My Stupid X-Men Opinions

by Mallory Ortberg · June 3, 2014

xmenAw, Toad came back! There…there he was. Toad.

Okay, so the ending of X-Men: Days of Future Past sort of nullifies the events of X-Men: The Last Stand and maybe also X-2 and I think possibly X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which is a lot of nullifying. It feels like between the Monster Retcon of DoFP and the brand-new First Class cast the studio’s trying to halfway-reboot the franchise without actually rebooting (mostly, I would guess, to preserve the Patrick Stewart/Ian McKellan/Hugh Jackman moneymaking trio) and the strain is starting to show. Reboot the dang franchise! It’s been fourteen years, that is a good run. Wolverine is looking old, though, man. Can’t have an old Wolverine.

And selfishly, I want Jackman to be free to make the Boy From Oz movie.

Don’t reboot Patrick Stewart or Ian McKellan, obviously. Never let them die; they are precious natural resources.

There’s a scene where Peter Maximoff runs around in slow-motion redistributing recently fired bullets, and the song that plays over it is Jim Croce’s “Time In A Bottle.” That on-the-nose urge ought to have been resisted.

The role of Mystique deserves to be treated with the respect and careful casting that the role of a 150-year-old, venomously angry, lesbian shapeshifting assassin merits. She deserves a spinoff trilogy every bit as expensive as Wolverine Visits Japan. Jennifer Lawrence has a great jawline and seems like she’s a lot of fun at parties; she’s a good actress but she does not have Mystique running in her veins. I want to see a woman who looks like she’s committed murder during the act of sex wearing that blue paintsuit. I want a woman with falcon eyes and a crocodile heart, a balls-out weird woman, a woman who’s spent some time living underground. She deserves to be played by either Tilda Swinton, Eva Green, or Lena Headey, in that order.

Do not bring back Famke Janssen just for another spin in the Scott/Jean/Logan love merry-go-round. Don’t do that to me. She has not aged a day and I hope she made a million dollars for that one scene where she leaned against a door and said “Logan” in a tone of dull surprise and then made absolutely no subsequent expressions with her face but you can’t make me sit through that again. Please don’t.

Or bring that triangle back in every subsequent X-Men movie, but have the resolution always be “Jean dissolves Scott into nothingness, then Wolverine claws her in the gut and runs away.” I could actually be really into that eternal, Sisyphean love triangle, if it involved Famke Janssen making out with James Marsden until he dissolves into nonbeing.

Conversely, I would pay $15 for a 3D ticket of an X-Men: Apocalypse that’s just Kelsey Grammar’s Beast jauntily strutting down the hallway wearing a natty three-piece suit saying “Hey, Logan” in slightly different ways.

Find a way to work Michelle Rodriguez into the next movie, if she’s willing to put on the old action-movie white tank top one last time. I mean, I get it if she doesn’t want to, but if she did want to, I would really like it.

Man, I hope Lucy is good.

Did Magneto have any memorable lines in the whole movie? Give Magneto some bitchy lines. Really camp him up. His only move is basically “evil invisible orchestra conductor” — whenever he betrays Chaaaaahles, he straightens up, cape billowing, and performs a gesture that can only be described as conducts a malicious, floating, incorporeal orchestra. And Fassbender is a campy dude! Let him run loose! Really let him chew the scenery! That whole reunion-fight on the plane was so forgettably written; it was only saved by a balls-ton of Acting. Give us SOAP. Give us THESPIAN HAMMERY. They’re pretty much gods who are also ex-boyfriends that control metal and brains — Magneto builds a special helmet just to keep Xavier from knowing what his feelings are; HE BUILDS A BRAIN CAGE SO HIS EX-BOYFRIEND WON’T KNOW HOW SAD HE IS. That is the demigod-level mutant equivalent of setting your gchat status to invisible so your ex-boyfriend can’t tell that you’re online. That is so campy Susan Sontag just sat up in her grave and texted John Waters “omg did u hear about Magneto?!!!”

JOHN WATERS DID HEAR ABOUT IT. AND IT RULED.

Oh shit, Marvel owns Loki and Thor too, right? Give us a movie where Magneto and Loki become best friends and skate across Bifrost and destroy the mortal world together. Campy bastards just glamming it up on the world tree, swapping helmets and floating over the crushed bodies of their victims while holding hands. Buy FOX if you have to, just make it happen.

