Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

A Non-review by Professor Popinjay

Hi, kiddies! Today we’ll be considering:

• X-Men: First Class (2011)
• X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)
• X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)
• X-Men: Dark Phoenix (2019)

I guess I should put a spoiler alert here.

If you’re curious, I did indeed write a Non-review about Dark Phoenix by itself. It’s the most NON of all Non-reviews, so disinterested in that film as I was. Check it out if you like. There’s not much there. I can’t promise there’ll be much here either in regards to that particular title. I dunno. Maybe I’ll give it another chance. It just seems like we did that one already with X-Men: The Last Stand in 2006. I’ve included Dark Phoenix here because it’s part of the franchise, that’s all.

So are these prequels? Are these reboots? Is it an alternate universe? The simple answer is… yes, er… no! Well, maybe?

First Class starts with all the flags of a prequel. Our favorite characters are here or being recruited. We’re seeing them learn to control their powers or accidentally turn themselves hairy or blue… or both. Then we see Hugh Jackman as Wolverine being the same age he’s always been. I guess Xavier, the mutant psychic who can zero in on specific mutants all over the earth and find them at a moment’s notice with the help of the cerebro machine, must have forgotten that he already met Wolverine years prior to the first X-Men film.

We also meet Emma Frost (aka the White Queen) in First Class which, I remind you, is set in 1962. This stands in stark contradiction to meeting a younger Emma Frost in the X-Men Origins: Wolverine film which is set primarily in the 1980s.

So now I’m leaning toward the possibility of an alternate universe plot that starts earlier than the original X-men film but Wolverine is a universal constant, a pan-dimensional being existing as he is in all universes regardless of other differences around him. Of course we find this to not be the case in Deadpool and Wolverine (2024) which features multiple Wolverines in multiple universes. The only constant we see is they all happen to look exactly like Hugh Jackman. What are the odds of that, especially considering Hank McCoy (aka Beast) looks like Kelsey Grammar in one universe and Nicholas Hoult in another? You mean to tell me Nicholas metamorphizes into looking like Kelsey Grammar? Hoult is a larval Grammar? I don’t believe it, but I guess we’ll see. Keep your eye on Hoult.

But then we come to Days of Future Past (2014) which starts us with a bit of the original cast (including Anna “Sometimes Ah Have uh Áccênt” Paquin reprising her milk toast rendition of Rogue, depending on what version you watch)

…and we get to do some mental time-travel through Wolverine (Huge Yackman, again) because apparently the realm of the mind transcends time and dimension if we accept the Multiple Emma Frost Theory. So now both timelines, universes, pasts and futures have converged. Bottom line? Fox let directors do whatever the hell they wanted and it’s just a huge gobbledygook of characters, storylines, and contradictions…just like the comics, so mission accomplished.

If it’s such a huge draw to bring back the original cast, it makes one wonder why a reboot with new younger actors was ever necessary in the first place. But whatever, it’s fine.

Wolverine’s actions in Days of Future Past set into motion an alternate timeline which we see unfold in X-Men: Apocalypse (2016). Obviously there’s no such thing as “alternate” when traversing to and fro in a continuum but this is fiction so we’ll grant them a pardon for the sake of storytelling. In that case Apocalypse does render some events in the original trilogy either obsolete or redundant.

Perhaps that’s why, when we come full circle to X-Men: Dark Phoenix (2019) it’s practically the same storyline as X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)! They didn’t paint themselves into a corner! They painted themselves into an ever repeating möbius strip and now theater goers are required to watch the same stories play out in an ever repeating loop! Why even stop the projector? Just take the end of the film, flip it over and tape it to the beginning! It’s the Neverending Story! Except instead of having to watch Artax sink into the Swamp of Sadness, we get to watch ourselves sink into the Moor of Mediocrity.

Can we talk about Magneto for a minute? He’s a holocaust survivor. I neither want to get religious nor political here but as Eric Lencher is set up as a villain, I have a hard time pointing a finger at him and saying “Shame, shame!” I understand he’s pissed and has lost a great deal of empathy and compassion for people who would oppress others. It’s perfectly understandable. That’s actually why I have a hard time accepting that he would submit to Apocalypse. I mean, the dude’s literal name is Apocalypse. They probably named apocalypses after him! It seemed like he had little choice in the matter I suppose, and Magneto WAS part of Apocalypse’s undoing in the long run. I don’t know. Magneto is a complicated character. He deserves more analysis than I have the energy for right now. He has my sympathies.

Most of these films were pretty good. I can’t figure out how Jennifer Lawrence morphed into Peter Dinklage. I know Mystique can change her appearance but her entire shape? If that’s the case, why doesn’t she just masquerade as a toaster or a table saw? I guess she did turn into William Striker (Brian Cox) who is roughly the size of two Rebecca Romijns. This is the stuff that keeps me up at night, man.

Box arts!