Today’s Feature: Mutant vs. Machine (2015) – X-Men: Days of Future Past – The Rogue Cut (2014)

With the release of Justice League, and some great action over in the WWE, I feel like the site has been dominated by WWE and DC for the last week or so. Because of this, I immediately decided I should balance it all out an do a Marvel film for “Bonus!”.

Then I ran into a problem. Most of the Disney produced Marvel home video releases don’t have much to work with. Sure, there are the old Marvel One-Shots, and they feature some limited deleted scenes and featurettes, but on the whole it usually feels like Marvel Studios doesn’t want you to know much at all. The solution was easy though, I had to pick a release from 20th Century Fox, who almost always give due attention to their releases. Honestly, I think the X-Men series is superior to the MCU run anyway, but we can get into that at another time (comment if you’d like me to). Mutant vs. Machine is an hour long documentary on the production of X-Men: Days of Future Past, and touches on many aspects of the film. The interviews here are great, with comments from everyone from longtime X-Men writer Chris Claremont to Producer Laura Shuler Donner. There is also a nice level of honesty on the development of the film, specifically on how the script was crafted and how Editor/Composer John Ottman found himself with 72 hours to complete an essential piece of the film’s score. Personally, I think Days of Future Past is the pinnacle of the series, allowing Bryan Singer to return to the franchise he helped craft and shifting it into the more fantastic plot lines of the comics. In many ways, the film opened the door for varying tones of Deadpool and Logan by showing that the concepts were stylistically malleable. Logan might be the best crafted film of the franchise, but here the X-Men affirm their place in film history. Not only this, Singer finally gets to play with The Sentinels and a massive X-Men team, much more similar to their eighties and nineties heyday. It might also contain the most stunning Visual Effects in the franchise’s impressive history. That opening fight sequence is just terrific. The documentary also specifically addressed the added Rogue subplot where The Rogue Cut gets its name. Once again, the crew is frank about why the sequence was originally excised, citing length and it’s ease to remove. Well, maybe not addressing that plot hole where earlier in the film they established they couldn’t really travel that easy, but hey, it’s still my favorite X-Men team film. Another nice aspect of the feature is comments on the films reception and even the development of X-Men: Apocalypse, since this Blu-Ray came out long after the film’s release.

Mutant vs. Machine is exclusive to the X-Men: Days of Future Past – The Rogue Cut Blu-Ray, which is still widely available.