I don’t like the bone claws. They look gross. No more bone claws. I don’t care if you don’t bring back the adamantium, but cover them with something. Sand, or yarn, or acrylic, or something that’s not just human ivory.

That’s all the opinions I have about X-Men right now, I guess. It was a good movie, with some problems; you should probably see it if you like the X-Men, which I do.

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170 Comments

  1. snaxstax +27

    “Eternal, Sisyphean love triangle” is my favorite, favorite genre. Runner up is Michelle Rodriguez in a white tank top.

  2. Girl Named Jack +82

    I assume the mostly-Beast movie would also have several scenes of him talking while looking over the tops of his glasses, right? I mean, I really need that to be in there.

      1. sednarea51 +50

        Wolverine sitting in a corner with a lit cigar, knitting a sock on his claws

        snikt bub
        knit bub
        purl bub
        yarn over, bub

  4. combledore +14

    Now I’m trying to figure out who Michelle Rodriguez could play in an X-movie. I think she’s too old for X-23, but somehow that feels right.

    1. rkfire +13

      Michelle Rodriguez as Rogue! Genderbent Gambit! IDFK, but I’d like to see a movie with Gambit and Michelle Rodriguez.

      1. avantsweater +5

        Wolverine, or she would make a good M from Generation X. M gets to punch a LOT of ppl.

    2. lurkeriatipsos +11

      Destiny? I mean, they’d have to make asskicking her secondary mutation or smthg, but I would buy so many tickets to a movie where Michelle Rodriguez was Mystique’s sightless clairvoyant girlfriend.

    4. erindubitably +13

      CALLISTO. I mean, not the weird version that was in the films already. Eyepatch-wearing Morlock Callisto!

      Or, er, Kate Moennig could do too.

      …I’ll be in my bunk.

  5. eastcoastanne +9

    I finally just watched First Class and plan to see this next weekend. I agree, Jennifer Lawrence was ALL WRONG.

  6. Rosie_M_Banks +16

    I have zero X-Men opinions but I have many opinions about Jim Croce being thrown around indiscriminately.

    1. literaltrousersnake +18

      my opinion was that scene and quicksilver are worth my $15 entirely on their own and I absolutely loved the twee repellent music choice.

      1. Absotively +6

        Yes. That scene was the best part of the movie and it was perfect and wonderful.

    2. tubatoothpaste +1

      I have zero fucks to give about X-men as well, but plenty about super-duper-on-the-nose musical choices. I only made it through like 15-20 minutes of Flight but the extremely literal soundtrack was probably what drove me over the edge.

    1. osutein +17

      BUT IT’S 3-DAYS AS THE NAZGUL FLIES, not “the crow.” Dammit dammit dammit. We had the opportunity to hear Fassbender imitating McKellan saying the word NAZGUL and we lost it. THERE IS NO POINT IN GOING ON.

      1. GreenGrasses +18

        Goddamit Fassbender. You coulda really made something of yourself. Now look at you! YOU DONE FUCKED UP.

      2. Peanutcheese +15

        Nooooooooo!

        This was officially the best video ever (TM) and now it has been marred :(. Now it is still the best video ever (TM) but not quite as good as it could have been (TM).

        However, it has given rise to my best idea yet (at only 24!): Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan take over of all TV programming. Stewart and McKellan will appear in every show on TV: the news, the weather, soap operas, game shows, documentaries, sitcoms, everythingggg. It will be magical.

        1. Upsidedown_Cake +13

          Having Stewart and McKellan take over tv is basically my plan for world domination.

        2. msjinxie +7

          Error or no, I’m pretty sure this video managed to get me pregnant, is how much I loved it. You combine Magneto, Sir Ian, and the Lord of the Goddamned Rings and this is basically all I need in life to be happy.

  8. ejbaker13 +28

    Sony actually owns the film rights to X Men, as well as Spiderman, which is why you won’t see them appearing in the MCU, so sadly, that Loki x Magneto crossover we’ve all been dreaming of can never happen. *~*nerds off into the sunset*~*

    2. MalloryOrtberg +34

      lol i wish you could have been around for this conversation last night on twitter

    4. TheAntiHumorEquation +3

      Fox has X-Men (also Fantastic 4 for some reason?), Sony has Spidey, but yeah. No magical Loki/Magneto friendship (sigh).

