Film Review – X-Men: Days of Future Past
3 min read
X-Men: Days of Future Past is the latest installment in the hugely popular X-Men franchise, directed by Bryan Singer. It has a more unusual plot that puts the new class of X-Men in the same film as the veteran cast, only in a parallel timeline. In the future, the world has been basically wiped-out by the robot “Sentinals” who are programmed to destroy all mutants, and all that remain are a few of the more resilient mutants including Professor X and Magneto. Since first being built in the 1970’s, the Sentinal’s became highly evolved (thanks to Mystique’s DNA) and very powerful and efficient at killing, so the X-men hatch a plan to send Wolverine back in time to the 1970’s to prevent the key event that led to their rise and domination.
The plot element used to send Wolverine back in time is a little reminiscent of Terminator, only with a twist in that he doesn’t physically go back in time, but only his consciousness is projected back in time. It works quite well and sets up a perfect bridge for the film to go back and forth between the relatively peaceful 1970’s present, and the future where the X-Men are desperately fighting off the evolved Sentinals in order to keep Wolverine alive long enough for him to do the job. The veteran X-Men include all the familiar characters, as well as a couple of new ones like Bishop, Colossus, Sunspot, and Blink (who has a really cool teleport mutation). One complaint I have is that Storm (reprised by Halle Berry) only has a superficial appearance in the film, though it was nice to see that Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) played very prominently and we got to learn quite a bit more about this fascinating character.
One great thing about the movie was the character of Qucksilver, played perfectly by American Horror Story’s Evan Peters whom Wolverine and Charles (in the 1970’s time) recruit to break Erik (Magneto) out of the Pentagon. He has superhuman speed and is featured in a scene where he is running along the walls of a (circular) kitchen disarming a slew of security guards who have just fired on them. Visually, it is an amazing scene because of the crystal clear clarity of the super slow-motion photography and must have been very difficult to shoot. The silly pranks Quicksilver plays on the guards in the process of disarming them is hilarious, and is a great technical achievement. It is the highlight of the movie.
Overall I thought X-Men: Days of Future Past was one of the best in the franchise, and I loved the funny references to famous historical events and characters (like Kennedy and Nixon). It has a more compelling and suspenseful story, and is probably one of the most ambitious in the series to date. And, as usual, it does a good job of setting up for the next installment so stick around after the credits.
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::: Renowned For Sound Technical Director and Film Reviewer ::: Robert is an IT geek, movie fan and part-time movie reviewer/editor. Robert also looks after the ‘behind the scenes’ technical elements of Renowned For Sound.