X-Men Days of Future Past

I’ve been away from the X-men film franchise for several years. Blame Brett Ratner, who made a total mess of X-Men: the Last Stand. Between the botch-up of the Dark Phoenix storyline in The Last Stand and the lousy portrayals of both Deadpool and Gambit in X-Men: Origins, I stopped watching X-Men movies. When the series was rebooted with X-Men: First Class, I shrugged my shoulders. When Hugh Jackman returned to play the titular character (yet again) in The Wolverine, I promptly forgot the movie existed. But now…along comes X-Men: Days of Future Past. DOFP was not only one of the best storylines from the comics, but Bryan Singer (director of the superlative X-Men and X2) was coming back to direct. Maybe this movie would be good?

I decided to give it a shot. I wasn’t too worried about watching the films out of order; I saw The Last Stand before X2, for example. I’d read enough about First Class that I was comfortable coming into a new X-Men movie with the new cast.

Thankfully, DOFP is an amazing movie and worth every positive review it gets. A quick summary: the movie opens in a dystopian future, where giant robots (Sentinels) are killing all mutants (and humans who may give birth to mutants). Most of the X-Men are dead, and the few remaining members of the team gather for one final fight. Using Kitty Pryde’s (Ellen Page) abilities, Professor X (Patrick Stewart) and Magneto (Ian McKellen) convince Wolverine (Jackman) to travel back in time and prevent an assassination, which they’ve identified as the key event that brings about the dystopian future. Wolverine must convince the younger Professor X (James McAvoy) to work together with the younger Magneto (Michael Fassbender) and stop Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) from finishing her mission.

The time-travel nature of DOFP allows Singer to retcon the universe to his liking, both using the First Class cast as well as his stalwarts from the first three X-Men movies. One of the biggest complaints about The Last Stand was its massive ensemble cast. Critics complained about the lack of screen time for all the new characters. While DOFP’s cast is just as large, Singer juggles his characters better. He succeeds at keeping the cast from feeling too large by limiting the number of new mutants in the past timeline. Once Wolverine returns to 1973, the movie almost becomes a character study, focusing mostly on the younger Professor X, Magneto, and Mystique. The younger actors, McAvoy, Fassbender, and Lawrence respectively, all crush their roles, successfully bring their own takes to the characters while standing as worthy successors to Stewart, McKellen and Rebecca Romijn.

I also have to give props to the art direction. What I remember about the Sentinels from the X-Men animated series is that they were big and kind of purple. But these Sentinels in DOFP aren’t the Sentinels of my childhood; they’re the Sentinels of my childhood nightmares. They’re big and unstoppable and genuinely scary, similar to the T-1000 from Terminator 2. If I were a mutant living in the dystopian future and came across these Sentinels, I’d just lay down, give up, and pray for a quick death.

X-Men: Days of Future Past is a movie that makes me excited for other movies. Quicksilver’s part in the 1973 storyline makes me excited to see him in Avengers: Age of Ultron. James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender’s takes on Professor X and Magneto make me excited about both the upcoming X-Men Apocalypse and the preceding X-Men: First Class. And after seeing Bryan Singer resurrect a franchise with its best movie yet, I’ll happily watch anything he puts his name on. (Checks IMDB.) Well…maybe not Jack the Giant Slayer…

tl;drs

Blank is a blanker version of blank: X-Men: Days of Future Past is as gritty an X-Men movie as one could wish for, with a note-perfect ensemble cast.

Screen credits over/under: Over. Four writers worked on DOFP, although the final movie looks as seamless as if it had been written by a single person.

Recommended if you like: The good X-Men movies, keeping Hugh Jackman in diaper money.

Better than I expected: James McAvoy kills it as a young, arrogant Professor X.

Worse than I hoped: Fifteen years since the first movie and I’m still waiting for a decent on-screen depiction of Gambit. Next year, maybe?

Verdict: Bryan Singer did his job well. Not only did I love this movie, but I have some catching up to do. Time to watch X-Men: First Class and The Wolverine.