Movie Review: X-Men: Days of Future Past

X-Men: Days of Future Past

The first problem was the title confusingly suggesting that the future will somehow happen in the past, or that the past is the future, or that we have the past to look forward to in the future. The second problem was that the movie contained more perquisite reading than most of my college English courses did. The third problem was that early descriptions and trailers made the movie seem like an amalgamation of old Magneto and young Professor X with Wolverine (of course) and some other mutants from the future in the past and robot sentinels.

The good news is that once the movie gets going, and it takes off running, these problems are all resolved, leaving us with all of our mental faculties to soak in all the mutated action and humor Brian Singer’s X-Men: Days of Future Past has to offer.

Right in the beginning we’re thrown into a tragically dystopian future, where it is revealed that nearly fifty years ago a military weapon, giant ultra-advanced robots known as Sentinels, was created to protect mankind from any and all mutant threats. However, the Sentinels, which were programed to only target mutant gene sequences mutated at some point (isn’t it ironic, don’t you think?) and began eliminating any normal humans who were destined to have mutant offspring. To make matters worse, before the Sentinels’ “mutation” mankind was able to infuse the highly adaptable DNA of Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) with robot technology, making the Sentinels able to adapt at will to counter any threat they face. During their (true) last stand Magneto (Ian McKellen) and Professor X (Patrick Stewart) devise a plan to project Wolverine’s (Hugh Jackman) future consciousness into his past self in a desperate attempt to “end the war before it even starts.”

Don’t worry if that still sounds a little scary, the movie does a better job explaining than either myself or any of the prerequisite “How to Days of Future Past” literature does.

Days of Future Past contains quite an appetizing array themes and concepts from other movies. One cannot help but notice that the future resembles the dark and violent world of The Matrix, where humanity is hunted to extinction by a society of advanced robots. Or that the Sentinels themselves are even deadlier versions of Thor’s Destroyer. We see Professor X (well in this case Charles) wrestle with the Batman/Nolan-esque concepts of the devastation of loss and the struggle to rise above human failures. Yet what is nice is that while this creative borrowing and hat-tilting is noticeable it is never campy or overdone.

The biggest shortcoming of the movie is the ease with which Wolverine is able to convince everyone in the past the he was sent by their future selves to save the time stream, but that usually seems to be the case with movies that dabble in time travel. The other issue I took is that while Peter Dinklage did, as expected, a wonderful job bringing life to his character (Dr. Bolvar Trask, the movie’s antagonist and creator of the Sentinels) there was not much of a character to bring life to. Trask felt like a means to an end: they needed to Sentinels and did not want to attempt the Transformers route so they gave us Trask, a relatively limited character brought to life by an actor with almost limitless talents.

The other issue the movie creates affects the franchise as a whole because it confirms and concretizes the feeling that we all had a good chunk of our time wasted by X2, X3 and the Wolverine standalones. That is all I will say on that issue seeing as how if I do not want to spoil anything.

So what at first seemed to be a confusing journey into the inevitable stupidity of time travel reveals itself to be a psychedelic, witty, well-paced race for Logan to change the past to save the future. Days of Future Past also leaves us with many questions as to what is coming next and the first feeling that the X-Men are a franchise and not just some random movies scattered around some other random Wolverine movies.

Don’t forget to stay for the post-credits scene! It’s all the way at the end.

Overall Rating: 9.0 out of 10