Director: Bryan Singer
Starring: Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Jennifer Lawrence, Michael Fassbender, Nicholas Hoult, Peter Dinklage, Ellen Page, Evan Peters, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Shawn Ashmore, Halle Berry, Omar Sy, Josh Helman, Lucas Till, Fan Bingbing, Adan Canto, Booboo Stewart, Daniel Cudmore, Evan Jonigkeit, Mark Camacho
Across fourteen years and seven movies, the X-Men have always been far behind their other Marvel counterparts, such as the multi billion Avengers or Spider-Man, at the box office and in recent years have slipped back from their critical credibility; the series only three three instalments to really be proud of, namely 1, 2 and First Class. Fox’s masterplan to return X-Men to its status as the superhero monopoly is to bring back Bryan Singer (the man who made the mutants into a success), take one the most famous X-Men storylines (Phoenix and Hellfire Club are already taken), unite two very different casts and ramp up the budget to $200 million, risky business for a franchise yet to individually surpass the $500 million mark.
The year is 2023 and The Sentinels, adapting robots programmed to kill all mutants and humans carrying the X-Gene, have ravaged the world into an apocalyptic wasteland. The remaining X-Men, Professor X (Patrick Stewart), Magneto (McKellen), Storm (Berry), Colossus (Cudmore) and Iceman (Ashmore), opt to use the powers of Kitty Pryde (Page) to project Wolverine’s (Jackman) consciousness into his body fifty years ago in order to prevent Mystique (Lawrence) from inadvertently instigating The Sentinels’ creation. To do this, Logan must unite the younger Charles (McAvoy) and Erik (Fassbender) at a time that they couldn’t be further apart.
Days of Future Past has divided opinion but it’s indisputable that its increase in scale confirms it as the first truly epic mutant adventure. It’s immensely exciting for X-Men comic fans to, at last, see the series finally reaching The Avengers’ heights. It may well be overshadowed by the recent Godzilla but, painstakingly trying to not give too much away, Magneto’s stadium sequence is one of the great set pieces of the year.
While arguably scattershot and rough in its plot, the film’s script, constructed in chief by Simon Kinberg, Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn, is the first to have genuine power in its dialogue – fans may get teary. The decision to make Mystique the villain who has to be stopped philosophically rather than physically is inspired. The Dark Knight can sleep easy and its still the best superhero film of all time but DOFP is by far the most emotional.
Across the giant ensemble, the majority of that emotional power comes from a masterful performance from James McAvoy. His Xavier is a broken one since his crippling incident eleven years before, regularly taking a serum that gives his legs life but crucially takes away his telepathic powers. Logan was once a recluse reformed by Xavier and, although the Canadian is infamously intolerant, he must now return the favour. This leads to the most electrifying discussion there’s been in an action movie in a meeting of minds between McAvoy and the equally admirable Patrick Stewart.
Hugh Jackman meanwhile is channelling his usual action steeliness but thankfully this is the first time that he’s really owned the role since X2. Wolverine’s action in this instalment is excellently wince inducing, at last ridding the artificial feel of the other films’ violence. The rebar sequence is exactly how to genuinely horrify within the 12A region
She may not have a scratch on Katniss (The Hunger Games) or Tiffany (Silver Linings Playbook) but Mystique is fastly becoming an icon of Jennifer Lawrence’s career and the X-Men franchise in general. Here, she finally has a role pivotal to the plot and Lawrence portrays the shapeshifter with a perfect mix of angst and mysterious allure.
Despite the mega cast, all the buzz seems to be around Evan Peters’ scene-stealingly charismatic portrayal of Quicksilver and deservedly so. Pietro Maximoff’s super speed antics during the Pentagon raid are undoubtedly the funniest action scenes there have ever been. I’ve now got serious doubts in Aaron Taylor Johnson’s performance in the upcoming Avengers sequel Age of Ultron.
Nick Hoult’s Beast (who subscribes to the same serum as Xavier) and Ellen Page’s Kitty (who’d be killed should the dormant Logan lash out at any given moment) are as lovable as ever while I admire the extension of continuity with the inclusion of minor roles such as Toad (Jonigkeit), Styker (Helman)and Havok (Till) but many classic characters are undernourished in a Xavier-centric storyline, most obviously Magneto. The series’ most formidable actor Ian McKellen is given frustratingly little to do while it seems that his younger counterpart Michael Fassbender never quite has the full on menace that he had in First Class.
Also criminally underused is fan favourite Storm, the only mutant who actually needs an origin story. While Berry herself brilliantly kicks off the most devastating scene in the film, she hardly gets a line in within the sprawling action and the same goes for Shawn Ashmore’s (now) bearded Iceman. Less surprisingly, Colossus is again deprived of the development he gets in the comics; casting Magik for future films could bring him to the forefront of the narrative. Maybe we shoud just feel lucky that they made it; we all know what happened to Anna Paquin’s Rogue
Alongside the traditional X-Men, DOFP introduces a new roster of mutants, Bishop, Warpath, Sunspot and Blink, about 50% of which are awesome. Blink, played by China’s Fan Bingbing, can essentially play Valve’s Portal in real life (the dream of every gamer) without the device while time traveller Bishop (French star Omar Sy), as well as giving the team some much needed ethnic diversity, just has a boss blaster. They both accelerate the mayhem of the frantic but ingenious opening set piece. Sadly, the addition of Sunspot (Adan Canto) and Warpath (Booboo Stewart) may excite the fans but their lack of contribution to anything but the spectacle only increased frustration that so many got so little.
The spectacle is something that Days of Future Past gets bang on. Singer doesn’t formulaically stream the CG into our eyes but uses to terrifying effect with the mutant targeting robots known as the Sentinels, the creation of falsely martyred monster Bolivar Trask (impeccably played by Peter Dinklage). They do begin as a bit of a standard giant robot in the ’70s setting but, in the future, they become truly demonic beasts.
Singer’s return to X-Men isn’t as dark as Watchmen, as smart as The Dark Knight or as plainly fun as The Avengers yet it has read a page of all of their books and is easily the most emotional superhero film of all time. It ramps the scale up to 11 and still retains its human drama. Way too many major stars get stuck in tiny roles but arguably that allows leads McAvoy, Stewart, Lawrence, Hoult, Jackman, Page and Peters to excel and it finally has a narrative that revolutionizes what we thought we knew about X-Men.
9/10
“The past: a place of potential promise, and possibility. We are the sum of our choices, as what we do now defines what we will do. Infinite decisions mean infinite consequences, for the future is never truly set.”
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