    5. SarcasticFringehead +17

      More nerdery! Because of how comics work, when you say one studio owns the X-men and another studio owns the Avengers, there’s actually not always a clear line for which characters are in which group, which is how you end up with Quicksilver being in both this movie and the upcoming Avengers movie (played by different actors, though).

    6. rkfire +19

      None of this precludes tumblr from diving headfirst into Loki x Magneto land!

  9. EPWordsnatcher +41

    Things I didn’t realize I needed until now: Loki and Magneto glamming around everywhere in large billowy capes with fancy helmets. GIVE IT TO ME NOW, MARVEL.

    And yes, DoFP needed approximately 1000% more campy Fassbender.

  10. rkfire +17

    I can’t believe I’ve never thought of Loki x Magneto until this morning. OTP! OTP!

  11. osutein +40

    Man, they really screwed the pooch by not comitting to First Class as a flat-out reboot. It makes NO sense in the context of the first 3 X-Men movies/2 Wolverine movies. I mean, unless Ortberg’s Law of Temporal Sexual Identity Displacement also includes accents, I’m not sure how Moira McTaggert went from being a 30-yr. old American CIA agent in 1963 to being a 40-yr. old Scottish biochemist in 2007 or whenever.

    Plus, Spider-Man got rebooted! FF is getting rebooted! Superman got rebooted! Batman’s gonna get rebooted like 5 times in my adult life! Just reboot the damn thing. Keep Jackman, PatStew and Magendolf around b/c they are great. They can play the same characters in different iterations of the franchise. It’s fine! It’s fine. Really.

    Also, Eva Green would be an AMAZING Mystique.

    1. Angelan_ +58

      No, keep all the actors, but everyone moves one character up on the cast list. Halle Berry is Cyclops! Famke Janssen is Magneto! Patrick Stewart is Wolverine!

      1. osutein +32

        This is X-MEN: BACK TO THE FUTURE OF DAYS PAST’s biggest crime. They had a chance to reboot the franchise and they brought back Halle Berry as freakin’ Storm. Like we have Lupita Nyong’o now who is ACTUALLY KENYAN and an amazing actress and we still have Halle Berry playing Storm.

      2. Absotively +18

        I dunno, I feel like Jennifer Lawrence would make a good Wolverine. She’s got the “are you kidding me?” stare pretty much down pat.

        Patrick Stewart could be Beast, maybe?

    2. TheAntiHumorEquation +22

      I think the only way the timeline in the X-Men movies make sense is if you acknowledge that there are, like, 20 total possible names in this world, and that’s why we keep seeing characters with the same name who totally cannot be the same person.

    3. SarcasticFringehead +17

      Or how William Stryker (I’m pretty sure that’s who I’m thinking of) was a mid-20s army guy during Vietnam (DoFP) and also a mid-40s army guy during Vietnam (Wolverine).

      1. EPWordsnatcher +22

        I saw something that covered this by saying something along the lines of “Maj. Stryker aged hard during these seven years.”

    4. larsgarvey +18

      I would gladly pay upwards of $20 to see Eva Green as Mystique. Not hating on Jennifer Lawrence, who I enjoy in her other films, but I wholeheartedly agree that Mystique is lacking a certain dark edge that Green would easily bring to the character.

    5. slankettt +27

      So, according to Ortberg’s Law, Wolverine was gay for most of Days of Future Past, yes? Would explain why he was so confused when he woke up in bed with a naked lady post-time travel.

  12. anon210 +72

    “a woman who’s spent some time living underground.”

    With Mallory, it’s quite impossible to tell if this is meant in the metaphorical “living among shady characters” way or if she actually wants a woman who has inhabited a cavern.

    2. Sean_Sullivan +41

      Tilda Swinton once operated an opium den in the Hölloch caverns of Switzerland, so there’s no need to compromise here.

    1. MalloryOrtberg +44

      the guy who maybe beat up his girlfriend and i wonder if he really did it A LOT

      1. rkfire +13

        Yeah, where did things land with that? I may or may not have a crush on him and this information is necessary to its survival.

