X-Men: Days of Future Past

The X-Men film franchise started strong back in 2000. They had a bit of a slump with The Last Stand, and Origins was just bad. But the series received a much-needed shot in the arm with the success of First Class, and now the X-Men are back in business. Not just the new, young, prequel X-Men, mind you. The original X-Men are still in action, too, thanks to a genius idea that led to Days of Future Past.

Days of Future Past, the seventh and newest installment in the X-Men film series, takes place both in a dystopian future and in a could-have-been past that the X-Men desperately need to make a reality. In the future, the X-Men (played by the original cast) are being hunted down by mutant-seeking robots called Sentinels that exist partially due to decisions each of them made in the past. In a desperate attempt to create a better future, they send Wolverine into the past to interact with their younger selves (played by the new cast) and hopefully avoid the horrible future they caused.

When I first heard about Days of Future Past, I thought it was too ambitious. I thought they had gotten cocky after the success of First Class and bitten off more than they could chew. But then I saw the first trailer and got really excited. From the first time I saw footage from the film, I knew it was going to be amazing. I realized Days of Future Past could be done and done right. And that it was.

A big part of the movie’s appeal is that it can draw in the original crowd of X-Men fans from the early 2000’s while also getting the attention of newcomers who have only seen First Class. Days of Future Past serves as a sequel to both The Last Stand and First Class. The combination of casts is brilliant. While the majority of the movie takes place in the past, there is a good deal of time spent with the original cast in the future, and what takes place there does have implications for the film’s overall plot. To me, the film felt pretty well balanced, and that’s something I found very reassuring.

Days of Future Past was also just a pleasure to watch. It had great action, some funny joke, and even a couple of touching moments. The plot never seemed to drag. The acting was spot-on. And the movie always kept you just confused enough to stay interested. I have no complaints about any of those aspects of the film. I do have a couple of worries, though.

I was really hoping that the filmmakers were introducing the time travel element to fix some of the inconsistencies between The Last Stand and Days of Future Past. In The Last Stand, we see Professor X and Magneto walking together and starting the school in the 80’s. In First Class, we learn that Professor X lost the ability to walk and also had his falling out with Magneto in the 60’s. I haven’t found any good explanation to correct these discrepancies. I was hoping Days of Future Past would offer that. It didn’t, which leads me to believe that no future X-Men film will. But maybe that’s OK. The new films are much better than The Last Stand, so maybe I should just choose that version of the story over the old one.

But that one complaint aside, I have nothing but good things to say about this movie. It’s accessible to long-time X-Men fans and to people who have only seen First Class. It has fanboy appeal and serious mainstream possibilities. Days of Future Past is just another reminder of how great X-Men films can be when they’re done right, and it makes me excited for the future of the franchise.

Days of Future Past does leave the future of the X-Men films a mystery, though. It definitely sets us up for a sequel with the new cast, but it also seems to be continuing the story of the old cast in the new timeline. Are they planning on splitting the casts back up and making separate films? Will every subsequent X-Men film include members of both casts? Does Days of Future Past completely undo the plots of all the movies before it (excluding First Class), or are at least some aspects of them (for example, Wolverine’s adventures in Japan) kept? These are questions the X-Men film creators will have to answer now that the film is out. And they’ll have to do it fast if they want to have Apocalypse ready for 2016.

In the age of superhero film universes, X-Men has proven that they’re still very much in the game. They’ve put out seven movies in 14 years with two different casts and created a rich, fun universe for moviegoers to experience. And this is only the beginning. There are at least three more X-Men movies in the works, and the X-Men will soon be crossing paths with another superhero team, The Fantastic Four, after Fox reboots that series. The future of X-Men is bright, and I can’t wait to see what’s to come. Thank you guys for reading. Go see Days of Future Past, and let me know what you think of it!

Taking Time to Rest

We’ve all heard it before. We learned it in Sunday School. We’ve heard it preached from the pulpit. You’ve probably read it in your personal Bible study time. It’s something we always hear but rarely give much thought to. It’s the classic commandment, “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.”

