X-Men: Days of Future Past (Movie) Review

Fox releases their most ambitious X-Men film to date.

Put simply, X-Men: Days of Future Past is an epic. The film, just released by 20th Century Fox at the end of May, ties together X-Men film story lines past and future while eliminating several of the more undesirable elements from the atrocious X3 (so, pretty much the whole movie). It’s a tall task to ask from any film honestly, but one that returning director Bryan Singer has absolutely crushed with Days of Future Past.

Though the film is named after the historic X-Men tale from the Marvel Comics, it’s not an exact retelling by any means. For starters, this story centers on Wolverine and not Shadowcat, the star of the book of the same name. The reasoning for this is simple, Wolvie is already a known commodity in movies and Hugh Jackman’s version of the character has become something of a force in the way people view him. Kitty Pryde on the other hand, has been handled pretty terribly by the films (she only appeared in X3) and isn’t a big character by any stretch of the imagination in the X-Men comics or movies of today.

That’s not to say that she doesn’t have a pretty major role in this film though. Kitty is the mutant that sends Logan’s (Wolverine) mind back in time and into his younger self in the X-Men’s desperate bid to change history. See, in the future the world is overrun by highly evolved Sentinels, the giant robots from the comics. Created by Doctor Bolivar Trask in the 1970’s, the Sentinel Project was a flop with no funding till Mystique assassinated the not-so-good doc. This act pushed the governments of the world into secretly activating the Sentinels initiative and researching the mechanical monstrosities. Ironically enough, it was through Mystique’s own DNA that the robots became the force for mutant extinction that they did in the future X-timeline (in the film).

Once back in the ’70s, a de-adamantiumized Wolverine (he didn’t get it bonded to him yet) must unite what remains of a tattered X-Men team in the midst of a tense, Viet Nam engulfed world, all in order to stop the assassination from taking place and prevent the Sentinels from catching on. Along the way, he meets up with more mutants than have pretty much ever been seen before in an X-Men film and gets into some fantastic action scenes with plenty of nods to fans of the comics.

Most of the characters featured in the movie are major players too with very few throwaways. In the opening scene alone (and I’m not spoiling anything here) we see Iceman (fully iced up too!), Storm, Colossus, Sunspot, Warpath, Shadowcat, Blink, Bishop, and more. This pace doesn’t exactly keep up for the rest of the movie, but there are still more characters to come, punctuated by a great bunch of cameos at the end. Evan Peters’ Quicksilver is a real highlight too, and this is coming from someone who absolutely can’t stand the character.

Though again, that might sound like way too much for one movie to hold together with any degree of cohesiveness, Days of Future Past does just that and does it well. The story is tightly knitted with few scenes that either feel superfluous or ‘tacked-on’ just for the sake of having them there. Likewise, all of those characters I just rattled off all feel perfectly suited to the roles and screen-time that they get. It’s a remarkable achievement for the film considering the recently opened Amazing Spider-Man 2 tried the same thing with way fewer names tossed around and only did a so-so job of things.

Even though it’s so well done though, the plot isn’t perfect. There are a few glaring inconsistencies in the narrative’s future world as to what’s happened already by the start of the film. Again, not spoiling anything here, but Wolverine has his adamantium claws from the start of the future age when he lost them in last year’s The Wolverine, Professor X is back alive though he was killed in X3 (though that one’s debatable). Things like that, that go by without explanation, tend to bother me as a viewer. Though I can’t really pick too much I guess since most of that was changed for the better.

Much like the plot line, the visuals are real stunner too. The dark, post-apocalyptic feel of the opening (which is inter-woven throughout the film) looks fantastic as do the Sentinels in both that age and in the past and everything contrasts fantastically with the brighter and more ‘everyday’ age of the 1970’s. Funnily enough, the bots of the 70’s actually might hold more interest for fans since even though they’re not as slick, they look way more like classic Sentinels and generally come off as well as you could imagine. Like the Sentinels, mutant powers look better than ever here too, with all the different powers and abilities on display recreated beautifully from the comics. Much like in First Class, Magneto is one again in rare form here and doing some incredible stuff that puts the ‘bridge’ stunt from X3 to shame.

The casting is once again spot on for the film as well. James McAvoy and Patrick Stewart are excellent as Charles Xavier and Michael Fassbender and Ian McKellen both play Magneto to perfection. The rest of the cast is equally as good with Hugh Jackman once again owning Logan/Wolverine despite not really looking anything like the comic book version and Jennifer Lawrence portraying a tortured and angry Mystique. I don’t want to spoil anything for you either, but there are just so many great character moments in the film that it truly makes me want to see more of all of them. If Fox’ plan is to spin X-Men off into a whole universe of movies, then you can count me in for all of them- as long as they’re given this kind of care and attention.

Final Thoughts

If you saw X-Men 3: The Last Stand and absolutely hated it, go see this movie.

I had completely lost faith in the X-Men film franchise after that mess and the ‘meh’ Wolverine flick that followed it, but X-Men: Days of Future Past brought me back in. Other than the excellent Captain America: The Winter Soldier (incidentally, coming out on DVD and Blu Ray soon), this is the comic book film of the year thus far and I can’t really see Guardians of the Galaxy being much better.

I’ll even go so far as to say I liked X-Men: Days of Future Past better fan favorite The Avengers. It’s that good and that well put together. If you are in any way an X-Men fan, go see it if you haven’t already. And maybe see it again if you have.

Now, bring on the Apocalypse…