Bacon is speaking German during this entire scene. Shaw pauses between two and three as Erik is trying his best to do it. Then Shaw fires his gun and Erik’s mother is dead – which is ice cold! Erik loses his mind and destroys or bends everything that is metal in the room. The guards who were holding his mother are dead but Shaw still stands.
Shaw tells Erik that is anger and pain that allows Erik to focus his power.
We move up a few years. We see the Magneto we will be following in this movie. He is played by, of course, Michael Fassbender. Who I really really like in this movie. I could have gone with an entire movie of just Magneto as he hunts Nazis or grocery shopping. I really need to watch more films of his. I do a weekly search for Shame but none of the movie channels seem to want to air it.
He’s in 300 but I don’t remember him from it. The same for Inglorious Bastards. Him being in Jonah Hex, Jane Eyre and Prometheus makes me want to watch those films.
I missed out on 12 Years a Slave, probably get around to that film one of these days, especially after it won Best Picture at the Oscars. I know he’s in the upcoming Assassins Creed film and the movie, Frank, sounds super interesting.
These two X-Men films are really going to stand out on his IMDB page.
Erik is in a hotel room, as he is planning his next move. We see his arm, and production made sure his number on his arm matches older Magneto from the previous films.
Geneva, Switzerland, 1962.
Erik is following the gold, he is hunting Shaw’s current location.
Oxford University, England.
If it wasn’t obvious how different Magneto and Xavier had it growing up, it is now.
We see Xavier and Mystique – played respectfully by James McAvoy and Jennifer Lawrence.
McAvoy, I don’t really know. We love the American Shameless and we gave the British version a chance, the pilot was too similar so we chose to abandon it. We kept noticing the differences and we just prefer the one we met first – though we recognize that the British one came first. McAvoy plays the Jimmy / Steve role in that series, he is only there for the first 13 episodes from what I’ve read. Which I was tempted to just watch those episodes. Maybe one of these days.
McAvoy is Mr. Tumnus in the first Narnia film, which he must love being reminded of that. I’m now interested in watching Last King of Scotland now that he’s in it. I know Forest Whitaker won Best Actor for the role but it didn’t seem like my type of movie. Same for Atonement, I am sure I haven’t seen one of Keira Knightley’s films. I came close with Anna Karenina but the production of the film threw me off. I do love that book, and should try to get pass the first fifteen minutes.
I didn’t see Wanted. He is the voice of Arthur in Arthur Christmas, which I saw most of when my nephews were watching it.
Now, Jennifer Lawrence, on the other hand, I’ve seen a slew of her films. Winter’s Bone, her performance in it was good but the film was a hard watch. Still want to watch Beaver as I like Jodie Foster (for the most part) and the cast and story seems interesting. Hunger Games, I’ve seen both films. In Catching Fire, she looks different in almost every other scene of the film. It made me realized that I’m not sure I can picture Jennifer Lawrence in my mind, besides the posters and she looks different in each poster. Am I the only one who notices that? Maybe I’m crazy.
Silver Lining Playbook, I really liked. Should own it but one of these days. American Hustle, I really need to watch as I love almost everyone in the main cast. I would have made a point of owning it first week if Amy Adams or Christian Bale won their Oscars.
Jennifer Lawrence’s opening monologue from her episode of Saturday Night Live may be my favorite monologue ever. She does this run down of smack talking all of her fellow nominees for Best Actress and ends each one with a nice compliment. It is amazing, and made better by her actually winning her Oscar.
Thanks to YouTuber Jasmin Lehmann for hosting the video. The subtitles are only midly distracting – I imagine she has them on screen for the copyright issue or something. Either way, glad I have this blog so I can find that easily – and not have to go to YouTube and search for it. There was other ones but they were filmed off of their televisions and poor quality so no wonder Lorne Michaels has left them up. Her episode wasn’t that bad but the monologue is the true gem.
This is probably the best five minutes of her career, definitely the funniest.
Also, I really like how healthy Jennifer Lawrence looks in First Class.
Both actors play their roles pretty great. I think McAvoy does a great job of Xavier but I don’t think he could carry a film on his own. But that isn’t the role he is asked to do.
At a local pub, Xavier hits on broads with how sexy mutations are. They are groovy. It works for him.
Later in their shared apartment, Raven is in her blue Mystique form (which I like how limited they have her in this state as it must have made filming so much easier) and she gives us our first “Mutant and Proud” that will creep up again towards the end of the film. She mockingly says it now.
She asks if Xavier would date her, he tells her that any man will be happy with her. She repeats the question but emphasizing in her blue form. He gives her a, blue? Well, she is his oldest friend, so he can’t be dating her. It isn’t very convincing and she should feel comfortable in her true form, she shouldn’t have to hide, filming be dman!
I like how Raven claims some small victory by stating that she is Xavier’s only friend, which knocks him down a peg.
Erik, at the Bank scene. Erik is super intimidating and then add the powers on top of that. I wouldn’t have put up a fight at all. I will repeat it here, magnetism is probably the most powerful power one could have. That’s why Chronicle was such a good film. Really shows what jack arse teenagers would do with the greatest power in the world.
Last Vegas, Neveda.
The club that the CIA are watching is the, Atomic Club. Get it?
Rose Byrne plays Moira MacTaggert. Who I really like in this movie, and not just because she gets down to her underwear in the first scene. Oh, did we really make women wear all of those undergarments in the 60s? No wonder women went on the attack from this decade forward. I would want justice as well!
Moira is a CIA agent instead of a scientist in this film, also gone is the Scottish accent.
I’m not that familiar with Byrne has an actress as I didn’t watch Damages. I tried the pilot and I didn’t take to it. She was the assistant to Natalie Portman’s queen in Star Wars : Attack of the Clones, Dorme. The name rings a bell but I’m sure she was wearing that white face during her scenes. She’s in Casanova which I want to see as David Tennant is in it. She’s one of the soldiers in 28 Weeks Later, which as soon as I read the title, her face appeared in my mind’s eye so I guess I do remember her from it.
She’s in Get Him to the Greek, which I still say that the best part of the movie is every single scene that has Sean Combs in it. If someone wanted to make a YouTube video of just him, I would totally watch that. So I don’t remember her in it at all but the film does lend itself to cameos. Also, not enough Jason Segel involvement.
She’s the one of the members of Bridesmaids. I am one of the few who didn’t care for that movie at all. I like the ending song but Hold On by Wilson Phillips is one of the best songs of all time.
She’s in Place Beyond the Pines, which I should watch as I like Ryan Gosling (the Gos) since I time I saw him build a house. I’ll look for it and record it off one of the movie channels.
Moria sees Colonel Hendry go into the club. Colonel Hendry is played by Glenn Morshower, who whenever I see on a show, I say “It’s Aaron from 24!” as my wife and I love that show and we really like Aaron Pierce on it. I’m such a fan of his that when he was on Revolution and they only showed the top of his head, I said it was Aaron from 24. Then two scenes later it was him! He was also on the West Wing, to which I usually shout “West Wing represent!” whenever someone on the show shows up anywhere else (even non-main cast members) – I’m a real treat to watch shows with – but him being on 24 trumps the West Wing shout out. He’s also in Air Force One (he gets type casts a bit) and Star Trek Generations.
So the CIA agent with Moira notice that the girls who are going into the club are wearing only their underwear. Moira strips down, surprising her fellow agent. She is using something the CIA didn’t give her. An odd line but Byrne pulls it off.
Once in the club, we are treated to January Jones as Emma Frost. Which, I still wish they went with Alice Eve in the role as she would have been sexier in it but I get them going with a more known actress in January Jones. Jones does look good as Emma, also in her underwear, but there is something lacking that I can’t quite place. She does a great Emma though, perfect attitude for the part.
I first saw January Jones in American Wedding as Alyson Hannigan’s character’s sister. I don’t remember her from Anger Management nor Full Frontal – but I saw that second film when I was probably too young for it. You’ll think with how much of a fan of the Uncanny X-Cast, I would have seen Love Actually by now. One of these days, I will.
I vaguely remember her from, We Are Marshall. At least, I know there is a blonde in the diner, and I can only assume that is who she is. Finally, of course, I don’t watch Mad Men. You’ll think I would has I’m a huge Alison Brie fan as well as Jon Hamm but my wife started the show without me and I have no time to watch shows without her (or I do but I’m watching the three shows she doesn’t watch) so I have completely missed out on the phenomenon that is Mad Men.
I do love how the Hellfire Class (only really represented by Shaw and Frost – from the comics) are the villain in this movie. The X-Men do have other villians besides Magneto. Pretty excited about Apocalypse going to be the villain of the official First Class sequel (Days of Future Past is a sequel to First Class but it works more as Star Trek Generations – giving the fans a chance to see everyone in a film together than a proper sequel). I do worry that Apocalypse is going to be shown as a white dude wearing a blue business suit but time will tell on that.
Before the CIA was concern with mutants, they were mostly worried about communists, which is why Moira was watching the club for Hendry. Which Hendry and Henry sounds too alike, they should have changed Hendry to some other name. They quit talking about Hendry by the time McCoy shows up but still.
Shaw wants Hendry to place nuclear missiles in Turkey. They keep referring to them at Jupiter missiles but that’s what they are. Hendry doesn’t want too.
In the background, we get to see Alex Gonzalez as Riptide. He is never called, Riptide in the film. I saw the entire film the first time, and whenever he was on screen, I kept trying to figure out which character he was suppose to be. Riptide of course, is one of the Marauders during the infamous Mutant Massacre storyline. He is the fool that Colossus crushes the neck of in retaliation for hurting Kitty. Well, Harpoon is the one who hurts Kitty but Riptide tries to protect Harpoon and gets killed in the process. It is awesome.
I do like how Gonzalez suits up for the role. Very business like.
Shaw motions over to Riptide (who in my notes I kept calling Whirlwind – who is an Iron Man villain but I couldn’t think of any other wind villains) to create a whirlwind (that didn’t help) and he does so. Which blows Hendry back against a wall.
Moira is watching all of this through a slot in the wall.
We see that film Emma has her second mutation, diamond form. It looks pretty decent here, much better than Wolverine Origins. Which that is a whole thing with how can these two be the same character but Vaughn didn’t want to worry about all of the continuity stuff like that (just like a new comic book writer) he wanted a fresh start on the X-Men franchise, a spy film and a movie set in the 60s. Which he got to do all three, so that’s pretty impressive!
We see the final member of the Hellfire Club, Jason Flemyng as Azazel. Which is a cool visual of a character to see and it must have made Chuck Austen some money. Who knows if a relationship between the he and Mystique will be hinted at during Days of Future Past. Production must have really wanted to reuse the teleporting effects from X-Men 3.
Flemyng is also in films I’ve seen but don’t recall seeing him in them (doesn’t help that he’s red in First Class) such as Rob Roy and Stealing Beauty. Apparently he is one of the many cameos in Spice World. I saw From Hell but I’m sure I fell asleep during it and have no intention to ever rewatch it. Rock Star, I was tempted to rewatch as it was on Showtime or some channel and I wanted to see Mark Wahlberg drive the batmobile again. Maybe I will record it next time I see it is on.
Here we go. He’s Dr. Jekyll in League of Extraordinary Gentleman. Is he the only one to show up in two different Alan Moore adaptions? Maybe?
He was in Kick Ass, so that makes two Vaughn films.
We see the American War Room, straight out of Dr. Strangelove. Moira is trying to warn CIA Director McCone that Hendry is working against American interests in Vegas when she is told that he is sitting there in the War Room. McCone is played by Matt Craven, a great character actor. He’s been in A Few Good Men, Timeline and Public Enemies – he is also type cast as this type of role.
Hendry changes his vote to place missiles in Turkey.
Cut to Oxford. Xavier has earn his Professor title. He tells Raven that he isn’t technically a professor until he has a teaching position. We are shown that Moira is following Xavier.
Villa Gesell, Argentina. It is this scene that I realize how large the scope of this film is, it really is quite the international film.
Magneto is hot on the trail! He gets to a bar where the two people he needs to direct him to Shaw are.
How amazing is this Magneto, he uses his powers so effortlessly. How fast he is with that knife trick and controlling the bartender’s gun, incredible!
Fassbender is full of such charisma! As excited as I am about Ellen Page in Days of Future Past, I’m really looking forward to Fassbender in the film. Especially after the second trailer shows him even more casual with his powers. McAvoy looks like he gets to do some good acting in that movie too.
How nervous the two Germans at the table, good acting from the day players.
Scene ends with Erik referring to himself as Frankenstein’s Monster and looking for his creator. So points for referring to himself as the correct character.
Xavier is drinking beer, he’s not murdering people. Moira asks him about his thesis on mutations. He starts to hit on her like she was a regular broad. He then reads her mind, and knows that she is serious about mutants. I like how Moira asks if anything is wrong, as from her perspective, he’s just staring at her touching his temple.
Miami, Florida.
Shaw talks to Hendry. Hendry tells him that he hasn’t spoken to anyone regarding their deal. Then he pulls out a grenade t kill the mutants. Shaw grabs the grenade and explodes it. We see how Movie Shaw’s powers work. Sort of the same, he absorbs kinetic energy but instead just doing it, the movie shows his absorption by this sort of wave effect. Also, Shaw reveals that his power keeps him young. That’s the boring part, the fun part is what he can do with that power once he has it. He touches Hendry and poor Hendry explodes.
CIA Headquarters, Langley, Virgina.
Xavier is giving an unimpressive impromptu speech about mutations. The CIA folks don’t care.
We see Oliver Platt in the back. Now, I love Oliver Platt almost as much as I love Kevin Bacon. He’s credited as “Man in Black Suit” which is fun.
Oliver Platt was in Flatliners, The Three Musketeers, Executive Decision, A Time to Kill, Bulworth, Lake Placid, Three to Tango, Ready to Rumble, Martian Child (John Cusack’s worst film of that I’ve seen of his), Letters to Juliet. I still need to see, Love & Other Drugs.
On television, he was on the West Wing for eight episodes – West Wing represent! He was also on the Big C, which we really liked until that final portion season, we couldn’t even get through the six episodes. I think we gave up at three. That show would show progress and then jump backwards. It was hard to watch but it had its moments.
Oliver Platt can do practically any type of film.
Xavier has to reveal that he is a telepath. Of course, the CIA Director believes he is a spy and that Moira is a fool for letting a spy in.
At the thirty minute mark, Raven shows her true blue form. That shuts the CIA folks up.
Olivier Platt’s character tells the director that he can house the mutants at his off site base. Platt is very Pro-Mutant.
Moira, off on her own, is in a hallway. All of a sudden, people are frozen in place. Xavier communicates with her telepathically and she agrees to join them at Platt’s site.
Moira has a lead on where Shaw should be going.
I can only imagine this next action sequence takes place in Florida.
Erik has made his way onto Shaw’s boat. Shaw is impress to see him, it has been two decades.
Erik tries to kill Shaw with a knife and Emma catches it in her diamond form. Emma then pushes Erik overboard. Shaw tells her that she shouldn’t use her powers on their own kind.
Emma then senses Xavier on another boat. Xavier is impressed to finally meet someone like him.
Riptide starts taking out the Coast Guard boats.
Xavier senses someone is in the water. Erik is in the water, trying to stop Shaw’s submarine. Shaw had to use his fancy escape submarine (who plans for their boat to be destroyed?) as Erik has taken the anchor of the boat and completely wrecked the upper deck of the boat. I keep typing, boat, but I suppose it is more of a yacht situation.
Xavier dives into the water to try to convince Erik to let go of his hold on the submarine (he isn’t really slowing it down at all) but if he keeps it up, he will surely drown. It is a very interesting way to get these two characters to meet.
Who, by the way, McAvoy is credited as 24 year old Xavier, whereas the Trilogy implies that he was 17 when he first met Erik. But again, Vaughn didn’t want to be held down by continuity and it makes more sense to have him be a little older than 17. What would 17 even be? Barely old enough to be a soldier.
Covert CIA Research Base – fun description
Platt explains that his base’s goal is to investigate paranormal activity. The 60s version of the X-Files.
We see the model of a Pre-Blackbird jet, I’m not sure if they give it a name. I keep calling it the Pre-Blackbird, which isn’t great.
We meet Hank McCoy played by Nicholas Hoult. Hoult was in the Weatherman, who I don’t remember him being in it. He must have been the young son. He was in Warm Bodies, which we liked. I believe my wife liked the book more. Which is typically the case. Decent romantic comedy with a zombie twist. He was Jack in Jack the Giant Slayer, which I have no interest in except to see what Bryan Singer is up to – visually but I now have Days of Future Past to look forward too. The commercials make it look like a real special effects heavy movie, so I’m glad he got more exposure to special effects.
Xavier outs McCoy as a mutant, like a dick. I’m not sure if it was the excitement of meeting more mutants in 24 hours than he has in his 24 years. But still, a dick. Movie McCoy’s power is that he has finger toes, but real finger toes. I wish he had big hands as well but its okay. Poor guy doesn’t even wear special shoes, he just crams his toes into his shoes.
Hank tells Platt that Platt never asked, so this is the first instance of “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
Hank gets to show off a bit, he even hangs upside down. Erik, Xavier and Raven are all impress.
Raven even is attracted, a little bit. We’ll see over and over again that Hank, if he would just shut up and listen, could have had Raven has a girlfriend but wouldn’t stop looking at her as a cure for his condition. Its painful to watch.
We start seeing where Shaw’s plans are heading as America and Russia are heading towards something, what could it be?
Shaw reveals to Emma his fancy new helmet that the Russians made for him. He puts it on his head and Emma can’t read his mind. Which I like the unspoken change in power here. Not sure if she has been manipulating him at all but now she can’t. The look on her face when he asks her for ice for his drink, is priceless.
Hank confronts Raven, he believes her DNA might be the best option for curing physical mutations. Not mutations themselves, but the physical aspects – which I like the concept behind it. She can shapeshift so in theory maybe her genes can help. But my issue is, if Hank’s physical power is changed, so that he has normal feet, he won’t be able to use his power at all, as how will he grip onto things?
Hank wants her blood and she gives it to him. I take it that if he wanted some kissing, she would have let him, but he’s an idiot. I do like how Lawrence plays all of these scenes. Subtly putting herself out there but knowing he is never going to take the bait.
Erik interrupts them, telling them that they should be happier that they have powers than they are. This is the beginning of Erik’s move on Raven, I’m not sure if the character – at this time – is planning it but he makes it no secret that he prefers her in her natural blue state. Really, he doesn’t like that Raven is hiding.
Erik finds the files the CIA has on Shaw. He is now leaving the base when Xavier confronts him. Xavier is surprised that Erik has waited this long before leaving. Xavier convinces Erik to stay with the idea that Shaw has friends, so Erik will need friends of his own.
Xavier and Platt are having a conversation when Erik comes back the next day. Erik agrees to join the team, but only if he and Xavier find the mutants. No government agents on site. Platt starts saying that is unacceptable but Xavier picks up on how this is the deal, if not, Erik is gone. Xavier agrees and Platt is out of luck.
Hank has created a Pre-Cerebro. So in the Trilogy of films, when Xavier and Magneto are claiming they built it, they must mean they built another one and not giving Hank his due credit.
Hank tells Xavier that it would work better if Xavier was bald. Xavier tells him to not to touch his hair. Pre-Cerebro is inside a giant golf ball. No one in the film makes the comparison. How could they not? Or is it too obvious?
Erik comments that Xavier is a lab rat. Xavier really wants to test it out, to see how strong his powers can get.
We are treated to some mutants – though how some of them can be present in the 60s is beyond me. We see Storm and Cyclops and a few others that I can only imagine are meant to be known mutants.
The road trip begins!
