Project Geekology
Embark on an epic journey with Anthony and Dakota as they delve into the vast realms of geek culture, from cherished classics to cutting-edge creations. Join us for an exhilarating adventure of exploration and nostalgia, as we unearth hidden gems and reminisce about the moments that have shaped us. Welcome to the ultimate celebration of all things geeky!
Project Geekology
X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)
Ever wondered how time travel could influence your life choices? Join Anthony and Dakota as they unravel the complex layers of "X-Men: Days of Future Past," comparing its time-bending narrative to their own aspirations and reflections on work and life. From the thrilling execution of Kitty Pryde’s powers to the dynamic action sequences featuring Blink, this episode takes a deep dive into what makes this film a standout in the X-Men series. Plus, Anthony delivers exciting updates on our podcast’s website and shares his thoughts on the recent Steam release of Kingdom Hearts, complete with its stunning visual upgrades and exclusive content.
Got a soft spot for MMORPGs? Reminisce with us as we venture back to the early days of World of Warcraft, recalling those 5 AM gaming sessions and the addictive nature of this pioneering game. We dissect the nuances that set WoW apart from other MMOs like Final Fantasy XIV and Elder Scrolls Online, and discuss the allure of revisiting World of Warcraft Classic. We also touch on the latest buzz in the gaming world, from potential remakes and sequels of fan-favorites like Persona and the upcoming project, Kingdom Hearts 4, to our ongoing personal projects that keep our creative juices flowing.
Switching gears, the episode circles back to "X-Men: Days of Future Past" for an in-depth look at its dystopian setting, standout performances, and memorable scenes. From Jennifer Lawrence’s evolving portrayal of Mystique to Magneto’s grandiloquent schemes, we cover it all. The "Rogue Cut" version gets a special mention as we discuss how the added scenes enrich the storyline. And of course, no conversation about this film would be complete without touching on the time travel mechanics and their fascinating, albeit complicated, implications. Whether you’re a die-hard X-Men fan or a casual viewer, this episode promises insights and entertainment aplenty!
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welcome to episode 85 of project geekology. I am one half of your host, anthony, and joining me, as always, is pew, pew, pew, pew.
Speaker 2:Dakota from new york. Yeah, guys, we're covering days of future past today. X-men, days of future past. And anthony, we're gonna, we're gonna, send you right back to 1973. How do you feel about that?
Speaker 1:am I in the future or am I in the past?
Speaker 2:Currently, you're in the future.
Speaker 1:Right now I thought I was somewhere in the middle ground or something.
Speaker 2:And I think you're the only one capable of making the journey. Your body is just. It'll be able to withstand the impact better than anyone else's in the whole of the future.
Speaker 2:So you gotta be sent back to a day of future past oh my goodness, I'm going back to a time where I didn't even exist, guys as you've probably gathered, we're talking about the follow-up to x-men first class and also the follow-up to the original trilogy of x-men films x-men days of future, past, and it's gonna be a crazy discussion because it's such. It's such a crazy movie just conceptually and the fact that they actually pulled it off.
Speaker 1:And that it was good.
Speaker 2:Conceptually, it was strange. Conceptually, it was crazy that they pulled it off and crazily. Yeah, they made a great movie out of it. So we're going to be talking all about that and more later on in the discussion of our 85th episode. But, Anthony, what have you been up to this past week?
Speaker 1:Dude, I've been sleeping all week. I just woke up.
Speaker 2:I feel like I've been doing the same. I know I haven't. I know I've been working a lot, but I haven't been doing like the work that I want to be doing, if that makes any sense. Like, do you ever feel like you're at your day job and you're just like this is not what I want to be doing with my life? Not that making money is bad or having a career is bad or, you know, looking to the future in that respect, but I often get this feeling when I'm working or grinding to just make ends meet. I feel like I could be doing something bigger with my time, like going back to 1973.
Speaker 1:I actually I totally get that. I feel like that's like I mean, I mean. I think it's just human nature right, yeah, yeah, no but I mean you're right and I think that you know most, if not all of us are like capable of it. You know, a lot of times it's just us getting in our way different things, complacency, and not pushing through certain barriers that get in our way, which, actually, speaking of that, I have been working on on the website.
Speaker 2:It's coming over those. For those of you who don't remember, anthony has been working on a website for the podcast and he's well on his way to like figuring out how to basically create a website for us, so that's what he's talking about right now yes, so right now I've got the episodes set up pretty well.
Speaker 1:I've been using a little bit of JavaScript for our episode page so that our episode page isn't overloaded with every single episode that ever comes out and will come out. I have it limited to like 10 episodes per page. It's called pagination I think I talked about it last episode and it just limits like 10 episodes per page. So I mean there's a lot of stuff that I'm working on. I'm setting up a featured episode section on the front of the page along with our last five episodes. The thing that I'm trying to figure out and you know I'm going to find it out eventually, but what I'm trying to figure out is how to update the featured episodes without having to hard code it in every single time, because that's not efficient. You know work smarter, not harder. So I have to be able to set it up in a way that I can post featured episodes without going back into the code. Essentially. But I mean it's been coming along well. I mean I've showed you a couple of pictures.
Speaker 2:You've texted me a couple of pictures of like what it looks like from your end, and so far, so good. I'm excited to like peruse it when it's finally complete.
Speaker 1:Right, I might actually post a couple of pictures that I've taken of the website on our Instagram and our Twitter If you all are interested in checking those out or anything else that we post, they will be in the show notes and so, yeah, like I've been working on that, I've also. I told you a little bit before we actually started recording that Kingdom Hearts was ported over to Steam.
Speaker 2:For those of you who don't know, Kingdom Hearts is my favorite game of all time.
