“Comic book movies” have been a huge part of the pop culture mainstream since the first X-Men film was released over a decade ago. Some have been unquestionable home runs, while others have been critical and commercial failures. Almost all have followed similar formulas: take the characters and themes of the source material and put them into a world as real as possible. Every movie follows traditional Hollywood rules in terms of scripting and does everything it can to appeal to the new fan, making each sequel feel almost like a fresh start.

X-Men: Days of Future Past changes all of that. It fulfills the promise of what a “comic book movie” can be. As The A.V. Club recently explained in its review, DoFP does away with the need to remind viewers of who the characters are. In a sense, it adapts the sometimes maddening quality of superhero comic books, which count on rabid fans to understand the extensive history of the franchise. For DoFP, however, it works. The movie lets the characters breathe so that even new fans are able to pick up their traits quickly without having to be explicitly told their backstories. Minor details, like Wolverine’s pre-adamantium bone claws, are candy for fanboys without intruding on the story for newcomers.

The movie feeds off of the franchise’s history. Mystique and Professor X’s friendship from X-Men: First Class is the primary mover of the plot, with Charles Xavier spending the entire movie trying to save Raven from herself. His relationship with Magneto plays the same important role in the story as it always does, but in a much fresher way; we are shown both men at two very different times in their lives: one in which their philosophies have them in great conflict, and the other when war has rekindled their lost friendship. We are expected to remember everything the two men put each other through in the original X trilogy, as well as their split in First Class, in order to understand their conflict in this movie, as well as to raise the stakes of Wolverine’s mission.

Wolverine’s character continues his development from his last movie. Logan is still suffering from the loss of Jean Grey in X-Men: The Last Stand, and it is the memories of her and other slaughtered mutants that motivate him to take the journey.

This sense of history and self-reference to several different stories is a hallmark of superhero comic books and makes DoFP great, giving it the feeling of an epic conclusion, even while doing what comics always do at the end of their arcs: start the next story.

Even beyond the self-referential nature of the movie, DoFP feels like a real-life comic book. The entire story structure is more like a six-issue comic collection than a three-act play. Each section of the movie tells a distinct story that’s a part of the larger narrative.

In true comic book form, one of these subplots sees the introduction of Quicksilver. The lightning-fast teen steals the show for a few minutes, then quickly moves on, allowing the core heroes to continue on without him. Comic book fans are familiar with this trope. Characters pop up in other protagonists’ titles all the time, only to leave by the next issue to return to their own adventures. Writers often employ this technique to move their stories along, using the unique abilities of other characters to fulfill a narrative need. In abundance, this can take away from the hero’s story, but DoFP uses the cameo effectively, in a way that hurt no one’s development and gives the dark film some much-needed comic relief.

Previous “comic book movies” relied heavily on the characters to sell the story and the action to tell it. DoFP broke the mold by relying on the story to sell the movie and the characters to tell it. In fact, DoFP and Captain America: The Winter Soldier are the first superhero movies to actually be named after specific comic book story arcs. As such, both movies relied less on combining disparate stories to pack as much plot in as possible, like X3 did, and instead were able to build primarily off of one story and fill in the gaps with strong character development.

And what a story DoFP told. The original comic book storyline is beloved for a reason. Until recently, it was the kind of story that only comic books could tell. The time-traveling tale predates The Terminator by three years and Back to the Future by four. Both the movie and the comics tell two tales in different eras simultaneously, establishing the rules of time travel early and sticking to them.

The movie manages to combine several types of stories in a way that truly honors the source material. It’s equal parts 1984 dystopia, civil rights allegory, time-travel odyssey, superhero epic, and personal drama. Seeing all of these elements in one story is what makes superhero comics great, and the X-Men cosmic opera so beloved.

20th Century Fox took a big gamble with DoFP. A story like this requires a huge budget. The effects used in the future scenes alone are incredibly impressive. The Sentinels come across as horrifying, monstrous machines, which are pretty much unbeatable. And, as always, Magneto shows off his powers in terrifying new ways.

DoFP the film is the realization of the vision of Chris Claremont, author of the comic-book arc. It is a movie that tells an important story about acceptance and humanity while pushing the limits of science fiction to bold new places. It punctuates important moral points with explosions and giant robots. It’s pretty much the coolest way to learn about loving our fellow man.

If you haven’t already, see X-Men: Days of Future Past as soon as possible. Whether you are a fan of blockbusters or of character dramas, you will leave the theater happy.

It has always surprised me that fans of the X-Men films really don’t like the third installment, X-Men: The Last Stand. Admitting that you like X-Men 3 is enough to get you sidelong looks from your fellow nerds at best and scathing criticism about your nerd-cred and taste in films at worst. Say that you enjoyed The Last Stand in the company of your fellow comic-book fans at your own risk.

