Damn - I had my heart set on X-ray vision...

In an odd coincidence, LinkedIn™ was kind enough to inform me as to the nature of my personal super-power while I was working on my posting about Days of Future Past.  Ha - take THAT, Magneto!

- Sid

A stubby would have been even better.

Speaking of Alpha Flight, I was discussing comic book movies with my long-suffering co-worker Terry, and asked if he has seen Captain America: The Winter Soldier.  Upon discovering that he hadn't, I told him that he would have to get it when it reached the general marketplace, because it would fit in perfectly with his conspiracy-oriented view of the government.* 

He replied, "Absolutely - I'll sit down with my son and we'll give it a good watch."

"Isn't Ed a bit young for that sort of movie?"

"Well, he's only four, but he loves that stuff. Spider-Man in particular, he loves Spider-Man.  I was a bit worried about Wolverine, it's so violent, but it doesn't seem to bother him at all."

"Wolverine is an interesting character all around.  He was introduced by Marvel in order to get some Canadian content - at one point the X-Men was being drawn and co-written by a Canadian, fellow named John Byrne, and he introduced an entire Canadian super-group called Alpha Flight, with members from BC and Alberta and Québec and so on.  Wolverine had been a member at one point, and then left under a cloud, so when they meet up again they do that whole weird hero-fighting-hero thing that seemed to happen so often in Marvel comics.  Wolverine and Nightcrawler, the blue X-Man who can teleport, go to Ottawa so Logan can reconnect with Alpha Flight, and there's a whole bunch of Canadian Easter Eggs**, like conversations with Trudeau and Wolverine drinking Canadian beer - Molson's or something similar."

Ah, well, nobody's perfect - a little research revealed that it was actually Labatt's. Although, when you think about it, a can of Canadian would have been a better joke.

 - Sid

* Well, to be honest, his conspiracy theory view of everything.  I'm not certain that Terry believes that we've actually landed on the Moon.

**  Alpha Flight had its own comic for a few years, and if memory serves it continued to have a distinctive Canadian flavour: for example, Northstar, one of the team's super-powered mutant Québecois twins, turned out to have been associated with the FLQ. 

Past, Present and Future.

As per my previous comments regarding comic book movies, I was already familiar with the basic plotline for Days of Future Past when I walked into the theatre: the X-Men of the future send the consciousness of one of their members back in time* to 1973 in order to change history and prevent the extinction of mutant-kind.  However, after seeing the movie, I felt it necessary to revisit the comic book version in order to determine exactly how much the movie version differed from the print version.

The changes are substantial and dramatic – and you know what?

The movie is better.

The X-Men movies have always been back and forth on comic book canon, but the largest variation comes from the storyline of First Class, which in many ways tears down the origins of Professor X and Magneto and rebuilds them from scratch.  Days of Future Past continues that process, but it adds much more depth to the characters of both men, especially Professor X.

Stan Lee initially created these two characters as mutant parallels to the civil rights struggle of the 60s:  the Professor represented Martin Luther King, and Magneto stood in for the much more militant Malcolm X – hopefully no pun intended.  There are glimpses of that aspect of Charles Xavier in First Class, but in Days of Future Past, we start to see his evolution into a more mature character through his relationship with Mystique and Magneto.

The comic book version, which shows Canadian comic book artist John Byrne doing some of his best work, gets bogged down in the sort of clichéd expository team-versus-team fight scene that is one of less pleasant legacies left to Marvel by Stan Lee.  The movie version keeps things much simpler, and offers a far more emotional - and powerful - interaction between the characters throughout.

A special shout-out to the producers for the casting of Peter Dinklage as Bolivar Trask, inventor of the anti-mutant Sentinel robots. Initially, when word got out that Mr. Dinklage had been cast for the next X-Men movie, it was widely assumed that the story would involve Alpha Flight, Marvel's Canadian superhero team, because one of the members of Alpha Flight was a dwarf.

In the original version, Bolivar Trask is a man of average height, but there’s not one reason why Peter Dinklage would be unable to play the part.  And, impressively, not once during the entire movie does the question of his height garner any sort of mention.  Full points to the producers for casting based purely on talent.

 - Sid

*  The joke is that the original two-issue sequence in the comics was published in January of 1980, and Kitty Pryde is sent back from about 30 years in the future – now, in other words.  How quickly the future becomes the present…