We first meet Angel Salvadore (from Morrison’s run) played by Zoe Kravitz. Daughter of that Kravitz – which I’m sure she loves that people point out who her father is. She was in It’s Kind of a Funny Story, which is by far my favorite Zach Galifianakis. The DVD is one of those bare bones DVDs, with maybe an interview feature or something but I wouldn’t mind owning it. She plays the would be love interest, if it wasn’t for Emma Roberts in the film – which I do like her in this film as well. Probably her best role but I haven’t seen everything she is in.
Xavier and Erik meet Angel. Erik shows off his powers, so she shows off her wings. She’s a stripper.
Xavier and Erik next meet taxi driver, Darwin – played by Edi Gathegi. Edi was in Gone Baby Gone, as Cheese. A role that stands out, due to the character name. He is Laurent in the Twilight movies.
Once the Atlas Shrugged trilogy is finished and available on Netflix, we are going to marathon those films as my wife loves that book.
Darwin is one of the mutants Xavier lost to Krakoa during X-Men : Deadly Genesis. One of the four Lost X-Men between the Original Team and the All New All Different Team. One of Moira’s students. None of that is even hinted at in the film. How could it even be?
Havok is the third mutant shown. He is played by Lucas Till. I only know him as being the love interest in Taylor Swift’s You Belong With Me music video. He’s in the film, All Superheroes Must Die, which is a film I’ve been somewhat curious to watch. It looks like a low budget film, so that could be very interesting or truly horrible.
Havok is in self imposed isolation in prison. From the dialogue, I’m not sure if he committed a crime or is it like Ali Larter’s character from Final Destination 2, where she just checked herself in one day.
Banshee is next up, he is hitting on some girl in an aquarium. She likes the fish, turns her back, he whistles at the fish and has her turn around, there’s no fish. Not sure how that is suppose to attract her.
Banshee is played by Caleb Jones. He doesn’t have an Irish accent, which is a shame. Apparently, before his film he was in movies with the sweet credit of “Boy …” in No Country for Old Men (on bike), Superbad (at party) and Social Network (Fraternity). So of course, who knows who he is. He seems like a natural redhead so might be able to pick him out during Superbad’s party scene. Though there are two party scenes so it could be either of those. Apparently, he was not asked back for Days of Future Past, that has to burn, especially has Havok was asked back. Banshee being the only First Class member to not be in the next film. Ooof!
0:48:04 – we get the Wolverine cameo by Hugh Jackman that was all the buzz when the film came out. He gets to say the one F-Bomb you are allowed to say in a PG-13 film. Which is how the latest Die Hard films are allowed to get away with it and stay PG-13. It is a little awkward with how Xavier and Erik show up, Logan says his line and the two leave.
In the submarine. Shaw has a special room in the back of the sub. He refers to mutants as, the Children of the Atom – which is one of the taglines for the X-Men comics at the time.
Emma can sense Xavier, his powers have been increased somehow. Emma can also sense that Xavier has been recruiting.
In front of the Lincoln Memorial. Xavier and Erik are having a nice chat. I could have used more scenes like this, where the two just chat. We only get one more. The topic they are discussing is what the government will do once they know about the mutants. Erik believes they will be forced to register and Xavier believes that the government will realize American mutants and humans will have a common enemy in foes like Shaw, that there will be peace still.
At Platt’s base, he gave the mutants a nice room with a window. Mystique believes they should all have codenames, as they are members of the CIA and agents get cool codenames. So they all take the names, they are known for. She calls herself Mystique, to which Banshee wishes he could have had that name. He calls himself Banshee, and Hank asks why that name. Which leads into people showing off their powers.
Darwin shows that he can grow gills if his head is under water. Banshee breaks the giant window to their room.
I really like this scene as it shows young mutants being young mutants.
Angel is her stage name. She then spits hot lava.
Poor Hank, everyone is accepting everyone’s power and then he shows off his feet. Havok, who is essentially a real dick to Hank for the rest of the movie until right before big conclusion, offers to call him, Big Foot. I wish the movie took a turn here and all the other mutants pounce on Havok and let him know that mutant on mutant name calling will not be tolerated. But it doesn’t go in that direction.
Mystique, to her credit, tries to stand up for Hank. Commenting on what
people say about guys with big feet. Then she points out how Havok’s feet seem rather small.
CIA Office. Moria gets permission to have mutants fight mutants.
Back to the young mutants. They are all drunk and having a good time. Even Hank. Xavier, Erik and Moira show up and the mutants get in trouble. Mystique has no time for this as she has to let Erik and Xavier know what is up.
They have decided that Erik will be Magneto and Xavier will be known as Professor X. Which is awesome. Even better, Erik likes this new name and finds it acceptable. Almost as if this is what he’s been waiting for, mutant identities.
So since the kids are drunk and out of control, they don’t get to join the next mission. That’ll show them. I’m not sure how the next sequence would have been if they were allowed to go.
Russian Military Retreat. The CIA has news that Shaw is going to be meeting with a Russian General.
The truck that Xavier, Magneto, Moira and a few soldiers are on, gets pulled over. Xavier tells everybody to be cool. When a Russian soldier opens the backdoor, he sees an empty truckload.
They get to the General’s house and they see only Emma entering, Shaw is nowhere in sight. The military are only interested in Shaw so they pull back. Magneto wants to go as Emma would clearly know where Shaw is.
This next sequence is spectacular! Magneto makes a run at the mansion, and the way he takes out guards is fun to see. He is so powerful and good with his powers.
Xavier can’t leave Magneto behind so he goes after him.
Emma has met with the Russian General, played by Rade Sherbedgia, who if you ever need to cast “Russian male” he is the go to guy. He was the main villain in The Saint with Val Kilmer. But he also in Eurotrip and in the latest M&M ad with the yellow M&M (who is voiced by JK Simmons). He was also in Eyes Wide Shut, Space Cowboys, Mission Impossible II, Stigmata, he’s the man Wayne gives his jacket to in Batman Begins and he was on 24 (Day 6).
The Russian General gets a fun scene, where he believes he is making out with Emma but really, she’s bored and trying to read a book when Magneto and Xavier barge in. It takes the General a while to figure out why Emma disappeared and is sitting on the couch. On top of that, why two men are staring at him.
The General gets knocked out. Magneto tries to get Emma to talk. She turns to diamond form. So he turns the bed frame into a strangling device and the Emma’s neck starts to crack under the pressure. She turns back to her human form. If she turns back, Magneto will break her.
Emma is now their prisoner.
Cut to Shaw, as he is planning on convincing Russia to move nuclear missiles to Cuba.
At Platt’s base. The young mutants are sitting around when they start hearing this thud noise. They look outside and it is raining men. Except these CIA agents are being killed when they hit the ground.
We see Azazel is doing the ol’ teleport to the sky, drop a fool routine.
Oliver Platt, unfortunately, is one of these guys. He’s killed as if he wasn’t an important character in the film, which is ice cold.
Shaw enters a room with a nice staircase. The agents open fire. He absorbs all the energy. Then with one stomp, the staircase and the second floor all crumble before him. All of those guys are dead. He only wanted to know where the mutants were.
The agents try to not reveal the location and they die. So those faceless guys get redemption.
All of this death and it is done by three mutants. That’s power. That and Riptide hasn’t had to do anything yet.
Azazel not only has teleporting but also uses swords – he is a swash buckler. Just like his son will be one day. Not sure if Chuck Austen shown him liking to use swords but Jason Aaron has in his opening arc of Amazing X-Men, its only taken the comics three years to incorporate it if that’s the case.
Before Shaw enters the young mutants room, we see some agents say “the mutants are in there, let us normal people go” to which Shaw kills them, and rightfully so. We have no room for prejudice people in this new world we live in.
Shaw meets the cast of the X-Men. He offers them a place in his club. They can be kings and queens.
Angel accepts with little hesitation.
Darwin pushes Havok, not sure if Havok actually knows at this point what Darwin is up too.
Darwin tells Shaw that his power is to adapt to survive and being with Shaw means to survive.
He tells Havok, now!, and Havok does his best to blast the Hellfire Club. He has no control so they go wild.
Shaw gets hit and uses that energy to kill Darwin. His body puts up a decent fight but he still explodes. Or does he adapt and becomes a being of air? I’m sure we are meant to believe he is dead as he doesn’t show up again.
These Pre-X-Men just got dealt their first lost.
Moscow, Russia. Russia has agreed to move missiles to Cuba. This is starting to look familiar.
Xavier greets the young mutants and hugs Mystique. Those poor kids have been through something.
The kids are ready to quit. Magneto tells them all that they will have to avenge these deaths. They are now, The Avengers! If only!
Xavier realizes that they all need to train, luckily he has a place for that.
We see the fancy prison cell Emma is in. There are two CIA agents talking about what to do and what will be done. The agents talk about how they can’t just keep her there, there are laws. To which the other comments on how those laws are for humans. That didn’t take long!
Emma uses her diamond finger to cut a circle in the glass and pushes it out. She tells them that she has an idea.
We are shown that it will take Russian ships a week to get to Cuba. So that’s how long these next couple scene’s time frame.
Ray Wise, is the Secretary of State. I know Ray as being the Devil from Reaper, a show that I somehow missed the second season of. I read that it ended on a cliffhanger, so that’s disappointing. He’s also the second (and final) actor to play Robin’s father on How I Met Your Mother. The original actor was Eric Braeden, he only portrayed the character once.
Ray Wise has been in a slew of films and television shows. Robocop, the wonder that is Twin Peaks, He was on West Wing once and 24 Day Five. He also gets type cast in essentially the same type of role.
Xavier Mansion. Everyone is impressed with Xavier’s home. Magneto wonders how Xavier could possibly get by, living in such suffrage. I love Magneto in this movie so much!
Also, great is the angle we see the Mansion at, can really see how gigantic it is.
We get the first of two speeches by Kennedy. I really like the use of Kennedy to put this film into real terms. I’ve been joking up to this point. We are clearly heading into the Cuba Missile Crisis.
Xavier Mansion. The first scene is Xavier holding a gun to Magneto’s face. Magneto wants him to shot him, as he needs to train. If Magneto knows he can stop the bullet, then he isn’t really pushing himself.
Havok gets the first of three scenes, which I like the progress shown of him trying to control his power. Xavier’s father built this bunker to withstand a nuclear blast, it should hold Havok. Havok tests out his power, Xavier reenters the room and sees the entire place is on fire. Even behind Havok!
Banshee is told by Hank that he should be able to control his power enough to fly. He gets a third floor window and pushes himself out of the window and falls on his face. Poor kid.
Xavier and McCoy get into a conversation about Jekyll and Hyde. The story is all about controlling impulses. Hank needs to let the beast free! Once he is able to do so, he is able to lap Xavier around the mansion.
Havok shows up, tells Hank that he needs a red nose to go with those feet. Going as far as to call Hank a bozo. Xavier thanks Havok for making such a comment.
Mystique is lifting weight and Lawrence looks great in this film. Which I know I’m the millionth person to comment on how Jennifer Lawrence is stunning to look at but there it is. Though I’ve only ever found her truly attractive in this role and Silver Linings Playbook. Though American Hustle looks like another film that plays up on her beauty.
Magneto tells Mystique that if she is using some of her focus to maintain her Raven persona, then she isn’t fully focusing on the issue at hand. He’s been holding up her weight bar during this and drops it on her, forcing her to shift to her blue form. I didn’t pay attention to how much she is lifting but I wonder how much. The weights look rather big.
Hank creates the famous Havok circle thing, proving he is the bigger person. Havok is now only slightly better with his power.
Hank is shown also working on Raven’s blood. Raven sits on his lap to look into the microscope. oh Hank, just kiss the girl!
Magneto, Hank, Xavier and Banshee are on the giant satellite dish. Magneto pushes Banshee off of it and luckily, Banshee is able to activate his powers so that he can fly. I’m not sure what the rescue plan would have been if Banshee didn’t get his powers to work correctly. None present would have been able to save him.
Havok finally gets to focus his powers with the device after Hank and Xavier stand on opposite sides of the test dummy.
Xavier shows Magneto a happy thought and now Magneto can obtain true focus. Which apparently is right right between serenity and anger. The memory causes both of them to cry, they are officially bromancing.
Kennedy’s speech, if Russia crosses the embargo line, there will be war.
Hank has created two serums that should cure his and Mystique’s physical mutations. Right when she was coming to terms with her mutation. Even here, he could have grabbed her but he’s too focus on getting his feet fixed. Raven is even in a robe, still he is not distracted.
How often does Hank even go without shoes? Seems like a man in his profession, he is always wearing shoes. Though he does have to live with the time when he is shoeless, but clearly this is a big issue for him that he can’t overcome.
Raven tells Hank that society should strive to be more like them after he tells her that even after they are successful after the mission, society won’t accept them due to their physical mutations. Raven rejects him.
We are given the second scene with Xavier and Magneto chatting. They are playing chess, which is a callback to the original trilogy. They are defining their outlooks with Xavier being an optimist and Magneto is a realist. Xavier believes all humans are like Moira whereas Magneto believes they are all like Shaw. Which is a great point, late in the movie, these two still believe Shaw to be a human. I guess the young mutants never told these two about Darwin and Shaw’s power.
Magneto gets this awesome, peace was never an option, line.
Hank takes the cure. It works for a moment and then he starts turning blue, which reminds me of a werewolf movie transformation scene.
Magneto goes to his room. Raven is in bed, waiting for him. She is has to be nude, under those sheets. He isn’t in the mood for such games. Raven thinks it is because of how young she is, so she shifts to Rebecca Romijn, which is a fun cameo. Erik isn’t happy with that either. He wants the real Raven. So she becomes Jennifer Lawrence again and he repeats, the real Raven. She shifts to her blue form.
Raven attempts to grab her robe, Erik tells her she doesn’t need to hide anymore. Which is odd, she’s nude but with scales. She can still wear clothes. I think she misunderstands him at this moment and he never corrects her (after all of these years) he only meant in his bedroom, outside of it, she should wear clothes but be blue.
At the hour and a half mark, Erik and Raven are kissing!
Scene fades to black and once it comes back, we are treated to Jennifer Lawrence in full nude blue Mystique form – from toe to head. She is looking good.
She greets Xavier and he does the right thing, of seeing her nude and wanting her to wear clothes. Raven leaves, disgusted with him. Xavier took some hits this night.
On Hank’s door, is a note telling the others that he is at the airbase and to bring the crate with the giant X on it.
Xavier opens the crate, from the crate’s angle, so the team sees what is inside but we don’t yet. It is the suits and since none of them can withstand zero-g, they better suit up!
I like how the color scheme is gold and blue, just like the original X-Men uniforms. They look nothing alike but still, the colors are represented.
We see full on Blue Beast!
Magneto gives him an honest, never looked better and Beast loses his mind and starts choking him. Xavier convinces him to let go. Havok speaks up that even he, the dick of the group, has to admit that Beast looks bad arse and gives him the Beast name.
Cuba.
2 navy fleets go to war.
Michael Ironside plays the American Navy Captain. I know him mostly by his voice, as he is a sensational voice actor. On the 90s DC cartoons (Superman and Justice League), he was Darkseid. In live action, he is in Top Gun, Total Recall (the original), Highlander II, Free Willy (where I probably saw him first), The Next Karate Kid, The Perfect Storm, he was Lois Lane’s father on Smallville. He was also on Community, playing his typical role – stern high ranking military man.
From the Russian side, their captain doesn’t want another world war as he already lived through one.
One of the Russian ships is about to cross the embargo line. We see that everyone on the ship has been killed by Azazel. Xavier is the way we find this out. Xavier takes control of one of the Russian soldiers and has that man set off a missile that destroys the ship.
The missile almost hits the Pre-BlackBird and the plane gets a little out of control. Xavier almost stops short with Mystique.
Shaw knows that he has to take a more direct route to ensure a world war.
Since they can’t see Shaw, they know he must be underwater. The plane does not have sonar. I do like how Banshee steps up so quickly, that yes they do. Moira sends out a message that the soldiers might want to take off their ear phones.
Banshee locates the sub. Shaw knows they are detected and moves back into his secret room. Shaw has Azazel turn the nuclear reactor to one hundred person. Shaw puts his hands on it, he is becoming a nuclear bomb himself.
Thus begins the sequence that becomes the conclusion to this film.
Magneto lifts the submarine out of the water, it is awesome. There is no denying that mutants (and superpowers) exist in this world.
The sub has the name, Carportina, but not sure if that means anything.
Riptide throws out a whirlwind and Magneto loses control of the sub, crashing it onto the beach. Their plane also crashes on the beach, practically right next to it.
A fight breaks out, three X-Men versus three Hellfire members. Azazel versus both Beast and Havok.
Moira tries to radio both countries to turn their ships around.
Magneto gets into the submarine. He turns off the nuclear reactor, which lets Shaw know that he is about to have to confront somebody.
Banshee saves Havok from Angel. Havok loses his circular device in the fight.
Shaw reveals himself to Magneto, they enter Shaw’s secret room so Xavier can’t monitor Magneto anymore.
I really like this scene of the two characters who haven’t been on screen together for like an hour.
Angel spits onto Banshee’s wingflap so he has to crash onto the beach along with Havok.
Magneto tries to stop Shaw by throwing metal pieces of the sub around Shaw. This creates rips inside the room that gives Xavier a slight opening to see what is happening.
Shaw realizes that he made Magneto into the man that he is. As a viewer, we can tell that Shaw’s philosophies are what shape Magneto’s outlook.
Havok has a better control over his power, even without the device’s assistance.
Shaw implies that Magneto hasn’t even hit his prime yet.
Azazel versus Beast. Good use of teleporation. Shaw comes out and tells Azazel to stop, Beast knocks him out. Good use of Mystique here.
Shaw makes the mistake of calling Magneto, son. Magneto does a call back to the earlier bar scene by calling Shaw his creator.
Magneto takes off Shaw’s helmet and Xavier freezes Shaw in his tracks. Magneto puts on the helmet, it is awesome!
Magneto agrees with Shaw but he hates Shaw for what he has done, he killed his mother, which is unforgivable. He pulls out the coin from the very beginning of the film.
Great directing choice with intercutting Shaw’s silent face with Xavier’s face as he is screaming, on top of the camera pan and cutting between the two characters, as their faces move from right to left as the coin goes into ‘their’ heads.
America and Russia have a shared enemy now, the mutants.
Magneto brings out Shaw’s dead body, resembling a scarecrow. Makes a great speech.
The two teams are split.
Missiles are fired, Magneto turns them around back at the ships.
Moira realizes that she is collateral damage.
It looks like Magneto is controlling a hundred missiles.
Xavier makes the mistake of telling Magneto that the soldiers are only, following orders. A line no one should ever repeat after the Nuremberg Trials.
Xavier tackles Magneto and they fight like brothers, with slaps. Due to this, Magneto lets some missiles drop.
Both captains make peace with their pending deaths, and thank their fellow soldiers for their service. Which is a very nice touch.
Moira comes at Magneto, guns ablazing! Magneto tosses the bullets aside. Except one of them hits Xavier, right in the spine! Where is this going!?!
Magneto starts choking Moira with her own dog tags! Xavier tells Magneto that it isn’t her who did this but Erik. This wakes Magneto up.
Magneto gives another speech. The assembled (!) mutants have two paths to go. Magneto takes the Hellfire Club members
At the two hour mark, Mystique runs over to Xavier. He tells her to go with Magneto. Which she does. Magneto has the beginnings of a group or a brotherhood, if you will.
I wonder where Azazel teleports them to, as there is no dialogue about it. Maybe just a few miles away and then Erik gives him proper directions.
Before they teleport, Mystique tells Beast to be “Mutant and Proud” which I’m surprised wasn’t the tag line to the film.