But with X-Men: Days of Future Past making its way to theaters, I felt it was time to revisit the third film in the franchise and talk about what it does right and why I like it. And I don’t mean that I like it in comparison to, say, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, a film that deserves the vitriol heaped upon it by fans (a proper destruction of which warrants an article in itself). I think The Last Stand deserves its place among the X-film pantheon and is, in fact, the perfect film to set up the translation of the iconic “Days of Future Past” storyline from page to screen.

There are legitimate criticisms leveled at The Last Stand. I really don’t think Halle Berry is a strong enough actress to pull off her role as Storm, successor to the leadership of the X-Men. James Marsden’s Cyclops and Ben Foster’s Angel were both chronically underused. This is particularly regrettable with regards to Angel, a character that could have given us some serious insight into the world created by this film.

I really think the producers of X3 dropped the ball on Vinnie Jones’ portrayal of the Juggernaut. There were any number of other, just as recognizable, bruisers in the pages of the X-Men comics that would have been easier to translate to the screen. The Juggernaut has a complex relationship with Professor X and, to boot, isn’t even really a mutant; his powers derive instead from the Crimson Gem of Cyttorak. While I like the character in the comics, I don’t think he has a place in the film universe.

The same can be said (and has been by my colleague Charissa) of the incredibly abbreviated version of the Phoenix sagas that begins in X2 and concludes in X3. There is no space travel, no Shi’ar, really none of the defining aspects of that storyline outside of Jean Grey’s incredible psychic powers. But that really doesn’t bother me as much.

That might come as a surprise to you. After all, one of the marks of the true nerd is the desire to be technically correct, because it is the best kind of correct. But if you enjoyed the Lord of the Rings films despite the innumerable differences between the book and the movies, then you really don’t have a leg to stand on with this complaint. Film and comics are different mediums with different rules.

It would take a lot of time and effort to do an accurate adaptation of the original and Dark Phoenix sagas, and I don’t blame the writers and the director for opting to take a shorter route, less grounded in comic book lore. The Phoenix sagas are cosmic stories, and the X-Men movies have been about human stories: a group of people who are born different, trying to make their way in a world that doesn’t want to treat them as human. X3 director Brett Ratner made the right choice here, and because of that choice, the movie remains thematically consistent with the other entries in the franchise.

Perhaps Dark Phoenix should have been left out of the third film altogether, but I don’t want to dwell on what The Last Stand does wrong. Let’s look instead at what it does right.

First, this movie sets up and connects the sundry X-Men films. Putting aside the atrocious Origins: Wolverine film, the X-Men film series has had two acts so far, and with the release of Days of Future Past, we will be moving on to a third. X3 acts as the bridge from the prequels, through the original trilogy, and into the next era. It introduces elements of the Future Past saga: Trask and the Sentinels show up here, and the plot includes several references to the massive power of mutants, which makes a good connection to the newest film. X3 also segues directly into the rather enjoyable The Wolverine, which is a really fine film that primes Wolverine’s character development for Days of Future Past.

The relationship between Professor X and Magneto is handled wonderfully in The Last Stand, and the groundwork is laid for the first-act prequel X-Men: First Class. While that film would explore the beginnings of the friendship between the two mutant leaders, X3 explores the endings, showing a troubled Professor X who has to live with the consequences of his choices and a Magneto who is finally depicted on screen as the mesmerizing and influential leader of a violent revolution.

This character exploration leads directly to another thing X3 does very well. The actors, on the whole, absolutely nail their characters. I love Kelsey Grammar as Beast (complete with an “Oh, my stars and garters!” line). I think Hugh Jackman is dead-on with his Wolverine. I love the conflicted Professor X and the charismatic and driven Magneto. I love the near endless little shout-outs to the X-Men universe in the form of the extended cast of mutants. And the way Bobby Drake finally lays the smackdown on Pyro is just epic.

The action sequences are top-notch. The fight in Jean Grey’s house, the subtle and effective depiction of Magneto’s convoy takedown, the incredibly rewarding and exciting final conflict — each action sequence is fast and exciting and chockablock full of mutant powers and comic-book references. I particularly enjoyed the Fastball Special (a true X-Men classic) and the casual yet overwhelming power of Magneto. The characters move in a way the evokes the comic book action sequences, and I get a thrill watching Beast somersault through a battlefield or Bobby Drake do the full Iceman transformation.

I get that The Last Stand is not as cerebral as some people might have liked, and it is definitely aiming more for “big-budget action flick” than for “accurate-as-can-be comic book film,” but it retains elements of that intellectual, questioning nature, and it does something that no other film in the X-Men franchise had yet done: It shows, for the first time, that this is a world where there are mutants who aren’t X-Men or members of the Brotherhood. The film portrays the mutant community in a moment of crisis, and that’s what makes it brilliant.