Speaker 1:And yeah, they did some visual upgrades to it and right now there's actually a sale on it where all the games are on there and you can get that first little collection that has the first and the second game, along with a chain of memories and all that the like final mix of the second game, and then kingdom hearts 3 with its dlc, and then there's this bundle called the Enneagram Masterpiece and it has everything all together and you get a Steam exclusive Keyblade in Kingdom Hearts 3.
Speaker 2:That's pretty sick, I'm not going to lie. So you said that the visuals have been changed or upgraded.
Speaker 1:Right right.
Speaker 2:Just like an HD make makeover, right, right they look pretty crisp like they.
Speaker 1:They look really good, it looks very nice. It runs like super smooth. I mean, it probably did on. You know, the playstation versions probably ran pretty well and I'm talking about like the playstation, like collection, like the releases that they came out with the re-release.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think they did a ps4 re-release right, right and recently in quotations.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and kingdom hearts has been on pc for some time now, but it was on the epic store and a lot of people are not too much. I'm, to be honest, like I'm not a big fan of too many launchers. I'm like, bro, I just want to have most of my games in one place. I mostly keep the Epic launcher because sometimes they'll give out free games and I'm like, okay, I mean, it's a free game and so that. And if I decide to hop on Fortnite which is a rare occurrence for me, but yeah, no, they brought it over to Steam. A lot of people are pretty stoked and it's been getting some pretty good reviews, which is pretty good, because there was a release of the two og battlefronts. They had like a collection and it was like supposed to be kind of like some upgraded visuals and stuff, but it released pretty broken and some of the servers were messed up, so that really got people upset. So the fact that this was ported over and they did some tweaks and it did pretty well. My cat, my cat, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I totally I was like what is that? I thought that was a parrot at first and yeah might as well be a parrot.
Speaker 2:When I first got this guy he was so quiet, quiet dude, like he would try to meow and he'd just be like because he was just like a malnourished little kitten. But now he's super loud and like in charge of the entire. This is his house.
Speaker 1:I just happen to live in it that's usually how it goes with cats, you know, yeah, that's it, sorry, I no, no, no, you're good, you're good. So, no, no, it's just, it's nice to to see it ported over. It plays like very well on like the steam deck, it looks good on it. So the fact that we've got it on steam, which is a beloved launcher dude, that steam has been around for a while, a lot longer than, like the ubisoft and the and, like you know, epic, all these other like launchers and stuff. Steam has been around. Battlenet has been around for a while, but in its current state it's I think it's in its current state it's older, it's or it's like newer than steam.
Speaker 1:I think that like battlenet was kind of game specific back in the day, remember like yeah like when we like when you and I hopped on world of warcraft like there was no like main launcher that had all the games. You know, it was just it was just. Well, it was just world of warcraft or if you wanted to play diablo like battlenet was, like their, I guess their servers and that's how they were.
Speaker 2:Battlenet wasn't a thing until after, I think, the fourth or fifth expansion, like that was. That was well.
Speaker 1:Well, I think battle net 2010 so I think battle net was a thing with diablo 2, but not in the way that we're thinking about it.
Speaker 1:It was like okay their sir, I think it, that's what they called their servers. And then then it, yeah, it became a launcher like way down the line, which actually I've been playing a little bit a while, because cataclysm classic came out like a bit ago I think, like a month or so ago, so I had seen, or maybe even longer, like maybe, at least like within like the past few months it came out. So I've been playing a little bit of that. Yeah, man, it's dude, it's, it's crazy. Like I just want to know when they're going to, when this game is going to stop being considered classic, because after a certain point it's like dude, this is not classic.
Speaker 2:So yeah, no, I understand what you're saying. Speaking of Battlenet, do you remember there was a website called battleoncom and there was a game like a? It was like a java like rpg game maybe not java, but like flash rpg game called adventure quest oh, dude, yeah, yeah, I used to love that dude adventure quest was huge.
Speaker 1:Yeah, dude like that. That was the early 2000s. Yeah, dude like I feel, like it was like the early version of what the internet is today. Like there, you know the internet's old, but like back in the nineties and and you know, even like before, that it was just just, you know, barren nothing it was a wasteland.
Speaker 2:It was a wasteland. Yeah, you know a lot of just you would get your games wherever you you could get them right.
Speaker 1:Right, man, it really was like you know, think about like when the united states was first colonized and then when they started moving out west.
Speaker 2:It was like the frontier that was the internet back then yeah, so I'm looking it up, it's actually 2002 that adventure quest first started I remember us playing it like right around the time we were playing world of warcraft, actually probably a little before that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a couple of years after that, world of Warcraft came out, towards the end of 2004. Yeah, and yeah, like I mean I'm pretty sure, like we played it like when it.
Speaker 2:I loved it Essentially when it first came out Right. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I think, because I remember I'll never forget the story, because you knew and I think we've already told the story before. Get the story because you knew and I think we've already told the story before. But I think you knew that I was into the RTS genre, real-time strategy, until you're like, oh you know, let, there's this game called Warcraft 3. I hadn't really played Warcraft before that, but you had invited me over. You're like, oh yeah, let's check it out. And I think that between the time that you had told me and the time that we actually got together to play, world of warcraft had come out in that period of time. And so you suggested like, hey, let's try out this new version. It's, it's called world of warcraft. And like we hopped on and you're like, dude, this is nothing like the game that I played I don't think we've had this conversation on the podcast but I do remember that dude.
Speaker 1:You remember that?
