Movie Review: X-Men: Days of Future Past

The following review originally ran on Starpulse.com in 2014.

In Bryan Singer’s sequel X-Men: Days of Future Past, the emotional stakes are much higher than in his previous films X-Men and X-Men 2. That’s because mutants aren’t just ostracized for being different, they’re attacked as an entire species. Days of Future Past is more engaging due to the morally complex evolutionary battle that mankind wages against mutants in its attempt to defy Darwinism by any means necessary.

Humanity’s extreme measures involve deadly robots called sentinels designed to exterminate mutants. In the movie’s opening, we see a war torn future where the sentinels have killed millions of mutants. Only a few that we know are left: Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), Professor X (Patrick Stewart), Magneto (Ian McKellen), Kitty Pride (Ellen Page), and a couple of others. Because Kitty now has time travel powers, they decide to send Wolverine back to stop the war. She pushes him to the 1970s, where he must unite young Professor X (James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender) so that together, they can prevent Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) from causing the whole mess.

Although the mechanics of time travel make no sense, somehow Days of Future Past reconciles all of the previous X-Men film plots into a movie that does. It probably works because scribe Simon Kinberg wrote X-Men: The Last Stand and he’s assisted on this story by Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn who penned X-Men: First Class. A consequence of trying to tie all these pictures though, is the need for numerous flashbacks and boring, heavy exposition in the dialogue. Kinberg and Singer tell everything instead of showing it, so it’s not required that viewers know the other X-Men to get this one, but if they do, the script comes off stupider, especially on top of all the ten-cent wisdom uttered by these characters.

Despite its two hour and ten minute length, Days of Future Past moves at a fast pace since time in the future keeps ticking while Wolverine is on his mission. His quest has greater urgency because he must succeed before his friends there are killed. Additionally, cinematographer Nigel Thomas Sigel keeps the momentum brisk with his swooping, sliding camerawork. The film’s editing tends to be equally fast in action scenes, but it gets just a touch too frenetic during some fights, making things difficult to follow.

The 3D in Days of Future Past is extremely well-done and doesn’t suffer from that common problem where you stop noticing it after a while. All of the characters’ powers also look fantastic. Their abilities are slick in the future, although they’re even cooler in the past when we get to see mutants like the super-fast Quicksilver (Evan Peters) create mischief and mayhem. Because these effects are so polished, all of the mutants feel unique and fully developed.

All of the franchise’s returning actors are entertaining, however the movie’s standout is Peter Dinklage, who plays the villain Bolivar Trask. Since he’s such a talented performer, Dinklage’s work pops on its own, but it’s nice too that no one ever mentions his small stature. The most fascinating thing about Trask, is the depth that Dinklage and the writers give him. Trask sees the struggle against mutants simultaneously as a needed way to unify humans and an unfortunate necessity to ensure their survival as a species.

X-Men: Days of Future Past may have stupid dialogue and plot holes with its time travel nonsense, however it’s still wicked entertaining, looks polished, and it moves. Plus there’s an interesting moral dilemma at its core. Not even this cynic who thought X-Men and X-Men 2 were lackluster could complain much.

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