Released: May 23rd, 2014
Rated: PG-13
Studio: Twentieth Century Fox
Starring: Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael
Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Halle Berry, Anna Paquin, Ellen Page, Peter
Dinklage, Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart
Directed by: Bryan Singer
Written by: Simon Kinberg
Personal Bias Alert: X-Men
is my favorite franchise, haven’t read any of the comics, vaguely remembers
watching the ‘90’s cartoon
8.5 of 10
Hugh
Jackman’s Wolverine has been the breakout star of the X-Men franchise from the
beginning. He was the conduit for the
audience in the first film back in 2000 and served as the anchor for the rest
of the trilogy. He’s the only character
to have an individual film (in fact, he has two), and of the seven films in the
X-Men franchise, only “X-Men: First
Class” didn’t feature him in a starring role.
No surprise, then, that when the writers chose a time-bending storyline
from the comics for the next film, they changed the time traveler from Kitty
Pryde to Wolverine.
There’s
actually another good reason for making that change. Wolverine is a survivor, a man who’s lived an
inordinately long life, and because of that has endured more than the rest of
them. He sort of operates as the
franchise’s observer; he experiences everything, takes on most of the pain, and
lives with the memories. It’s made him
gruff and closed-off, and yet he’s managed to retain some measure of hope. Given what he’s been through, that hope has
weight, and it becomes imperative that he gets that across in “Days of Future
Past.”
At
the opening, humanity has turned on the X-Men from the original trilogy and are
hunting them down using robots called Sentinels. Their only hope for survival is to send
Wolverine’s consciousness back to the 1970s to stop Mystique (Jennifer
Lawrence) from killing the Sentinel’s designer and inadvertently giving the
humans the key to the Sentinel’s future success: the ability to take on a mutant’s powers.
Most
of the film takes place in the flashback, with Wolverine teaming up with the
cast from “First Class” to stop Mystique.
Wolverine finds everyone reeling from the events of “First Class,” none
more so than Prof. Xavier (James McAvoy).
He’s boozy and petulant, despondent over the losses he’s endured. Wolverine’s main job becomes coaxing Prof. X
into becoming the man he knew and the man everyone needs.
Casting
has always been a strong suit for the X-Men franchise, particularly in “First
Class.” Here they get to pick the best
of the best, with Jackman, McAvoy, Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult as Beast, and
Michael Fassbender as Magneto forming the central dream team. They play off each other with ease, and the
script gives them the opportunity to do some electric one-on-one scenes. Their backing cast, many of which are listed
as stars, include Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Ellen Page, Peter Dinklage,
and Halle Berry, to name a few.
A
great cast is always exciting, but a poor script can leave you burned. Hearing about the plot, there were so many
red flags that I went into “Days of Future Past” with my guard up. Time travel?
Mixed-trilogies cast? Terrible
title? I didn’t see how they could pull
off this seemingly bloated concept while retaining the strong character beats
that has made the X-Men franchise stand out.
It got off to a rocky start with a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it explanation
of why Kitty had to send Wolverine back in time and the nonexistent explanation
for why Kitty can do this, even though I thought her ability was to run through
walls. But once Wolverine wakes up in
the ‘70s, the story settles into a nicely building arc that feels smoother than
most blockbusters. Once you buy into the
central conceit, the plot holds together fairly well, and the character stuff
is just as strong as it was in “X-Men” or “X2.”
I’ve
always had a sneaking suspicion with the X-Men franchise that it works so well
for me due to distraction. There’s so
many characters with so many different abilities that there’s always something
or someone interesting to focus on, and particularly the films with Bryan
Singer at the helm are good at knowing when to jump from one thing to
another. With most blockbusters there
are three or four main characters, generally all working together towards the
same thing. This makes the plot pretty
linear, giving you time to note all the holes.
The X-Men films almost always involves a massive, scattered cast of
characters doing all sorts of visually interesting things, so when I start to
think “Hey, that didn’t make sense,” I can’t even get the thought through my
head before they’ve moved on. I’m not
sure how Singer’s able to do that, but I’m sure some of the credit should also go
to Editor John Ottman.
Ottman
also provided the music for the film, which is just one in a long list of
smaller things that the film got right.
What I love about the music is how it changes as the characters embark
on different tasks. The jailbreak scene,
featuring a great bit part by Evan Peters, has a classic heist score, while
some of the large set pieces having a thundering score more reminiscent of
“Inception.” The ‘70s clothes and hair
is fitting without being distracting, and the visual effects are stunning. As always with the X-Men films, I have to
give it props for mixing in some solid humor as well.
The
most surprising thing about this film is how little it did wrong. It goes down easy and remarkably
quickly. It’s not until you leave the
theater that you realize how hard it must have been to do so many things so
well.
Other
Notes (Ridiculous Mutant Version):
Ø Why
couldn’t the portal girl just have everyone huddle together and make a portal
surrounding them so the Sentinels can’t touch them?
Ø Why
couldn’t portal girl just create a portal for them all to go through that would
take them away from the Sentinels? Just
put Wolverine on a gurney and wheel him through.
Ø Why
did Magneto fling himself so haphazardly onto the train? He normally moves at a nice controlled pace.
Other
Notes (Normal Version):
Ø I
liked that there weren’t too many “Hey, it’s the ‘70s!” jokes
Ø The
scene where Prof. X enters Wolverine’s mind is great. I love that McAvoy’s tear stain was visible
in his close-up.
Ø So
in the new future, everyone’s alive. Even
if we didn’t go to war, shouldn’t someone have died of natural causes or a car
crash or something?
Ø I
live in Indianapolis, IN, and with the Indy 500 going on this weekend, the
movie theaters were remarkably quiet.
Hopefully, that doesn’t hurt this film’s box office.
Ø I’ve
already seen this film twice, once in 2D and once in 3D. I preferred the 2D. The darkened picture I got at the 3D showing
made several facial expressions less clear, and I always feel like 3D blurs the
fight sequences.
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