Review of X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) by Sameer K — 28 Jul 2016

I do believe this is the best comic book epic. Dramatically, Dark Knight is a hard one to beat, but this is more fun, colorful, expansive, evocative, cerebral, and pleasantly complex. Apocalypse stole the title 'quintessential' for it's sheer magnitude, but I had such a ridiculously synchronistic experience with DoFP that I could never imagine one without the other. This chapter couldn't be skipped, it had to be told. Finally, a franchise making use of all it's material, collecting it, uniting it, doing it's best to make sense of and legitimize it. Perhaps no scene is more pivotal to a franchise and it's reboot than the meeting of old and young Xavier. And how cleverly it's done, through consciousness. The whole film is a mind-bender, full of complex ideas, complicated yet smoothed-over plot and scenarios. Singer does his damndest to make it visually cohesive, giving us a narrative we can follow based on a code of visual cues. We may not catch all the exposition, but damn, just look at this movie, it's beautiful.

Newton Thomas Siegel is an amazing cinematographer and deserved an Oscar nod for this effort. It's a splendid visual joy, styles changing for 70s and future not just photographically, but obviously wardrobe and set design. One shot amazed me when Wolverine looked out the window to see 70s New York - turned out we were looking at actual 70s film stock! As a fan of JFK, I appreciated the Zapruder-film effect, though that would be more reflective of the 60s, and slightly unnecessary. It was a visual harkening to a story told earlier that JFK's assassination was a mutant issue, apparently he was a mutant and Magneto tried to stop the [magic] bullet, only to be accused of the crime itself, then placed in maximum security prison [at the Pentagon nonetheless]. Speaking of Magneto and design, he in his Barbisio hat, Boss jacket, and bell bottoms. Xavier a drugged wreck, shaggy hair and beard, unbuttoned pink/red Glanshirt over a messy white beater, Sao Paolo sunglasses. Wolverine in sleeve-rolled sports shirt tucked into stylish tight jeans with oil-rubbed Lenwood leather belt, wayfarer sunglasses. Mystique in her white fur coat as she seduces the general. Big shoutout to costume designer Louise Mingenbach.

I love the feelings and ideas captured, especially Wolverine waking up in the 70s. A future mind in an old body, it evokes a thousand thoughts at once. A lava lamp flows, trippy - ever travel back in your consciousness via mushrooms, salvia, acid? The way it fades from white and spins on that object, it's just right. What a bold idea - who doesn't wish they could sometimes wakeup in their old body and correct themselves? I shake sometimes at the thought, trying to send vibrations strong enough to accomplish it. There's even recent discoveries in particle physics to suggest this is a reality. Maybe all that vibrating worked for me.

Singer was bold to film native stereo (actual 3D onset), and though some of the depth was impressive, it wasn't entirely used with artistic merit. I felt the initial meeting of Wolverine with damaged Prof X and young Beast was the best use, capturing an impressive depth of field, one part particularly using three layers of strata between the three subjects. This was the slowest scene, and in regular 2D the dullest, so I imagine the impressive 3D was intentional to spruce it up. Too bad it was less memorable elsewhere.

Prof X is a fascinating character exploration, a deep drama whose subtext speaks loudly to the heroin epidemic and other such drug addictions. Many of these addicts have powerful minds, like Xavier, and, unable to cope with the responsibility, resort to erasing the feelings that come with it. We get that sense each time Xavier sticks a needle in his arm. It makes sense, it's not just there for the sake of it. One has to imagine Xavier, with his incredible power, is always on the tipping point, especially given his youth. Here he's lost his best friends, his vision for a school, and seen his whole race scrutinized and bullied, making him an outcast... I'd be a frightened wreck!

Other notes of interest: Sentinels, finally! And in two radically different forms, the future versions being complex, lithe, agile, and uncomfortably flexible. Peter Dinklage as Bolivar Trask; the guy plays it straight and has legitimately broken the barrier of perceiving midgets on film. And most notably, the show-stealer Quicksilver, whose work in breaking out Magneto will imprint most memories forever. The high-speed bailout is some brilliant filming; kids in film school confused about high-speed slo-mo vs slow-speed fast-mo now have a great reference to make sense of it all - I hope professors will teach it with this. Essentially, Quicksilver is super fast, so everything around him moves super slow, basic physics principle.

The action was anticlimactic, but Singer wasn't going to leave us disappointed. Instead, a greater sense of closure to one era of the franchise supersedes any action scene one could hope to stage. We drift along the corridors to find a corrected School for Gifted, a hopeful future where the worst has been undone. There passes Kelsey Grammar's Beast, Storm and Kitty and Colossus all busy teaching, Rogue and Iceman have found a way to make it work. And finally, the Phoenix returns, Jean Grey alive and well, Cyclops by her side, all conferring with Professor X. Wolverine will be a history teacher; makes sense for a guy who's not only lived a good portion of civilized history, but who also traversed it's time dimension.

The Rogue Cut is pointless, contrived. I felt like they were wasting studio money to shoot scenes that'd obviously never work in the release. They had to know this was all to sell an extra edition on BluRay. But it's fun for fans. Rogue seems more like a comic book character than ever before, and we get more movement out of Sir Ian McKellan's Magneto, parallel cut with young Magneto brilliantly, their actions clashing. This is a character who obviously went through severe changes in the intervening years. In the new timeline, that may have already happened quicker given the results of Apocalypse. We never see where old Magneto ends up in the corrected future, a nice question mark to an always questionable character.