Directed by Bryan Singer
Starring: Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender and Jennifer Lawrence
For all its flaws, “X-Men: Days of Future’s Past” still has much more to love than to hate.
In fact, it’s one of the best super hero films to come out in recent memory.
Certainly better than “The Amazing Spider-man 2” earlier this month…
(Seriously, fuck that movie…)
While Sony can barely muster an argument anymore as to why they should still own the rights to Spider-Man, 20th Century Fox is proving that not only can they still keep X-Men interesting but that they have a vision for the future and fans should be excited about it.
So fuck you Marc Webb! (You…You human paraquat!)
Anyways, the story plays out a lot like “Terminator” meets X-Men; a similar dystopian future is set with machines aka The Sentinels ruling the earth and enslaving mankind and in order to stop them Kitty Pryde must send Wolverine back in time to stop Mystique from setting off a chain of events that lead to the war.
How Kitty Pryde can suddenly send people back in time is never explained, nor why and how the Sentinels became as powerful as they did but once again the movie kicks butt in so many ways that it really won’t bother most fans anyways.
(seriously, this was pretty awesome!)
Part of Bryan Singer’s strengths with the original films weren’t really his sense of action or visual effects but how he was able to handle a vast group of characters and keep them all deep and emotionally interesting.
Hugh Jackman as always is at his Wolverine best and James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender and Jennifer Lawrence all play their roles as professor Xavier, Magneto and Mystique respectively very well.
To steal a few lines from a friend, they play off each other almost as dysfunctional family members and the effect is perfect in setting up the tone of the film.
We feel for these characters and their struggle and that’s more than can be said about most of the Marvel Studio’s films, which seem more concerned with churning out movies as quickly as possible with little interest to the characters themselves so they can get to the next “Avengers” film (“Winter Solider” being the lone exception). (Take a bow, Cap…)
But Singer does nail the action in this movie well on several occasions with Wolverine doing Wolverine things, Magneto doing Magneto things and shit just blowing up and going horribly wrong in the dystopian future involving the Sentinels. (Gratuitous Hugh Jackman ab shots…)
Even Quicksilver, whom everybody assumed would be awful before the movie came out based on his terrible outfit design and awful Carl’s Jr. commercials, had one of the best scenes of the movie.
It’s just a shame we ended up only seeing a bit of him in the end.
(Haters gunna hate…)
Of course, as mentioned, the movie is enjoyable but extremely flawed.
For all the things the movie does right it does a lot of things wrong in terms of following logical steps in plot and story structure.
It tip toes and harasses the line of believability multiple times throughout the movie and many times the audience is just left to say “Fuck it, I guess I’ll just roll with it.”
Time travel is always a sticky plot device to work with but even still it needs to operate with more forms of logic than “Just take our word for it.”
There are other moments in the movie that will leave many fans scratching their head and will probably rub a few fans the wrong way.
Several of the characters are also severely underwritten.
If you’re a big Peter Dinklage fan don’t expect to hear too many lines out of him.
He’s mostly relegated to a side role to enhance the story but not really have a story of his own.
Dinklage’s Bolivar Trask is just raging against the mutants and there really isn’t much motivation beyond that,
(awww don’t cry Tyrion, it’s not your fault the script sucked on your end…)
Once again, the film still delivers on the emotional arcs of the other main characters and will leave most fans satisfied when they leave the theater.
Unlike another super hero film that failed to deliver on this…
(If only the franchise could have ended right there…)
“X-Men: Days of Future’s Past” is thus far the most satisfying film to come out this summer for me and once again despite its numerous flaws it’s an overall solid movie.
Unfortunately those flaws keep it from being an otherwise perfect super hero film but I think for most people a “B” is still a pretty nice grade to have.
Just be thankful it isn’t “The Amazing Spider-man 2.”
(Ok I’ll shut up now…)
So simply put if you enjoyed any of the previous X-Men movies you’re more than likely going to have a good time with this one.
Just repeat to yourself it’s just a movie about mutants with freaky powers fighting giant robots and the whole space time continuum thing shouldn’t be too big of a problem…
Rating: 4 out of 5
Those policemen = haters