Speaker 2:like dude and and yeah, so I I remember being like weirded out at first, but then obviously it was the most addictive game, I think, of all time you know, yeah, yeah, there was nothing like world of warcraft dude, there was nothing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like we had gotten our first taste of like truly online gaming, like that, like back then, like dude, in 2004 and, dude, I know that we had brought up the story I don't know if we did on the podcast, but the fact that you and I were like what children, man? Like we're like 13, 14 years old no, maybe younger and we're waking up at like five o'clock in the morning to play world of warcraft, dude, remember that dude, we would set an alarm just to wake up to play World of Warcraft.
Speaker 2:Yes, it was really funny, and the two computers that we had were in different rooms, so like we would just be playing on opposite sides of my old house.
Speaker 1:basically, that was so crazy, but it's always kind of been in my life, even if it's not all the time. I always get kind of like the itch to play it and I'll hop back on it for a little while to play it and I still have fun, man, it's something that's familiar, it's something that I've grown up with, I've known. There's some other MMOs that I've played that are pretty cool. Like Final Fantasy XIV is pretty cool, but I think it's a little bit harder for me to get into that one because I had friends to play with in the beginning of my time in World of Warcraft, so I was able to figure out how the game worked with friends, so it was easier, whereas now I'm kind of like wandering around, like okay, what do I do?
Speaker 2:I feel like I'm wandering around aimlessly. Sometimes I also find that Final Fantasy XIV has a harder or more confusing learning curve. It took me a lot. Same with Elder Scrolls Online. It took me a while to figure out what the heck am I supposed to be doing, and I think that never happened. That never happens when you start a World of Warcraft campaign. You get put into a small section of the map. You eventually get to a larger section and you grow your character from there. But anyway.
Speaker 1:Right, right, right right. I think we're going we're going on like a very deep world of warcraft tangent I mean, I could easily do an episode on world of warcraft, but, dakota, I think that we need to get you back on man, I think, at least on classic, so that you can get that like, oh my gosh, you know that nostalgia the issue with that is like I really miss my characters and I would.
Speaker 2:I don't. Can you play your your characters on classic or you'd have to create a new character.
Speaker 1:No, no, no, yeah, yeah, you'd have to like all the other, like characters and stuff are on, like retail Classic is like its own thing, it's its own.
Speaker 2:Right, right but.
Speaker 1:I mean it, it's, there is something fun about making a new character and kind of building them up and 100. I've actually looked more into, like you know, and I know that, like you said, we're getting like crazy deep into it. But I've looked more into, like you know, building up specific stats and stuff for whatever I'm trying to build. But, yeah, man, yeah, you know, if you ever decide, man, hit me up, I will definitely hop on with you. But yeah, enough about me and just running my mouth off of the different video games that I've been playing. Persona 3, what have you been up to? You know, I had to throw one in there. Yeah, right.
Speaker 2:Speaking of which, is there ever going to be like a Persona 4? Or you?
Speaker 1:know, is 3 just like it right now. Yeah, I think that they're talking about coming out with a remake for four. I know they're doing a remake for the earlier ones also. You did mention that, yeah.
Speaker 2:So all right, and there's a persona 6 being in the works too and there's a kingdom hearts 4 in the works too, so I'll just throw that out into the world. Yeah, see, anyway, what have I been up to so like I was trying to allude to this earlier in the episode, but I've been like very busy with work so I haven't had a lot of time to like do my own thing, and every time I come home I'm like super tired because it's a construction job. I'm lifting up heavy things, I'm pulling wire, blah, blah, blah. But I have been chipping away at the project that I've been talking about for literal months at this point the star wars timeline, or time saber as I'm calling it. Patreon members can like patreon members for geek critique. They can go and find like a draft of it and it's like full size. But like you can go to my twitter page right now and I've been giving like updates regularly on like what I'm like where I'm at with that project and you can get a nice glimpse of like what I'm talking about in terms of basically what I'm going to say next, because there's so many titles within the Star Wars universe, whether it be comics, novels, junior novels, young adult novels, tv shows, video games, movies, whatever there's a lot, there's a a lot of stuff that all comprises the canon of the galaxy far, far away and I've had to make some choices as to what I want on the timeline versus what I don't want on the timeline. I know that I want novels and stuff. I know that I want comics and TV shows, obviously, and movies and video games. I know that I want comics and TV shows, obviously, and movies and video games.
Speaker 2:But the issue that I've come across now is that something that I've like immediately taken off of the table when it comes to this is the short stories. There's a lot of short stories. There's a Star Wars Insider magazine that comes out every month and almost every month they have like a new canon short story. It's a couple pages. Random character in the galaxy takes place whenever the author wants it to. But anyway there's a bunch of those. I've decided not to do that. So any like short story anthologies, anything like that, I've just decided to ignore for the sake of room on the visual timeline, basically, and it would just clutter it up.
Speaker 2:What I've realized is that there's the IDW comics. They're called Star Wars Adventures. There's probably 30 or 40 of these issues. They all take place at random areas on the timeline. I had started putting those in, but what I forgot to realize is that each of those issues is a half issue. Like there are two stories in each issue. So like it'll be like star wars adventures, issue nine, it'll go in, say, 10 bby, but the second story takes place in three aby.
Speaker 2:So I've just decided it's so confusing I'm just going to remove all the short comics as well. Like I've already decided to exclude the short stories from my timeline. Now I'm deciding to exclude the short comics basically. So any of like the free comic book taste stuff I've just decided, unless it's like pertinent to the story, I'm just removing it from the timeline. So, yeah, that's that's kind of the big update that I have. I've gotten through to just past A New Hope and I've like started chipping away at that section that I told you last week I was like really worried about which was the amount of like comic books between those movies. So I'm navigating that as we speak. But yeah, so that's that's where I'm at. But removing the star wars adventures comics from idw cleared up a lot of space and it looks cleaner, so I'm happy about that nice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it sounds like a massive endeavor. And you know, honestly, like we we're on, you know we're on the topic of star wars. I've watched the new episode of the acolyte. You know, obviously we're gonna make an episode of thelyte, but what are your thoughts so far? I mean, we got the first two episodes of Star. Wars Strong. Now we're on this.
