X-Men: Days of Future Past
Directed by: Bryan Singer
Written by: Simon Kinberg; Story by: Jane Goldman & Simon Kinberg & Matthew Vaughn
Starring: Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Halle Berry, Nicholas Hoult, Ellen Page, Peter Dinklage, Shawn Ashmore, Omar Sy, Evan Peters, Josh Helman, Daniel Cudmore, Bingbing Fan, Adan Canto, Booboo Stewart, Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, Lucas Till, Evan Jonigkeit, Mark Camacho, Gregg Lowe, Michael Lerner
Action/Adventure/Fantasy/Sci-Fi - 131 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl, 23 May 2014
Written by: Simon Kinberg; Story by: Jane Goldman & Simon Kinberg & Matthew Vaughn
Starring: Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Halle Berry, Nicholas Hoult, Ellen Page, Peter Dinklage, Shawn Ashmore, Omar Sy, Evan Peters, Josh Helman, Daniel Cudmore, Bingbing Fan, Adan Canto, Booboo Stewart, Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, Lucas Till, Evan Jonigkeit, Mark Camacho, Gregg Lowe, Michael Lerner
Action/Adventure/Fantasy/Sci-Fi - 131 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl, 23 May 2014
In 2009, the Star Trek franchise sent a character back in time, altered history, and made it so that every Star Trek TV episode and movie you have ever seen never existed. The franchise rebooted and freed itself to bring back any number of characters and/or situations in order to make it easier to pen screenplays geared toward fan nostalgia. X-Men: Days of Future Past plagiarizes the exact same premise. A main character is sent back in time to alter history to not only make the future a better place, but to perhaps bring back a whole host of characters who have fallen by the wayside in previous films.
Acting as a sequel to two films, 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand and 2011’s X-Men: First Class, the new installment has the opportunity to bring back the X-Men crew fans are familiar with instead of focusing on just Wolverine (Hugh Jackman, 2013’s Prisoners) whose character’s two recent spin-offs, 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine and 2013’s The Wolverine, focus solely on his backstory and adventures. Instead, the audience gets another story with Wolverine as the main character leaving the far more interesting mutants to fight it out in supporting roles. Wouldn’t you know it; Wolverine is the lucky guy who goes back in time.
Acting as a sequel to two films, 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand and 2011’s X-Men: First Class, the new installment has the opportunity to bring back the X-Men crew fans are familiar with instead of focusing on just Wolverine (Hugh Jackman, 2013’s Prisoners) whose character’s two recent spin-offs, 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine and 2013’s The Wolverine, focus solely on his backstory and adventures. Instead, the audience gets another story with Wolverine as the main character leaving the far more interesting mutants to fight it out in supporting roles. Wouldn’t you know it; Wolverine is the lucky guy who goes back in time.
As the idea of time travel is always a tricky one unless the plot just ignores how it happens, it is not really Wolverine going back in time, but his consciousness, one of the powers of the future’s youngest surviving X-man, Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page, 2013’s The East). She and a handful of the few remaining X-Men hatch a plan to send Wolverine back to 1973 to stop Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence, 2013’s American Hustle) from murdering a man whom they attribute as the catalyst for starting the war between humans and mutants.
The man is Dr. Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage, HBO’s Game of Thrones) whose favorite hobby is dissecting dead mutants to research their bodies and harvest their unique DNA. Wolverine must engage the help of a skeptical young Professor Charles Xavier (James McAvoy, 2013’s Trance) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender, 2013’s 12 Years a Slave), mortal enemies in the year 1973, to help him stop the murder. Xavier is a depressed alcoholic while Magneto is imprisoned 100 stories beneath the Pentagon for an intriguing crime; hey, nobody said Wolverine’s job was going to be easy. By the way, if you are familiar with what the inside of the Pentagon looks like, you are in for a treat.
