DOFP Reaction Post!

[futurepast_mod]

Did you write up a reaction post on Tumblr? Would you like to have a discussion in the comments here? Come one, come all, and give us your reactions to X-Men: Days Of Future Past!

As always, you can comment with a Dreamwidth account, with an OpenID, or anonymously!

Please be excellent to each other!

Comments

on the topic of Cherik *_*

[helens78]

Erik leaves WITHOUT HIS HELMET. And Charles lets him go. They'll get back together! THEY WILL.

I am personally looking to write about 5000 fics in which Erik did things very differently that whole time, because augh terrible Magneto antics were terrible, but I BELIEVE IN OUR BOYS. Things will get better in fic because GODDAMNIT WE WRITE THE FIC.

~SPARKLY FEELINGS FOR EVERYONE~

random-ass critique: mystique's makeup

[tashana]

i loved mystique SOOOOOOOO MUCCHHHHHH

but omg jennifer lawrence's mystique makeup

i know JLaw was apparently allergic to whatever they used in XMFC (read this somewhere), but the new look looks so... gah. it kept tipping me out of her scenes. i don't know if it's the shininess of the blue or the fewer scales...

anyways, i hope that in X:A they'll fix it up somehow.

(i'm sorry i just REALLY NEEDED TO LET IT OUT)

also, if they don't keep the magneto-mystique-professor x triumvirate of mutant leadership, i will be very upset.

Reaction posts on Tumblr

[(Anonymous)]

http://theletteraesc.tumblr.com/post/86578812105/xmdofp-review

http://keire-ke.tumblr.com/post/87021480644/xmdofp-review

http://motleypatches.tumblr.com/post/86934518374/codenamecesare-tahariels-mrssimply

http://spicedpiano.tumblr.com/post/86835177195/trobador-impressions-of-days-of-future-past

[(Anonymous)]

It seems like everybody loved Quicksilver in DOFP, and I was thinking about why.

Aside from the drunken party in XMFC, where the kids showed off their powers to each other... have we ever seen anyone having fun using their mutant powers, the way Quicksilver obviously enjoys his Pentagon antics? Have we seen anyone use them in a casual, everyday way, not as part of brooding/plotting like Erik when he flings his quarter around in XMFC and sews up his head and floats the film reel in DOFP, but just in the course of ordinary life, like Quicksilver playing Ping-Pong against himself?

Plus, Quicksilver's particular quality of brattiness - snooping, taking wallets to get answers instead of asking, being perpetually impatient and flaunting the fact that he's way ahead - is totally in line with how he experiences the world, with everyone else so slow, often to the point of motionlessness, from his point of view.

It's funny, when he only appeared for a relatively brief couple of scenes, but Quicksilver in DOFP may be the best characterization we've seen yet of a mutant whose powers are natural to him and fully integrated into his life and his way of seeing the world.

DOFP Backstory Timeline

[cesare]

As I wrote on Tumblr:

Hank says that the school fell apart after Charles’s proteges started getting drafted.

The Vietnam War draft lottery began in December of 1969. (The draft was in effect before that, but the numbers were relatively small, and for various reasons it seems unlikely the draft would have hit the Xavier school hard before that point.)

That means that Charles Xavier was not sitting out the fight for ten years. It seems he spent the ’60s recovering from his spinal cord injury and starting a school for mutant youth, which probably fell apart in ‘70.

Meanwhile, the Paris Peace Accords seen in DOFP took place in January of 1973. So Charles’s years of inaction were probably just 1970, ‘71 and ‘72. Still a long time to drop out... but it’s not ten years.

Personally I just feel like taking Charles entirely out of action for longer than that is character assassination. I know Charles has lost hope, he's depressed and addicted, and as a person with depression I know it can eat years of your life at a time. But it's really hard to see Charles as heroic or even decent if he spends years on end sitting on top of several billion dollars' worth of resources and not putting any of it to use to help people.

Unless you headcanon that after Moira quit the CIA and came back to get her memories back after the mindwipe they had BOTH AGREED ON-- Charles hired Moira to manage the estate and put the money to work for mutantkind, which is an idea I am adopting: now.

erik was right

[(Anonymous)]

Can we talk about how it's only younger Charles who says that Erik was right and older Charles' - older Charles who's living the "Erik was right" future - his response is basically he's only right if we let him be right and wow feelings. Talk about hope.

sentinel timeline

[tashana]

i didn't really follow any of the extra-film goodies (not sure of a better term, e.g. The Bent Bullet) that was released before DOFP nor did I watch either of the Wolverine movies (which I've seen someone comment as having affected the original timeline?). I've also only since DOFP once, so I'm gonna rely on all of you to fact-check.

Anyways, basically, I'm just trying to understand the basic timeline gist of the sentinels (not specific years or anything because, lol, good luck reconciling that).

XMFC
- existence of mutants may or may not be revealed to very specific people in the government after Cuba Missile Crisis

pre-DOFP
- Erik gets imprisoned in '63. Between then and '73, Trask successfully hunts down, experiments, and kills most of the Brotherhood+others. Did anyone see if there were any specific dates on those autopsy reports? Like, were all those captures an immediate thing? Something that happened later on?

- If Mystique gets her own movies, I swear to god, there better be at least a voiceover explaining what happened during those ten years better.

- Since Mystique seems to only discover Trask Industries' involvement in '73 after finding out where the Vietnam Mutant Taskforce was going to be shipped to, it seems a good guess that either (a) Trask was very good at capturing the Brotherhood mutants one-by-one or (b) someone/something else was doing the capturing and Trask was buying from them.

- Trask begins making Sentinels. At some point, he hears about Magneto (due to JFK assassination?) and makes them plastic.

