Bryan Singer
X-Men - Giorni di un futuro passato

Maybe as I write this, some math enthusiast is having fun enumerating the problems of humanity that could have been solved with the sum of the money spent on all Hollywood superhero movies, but since it's not my area of expertise, I'll just talk about the latest X-Men that offered me great emotions such as boredom, compassion (but only for Blink), and resentment towards the director and screenwriter. I have to acknowledge Singer for having first brought the mutants to the big screen and knowing how to deal them the final blow, making both critics and fans happy, a feat all the more remarkable considering the mishmash that this thing consists of as seen by me in extended home video version, christened for the occasion The Rogue Cut.

How to define a movie in a single adjective? In a beautiful world, it wouldn't be possible, but luckily here on earth for many films, it's easy. In our case, the most fitting adjective is rhetorical, and although almost all American films are so, when levels so nauseating are reached, there’s little to overlook. To achieve this, it was necessary to destroy the character of a good part of the supporting cast: we have a new independent Mystique, young at heart, who while in previous movies worked in her role as a Magneto loyalist, here she’s given so much protagonism and nothing else besides martial arts and pseudo-feelings; in short, just enough to make her similar to some sort of whore with insignificant moral complexes who wants to screw even the blue beast. Helping in this disturbing pathos is a new Xavier, a hippie at first, lost and defiant but then, after receiving (in Star Trek style) enlightenment from his future Self on the rhetoric of benevolent State, becomes as pedantic as a character from the worst Disney. And poor Mystique (along with me) has to endure his sermons… “Listen to your heart! Don't kill, it's a sin!” And that immensely powerful psycho-machine (Cerebro) used worse than a Sky decoder... and meanwhile, I was dozing off waiting to see Blink reappear... so beautiful and goth... but the director intended to use her as cannon fodder for the sentinels both at the beginning and end of the movie (because killing her once wasn’t enough for him).

In short, make way for the young! Or better yet, the rejuvenated since we're going back in time. Everyone except Wolverine: since the film about his origins is the last of the series worth watching, the merry glutton has been reduced to being Xavier’s retriever as punishment. The friend next to me, with a grim look, was trying in vain to figure out where the character’s indomitable spirit had gone, then at one point asked disconsolately if they had arranged a forced psychiatric treatment for him at the professor’s behest. We certainly also have a young Magneto in a reduced IQ version to avoid the risk of counter-arguments to Xavier’s well-intentioned, pacifist pedagogy (better to have them argue over who last slept with Mystique). Here, every metalhead's nightmare is nothing but the pure and hard stereotype of the obtuse megalomaniac, impersonated by a Fassbender whose talents were wasted in a role that could have been foisted on any model.

In closing, let's move on to the meaning of the work: I imagine the producers before signing the check to start the work questioning Kinberg, the screenwriter: “But... there’s content, right?” “Certainly! It’s that each of us can change his destiny.” “Ah! But... it’s an educational message, right?” “Indeed! It teaches not to accept the consequences of reality by losing oneself in the utopia of going back in time to change it.”