Xavier tells the rest of the mutants, and Moira, that he can’t feel his legs.
Kennedy gives his third speech of the film. It has been four weeks since the Cuba Missile Crisis.
At the Xavier Estate. Xavier is in a wheelchair. He tells Moira that they are G-Men but without the G. Moira tells him that they are now, X-Men!
Xavier is going to open an academy. Xavier is sure he will be going bald next.
To thank Moira for her service, he Superman kisses all of her memories of the past weeks away. What a great guy, not!
Cut to the CIA Director, as Moira reveals she only has flashes of what happened. She does remember a kiss, which the director rolls his eyes so hard and states that this is why women can’t be field agents.
Magneto frees Emma. She calls him, Erik. The camera turns to reveal Magneto in an image I can look at all day. He rather be called Magneto!
Love the shade of purple with red, purplish red, I don’t know.
The loss of Xavier has left a gap in his life and he needs Emma to fill it. Yeah, he do!
Two hours and four minutes, the credits begin! Jennifer Lawrence comes in at number five of the single card credits. That would probably be different now if they released the film, she would definitely be above Rose Byrne.
Thus our time with the film comes to an end!
I’ll review Wolverine Origins whenever the next Wolverine film comes out, which is slated for 2017. Unless I do it before then but I can’t imagine it coming up before then.
What better way to celebrate Mother’s Day than to review a comic with the greatest fictional character of all time’s mother? And I don’t mean Claremont, or Byrne (pending on how you view it).
This is Theresa ‘Terri’ Pryde’s first appearance. It is also so many others’ first appearance.
So rare, outside of a first issue, that so much world building or character creation will happen within one comic.
I remember buying this comic at Wizard World Philly 2006. Then, it was only thirty dollars. I thought I was practically stealing it at that price.
This is, of course, Kitty Pryde’s first appearance. Some magazines will state it is Emma ‘White Queen’ Frost’s first appearance, listing her first – or worst, only listing her. Nowadays, with Morrison having put Emma back in the spotlight and Whedon using both characters, this comic will cost someone around one hundred dollars.
Those two ladies are not the only ones marking this their first appearance. Carmen Pryde, Kitty’s father, is another one.
Then there are the villains. Emma Frost shows up, so this is also the first appearance of the Hellfire Club. In the shadows are – Sebastian Shaw, Harry Leland and Donald Pierce.
The Massachusetts Academy is mentioned for the first time. Naturally, this is the first time we see the Hellfire Soldiers and the Hellfire Knights. I’m not sure if the knights really appear much outside the next few issues.
Like I wrote above, this comic really adds to the mythos like few comics before or after it.
This is by far, my favorite comic. Without it, I wouldn’t even be a fan of the X-Men. If it isn’t my favorite comic, then it is at the very least, the most significant comic in my collection. My most prized comic. If all of my comics burned up, a recurring nightmarish thought I’ve had for years, I would have to buy this comic first, if I were ever to rebuild my collection. Which I probably wouldn’t do. That is essentially the danger of collecting paper as a hobby. I don’t quite worry about flood or water damage as I do fire.
On Comixology, I own the Paul Smith nine issues and this issue. Along with several other Marvel comics that were free when Marvel ran that promotion that practically crashed Marvel.com and Comixology.
Onto the issue :
Inside front cover ad is for Crossman Airguns.
Issue starts with the X-Men leaving Muir Island. The X-Men having just defeated Proteus.
Bsnshee was injured in the fight, thus needs to heal. He will not be returning to the States.
Moira lost both her husband and son in the fight, so now she is susceptible to Sean’s charm.
Since they are down one member, Cyclops offers Multiple Man a place on the team. He feels he is just a Kansas farm boy at heart, not a superhero so he will stay behind to stay on as an assistant. Imagine if he had joined? In this bold new era the X-Men are about to enter.
I forget to mention before, so this is where my X-Men collection begins. I have Giant Size X-Men 1, but none until this issue. All that came before Uncanny 129, doesn’t matter unless it is repeated post this issue.
Cyclops turns to Alex and Polaris, before he can offer, Alex turns him down. They just want to be normal people.
Tough day for the X-Men Recruitment Office.
On the Blackbird, back home, the X-Men are – Nightcrawler, Cyclops, Wolverine, Colossus, Storm and Phoenix who is fooling people into thinking it is Jean.
Colossus is being a big baby about how he had to kill Proteus. Instead of thinking that he was being a bro to Banshee. Also, Proteus was going to kill everybody.
Their plane passes another, this one has Jason Wyngarde. Which also reminds me. This is the first part of what will be known as The Dark Phoenix Saga. It begins here with the mind games on Phoenix. I have always been more of a fan of the first half dealing with the Hellfire Club rather than the second half dealing with the Shi’ar. The trade collects 129 to 137. I have never understood why it doesn’t collect 138, the entire aftermath issue. So the X-Men go from the Proteus Saga to the Dark Phoenix Saga. In the comic, it isn’t billed as part one or anything, that comes after all of the fan reactions.
Wyngarde, who is secretly Mastermind, reestablishes contact with the Phoenix. Apparently this was happening in the previous storyline as she was contributing it to Proteus.
There is an ad for Hubba Bubba bubble gum.
Now Jean believes that it is the Phoenix’s vast power, for some reason, transporting her to an ancestor. Roger Stern, the editor and Avengers legend, lets us know this happened twice before – issues 125 and 126. These editor notes are the reason I fell in love with Tom Brevoort over with Kurt Busiek’s Avengers run and those satellite titles. I wish we still got those today.
While Phoenix is exploring this new world, a nice gentleman comes along that reminds her of Scott, as Scott is checking in on her. Scott discusses how much he misses her when he thought she was dead, back in issue 113. They discuss his brief relationship with Colleen Wing. Scott states that all of his life, he has been losing people. He doesn’t mention that they all come back, except his mother.
When he thought Jean was dead, he couldn’t even function. They make out.
They get back to the mansion. The plane registers an intruder. The X-Men come barging in to find Xavier.
There are ads for rock shirts, whoppers and ROM action figure.
Days pass. Phoenix has read Xavier’s mind. He is there has he is concern about her increase power and her ability to control it.
Phoenix and Scott are walking when Wolverine comes out of the Danger Room complaining about Xavier’s training methods. Xavier is treating these latest X-Men as if they were the fresh face Original Five X-Men.
Scott knew this would happen, he didn’t expect it to be this fast. Scott confronts Xavier, explaining how Scott treats the team like peers, but he is the field leader. Xavier tells Scott that his intensity is for shit and he is a weak leader.
Scott tries to think of another tactic when Cerebro detects two mutants.
There are ads for a Marvel Holiday Special offer and an ad for Bubble Yum.
Page 14. We see that the Hellfire Club has a camera inside of Cerebro. Also, we get the three members in shadow. The last panel is Emma’s first appearance.
Shaw’s plan is to contact the two new mutants and try to recruit them.
Next, history is made!
Page 15, I become a lifelong fan of a character, Kitty Pryde. She is living in a suburb of Chicago, Deerfield, Illinois. Deerfield is twenty-five miles northwest of Chicago. The Prydes live on Central Avenue. She is introduced as Katherine Pryde. Kitty is thirteen years old. It is summer time and about noon. Kitty is coming home from a dance class.
The day before, the Prydes must have received two calls and didn’t mind double booking the two school institution.
The Prydes conclude their meeting with Ms. Frost. I wonder why they suspect two schools all of a sudden want to recruit their young daughter to live on the east coast. Did they send out feelers?
Terri Pryde wonders why Kitty is home so soon. Kitty states that she’s been having those headaches again. Terri
Kitty goes to her room, and starts thinking. Her parents must be serious about splitting up, if they are considering sending her to an out of state school. She doesn’t like that idea as she has friends here. I wonder how many and if she has secretly kept in touch with them, this whole time. I doubt it as one rule with joining the X-Men, is that you have to give up everything outside of being an X-Man.
Kitty doesn’t like Frost, she gave her the creeps. Frost looked at her like she was something to eat.
There is a two page ad for Star Wars action figures.
Kitty lays down. Starts getting another headache, and falls through the floor and lands in the living room.
The Prydes and Frost come inside right then. Terri is embarrassed. Kitty makes up the excuse that her shoe got snagged on the carpet and she tripped.
Carmen calls her, Kitten, as she runs upstairs, she claims she has homework.
The Prydes walk Emma to the door, apologising for their daughter’s odd behavior. Emma tells them, she understands as Kitty is young and in an awkward phase.
Emma passes Xavier and three X-Men, all in civilian clothes – Wolverine, Storm and Colossus. Wolverine takes note of Emma, that she looks good but makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. And that guy has a bunch of hair back there, so that is stating something.
The Prydes welcome the X-Men inside. Kitty sees them and they look like an odd grouping to her. Except for the big farmer boy, he looks good to her.
For some reason, Carmen thinks it is a good idea to send Kitty off with three adults to the local malt shoppe. Also, that she should be the only student under the age of 18 at this school, at least Emma’s school has students her own age. Emma’s school is training future mutant terrorists, so you lose some.
At the Malt Shoppe. Logan is reading some magazines, and by reading, I mean looking at Pentahouse and Colossus is standing too close to him. The owner doesn’t like Logan reading them as this isn’t a library. It must also be when the magazines were not sealed in a bag.
There is an ad for Elastic Hulk and Spider-Man that the Hulk one was featured on an episode of Comic Book Men.
There is another ad for ROM the comic by Bill Mantlo and Sal Buscema.
Ororo and Kitty are at a booth. I really like the two panels on top of the page with Kitty’s face all bright eyed and full of wonder and Ororo being amazed with how much life Kitty has. Ororo asks if Kitty has heard of the X-Men, she has and she thinks they are awesome superheroes. Kitty then figures out that she is amongst the X-Men! Xavier told Storm it was okay to let Kitty in on the secret. Kitty is so excited. Ororo can’t help but love the child, when she was at that age, she was making her way across the desert.
Kitty also comments on how beautiful Storm is, with her white hair and blue eyes, she is a wonder to look at. As far as Storm knows, she is one of a kind. I’ll say!
As everybody is enjoying themselves, minus the store owner, Hellfire Knights come crashing through a wall! One of them unleashes a flamethrower onto Colossus, who just turn to steel seconds prior. The flame is so hot that he can still feel it. Another Knight is attacking Wolverine, whose claws can’t cut it as it has a force field. The Knights are built to attack each X-Men individually.
Kitty gets scared from the violence and starts trying to back away, while still in the booth. She backs away so much that she phases through the wall. This is the first time she has done it with her eyes open so she knows how she keeps doing that now. Kitty passes out, as her powers drain her energy.
Wolverine, in classic comic book wisdom, decides they need to switch up opponents. The three X-Men make short work of the Hellfire Knights. Storm wonders what happen to Kitty, but figures she left when everybody else did. Just then, they all get zapped by a psychic attack. We keep hearing how much the X-Men are trained against such attacks, but I wonder if that comes after this issue. We will have to keep track of that. We know by 141, that only Kitty hasn’t received the training yet, thus making Days of Future Past possible.
The X-Men are knocked out. Emma Frost and Hellfire Club soldiers show up to clean up. The soldiers wonder what should happen to the knights. Emma tells them that the knights know the price of failure as their armors explodes. Those fellas are dead.
There is a Hostess ad starring Human Torch in the Icemaster.
In the hovercraft, Emma tells the soldiers to strip the X-Men of their costumes and to check for hidden items, as they know Storm keeps hidden lockpicks hidden in her headdress and cape. Clearly the Hellfire Club knows a great deal regarding the X-Men. They are prepared for them. What I really like about this panel, which is huge in the middle of the page is that Emma gives the order but we are shown that the soldiers are already doing it. Wolverine and Colossus’ shirts are off and Storm’s cape is being removed.
Emma isn’t worried about Kitty, as they know where she lives.
Issue ends with a hero in the making. Kitty has summoned the courage and mastery of her powers and has phased through the hovercraft’s wall. She is going to try to save the X-Men!
Back cover ad is for Lego, which apparently got the back cover to many comics during the 80s.
Such an amazing debut of two important characters into the X-Men Mythos!
I am planning on covering issue 130 for Father’s Day unless I do it before then so come back!
. . .
On this Mother’s Day, I want to send out a special shout to a few mothers.
First, my own mother, Diana, for delivering me and being the best mother I could ever ask for.
Second, my lovely and beautiful wife, Kristie, who was pregnant with our son last year, so we had a small Pre-Mother’s Day but gets to enjoy her first proper mother’s day. Thank you for the self-sacrifice for the past year as being pregnant wasn’t a fun experience, most of the time. Thank you for our son, Walker Dennis Klein, we sure did make a cute baby! We only have him as you made it possible as you did all of the hard work and the easy work. Thanks for letting me feel like I did anything even if it was small tasks.
. . .
Also, don’t forget husbands – Every Mother’s Day needs a Mother’s Night! A lyric I can’t stop having repeated in my head. Thanks YouTuber thelonelyisland for hosting the video!
So Part Two of Days of Future Present has no reference to Excalibur, Kitty nor Kate Pryde or Magik so I’m not keeping this issue for that story. What I am keeping it for is for this pinup by Rob Liefeld.
Thanks to Marvel Database for the better scan than I could have done :
By the time Liefeld came onto New Mutants, both Doug and Illyana were long gone memories. So there would never have been a chance for him to draw either character as the characters were not even thinking of their fallen friends.
So it is pretty cool to see Rob Liefeld draw Magik at all. You can tell that this Magik still has her trademark soulsword, always an easy way to identify her by.
In 1990, New Mutants released issues 85 to 96, and my last issue with the title is 84. They will spend the last issues of 1991 leading into X-Force which Liefeld co-created.
I imagine this “Glimpse of things to come” would have been an ideal X-Force title, of which, I would have totally bought.
I don’t buy an issue of X-Force until issue 26, completely missing out on Liefeld’s tenure on the title.
Cable, Cannonball, Boom-Boom, Sunspot, Rictor, Wolfsbane all make it to X-Force. Warlock never does. Shatterstar does eventually. Adult Magik definitely doesn’t. I wonder if there is any information out there regarding Magik’s inclusion on this piece of work. I can see an editor telling him to draw her to drive the fans nuts, as I imagine it would have had to.
There is a nice backup story with Doug Ramsey as a ghost as Wolfsbane shows up to tell him that she’s moving on to date a new guy, Rictor. Well, nice in that Doug is remembered in it. Doug is also mentioned in the proper Days of Future Present story but we’re not celebrating Doug on this blog. Well, not overly celebrating him. He shows up quite often enough though to give that impression.
Writers Sean McQuaid / Micahel Hoskin / Mark O’English / Stuart Vandal / Ronald Byrd / Eric J. Moreels / Barry Reese / Madison Carter / Anthony Flamini / Chris Biggs / Mike Fichera / Al Sjoerdsma / Rich Green / Eric Engelhard
Cover Artist Keu Cha
Cover Dated August 2006
“Justice to Marvel”
I own this issue for the Khaos entry, the new character that appeared in Excalibur Annual 1 in 1993 (one of those every annual that year required a new character). More on that and the character when we review that issue in June (something to look forward to!)
I wonder if I really should be owning these latest batches of Handbooks (from 2004 forward) that just merely mention Kitty as oppose to only owning the handbooks that actually have entries for Kitty, Lockheed or Magik. As I’m definitely not going backwards and buying all of those original handbooks for the mere chance of having a reference to those three characters.
The reason I’m spotlighting this issue is due to the legend that is Dick Ayers, sadly passed away on May 4, 2014.
We haven’t really dealt with deaths here on S&FwM and I’m not sure exactly what the best way to handle them are. I figured I would review an issue of theirs and that would be how we do it here.
Dick Ayers was the penciler for Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos for ten years. He also created the original ‘Western’ Ghost Rider that would eventually be known as the Phantom Rider once Johnny Blaze came onto the scene in the 70s. Sam Elliot sort of quasi played the character (loosely) in the first Ghost Rider movie. Which I own the second one but have yet to watch it. That one and Thor 2, just waiting for my wife to watch it with me and that is hard to schedule.
In terms of comics I have with Dick Ayers’ art work in it, I only own five comics – four of them being handbooks and the other is Amazing Heroes Swimsuit Issue 3.
That’s one of my regrets with these legendary artists of the silver age, is that my collection doesn’t go that far back and so I don’t really have any of their real work that others will reference.
You can learn more about Mr. Ayers from his Wikipedia page :
Three years after the second film. Like the second film, I always refer to this one as X-Men 3, as I don’t know anyone who calls it, Last Stand.
I only own this movie as the two disc DVD that was first released. The claws are the slip case and the cast photo is the actual DVD. The package also came with a comic, Stan Lee Meets the X-Men, written by Stan Lee! Stan meets Xavier and Magneto but its a fun ride. It also reprints three of his ‘favorite’ X-Men comics – that he wrote as that is what all three have in common. Issues one, four and nine. The Origin / First Appearances of the X-Men and Magneto, the first appearance of the Brotherhood (Mastermind, Toad, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch) and lastly, X-Men versus the Avengers as Xavier fights Lucifer – the alien that originally crippled him. Jack Kirby on art for all three issues, so that’s a bonus.
The Stan Lee Meets … was a little story they did at the time, other issues are Doctor Strange, Silver Surfer, Thing and of course, Spider-Man.
A little background with my history with the film. My wife and I had only been dating for a little while. Long enough for me to agree to come up to Montana with her and visit with her family for two weeks. I’m pretty sure at this point, I hadn’t told her how big of a fan of comics I was at the time. My only condition of going was that I really wanted to watch X-Men 3 while up there as the film would be out by then.
I was already tracking to love this movie as Kitty Pryde was confirmed to be in it as was Angel – which I would go into more later why I was excited about Angel being in it. Kitty Pryde played by Ellen Page was reported to be in the movie, a bunch. And she was, and I’ll say to this day that all of her scenes are what saves this film from being truly terrible. Though I’ve said that for going on eight years and I haven’t really rewatched it fully in at least three years. I’ve seen parts here and there thanks to FX airing the film as often as it does.
There was a scene rather early on in the film that I was pretty much like, uh oh and the rest of the film with few exceptions never got to recover from. When we left the theater, my wife knew that I didn’t have the great time I had walked into the theater thinking I was going to have. She thought the film was okay but I was counting the minutes so I could log onto a message board and rail against the film.
From there, she knew I was a crazy X-Man fan and how big of a fan of Kitty Pryde I was and I’m still thankful that she is in my life.
That was my X-Men 3 movie experience. Now onto the film!
They chose to carry over the simple hold onto the X in FOX for a two seconds which the other two films did as well. That’s nice.
The Marvel Logo is one of the better ones. I wish they kept this practice going but only a few films did this, where the logo visuals are only related to the film. I know one of the Fantastic Four films (probably the second one) only shows images from the Fantastic Four. If they don’t make a special one the images are very generic gloves and boots and random other images.
The commentary with the director and the writers (which is decent) discusses how they wanted to make sure the logo had only images from the stories that make up the film.
Thanks to a post I found over at the IGN message boards by poster TheNewCharlie985, he posted this gif that I absolutely love. I’m not sure if he created but he’s who Google pointed me at so my thanks to him.
Pending on how fast your computer plays gifs, you can really make out some of the images rather well. On the Kindle, it seems like it pauses gifs in a weird way so I get random panels being paused, and it is in a different place with each cycle so I’m always surprised with what is in there. Kitty Pryde makes several appearances, I want to say I’ve seen three separate ones. So great!
