Friday, July 17, 2015

"The Rogue Cut" Is An Enjoyable But Unessential Supplement to 'X-Men: Days of Future Past'



I like director’s cut/extended versions of movies.  Yes, half of the time, the director’s cut merely pads the movie and doesn’t add substance.  However, the other half of the time, a director’s cut allows a movie to make more sense, have more thrills, and have more depth.  The best example of an extended version doing some considerable enhancement was on the Lord of the Rings, and I personally like the alternate ending version of I Am Legend more than the original one.   So when an alternate, extended version of X-Men: Days of Future Past was announced to be released this year, I was intrigued.  X-Men: DOFP was one of 2014’s best movies, for not only was it a surprisingly good film by itself, but it also pulled off a successful continuity clean-up to revitalize the franchise moving forward.  I was hoping that this extended version would further elevate this movie.

X-Men: DOFP’s extended edition is named “The Rogue Cut.”  It’s called such for a subplot centered on a rescue mission for Rogue takes much of the additional extra minutes.  Some of the additional scenes are minor clips on the future X-Men team and a subplot on Beast and Mystique.  Unfortunately, though these provide interesting moments to explore the characters, they don’t contribute much in improving the movie.  And despite being called “The Rogue Cut”, the character Rogue doesn’t really do much in it.  Seriously, I long for a more comics-accurate, badass Rogue adaptation in film.  Anna Paquin’s version has never done justice to the character.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed watching “The Rogue Cut.”  DOFP is essentially a good film already, so watching “The Rogue Cut” is basically just re-watching the movie again.  The additional subplots and action scenes are superfluous, but I still welcome them – they don’t improve the movie much, but they don’t diminish it as well.  Watching the “The Rogue Cut” isn’t really an imperative, but it’s just something necessary to do as a fan.

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