Speaker 2:The third episode. Yes, it's called Destiny. Without getting too heavy into spoilers, because this isn't a Star Wars episode, you guys probably haven't seen it. Anyway, I would say that this episode was like a seven or eight for me. I liked a lot of the ideas that were in it. I just don't know how it all fits together yet, and I think that's on purpose. A lot of people have hated it for, you know, random reasons. A lot of it's, you know, just like just people wanting to hate it right right but we're only getting half of the story with this flashback.
Speaker 2:Everything that we see is from the character may's point of view. There are no scenes in that whole episode that don't feature may, like the, the main character. I think that we're gonna see another flashback that will focus on either Osha, the other sister and what she's been up to, or the Jedi themselves, because I don't think the Jedi are totally innocent in the massacre of the witches in that scene. There was just too much convenience there.
Speaker 2:So those are my thoughts. There's a lot of talk about how this could potentially invalidate the character of Anakin Skywalker and I'm not going to get into why that is, but I do think it's too soon to tell exactly what the process is for, how the twins were created and what that means for the wider story, because obviously Lucasfilm thought about this. It's not something that they just pull out of a hat, you know. So that's my thoughts. I like where it's going. I like most of the direction, like in previous shows like Obi-Wan and Boba Fett and Ahsoka.
Speaker 2:To some degree, my biggest issues were direction based. You know like if those stories were told in a novel like Obi-Wan, kenobi would have been a great novel. But because the direction was so poor, in my opinion I was able to poke holes left and right because I was able to see like, well, why can't the character just walk around that barrier? Why doesn't Vader just walk around that fire? Why is Leia suddenly running away from these people who are twice their size and she's very slow? You know like there's a bunch of stuff that I could believe if I didn't actually see the visuals of what's being presented on screen, but because it's being presented on screen with obvious like ways around objects. It was crazy to me, like I thought I was going crazy with Obi-Wan Kenobi. You don't really have that with this show. So it's a totally different type of directing style and I direction-wise. What are your thoughts? I'm sorry, I keep talking.
Speaker 1:No, no, no, you're good man, no, no. Yeah, I agree, I think that while it's a flashback episode so you know I'm not trying to dig deep too much into it but it was necessary for the information that has been presented to us so far. So I think that there was a lot that was good in it. I do agree that there's two sides to every story, so hopefully we get that in the next one.
Speaker 2:The other side I don't know that the next episode is necessarily going to be another flashback, but what I will say is notice that the first two episodes of the show the first episode was called Lost Slash Found, and the second episode was called Justice Slash Revenge I think that was the name of the title. But what that tells me is that there are two sides of this story that are going on. What that tells me is that there are two sides of this story that are going on, but this one episode was only called Destiny, which means that it's only focusing on one side of the story. There's no slash. I don't know, fate might be the other one, destiny slash, fate or whatever. There's none of that. So I do think that we're going to get another flashback episode, but I don't think it's the next episode, based on just comments that people have made.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, do you have anything else that you wanted to add, or shall we hop into?
Speaker 2:I just think that you know. It's interesting that we're talking about going back in time with this flashback when we're really looking forward to talking about the future. Now let's jump into X-Men Days of Future Past the future.
Speaker 1:No, let's jump into x-men days of future past.
Speaker 2:I was just like I knew that something was.
Speaker 2:You know, it's like we're you know we're looking forward to the, the days of future past, you know yeah, when, when we're recording, I think anthony and I both kind of realize like our shows generally are around an hour long, and so when our recording gets to about 30 minutes or like between 25 and 30 minutes, that's when we know to start pivoting into whatever topic is at hand for the day. And I could tell like anthony was looking at the time, it was just like do you have anything else to say, dakota?
Speaker 1:well, I knew that. I mean obviously, like when we're done editing, when we get to this, it's not going to be 30 minutes.
Speaker 2:It'll probably be like 25 or something Right or even early, you know, maybe even 20.
Speaker 1:But yeah, let's hop into the topic of discussion. Man, we get, yeah, we move into another good movie. Like, we enjoyed the Wolverine, as you called it.
Speaker 2:The Wolverine another good movie like. We enjoyed the the wolverine, as you called it the wolverine. I don't know if you caught that. I inserted a clip from the, the first movie, into like when I was explaining my why I kept calling it the wolverine. So if you listen back at our last episode you'll get some explanation as to why I call it the wolverine like that. But anyway, this movie starts so strong yeah, it's a wasteland, like it's a new york wasteland.
Speaker 2:Basically. There's like prison camps in central park, sentinels are rounding up humans and mutants alike, and then you have this, basically like rogue x-men who are you know they're? They're trying to make a difference but they keep getting caught up in like sentinel action and kitty pride uses her powers to send people's consciousness back a couple hours, a couple days, so that they have a little bit more time to plan for their next steps. Basically, and I think that's such a fantastic concept and it's such a it's a great way to introduce the conflict of the movie and like what's at stake. But what about that like first fight scene where they were, you know, we, we had a whole bunch of like new mutants and like old mutants doing their thing. We got ice man, really, you know, sliding around. We got blink making portals. Dude, there was. There was some cool stuff in here right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I thought it was cool. The a lot of the combos that they were using. Blink was like really good for setting up like different combos for like everybody man was it. This is like later on, but like there's there's a part where she puts a portal that sends colossus into the air and then he's like falling down and then she puts on another portal and he shoots out to the side and hits a sentinel. That was super sick.
