Jean-Paul’s Rating: 4/5 stars
Bottom Line: This is a movie with a fairly decent plot, a lot of imagination, and great use of special effects.
This movie has more X-Men than you can shake a stick at. Luckily, only a few of them are actually relevant to the plot line and the ones that aren’t have way cool powers like creating portals and shooting fire and ice and absorbing mutant powers in order to charge a gun? I don’t know about that last one, but the dude looked awesome doing it. Their names are irrelevant and I know none of them, but I’m sure every X-Men geek was in full geek fervor at the giant lineup of mutants involved in this movie.
Surprisingly, this is a movie about time travel and the plot is not bad. It might not be wholly internally consistent, but it does a journeyman job of making the time travel aspects work. The basic premise is the future sucks because the Sentinels, mutant hunting robots, are doing a pretty bang up job and the mutants are quickly becoming extinct. This leads to them using Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page) to send Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) back into the 1970s to prevent Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) from killing the inventor of the Sentinels, Trask (Peter Dinklage) because it starts the whole Sentinel War instead of preventing it.
The interactions of the characters are interesting and the conclusions they come to are believable. That’s always been the strength of the X-Men movies, even when the movies themselves haven’t always been good. You get what Professor X is doing and why he’s doing it, but at the same time you get what Magneto is doing and why he’s doing it. They are one of the better silver screen frenemies out there.
This movie also contains one of the best special effects driven scenes ever made. I won’t spoil it, but I will say that it is incredibly inventive, satisfyingly snarky, and magnificently mischievous. The audience absolutely loved it.
There is some second act slowness, but it is not entirely wasted as there is some interesting character development to be had in it. Other than that, “Days of Future Past” was a very enjoyable experience and I can seem myself wanting to see it again some day.
Out of curiosity, which did you prefer? X-2 (X-men United) or X-men: First Class?
Shocingly enough, I did not see First Class so I can’t answer the question directly, but most people I respect seem to think that First Class was the best X-Men movie prior to “Days of Future Past”.
I ask because it seemed like the people who are trashing this movie are the ones who really liked First Class over the Patrick Stewart X-men films. I can see the correlation since First Class felt like a breath of fresh air, and the original films were just action movies (not that there is anything wrong with that).
Totally agree! I will add I’ve no idea what was going on at the very end after all the credits. I’m a fan of the xmen but haven’t the foggiest what that was supposed to be referencing. Someone more versed in xmen lore will have to fill me in.
The Post-trailer scene is a preview of the next X-men file. X-Men: Age of Apocalypse. Yes that is ancient Egypt and yes, the mutant building the pyramids is Apocalypse. The shadowy men on horseback in the background are his guards, The Four Horsemen.
Word is the film will again feature both casts.
As to who are all the random mutants:
In the future:
The energy absorbing/ Gun toting mutant: Bishop (Doesn’t need a gun in the comics)
The fire mutant: Sunspot (Absorbs Solar Energy, It was dark all the time)
The teleporter: Blink (Technically not a teleporter, since she opens door-like Gateways like doors)
The metal man: Colossus (His skin becomes Organic metal, almost as strong as Adamantium)
The knife wielding Indian: Warpath (He is NOT a cliche, Ok, yes he is)
And of course, Iceman, Kitty Pride, Storm, Wolverine, Professor X and Magneto.
In 1973
Were Mystique, Magneto, Professor X, Beast and Wolverine (again), The superfast mutant was Peter Maximoff aka Quicksilver (Spoiler alert: He IS Magneto’s son)
Army Mutants:
Havok (From X-men: First Class),
Toad (was in the first X-men film)
The Tatooed Mutant is Ink,
the Spikey mutant is duh, Spyke.
And Jean Paul, X-men:First Class, is actually pretty good and worth the rental.