I’m not that familiar with Brett Ratner as a director. I meant to see at least a few of his films before I saw this one but could not get access to any of them. I’ve seen the Rush Hour films (I wouldn’t say I like them all that much outside of the first one and parts of the sequels), Family Man (which I like with Nicholas Cage and Tea Leoni) and later I found out he was a producer on the great show, Prison Break. Well, great until the train wreck that is Season Three but Four makes up for it. I would not recommend watching the two hour film as I regret that I did.
So Ratner is the director of this film He’s the director because Bryan Singer was given a once in a lifetime chance to make a Superman movie and he didn’t want to pass it up. Why FOX didn’t just wait one more year is beyond me. Probably due to how large the cast is so it is hard to schedule times around all of them.
Superman Returns came out a month later and I remember thinking that hopefully Superman Returns was worthy of a film to make X-Men 3 the price of success. It isn’t but that is a lot of pressure to put on a film.
So the film opens with young Xavier and Magneto (it is done with special effects but they look practically like their faces are pulled way back so if the actors ever wondered what it was like to have a face lift, this is what it looks like) visiting an even younger Jean Grey. She is experiencing Phoenix level telekinesis.
Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen are back as their respected roles.
Does the number 1769 have any significance in the world of the X-Men? It is the house number of the Greys.
Xavier is walking at this point. I like that Magneto is wearing a purple/reddish jacket, they really keep with the color scheme.
They kept John Grey’s name and they don’t name Jean’s mother.
Before this scene ends, as we see that Jean is lifting every car in the neighborhood into the air, we see Chris Claremont, the legend!, mowing his grass. At least, he is trying to but his lawnmower is also being lifted into the air. Stan Lee is one of the neighbors too, Stan is the man (!) with the water hose that is also being lifted to the sky.
So far so good.
The second flashback is a young Warren Worthington III. When they announced Ben Foster as Angel (he doesn’t play young Angel in this scene) I was so excited. This meant that all five original X-Men were going to be in a live action film together. Before this, we had to settle for the 90s FOX Cartoon episode, Cold Comfort, to get a small taste of the Original X-Men in action. The X-Men Evolution episode, Under Lock and Key, also has the five original X-Men – which is fun as by its third season, it took some doing to get these five characters together as they were not teammates or peers really. Later, the Wolverine and the X-Men episode – Breakdown, also has the Original Five X-Men in animation. So this film, misses that mark. There is only one scene that gets three of them in the same room together and it is over as soon as it begins. Highly disappointing but we’re not there yet.
Young Warren is trying to cut off his wings so he can make his father proud, poor kid. Feel bad for the kid but we’re still okay, viewer wise.
Then the opening credits begin. I do like how it is a short graphic, they don’t waste any time going into the film. With the film only being an hour and 44 minutes, they have to get to everything and fast. Not sure if it is the shortest of the three films but it really moves.
Movie claims it is in the, Not Too Distant Future.
When we first see the X-Men, they are fighting Sentinels. It is mostly a bunch of sound effects but we see one seven foot tall Sentinel head. Wolverine comes out from behind it. The X-Men at this point are Rogue, Iceman, Colossus, Wolverine, Storm and with a new casting – Kitty Pryde. The other are all played by their respected actors – Anna Paquin, Shawn Ashmore, Daniel Cudmore, Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry and Ellen Page.
We see Kitty Pryde, played (for the third time, by a Canadian) by Ellen Page. She was known as Kitty Pryde from X-Men 3 for like a hot second (more like a year) but the very next year, her career exploded and people started just calling her Juno. She got Oscar nominated and people fell in love. Leaving me around to be like, uh guys, she’s Kitty Pryde first but no one cared about that. Now she is Kitty Pryde again and do you hear about any Juno sequels? No. I do love Ellen Page, I don’t see every film she is in (because I’m a fool) but the ones I have seen, I do enjoy and it is mostly due to Ellen Page’s presence. Her third film I saw after X-Men 3 and Juno was Hard Candy, where I first saw Patrick Wilson in – and have since become a huge fan of. Whip It, I enjoyed – need to own it one of these days. Inception, I liked, not sure if I want to own it – as I didn’t love it as much as others did. Super, I need to own it, she is so wonderful in it.
She’s in a Woody Allen film, To Rome with Love and I saw it first the first time only recently. Brave to put her and Alison Pill in the same movie. I though Ellen was playing a blonde and a brunette at first. Also, I want to play Beyond : Two Souls so badly but my PS3 died and who knows if I would ever get a PS4.
If there was a YouTube video of only the Kitty Pryde scenes from this movie, I would love that video so much!
At the 0:05:06, we see Kitty for the first time!
Some fun teamups in this. Kitty and Iceman are running around. Storm is flying. Colossus and Rogue are a team, she absorbs his armor ability. Nice bit of acting with him shaking the effect off.
0:05:52, Kitty phases through one missile. Bobby freezes a second one. Then she phases both of them through the frozen one as it crashes. She does it via a hug, which Rogue sees.
Wolverine lights his cigar off some burning wreckage. He has Colossus do a fastball special, which I wish they named.
Hugh Jackman is looking like how we all know him nowadays (minus all the crazy muscles, he’s still fit but not crazy built) and Halle Berry is wearing an even better wig.
Storm is upset that Wolverine went rogue in the fight. He tells her that he at least used teamwork. He also mentions a strong defense is having a good offense, which will come up again.
0:07:53, we get to clearly see Kitty’s uniform for the first time, she has red trims – which isn’t really a color that she’s been associated with in the past but Iceman got blue and Wolverine got yellow.
Scott is still grieving.
Bobby and Rogue are fighting as she is mad she can’t touch her boyfriend. He tells her he never pressures her. She throws in his face that he is a boy and only thinks of one thing. Which he really should have said something after that.
Cyclops, by James Marsden – treasure this screen time! is still upset that his girlfriend is dead. Scott looks rugged. He just doesn’t give a dman. Wolverine confronts him about not being in the Danger Room sequence. Scott gets this great line of, not everyone heals as fast as you Logan.
We see Beast, hanging upside down in his office. Nice reveal as the camera turns upside down to show what he is doing.
Beast is played by Kelsey Grammer, who doesn’t appear to be eighty! I do like how they never once show us what Beast looks like without the makeup on. Grammer as Beast was one of those dream castings up there with Patrick Stewart as Xavier. The issue was always going to be, would an actor of his stature do a comic book movie (this was before everyone was doing comic book movies) or allow himself to be covered with enough makeup, that his face wouldn’t be that recognizable. The closest is we see his hand go from blue to white when he is introduced to Leech. We all know Kelsey Grammer from TV’s Frasier (and Cheers). He is also the voice of Sideshow Bob on the Simpsons. I liked him in Down Periscope.
Beast in the film is the President’s Secretary of Mutant Affairs. The President in this film is played by Josef Sommer. Making him the third President of these films. With this film taking place in the distant future, it could be either four years or eight years later. Probably four.
We are shown that Mystique is a prisoner, they are trying to figure out Magneto’s current location. She isn’t talking. What she is doing, is beating up her interviewers.
The President reveals to Beast that they are working on a cure for troubled mutants.
0:12:38, Back at the school, Xavier is teaching Mutant Ethics. Kitty proves she is a genius by quoting Einstein. Xavier throws to Moira MacTaggert, Xavier poses a question that sets up the end credit sequence.
Xavier stops class as the weather gets bad outside. Storm needs her hand held, I suppose. As they talk, we can see three blondes in the background, the Cuckoos! Xavier wants Storm to replace him at the school, if the need shall rise.
Beast is at the school. We learn he was an original member. Storm and Beast exchange hair compliments, with Xavier sitting right there! The jerks!
Wolverine meets Beast, they seem to not like each other as they exchange animal metaphors.
Beast informs the three of them about the cure. Storm gets all upset because they are not a disease that requires a cure. Xavier tells them that the news is announcing it right now.
Worthington Industries is working on a cure – thus Joss Whedon / John Cassaday’s opening arc of Astonishing X-Men, Gifted, is credited as being the concept behind the film. If I had my way, I rather watch the motion comic of that arc and this movie. Some foolish websites would state that Dark Phoenix Saga is an inspirational storyline for this film, but besides Jean using the name, Phoenix, is there any connection between the two? I don’t see it. No Hellfire Club, no space battle and definitely no noble sacrifice are seen.
Has Bryan Singer ever been interviewed regarding his opinions on this film? I know Days of Future Past is sort of going to fix any problems this movie created so that might be seen as his reaction but that’s probably mostly the studio’s reaction.
This made the most of any X-Men film so that’s something as well.
Rogue is all excited about the cure, Storm seems to forget who she is speaking to as she is telling the room that the cure isn’t needed.
Magneto hears the news of a cure and isn’t going to let that fly and decides to get a gang together. A Brotherhood, if you would.
Magneto is forming his new Brotherhood by going to a mutant rally. This is where production tries to put as many mutants as possible and combinations of mutants as possible and it really back fires. The movie is taking a turn and it will either keep turning or settle. There will be some peaks but they are not lasting.
Magneto has Pyro.
He gains a version of Callisto who needs to have her vague appearance and Caliban’s powers. Callisto is played by Dania Ramirez. She is apparently Daphne is 25th Hour, but I’m not sure who that is in the film. She’s also Selene from American Reunion but not sure who that would be either.
Meiling Melancon as Asian Psylocke, and we only really know this by the credits and the purple streak in her hair. She’s in Rush Hour 2, so that explains that.
Omahyra Mota as Arclight from X-Treme X-Men.
The biggest offense is Ken Leung as “Kid Omega.” If they had only named him correctly, with Quill, there wouldn’t be a problem. Now, why would producers want to adapt Quill, is beyond me but they did and tried to make him a better character by giving him a different character’s name, but that doesn’t work. Same thing with Dominic Monaghan going to play Barnell Bohusk, which is Beak’s real name when he is clearly playing a character with electricity powers. I do like Ken Leung, he gets a terrible role in this film but he was fun on LOST and Person of Interest. He was both Keeping the Faith and Family Man – but I don’t recognize him nor the character names from those roles. He’s also in the first Saw film but I don’t remember him from it either. I do love the first Saw film, I still state that it is the best final scene in a film to this day. Or at least, the best twist in the film. Poor guy, I also love Spike Lee’s Inside Man and don’t remember him in it. I need to revisit these films.
Magneto makes an awesome speech and gains some recruits. Callisto apparently has a mutant scale and most people in the room are below level three.
Callisto asks where Magneto’s ink is, as these mutants all have horrible tattoos. He shows his Holocaust number, 214782, which is incredible that they keep being able to work that in. First Class kept the same number too, which is good.
We see Mystique is being transported in a convoy.
Beast visits the Worthington Labs. We meet Dr. Kavita Rao, played by Shohreh Aghdashloo. She’s in Twenty Bucks, a film that I really like the concept of, where we follow one twenty dollar bill. She is also in The Exorcism of Emily Rose and Lake House, where she also plays doctors. She is Elizabeth in The Nativity Story.
We learn that mutant is being used for the cure, that mutant is a white boy named Jimmy played by Cameron Bright. I point that out as he’s suppose to be Leech, the green Morlock. I guess it makes more sense to not make him green as we already have Beast being quite blue in the film (as well as Mystique). I know him from Godsend, Thank You for Smoking (which I love the film), apparently he is in Juno but he is credited as RPG nerd which is not a character I’m familiar with from that film. Apparently he is Alex, one of the Volturi, in the Twilight films. I wouldn’t recognize him from that.
Beast goes to shake Leech’s hand and his turns white. Leech apologizes. Leech has an XBox.
Scott rides to Alkali Lake and sees where she has died has dried up. He hears his name spoken by Jean. He optic blasts the lake. Next, he sees Jean and they kiss – even though her hair is way too long but he loves her. Famke Janssen is still Jean Grey. Jean has Scott take off his visor, she holds back the optic blasts – she’s that strong and they really start to make out. We see Marsden’s blue eyes. Things don’t go well as Jean’s eyes go all black.
We’re still okay though. Hesitant but still okay.
Xavier senses something is wrong and sends Wolverine and Storm to investigate.
Storm is in costume and Logan is in his regular style of an outfit. When they get there, they see all types of things floating about including water and rocks. Then Logan finds Cyclops’ glasses. Storm finds Jean.
They take her back to the mansion, and we get a fun twist on the scene from the first film. Where Wolverine is on the bed and Jean is caring for him.
At the 30 minute mark, Xavier explains that Jean has a split personality that she called, the Phoenix. So now we know, as fans, that this movie is taking a nose dive. He also explains that Jean is the only class five mutant he has ever met. I feel like we need more classes or classes one and two are going to be filled with hundreds of people and levels three and four will only be known (famous) mutants.
Wolverine is disgusted that Xavier had to resort to putting mental blocks in Jean’s mind to control her. Xavier does it best to not throw all the deaths Wolverine has caused due to his utter lack of control. That’s what you get with a great actor like Patrick Stewart.
So Xavier leaves so Wolverine can watch over Jean.
At the mutant rally, we find out that the first subject is about to take the cure. We go upstairs and we see Ben Foster as Angel for the first time.
I wonder if Ben Foster regrets being in this movie, as it really isn’t the type of role he typically takes.
I really like Ben Foster. I’ve liked him since Disney’s Flash Forward. When people talk about Flash Forward, my heart skips a beat as I feel like I’m the only one who even remembers that show. But of course, they want to talk about the ABC show about the black out and time lapse. I didn’t watch that show, my wife did. She really liked the book. These are the things I can talk about. I imagine Ben Foster does not want to talk about Flash Forward either. Jewel Staite was his neighbor slash best friend on the show.
Films he probably would like to discuss are – Get Over It, Bang Bang You’re Dead (a great film!), the Thomas Jane Punisher, 3:10 to Yuma (I really like it and he’s awesome in it. Why Luke Wilson is in that small of a role is beyond me) and 30 Days of Night (so he’s been in three comic book films).
Angel really doesn’t want to take cure, he changes his mind. His father is being a real jerk about it. I’m not sure if Angel is in the right as he jumps through the window and flies away. He really should have left through the front door. I wonder how the media covered that as that can’t be a good sign. Mutants escaping through the window. Leech sees Angel flying away from his little room.
Mystique is still being transported in a military caravan. At one point, she was taken prisoner. Magneto frees her in a pretty awesome stunt. Mystique is still played by Rebecca Romijn.
Before Magneto gets into the semitruck, Mystique kills her one guard that she promised she would.
When Magneto frees her, she tells him that there are fellow mutants in the caravan.
Eric Dane plays Multiple Man. He was in the film, Valentine’s Day, but who wasn’t?
Juggernaut is played by Vinnie Jones. They don’t claim he is Xavier’s stepbrother (they also don’t state that he isn’t) but they do state he is a mutant so there’s that. I do enjoy Vinnie Jones when I see him pop up in a movie. My first film of his was a small role in Eurotrip. He was also good on Elementary recently. He is in Gone in 60 Seconds (a film I don’t care for just because of how detailed they show how to hijack cars), Swordfish (where he gets to reteam with Berry and Jackman in this film – it is okay – there is a reason why it is known for two things ha cha cha cha), the Condemned (a Steve Austin film). He was on The Cape, that gave us the sweet Six Seasons and a Movie goal from Community.
Magneto has a better Brotherhood already than he has in the previous films.
One of the military guys fires a gun at Magneto, Mystique takes the hit and she is now cured. We see Rebecca Romijn in the flesh but with a short brown hairstyle, which I like as it mirrors her Raven Darkholme persona from the comic. Except nude. Which must have been a rough day of a shoot as poor Rebecca is nude on the floor of a tank, and that doesn’t look like a smooth surface.
My wife came out to talk to me and I paused the film so I can give her my full attention – always a good idea. Of course, I paused it as Romijn is naked, covering herself up. My wife didn’t comment on it but it was a little embarrassing.
Pyro burns the soldier alive. Magneto and the Brotherhood leave Raven behind. Magneto states that it is a shame as she was so beautiful. Pyro looks like he is in shock that they are leaving her behind. That or he realizes that Magneto would straight up abandon people.
Beast learns of the weaponized cure and confronts the President. Beast is going to be taking a little break from the president, as he clearly isn’t needed there so he’s heading to where he is needed.
Jean wakes up, and has a passion that only Wolverine can attempt to slate. Jean is super aggressive in the scene, which I like. Wolverine puts up a fight and she starts taking off his belt and such. He doesn’t like a Jean that is ‘good to go’ he wants innocent Jean.
He tries his best but then he remembers Scott is missing and needs to know where Jean and Scott stand. Jean tells Wolverine that he doesn’t have to worry about Scott any more, more kissing and he realizes what is up. Scott, Cyclops, the best X-Man amongst them, their leader, is dead. And Jean killed him.
We are now in uh oh territory. Now, I’m in the theater, thinking of ways it can be undone. If the Phoenix kills someone, then it can easily undue that as Phoenix is all about birth and rebirth. Except that this is crazy Jean split personality Phoenix and not the mythological bird Phoenix. Oh how I wish they didn’t choose to ruin the Phoenix concept with this film. Marvel was smart to steer clear of adapting any aspects of this film into the comics.
To this day, my wife still thinks this is what the Phoenix is, or at least, that’s what she tells me. She likes to poke at me with how – once it is in the movie, that’s how it is – which of course annoys and frustrates me. Not her mentality but the movie producers mentality.
My wife hasn’t had this type of reaction to a film, until recently. She is a big reader of novels and will read the book before seeing any film adaption. She really got into those Immortal Instruments books and then the first film came out (the only one thus far) and she could not believe some of the choices they made for that film. Choices that are going to make the sequels that much harder to adapt. She vaguely had this reaction with Beautiful Creatures but we all know that franchise is dead in the water as I believe they are filming the second Immortal Instruments film right now.
It was her first time having to think about movie adaptions and how they work and being disappointed with on top of that, having to ponder what it means with future changes and how that is going to make a less than good film.
The only other reaction I can think of is from Return of the King when they chose to have Samwise Gamgee seek the ring as in the novel, she’s a huge Tolkien fan, he is never tempted to take it. It really taints the film in rewatching for her.
There is a scene later in the film where I realized that the producers have no interest in bringing Cyclops back to life as they are punishing James Marsden for making Superman Returns with Singer.
Phoenix, not liking being turn down by the animal that is the Wolverine, flings him across the room and leaves.
Jean came to her senses for a little bit and wanted Wolverine to kill her, and he didn’t. Oh how the movie would be so different if he just did it.
Magneto, in some sort of cave base?, has one of the cure guns. He needs to do something about this. He needs an even bigger army.
Callisto informs Magneto about a new Class Five mutant she has detected.
In the Medlab, Storm finds Logan. Xavier is disappointed that Logan let Jean escape.
Magneto and his Brotherhood get to Jean’s parents house at the same time as the X-Men. I like how Ratner matches the beginning of this scene with the opening scene. In twenty years, Xavier got into a wheelchair and Magneto has gotten an awesome villain suit. Though, these two look nothing like how their younger selves look when they were thirty years ago but production had no idea First Class was around the corner.
This is a decent action sequence and we get some nice pairings. The scene ends in a lousy way though.
Juggernaut fights Wolverine. Callisto fights Storm. Good sequences.
Magneto and Xavier try to compete for Jean’s affections. It is weird. Wolverine works his way into the room, after Juggernaut flings him into the house. Wolverine is there when Jean kills Xavier. So brave of Jessen to allow herself to be filmed in such an attractive light and makeup.
Then she leaves with Magneto, who is both shocked at this turn of events and scared. His hold on Jean will be considered unstable at best.
This is where I knew that the film was going to be not a pleasant experience.
There were rumors when Halle Berry won her Oscar for Monster’s Ball (great film) that she demanded a larger role in X-Men 3. The easiest way to make her have a larger role is to get rid of other roles or screen time. So what do the writers do? They kill off Xavier and Cyclops to give Halle Berry more screen time. So this movie is always hard to watch when Berry is on screen as it is her fault for their deaths. Or at least, that’s the rumor I remember and I don’t ever remember anyone stating otherwise.