        1. MalloryOrtberg +23

          we just get to keep NOT KNOWING and live our lives in that uncomfortable ambiguity

      2. tubatoothpaste +22

        I’m just going to assume he did, which is probably REVERSE SEXISM but fuck it.
        Not ALL rich, famous men…. but really, pretty much most of them. 🙁

  14. Merry +9

    I paused the newest Slashreport episode about this movie to read this, and between the two I finally broke down and just read a plot summary because I have trouble believing this is a existing movie and not a fever dream. I’m still not convinced.

  17. Angelan_ +61

    Can we have a movie about the purple portal woman? I don’t care what it’s about, I could watch her set up “why are you hitting yourself” style fights for two hours, easy.

    2. amalmohtar +17

      Her name is Blink and she is wonderful and I love her but all the comics I read with her in it were from the early-to-mid-’90s and I didn’t own any of them and they have probably aged terribly but she is SO GREAT.

      1. rkfire +7

        Let’s face it, her name really should be Portal Woman. She should also quote the game endlessly.

        “I’m not even angry..”

      2. protocoach +1

        Well, AoA is pretty terrible when you go back and read it, but Exiles is still really, really good.

    3. m98widow +17

      They literally did the “speedy thing goes in, speedy thing comes out” move from Portal!

    4. daisicles +8

      Yes please! I mostly just want to go ‘Blink, you are so pretty and also your makeup or whatever that is is so awesome and also your power looks SO NIFTY’ for 2 hours, so plot is irrelevant.

  18. sednarea51 +40

    Still waiting for the movie where all of Wolverine’s dialogue is replaced with “sniktbub”

  19. jimboch +35

    The X-Men needs to be a TV show, is all. There’s too many characters! We need (nay, DESERVE) the Beast-centric episode that’s just fuzzy Kelsey Grammar nodding at Logan and doing science for an hour.

    1. kjschapira +9

      This isn’t going to fix your Kelsey Grammer problem but X-Men: Evolution is a cartoon that exists and is great.

    2. Prawns +6

      You can always go back and watch the old X-Men cartoon.

      Buh nuh nuh nuh na nuh nuh, buh nuh nuh nuh na! nuh na, na na na

    3. amzielke +1

      My secret dream is to adapt the early, post-Giant Sized X-Men issues into a live action sitcom, but add Beast and also Emma Frost to the cast.

  20. Rianne +43

    This was a movie where the plot was entirely reliant on the mutations of two women. Like, without Kitty Pryde and Mystique this movie would not have existed.

    So of course Kitty Pryde was a plot device, not a character, and Mystique was two dimensional and I just wanted to spend more time with her.
    Stewart &Mckellan are the greatest, but FFS it felt like a story where the pile of white dudes should have been way more peripheral than they were.

    1. jimboch +11

      Also, I totally forgot that a pre-Juno Ellen Page was Kitty Pride in X-Men 3. That’s a nice bit of casting!

      Also, why could Rogue hold Bobby Drake’s hand in the rebooted future?

    2. anachronistique +37

      And based on a comic where Kitty Pryde (a Jewish woman) is the one sent back in time to save her people from being rounded up into camps and exterminated. So let’s replace her part with a white guy!

      *throws self off a cliff*

      1. Rianne +26

        ‘But, but, Wolverine is the character everybody loves! They had to use him! People would pay money to go see him!’ – the rebuttal from the dudes I was having this conversation with.

        Because what? Nobody has any interest in seeing more Ellen Page these days?
        *joins you at the cliff*

        1. meanchelled +20

          i loved wolverine a lot more when he was a character hugh jackman played between musicals featuring gold lamé pants and… i don’t know, whatever else hugh jackman feels like doing that’s NOT WOLVERINE

    3. literaltrousersnake +5

      I made my girlfriend very angry by hissing “Why did they kill all the minorities first, starting with Storm?” at a bad moment.

  21. Rianne +21

    Did anyone else crack up over Anna Paquin getting higher billing than Ellen Page?

      1. msjinxie +1

        Ah, good to know. I was wondering what was going on with that – Paquin’s fine, but she’s not, like, a huge huge star.

  22. meanchelled +58

    I don’t understand why the overarching plot of this x-men series isn’t “we are fighting for mutant equality and we are also deeply in love though our relationship will never live up to the Good Role Model Ideals that other mutants need- EVER, CHARLES, DO YOU HEAR ME, EVER, BECAUSE I WILL DROP A STADIUM ON YOU AND THE WHITE HOUSE IF YOU SAY ONE MORE CONDESCENDING WORD TO ME, PRICK”

    like, that would generate a lot of character development and you don’t need all this time travel nonsense.