Like I said, we’ve all heard this a lot. Maybe we’ve heard it so many times that we don’t really take it seriously anymore. But isn’t that a problem? The Sabbath is something that’s mentioned throughout the Bible, Old Testament and New. It’s mentioned over and over again, and yet for some reason, the fact that it comes up so often makes us take it less seriously. I’ve been guilty of this, too. For my blog post this week, I want to take a serious look at the Sabbath and what I think it means in the Christian life.

The Sabbath, or day of rest, has its roots all the way back in Genesis 2. After spending six days creating the earth, God rested on the seventh, creating the seven-day week cycle and setting the seventh day apart as holy. One might wonder why God rested on the seventh day. Was God tired after six days of creation? Does God have a limited amount of energy that has to be replenished? Of course not. God did not rest for His own sake. He rested in order to set a precedent for us. Six days of work followed by one day of rest. That was how God structured the first week, and that’s how He meant for us to structure our weeks, too.

The Sabbath became an official rule after Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt to Mount Sinai. There Moses received the Ten Commandments (among many other laws). One of the “big ten” concerns the treatment of the Sabbath day. You can read the full commandment in Exodus 20:8–11. These verses present a pretty clear image of what the Sabbath was supposed to be for the Israelites and why. God commanded them (through Moses) to avoid working on the seventh day of each week. Why? Because that is what God did when He created the earth. It seems simple enough. But the Israelites immediately struggled with it.

Exodus 16 tells us that while the children of Israel were wondering in the wilderness, God provided bread for them from heaven. Every morning when they walked out of their tents, they would see an abundance of bread on the ground for them to gather and eat. They were supposed to gather each morning only what they needed for that day, and on the sixth day of the week, they were supposed to gather double so they wouldn’t have to gather on the Sabbath. They weren’t even supposed to cook on the Sabbath. But many people disobeyed and tried to gather food on the Sabbath day only to find that there wasn’t any. God became angry with the Israelites because they didn’t respect the commandment He had given them.

The Sabbath is obviously something that God takes very seriously. He wants us to take a day of rest each week not only because He told us to but because He knows that it is what’s best for us. Our bodies and minds need some time off, especially in our day and age where we are bombarded with information and stressors left and right. We need a Sabbath in order to stay optimally healthy and energized so that we can continue living the lives that God has for us. But practicing the Sabbath has been tricky from the very first time God commanded it, and it hasn’t gotten much easier since then.

Jesus dealt with all the messiness associated with the Sabbath day on several occasions. By Jesus’ time, the religious leaders had come up with a long list of rules for the Sabbath in an attempt to make it easier observe. But instead of helping people obey God’s commandments, these rules actually just privileged man’s ideas over God’s. There were rules like how many steps one was allowed to take on the Sabbath day, and people were ridiculed if they broke these rules. That’s not observing the Sabbath. The rule may have originally been well-intended, but the Sabbath isn’t about making sure you follow a list of rules. It’s about putting all the lists away and allowing yourself to find rest in the God who created Sabbath in the first place.

Jesus made this clear in Matthew 12. His disciples were being ridiculed by the Pharisees (Jewish leaders) for plucking grain on the Sabbath, but Jesus didn’t rebuke them. He stood up for them. He said, “And if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath” (Matthew 12:7–8). Jesus told the Pharisees that the Sabbath isn’t about following man-made rules. God made the Sabbath, and He decides what is appropriate to do on the Sabbath and what isn’t. Jesus drove the point home by going to the synagogue and healing a man’s withered hand, another activity prohibited on the Sabbath.

It’s not that Jesus didn’t respect the Sabbath. He was a Jew, after all. He just didn’t feel the need to follow man-made rules (sometimes referred to as “tradition”) that tried to set themselves equal with God’s commandments. Jesus understood the meaning being the Sabbath, and He lived it out. We know that Jesus regularly took time for rest and prayer. Just like in everything else, He is our ultimate example of how we should treat the Sabbath.