Is Monster’s Ball great enough of a film to warrant X-Men 3 being the price of that victory? I wouldn’t say so.
0:51:04, The Funeral Scene. Nice to see Kitty getting to set in the front role, she is part of the big team after all. A bit insulting that they gave Xavier a tombstone / statue that is at least ten times as large as Cyclops’. He barely got a thin gravestone. Xavier’s face on the statue reminds me of President Eisenhower from the dime. I guess bald men look the same in 2D.
Poor Kitty, because she can be touched, Bobby puts his hand over her hand and Rogue is sitting right there! She is all bundled up so she can have her boyfriend hold her hand, which he is doing. It is pretty insulting. It isn’t even like Kitty was hinting at needing some comfort. Some cold comfort. Who tries to hold two girls’ hands at a funeral? Just sit there, bro!
We see that Moira went from teaching a lecture aboard to traveling over an ocean to attend the funeral. She’s right next to Beast.
0:52:11, Kitty is crying in her room, away from others. Nice that Ellen Page has spent almost an hour in the movie and this is her second scene that allows her to do any acting in it. Bobby knocks and lets himself in. Like a jerk! Kitty tells him her origin story. Xavier came to her house and encouraged her to join the school. She misses home, she tells him. Which gives Bobby an idea. An idea that is clearly beyond a friendship level.
Bobby takes her to the fountain and freezes it for her. Now she can skate, like she would in Chicago. This is a fine idea, but then he gives himself a pair of skates and skates around the fountain with her, holding hands and making her laugh. Rogue is watching all of this and I get from Kitty’s perspective, that she is given a fun thing to do but from Bobby’s perspective, he is clearly hedging his bets.
I’m just happy that Kitty Pryde / Ellen Page was given two minutes of screen time!
Rogue packs her bag, on her way out the door, Logan sees her. I like how he tells her that he isn’t her father, he’s her friend. She is surprised that he isn’t trying to stop her but he completely understands her motivations. He offers her a ride and she declines. Scene ends with Rogue telling him her name is, Anna. Which the comics settled on Anna Marie to try to own it, I suppose.
In the woods. Magneto is talking to Jean, and Jean clearly is only hanging out with Magneto has she has nothing else to do. Later, Pyro claims he would have killed Xavier if that’s what Magneto wanted. Magneto stops him and expresses that his greatest regret is that Xavier had to die so that Magneto can win.
0:58:08, this is the scene. I like that we are getting an X-Conference. The team has lost both their leaders. Since Xavier is dead, they have to figure out if the school is going to even be a school. Storm believes the time has come to disband. In the room is Storm, Wolverine, Beast, Iceman and Kitty!
Angel walks in the room, stating he heard the school was a safe place for mutants. Storm tells him it is and that the school will remain open, to the smiles of everyone! Well, maybe everyone. We get shots of all the attendees except for Kitty. Funny how Colossus isn’t in the meeting. Funny and it makes perfect sense. If Angel hadn’t shown up, would someone else had spoken up? Or would the school be closed?
My problem with this scene is that it is the closest we will get to having the Original Five in live action together. Beast, Angel and Iceman – the B Team! They don’t get shown all at once or as if it is a special occasion at all.
Which now that I think of it. I thought I was going to lampoon the film, but it really has only three scenes that I find myself shaking my head at. But the rest of the film is rather enjoyable. Which I can’t believe I just typed that. It definitely is the lesser of the three films but not by much. I blame it on me being older and just wanting to watch a movie and enjoy myself. I’m not punk 24 year old anymore.
So Bobby is looking for Rogue (finally!), I suppose so he can tell her the good news. He knocks on her knock, twice and waits for an answer. Kitty must have told him how rude it was in between those two scenes. He opens the door to find her gone. He sees Colossus (who hasn’t been seen since the Danger Room scene) and he tells him that she left a while ago. Colossus is just walking around with a television set under his arm.
At the hour mark, only forty four minutes to go! While Logan is spending some lone time at Xavier’s grave, he hears Jean’s telepathic call. He’s going to go to the woods. Storm sees him right before he leaves, telling him that he needs to choose a side. He has, he wants Jean.
There is a rally, with mutants in line for the cure. Rogue is thinking of taking it. Bobby and Pyro have one of their encounters. I like how fast Pyro figures out that Bobby is there due to Rogue wanting the cure. Then he gives Bobby crap for it. Pryo then blasts the windows out of the cure treatment center.
Magneto gets on television, would a network actually air his speech? There will be more attacks on treatment centers.
1:02:44, Kitty sees this on the news.
The President gives the order, and then we see the military response. They trade in all metal and replace all weapons with plastic versions.
We see Rogue get off the bus and into a line at one of the treatment centers. She sure took a while to get to one of these.
Wolverine makes it to the woods. He has to fight a white version of Spyke from X-Men Evolution. Or a male version of Marrow, pending on which route you want to go. Wolverine kills Manrow and fights off a slew of other mutants. He moves in close as Magneto makes a speech.
Logan finds Jean, dressed all in red. She has changed her mind. Magneto confronts Wolverine and wins out due to Wolverine having a metal skeleton. Magneto wins by flinging Wolverine miles away.
The President gives the order to attack Magneto’s wooden base, as Mystique has given up the location of it. Women scorn and all that. Once they get there, they see they feel for a trap. It was only Multiple Man doing his thing.
Magneto is ready to take the fight to Worthington Labs, which is located on Alcatraz – in San Francisco. I’ve never been there, my wife says it is nice.
Magneto eyes the Golden State Bridge.
At the mansion, Wolverine informs Storm and the X-Men what is happening.
Angel overhears how Worthington Labs is about to be attacked.
Beast still fits, sort of, in his old uniform.
1:11:19, Kitty is in her uniform!
Six X-Men versus an army of Magneto. Wolverine gives the big morale boosting speech.
From this point on, there are two moments where I really notice how short Ellen Page is! Doesn’t help that most of the cast is near six feet tall.
In the Blackbird, everyone is silent as we read their expressions on their faces. Somber.
Magneto shows the most power he has been able to show in the films, he takes a large portion of the Golden State Bridge and uses it as a platform to transport his army to the island. There is no going back now, that city is going to have to replace and rebuild that bridge. So many commuters are going to be out of a job if they can’t find a way around now.
Magneto gives the worst line of the film, Charles always wanted to build bridges. Oooof!
Cute moment when one of the cars on the bridge (as not everyone got to escape) has a family of four in them and the mother locks her door. Hopefully their car wasn’t one of the ones that Magneto and Pyro flame throw at the military later.
Magneto orders his army to attack, the nameless members of the army. He calls them pawns. The military starts shooting the cure bullets at the invading mutants. My problem with this is that most of these mutants have the same power, they seem to be able to leap far and are strong.
Also, when Magneto lands the bridge portion is is daytime and when they are about to attack, it is night time, what happened!?!
Arclight does a sonic boom.
1:19:45, The X-Men land on Alcatraz Island. The X-Men all land in ways that are unique to themselves, which is awesome. Kitty (with Iceman) drops to the ground, she phases both of them down and then springs back up.
Wolverine, the field leader I suppose, tells the team, to hold this line. On the commentary track, Ratner states that the nod Kitty Pryde gives to Wolverine is suppose to be a sign of all of their history they have together. Which I did not pick up on that the first time around.
The X-Men start to fight the invasion. Kitty does this cool move at the 1:21:21 mark, where she lets a guy phase through her and then turns around and body slams the guy to the ground. The film does a great job of showing the offense ability of phasing.
1:21:42, The entire reason the Brotherhood is there is to stop the cure, and the best way to do that is to find Leech and stop him. Juggernaut goes into the prison to find him. Kitty takes off as she knows she can get ahead of him by phasing through the walls. It is a fun sequence as he smashes through the walls and she runs through them. At once point, and at the time, this became quite the Internet meme – Kitty phases Juggernaut into the ground and he laughs at her attempt to stop him by shouting at her, “I’m the Juggernaut, Bitch!” Which is uncalled for. She smirks at him, which I’m pretty sure the above picture of Ellen Page as Kitty is taken from that moment.
Meanwhile – Quill, Arclight and Psylocke find Worthington Jr. and Rao. Psylocke is shown becoming visible in front of the wall. The ladies take off with Worthington Jr. and Quill gives Rao a hug and kills her with his pines. It looks completely stupid. Fourth bad scene but they are outnumbered by the good / enjoyable scenes.
1:23:16, Kitty gets to Leech’s room, she tries to phase him, she learns that his mutant power is to turn off other mutant powers. Kitty, in that split second, comes up with a plan to stop the unstoppable. Juggernaut charges at them, like a fool, the two teenagers jump to to their respected sides and Juggernaut hits his head and he is down for the count. He is wearing a helmet but he’s been defeated. In the film, Kitty calls Juggernaut a dick head but on FX airings, she states, Tin Head.
Quill tries to kill Angel’s father but Angel saves him. This is exactly Angel’s third thing he does in the film, I guess it warrants him being in it all but does it? Also good thing he didn’t take the cure.
Storm fights Callisto and kills her by electrocuting the fence.
Pyro starts setting the cars on fire and Magneto launches them at the X-Men and the military. Pretty awesome stunt.
The X-Men (Beast, Storm and Wolverine) are coming up with a plan to stop Magneto. In a call back from the opening Danger Room sequence, Storm recites – a good offense is a good defense. I do like how the plan forms with only eye acting (a term we learn from LOST) and slight nods as the three of them stare at the pack of four cure needles.
Iceman comes out to play and Magneto finally lets Pyro fight him. They do that classic power versus power and Pyro starts winning (as fire burns ice) but Iceman goes into Comic Iceman full ice form and head butts Pyro, which is spectacular! Fire versus Ice, warm water! That’s a little New Girl reference for you. It is from the Prince episode. Which is one of the better episodes of that series. Injured, from season one is another favorite. This is a Sad Song. Winston is by far my favorite character on that show.
Colossus fastball specials Wolverine at Magneto. It is sort of awesome but awkward to see a six foot man throw another six foot man but its a fastball special, it is awesome.
Magneto laughs at the lame attempt, he’s the master of Magnetism so he throws Wolverine straight to the ground. In a twist, Wolverine was only a distraction. Beast is behind Magneto and injects him with four cure serum needles. Magneto has been taken out with a plan that is only slightly above “hey, your shoes are untied.” The plan is nice as Magneto spent the previous two movies commenting on how Wolverine always thinks he’s the center of attention and then he himself falls for the trick.
At the hour and half mark, Now the death toll really increases in this next segment. There is only one mutant standing and she is crazy. The military turns their attention to Jean and she straight up starts vaporizing soldiers. Those people are dead and all it took was her staring at them. She also kills Quill, Arclight and Psylocke as they exit the building. The Blackbird is destroyed as well. Who knows how the X-Men get home.
Wolverine knows it is up to him, of course it is. He starts heading up the hill where Jean is. She keeps ribbing pieces of his skin and muscle off, so we get to see the metal skeleton underneath. It is a cool concept but shouldn’t she just kill him like she did everyone else. I suppose the rationale is that she knows what he is there to do and is only putting up a respectable amount of a fight. His healing factor heals him but it can’t keep up to the demands.
Jean pleads for him to end this. So he claws her and she dies. Items start falling back to the ground. The day has been saved. Wolverine is pretty turn up over the whole thing.
1:34:37, The movie ends with some closure to some characters – such as Kitty Pryde looking at the grave sites. Storm joins her eventually. For some reason, they placed Jean’s tombstone right next to Cyclops, which his is right next to Xavier’s. I mean, really? The lady who killed both of these men and she gets a tombstone right next to them? At least put it on the other side of the yard.
Kitty Pryde is wearing a Canadian Tuxedo, I wonder if that’s a shout out to Ellen Page?
It dawns on me that Kitty and Storm have a great friendship in the comic and this is the only scene of the two of them together, at least we got something!
Rogue is back in her room, she tells Bobby she took the cure. Bobby lets her know that he didn’t want that, but they get to hold hands. It would be awesome if he pushed her hand aside, called her a traitor and stormed out of the room. Also nice that she will still attend the school. Probably be used as an example of mutant pride and what not to do.
Leech joins the school!
Storm is the headmistress (it’ll take the comics seven years to match this), Beast is the US Ambassador to the United Nations.
The X-Men portion of the film ends with Wolverine looking at the massive Xavier estate.
Magneto is in the park and turns out, he has a little power left so maybe all of the cures were temporary. Or maybe he got too much of the cure so it was, essentially, a weaken dose. I like the idea that it was only temporary so that way Rogue has her powers back as well. Which I’ve read that Rogue was suppose to be in Days of Future Past (her scene will be added to the eventful BluRay release) so clearly the powers were only cured for a moment.
During the credits, the single name title cards start with Hugh Jackman (they have decided to stop pretending that these movies really should have been titled – Wolverine and the X-Men). Patrick Stewart gets the coveted ‘and’ credit. Right after that is a three name title card of Ellen Page / Ben Foster / Dania Ramirez. One X-Men, One regular Mutant and on Brotherhood member.
In the list credits, Kitty Pryde / Ellen Page is listed thirteenth. She’s between Juggernaut and Colossus.
After the credits, there is a quick scene in Scotland with Moira MacTaggert at the Muir Island Institute. She’s played by Olivia Williams. Williams was in Rushmore and the Sixth Sense. She’s seen earlier in the film when she references how she has a patient who has been brain dead since birth – or something like that. So during this post-credit scene, the body moves, calls her name and the scene ends with her asking, Charles?
Which is what they use to explain how Xavier can show up in The Wolverine at the end. Turns out, and I forget where I read this at, the body is of Xavier’s twin brother who I guess Xavier took his mental energy and that’s why he is as powerful of a psychic as he is. Or something like that. But if he’s been in a coma for decades, then shouldn’t his body be that of brittle bones and such? Though plenty of time has passed between this film and The Wolverine, at least two years, so that’s maybe enough time to get this new body up to being able to move around. Maybe?
So that’s X-Men 3, the end of the proper trilogy. I can by my initial reaction to the film, it isn’t the worst film of all time but there are parts that feel like the film really wanted to sandbag itself with lousiness.
There was a toy line for this film but no Kitty Pryde action figure, which is disappointing.
There is a fun X-Men : The Official Game that is suppose to bridge the second and third films. You get to play as Nightcrawler, Wolverine and Iceman, three levels each. My favorite levels are the Nightcrawler levels. Some websites report Kitty Pryde having a speaking role in the game but I played the PS2 version and she didn’t even appear in the game. But it was a fun game, so I wasn’t horribly disappointed.
So in the film and I realized that I like it. We only have four proper X-Men films (I’m counting First Class here) and it isn’t nearly as bad as I remember. After I saw this film and First Class on Saturday, FX on Sunday, aired these films back to back. We left the television on so I was able to see portions of it from time to time.
How great is it that we live in an era where you can flip through the channels and get various comic book movies to see? That same Sunday, TBS was airing Daredevil then Spider-Man and FX did Spider-Man 2, then the two X-Men films and Thor was going to air after those.
The first sequel to Days of Future Past. See what they did there with the sequel title? Pretty clever.
It took them ten years to revisit DoFP, but that makes sense as one usually celebrates the tenth anniversary before anything else. Well, maybe the one year anniversary and the fifth year anniversary but still. Ten is saying something.
Kitty doesn’t show up in this issue, nor does Kate. Meggan and Rachel do, which is cool and Meggan mentions, by name, Excalibur – and I’m apparently collecting all appearances of that. I was also collecting most appearances of the DoFP universe, that is apparently been labeled, Earth-811. The only other comic I can think of that I own just because the team, Excalibur, is mentioned is Avengers 319, so that’s something to look forward too.
I’m missing part four of this crossover and I own parts two and three but while revisiting my comic collection for this blog, I’m taking a hard look at some of these issues as for some reason, I’m keeping issues that I thought were Kitty related and rereading them now, I think I may have been mislead by a website or two. I know I’ve thrown three comics out of my collection since starting the blog. So I can’t guarantee I will be doing the other two parts at this moment. I can tell you that Kitty does show up in Part Four (Uncanny X-Men Annual 14) – or maybe in one of the features of the annual _ so it is on my Wishlist.
Skimming both comicbookdb, comics.org and the Marvel Database – it looks like parts two and three don’t contain Kitty or Kate references at all.
Part Two is New Mutants Annual 6 and Part Three is X-Factor Annual 5. One would think that in the bonus section, Magik would at least make an appearance in the New Mutants Annual. These two covers infamously have the wrong parts on them. X-Factor’s cover states it is part two and New Mutants’ states it is part three but it really is the other way around.
I had forgotten how New Mutants Annual 6 has an early tease of a glimpse into the future and that has an adult Magik present so I’m keeping New Mutants Annual 6, if not for Part Two of this story, at least, for the two page spread.
X-Factor Annual 5 doesn’t mention Kitty nor Kate Pryde or Excalibur so I am not reviewing that issue at all. So this is the only review for this storyline proper.
This issue is also the very first appearance of Ahab, the man who turned Rachel into a mutant hunting Hound. Also, the future version of Rory Campbell.
If I haven’t mentioned this before, Walt Simonson is one of my favorite Fantastic Four writers. He gave us the New Fantastic Four, after all. I would rank Mark Waid as my all time favorite, for sure but Simonson and Claremont would be in my top three.
So onto the issue itself.
But first, that cover. For whatever reason, Ahab’s chestplate always looks like a book to me with the Fantastic Four are locked inside of. My eyes always go straight to the middle of it. Now, I can’t stop seeing it.
Guice’s style is really realistic. Not photo realistic but I can tell that if he had a larger color pallet, it would look very differently today than it did 24 years ago. Characters are drawn almost lifelike.
The issue opens with the Fantastic Four coming back from a picnic they had up at Bear Mountain Park. Turns out Sue makes a mean egg salad sandwich. Which I love (good) egg salad but my wife hates eggs so it is like a guilty pleasure when I get to sneak a sandwich from a restaurant.
As they approach their home, the Four Freedoms Plaza, they see that the old Baxter Building in its place. They wonder who could have switched the two buildings. I like how Reed’s initial reaction is to do all of these scans and figure it out. Sue names some opponents who could have done it.
The scans reveal that it is in fact the old Baxter Building. They go inside and see their old doorman who has retired but he doesn’t look a day older than when the Baxter Building was still standing. Sue’s belt can still activate the elevator – just like Wolverine’s belt from Days of Future Past.
Reed is impressed, whoever did this, clearly has unlimited power as the entire building, both outside with weather stains and the technology from inside – are exact replicas.
They come across the past Fantastic Four, which I like how since then the team has gotten new costumes. So the old team is in their nearly all blue uniforms with their gloves and boots are only slightly darker than their shirts and pants. So the current Fantastic Four is wearing blue pants/shirts with white boots and gloves that I first knew as their uniform.
Also the current Fantastic Four are – Reed Richards, Invisible Woman, Human Torch, Human Ben Grimm and She-Thing with Franklin Richards who may be eight or so. Now that I have Walker, I’ll be better with guessing kids’ ages but for now, he seems pretty young. Franklin, of course, is always hard to gauge how old he is and how much time has passed. Him and Kitty Pryde are the two who age but is complicated with the Marvel sliding time scale.
So there is a quick fight. It looks like the current Fantastic Four lets the past ones win, so that they can figure out what the next step is. I’m not sure, this is the first of three instances that it feels like we are missing a page but the handy page numbers on the bottom indicates we are not.
I like how both Reeds think to themselves, now we’ll get to the bottom of this.
