Well, yeah. It is a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Dead muties all around, scenes reminiscent of the holocaust. I would say no hope and total despair are appropriate. X-Men was often a pretty gloomy comic book in general, and this story was one of the gloomiest. Unlike Superman. . .
You know I just watched this again last night for the third time this week (I'm going to be quite the expert when you catch your second viewing in 2019) and I really don't have any significant problems with this movie. When I step back I can think (hmm, wish it had more action, or Wolverine beat up more people, or that such and such didn't happen) but when I watch it pretty much every scene just works.
If you want hopeless and grim, yeah, you get that with the future Sentinels. They only fight *three* in that opening battle and they can't even take *one* down. That's pretty freaking demoralizing. When the whole team has been wiped out and Warpath stands alone against all three you just know, "yeah, you're dead dude."
I often judge a comic book or fantasy movie by how often I spontaneously smile while watching it. And DOFP has some solid sequences that make me do that. Possibly the best is when Singer intercuts between the approaching stadium and future carriers with the music blaring. That's epic stuff.
I also feel that for a somewhat convoluted plot everything seems to play out pretty organically. We get a summary of past events at the beginning then we see how Mystique goes to Nam, frees detained mutants, learns of Trask, goes to his office, learns of the expiriments, and then gets the itinerary for the Peace Summit. Charles wanting to save Trask while Magneto wants to kill Mystique are two very viable approaches to the same problem and totally in character for each.
They also avoided some significant pet peeves that I often see in movies like this. I really dislike it when a movie tries to get cute with exposition so they don't have characters explain things properly or have characters ask the right questions or just be content with incomplete information. Case in point: While the hell didn't Balin just tell Bilbo what the Arkenstone looked like? "Oh you'll know it when you see it, tee hee." There's a billion freaking gems down there! Just say "It's a white rectangular stone about this big that literally glows. You'll know its the Arkenstone if it's glowing. Nothing else glows." Ah, thank you! Instead of having Bilbo waste time dinking around picking up little rocks and necklaces and things wasting time and making noise.
In DOFP the future Magneto clearly told Wolverine where he was being imprisoned. No "oh you'll see, *chuckle*, good luck!" Also Wolverine doesn't **** around with trying to explain his story. "I'm from the future. This is what happens. Here's who did it. Charles can you please just get your powers back and retrieve anything from my mind that I might have missed." Bam, DONE. Two points, straight line, thank you Wolverine.
I also like that Magneto is savvy enough to just "get" the situation with a minimum of convincing. Just lots of nice stuff like that. DOFP might not have the most action but it just oozes cool and has a number of truly exciting moments. Blink just rocks. As I said I've watched it three times this week but I still am not totally clear on the logistics of how she positions her portals to maximum effect. I know I can just watch in slow motion and see it that way but its fun to try and figure it out in real time. This really has got to be one of my top five superhero movies ever.
