Back to the Future (Past), or You Can't Keep a Good X-Man Down

I enjoyed X-Men: Days of Future Past, Bryan Singer's return after a decade-long absence to the surprisingly resilient superhero franchise he originated. This movie is based on a 1981 story from The Uncanny X-Men comic book that I first read when it was reprinted in probably 1989 or 1990.

The movie alters the tale as necessary to unite the cast of 2011's 60s-set X-Men: First Class with the players from the earlier X-pictures, set in the present day -- or rather, as a title card at the top of 2000's X-Men tells us, "the not-too-distant future." I'd feared this timeline-straddling -- Days of Future Past is set in some unspecified year in the 2020s, -ish, and in 1973 -- might make the movie as dull and incoherent as the Star Wars prequels, but it's funny and light on its feet.

This time-travel movie triggered some sympathetic time-travel on my part. I bought my first issue of X-Men in the summer of 1988, and I stuck with the title for about four years after that. Since then, I've looked in on the X-Men infrequently, whenever I've heard that Grant Morrison or Joss Whedon or Matt Fraction was up to something interesting with them. 

Anyway. For NPR, some ruminations on how time-travel helps to keep long-running movie franchises fresh.

SEE ALSO: Another thing I wrote for NPR, about a quite different time-travel flick last year.

What Gravity Should've Learned from ALIENS

Sigourney Weaver and Carrie Henn in ALIENS. 

Sandra Bullock in Gravity. 

Admittedly, ALIENS is a film I've loved unconditionally since I was a kid. I need very little prompting to think about it, and only a little more prompting than that to write about it. But a deleted scene from that 27-year-old movie highlights what is, to me, the sole flaw in Alfonso Curaon's still-fantastic new space movie Gravity, and how audience expectations have changed in the generation since ALIENS. This is the subject of my first piece for Slate, which you can read here.

Arnold Schwarzenegger: Return of the Machine

“If I am not me, who da hell am I? I mean, who da hell am I now?”

I am delighted to tell you that I am making my Village Voice debut this week with an essay about one Arnold Schwarzenegger, screen icon of my youth, governor of California for part of the time I lived there (I didn't vote for him) and celebrity host of my narrowly acclaimed 2012 Christmas album.

It was a happy, potentially self-improving experience, being edited by the noted crapologist Alan Scherstuhl, whose cover story in last week's Voice about current Spider-Man scribe Dan Slott is well worth your time, if you care at all about Spider-Man or comic books.

There were some outtakes from this one. Writing about subjects that have interested me since childhood is often more time consuming than writing about more recent interests (like, say, theater) because there's so much more "onboard" material -- memories, opinions -- to sift through. There was a whole bit about John Wayne in my first draft that I may resurrect for a different piece someday. And it was hard to lose the factoid that Arnold's sole credit as a film director was a 1992 remake of the Barbara Stanwyck comedy Christmas in Connecticut. Because he and Stanwyck had the same jawline, maybe?

"I think we both realize this will not be your truly epic all-encompassing Schwarzenegger piece, which you should be pitching right now to The Believer," Alan wrote during one of our e-mail exchanges.

Perhaps I shall, Alan, perhaps I shall. In the meantime, thanks for helping me with this one.

Movies I Watched or Rewatched in Their Entirety While Writing This Piece (chronological by year of release): The Searchers, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Last Action Hero, The 6th Day, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, I Saw the Devil.

Arnold's new one, The Last Stand, did not screen in DC before my deadline. And his good films are all indelibly lightscribed onto my brain, for better or for worse, so I didn't have to revisit them.

Judgment: Judgment Day

Edward Furlong and Arnold Schwarzenegger get close in 1991's Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

Over in today's Criticwire survey, I make a Sophie's choice and present my surprisingly concise rationale for why Terminator 2: Judgment Day is the superior of James Cameron's two Terminator joints. And I begin flogging my imminent Village Voice piece about Arnold Schwarzenegger's attempt at a comeback in The Last Stand. That should be online Wednesday or Thursday.  Rest assured I will let you know.