    ALSO DARWIN FROM THE FIRST MOVIE IS STILL DEAD AND THAT IS SO MUCH BULLSHIT

    1. rkfire +38

      I like to think that Magneto tearing up RFK Stadium was really more a commentary on the team name/mascot.

      EVEN MAGNETO HATES THE MASCOT, DAN SNYDER! EVEN MAGNETO.

      1. osutein +9

        He’d probably be cool with it if they were the Washington Flatscans, though.

      2. jimboch +6

        As a person who lived in Washington DC for a number of years, he did the world a favor by tearing down RFK Stadium.

        That thing sucks.

        1. rkfire +2

          Not a fan of DC United? ;D

          [I haven’t been in ages; the only time I’ve been to RFK Stadium is to go to HFStival in the late 90s.. wooooo!]

    2. daisicles +25

      I read more than one fanfic that postulated that Darwin is still alive but has to, like, reassemble himself from a bunch of molecules. I am taking this as COMPLETELY TRUE and therefore he’ll obviously be back for the next movie.

      I’m sure the producers are listening to me right now on that front too.

  23. jimboch +30

    Mallory, you forgot the most important thing about the new X-Men:

    This X-Men film DIRECTLY STATES that 1) President John F. Kennedy was a mutant and 2) the missing Nixon tapes were about mutants.

    What do we think JFK’s super power was?

    3. rkfire +16

      Pheromones? Or maybe his accent. His accent has the ability to bewitch others.

      1. anachronistique +12

        My friend and I were discussing this and literally typed and sent “pheromones” at the same instant. And then I started wondering if all the Kennedys had superpowers, because that would explain a lot.

    5. amzielke +13

      I once read a Cyclops mini that claimed Kennedy’s mutant power was that he didn’t produce adrenaline and was therefore super composed.

      Yes, this is a subject that they have directly addressed in X-Men comics.

  24. m98widow +60

    Every time I read an internet comment about how Charles’s decade long bender was because he was sad about Raven and not Erik, I want to pat that person on the head and say “Aw.”

    1. SarcasticFringehead +16

      But they grew up together! He brought her everywhere! Including to bars where he spent all his time hitting on other women! If that’s not true love, I don’t know what is.

      1. m98widow +30

        I think I knew all the way back when I was twelve and Erik was literally carrying Charles around in his arms during the Savage Lands episodes of the animated series.

  26. brigidkeely +50

    I HAVE SO MANY X-MEN OPINIONS

    SO MANY

    SO MANY YOU PROBABLY DO NOT WANT TO HEAR ME NERD OUT ABOUT THEM HERE

    BUT IF YOU DO

    CHECK OUT MY TWITTER (@BRIGIDKEELY)

    BECAUSE I GO OFF ON A FAIRLY REGULARLY BASIS

    BUT LET ME TELL YOU SOMETHING INTERNETS

    KITTY FUCKING PRYDE, AMAZING GODDESS THAT SHE IS, IS A JEWISH WOMAN. JEWISH. WOMAN. WHO CAN PASS EASILY MOST TIMES AS HUMAN. WHO ORIGINALLY WAS THE ONE WHO WENT FORWARD IN TIME TO PREVENT A MUTANT HOLOCAUST THAT HAD SHOCKING PARALLELS AND RESONANCES TO WHAT HER PEOPLE HAD GONE THROUGH. WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU WRITE HER OUT AS THE MAIN CHARACTER AND PRESENT THE ROLE TO A WHITE MAN. A CANADIAN.

    LIKEWISE, PIETRO MAXIMOF, AKA QUICKSILVER, IS THE DAUGHTER OF MAGNETO (A JEW) AND MAGDA, A ROMANI WOMAN. HE, AND HIS SISTER WANDA ( WHO OH MY GODDDDDDDDDD I DO NOT HAVE THE BRAINPOWER TO GET THROUGH A DISCUSSION OF HOW MISHANDLED SHE USUALLY IS LOL BITCHES BE CRAAAAAAAAY AMIRITE) ARE CANONICALY JEWISH AND ROMANI, TWO GROUPS TARGETED FOR GENOCIDE BY THE NAZIS AND AGAIN, PARALLELS TO THE FUCKING ANTI MUTANT GENOCIDE. WHY WOULD YOU CAST A WHITE ACTOR AND RE-NAME HIM PETER. WHY. WHYYYYYY. WHY DO YOU DO THIS TO ME MARVEL. WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY.

