X-Men: Days of Future Past [M]

The war between humans and mutants has hit its zenith with mutant-targeting and immune robots called Sentinels brutally destroying all mutants in their path. The only hope for mutant kind falls to Charles Xavier and Magneto who decide to send Logan back in time to stop the event that triggered the entire war: Mystique’s assassination of the Sentinels’ creator. 

Admittedly, it’s been a while since I watched any X-Men films, definitely ages since I saw First Class and as such, it took me some time to ground myself within the fragmented timeline that these movies follow. Indeed I sort of gave up on that front altogether and just concentrated on this movie as a singular movie. 

With any Marvel film, be it in the Avengers universe or the X-Men universe, there is a generic contract between film and audience. In other words, you’re always certain of what you’re going to get in terms of a cinematic experience and the films always deliver that. Days of Future Past is no exception to this rule and what you get is a good action/sci-fi movie experience. 

Beginning right in the middle of a battle, the film resurrects faces we haven’t seen in years, and then gives us a good exposition dump that sets the narrative ripples in motion. It’s not the smoothest or cleverest display of a screenwriter’s abilities, but it gets the job done. As the film chronicles two time frames running parallel to one other, we get a nice hit of time warp fun like The Matrix or Inception though not as cleverly done. 

The story itself is accessible and interesting with the internal struggles of characters giving the narrative its flow and drama. Ultimately we have three central dramas about choice and redemption that drive the film along: those of Xavier, Raven, and Eric (who’s is admittedly pretty damned predictable as we’ve seen it done before). 

But despite the physical and emotional battles that make up the film’s girth and the fun of time travel, it can’t be said that is the greatest X-Men movie to date. For a start, a lot of the plotlines are predictable. Now this would not be so much of an issue if the film did not take itself as seriously as it does. When I first got into X-Men it was because of the banter and humour that was so beautifully injected between dramatic scenes to bring balance to the movie and keep the fun of the genre. This is something that is sadly lacking in this movie and what is more, it seems that it has been replaced with inspiration speeches about the paths that tie the future to the past. Whilst a lot of these speeches are moving and establish a good vibe for the film, they just don’t bring that balance and because there are more of them than sometimes is necessary, they tend to lose some of that aspiration that they seek to create. What happens then is that audiences listen but don’t take anything away from them that they can then apply to the world; just words from a character on a screen. 

Whilst the action sequences and the special effects are quite stunning and visually impeccable, technological bounds cannot substitute for a trying script and an unsalted narrative and unfortunately that’s what makes this movie a little bit underwhelming for me. 

Starring Hugh Jackman, Ellen Page, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Halle Berry, Nicholas Hoult, Peter Dinklage, Shawn Ashmore, Omar Sy, Evan Peters, Bingbing Fan, Patrick Stewart, and Ian McKellen, X-Men: Days of Future Past is an enjoyable action movie and it does deliver the expected thrills of an X-Men movie, but it doesn’t attempt to go beyond that generic promise. Filled with action, science fiction, history, war, drama, and the smallest smatterings of comedy, it’s a fine film.