We seem to live in a society that is completely incompatible with the idea of the Sabbath day. We generally work five days a week and spend the other two days trying to accomplish all the stuff we put off during the week and maybe squeezing in a little bit of recreation. We have regular worship, but it’s not even on the seventh day of the week. And a lot of people don’t have control over their work schedules, which often require them to work on Sunday, the day that in our society sort of resembles a Sabbath. So what are we to do? Should we just give up on the Sabbath completely?

The answer to that question is no. Of course not. Scripture makes it very clear that the Sabbath is important to God, and it should be important to us, too. So then the question becomes, “How does one observe the Sabbath in this crazy, hectic, non-Sabbath-friendly world?”

I think the answer is simple. We have to make time for rest. To put away all the tasks and stressors and everything else and just spend time giving ourselves a break. To spend time with God and find rest in who He is. That’s Sabbath, and that’s something we all need on a regular basis.

Originally, the Sabbath was on Saturday, but Christians moved it to Sunday to be in line with the day of Jesus’ resurrection. That’s fine. I don’t think the day matters so much as the act of doing it. If you have to work on Sunday, don’t feel bad. Do what you can with the situation that you’re in, but make sure that you’re consistently taking time to rest like God commanded us to.

The Sabbath is also a day for worshipping God. I think this is combined with rest for a reason. Worshipping God is a great way to connect deeply with Him, realign our minds with His purposes, and feel that energy that you can only feel when you’re worshipping God. Worship combined with rest gets us ready for upcoming week so that be at our peak mentally, physically, and spiritualy as we go out and live for Him.

There’s one more thing I want to say about the Sabbath, and then I’ll be done. Right before He healed the man with the withered hand in Matthew 12, Jesus said, “It is lawful to do good on the Sabbath” (Matthew 12:12). I think what he meant there is that it’s OK to do work on the Sabbath as long as it’s something God has called you to do. Pastors, for example, work very hard on the Sabbath. Putting on a church service takes work from countless volunteers. There’s nothing wrong with doing the Lord’s work on the Sabbath. Just like any other day, if God is calling you to do something on the Sabbath, do it. Don’t let someone else’s “traditional” (i.e., man-made) beliefs about the Sabbath keep you from doing the Lord’s work.

My curiosity about the Sabbath came from a personal struggle I had, and I think this struggles pretty well sums up my thoughts on the Sabbath. It all started last week when I decided to start running on a regular basis. I told myself I would do it seven days a week just to keep the routine going. But then I got to thinking about the Sabbath. Should I exercise on Sundays? I mean, I’m trying to take care of my body, which is something I feel like God has been calling me to do. But then again, my body could probably use a break after six days of running. I decided to skip running on Sundays and instead use that time for Bible study, meditation, and simply resting in the Lord. But that’s not to say I would ever judge anyone for exercising on the Sabbath if that’s they feel like God is calling them to do. The Sabbath is going to look a little bit different for each of us, but as long as we’re all taking time to rest and spend some quality time with God, I think we’re living up to what He has called us to do on the Sabbath.

Once Upon a Time

I’m sure many of you have experienced the awe and frustration caused by TV series Lost. When Lost premiered, it was ground-breaking. Its non-linear storytelling and its ability to keep fans waiting for seasons on end to get answers answers to their constantly burning questions made it hugely popular with both viewers and critics. Lost ended its run in 2010 after six seasons of keeping its viewers guessing, and TV has never been the same.

You can see the impact of Lost every time you turn on your TV. Lots of shows have tried to recreate the unique storytelling and long-term payoffs that Lost offered, and many have succeeded. One of the best things that came out of Lost was a show created by two of its writer/producers, Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz. The show is called Once Upon a Time, and it’s my subject for Stuff Devon Likes this week.

Once Upon a Time (shortened by fans to simply “Once”) actually has a premise that is similar to Lost’s. Instead of a bunch of people stranded on an island because of a plane crash, Once tells the story of fairy tale characters who have been trapped in our world, a world without magic. Each episode usually tells two separate stories, one from the present and one in flashbacks or in another realm, that intermingle and somehow relate to one another. Like Lost, Once takes advantage of long-term mysteries and big payoffs that keeps fans invested and on their toes at all times.