DOFP, original timeline:
- US govt refuses Sentinel program.

- Mystique kills Trask. She gets captured by Stryker and is then experimented on by Stryker and/or US government.

- all governments want Sentinel program.

post-DOFP, original timeline:
- Mystique escapes after some X number of years.

- Magneto is released from prison, somehow, and Mystique rejoins Magneto. I feel like these two are related... Mystique is so traumatized/angry/full of rage that she's like, "WHO CAN HELP ME GET VENGEANCE?" and goes 'oh yeah, erik' and does Prison Break Version 1.0 <-- current headcanon (plz, quicksilver, not even a drop of blood while breaking him out? lemme show you sumthin).

- Mystique's blood is analyzed. and analyzed. and analyzed. Successful integration into Sentinels?

- 2000s: X1 (magneto imprisoned again), X2 (prison break version 2.0), X3 (charles dies)

- Magneto loses his powers. Mystique loses her powers. Charles returns by possessing his comatose brother's body (????).

post X3

- Governments finally decide to release Sentinel program against Mutant Menace

- Magneto regains powers. Mystique presumably dies (with/without regaining powers?)

- 2023: death, mayhem, and near-extinction

basically, i have no idea why sentinels were initially created in '70s and not heard of until post-2000s, especially since in the original timeline, they weren't shelved.

Serum & Shitty Science: the Fanwanking

[tashana]

by both Marvel and me.

(also, i haven't been active in fandom for ages; "fanwank" used to mean something completely different in my day...)

So I know we're supposed to be sort of hand-wavey about how Hank's serum actually works, but I was having some fun trying to actually rationalize it.

Please note that (a) I haven't studied biology in YEARS and (b) real scientists are absolutely welcome to trample over my misconceptions/mistakes.

Firstly, I never thought it made any sense for the X-gene to be this new single gene added into a human's DNA. 1. That's a lot of base pairs showing up out of nowhere, 2. no way one gene can produce that variety of powers, and 3. the global (rather than local) rise of mutants makes this rather unlikely.

(It would be interesting to know whether certain areas are more prone to breeding certain types of mutants however. Like, for some reason, Kansas City has a higher percentage of psionics (based on manifestation location) than the rest of the world.)

The "X-gene" is really a misnomer for a bunch of mutations of already existing genes that leads to Powers. And because there's probably no way for the serum to work for all mutants otherwise, there's something about these specific genetic mutations that are physically different from normal DNA - some rare/new side group, maybe (maybe I should have just gone for the singular X-gene...).

Hank's Mystique-derived serum from XMFC overexpressed his mutant genes. I'm imagining that the only reason Hank wasn't born blue and furry is because of the marvel of epigenetics. the alternative is possibly that Mystique's DNA did some reverse transcriptase shit and that's why he's blue.

In DOFP, I imagined that in making his cure/control serum, he must have used Mystique's DNA again from leftover samples. The serum effectively represses the X-gene/side group/wtf-ever (yooo operons). Based on the Sentinel fight, we know that it is able to make you completely homo sapiens human, but that it's temporary. The repressors can be washed away/neutralized by either normal body metabolism (the time-method) or by heightened emotions, which implies some sort of chemical change (increase in adrenaline?). Actually, now that I think about it, Hank is able to switch from human-mutant-human without taking a new dose, so the second method must just neutralize the serum temporarily? whereas time completely degrades/washes away/whatever the serum.

(also, did Hank basically create the Cure Lite?)

Furthermore, it's not a binary ON/OFF DNA-changer. It acts more on a scale from overly-expressed-mutant-self to homo-sapiens-self. The repressors don't turn genes on/off - they must be affecting the rate of RNA transcription which leads to the mutant phenotype?

Hank says he made a new derivative of his serum for Charles to treat his spine. The mutation-dampening properties are already known. So he altered the serum to... somehow encourage the growth of new neurons? It's like stem-cell shit, jfc. but then how do these new neurons "disappear" when the serum wears off? ARGH. Ooh, maybe the neurons are able to grow only when the X-genes are repressed and then begin to die off once the genes are expressed again? (some sort of immune response, deal with it.) the more mutant expression, the faster they die.

Ok, so assuming Charles' serum has the same properties of Hank's + neurogeneration: for the power-dampening effects of the serum to be more permanent (as in, isn't affected by emotions), Charles would have to take a shitload of serum all the time so that even if he does get upset, it's not enough to take him from the 100%-homo-sapiens end of expression. More upset he gets, the quicker he has to take the serum? Which is why he doesn't use just enough serum to create that gradient scale like Hank because that means he still has use of his powers, no matter how dull they are, which means he can still feel others' pain, and apparently even a little bit of that is still too much for DOFP!Charles, based on when his powers return at the mansion. Alternatively, Hank could have altered the serum so that it WAS an ON/OFF switch for Charles, and so it's... not... as... affected... by... emotions...?

urgh shitty science. i tried. that was fun! :P

[moodring54]

I wasn't really into Mystique in XMFC, but I fell in love with her all over again in DOFP! As soon as I saw her crush someones windpipe up against a wall with her feet, I got stars in my eyes.

Loved Charles, loved Hank, thought Erik was an asshole but funny (what else is new?). Is he a bit of a masochist? I loved how he tried to entice Charles into "chess" after getting punched in the face, then pulled a "hey girl" when Mystique had that knife against his throat. I damn near cackled in the theater after his plan got thwarted, he took a well deserved bullet to the face, then just sort of went "welp, you win some, you lose some!" and floated away. And Charles let him! Chuck, I know you're filled with love and hope right now, but Erik is probably not best left to his own devices.

ETA: AND PIETRO/PETER! I had extremely low expectations, but he was right up there with Mystique as a favorite.