Past Reed believes that these older versions are either from the future or an alternate timeline. Our Reed states there is a third option, that they are from the past. Past Reed doesn’t think that should be an option.
Sue sees an adult Franklin. He freaks out as they shouldn’t be there. Our Sue tries to talk some sense into him by telling him that these past versions and the old building are the dream and the present day Fantastic Four are the reality. Making him think this makes adult Franklin think of death and he continues to freak out. This, naturally, scares child Franklin. Ooof, this getting to be a hassle with the past, present and future versions of characters.
Adult Franklin shouts about how he remembers too much and flies through the side of the building, putting up a forcefield and restoring the Four Freedoms Plaza.
The second instance of a missing page is when Reed states that he was trying to goad his adult son but didn’t think he would have such an aggressive reaction. But it was Sue who had the only dialogue with adult Franklin so why is Reed trying to take the credit?
Cut to Meggan and Rachel on the west coast of Britain, and the reason I own this issue. I guess I am keeping it. Meggan likes being part of Excalibur and she names Kurt but she really likes these times where they can relax. Meggan is drawn like I’ve never seen her drawn, pretty realistic. I like Excalibur’s art teams but they have that comic book / clean cartoon style and Guice here is trying a more adult art style. I’m not sure if that’s the best way to describe it but its close.
Meggan asks Rachel about the future timeline she is from. Rachel doesn’t recall that much, her memory is scrambled or like Swiss cheese, if you would. Rachel claims it is like feeling jet-lag. Meggan counters with time-lag. Which, as much as I love Meggan, I’m not sure if she’s capable of making that joke or correction. I had to look to see which issue of Excalibur we were on during 1990. Excalibur issues 18 through 32. She might have been capable of it.
I wonder why of all the members of Excalibur, why Meggan was chosen to be the friend in this scene. The two of them do have a friendly connection. Was it that Guice wanted to draw the ‘hot’ ladies? I know later in Excalibur, the two of them have adventures together, one I recall is when Rachel went with Meggan as Meggan investigates her origins.
Rachel then gets a headache and flies off, telling Meggan that she is being summoned.
Which now works as a time to mention this, Days of Future Past Franklin died in that storyline, so quickly. When can this Franklin even come from, during the early days of the future timeline?
Back in New York City. Forge and Banshee, I guess they are friends?, are walking around the city. Adult Franklin sees them, and comments on how happy he is. Franklin then notices that they are much younger than they should be, also that they are dead when he comes from. Franklin tells them that they are his old teachers. Realizing that they are not right, he flies off even more upset.
I suppose at this point, Franklin’s potential is known that he is essentially a god with unlimited powers over his reality. Known to at least his family. So seeing an adult Franklin who is emotionally unstable must be unsettling for all involved.
Banshee and Forge race over to Four Freedoms Plaza and notice the forcefield surrounding the building.
Between the then and the now and the later then. Ahab awakens. The time has come that he is needed. I guess he is a type of time police, maybe?
Over at the Power Pack home. The Power children are playing hide and seek with an adult Franklin. It could be played for creeps but it doesn’t go there. Their father comes home and at first, is shock to see an adult version of his children’s friend but Franklin makes him see him as a child. So weird.
Sue is trying to sooth her young son. He doesn’t like the idea of a crazy adult version of himself running around. Reed knows that Franklin is the key to this. So he unlocks the mental blocks that hold Franklin’s mutant abilities in place.
Ahab’s forces are now in the present day as they attack the building. They are there for Franklin. They scan Sue, they have the nerve to have her identified as, producer of mutant offspring, so she needs to be eliminated.
Oh, how you would think the Fantastic Four would do more for mutant relations, instead they stay clear of it.
Reed is slightly impress with these Time Sentinels but no one threatens his wife and child and starts fighting back. This is a Reed I can get behind.
Once the fight is over, it doesn’t last long, Forge and Banshee join the team. Sue gets a fun line about the robots going on the offensive and she says, you’ve been plenty of offensive already. Sue is by far my favorite of the four.
Susan figures out adult Franklin’s motivations. He is clearly going back to when he was the happiest, which is when you are a child. Which, I’m not sure about that exactly. But I’m not going to argue with Sue. Plus, it is true for Franklin as his future is horrible.
Sue asks Franklin if he could be anywhere besides with his family, where would he be. He answers with, with his friends the Powers. So that’s where the united heroes are heading next.
Dr. Power answers his door, even though Adult Franklin doesn’t want him too. Poor Dr. Power, who doesn’t know the secret about his children, is surprised to see two Franklins. They convince adult Franklin to come with them.
While flying back, adult Franklin sees a building that shouldn’t be there and makes it disappear. The building he sees is actually X-Factor’s mobile base, Ship.
I like how Human Torch has the though that someone clearly, in the future, is going to hurt his nephew and he is being driven angry over that fact.
The third instance is Ben’s comment about not seeing Reed being this obsessed in years. I’m sure there was a time cut and I just didn’t realize it or something. They are back at their home. Reed and Forge are creating a new type of scanner. They are looking for Franklin’s energy signature. They get two locations, one to the north and one downtown.
Sharon, the She-Thing, asks Ben if adult Franklin could really be Franklin grown up and what could have possibly happened to him. Issue ends with the teams splitting up and Ben telling Sharon that by the time they figure it out, they will wish they hadn’t.
There two other stories in this issue but they don’t relate tot his main story.
This issue isn’t as bad as I remembered it, it could be the other two chapters I’m thinking of that get crazy out of sorts.
Screenplay Michael Dougherty, Dan Harris and David Hayter
Story Bryan Singer, David Hayter and Zack Penn
Premiere Date May 2, 2003
I only only this once, as the Widescreen version. I had own the Full Screen version, but upgraded it not too long ago. Remember that era where they made two copies of each movie? So weird all the shelf space stores had back then to allow that. Just buy the widescreen and then zoom in once. It would almost be better that way.
This DVD, everything I wanted to start it, automatically set itself to show subtitles, super annoying!
Three short years after the original film, we were given the most anticipated and better sequel, it was well worth the wait! It ranks at the top of my list of the films but I’m not sure what I would rank as the next two to make a Top Three list. First Class and then The Wolverine, or I might swap the two of them. I’m not ready to commit yet.
At this point, 2003, I was wired into the Internet – but I would consider it casual compared to how much I am now with my three websites I go to daily and my one that I go to at least once an hour.
When Nightcrawler was announced as joining the cast, I was so happy. He’s my third favorite X-Man and I would argue that you can’t have an X-Men movie with Kurt but I also understood why an actor might not want to play the role. He’s played by Alan Cummings – who I had known prior to this but have become a fan of his since his portrayal. He’s been in such films as GoldenEye, Romy & Michelle’s High School Reunion, Spice World, The Anniversary Party, Josie and the Pussycats and my favorite, Reefer Madness.
I refer to this film as X-Men 2 but they marketed as X2. Like how X-Men 3 is X-Men Last Stand but who calls it that. X2 – Mutants United. Just call it what it is.
This film has the basic premise of God Loves, Man Kills – Stryker wants to kill mutants and Magneto eventually will team up with the X-Men to thwart Stryker’s plan. God Loves, Man Kills – of course was brought to us by Chris Claremont and Brent Anderson.
Now, onto the film!
They held over the X in the FOX gimmick so it does a slow fade. It is simple but I like it.
The film opens with the White House. There is a tour going on at the moment. We see the current President, played by Cotter Smith – who right now is playing the president at NBC’s Revolution – a show I feel like I’m constantly willing to drop but every three episodes, it seems to prove itself again. ABC’s Once Upon A Time and Revenge sort of do that trick too. Two or three lesser shows and then they knock one out of the park and then it back again. I guess Smallville was like that too, tiny amount of characterization, it would be mostly undone by the end of the episode but then they would do a mythology episode and I’ll be hooked all over again.
0:02:29, we hear our first Bamf and at :32, we see our first Bamf. I swear, as soon as that one two punch happened, I was smiling and the movie could do no wrong.
We see Nightcrawler, still hidden by white face and a trenchcoat, posing like the famous Kennedy portrait. We do see a blue tail, as the first big action piece happened. Kurt starts bouncing and bamfing and we see that if he was a villain, he would be pretty hard to beat.
The Secret Service gets five guys in front of the President, as it should be. They are doing their job.
I’m not a fan of the character design for Nightcrawler. With all of the tattoos that seem silly. Later, we learn that he made the markings himself to be closer to God. Which is nice and all but I mean really, unnecessary. We probably could have gotten Cummings to be in the third film if his makeup process wasn’t so soul crushing. If they went with the simple blue skin or better, fine layer of blue fur, it would have cut the process down in half and he could have had a better time of it.
I do like how they made Kurt’s tail functional, as it grabs a knife to kill the President. He gets shot and dropped the knife which has on it “Mutant Freedom Now” marked on it.
Such a great way to open the film!
0:05:39, we see the back of Wolverine’s head, making him the first X-Man of the film. He’s gone to Alkali Lake where Xavier has told him the Weapon X facility should be located. He walks through a small barrier, sees a wolf and that’s it. There is no building or any infrastructure to speak of. I’m not sure where he thinks people parked back in the day but I couldn’t figure it out.
Wolverine is smoking a cigar, this is before Quesada’s no smoking rule in the comics.
That wolf shows Wolverine the respect.
Hugh Jackman still looks young in this film but not as baby faced as he was in the first film.
Wolverine’s face segues into a wolf’s face at a museum. We hear Storm’s voice before seeing her. Halle Berry’s wig is so much better than in the first film.
We see a blonde girl eating ice cream and one of the mutant boys sees her, they make eye contact and he sticks his tongue out at her, revealing a lizard tongue. No wonder humans don’t like mutants, they can be jerks sometimes. To be fair, she did stick her tongue out at first but she doesn’t have a lizard tongue. You’ll think before they got to the museum, Xavier would have took the kid aside and tell him, “if you are not going to one think, please make it this – don’t stick out your tongue.” Xavier is working hard on keeping his school for the gifted a secret, he doesn’t need some kid ruining everything. Storm calls him Artie, which is cool but if he’s going to be Artie, let’s make him at least very pink. I get why they didn’t go the whole “big blank white eyes and pink spots” route but he could have been pinker. Also, Artie but no Leech? That’s not right.
Cut to a sabretooth tiger statue, that’s a call back.
We see Famke Jannsen back as Jean, also with a proper hairstyle now. It is shorter and better. Jason Marsden as Cyclops, yeah buddy!
Jean’s telepathy is out of control and starts messing with the television sets around the museum. Scott tries to calm her down. He references that it has been out of control for a month now, since Ellis Island. Meaning that the first film was only a month ago. Wolverine took his sweet time getting to Alkali Lake. Also, was the president from the previous film in his final days in office and that’s why we got a new president now? It must be! So the year is still 2000 then (or around then) and this film must be in late January or early February.
Scott also references that Jean has nightmares at night and when they wake up, all the items have been scattered. Xavier still letting them share a bed, those naughty mutants!
0:09:30, Rogue, Iceman and Pyro are sitting around a table. I forgot that Aaron Stanford has joined the cast as Pyro. The bad boy to Shawn Ashmore’s Iceman. They are not just opposites by their powers but also by their temperaments.
I do like seeing a Junior class of X-Men forming.
The three of them are being harassed by two idiot boys. They really want to borrow Pyro’s lighter. Which I get Pyro being a jerk to them, but shouldn’t those two boys have their own lighter(s) if they have their own cigarettes? Also, is it cool to smoke in the eatery of a museum?
For some odd reason, Singer has decided to give us a look down Anna Paguin’s blouse. This is the first of two times he gives us a look. I wonder if he was trying to help her secure the True Blood role? This one isn’t even the good look. Maybe it wasn’t Singer’s decision but DP Netwon Thomas Segal’s?
Pyro gets tired of the two boys’ attitude and finally gives them his lighter. At first, they can’t get it to work and when they do, there is a big burst of flame. Iceman has to put the flame out with his ice blast.
The boys freak out and then they stop.
Patrick Stewart as Xavier has stopped everyone who isn’t a mutant in the scene. Now, that’s power. Stewart is looking good here. There is some footage of X:DoFP that makes him look old but then I saw him on a few talk shows and it is only make up, he still looks good at 73. And this film was 11 years ago so he was 61 at the time. Boy, do I do a lot of math on this blog.
I like how we get a news alert on one of the televisions, a nice way to show that time is still moving, only the people around Xavier are frozen in place. The news is stating that a mutant attack on the White House has occurred. Looks like mutants might need to be put in line. Though really, someone would recognize this as an act of one person and not deemed an entire culture are violent. There should be a word for such an assumption.
0:11:17, the Xavier Mansion! I like that the senior team are huddled and talking about next steps. Scott thinks Magneto might behind this, but the telepaths shut this down. Xavier is trying to track the mutant but can’t get a lock on him.
0:12:30, Brian Cox officially joins the film! Once he was announced as playing William Stryker, I was excited as God Loves, Man Kills is such a great piece of work. Except instead of Reverend Stryker, he plays Colonel Stryker. Essentially the same character but it sort of frames how the rest of the movie is going to be. I really like Brian Cox as well. He’s been in Rushmore, Braveheart, Super Troopers, 25th Hour, Match Point and RED.
Styrker comments about wanting to speak to the President about school reform, very clever.
Bruce Davison is back as Senator Kelly but really, it is Mystique. We are not shown this just yet but we do know that Kelly has become Pro-Mutant in the past month.
Also joining the cast, Kelly Hu – playing Lady Deathstrike. Which is pretty cool that Lady Deathstrike made it into live action. Unfortunately, I only know her really from Scorpion King. I know she was on Nash Bridges, and I only saw the first episode Stone Cold Steve Austin did and the episode, Wild Card, that reunited both Don Johnson with Philip Michael Thomas – from Miami Vice and Tommy Chong with Cheech Marin. I’m a sucker for shows that have fun casting like that, though I remember being completely lost but they knew that they were going to get new viewers so it was pretty viewer friendly. I know Kelly Hu is either on or will be on soon, Arrow – but I can only watch that show every three weeks or so when I’m not recording at least one other show on Wednesday nights at that time slot. I’m hoping to catch up during the summer reruns.
Lady Deathstrike is waiting in the waiting room, cracking her knuckles and causing a disturbance with how loud it is.
Senator Kelly mentions Erik Lehnsherr and Styrker calls him Magneto. Stryker also refers to a mutant facility in Westchester. He shows a picture of a jet coming out of the basketball court. Was there a helicopter above there that I didn’t see last film? Who took that picture?
The President gives the okay to go into the school but he doesn’t want to see anyhdead children on the news.
Senator Kelly meets Yuriko, introduced as Stryker’s assistant, she hurts his hand when they shake. Which is a nice detail.
Kelly wants to see Magneto, Stryker informs him that it isn’t a petting zoo. Styrker also references that he was in Vietnam was Kelly was still nursing as a baby.
We get the unnecessary Mystique reveal with Kelly’s eyes turning yellow. We get it.
0:15:35, we see Colossus played by Daniel Cudmore, he gets a much more substantial role in the next film but he does okay here. He’s painting. He is Volturi Felix in the Twilight films but I don’t recognize him from those.
Bobby and Rogue are playing and generally goofing around. Then Bobby wants to ruin the time with an awkward moment. We can tell that Rogue wants to kiss him back but she isn’t sure. Bobby wants to try, at least, of course he does. Get it under control!
Colossus draws a picture of what would happen if they do kiss, Rogue sucking Bobby’s face. What a jerk, Colossus!
0:16:14, Logan is back at the school! Rogue greets him, so happy. She begins to introduce Bobby to Logan. Bobby is the one who refers to himself as her boyfriend. So awkward. Made worst by when Logan shakes Bobby’s hand, Bobby purposely freeze’s Logan’s hand in return. I never realized what such jerks these mutants are. And they are the good ones! Logan wants to know how the two of them function as a couple. Rogue thinks he means physically but I get the impression that he meant, by chemistry. He happens to be her age so she dates him.
Rogue hugs him and then moves on as Bobby has embarrassed her.
I like how this scene plays out with how people heard Rogue and so everyone feels the need to come downstairs to visit Wolverine. Storm is first down the stairs. She walks down the stairs in a goofy way, I’m not sure how to describe it further. Storm lets him know that the adults are leaving at night so he is on babysitting duty. That’s good timing!
Jean sees him next, she’s wearing a red shirt. Who is she, a Power Ranger? Also, the shirt has a bit of a flame thing to it, foreshadow, much?
Storm and Jean are heading to Boston and Scott and Xavier are going to visit Magneto.
Jean informs him of the attack on the White House, Wolverine is surprised that it is a confirmed mutant attack.
Logan can think of a few reasons to stick around, after Jean jokes about him running away.
Then Scott is Logan. Jean kisses Scott, right in front of Logan! Logan throws Scott’s keys to his own motorcycle at him, telling him that his bike needs gas. Marsden takes an awesome beat, and chucks the keys right back at Logan, telling him that he needs to fill the motorcycle with gas then. Mutants are such jerks!
0:17:58, Magneto! He is reading Once and Future King by T.H. White, a book I’ve been tempted to read because of this film but I can’t seem to pull the trigger on buying a copy.
Magneto is sentenced to be in this plastic cell forever. The guards don’t care for him. Especially the main one, Mitchell Laurio, played by Ty Olsson, who has done a slew of TV.
Stryker has a meeting with Magneto, informing him that he’s not there forever, just until Stryker has all the information he needs.
Laurio hits Magneto with the back of a plastic baton! Then we see the drug and the insertion point on the back of Magneto’s neck. It is a type of truth serum drug.
Today’s task, Styrker wants to know about Cerebro.
Cut to Xavier using Cerebro, what a good edit by John Ottman and Elliot Graham.
Xavier doesn’t like Logan smoking in the mansion but if he insists on smoking in Cerebro, he will rewire Logan’s mind so that he believes he is a six year old girl. Xavier can’t get the answers Logan wants but he can change his personality. Limits!
Logan puts the cigar out on his palm, nice way to show us his healing factor as well as the fact that he does feel pain, he’s just not a baby about it. It isn’t much of a wound, so it instantly heals.
We are treated to a better graphic display for Cerebro. Logan can see what Xavier sees, which must be an artistic choice as, does it make any sense? White lights are humans, evil red lights are mutants – what an odd choice by Xavier to set that as the settings. We see that there are like millions of mutants around.
Wolverine informs Xavier that there was nothing at Alkali Lake.
Xavier tells Logan that he can’t locate the mutant. Which is odd as Jean has already told Logan that they are going to Boston so they must know where Nightcrawler already is. Maybe Xavier is just trying to reconfirm his location.
Xavier informs Logan that he could kill the mutant using Cerebro if he wanted to, but instead, he is trying to pinpoint his location. We see that Nightcrawler is praying the rosary. He’s a good Catholic.
Logan wants Xavier to read his mind again and Xavier puts it off but tells Logan that he ha to watch the children tonight as they are all leaving.
Jean & Storm are taking the Blackbird. Jean flies and Storm navigates. It is a bigger plane now.
We follow Senator Kelly as he transforms into Lady Deathstrike. I really like the use of the pillars, it s a money saving technique but I also like it for how simple it is.
0:23:39, Mystique is shown in full form! Rebecca Romijn is back in the role.
Instead of using passwords, they use voice recognition which of course Mystique can work around as she tries to hack into Styrker’s computer. Such a silly security measure and it isn’t a safer one.
On the computer screen, we see files with the real names of the following characters – Sabretooth, Lila Cheney, Polaris, Iceman, Blob, Gambit, Multiple Man, Karma, two Maximoffs, Proteus, Dani Moonstar and Storm.
Weird how the files categories go from right to left, the government isn’t using Mac Finder.
