Saturday, May 24, 2014

X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) review

(Note: Before I start this review, I want to address the recent controversy surrounding the recent allegations made against director Bryan Singer. True or not, these charges have no connection to this film whatsoever so it will in no way affect the following review.)


I’m fairly certain that, for quite a lot of people, ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’ will be their most anticipated film of the year and there are quite a few reasons for why this is. It’s based on one of the most iconic storylines in the history of the X-Men comics, 1981’s ‘Days of Future Past’, written by Chris Claremont and John Byrne. Taking the director’s chair for this film is Bryan Singer, the same man who brought the film franchise to relevance in the first place with 2000’s ‘X-Men’ and 2003’s ‘X2: X-Men United’. It’s safe to say that when he left the franchise after that, the series began to go downhill with the extremely disappointing ‘X-Men: The Last Stand’ and the god-awful ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’. Thankfully, Singer returned (albeit only as a producer/co-writer) for 2011’s ‘X-Men: First Class’, which was certainly a return to form for the franchise. Heck, Wolverine even got a far superior solo film, ‘The Wolverine’, and the post-credits scene for that film set up what was to come for this film. Finally, because of this film taking place in different time periods, this film features one heck of an ensemble cast, probably the largest to date in the history of the franchise, consisting of members from both the original trilogy and the ‘First Class’ cast. But at the end of the day, will this film be able to live up to expectations? In two words… Hell yea!

In the year 2023, the mutant race is on the verge of extinction as a group of sentient robots known as Sentinels are in control, exterminating mutants left and right and they are even persecuting any humans who try to help them. In order to end this war in which the mutants are very much outnumbered, Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and Magneto (Ian McKellen) form a plan, with the help of Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page), who has the ability to send a person’s conscious back in time, to send Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) back in time to the year 1973 when the defining moment that led to the beginning of this war occurred; the assassination of Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage), the creator of the Sentinels, carried out by Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence). Once back in time, Wolverine finds the young Xavier (James McAvoy) and the young Magneto (Michael Fassbender) as he attempts to have them team up so that they can all stop this dark future from happening before it even begins. But this won’t be that easy, as there quite a bit of bad blood between the two following the whole Cuban Missile Crisis debacle in ‘First Class’.

Now while this is a very big ensemble cast, at the end of the day the film mainly focuses on four characters; Wolverine and the three main stars of the First Class cast; the young iterations of Xavier, Magneto, and Mystique (though thankfully, Wolverine doesn’t overshadow any of them here). As for the rest of the mutants featured in this film, they’re mostly just cameos, though some do get a decent amount of screen time like Beast (Nicholas Hoult) and Quicksilver (Evan Peters), the latter of which has one of the best sequences in the entire film. There’s also not really a definitive villain here; sure, Bolivar Trask does play a key part in the film’s overall story but he’s actually more of a side character here. So even though the bulk of this film’s ensemble cast isn’t given as much attention as the main characters, this film still does a great job at not only having quite the variety of mutants on display but by also really showing the ‘team’ aspect that defines this franchise as evident through a lot of the very well done action sequences. Also, if you’re still pissed about ‘X3’ and ‘Origins’, then don’t worry because this film basically says ‘screw you’ to those films in regards to what happens in this film and from what I can tell, that was the filmmakers’ main goal; to right the wrongs (mostly in regards to continuity problems) from those two films and they do succeed in doing so.

In ‘First Class’, the standout member of the cast was Michael Fassbender as Magneto, though James McAvoy did an equally terrific job as Xavier in that film. Here, McAvoy’s the big standout, not only because this is easily McAvoy’s best performance in the role to date (even though this is only his second film appearance in the franchise) but the writing for this character and the arc that he goes through in this movie is just fantastic, as he continues to grow into the Xavier that we know from the original trilogy (on that note, Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen, like a lot of the other cast members in this film, are basically just doing cameos here but regardless of that, it’s really nice to see these two back). But of course, Fassbender is excellent once again as is Hugh Jackman (I’m not sure yet if this is his best performance in the role to date after his excellent turn in ‘The Wolverine’ but I’d say it’s definitely one of the best) and Jennifer Lawrence. In fact, the whole cast is great here; this is the first time in a while in regards to these movies where I can’t think of any ‘weak links’ in the cast (which unfortunately was the case with ‘First Class’ and ‘The Wolverine’, which both had one weak link in their casts).

Do you want to know how good this film was? It’s so good that I think that I’m actually becoming more of an X-Men fan than I had been before (I was a general fan of the movies but I haven’t read the comics or watched the 90’s TV series) because of it. This is definitely one of the finest X-Men films to date, if not the best. Not only does it erase the bad memories of ‘X-Men: The Last Stand’ and ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’ but in terms of its essence, this truly feels like an X-Men movie with plenty of mutant action and some excellent action sequences (this film also has the best climax in the entire franchise to date). I was hooked into this film almost immediately after it started and for what is certainly a lot of people’s most anticipated film of the year, this film really doesn’t disappoint. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again… thank god Bryan Singer returned to this franchise because it’s clear that he understands this franchise and now thanks to this film, the series’ chronology is far more consistent following the whole debacle of ‘X3’ and ‘Origins’ and hopefully he’ll stay for good this time as the series will continue on. It’s already been announced (and is briefly hinted at in this film’s post credits scene) what’s happening next.


Rating: 5/5!

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