While Marvel Studios has been dominating the superhero landscape for some time and DC/Warner Bros. is fighting to keep up with their upcoming Superman/Batman face-off, the franchise that started it all has finally regained its place at the top of the comic book pyramid with X-Men: Days of Future Past.
Days of Future Past acts like a highway interchange for the disparate storylines and characters which have existed in the many X-Men movies made since Bryan Singer’s first film, called simply X-Men, in 2000. Past plots, relationships and characters – previously unconnected—merge in one place in a massive mutant extravaganza. Singer, directing for the first time since X-Men 2 (or X2) in 2003, re-energizes the franchise with his clear love for the characters and the world he launched 14 years ago.
The film pulls from the original X-Men franchise – which includes Singer’s two installments and X-Men: The Last Stand directed by Brett Ratner – as well as the 2011 prequel X-Men: First Class and even the terrible solo outing The Wolverine from last year. If the title wasn’t a clear enough indication, Days of Future Past is a time travel movie, allowing the audience to watch both the younger mutants from First Class as well as their older, more experienced selves from the original trilogy. The film is split between two time periods: the 1970s, which is roughly 10 years after the events of First Class, and about 20 years from now in a dark, hopeless world where mutants (and their human allies) are hunted like animals.
In the future, mutants are being wiped off the planet by giant, indestructible robots called Sentinels which can adapt to any mutant power almost instantaneously. The few remaining mutants in the resistance know their days are numbered. Led by Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and Magneto (Ian McKellen), their last hope is to send the consciousness of Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) backwards in time into the mind of his younger self just before the historic moment that forever solidified the war between humans and mutants.
Wolverine’s mission is not so easy. The younger Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) has given up hope for humanity and has become addicted to the powerful drug which gives him use of his legs in exchange for his telekinetic powers. Erik (Michael Fassbender), the future Magneto, is imprisoned within a maximum security federal prison from which escape is impossible. And Raven (Jennifer Lawrence), now Mystique, who is the key to fixing the future, is on a multi-continent manhunt for Dr. Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage) the man who invented the Sentinels as a way to identify and kill mutants. In order to rescue the remaining mutants in the future from total extinction, Wolverine needs the help of Charles and Erik to stop Mystique from assassinating Trask, the incident that sets the stage for the war between humans and mutants.
Days of Future Past is a brilliant film and an excellent resurrection of the X-Men universe, but it’s certainly not going to please every fan. In fact, many of the criticisms that will be bandied about online in the coming days are completely justifiable. Singer and screenwriter Simon Kinberg do cherry pick from the previous movies the storylines and plots that best fit the movie they want to make. They do take massive liberties with the original source material (the X-Men comic series Days of Future Past) and the each character plays. Finally, as evidenced from the seemingly unending IMDB cast page, Singer and Kinberg pack the movie with dozens of mutants, very few of whom get more than one or two lines of dialogue let alone genuine development.
But you know what? None of those criticisms matter because Days of Future Past is so damn good. The story is complex and clever in ways you might not suspect. Kinberg has crafted a screenplay that works as both a genuinely unique time travel movie and as a highly entertaining installment in a superhero franchise. X-Men: First Class was not originally intended to perfectly fit within the universe of the original trilogy, but Singer and Kinberg make it work beautifully. We aren’t given every detail of what happened in the decades which are absent from this story, but we have enough clues to piece it together for ourselves.
Almost as important, the movie is constantly entertaining. Though it’s not as action heavy as The Avengers and the rest of the Marvel Universe movies, the plot moves quickly and never strays far from its central focus. Visually the film is stunning, especially the design of the Sentinels (both past and future) and the ways they manipulate their surroundings. Though there are just a handful of fight sequences, we get a clear idea of how it was so easy for the Sentinels to eradicate the mutant “threat.”
The characters are written a little thin because it’s assumed that audiences will have at least a casual familiarity with who each one is and their relationships amongst each other. Jackman is, as always, fantastic as Wolverine, a role we won’t get sick of him playing any time soon. Fassbender, though, is the emotional core of the film. In First Class, we got a strong sense of Erik’s inner struggle with how to handle humans. In Days of Future Past, young Erik is no longer struggling; he has judged humans and has decided they must be destroyed. Fassbender plays Erik with the fiery passion that has appeared in every one of his on-screen performances.
With an intelligent and playful script and epic tone, X-Men: Days of Future Past is an excellent installment and hopefully a rejuvenation of the X-Men franchise.
Grade: A
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