Additional names are shown as – Garrison Kane and Artie Maddicks
Mystique knows what building Magneto is in now.
Even more names – Omega Red and Franklin Richards (so the X-Men films take place after both Fantastic Four films, I suppose)
Besides names, we also get names of projects or operations – Project Wideawake, Muri Island and Cerebro. There is a clean Cerebro I and a ghetto Cerebro II.
She clicks on Cerebro II, but when she calls up the location of it, it states it is Classified.
Lady Deathstrike is seen entering the building. With her entrance, comes the first musical cue I’ve noticed. Score is done by John Ottman and he starts with the suspense music. Is Mystique going to get caught? Mystique starts printing pages but the papers are coming out so slow!
Lady Deathstrike comes into the room and Mystique is nowhere to be found. Then Lady Deathstrike turns and we all see the custodian with a trashcan full of papers, oh that Mystique is a clever minx.
0:26:07, in Boston, the gate outside the church as graffiti that states, Nature Laughs Last. So true. The Nightcrawler scene has begun. Jean and Storm enter the church, and I like how individualized the two uniforms are. Kurt’s voice is heard from different locations and Jean, with a smirk, states that he is a teleporter. She’s so smart.
Kurt falls from the ceiling, Jean freezes him in place. We learn his name is Kurt Wagner. From his room, we see flyers from various German circus performances. He explains his religious tattoos.
Logan dreams of the Weapon X project, and it is all in this sickly green and machines and dudes drinking champagne. He wakes up and goes to the kitchen.
On his way there, he sees a boy on the couch, blinking his eyes to change the channels every second. Must be so annoying to watch television with that kid, or not watch it. There is a cute line about how the boy asks Logan if he can’t sleep and Logan responds with “how can you tell?” “You are awake”. Gives the actor something to do and its cute.
We finally get the 30 minute mark! Bobby is in the kitchen. This is a fun scene. Logan asks if there is any beer. Bobby tells him it is a school. Logan responds with an awesome, so no beer? Which is great, as why can’t there be beer still? Logan grabs a Dr. Pepper, guess who was a sponsor? It is warm. Luckily, Bobby is sitting right there, with no words, Logan puts the bottle in front of Bobby, he breathes into it and now Logan has something cold to drink. I like seeing the powers being used in practical ways. It is almost why the students are at that school. Not to be part of a military arm to a man’s dream but to learn how to live and operate their powers.
Next, Xavier is visiting Magneto. Poor James Marsden doesn’t get to do much in this film. Though one of the guards says, “nice glasses” and his quiet “thanks” is haunting!
I get the impression that whenever Xavier visits Magneto, Magneto’s opening line is always, you hear to rescue me?
Xavier asks if Magneto knows anything about the attack on the White House, I like how this is an ongoing plot point.
Xavier notices there is something off with his friend. Magneto tells him about the visits with Stryker. The three of them have a shred history, that is only hinted at here. Magneto implies that Xavier’s work with Wolverine is redemption for his lack of work with Jason, Styker’s son.
Back with Logan and Bobby. Bobby tells him that his parents don’t know what type of school he is at. They think it is a prep school. They start talking about Rogue. Bobby wants their relationship to be closer, seriously misreading his new friendship with Logan. Then he ruins it some more by implying Logan and Ms. Grey have a relationship that is the same as Bobby and Rogue.
Magneto and Xavier. Magneto hints about how Xavier knows more about Logan’s past than what Xavier has told Logan. Which is interesting and isn’t picked up later. Magneto calls the X-Men by name, and Xavier knows that something is up. Magneto answers Xavier’s question of what has he told Stryker with a terrifying, everything. Then they start getting gassed.
Cyclops doesn’t like the look of that and starts fighting the guards, doing a good job of it too! Then Lady Deathstrike comes in and pretty much beats him up. I like that we see that Cyclops has good close quarters fighting skills as his main power is a range attack.
Where the guards sit, there is a television and the audio states, when the mother is away – the babies are helpless. Such an awesome line that sets up the second big action sequence and it is awesome!
The military starts invading the school!
Logan hears something and it is on!
0:36:01, Kitty Pryde!
Portraying Kitty Pryde in this film is Katie Stuart.
Highly disappointed that Kitty and Kurt don’t share any screen time together. I remember Katie Stuart being announced as joining the cast and at the time, I felt that meant she was going to have a substantial role in this film. She doesn’t have as much screen time as Sumela Kay got in the first film but she got to phase through more walls so that’s something.
She phases and holds the screen time for twelve whole seconds as she escapes. It is awesome!
Bobby is about to be taken out when Logan saves him, we get our first, Bub, of the film.
Siryn wakes up and starts screaming – she makes for a great alarm system!
0:37:00, the Claws come out! It is on! Wolverine definitely starts killing soldiers. I like how the fridge has claw puncture holes in it now. Good follow through.
Colossus and Pyro are roommates. Colossus armors up, and saves Siryn.
We see that there is a clear Boys side and a Girls side.
Colossus leads a group of students away, no wonder he gets promoted to the big team next film, he’s not afraid to take action.
Wolverine turns Colossus down for help, Colossus’ main goal has to be to save the students.
Bobby and Pyro finally locate Rogue.
I really do enjoy how not only are there emergency exits behind walls but that the students have practiced escaping from the school.
I’m not sure if “small army” full describes the assault on the school but soldiers keep landing helicopters and climbing into the school.
0:40:00, Logan jumps off the banister and clearly kills two more soldiers. Logan joins the three junior members and now we have our second group of X-Men that we will be following for the rest of the film.
Stryker and Wolverine finally see each other with an entire hallway separating them. Stryker knows the name, Wolverine, which pauses Logan in his tracks. Stryker enjoys seeing Wolverine in a school environment.
Stryker implies it has been 15 years since he has seen Logan last. So if this movie still takes place in the year 2000, then Wolverine Origins takes place during 1985 but with First Class throwing the entire timeline off, who knows what year anything is. Just like in the comics!
Rogue convinces the boys to go back for Wolverine. Bobby creates a giant ice cube to further separate Logan and Stryker. There is a nice visual of Stryker’s hand forming a shadow and Wolverine putting his hand on the shadow hand.
Rogue convinces Wolverine to come with them. I like that Logan is all like “I can handle myself” but she gets him to come along by saying that the three teenagers won’t be. Logan matured right there.
0:42:44, Pyro wants to drive and Logan pushes him out of the way. Logan starts the car with his claw going into the key hole, would that really work? I doubt it but how else were they going to leave? One would think with all of the cars Xavier owns, that the keys will be left in the ignition. Are we expected to believe that there is a giant wall of keys in his office with all the keys on it?
That was an awesome 7 minutes of film!
Pyro turns on the radio and we get to listen to NSYNC’s Bye Bye Bye. No one is happy to hear it. One thing is for sure, it doesn’t date the film at all. The song came out in 1999, so maybe this is suppose to be a sign that the film takes place in the year 2000. That’ll be pretty impressive, if it was planned like that. Funny being 11 years from when the film came out, and how far Justin Timberlake has come. Two others have danced on Dancing with the Stars, Joey and Lance. Did you know Lance took Danielle Fisher to her prom? How depressing would that have been.
Wolverine tells the teens that they are heading to Boston, Bobby pipes up with the fact that his parents live in Boston.
As Stryker exits the elevator, real quick, you can see the word, DANGER, on the opposite door. He turns to the left and heads towards Cerebro. He is told that the military was able to capture six of the students.
The Bar Scene. Most likely Rebecca Romijn’s favorite day of shooting as she just needed her face makeup that day.
On the television, is a panel discussing the latest anti-mutant riots. One of the speakes, is a very non-blue Hank McCoy. How old must he be? He looks like he is in his 30s or 40s. But if he’s 20 in 1960, ooof!
Guard Laurio is there, drinking away. Rebecca walks over, she’s wearing a dark blue dress with some black scales on it (get it?). She’s pretty so he accepts her free drinks and her offer to go to the men’s bathroom. Its that type of bar. Before they head over there, when she sits down, we get this shot of her legs, going up her dress. Super unnecessary and it must have played even better on the big screen but come on already.
She’s super aggressive, he comments on how he can’t believe his luck. She gives him another drink with a pill on the bottom. She takes off his pants, he has velcro on his pants. She pretends she likes it, but that has to be weird for him. All of his work clothes don’t have any metal on them. But he wears a uniform, so it can’t be that weird. He passes out, she pushes him forward, and takes his pants farther off. Then she gives him an iron injection to the butt. Blue Mystique gives a, bottoms up! She’s having fun.
Does she transform back to Rebecca as she leaves the bar? She would have to right? So that Laurio doesn’t get himself checked out.
Xavier wakes up at what we know later to be the underground base of Alkali Lake. Stryker is there to confront Xavier, but first tells him to not get up. What a bully! Xavier has a neuro-inhibitor on his head, a device Stryker himself created. Xavier needs to wear the helmet as the drug won’t have any affect on him.
Xavier wants to know where Scott is and Stryker tells him that Scott is getting re-educated.
Stryker mentions that Xavier failed his son, Jason. Xavier rebuttals with, mutations can’t be undone. To which Stryker states, yet.
We get Jason’s origin. He tortured his mother and his father with his mind powers. To the point where his mother put a drill to her skull to stop it. What a horrible way to go!
Lady Deathstrike’s eyes start to dart around. Xavier notices.
Jason has illusion powers.
Stryker gives Lady Deathstrike another dose of serum.
Xavier figures out that it was Stryker who was behind the attack on the White House.
Stryker doesn’t hate mutants as long as he can control them.
Mutant 143 is Jason, not sure if that number has any signance to the writers or something as the only 143 I know is the X-Men Christmas issue where Kitty proves herself against the N’Garai.
Xavier’s mind is too strong for the drug but Stryker figures Jason’s powers are stronger. Stryker needs Xavier to locate all of the mutants.
Michael Reid McKay plays Jason. He was in Apt Pupil, Batman & Robin as Pre-Bane, Se7en as Sloth victim. McKay is the Doug Jones of pain!
Stryker positions both mutants, who are in wheelchairs, so that they are facing each other. Jason’s wheelchair puts him in a horrible position. The mind games begin!
0:50:23, the Drake Home.
Bobby gets to pick Rogue’s outfit, using his mother’s clothes, so that’s not weird. He finds her a pair of gloves, and the outfit that goes with the gloves.
Rogue begins to get undressed. Bobby turns his back to give her privacy. Which, really, he should have just left the room and let Rogue find him later. To make matters worst, he takes a peak at her too.
Pyro is seen looking at the pictures on the walls. He’s judging Bobby’s upbringing.
Since Bobby saw Rogue in various stages of undress, he’s in a kissing mood. Which they do. Which I don’t get the problem, clearly they can kiss with pauses between kisses. They can never have full on make out sessions but kissing is clearly an option. Rogue gets to breathe chill, so that’s one benefit.
0:52:41, Wolverine gets startled while looking for something to drink, turns and extends his claws. The cat licking the tip of his claw was in every single commercial. We could not escape this moment that summer.
Logan opens the fridge and sniffs out the beer. Which is odd, as it is clearly right there at the front of the fridge.
Bobby’s parents and his brother, Ronnie, come home. They take an intruder in their home, rather well.
Bobby comes down the stairs and introduces his teacher as, Professor Logan. It’ll take the comics ten years to make this happen, prove that they don’t make every change in the film translate into the comic.
We begin the third big action sequence. Laurio comes to give Magneto his meal. The metal detector notices something is off but then settles down. Once Laurio is in front of Magneto, Magneto can sense the extra metal in his system.
Magneto rips all of the extra iron out of Laurio’s body, who is definitely dead after that. This prison break sequence is pretty cool to see. Magneto forms the iron into three balls. Then turns one of them into a platform so he can float to the guard station.
If he had stayed, Magneto’s dinner would have been chicken nuggets, bread and mashed potatoes.
I do like how once he begins the escape, we see what the procedures should have been. His prison is hung with a few wires. As soon as he starts breaking glass, the ramp that connects the guard station and the prison starts to recoil. That might have worked if he didn’t have the extra metal. Also, there is a warning on the floor stating that there is a 100 foot drop. We see on the ground a doorway, I wonder where that goes?
Back at the Drake Home. Pyro is bored.
Xavier’s is a school for the gifted, indeed.
Bobby’s mother’s response of, we still love you, is so weird. Of course you would. I never understood how one lifestyle choice from a child all of a sudden turns parents against their own child. Who cares if they are gay, get behind it and be supportive. We live in an age now where you can still get grandbabies with adoption procedures so not being selfish and take your heads out of your ass.
We find out that he is Professor Logan of Art.
Bobby freezes the coffee and the cat starts licking it. Ronnie runs upstairs as he can’t keep his disgust to himself.
Pyro states that it is the male’s who carry the mutant gene, so it is Bobby’s father’s ‘fault’ after the mother claims it is her fault.
Ronnie is upstairs and I finally noticed his shirt has a Phoenix bird on it. Subtle!
Ronnie is watching the news that has the announcement that there is an underground mutant organization in Westchester.
The Blackbird. Storm can’t get anyone to respond to her calls. Jean will keep trying. Storm goes to chat with Kurt. Storm has anger issues. Kurt prays.
Kurt further explains his tattoos, which I believe the writers really want to explain why the costume department went in this direction. The tattoos are Angelic symbols from the Archangel Gabriel.
Kurt asks how both Storm and Jean are school teachers. It is an odd thing that we accept as fans. They are superheroes but they are also school teachers during the day.
Kurt was liked in the circus but when he was outside of the tent, he was treated cruelly. He didn’t hate them, they were just scared. People will never understand anything that is beyond their ability to see with their eyes.
Kurt finds Storm to be beautiful. She uses anger and he uses faith to survive.
0:59:25, Logan gets a call from Jean. He informs her of what happened at the mansion. Storm wonders about the children. Jean tells Logan that she can’t get in touch with either Xavier or Scott.
The mother does the other moment that was in all the commercials, have you tried to not be a mutant? What a jerk!
We finally get to the hour mark! An hour and a half to go! Sorry I didn’t realize this was going to be this long of a post! It is already an extra third of what the first film was but I really like this film.
Logan sees police in the window reflection. The fourth action sequence is about to begin!
Poor Boston Police, just doing their jobs.
“Drop the knives and put your hands in the air” Logan responds with a, I can’t, but he really could have just retracted the claws and explain what is happening. Also, it would show that he is in control of his powers and not a menace.
I never noticed this until this viewing but Logan retracts his claws and the split second later, is shot in the head. I’ve been under the impression that he gets shot and that causes him to retract his claws.
Pyro decides this is the moment to become a fool. He announces a lame, “you know all of those dangerous mutants people always talk about? I’m the worst one!” and starts to flame blast officers. Who I’m not even sure should survive the experience. If they do, they have to have some serious lasting burns. Also, he’s not even in the top 20 worst villains or dangerous mutants (as the second group should include the potential of some of the X-Men to turn or be turned).
Rogue finally takes off one of her gloves, we get to look down her blouse (much better view than the first glimpse – once again, pales in what we’ve seen in True Blood – or watch that show! or Google it, don’t let me tell you how to live your lives). She absorbs his powers and he can’t use them anymore. Who knows what memories she gets from him, as the film doesn’t go in that direction. Imagine what memories or thoughts she absorbs from Iceman in those kissing moments?
The Blackbird lands, the four mutants board.
We get our first taste of Wolverine’s fear of flying.
I like immediate Logan sees Kurt and wants to know who this guy is. Kurt’s instant answer of “Kurt Wagner but back in the circus I was down as the Amazing Nightcrawler” and how he has a whole introduction at the ready is perfect. These two, I wish got more scenes together as they are best friends in the comics. At least we got this interactions. Wolverine also being unimpressed is pretty nice too.
Two jets show up, one of the pilots is a lady. The commentary track by Singer states that they got some kudos for having a female pilot as women were only recently the Air Force allowed ladies to pilot jets.
Storm creates some tornadoes (which may be the worst response to jets yet) so she destroys one jet but at what cost? We see that the tornadoes do touch ground so there is property damage or at least, trees should be knocked down.
For some reason, Storm has to stop with the weather but misses one rocket. Jean tries to stop it but she isn’t hitting mega levels of powers, yet. The rocket hits and the Blackbird loses its tail.
Rogue gets sucked out and has to be saved. I remember right before the movie came out, Brian Michael Bendis had to announce that a story element from X2 appears in Ultimate Spider-Man 43 and how he had written the scene months before even knowing about the film or its scene but he tried to not give any spoilers. In the comic, Geldoff (Ultimate Universe’s first new character) woke up and freaks out in the Blackbird and explodes the tail end of the plane from inside of it and Spider-Man gets sucked out of the plane.
Nightcrawler saves Rogue, which is another pairing I wish we got more of as well. Kurt and Storm, not two characters I was crazy got the most amount of time together. In the comics, they are adopted siblings.
The Blackbird starts to crash land, Jean can’t stop this as well (why she would think she can stop the plane’s fall when she couldn’t stop a missile is beyond me). Luckily, Magneto and Mystique just happen to be in that spot of the woods (?) and Magneto stops the plane in one of his only real feats of power. It isn’t until X3 that we see him do something even more powerful.
Magneto quips about when the X-Men are going to learn to fly. Which is awesome as most of the ones on the plane should be flying as they do in the comics – Jean, Storm and Rogue.
Rogue thanks Nightcrawler for saving her life, she’s a good Southern gal. She then puts the idea in his head to get closer to the meeting.
The mutants decide to unite (hence the subtitle). There is an awesome scene of them around the fire, making up a plan.
Magneto informs them of Stryker’s involvement in the day’s events. It isn’t until now have I realized that the bulk of the film up to this point as taken place over the course of two days. Logan arrives, then the military attacks that night. Then the Drake home and Magneto in the woods are a second day. I’m a real sucker for movies that take place over a course of one day. Also, films about four male friends. That’s my jam.
Magneto tells them about Stryker’s intentions with Cerebro. Storm asks the question about how could even have knowledge of Cerebro. I love how McKellen takes a breath here and then has to own up to how he told Stryker.
Magneto reveals how he help develop Cerebro. He also hints that he knew of Stryker from back in the day, as did Xavier – also that Xavier clearly knew about Wolverine’s past.
Magneto states that one among them knows the location of Stryker’s base. Wolverine is quick to say that he doesn’t know where it is and Magneto has to laugh at him again. This is twice now that Wolverine thinks he is the center of the plot. No, Magneto meant Nightcrawler as they all look up.
They notice that Nightcrawler is eavesdropping. Jean reads Kurt’s mind and they learn that Stryker is at Alkali Lake. Logan states that he was just there, and there isn’t anything there. Jean has to tell him that it was underground. Logan really should have looked there. I wonder why Stryker went all the way to Boston, grab Kurt, brought him all the way back to Canada, dose him and then send him all the way back to Maryland? Maybe they are on the East Coast of Canada and I keep mentally picturing it taking place towards the Western part of the county. Probably because Alkali reminds me of Alaska, Alk, that’s what I’m going with.
At one point, we actually get Kurt and Mystique communicating. He asks her, why if she can change her appearance, she doesn’t make herself always look not blue. She tells him she shouldn’t have too, which is an incredible answer.
Jean and Logan finally get to chat. She tells him that she’s the type of lady who marries the good guy. Logan tells her he can be a good boy. She doesn’t believe him. She wants Scott, as he’s awesome and better than Wolverine.
Later that night, Mystique wants some of Logan. In what had to be a fun scene for Jackman, Mystique shifts into all of the X-Ladies. Starts with Jean, then herself, to Storm to Rogue (?) back to Jean, then herself to Stryker. Its pretty twisted. None are pleasing enough for Wolverine to take advantage of. I’m sure if there is a porn version of X2 (is there?) that this scene goes a different route.