The man is Dr. Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage, HBO’s Game of Thrones) whose favorite hobby is dissecting dead mutants to research their bodies and harvest their unique DNA. Wolverine must engage the help of a skeptical young Professor Charles Xavier (James McAvoy, 2013’s Trance) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender, 2013’s 12 Years a Slave), mortal enemies in the year 1973, to help him stop the murder. Xavier is a depressed alcoholic while Magneto is imprisoned 100 stories beneath the Pentagon for an intriguing crime; hey, nobody said Wolverine’s job was going to be easy. By the way, if you are familiar with what the inside of the Pentagon looks like, you are in for a treat.
Director Bryan Singer, returning to the series after directing the first two X-Men films, employs the standard tactics of showing the audience we are in 1973; there are lava lamps, waterbeds, big collars, and big hair. There are no X-Men yet as most of the key players are still quite young but every now and then we get an interaction with a particularly engaging mutant. By far, the most interesting mutant is Peter Maximoff aka Quicksilver (Evan Peters). This teenager is similar to The Flash, he moves faster than you can see, can move through rain without getting wet, move bullets mid-flight, and can steal anything he wants to. There is a scene inside the Pentagon while trying to break out Magneto set to Jim Croce’s “Time in a Bottle” which is not only the best scene in the film, but perhaps one of the best action scenes from the past few years. I would gladly sit through this movie’s plot holes and monotonous Wolverine centricity if I could see this scene again.
The Quicksilver character may cause those of you not as familiar with the comic books and the X-Men to question his presence in the film. Yes, Quicksilver is an X-Man and he is also an Avenger. The character you remember from the credits scene in Captain America: The Winter Soldier is the same character, but due to a deal between the franchises, he will be played by a different actor and no allusion will be made that he operates in both groups. Confused yet? This is not the only instance referencing the complex inside lore and mythology of the X-Men. Just as the new Star Trek reboot may incorporate tribbles as a side gag for those in the know, X-Men will now start doing the same thing.
The Quicksilver character may cause those of you not as familiar with the comic books and the X-Men to question his presence in the film. Yes, Quicksilver is an X-Man and he is also an Avenger. The character you remember from the credits scene in Captain America: The Winter Soldier is the same character, but due to a deal between the franchises, he will be played by a different actor and no allusion will be made that he operates in both groups. Confused yet? This is not the only instance referencing the complex inside lore and mythology of the X-Men. Just as the new Star Trek reboot may incorporate tribbles as a side gag for those in the know, X-Men will now start doing the same thing.
Visually, Days of Future Past uses the third dimension to its advantage unlike most other recent action films that merely have you pay the 3D surcharge but offer you no added benefit except a darker image and uncomfortable glasses. Multiple fight scenes and certainly the gorgeous sequence with Quicksilver employ 3D effectively making this film one of the very few I will recommend you seek out in its 3D format. We also only get a few but provocative glimpses of what the year 2023 looks like; apparently, the war between humans and mutants has destroyed most of the world and annihilated its major cities. I understand the motivation to send someone back in time, but 2023 would be more appealing to watch than 1973, even if Magneto picks up RFK stadium from its foundation and moves it.
X-Men: First Class rebooted the franchise a mere three years ago. The prequel did not even send someone back in time to do it. Rebooting it again so soon does not automatically mean writer Simon Kinberg could not think of a story after Last Stand or First Class. Perhaps it was the most convenient mechanism to have both Patrick Stewart and James McAvoy show up in the same movie as the same character. Thumbs up to Kinberg and Singer for what they did with Quicksilver; otherwise, there would be far more paragraphs here dissecting time travel, or consciousness transportation, or whatever it is.
X-Men: First Class rebooted the franchise a mere three years ago. The prequel did not even send someone back in time to do it. Rebooting it again so soon does not automatically mean writer Simon Kinberg could not think of a story after Last Stand or First Class. Perhaps it was the most convenient mechanism to have both Patrick Stewart and James McAvoy show up in the same movie as the same character. Thumbs up to Kinberg and Singer for what they did with Quicksilver; otherwise, there would be far more paragraphs here dissecting time travel, or consciousness transportation, or whatever it is.
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