    I AM REDUCED TO ALL-CAPS HERE.

    THIS IS WHAT YOU DO TO ME, X-MEN MOVIE FRANCHISE.

    WELL.

    I AM OFF NOW.

    I AM GOING TO RE-READ MY ISSUES OF THE INITIAL RUN OF “EXCALIBUR,” WHICH FEATURES 3 KICK ASS WOMEN CHARACTERS WHO HAVE DIFFERENT INTERESTS, MOTIVATIONS, CHARACTERS, INTERESTS, AND POWERS AND ALSO HAVE 3 DIFFERENT BODY SHAPES/TYPES TO THE POINT YOU CAN TELL THEM APART IN SILHOUETTE. MY FAVORITE PART IS WHEN KITTY PRYDE MAKES FUN OF RACHEL’S RIDICULOUS SKIN TIGHT SPIKED COSTUME AND PONDERS ALOUD HOW SHE TAKES IT OFF TO USE THE BATHROOM. WHY CAN’T WE HAVE THIS AS A MOVIE. WHY. WHYYYYYY. WHY.

    1. jimboch +6

      Well, there’s always hope that the Avengers can handle Quicksilver/the Scarlet Witch better, I guess?

      1. brigidkeely +13

        I have deep reservations, as they’ve hired light skinned/light haired/light eyed actors for them and Pietro’s actor is English. Wanda’s actress describes the character as “crazy” and defines her as having “more things wrong with her than any character I’ve ever played,” so I’m not really… expecting great things. I mean, they can’t be listed as Magneto’s kids because different companies have the right to Avengers and to X-Men/Spider-Man. Avengers studio doesn’t have the rights to Magneto. I know that going in. But ffffffffffffffffff.

        1. anachronistique +63

          lbr joss whedon never met a crazy hollow-eyed waif he didn’t like

          (also I agree with the rest of your thoughts but I’m trying to keep my head from exploding)

          1. brigidkeely +25

            Please accept this basket of “thumbs ups” for your joss whedon comment.

          3. brigidkeely +24

            Naw, it’s super great how he makes sure that we all know that EXCEPTIONAL women are women who are INNATELY GIFTED (created BY MEN, often against their will) and not women who work hard, thus ensuring that we all know that EXCEPTIONAL women are RARE CREATIONS who are SUPERIOR to regular women in every way. EXCEPTIONAL women are either born with gifts (frex: being able to absorb mechanical experience from their fathers and intuit what’s wrong with a ship by looking at its exterior, MAGICALLY) or they are created through magic (Buffy) or science (River, that creepy Dollhouse deal) wielded by men. Practice? Studying? Totally not needed! So it’s totally ok to continue dismissing the efforts– and stories– of women who aren’t EXCEPTIONAL and thus worthy of our attentions.

          4. CleverManka +15

            Every time I see that quote from him about “why do you write strong female characters” my chest gets tight and maybe my vision gets the teensiest bit blurry. How do so many women still defend/adore him? I just don’t get it.

            I mean, I enjoy some problematic-as-shit shows but I recognize and acknowledge that they’re often a hot mess of misogyny and racism. I don’t try to excuse, justify, or beatify the writers. Christ almighty.

          5. brigidkeely +25

            What I hate most about that quote is the fact that Tamora Pierce said the same thing 10-20 years before him, yet SHE is not endlessly requoted because REASONS. Unlike Whedon, she also turned the question around and asked if they’d ask the same thing about writing strong male characters.

  27. rusty +6

    So I was like enormously distracted by the way that the dramatic finale was pretty much exactly like the dramatic finale of That Matrix Movie Everyone Hated — evil machines are breaking in and winning, but guy is on another plane of reality doing stuff to pre-empt it, but he’s like maybe dead in that other plane of reality…

    But nobody who watched the movie with me felt the same way, because apparently everyone else has blocked all memory of TMMEH?

    1. literaltrousersnake +25

      Pardon, what was that? The Matrix is a standalone movie about how Carrie Ann Moss is the Hermione of the latex-clad future warriors, and her solitary efforts to save Lawrence Fishburne from the Dark Elf Elrond.