I’m not going to lie. When I first heard what this show was about, I was skeptical. Fairy tale characters? Aren’t those just for children? No, actually, they’re not. Once takes the same fairy tale characters you loved as a child and turns them into dynamic, live-action characters who are quirky, fun, and relatable. You’ll have to suspend your disbelief for a little bit at first, but once you do, you’ll realize that a show about fairy tale characters can actually be really cool.

I really love the story on Once and the way its told. They give you enough that you can be interested and understand what’s going on, but they don’t give you the whole story until they absolutely have to. The flashbacks really help to develop the characters and offer some surprising revelations about their backstories and identities. We see most of the characters both in our world and in the Enchanted Forest of the past, and it’s cool to see both versions of the characters and get to know them each way.

Possibly the most interesting character is Emma, the outsider who finds herself in Storybrooke (the town all the fairy tale characters are trapped in). She has to come to terms with her past while learning more about her family and eventually taking on her role as the savior. All of the characters grow and change throughout the show, but Emma is probably the one who changes the most, and it’s really fun to see her transformation.

It’s also fun to see where these characters’ adventures take them. They start off stuck in Storybrooke, but they eventually explore other lands including the Enchanted Forest, Neverland, and even Oz. They meet many classic characters along the way, and Once always puts a special twist on each one. There is a ton of material for them to use (ABC is owned by Disney, after all), and it’s fun to see how they make each character and each story their own.

Once Upon a Time has been successful enough to warrant a spin-off, called Once Upon a Time in Wonderland. It focuses on Alice as she teams up with the Knave of Hearts to rescue her one true love from the evil Jafar. It’s a really good story told in 13 episodes and expands the Once universe. They’re actually incorporating one of the characters, the Knave, back into the main show next year, which I think is pretty cool. They’ve created this universe that can be expanded and focused in on at various times as the story requires, and I love it.

Once Upon a Time just finished their third season this month, and they’re scheduled to start their fourth season in the fall. I won’t spoil who the main villain is this season (and you better not Google it), but it’s really cool. Now is a good time to catch up on Once so you’ll be ready for what is shaping up to be an epic fourth season. Check the show out on Netflix or on ABC’s website and let me know what you think of it. Thanks for reading this week’s Stuff Devon Likes. Have a great weekend, and check back next Saturday for my review of X-Men: Days of Future Past!

The First Day of the Rest of My Life

I don’t think it really hit me until I looked at my diploma with my own eyes. There it was. My name. Written on the diploma that I’ve been working toward for four years. And it was right there, in my hands. That’s when it became real to me. That’s when I realized that my days at Hendrix College were over. My undergraduate career had come to an end.

It was a surreal feeling, and it all just hit me at once. I realized that I had really enjoyed my time at Hendrix. That I had learned a lot and met some amazing people. That I’m going to miss that place and those people so much now that I’m gone. I realized that things will never be the same. They can’t be. Looking at that diploma was a wake-up call that my life was moving forward and leaving college behind.

In times like these, it’s easy to focus on the endings. The end of my undergraduate studies. The last night I spent with my friends as a college student. Endings can be sad, but they’re also always new beginnings, and those are never something to be sad about. College was great, and I’ll cherish those experiences forever, but I’m not going to let the fact that college is over stop me from enjoying what’s to come. Because as great as college has been, what’s to come is even better.

That last statement may sound harsh. It may sound like I’m trying to downplay how good my college years were. That’s not the case at all. I’ve loved college, and I love the friends that I made in college. I will cherish those memories and maintain those friendships forever. It’s going to take a lot to top the last four years. But I truly believe that my best years are ahead of me, and I don’t want to miss them by always looking backwards.

And as much as I’ve enjoyed college, some bad stuff has happened the last four years. I’m certainly not sad about saying goodbye to those things. Now I get a new start in a new place. As much as I hate to say goodbye to all the good things in the previous phase of my life, I’m happy to be free of the bad things, and to be a better person because of them. I’ll take what I’ve learned and try to make the next phase of my life even better than the last.

