The Best X-Men Movie Has Huge Plot Holes
Not counting 2017’s Logan — which, for the purposes of this op-ed, I’m counting as a Wolverine film rather than an X-Men one — the best of Fox’s X-Men features is unquestionably 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past. The film brought the controversial filmmaker Bryan Singer back to the franchise, united the casts of the original films with the stars who played their younger counterparts in 2011’s X-Men: First Class, and laid the foundation for new stories. But it did it all with some huge plot holes that are impossible to ignore.
Kitty Pryde’s Power Upgrade
There is never even a minimal attempt to explain the fact that, along with her more familiar phasing powers, in X-Men: Days of Future Past Kitty Pryde (Elliot Page) can now psychically transfer someone into the body of their older or younger self. Nor is there anything about the new ability that comes off like a natural evolution of the powers she already had. There’s nothing about “I can walk through walls” that would make you think “and with enough practice I can turn my friends’ brains into time travelers.”
No, there’s no rule that says mutants can only have one super power. In fact, in the source material characters have been known to develop “secondary mutations.” Perhaps one of the best known examples is Emma Frost, whose powers originally are isolated to the psychic, until she later spontaneously develops the ability to turn her skin into diamond.
But there’s no mention whatsoever of how or when or why the X-Men’s Kitty Pryde develops the power to send others’ psyches through time. It’s a nice nod to the comics — since it’s Kitty, not Logan, who gets sent back in time in the source material — but even one or two lines explaining this pretty massive power upgrade would have been nice.
Professor X Never Died?
Now I would normally be the last to argue that while making Days of Future Past, the filmmakers should remember what happened in the horrible mess that was 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand, but you don’t get to pick and choose. If you’re going to take things from The Last Stand like Elliot Page’s Kitty Pryde and Kelsey Grammer’s Hank McCoy, then you can’t just leave out that Professor X (Patrick Stewart) got erased like an embarrassing typo.
Yes, X-Men: The Last Stand provides an insanely ridiculous “out” — the reveal that Professor X conveniently had a comatose twin brother he could transfer his psyche into — but even if we turn our brains off and accept it… why is he in a wheelchair?
So even when Professor X psychically transfers himself into a new body, ultimately that new body automatically gets shot in the spine just like the original? Did he shoot himself in the spine so he would “match?” Explain that while sober.
Wolverine Grows Metal Now?
The year before X-Men: Days of Future Past hit theaters, fans of the movies learned something fans of the Marvel comics had known for years: Logan’s (Hugh Jackman) claws are not purely a creation of adamantium–bone claws are a part of his mutation. Fans had already seen this in 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine, but that movie was so terrible it’s canonical weight was denied by just about everyone.
In 2013’s The Wolverine, the adamantium lacing Logan’s claws is hacked away by the Silver Samurai, but his bone claws–still subject to his healing factor–remain. It’s those same bone claws he bares in The Wolverine‘s post-credits scene, meant to tease X-Men: Days of Future Past.
Yet in the scenes set in the dystopia of X-Men: Days of Future Past, Logan’s adamantium claws are back. He even unintentionally cuts Kitty with them while he’s prone in his time travel trance. As far as any of the source material has shown, or the adaptations, there’s no reason to think Logan’s healing factor could extend to the metal lacing his bones.
There are some possible explanations. Locked in a terrible and costly war with the Sentinels, Logan could have decided he needed the adamantium back and found a supply along with a way to apply it. Perhaps Magneto (Ian McKellen) was able to somehow borrow adamantium from other parts of Logan’s skeleton and applied it to his bone claws.
But first of all, whatever the explanation is, there isn’t even the briefest of attempts to deliver it.
Second of all, and much more importantly, regardless of how he got his metal claws back, that shouldn’t have made him forget about the bone ones. Yet when Kitty sends him back to the past and he finds himself facing a bunch of mafia hoods, he seems completely shocked that the claws that pop out of his hand are bone instead of metal.
Yeah, Logan has some memory gaps, particularly when it comes to his life before Weapon X, but even if the events of The Wolverine were the first time he learned he had bone claws, he should remember those events in Days of Future Past.
Or did he suffer another amnesia? How many amnesias does this guy have? He’s like 36 Final Fantasy protagonists in one.
