Culture Shock 05.29.14: 'Days of Future Past' gives X-Men a second chance

Given the obstacles it must overcome, that "X-Men: Days of Future Past" works at all is a pleasant surprise. That it's one of the best superhero movies to date qualifies as a minor miracle.

The X-Men franchise is one of the few Marvel Comics properties still outside Marvel and Disney's carefully constructed Marvel Cinematic Universe. That has its pluses and minuses.

The X-Men work better when kept at a distance from Marvel's other superheroes, who get in the way of the mutant vs. human dynamic that's central to the premise. That said, Fox's track record with Marvel's mutants is mixed. Only "X2: X-Men United" and "X-Men: First Class" are in the same league as Marvel's in-house productions.

But with Bryan Singer, who directed the first two X-Men outings, returning to the helm, "Days of Future Past" not only hangs with the best of them — "The Avengers," "Iron Man" and "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" — in many ways it raises the bar.

Singer and Fox have a message for Joss Whedon and Marvel/Disney: "Game on, bub."

Adapted from a 1981 story by Chris Claremont and John Byrne ("Uncanny X-Men" Vol. 1, Nos. 141-142), "Days of Future Past" opens in the near future, where a war between humans and mutants has laid waste to everything and left most of the mutant population dead or imprisoned in concentration camps. The only mutants still roaming free are a handful of X-Men and their former enemy Magneto (Ian McKellen). They're just steps ahead of the Sentinels, an army of robots that can adapt to combat any mutant, no matter his or her abilities.

With no other options left to them, Professor Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and Magneto hatch a plan to save the future by changing the past. That means sending someone back in time to prevent the act that ultimately leads to mutantkind's annihilation.

There's some explanatory handwaving, but eventually they send Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) back to 1973, where he wakes up in his younger body with a mission to find the younger Xavier (James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender), whom we met in "First Class."

Only together can they stop Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) from killing Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage), a weapons designer who believes mutants herald humanity's extinction.

Trask's answer to the "mutant problem" is the Sentinels. But ironically, it's his assassination that leads the government to fund the Sentinel program, which it had previously passed on.

Mystique's solution is actually the problem it's meant to solve.

Wolverine's mission has just two complications. First, the young Xavier, deep in a depression following the events of "First Class," has given up on his dream of mutants and humans living together in peace. Second, Magneto is imprisoned beneath the world's most secure building. And even if Wolverine can bring them together, they hate and distrust one another.

Even with all that story to deal with, Singer delivers plenty of well-staged action.

Singer wisely dispenses with the "First Class" supporting cast, keeping only Nicholas Hoult's Beast, to focus on the main characters and what they do with their second chance. Even franchise mainstay Storm (Halle Berry) gets only a few lines, although she does finally get to show off her powers.

Storm kicking butt minus Berry's wooden line readings equals a win-win for the audience.

That leaves room for a few new additions, of whom Quicksilver (Evan Peters) is the undisputed scene stealer. No spoilers, but Quicksilver's big scene, improbably set to Jim Croce's "Time in a Bottle," will have you smiling.

As much as "Days of Future Past" is about second chances for the characters, it's a second chance for Singer, too. He walked away from the third X-Men film to direct 2006's "Superman Returns," a misguided effort that led to Warner Bros. starting over last year with "Man of Steel." In his absence, Brett Ratner directed 2006's wretched "X-Men: The Last Stand."

With "Days of Future Past," Singer sets the X-Men right in more ways than one.

Culture Shock 08.01.13: Jackman makes 'The Wolverine' his own

Hugh Jackman wasn't the first choice to play Wolverine. Nor was James Mangold ("3:10 to Yuma") the first director attached to "The Wolverine." All films are as much the result of chance as design. But in the case of "The Wolverine" it shows.

Dougray Scott was the first pick to portray the scrappy mutant in 2000's "X-Men," but he dropped out when production on "Mission: Impossible II" fell behind. Now, it's nearly impossible to imagine anyone other than Jackman in the role. Like Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark and Christopher Reeve's Kal-El, Jackman's Logan is definitive, even if he isn't a carbon copy of the comic-book character.

By contrast, Mangold and screenwriters Mark Bomback and Scott Frank never put a distinctive mark on the film, which is loosely based on Chris Claremont and Frank Miller's four-issue "Wolverine" miniseries published in 1982. (Not that Claremont and Miller get screen credit for their contribution.)

That is a shame, because there are seeds sown here that, with a bit of tending, could have born fruit.

"The Wolverine" picks up immediately after the events of "X-Men: The Last Stand," in which Logan was forced to kill the love of his life, Jean Grey, after she lost control of her powers, went all Dark Phoenix on everyone, and threatened to destroy the world. Heartbroken, depressed and blaming himself for Jean's death, which is strictly true, Logan has retreated to the isolation of the wilderness.

But even playing hermit can't keep Wolverine completely off the radar. He is tracked down by Yukio (Rila Fukushima), a mutant who can foretell people's deaths. She persuades Logan to fly back with her to Japan, where her employer, an old acquaintance of Logan's, wants to settle a longstanding debt.

During World War II, the ageless Logan was a prisoner of war in Nagasaki the day the atomic bomb fell, and he saved the life of a soldier named Yashida. Now on his high-tech deathbed, a billionaire industrialist Yashida (Hal Yamanouchi) wants to give Logan a gift no one else can: mortality.

With the help of some superscience, Yashida will get Logan's super-healing powers, while Logan will get to live a normal life, growing old and eventually dying, ending the "curse" of immortality.

Yet Wolverine's existential crisis doesn't last long before taking a backseat to the Yashida family's internal power struggles, which are far less compelling.

When the Yakuza attempt to assassinate Yashida's granddaughter and designated successor, Mariko (Tao Okamoto), Wolverine is forced back into the "best there is at what he does" role he has tried to escape since Jean's death. Wolverine, the "ronin" or masterless samurai, is back in protector mode.

Only this time, Wolverine's healing powers aren't working, which makes fighting an army of criminals, and later ninjas, a lot more difficult.

What follows is the movie's best action set piece, with Logan and Mariko fighting their way across Tokyo. Afterward, it's all downhill en route to an overblown ending that looks like it wandered in from some other movie. When we finally learn the villain's master plan, the most striking revelation is that nothing we've just seen makes a lick of sense.

Still, Jackman makes it almost worthwhile. He is an engaging presence, and while he doesn't have much chemistry with either of his love interests, Mariko or Jean (Famke Janssen, appearing in several dream sequences), his role-reversed relationship with Yukio is fun while it lasts. If "The Wolverine" is about anything, it's about Logan as seen through the eyes of the women in his life.

How might "The Wolverine" have been different had director Darren Aronofsky not dropped out? Maybe its themes of life, death and immortality, which Aronofsky explored so well in "The Fountain" (also starring Jackman), would have been better examined? But we'll never know.

That's chance, and life, for you.