The day of my graduation, my dad told me, “Well, tomorrow’s the first day of the rest of your life.” Funny enough, I’ve had May 18 marked as “The First Day of the Rest of My Life” for months. I guess he and I just think alike. But it’s so true. I just started the rest of my life. I’m just a few days into this new phase, and it feels great. I’m happy with the way things are, I’m proud of how far I’ve come, and I’m excited about where I’m going. The rest of my life may be a mystery, but it’s going to be a good one.

I want to say thank you to everyone who has supported me thus far. And I want to give a special thank you to every person who played a role in my college years. I’ve had some of the best friends, professors, and mentors anyone could ask for, and I am so thankful. Bear with me as I transition from college into summer and (very soon) into the seminary phase of my life. I can’t wait to learn, to grow, and to share my experiences with you. God bless.

The Lord of the Rings (Book Series)

For the first time ever on Stuff Devon Likes, I’m reviewing a book! Back in January, I watched The Lord of the Rings film trilogy and really enjoyed it. In my review of the films, I said that I hoped to read the books soon and write a review of them. Well, I’ve spent the past four months reading the books, and I finally finished this week! So here’s my review of The Lord of the Rings, the book series, not the film series.

First of all, I really enjoyed these books. They were fun to read. I was afraid they may not be as enjoyable after watching the movies because I knew what was going to happen, but that wasn’t the case at all. I still felt the suspense and shock while reading that I would have felt if I hadn’t see the movies before. The story is told so well, and it’s so compelling that I didn’t mind experiencing it again.

But the books tell a slightly different story than the movies do. People always say that a movie is never as good as the book that it’s based on, but I’m not sure that it’s really fair to compare The Lord of the Rings books to the movies. While they follow a similar plot line, there are some pretty major differences that make both work really well for the medium they’re in.

Tolkien didn’t approach The Lord of the Rings as fiction that he was writing. He approached it as a history of what our world was like a very long time ago, and he based his history on a book that he claimed to be written by Bilbo Baggins, Frodo Baggins, and Sam Gangee, the main characters of The Lord of the Rings and its prequel, The Hobbit. I think this approach is really cool because it allowed Tolkien to not only tell a story, but to create a whole world. It allowed him to write appendices about Elvish language and how the hobbits have different calendars than the rest of the world and so on, and I think that’s pretty cool.

I really liked the way the LOTR books are structured. Each of the three books (The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King) is split into two halves. The first book tells the story chronologically, but in the second book, the main characters split into two groups. The story of one group is told in the first half of the book, and then the second half of the book goes back and tells the story of the other group, making occasional references to where the other group would be at that time. I think it says a lot about Tolkien’s writing that he can spend half a book telling us about what are thought to be side characters, but we still care enough to keep reading.

The books also contains some interesting stories that had to be cut from the movies. The two stories that really stuck out to me were the hobbit’s run-in with Tom Bombadil in The Fellowship of the Ring and The Scouring of the Shire chapter at the end of The Return of the King. These were both cool stories that added to overall narrative but weren’t considered necessary enough to be included in the (already lengthy) films. If anything, the books are worth reading just to experience those extra stories.

My one complaint about the books is that they can be flowery sometimes. Just as Tolkien was invested in developing the characters and the history of Middle Earth, he was also interested in the way it looked. He goes into great detail about the terrain of the land that the characters travel, and these are the parts of the story that I struggled to get through. My mind just doesn’t work like that. I’m sure a lot of people enjoy imaging this world that Tolkien has created, but I prefer to just stick to the plot. Maybe I’ll invest in an abridged version for my next LOTR reading experience.

But that one complaint aside, I really loved reading these books. I got completely sucked into the story and invested in the characters. Even though I knew how the story ended, I still enjoyed re-experiencing it in a different way. I would suggest The Lord of the Rings books to anyone interested in the movies or just in fantasy stories in general. Thank you for reading my review, and check back next week for another installment of Stuff Devon Likes!