Speaker 2:Like there was like a lot of like really cool, just yeah dynamic and cohesiveness between the mutants and their powers, and I, I love I love the portal that she puts in front of Bishop where he can get a closer range of action with the Sentinels that are coming towards wherever the X-Men are. Dude, it's just such a cool movie. The action in this, especially the future scenes, is phenomenal.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, yeah, that I really like about this film and, even though it's a lot different than a movie like Spider-Man no Way Home, there was a certain aspect of it that reminded me of Spider-Man, because you have the old X-Men from, like you know, when they started the movies back in the 2000s, and then like the new iteration that, like I know that a lot of them are technically supposed to be prequels, but there are moments where there feels like there's a clear separation there and it feels really cool because it's like you have Hugh Jackman's Wolverine that's blending both, even though he was in X-Men First Class.
Speaker 2:But yeah, we know him for for those earlier x-men film you compared it to no way home, which is a good comparison because you have like a multiverse of characters coming in from different generations of our movie, going history in one film, which is a really cool concept. But what this reminded me of was star trek generations, which is the film where the original series Star Trek cast meet up with the Star Trek Next Generation cast, and Patrick Stewart's also in that. So that's also why I'm, you know, thinking about that in this moment. But it had a lot of similarities in that respect. It's almost like a passing of the torch from the original cast to the new cast and I love that because we were talking when we were covering the first class.
Speaker 2:Like some of these characters, some of these actors really nailed the role. Some of them I'm still not feeling, but when superimposed over their older or like the original cast, the newer cast really shines. I had an issue with michael fastbender in the first movie just because he didn't feel like ian mckellen's version of the character. I don't think his take on magneto changed all that much, but the juxtaposition of the scenes with ian mckellen andassbender were just phenomenal, like it was just such a cool back and forth. And, by the way, for those of you listening that haven't seen this in a while, there's a version of this movie that you can check out called the Rogue Cut R-O-G-U-E. It adds like what was it like? 19, 20 minutes of-.
Speaker 1:Right, right. I think it's like an additional, like maybe 17 to 20 minutes.
Speaker 2:Of footage that wasn't in the theatrical version of the film. I haven't seen the theatrical version of the film in years, almost a decade, probably about a decade at this point, so I do not remember what scenes were new, specifically because this is the first time I'm seeing the road cut, but there were scenes that I was just like.
Speaker 1:I don't really remember this and right, those are the scenes, right? So so there's a scene where magneto and ice man go and save rogue. Yes, that's a new scene, so that wasn't in the original film right, right, right. Yeah, there was like all that added stuff. I also don't remember Rogue being in the end, like that.
Speaker 2:I don't remember her being in the movie at all.
Speaker 1:I think it was very minor.
Speaker 2:What I do remember is her being present in the X-Mansion after they fixed the future. I remember her and Bobby in that scene, but I don't recall any of the other scenes, so I'm assuming that most of rogue was cut for the sake of brevity right.
Speaker 1:Right, and I I think that they had this whole cut because there was a little bit of an issue where, like, rogue kind of goes from being a focal point character so like a little bit of a toss away character as those movies come out and then you have her in this original film and, yeah, her moment was very brief. So they added a lot more of Rogue and I do like the utilization of her power that Kitty Pryde had was, you know, sending Logan to the past but she had gotten injured because you know logan's having some like ptsd moments or like moments in the past that are causing him to kind of lash out and he cuts kitty and it's hard for her to focus because she's injured. And the fact that rogue was able to kind of like finish it up because you know she can copy powers, why don't they ever restrain his hands, man, like whenever wolverine is asleep?
Speaker 2:it's just every single movie he wakes up with his claws like raised like he's ready to kill single time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's dude, it's gonna happen I mean, like we had the very first film where he just like, completely just like impales rogue and the good I mean her powers, save her.
Speaker 2:But like dude, yeah, you're right, every single movie he either like wounds the person he's sleeping next to, hurts the person who is like helping him, like you know, on a sickbed or is just about he's just about to take the life of someone you know like fists, like totally like in their face yeah, we have a moment like that in the wolverine yeah, you got a big moment like that, but yeah, I.
Speaker 1:I think that there's also some moments between mystique and beast that were added. I forgot which moments those were, because I had kind of looked it up. I do believe that jennifer lawrence's performance as mystique and this one was a lot better than in the first class it was believable, like she was a believable mystique.
Speaker 1:She felt a lot more like the mystique that we had gotten in those earlier films. You know kind of very cold, very like cutthroat and kind of like. You know like kind of built her up to be this type of person.
Speaker 2:Who she turns into be.
Speaker 1:And she's kind of off the leash now.
Speaker 2:And really quick, while we're talking about Mystique specifically, do you feel that they made her too blue in this one Like? Was she like really dark? Like in comparison to every other Mystique that we've had. It's just, it's always been very deep blue, but now it's almost edging into purple. It was very dark, I don't know. Every time she was on screen I was just like they made her too dark. I don't understand what's going on. But anyway, let's talk a little bit about the plot, Because Mystique is integral to the entire story.
Speaker 2:Yeah because mystique is integral to the entire story. Yeah, we have a future where trask industries, sentinels, have gone haywire and are it's. It's almost like a terminator-esque future right, right yeah it's man versus machine, and it's gotten to the point where, like their directive has have has like, evolved their directive? Yeah, it's, it's not even just them targeting mutants, it's anyone who has a latent mutant X gene that could potentially, generations down the line, create a mutant.
