X-Men: Days of Future Past has to open substantially higher than X-Men: The Last Stand to gross substantially more in America. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End did 2.2x its $139 million Fri-Mon, Fast & Furious 6 did 2.35x its $122m Fri-Mon debut while Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull did 2.1x its $150m Thurs-Mon five-day debut. A $135m 5-day opening for The Hangover part II in 2011 yielded "only" $254m in the end.
Memorial Day weekend openers aren't generally leggy regardless. Since this fast-fade has effected X-Men films both very good ( X2) and very bad ( X-Men Origins: Wolverine), there is little reason not to expect a similar fade-out this time around. X-Men: The Last Stand opened with $122 million over its Fri-Mon Memorial Day weekend debut, including $102m on Fri-Sun, but ended its run with just $234m in America. If this one can't vault the X-Men to the next level of comic book franchises, frankly nothing short of casting Brad Pitt as Apocalypse the next go-around will.īut working to its detriment, at least domestically, is the franchise's infamous front loading.
The whole "old cast returns" and "everyone comes back to save the day" gimmicks basically combine the marketing trump cards of Fast & Furious and Fast Five into one tidy package. This also allowed for the mix and match of characters from “First Class” and the original trilogy in “Days of Future Past.Merely combining the $234m of X-Men: The Last Stand with the $282m that The Wolverine earned overseas last year gets you $516m, good enough for a franchise high. There is much to theoretically please the franchise's fans this go-around, specifically the return of original franchise stars like Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen. He was the clear breakout star of the original trilogy, so it would’ve been easy to reboot with him, but this film took a step back and said we’ll work him in while shifting the focus elsewhere. It helped tie the reboot back to the originals and gave us a little bit of Hugh Jackman without going overboard. I also, thoroughly, enjoyed the Wolverine cameo. James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence and Nicholas Hoult all did a great job portraying younger versions of Professor Xavier, Magneto, Mystique and Beast, respectively. Given the quality of “X3” and “X-Men Origins,” that’s not something I was expecting from an “X-Men” film when this was released in 2011. It’s a good story that helps you care about the characters, appreciate their connections to the original trilogy, and it got me excited for potential sequels. While it does create some plot holes namely Mystique’s age those are mostly forgivable in a film about mutants.
You get to see how Xavier and Magneto were friends before their differing ideologies took them down the paths that led to them facing off in the original “X-Men” trilogy. While “X3: The Last Stand” was bad and “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” was atrocious, this film hit all the right marks.
#XMEN FIRST CLASS SONG SERIES#
This film was the best possible way to get the series back on track.
After successfully stopping Shaw, we see Professor Xavier and Magneto go their separate ways as Charles continues his quest for good while Magneto goes on his mission to take revenge on humans for the atrocities they have committed against mutants. After the failure of “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” Fox decided to reboot the franchise by going back to the first class of mutants to be mentored by Professor Charles Xavier and Magneto in “X-Men: First Class.” The pair of mutants put together the first team of X-Men featuring Mystique, Angel, Beast, Banshee, Darwin and Havoc as they try to stop Sebastian Shaw and his team of mutants from taking over the world.