      1. EPWordsnatcher +2

        Dammit now I want to watch The Matrix again, with this (true and factual statement) in mind.

  28. heartstillatwar +6

    Praise be to Mallory for writing this, so I didn’t have to corral my thoughts into a coherent review.

    Allow me to add – wtf was even the point of adding Quicksilver if he was only going to have 10 minutes of screentime, do a *wink wink nudge nudge* about his parental origins which especially don’t even make sense given there’s only TEN YEARS between the actors?! (All my issues with the movie and apparently this is the one that bothers me most.)

    1. erindubitably +3

      It’s all about Sony owning the Avengers and thus rights to QS and SW and so X-Men can use them but only if they don’t have their origins, and Sony can use them except they can’t say they’re mutants… or something.

      1. heartstillatwar +3

        I know, and I was fine with that but then they had QS say ‘Oh you move metal? My mom knew a guy who could do that…’ And it was so coy and twee and annoying.

        1. erindubitably +5

          Ah fair enough! I thought it was a nice bit of fanservice but then the whole QS thing was way better than I was expecting it to be based on his terrible wig, so.

  29. larsgarvey +55

    This right here may be my favorite thing ever written about any X-Men film, ever: “HE BUILDS A BRAIN CAGE SO HIS EX-BOYFRIEND WON’T KNOW HOW SAD HE IS.”

  30. spectralbovine +17

    EVIL INVISIBLE ORCHESTRA CONDUCTOR is such a perfect description of everything Magneto does (awesomely).

  31. erindubitably +10

    The worst thing Hugh Jackman ever did was make me like Wolverine a little bit.

    But please god, no more Wolverine films.

  32. erindubitably +28

    Also I kind of love their dedication to portraying Erik as a human-hating sociopath – I mean, the better plan would’ve been to use the metal-infused Sentinels and make them go a bit nuts at the unveiling to discredit Trask and make him a laughingstock and shut down the threat that way, but did he make the reasonable plans noooooo he had to KILL THEM ALL AND ALSO GIANT FLOATING STADIUM WHAT.

    2. osutein +13

      Yeah, I liked that too. It really shows how fucked up Magneto’s thinking is. As you said, he could have just secretly made the Sentinel debut go terribly wrong and get it shut down by gov’t order, but instead he decides to declare open war on humanity.

          1. tragicallyludicrous +30

            where does he even GET a cape. actually where does he even get clothes from. like does Charles bring nice clothes after they break Magneto out of Pentagon Jail? I hope he was like “Erik is going to be especially upset that he’s not been allowed to wear a tight-fitting shirt for ten years, we need to get him new clothes before we go.”

          2. Absotively +29

            Maybe Charles was unable to bring himself to clean out Magneto’s drawer.

          1. EPWordsnatcher +5

            Between that and BIG HAIR NO HEART, today has been A Day for slogans here on The Toast.

  33. floridagal1 +25

    “That is the demigod-level mutant equivalent of setting your gchat status to invisible so your ex-boyfriend can’t tell that you’re online.”

    dying

  34. briliantmistake +36

    One of my favorite parts of First Class is how it includes an elaborate explanation for for how Magneto winds up in his iconic helmet and two seconds later he’s shown rescuing Emma Frost in the helmet … and a cape, because sometimes a supervillian just needs some flair.

    1. tragicallyludicrous +37

      my favorite thing is Magneto being a massive Eurovision-level drama queen just because

    2. SarahDances +32

      And let’s not forget the truly fabulous paint job he does on the helmet. “Utilitarian metal? Heavens no! One does want a hint of color.”

  35. erindubitably +24

    I just really don’t feel like Jennifer Lawrence would be the type of person to wear a skull belt. Eva Green would bring her own to set.

    2. brigidkeely +6

      I fell in love with the suggestion of having Tilda Swinton play Mystique. If anyone can portray a nigh-immortal blue-skinned shapeshifter strongly influenced by Kali, who girds her loins with the skulls of infants, it’s her.

  36. Absotively +20

    Tangent: I am kind of sad for new timeline Wolverine, who appears to have been basically replaced with old timeline Wolverine without ever appearing on screen. I had assumed that both sets of memories would sort of coexist.