The first two X-Men films are essentially superhero movies. Sure, the superheroes are born with their powers instead of getting them from gamma radiation or power armor or a super soldier serum, but they still pretty much use those powers to fight the bad guy who wants to do bad things. Those films are either conflicts between the Brotherhood and the X-Men or between a small group of mutants and a shadowy government agency. We never get a sense of the rest of mutant-kind.

With the central conflict of The Last Stand revolving around the so-called “mutant cure,” Ratner had a reason to depict the larger mutant community. Thats what makes X3 special. Whereas the other films are full of mutants who are heroes and villains, many of the mutants in The Last Stand are citizens, or students, or politicians, or community activists. We get to see how the cure impacts the world beyond the scope of super-powered combat and action. We get to see how this community reacts to the presence of a drug that can take their mutation away. They wrestle with the implications and challenges of this new reality.

The X-Men provide us with a way to look at how we treat the “Other” and the outsider, the marginalized and the misrepresented. By allowing us to see the broader scope of the mutant community, by turning them into people and not just heroes and villains, we are forced to reckon with the question of how we would use a drug that would change the Other. And when that X-factor that we seek to change is a source of potentially overwhelming power, we have to ask ourselves if we want to change the Other to make them more like us … or to take their power away so they don’t threaten our way of life.

While The Last Stand is far from a deep and philosophical look at how we treat our fellow man, it does a great job of creating an exciting and immersive film that highlights a crucial aspect of the human condition. If you plan on catching Days of Future Past in theaters this weekend, you may want to reacquaint yourself with this movie. You just might like it better the second time around.

After seeing Captain America: The Winter Soldier with friends, we spent some time discussing how well Marvel has done creating the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and how well they’ve adapted the various Avengers heroes. This led to a discussion about some other comic book films that were much more disappointing. At the top of my list: X-Men: The Last Stand.

To give you some context: I am a big X-Men fan. Prior to the creation of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I would say the X-Men were probably my favorite Marvel characters. I confess that I have not read every issue of every X-related series — though I would love to someday. However, when I was in elementary school, I frequently borrowed comics from a friend, and we would often get into debates about who was the coolest X-Man. We would also fantasize about our dream casting for an X-Men movie, if one were ever made. (I’m pretty sure Patrick Stewart is the only actor from our list who actually made it into a film, but come on, who else would you cast as Charles Xavier?)

X-Men finally made it to movie theaters about six years after the height of my comic book craze, but I was still excited to see my favorite heroes on the big screen. I was so excited that I was willing to give the creators the benefit of the doubt and forgive them for things like altering Wolverine’s height (because Hugh Jackman), excluding Beast and Angel from that first movie while making Iceman much younger than Cyclops or Jean Grey despite the fact they were all founding members of the team, and pretty much everything about Anna Paquin. (I’m sorry, I have nothing against Paquin — she is terrific in True Blood — but Paquin in the role of Rogue, a character I love, just bothers me).

Despite these complaints, I really enjoyed the first film, and X2 wasn’t bad either. In fact, I got really excited at the end of the second movie, because I recognized they were setting the stage for the Phoenix to appear in the third film. At the time, I had no idea which incarnation of the Phoenix we would see, but I was looking forward to watching what was arguably one of the best X-Men storylines ever written translated to the big screen.

If you’ve been following my column, you may recall a few weeks ago when I wrote about trying to judge books and movies separately lest you be inevitably unhappy with every film adaptation. Perhaps if I had taken my own advice while watching X-Men 3, I wouldn’t have been nearly as disappointed. Then again, The Last Stand is more likely one of those exceptions that I just can’t forgive.

After viewing The Last Stand, I remember leaving the theater with my brother, both of us extremely disappointed with the film. One of his comments was that it was a great action film about people with superpowers, but it was not a good X-Men movie. I’m inclined to agree.

X3 tramples all over the X-Men lore that laid the groundwork for the films to be made in the first place. I was very frustrated that the writers killed Professor X and, even more so, Cyclops. The field leader of the team — the one who is supposed to actually outlive Jean, many times, in the comics — gets killed off-screen early in the movie with very little fanfare. But my real problem with the film was in how it handled the Dark Phoenix storyline — or more like how it didn’t handle it.

As I stated earlier, I haven’t read all the X-Men comics, and at the time I first saw X3, I hadn’t read “The Dark Phoenix Saga.” Nonetheless, I was pretty familiar with the general plot and knew that what they had shown in the film was not anything close to the original story. After reading the actual comics, I only got more frustrated with the liberties the film took.