Speaker 2:So essentially everyone yeah because I don't think anyone is devoid of that gene, basically. So what makes them so unique and scary is the fact that they developed a way to adjust to any type of fighting style. It was akin to what's that guy's name, darwin from first class, you know. Like everything that was thrown at him he was able to adapt. So basically, like we find out that Because Mystique kills Bolivar Trask and she's then targeted and they use her genetic DNA To create these future Sentinels, that's the future that we end up with Basically, but I almost feel like, had they used the dna of that guy, darwin from the first movie, the abilities that the sentinels were using was a lot closer to that of darwin's than it was of mystique's, and I almost feel like that was the original intent right, but you know your boy's dead he got, crispified, he got crispified.
Speaker 1:He got crispified. Yeah, the Sentinels in this movie are a lot different than what you get from the Sentinels in the cartoons and even in some of the video games. You get these giant weird purple-looking robots and the cartoons. I mean they're dangerous to mutants in the cartoons and stuff, mean you know they're dangerous to to mutants in the cartoons and stuff. But these ones are very similar to the terminator 2 terminator.
Speaker 1:That was that kind of liquid, you know, like the liquid one yeah, yeah so, yeah, that they were able, exactly like you said, adapt to a fighting style. You know, there's that moment where bobby's fighting one of the sentinels and you know the sentinel just it's like frozen, but then uses this fire ability to melt the ice. You know, and like did we did?
Speaker 2:we ever see them get stopped, like, was anyone able to effectively kill any of these sentinels or were they just able to like slow them down? Because I don't remember there was.
Speaker 1:I don't remember if there was any moment in the future where they actually killed a sentinel I think that they were able to kind of just like slow them down enough to pretty much like yeah, like a lot of the moments where they would go back in time to like warn their like past selves so that they could move that. Yeah, it was pretty much just that. I think that some of them died each time that they would do that. But it's so interesting I don't think that Mystique killing Trask might have. Yeah, I guess it would have been a little bit of a catalyst, but even if she didn't kill Trask, they would have captured her Because she would have been in a moment where she was surrounded and, whether or not Trask was dead, they would have used her. So I think, whether he died or not, the results would have been the same.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what I liked. I mean I keep saying what I liked, but there was a lot that I liked in this movie. So let's talk about actually sending Logan back, because nobody else was capable of making a trip like that. Kitty was worried that they wouldn't be able to survive the trip, basically to go back all the way to 1973, which is this catalyst moment in time, even though you know you had eric and you had charles, who were alive back then and could have potentially done it. Their bodies wouldn't have been able to take the strain, but wolverine could, and I think that that was well. That was like the, the. That was the way to inject, basically the main character of the original trilogy and two other films into the new series of x-men films in a realistic and natural way, and it worked super right.
Speaker 1:I'm actually glad that you talked about that because I was thinking I was like it was so interesting the way that they went about time travel in this. It was very similar to like the assassin's creed games, where it was like.
Speaker 1:It was like the animus and I was thinking, you know what I feel like time travel in that kind of way is a lot more realistic than actually sending your whole physical being back in time, like I could imagine. Like I mean, it's still crazy science fiction, but it sounds so much more feasible that you could send your mind back to an older self. I mean, I don't know how that would work, but still, it sounds more.
Speaker 1:It makes sense of consciousness, Right right, it's, yeah, it's a whole consciousness thing. You're not sending this whole physical matter back in time. So yeah, it made me think like that's a lot more realistic than the way that we think about time travel, like you know, doctor who, and the tardis but what was cool about it was that logan was still anchored in the future you know, yes, he had to be like like the animus in in assassin's creed, like the body is there but the mind is in the past yeah, a whole 50 years earlier it was.
Speaker 2:It was such a cool way to do that. Yeah, I was. I was really impressed by how they were able to manage all of that and conceptually it just it was so cool. Dude, I'm amazed at this movie. Actually, the fact that something this cohesive came out of the the fox brand of marvel movies is incredible to me. I'm so happy that this movie exists. It might be my favorite of all of them. I don't know that it's the best movie of them, but it's my favorite of the ones that we've seen so far.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, you know, fox had, they did come out with some really, really good films, films, and I mean, that's true. You can say. I mean, that's a lot to be said considering the fact that, like Sony with their Marvel stuff, dude, like it's, like they really just don't know what's going on over there, man, currently. Yeah, well, that's the thing Like.
Speaker 2:Here's what I'm trying to say After this point in the X-Men franchise although I haven't seen a lot of it because I just chose to bow out of these movies for a little bit besides the Deadpool franchise, they've progressively gotten worse. You know the Fox X-Men movies after Days of Future Past. If you look at the Rotten Tomatoes scores, if you look at the reviews, it's just a downhill trend from here. So I actually haven't seen x-men apocalypse, which was teased in the post credits of this film. I haven't seen x-men dark phoenix and I haven't seen new mutants. So I'm excited when we finally get to those to cover it.
Speaker 2:But yeah, that's why I find this such an amazing film, because it's the peak for me. It is the peak of the x-men storytelling up to this point, because it captures everything. Peak for me. It is the peak of the x-men storytelling up to this point because it captures everything that worked so well with the original original trilogy and cast and injects it into something that has a new breath of life. You know, yeah, I, I love this movie. What did you think about charles xavier choosing to remove his powers for the sake of maintaining his legs?
Speaker 1:That's interesting. You know, we're so used to the current iteration or the older version of Charles Xavier that you would think he would never do something like that, especially if he knows that he could use his abilities to help people right, if he knows that he could use his abilities to help people right. But you know, grief can really send some of the smartest people into a downward spiral and cause them to make decisions that make no sense. And you know there's a lot that happens. You know this is after first class. You know he loses Mystique. You know Raven. He loses Magneto, he loses pretty much. You know Raven. He loses Magneto, he loses pretty much everybody except for Hank, and he loses his legs. So he's like well, I've lost everything, let me at least get something back. You know, so I can imagine that it is believable that somebody would decide to. You know I, he saw that the trade-off was worth it for him yeah, and he almost became, or he did.
