Movie Review: X-Men – Days Of Future Past (2014)

It says much about how far comic book movies have come and how comfortable mainstream audiences are with reboots that we have reached a stage where a Days Of Future Past movie, featuring two teams of X-Men from two established cinematic versions of the franchise, can be made. That the film is directed by the man who helped usher the X-Men onto the silver screen in the first place is almost uncanny.

Slipping back into the franchise like a pair of familiar slippers, Bryan Singer’s X-Men: Days Of Future Past combines the original X-Men series (started in 2000) and 2011’s “groovy” 60’s set X-Men: First Class with ease. Delivering a thoroughly enjoyable X-Men film that does much to satisfy fans, as well as charm casual audiences (apart from a post-credits tease which, like that of The Avengers, may be completely unfathomable to more casual viewers).

Like a mutant magpie, Singer cherry-picks the shiniest elements from each series: reinstating Patrick Stewart’s Professor X and Ian McKellen’s Magneto as future versions of the characters still played by James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender, mostly ignoring their fates from X-Men: The Last Stand. Culling most of the mutants from First Class, although doing so in such a way that fuels the motivation of some of the remaining characters and retaining comic favourites Iceman, Kitty Pryde, Colossus and Storm, as well as adding his own batch of “new” mutants to the mix.

The plot concerns an older, grayer Wolverine traveling back through time from a nightmare future, where robotic “Sentinels” have eradicated most of mutant-kind, to a key point in X-history to prevent the event that will give birth to the seemingly unstoppable robotic menace. The only catch being that only Wolverine’s mind travels back in time to his younger self while his body remains in the future and must be protected, as time now progresses at the same speed in both the “new” past of 1973 and in this  linked future, some 50 years later, adding additional urgency to his task.

Rather than taking the Brett Ratner approach from The Last Stand and trying to introduce too large a cast of mostly underused new mutants to increase the scale of his story, Singer wisely limits the central story to a core few while telling a tale that affects them all. Well known comic and film characters such as Bishop, Storm, Iceman, etc. may be glanced in the background, but this is truly a story of Professor X, Magneto and Mystique. Like the comics, Days Of Future Past knows it’s best to focus the storytelling on a few core characters while throwing in enough mutants as a supporting cast to please the fans and possibly follow-up with in subsequent adventures. The X-Men comics boast a huge cast of characters, but this was built over decades and it rarely tried to cram every character into a single issue.

Singer also focuses on the people and how they change over time rather than just chasing MacGuffin’s. The entire plot revolves around one mutant’s decision to kill, the consequences of that act, and the rest of the characters coming to terms with what they can do versus what they want to do.

Considering the quality of the cast, it’s hardly necessary to state that they all perform well, with none of the high profile actors giving the impression that they are slumming it in a superhero film. As usual, Jackman IS The Wolverine, McAvoy and Fassbender play their roles well, and Jennifer Lawrence’s stunt-woman seems to have set herself a personal challenge to best Scarlett Johansson’s in the leg-based takedowns department. Any worries about McAvoy’s delivery from the trailers dissipates once the lines in question are seen in context. Nicholas Hoult is slightly underused as Professor X’s nursemaid, while Peter Dinklage’s Bolivar Trask is passable, the initial, repeated refusals of his Sentinel program can become a little comedic.

Would you buy an anti-mutant weapons program from this man?

The biggest worry going into Days Of Future Past was how the silver haired speedster, Quicksilver, was going to be portrayed after that awful burger advert. However, he’s handled well, even if he is only present for a small part of the film, and provides much of the (intentional) humour for his part of the film.

The long awaited appearance of the Sentinels themselves, in both their future and past variants, doesn’t disappoint. They may not match the thick purple lunacy of the comics, but they are no less lethal, and their usage does bring some surprises to parts of the film.  Speaking of which, the film features plenty of surprises, as not all the characters in 1973 are where you would expect them, the 10 years since First Class having taken their toll, and the film continues to delight in throwing surprises and in-jokes at you, although never at the expense  of the plot.

My only niggle with the film is that the score leans a little more heavily towards referencing the musical themes of Singer’s previous films rather than the Henry Jackman’s excellent First Class score (there is at least one reference in there, but I missed it until I’d listened to the soundtrack).

Fashions of Future Past

Fans of the series (both comic and film) will find much to love here, with cameos galore and pleasing details buried throughout the film. The action is exciting, but always in service to that central story.

James Mangold’s The Wolverine gave us hope that there was still some life left in Fox’s X-franchise. Days Of Future Past confirms that there is and lays out an interesting set of possibilities for where the series could go next: continue with the First Class team, reassemble the surviving characters from Singer’s series, or mix both? It could take more than 2 teams of X-Men, across multiple time periods, to combat the threat hinted at in the post-credits teaser.

Hopefully Fox can continue this trend and build their corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe up to the level achieved by Marvel Studios so far.