Film Review: X-Men: Days of Future Past

It’s review time! Review time! And while I unfortunately never made it to Godzilla to get that checked out and reviewed, I did make sure to go and see X-Men: Days of Future Past this weekend because… well… it’s a big project with a lot of moving parts that does need some analysis. So we’ll talk good, we’ll talk bad, and we’ll talk about the nuts and bolts of this film and if everything is functioning properly. Let’s dive right into the mess that is the X-Men film franchise and see where this movie fits in.

For those just joining us, X-Men Days of Future Past is a film set to be a direct sequel to The Wolverine, which was a sequel to X-Men 3: Last Stand. If you’re keeping count, there was also a movie called X-Men First Class, which was a prequel. Incidentally, it was also designed to be a reboot, as many elements of that film contracted elements of the previously made (though chronologically later) three films and Wolverine Origins to boot (not to be confused with last year’s The Wolverine). Surprisingly, X-Men Days of Future Past is also a sequel to X-Men First Class, by which I mean a direct sequel. And, of course, spoiler warning, this is all to be followed in a year by X-Men: Age of Apocalypse, which the post-credits bit is happy to remind us of.

But, Aaron, how the fuck is this a sequel to two different movies with two completely different storylines. Simply put, the plot of X-Men: Days of Puture Fast involves time travel… lots of time travel and suspension of disbelief. The original storyline from the comics involves Wolverine travelling through time (somehow) to stop the world from ending due to the sentinel uprising and the mutant vs. human war. The same basic plot happens here (though with some modifications, obviously). And while it makes more sense here than in the shared continuity of the comics, there are some things that leave me with my head titled to the side and asking “What the Fuck?” But let’s get to the plot. 

In the current time (presumably now) the sentinel robots have taken over and both mutants and humans basically lost the world to them. Now mutants are put into concentration camps and killed brutally simply for being mutants. Utilizing Shadow Cat’s powers (originally just passing through walls) they have a way to send someone’s consciousness through time over short periods to help undo or alter history. Why do this? Because the sentinels took over only because the government obtained Mystique’s DNA to make the sentinels more powerful. Their goal is to prevent her from performing the assassination that gets her caught so they can save their future.

Xavier volunteers to go, but is told he can’t because the time-travel ability has potential risks of tearing someone apart if they go too far back. Thus enters Wolverine, a man who constantly heals and can’t be torn apart by the process and die. If only we had Deadpool. But his time will come… soon enough… 

Wolverine, once again taking the spot light, has to reunite young Xavier and young Magneto in order to stop Mystique from doing a bad thing so that doesn’t ripple into the mutant race being nearly wiped out. To do so, he’ll have to convince them time travel is a thing, make Xavier get over his problems, make Magneto stop being a prick for five minutes (which is surprisingly more difficult than it sounds), and try to not lose his mind in the process. The end results (spoiler warning) good guys win, bad guy loses, and the continuity… I mean, time-space-continuum is restored to something less horrible so we can have more X-Men films. Woo Yay!

What’s good? The action is the best the series has had in a long time, if ever. Bryan Singer finally learned how to direct action, giving us some great spectacle pieces throughout the film. The acting from most major parties is also pretty spot on. And, for as much as I get annoyed with the focus on Wolverine, this film is actually just fine because he gets sidelined a lot in this film to let the players of the past resolve their problems that he’s brought to their attention. We also finally get to see the sentinels in a movie (which is what I’ve wanted since… basically the first film because of how important they were in the 90’s cartoon). 

Also, quick mention to Quicksilver (Peter Maximoff). He gets a pretty cool scene in the film and while I still think the costume itself looks silly, the actor and effects bring him together nicely in a way I can’t reasonably complain about. What I can say is that Marvel may have beaten X-Men to getting Quicksilver on screen, but X-Men took a step farther by putting him in a very well-made scene. Next year, Marvel’s rebuttal to see if all this franchise-dick-measuring will pay off.  

What’s bad? Well… basically the premise itself is so needlessly twisted, it makes it difficult for me to really wrap my head around the movie as a whole. Yes, the movie is fun. And, yes, I did enjoy it for the most part. But when thinking on the film as a whole, you can’t help but see the seams being stretched almost to a point where the film is just about to fall apart. I mean, yes, it’s still better than Last Stand, but that’s not saying much at all. 

(image above, for reference, is when Hulk fixes the Time-Space continuum... by punching it)

Basically, what I’m getting at is that you can only push suspension of disbelief so far before the film falls apart. Yes, I’m a champion for breaking away from realism and having silly good concepts like Guardians of the Galaxy, but I’m also one where no matter how strange your film gets, it still has to follow its own internal logic. Case-and-point, where the fuck does Shadow Cat suddenly get this time-travel power? How the hell is Magento able to life an entire baseball stadium when I almost guarantee that there isn’t THAT much metal in it? And even if there was a healthy amount of metal, the non-metal bits would be insanely heavy or they’d just plain fall off until only the metal skeleton remained. Also, if we travel back in time to change the events of history and we succeed, shouldn’t the results be almost instantaneous? Why do we have to wait until the events of the narrative unfold before time corrects itself? Also, when time does correct itself, shouldn’t Wolverine have the memories of the years after he went back since he was still alive?

Look, I get it. This film doesn’t exist to tell a really captivating story or show us any new techniques for film making. This movie solely exists for two purposes. One is to keep the rights with Fox for the X-Men/Mutant license. But, more importantly, it exists to reboot the X-Men franchise without creating an abortion like The Amazing Spiderman. And, unlike Amazing Spiderman, Batman, Hulk, or Superman, X-Men really do have time-travel stories like this in the comics. So, yes, this actually does make sense to make at some point. 

And I get why you’d want to reboot the series THIS way rather than in the more traditional sense of starting over with an all new cast and story line. You’ve already established so many characters and some have actors you couldn’t possibly replace. And it’s not that the series ever got irreversibly bad, it just lost steam and couldn’t figure out what to do with itself. But in watching the film, that’s all I really see is just an attempt to erase the mistakes of the past films. And the timing is in line with Fox wanting to compete with Marvel, Sony, and DC with their own brand of X-Men films.

But if the existence of this convoluted mess of a film means we’re not only allowed to completely ignore all the previous films, but also means we’ll be getting newer BETTER films… yeah… you know what. I’ll take that. It’s not ideal, but I’ll definitely take that over being saddled with Last Stand and Wolverine Origins. Just don’t call me sold on this film being a solid piece of work. I mean, yes, it’s fun and works at times. But it has wobbly legs it’s trying to stand on, and it trips a bit at times. But I still had fun, even if I had to ignore the parts of the film that were making my brain hurt by the end of it all. 

My recommendation? Sure, go see it if you like X-Men. If you don’t like them or don’t care, don’t waste your time because this will make even less sense to you than any of the previous films. Overall, it does enough right to earn a pass, but if had been trying to be a standalone film or part of an even more broken series, I probably wouldn’t have been so kind to it. See ya next time.