Because of Mystique’s trick, we get to see what it would look like if Jean and Logan made out.
I like how the Blackbird carries at least 15 tents at any given time.
We get a fun transition scene of the mutants flying toward Alkali Lake.
Rogue wants a uniform, as does Bobby. Wolverine tells them that their uniforms are already ordered, they will be there in a few years. Rogue turns as she sees Magneto and Mystique laughing. Magneto quips about loving Rogue’s new hairstyle. Rogue takes off her glove and Bobby holds her back, as he does.
It is nice to see Magneto and Mystique in the Blackbird. They are not suppose to be in there! Pyro asks about Magneto’s ‘dorky’ helmet. That dorky helmet is going to save Magneto from the real bad guys.
Magneto talks to Pyro, asking what his name is. Pyro, like the fool that he is, tells him that it is, John. Not the name your mom gave you, your real name – Magneto has to waste time asking. No wonder Pyro goes with Magneto at the end, he keeps him in line. Also, when Pyro confesses to Magneto that he can only control the fire and not create it. Magneto’s “You are a god amongst insects” is so wonderful of a line.
Stryker is lightly torturing the captive students.
We see Xavier completely falling for Jason’s trick. Jason has taken the form of a young girl who leads Xavier to Cerebro and he wants to impress her (for some reason) and puts the ol’ helmet on.
As the X-Men get closer to Alkali Lake, they realize they need to form a plan. Nightcrawler reveals that he has to see where he is teleporting. Wolverine has history with Stryker so he wants to go in first. Magneto tells him how dumb of a move that is, as Wolverine is being hot headed at the time. Magneto has a better idea.
We begin the fifth big action sequence. Well, a slew of action pieces but all of them rapid style!
Wolverine does walk up to the door. Stryker lets him in – as he has nothing to lose – also he is under the impression that Wolverine has come home. Soldiers come out and cuff Wolverine in this weird device that was already built. Wolverine gets inside, Stryker gets one look at him and realizes that isn’t Wolverine and to open fire. Mystique reveals the trick and starts taking out military guys. They try to lock down the room but she slides under the door and flips everyone off in the process.
Turns out Mystique had taken Stryker’s form as he takes out the soldiers in the control room. Mystique has located where Xavier is and where the six students are. She also opens the doors so that the X-Men can come inside. Mystique locks the control room doors and Stryker and his men show up and she is in Stryker’s form and Cox gets to kiss himself a wave goodbye.
Magneto frees Mystique of the locked room.
Storm and Kurt go looking for the students as everyone else goes for Xavier.
Stryker tells Jason start the process of having Xavier kill all the mutants. Stryker exists Cerebro II and tells his guards to not let anyone, including himself inside the Cerebro II.
As they are heading towards Xavier, Cyclops shows up and lets them know that they are in trouble. Jean states that she will hang back. Magneto quips (he’s so fun in this movie) that they will be having a lover’s quarrel. I like how Mystique always there to either smile or laugh at his jokes.
Jean and Cyclops have a decent fight. Jean is able to actually block one of Cyclops’ optic blasts. Due to their actions, the dam takes too much damage as it slowly leaks. Jean hits him so hard that he snaps out of it.
1:30:00 mark, Xavier is still trying to locate all the mutants.
Wolverine finds the room that he was made into Weapon X. We get a flashback and get to see Nudervine! Wolverine finds Stryker but has to fight Lady Deathstrike first. It is a pretty decent fight. I like how two films in and Wolverine has had to fight two bad arse women as only women are Wolverine’s equal. or something like that. They both have a healing factor so it is a pretty narly fight as they can really cut into each other. He straight up kills her by pumping adamantium into her body, filling her up. It is one of the worst ways to die.
Pyro gets bored of waiting in the Blackbird and exists. What were those three talking about in there? It must feel like forever in the plane.
Stryker gets outside and close to his helicopter. Wolverine catches up and Stryker begs for his life by telling him he will reveal Logan’s secrets to him. Wolverine passes on the deal and stabs Stryker. Wolverine makes an amazing comment when he asks Stryker how it feels to have adamantium in him. What a twisted line! Wolverine ties Stryker to the helicopter.
Storm and Kurt find the students.
Xavier starts killing mutants but first, everyone gets headaches. Magneto doesn’t as he is wearing his helmet. Safety first!
Magneto kills all the guards outside of Cerebro II, he does it by pulling all the grenades on their belts. That is also a horrible way to die. If you don’t die from your own grenade then you are probably dying by the guy next to you’s grenade.
The smoke clears and Magneto and Mystique are ready for their plan. Mystique becomes Stryker, goes inside, tells Jason that the plan has changed and now he wants him to kill all the humans. So Xavier starts doing that and we get glimpses of humans in pain. The President is shown and it looks like he isn’t in quite as much pain as the people in the Oval Office.
Since they got what they wanted – Magneto, Mystique and Pyro all get on Stryker’s helicopter and take off. Before they leave, Magneto tightens the chains around Stryker.
Outside of Cerebro II, the X-Men have to figure out how to get in there. It is risky if Kurt blind teleports in as he could miss and as we all know, Cerebro is a deathtrap as you can fall to your death, like, extremely easily. They need some hand rails in there.
Storm wants Kurt to aid her in her plan. Cyclops realizes he has no idea who this blue guy in a trenchcoat and Kurt starts his “I’m Kurt Wagner but in the …” and Cyclops has no time for an introduction that requires ‘and.’
Kurt decides to risk it, he teleports himself and Storm inside. Storm starts freezing Cerebro II, which wakes up Xavier from his trap. Kurt teleports everyone back outside. The X-Men flee as the dam is falling apart.
Wolverine and the X-Men all escape with the students, in one of my favorite visuals of the film. There has to be a picture somewhere of it. There are like twenty people on screen as the camera pans around to get everyone in the shot.
Wolverine gets one more scene with Stryker and Artie is being held by Wolverine and Artie sticks his tongue out at Stryker. The last thing that guy sees before he drowns.
Rogue flies slash crashes the Blackbird. The X-Men get on it. They notice Pyro is gone.
The dam bursts, and the Blackbird can’t take off. Jean goes outside and lifts the plane and sends it on its way. Why she couldn’t do that inside the plane is beyond me. I left the theater with that being the biggest gripe of the film. Jean uses Xavier to tell Scott that she loves him. Scott has to yell at Xavier’s face to have Jean come back inside but she isn’t going to – for some reason.
Jean and Stryker and a slew of soldiers are left for dead. Wolverine, like a jerk, starts repeating over and over (I suppose he is in grief or awestruck) and Cyclops tells Logan to shut up. Then Cyclops starts to cry and Wolverine gets to hug Cyclops. It is pretty tender.
The two hour mark happens during this next scene.
Cut to the Oval Office. One moment, the President is giving a speech on live television, the room goes dark and the X-Men are now present. Xavier has Rogue (who is in costume as is Iceman) gives the President files from Stryker’s personal office. When asked how they got the files, Xavier tells him that they know a girl who can walk through walls – Kitty Pryde shout out!
I like how the President and Nightcrawler make eye contact and it is as awkward as it should be.
So the X-Men leave, and the lights turn back on. Which, the President was doing a live address, so what did people think watching from home? How does the President address that?
At the school. Xavier, Cyclops and Wolverine are talking about Jean. The two X-Men leave so Xavier can teach his class. Before Scott can get too far, Logan tells him that Jean choose to be with Scott. Which, to Scott, must be confusing as Jean was living with him and dating him, officially. Of course, she choose Scott. It was Wolverine being a dick that was in question not who did Jean actually love.
Xavier’s lesson of the day is going to be a reading from Once and Future King.
Before the credits roll, we get Jean repeating the opening line about mutants and evolution taking a jump. Then we see a faint Phoenix bird under the water. Oh how I was excited about the prospects of the Phoenix and the third X-Men film. I was going to break my golden rule of hating all modern adventures of the X-Men that deal with them going into space (it never works out well). Especially as it meant that the world of the X-Men was going to expand to other worlds. Of course, we didn’t get that film. I wonder what Signer’s actual plans would have been. He chose to make Superman Returns with James Marsden and so Marsden gets screwed out of X3, and we get another film altogether.
During the credits, Katie Stuart is listed with all of the other big name actors, twice! The actors, starting with Patrick Stewart, all get one name cards. Then Anna Paquin gets the ‘and’ credit. Right after that is a two name credit of Katie Stewart with Kea Wong below her name (who plays Jubilee) then after that is the casting director, Roger Mussenden’s title card.
Then the proper credits starts and we see where everyone ranks in this order. Towards the end, Kitty Pryde is listed third from last – It is Lady Deathstrike, Kitty Pryde, Jubilee (who is one of the captured students) and President McKenna. Then the ‘Cast in Order of Appearance” starts. How awesome is that? The character goes from fourth from last of the entire cast to being third from last of the main cast. That’s quite the improvement that only gets better with the next film.
This issue, the title officially becomes Uncanny X-Men – though the printed title has had the word on it for a while.
Great splash page, even better way to recap the final issue’s ending. Left Side – X-Men versus Brotherhood. Kitty Pryde in the middle. Right Side – Future X-Men versus Sentinels.
Then the next page has a great two page spread. The top panel that across the two pages has the Brotherhood on the left page and the X-Men on the right page, great use of the page divide.
Senator Kelly isn’t happy that mutants are going to make the Senate floor into a battlefield.
Blob backhands a police officer. Avalanche takes the ground out from under the X-Men.
Nightcrawler uses his circus agility to get to Avalanche. He keeps teleporting and punching Avalanche. Destiny predicts Nightcrawler’s next spot where he’ll teleport to and so Avalanche is ready for him.
Pyro torches Colossus. Wolverine comes at Pyro with claws extended. Storm creates a tornado to both push Wolverine away from Pyro and to extinguish the fire around Colossus.
For some reason, Angel is flying around holding Kate’s hand. Kate reminds Angel of the true goal of today, to protect Senator Kelly – all of this other stuff is purely a distraction.
Moira and Xavier are lead to ‘safety’ by a lady police officer. The two of them are discussing the concept of time travel. The officer is within earshot but doesn’t seem to be listening to this odd conversation. Xavier finally notices that he can’t read the officer’s minds (does he always do an initial scan? He probably does after this) and notices he can’t read her mind. With that, the officer sprays a gas in their faces and Mystique has taken out the biggest threat to the plan.
Mystique has a moment where she wonders if she should kill Xavier but decides to take him as a hostage. How crazy is that? If she killed him right there, it would have changed so many stories from that point on. There’s another What If? story waiting to be told.
Mystique and Destiny meet up again. Destiny still is having a hard time seeing the future clearly, there is a random element out there – that we know to be Kate.
Segue to Kate realizing that her mere presence hasn’t changed anything. She has to get to Kelly before he is killed.
There is an ad for Captain Universe, who will be appearing in Marvel Spotlight. Creative team is Bill Mantlo and Steve Ditko. Sold! Apparently, Captain Universe first appeared in Micronauts, which explains Mantlo’s involvement. I have only read him when Spider-Man had the power during Acts of Vengeance.
2013. Which, when last year, I thought maybe we’ll have some big event – which Battle of the Atom was suppose to be that but it wasn’t enough of Days of Future Past for my taste. Especially once Raze was revealed to be only using Kate Pryde’s shape.
Sort of like how during 1999, I thought Lavos was going to crash – that would have been a sight!
The Future X-Men are still working their way through to the Baxter Building. Colossus is still holding his wife’s unconscious body.
Wolverine comments that the Sentinels will figure he is heading toward his Canadian Resistance Army squad. Which, it would be interesting to see who makes up the CRA, is it wrong to assume it is the Alpha Flight of the day? There’s another What If? he did go left instead of right.
Storm takes the lead, and flies to the front of the Baxter Building, destroys the guard Sentinel (surprised they wasn’t two of them in front of the building – on either side of the door).
Rachel is going to stay behind, as the X-Men go into the building. She will keep watch of Kate’s body in case Kitty wakes up. Rachel wonders if Kate has been successful as one of the consequences of Kate’s actions could be that all she succeeds in doing is creating an alternate timeline. Which really motivates Wolverine, as if it doesn’t work, then they will have to still live their days out in this lousy timeline. At least a version of their past selves will be living maybe better lives.
Storm picks the lock to the Baxter Building. So funny that the Sentinels kept the human size doors after they converted the building into their central hub.
Wolverine has on his belt a mechanism that still activities the Fantastic Four maintenance elevator. The three X-Men realize that the odds are against them, three X-Men versus hundreds of Sentinels. Colossus asks if Storm is doing okay, as the elevator is a tight space.
1980. Kate realizes the X-Men are losing the fight with the Brotherhood. The reports in the future don’t name who killed Kelly, so it isn’t a matter of punching the would be murderer – the quest should be to get to the senator and protect him.
Storm is thinking to herself how lousy of a field leader she has been up to this point. Cyclops would have done much better in this scenario. One of the problems, is that they don’t have any space to really fight so she creates a whirlwind and knocks everyone out of the building.
Blob continues his fight with Colossus. Blob keeps going on about his strengths and his powers.
The army shows up, they can’t figure out who is a nice mutant. Instead of watching for a few minutes, they open fire. Colossus takes a canon from a tank, to the gut.
A soldier has a flame thrower and tries to use it. Pyro, of course, takes control of the flame. Angel is able to outfly his flame demon. Wolverine is busy with his fight with Blob. Wolverine doesn’t notice the flame monster behind him. It grabs Wolverine, causing him to scream in pain.
Storm flies up, dives down, causing a giant gust of wind, blowing out the flame.
Kurt, like a good friend, checks on Wolverine. Wolverine tells him that the flame resistant suit took the blunt of the flame. His healing factor is already working. Wolverine does hurt though. Kurt knows that Wolverine must really be in pain.
Then another Nightcrawler jumps at the first Nightcrawler. They start to fight. Wolverine wants to help. He figures the real Kurt will teleport away in time. He gets ready to charge when Storm orders him to sheathe his claws. Wolverine can’t believe the nerve of Storm to stop him in the middle of battle and tell him what to do.
She reasons that he is a formidable opponent without the claws and should only use them in dire circumstances. He tells her he wouldn’t take that from Cyclops and she tells him that, regardless, he will take it from her. He agrees, for now.
The entire reason he was going to use his claws is that his senses are still out of whack from the flame creature.
Avalanche takes the ground out from under them. Wolverine comments that their guard was down as Storm picked the worst time to lay down some field rules. Which really, she did pick the worst time. It literally is in the middle of the heat of battle.
Wolverine is bickering with Storm about who is going to help Kurt, as Storm flies the both of them away from the scene. Both Nightcrawlers shout that they don’t need any help. One of them shifts back into Mystique. Kurt is thrown off as her appearance resembles his own. Mystique calls him by his full name, Kurt Wagner, and if he wants any answers, he should talk to his mother – Margali Szardos.
Meanwhile, showing that he isn’t a complete idiot – Colossus enlists Wolverine’s help to defeat Blob. Colossus has a metal rod, he places it on the back of Wolverine and using him as a lever, flips Blob off of his feet. Which, I get the science of it, but if Blob doesn’t want to move (as he’s repeated several times in a span of two pages) how could he still be lifted? If the panel showed that the metal pipe went into the ground, that might be another thing but it looks like it only went between Blob’s legs. Not to take anything away from Byrne, or even question his art choice on his second to last issue of Uncanny but it could have been shown a tad bit better.
Angel flies by Kurt, telling him to get going as the army has already taken Blob, Avalanche and Pyro into custody. The army won’t stop there, they will arrest the X-Men too, he beliefs.
Kurt wants to take Mystique in, himself but she has disappeared.
Mystique, now in her Raven Darkholme persona, is behind a wall. She will never make the mistake of underestimating the X-Men again. She’ll be back with a stronger and better Brotherhood.
Storm is creating a fog to cover their escape when Colossus notices Kitty is gone.
2013. The three X-Men have made it to the top floor. They see an Omega Level Sentinel, by itself. Wolverine instructs Colossus to do a fastball special. As soon as Wolverine is in the air, the Sentinel turns and straight up fries Wolverine to the metal skeleton. It is a very famous panel and it is awesome. Seeing the arm of the skeleton on the ground and the look on Storm and Colossus’ face is astonishing.
The famous Wolverine is dead.
There is an ad for Doctor Stange’s new title by Roger Stern and Frank Miller. I would have bought this title.
To make matters worst, the Sentinel informs the X-Men that they have known the mutants were in the building the entire time and they are ready for them.
Storm destroys this Sentinel, her fury knows no limits.
More Sentinels come in. Colossus pushes one down.
Storm tries to create a blizzard but gets a metal spike through her chest for her troubles. It isn’t graphic but that has to hurt. It does, as now Storm is dead. Colossus lets out a shout and attacks the Sentinels.
In a bold move, we cut to Rachel outside. She has been telepathically linked to the X-Men. She felt them all die. She now senses Colossus’ death. So the cover is right, everybody does die.
It wasn’t a great plan, what were they even hoping to accomplish? We’ll see in an upcoming issue of Excalibur what their goals would have been. The Suspense!
Rachel wonders what would happen if Kate’s body dies while her mind is elsewhere. She wishes Kate a happier life.
Which transitions us perfectly back to the past. Kate has found Senator Kelly and Destiny has a crossbow pointed at him.
Destiny knows her teammates have been captured but their goal will be accomplished this day.
I like how Kelly stands up for himself. Even if he is killed, the human race will rally that much harder around his death. Destiny lets him know that he is more of a threat alive than dead. Oh, if only she were to know. I wonder how she got it so wrong, what future did she see?
Kate figures that the timeswitch is why Destiny can’t detect her.
As Destiny fires her crossbow, Kate phases through Destiny and unphases her arm to elbow Destiny’s aim off. It is a skill Kitty will master later but right now, only Kate could have done it.
I wonder why she didn’t just sneak across the room and just phase Kelly away from any threats. As her one plan still opens itself to a fatality. As Destiny’s aim is only slightly thrown off as the arrow comes near his head.
As soon as it happens, Kitty and Kate switch bodies again – Quantum Leap rules.
Storm comes flying into the room. Both Destiny and Kitty are unconscious. Kelly wants to know what is happening here. Storm picks up Kitty, who is coming to, and tells him that the X-Men just saved his life and he owes Kitty a thanks of gratitude.
Xavier comes in and Storm and he exchange a conversation. At this point, Xavier isn’t out about being a mutant or having any ties to the X-Men so whenever the X-Men are in public, they make a point of calling each other by their names – even though they don’t have any real secret identities or families to speak of, besides Kitty. Kitty at this point is going by Sprite.
Raven Darkholme sees Destiny being arrested, she vows to free her soon.
On the plane ride back, Xavier explains to Kitty roughly what happened. Last she knew, she was in the Danger Room. Xavier tells her that Kate was a delightful and admirable woman.
There is a Hostess Fruit Pie ad starring Daredevil in vs. Johnny Punk.
One month later. Senator Kelly, Sebastian Shaw, the President (in shadows) and a fourth gentleman are having a conversation. The President is amazed that Kelly wants to continue his war on mutants as he was just saved by a few of them. The President isn’t even sure if what Kelly wants to do is legal. Shaw pipes up, stating that the plan is to strengthen national security.
The President tells them that the operation will be known as, Project Widewake. The man who will be heading it will answer directly and only to the president himself. In the final panel reveal, it is ol’ Avengers thorn – Henry Peter Gyrich. Shaw is there as his company, Shaw Industries, will be making this new batch of Sentinels.
. . .
Also, be on the lookout for Star Wars jokes or references today. May fourth be with you, indeed.
Shadow and Flame with Magik 