X-Men: Days of Future Past

Since the release of Bryan Singer's X-Men, Sam Raimi's Spider-Man, and their slightly superior follow-ups, every release under the Marvel Studios banner has been an increasingly paler version of its predecessors. Over the years, it has developed an inane house formula immune to auteurs, and indeed the only auteurs guiding the franchise crossover Days of Future Past are the talent agencies that put it together. One of the strangest things about the film is how much it revels in murdering its mutant protagonists in the most disgusting manners possible, including beheadings and disembowelments, only to immediately respawn them in alternate timelines. It's bad enough all of that sick violence plus one F-bomb equals a PG-13 rating, but the more immediate effect is that we know no one can get hurt, which dramatically lowers the stakes of a story that concerns the survival of the entire planet.