Speaker 2:He kind of became a junkie, he became reliant on this drug that allowed him the ability to walk and he just kind of he was just kind of fading away, you know, in his, his mansion he kind of became like the beast and beauty and the beast, you know, like he just didn't think that there was any reason to move forward past where he was basically. So I kind of liked that story and I liked the scene specifically where he he hasn't taken the drug in a while and he's, you know, just as they're entering the house and he kind of like topples over and he instinctively, you know, asks hank to get him a dose, in this case a double dose, because it's been a while, or no. Hank decides to give him a double dose but it's, you know, it's not like a malicious thing that he's taking. We don't know, we don't think it is.
Speaker 2:But hank's also taking it too hank is also taking it just to. You know, look human. I guess yeah. But when it comes to the professor in this, in this particular instance, it it's very clear, it's. It's almost like he has an opi, an opioid addiction. You know like he looks, like he's about to inject himself with heroin or something like that right, right and there's.
Speaker 1:There's a couple of things that are happening here for him. It's, you know, he's getting his legs back, but also his mind is quieted, you know, like he's so used to.
Speaker 2:I mean, obviously, over the years he's gotten better at controlling it, but I think that he got lack of using his powers right right made that worse yeah yeah, and so I think that, like, what he really enjoyed was also not having to hear the thoughts of others yeah, what I really liked about wolverine in this movie was that he was able to reach charles Charles Xavier in a way we didn't really expect him to be able to he was able to really talk heart to heart, man to man, with him, and he didn't like force Charles to do anything.
Speaker 2:He was just like, especially like with the drug, like you sure you want to do that we, we could really use your help. You know like, and that instead of like telling him, no, don't do that, he decided to forego, uh, his legs a little bit longer, just so that he was able to, you know, help wolverine.
Speaker 2:And eventually there's that scene after he's incapable of using cerebro yeah where wolverine basically says, all right, go into my mind and you know, after he goes and sees all of wolverine's. You know past trauma which, by the way, I think they showed every movie except x-men origins wolverine. I didn't, unless I'm missing something. I didn't see any scenes of x-men origins wolverine, but I thought I think there was every other movie.
Speaker 1:I thought that was such a cool moment too because, you know, he obviously he tells charles to like reach further than that and the fact that, like this past, charles can actually like see this future through the mind of wolverine. It was so crazy. Like this man is time traveling to the future through Wolverine's mind and talking to him, talking to himself. Yeah, that was so cool. Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 2:It's like astral projection, but Charles in the future was able to detect the presence of someone in Logan's mind, that being himself and what he was projecting into the future. Super cool, just fantastic scenes, fantastic imagery. Just that shot of a younger charles xavier and an older charles xavier, like looking into each other's eyes and trying to communicate the damage that is about to happen if mystique goes on with her plans and everything. Just fantastic movie all around. Let's briefly. We're reaching the one hour mark, but I want to talk about magneto's plan a little bit, because that's where in my rewatch I was just like oh yeah, that's kind of dumb. Nito, he has a lot of style. He goes out with a bang every single time you know, if it's not lifting up the entire golden gate bridge.
Speaker 2:It's outdoing that entirely by picking up an entire baseball field and covering the surrounding area around the white house with it that was so wild dude, that was so crazy there was how do you even come up with that like, how does how?
Speaker 1:do I. We need more of that in the mcu and you think?
Speaker 2:you think we need more of that dude.
Speaker 1:Dude like I mean. Stop trying to make comic book movies like realistic Dude. None of this is real.
Speaker 2:It's going to you know, All right, all right. Yeah, all right, all right. You know, like some people, I'm thinking of what you're putting down.
Speaker 1:So it's so hard because, like we know, we're going to watch a comic book movie, and I'm guilty of this too, and too, and we see something utterly ridiculous and like, dude, that would never happen, none of this would ever happen, like ever, these aliens coming out of a portal and a bunch of superheroes fighting them. That's yeah, that's not happening. You know, like this man that's got a glove that snaps and like half the universe is gone, that's not never happening you know.
Speaker 1:So no, no, but but I, I do, I, you know, I do agree with you. Like, dude, it's there's some crazy moments happening, like why would you lift up a baseball? Like of all things to like pick up a baseball field, you know? Or like the stadium.
Speaker 2:But also, like you know, magneto this is a premeditated thing that Magneto is doing, was doing so the day before the whole washington dc scene. He like goes at night to the train. That's like loading all of the sentinels towards dc and you know he's capable of, you know, using the train tracks to embed the sentinels with metal. Basically, he knows that they don't have any metal in them, so he basically creates a metal skeleton for them so that he can eventually control them when the time is right. My issue there is, like, why not just destroy them on the spot, if you know, like he has the ability to wrap metal around these things? Or you know, once he does all that, he can just destroy them on the spot and, like bolivar trask's entire program is, you know, kaput I think he wanted to do that in front of people he wanted.
Speaker 1:I agree he wanted because you know, remember, he had that whole moment with the cameras yes, he wanted a scene, he wanted to make that moment right which, honestly, to tell you the truth, is very, very much.
Speaker 1:Like ian mckelleneto, magneto wants to make a grand display, hence the whole plot of the first movie. You know, he wanted to do this whole thing, turning all these people at a. It was like a UN party from the statue of Liberty, you know, I mean, I mean we're talking about the original, but yes, it's so, it's so crazy, you're, you're you about the original.