    Also, I was kind of surprised that Xavier wasn’t upset by this. He appears to have known and worked with and probably liked new timeline Wolverine, but when new timeline Wolverine is erased he’s just like, “oh, hey, it’s other Wolverine! That’s great and has no downsides!”

    1. SarcasticFringehead +2

      Yeah, I still don’t get that. He remembered the war when he went back in time, right? So I feel like he would continue to remember it as he lived out his new life in the non-war timeline, unless he still got his memories erased by the adamantium procedure, which seems unlikely because he would have known about that ahead of time because it already happened to him once, or I guess unless he lost them when he “drowned,” which hasn’t happened any of the other times he died. And it seemed like Charles remembered, because he wasn’t surprised when Logan came in like “I’m a different guy now!”

      At the very least, it was weird that war-Logan’s memories overwrote non-war-Logan’s memories, instead of, as you say, coexisting.

      1. Absotively +4

        I assumed that when future Wolverine woke up in the future, severing the tie between the two times, he left original flavour Wolverine with no knowledge of the old timeline future. Or the past week, since he didn’t seem to be present while future Wolverine displaced him in his body.

        Did Wolverine ever explain to the past X-Men that it was only his mind that had travelled in time? Maybe they didn’t even know that until they met Kitty and learned about her power. So they wouldn’t have been surprised when they encountered Wolverine again and he didn’t really know them, and then eventually they’d have figured out that he was due to have his mind overwritten with alternate timeline memories someday. Which I guess gave Xavier time to get used to the idea, but how did Wolverine feel about it? Did they even tell him?

  37. CleverManka +10

    If I wasn’t already assured that I Have Found My People and They Are The Toast, I would know it for certain, now.

    God damn, I hated this movie. And up until this very moment I thought I was alone. SO ALONE.

    1. SarcasticFringehead +9

      I didn’t necessarily hate it, but I’m always thrilled when I can come here and have a very serious discussion about the plot of comic-book movies and nobody jumps in like “god, grow up, why are you talking about a kids’ movie” or “obviously those two male characters weren’t in love, why are you projecting, that’s gross,” and also there are pitches for movies where campy villains go be campy all over the universe.

      1. CleverManka +2

        My hatred was, I admit, enhanced by the fact that I really, Really, REALLY dislike time travel stories.

        If nothing else, though, I am grateful that the movie inspired this post and the comments. <3

  38. Aunty Maim +4

    The media experience that this leaves me wanting is a mummy film-meets-Pop-Culture-Happy-Hour where Waters and the reanimated body of Sontag join up to regularly discuss cultural goings-on and recommend good youtube videos.

  39. emily_of_athens +11

    Insofar as I could tell, the premise of the movie was “God, the seventies were HILARIOUS. Weren’t the seventies hilarious? Can we just play dress-up with all our characters with horrible seventies mustaches and stuff and just, like, make fun of them a lot?”

    1. literaltrousersnake +3

      I thought it had that with a touch of “Weren’t cars, sex, and gangsters all more interesting in the 70s?”

      1. literaltrousersnake +2

        Or even… “Hey wasn’t the end of the world so much less terrifying then? Hahaha we had optimism.”

  40. thethirdhelix +4

    Mallory (can I call you “Mallory”?), I think your blog might be my new favorite corner of the Internet.

  42. amzielke +4

    “Give us SOAP. Give us THESPIAN HAMMERY. ”

    So what you’re saying is “Give us CHRIS CLAREMONT”, correct?

  43. hazel

    *rolls around all over the goodness*

    Mallory Ortberg is a precious natural resource.

  44. impasto

    The one who was a douchenozzle about Keira Knightley's stated boundaries while they were filming a scene where she was handcuffed and vulnerable. Not cool.

  46. stephiecakes +3

    I am pretty sure Lucy is gonna be a racist mess and I’m gonna be SO MAD IN MANY ALL CAPS.

  47. Stephanie

    I am pretty sure Lucy is gonna be a racist mess and I'm gonna be SO MAD IN MANY ALL CAPS.

  48. nicole_fcd +3

    Natalie Dormer for Mystique

    (though, honestly, I am a strong supporter of Natalie Dormer playing All The Roles, but Natalie Dormer as Mystique would be SO AWESOME)

    also I am 100% behine the whole “Loki and Magneto swanning around the galaxy being incredibly camp” thing