Shut Up and Eat Your Popcorn (contains spoilers)

Rating: 5/10 (24 May 2014)

I think that pretty much sums up the execs attitude when making this film.
Great cast, excellent performances, spot on effects. Too bad the script was dog food.
Lets start with the end of Xmen Last stand. Professor Xavier is killed right? Well the post credit scene suggests his consciousness survived. Although, we hear his voice, we don't actually see him (Patrick Stewart) cause it would be a whole new body, yes? Next comes Xmen Origins: Wolverine and First Class, nothing that ties this together. While X3 does close the book, it seems, on Scott and Jean, the fate of Charles Xavier is an unresolved issue. Third film comes in, the Wolverine, and again nothing...except, wait. The return of Magneto and Professor X. Wolverine is as stunned by this as we're supposed to be. But it eludes to the upcoming DoFP. So we open in a dystopian future where, ta da, there's Charles. No explanation or anything. 8 years and 4 films, and they fail to resolve this issue. By the way, that Wolverine end scene was as if that never happened, because DoFP takes place 8-10 years later.
I also found it a contrived plot device that time moves in sync, essentially time passes minute by minute in the past for wolverine as it does in the future. Ergo, Logan ages six hours in 1972, he ages six hours in the future (guesstimated at 2022). I would conservatively put Logan's sojourn into the past to be roughly a week. So for one week solid kitty pride is kneeling over him doing the time-phase thing the ENTIRE TIME. I guess she doesn't need to eat, sleep, or poop. Lets also not forget there are a dozen mutants just hanging out all this time. In a world of super sentinels, you'd think they would want to stay mobile, keep moving.
I'd like to know, wtf happened to the world to have a future like that, cause I must of blinked and missed it. X3 and the wolverine left the world in a good place for humans and mutants. Then ker-pow, now we use robots from the 70s? Funny, sentinels were never mentioned in the original films, save for a make believe scenario in the danger room in X3. Yet here they are. In fact, in the year 2000, it seemed the world was just waking up to the idea of mutants. Ohhh that's right, apparently as of now NONE OF THOSE FILMS EVER HAPPENED.
I guess wolverine never gets his adamantium then. Ohhh wait, how did he have adamantium claws in the future when he lost them in the Wolverine?
Xavier suddenly being alive is never explained. The serum he uses to walk again is horribly contrived. It's supposed to explain why we see him walking around in the flashback sequence in X3, as well as the cameo in Origins, but fails. He can walk at the expense of losing his powers. Well, he used them in X3 and Origins. And even so, if the serum later got "perfected", why wouldn't he use it all the time then? Furthermore, if the serum repaired his back, it did nothing for what happened to him at the end of this film where the steel beam crushes his legs.
While seeing certain characters fully realized (iceman using his ice- slide), the film lost its soul. What made the original films so great where how the characters connected with the audience, the social/moral implications of being "different", and the whole judgement, acceptance, and belonging that was such a heavy element to these films has been watered down into movie action schlock. If this film had any real emotional weight, it would of been all those characters in First Class being killed off by the government and the horrible experiments they performed on them. But since this happened off camera and just given a mere mention in this film, the audience is significantly less impacted. "awww, why they have to go and kill off Banshee?" vs, "OMG, you mother ******s, how could you? Avenge him!!!"
Although the original films were always set in "the near future" there were never any elements that made it seem too futuristic. Like the 3d map in the first film, nothing like that existed but it was easy to see us progressing there. In other words, the world felt very real, grounded, believable. Now, it's 8-10 years after X3, and we got giant lasers, space ships, a re-imagined NYC skyline, etc. Like aliens in an Indiana Jones film, these things felt out of place. Then, we use Sentimels, which is far beyond our current technology and have them first invented in 1972? So before we even have the same technology that brought us Atari and cassette players, we have advance cybernetic hunter/killer robots? I get how putting metal in them while they were being shipped allowed Magneto to use his mutant power on them, but doesn't explain how he was able to reprogram them. He talks and they obey him, makes no sense....ahhhhh shut up and eat your popcorn.
Ohhh, one last thing: Dear studio execs, please consider your largest demographic when choosing which characters bare butt to show off.