I understand that the entire Phoenix storyline, from the time Jean Grey became the Phoenix until she died, encompasses several years’ worth of comics. It’s not an arc that could easily be told in a single film. I even understand going straight to Dark Phoenix and never showing us the good side of the Phoenix power. The problem lies in the fact that it seems like director Brett Ratner and the screenwriters only wanted an all-powerful weapon for Magneto to wield so they shoehorned Dark Phoenix into that role.

Jean Grey’s death in X2 and resurrection as the Phoenix in X3 are very similar to the story described in Uncanny X-Men issue no. 101, only instead of taking on radiation while landing a spacecraft as in the comics, Jean sacrifices herself while trying to hold back a flood long enough for her friends to take off in the Blackbird. This is the only way in which it feels like the film’s producers were attempting to incorporate anything from the original storyline into the movies.

Dark Phoenix was an incredibly powerful being. As The Watcher says at the end of Uncanny X-Men issue no. 137, “She had only to think, and that thought would become instant reality.” In the comics, Dark Phoenix is a force of nature; she wields limitless power and is perfectly aware of how to use that power. She consumes stars and destroys worlds in order to feed this power; she’s nearly unstoppable. Yet, in X-Men 3, she is made subservient.

Dark Phoenix kills Xavier because she thinks the Professor is trying to control her, but then she turns and allows Magneto to actually manipulate and control her. Despite being the most powerful mutant in Magneto’s arsenal, Phoenix spends most of the final battle observing before she begins to unleash her full strength, only after Magneto has been neutralized. While in the comics she is completely independent and a threat in her own right, in the films she needs to have someone to follow.

Perhaps one of most controversial changes to the storyline — and the part that bothered me the most — is the death of Dark Phoenix. In the original comic, the X-Men temporarily subdue Dark Phoenix using a device created by the Beast. Jean gains control of herself for a brief moment and she begs Wolverine to kill her, but he hesitates and Dark Phoenix once again takes over. Near the end of Uncanny X-Men no. 136, Xavier engages in a psychic battle with Dark Phoenix and, with the help of Jean’s suppressed consciousness, is able to build up a wall around Dark Phoenix in Jean’s mind, suppressing the malevolent entity. However, the Professor’s solution is not permanent: Dark Phoenix begins to reemerge in the next issue. This time, before Jean completely loses control, she takes her own life in order to save the lives of her friends and the universe.

Jean Grey’s sacrifice is the ultimate depiction of love and strength. Instead of once again becoming Dark Phoenix and being responsible for countless more deaths, Jean takes control of her destiny and chooses to defeat the evil within no matter the cost. However, in the on-screen version, Jean was robbed of this noble act. Instead, Jean dies at the hands (claws?) of Wolverine, thus taking a strong and noble act of female empowerment and turning it into another example of male dominance.

This effect may have been unintentional on the part of the writers. I’m sure this ending was chosen for its drama, but the change still sends the message that Jean, though able to kill anyone with no more than a thought, is not strong enough to defeat Dark Phoenix. She needs someone else to do it for her, and that someone just happens to be one of the most masculine characters in the movie.

Another problem I have with this sequence of events is the focus on Wolverine in general. I understand that Wolverine had become the breakout star of the X-Men franchise, and don’t get me wrong: I like Wolverine and I love Jackman. But Wolverine has become the face of the X-Men and the star of these films, and that simply shouldn’t be the case. The X-Men are, first and foremost, a team, and no one character should stand out more than any other. If anyone should receive top billing, it is the leader of the team: Cyclops. This shift in emphasis to Wolverine added to my frustration that Cyclops was killed within the first half hour of the third movie and, consequently, doesn’t even appear in the final battle.

Basically, Dark Phoenix is used as a subplot in this film, taking a backseat to the mutant cure storyline, which seems like a huge waste of one of the best arcs in Marvel history. “The Dark Phoenix Saga” did not receive the attention or focus it deserved in this film, and probably shouldn’t have been squeezed into the story at all. Imagine the separate compelling, blockbuster film series that could have been developed with proper treatment of the saga.

As my colleague John has elaborated on in his defense of X-Men: The Last Stand, the film had some good moments. (Kelsey Grammer as the Beast is one of the best parts of the movie.) In fact, if you were to take the Dark Phoenix storyline out of the movie entirely, it probably would have been decent, and I certainly would have enjoyed it more. The final battle sequence was well done, and I enjoyed the fight between Iceman and Pyro — particularly the moment when Iceman finally becomes the completely frozen version of himself.

Needless to say, X-Men: The Last Stand was a huge letdown for me. However, X-Men: First Class restored some of my faith in the franchise, and I’m cautiously optimistic that X-Men: Days of Future Past — despite the decision to once again put Wolverine front and center, taking over Kitty Pryde’s role in the original storyline — will not disappoint.