Speaker 2:but yes, it's so, it's so crazy, you're you're, you're not wrong. Like he does have a penchant for just big, bombastic showcases of his power, and he even does that in x-men 97, probably like an even, I would actually say a much bigger example in the latter half of the new X-Men 97 show. I will say, which I can't talk about.
Speaker 1:I will say that the newer cast does get in touch a little bit better with the mannerisms and how the older cast is. James McAvoy is definitely a lot more of a believable Professor X than in first class. So is Michael Fassbender as Magneto. Like you said, there are those differences. I'll just suspend disbelief and be like, okay, it's their younger self, but it's kind of tracking a little bit.
Speaker 1:You know, definitely jennifer lawrence's mystique was definitely a lot better, like it felt so much more like from the original trilogy. So I remember watching through this and I'm like dude, this is just so good by the time you get to the point to where they send wolverine back, you're like this movie is amazing, you know, and it's still like earlier on in the film.
Speaker 2:But yeah, yeah, man let's talk a little bit about when wolverine is brought back to the future. I I think that that was such a powerful moment for him. You know, like being brought back to a time not only where sentinels weren't a threat, but a future where all of his friends were living happy lives right, and yeah, there's literally like a very small group of people that will actually mostly just Professor X that knows that there was such a big change.
Speaker 1:that happened because Professor X Remember we just talked about how he went into the mind of Wolverine to see that future. He saw what the future was going to be and the fact that he's living in that different future. It's crazy like only them two know the difference. So I mean, could you imagine living in an alternate life like that, knowing that you just dodged a huge bullet?
Speaker 2:yeah wow, it's super cool and it kind of just opens the door to more storytelling, which is perfect for comic books it is, it is.
Speaker 1:I love you know that.
Speaker 2:That's like a multiverse moment right there, you know yes, yeah, but it's also a happy ending for the original cast because that's the last time all of those cast members are on screen pretty much in the same scene, whether they're in like the same shot or not?
Speaker 1:right right, oh yeah, you get your boy back as beast.
Speaker 2:Yes, kelsey grammar's back as beast we have a moment where we see Kitty Pryde and Colossus in the same room, which you know they have been a couple in the comics before and you know we have Rogue and Bobby back together in this future, which that was an interesting take because, like in X-Men 3, the Last Stand, it kind of was hinted at that Bobby was like starting to fall for kitty pride and in this film, days of future past, we see that come to fruition where they clearly have a relationship together. But we as the audience are just like, oh, but what happened to him and rogue? Because you know we want them to have the happy ending, but they end up getting that happy ending.
Speaker 1:So right, right, it's cool. And then we get cyclops and jean gray back dude what a perfect way to end that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I love that, like cyclops still has the same relationship like easy there pal with with wolverine yeah, yeah, yeah but wolverine was happy to see yeah, yeah, oh, dude, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:He's like oh, my god, like you know they're here. But I loved that interaction between him and professor x, where he's like, oh, you're like late for history class. He's like I'm gonna need you to give me the update on the history and he's like, oh, welcome back, that was so fantastic yeah, yeah, really well that was so cool because, yeah, like up until that point, wolverine was just him, you know.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I really enjoyed that it was. It was good from from start to finish. It was a solid film and it was a really yeah, like you said, a really good like baton passing. You know, we'll see what the next up, wade wilson.
Speaker 2:Yes, edpool the.
Speaker 1:Finally we get to the we get, yes, we get the second deadpool movie.
Speaker 2:Yeah, buddy, I'm excited to jump back into this. I haven't seen it. I haven't seen most of these movies in a while, so this is fun. It's such a bizarre like trip that we've decided to go down as a podcast. We've just become an x-men podcast at this point, right, right bing.
Speaker 1:This is future anthony. So something that dakota brought up to my attention is the fact that we went through this whole podcast without mentioning Quicksilver once, which is absolutely insane. So I will add this little antidote to the episode. But Quicksilver was amazing in this film, super, super cool. He was played by Evan Petersers and I mean he's played in a few things. You've probably seen him. He's been in a couple things on netflix. He was on, he was in the movie kick-ass. But yes, evan peters as quicksilver was absolutely amazing.
Speaker 1:He had a really, really crazy moment in there where they're trying to leave the pentagon after saving magneto and he slows down time and he saves them and he does this because he's moving so fast. He's really really fast. They're about to get shot by these guards and he saves everybody in the group. He saves, you know, wolverine, professor x, magneto, which I mean we all know that wolverine would have survived that, but still he just he goes, he slows down time and he's listening to a song while he's going through all of this. It's an absolutely insane moment.
Speaker 1:Just another one of the many reasons to go back to see this movie if you haven't seen it in a while, or just go and see it if you haven't. And, like we said, there is that rogue cut, so it does add a little bit more to the film, and so I'm going to send us right back to the past. Well, I mean, we do have stuff in the pipeline. We are. I don't. I don't know if we talked about it before, after after, we finished recording an episode, but Dakota and I are in the works of recording a Death Note podcast after all of this, so I started watching that.
Speaker 2:By the way, this podcast won't end when we get to Deadpool 3, so don't worry. But yeah, I have to start re-watching Death Note. That used to be one of my favorite animes back in the day. But, guys, thank you so much for listening to us here. For our 85th episode next week, we're covering Deadpool and we're very excited about it because it's been a long time coming, with these X-Men movies.
Speaker 1:We finally made it to a Deadpool movie.
Speaker 2:A true Deadpool movie. Yeah, if you'd like to check out any of our socials, be sure to click into the show notes down below and you'll find links to our Twitter, youtube, twitch, all that jazz. Be sure to follow us there for more updates on when podcasts are going to be coming out, and be sure to leave us a fat five star rating on whatever podcast application you are currently listening to. Thanks, guys. Bye, the Wolverine.
