Movie Review: X-Men: Days of Future Past

X-Men: Days of Future Past/Dir. by Bryan Singer/20th Century Fox/Rated PG-13/131 min.

The X-Men have sure had a bumpy road at the movies.  First, there was X-Men, Bryan Singer's first big budget movie and a film that really paved the way for the superhero revolution of the last ten years by proving a comic book movie could be good and popular without containing the words Superman or Batman.  Singer then followed up with X2: X-Men United, a movie that many still consider one of the best superhero films ever made.  Singer then left the franchise to pursue Superman Returns leaving the super mutants in the hands of one Brett Ratner, the mastermind behind the Rush Hour movies.  While his visual skills on X-Men: The Last Stand were actually quite impressive (the incident at the Gray household is still one of the most stunning sequences in the franchise), it also was a little too happy to unceremoniously kill off major characters and minimalized one of the most beloved story arcs in the comic books.  Then there was X-Men Origins:Wolverine, which....well....the less said the better.  Next was the obligatory prequel/reboot, X-Men: First Class, which ended up being a fantastically entertaining look at how Professor X and Magneto first met and started gathering mutants together.  For my money, this was the best of the series at that point.  Finally, 20th Century Fox erased the memory of the first Wolverine movie with the economically titled, The Wolverine, not a great film, but leaps and bounds ahead of Wolvie's first solo outing.

Well, the powers that be brought Singer back to direct X-Men: Days of Future Past, a story arc that would bring together both the original cast and the First Class cast and a film that is the highlight of the entire series.  More than just a big summer explode-fest, DoFP is a movie about characters and ideas that just happens to have some mind-blowing action set-pieces.

Starting in a dystopian future roughly 20 years after the events of The Last Stand, the X-Men are fighting for their lives against Terminator-like robots called Sentinels that can mimic any mutants powers and are built specifically to exterminate all mutant kind.  In a last desperate attempt to save themselves, they decide to have Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page) use her powers to send Wolverine's (Hugh Jackman) conscious back to his younger body in 1973 in an effort to stop the events that lead to the creation of the Sentinels.  This future works mostly as a bookend to the film with the majority of the film taking place in '73 with the First Class cast.  Wolverine must get Professor X (James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender) to work together in spite of their bitter differences in order to stop the chain of events that leads to cataclysmic world war.

In the family of superheroes, the X-Men have always been the super brainy, but brooding cousins.  The films are far more about ideas than just super battles and in Days of Future Past the ideas are largely about choice vs. fatalism.  There's the fundamental plot arc in which the hope of changing the future is inherent, plus there's the individual character struggles and younger versions prove that they are not necessarily destined to become the same people they were in the original trilogy.  The conceit of time travel is not only a great plot device to examine the cause and effect of single decisions, but it's also a great way to celebrate the film series while erasing the memory of its less celebrated moments.  

The performances are, across the board, terrific.  Fassbender and McAvoy get even more opportunities to stretch their emotive muscles, while Jennifer Lawrence's Mystique is expanded to a level fitting of her current popularity.  She's the perfect person to play this character, filling her with a confidence, yet a vulnerability that was not found in Rebecca Romijn's incarnation.  However, it's Evan Peters as Quicksilver that steals the entire show.  It's unusual in a film series that's been around this long to feel a sense of discovery and that's what this character is.  He's only on screen for about 15 minutes, but he owns the screen in that time and there's certainly a feeling of disappointment when he leaves.  Here's hoping Quicksilver can be a big part of the already announced X-Men: Apocalypse , coming to a theater near you in 2016.

I promise not to get spoilery, but the final scenes of Days of Future Past will elate any fan of the series.  There were audible sounds of crying, happy laughing, and involuntary clapping in the theater during these scenes and they elevate what was already a very good film to the level of epic.  Hopefully, Singer will continue guiding the series well past Apocalypse, because in his hands, the X-Men are certainly among the best that superhero films have to offer.

To 3D or not to 3D:  The 3D has some nice moments, giving depth to the future worlds while enveloping the viewer in the action, but it's not vital to the story.  If you enjoy 3D, it's an easy recommendation, but if you're not sold on 3D technology, you're safe to see the 2D version.

Bottom line:  This is the first great film of the summer and the best of the franchise.  If you have any vested interest in the X-Men or in great action movies in general, this is a must see.

Grade: A