Review of X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) by Nathonas — 29 May 2014

The Great: My favorite part of the film is the speed mutant. It was just so cool to watch him in action. But if he had stuck around for the rest of the film, it would be too easy.

Great ending as well - we get to see all the changes in the timeline, and showing Jean and Scott as a small tribute and connection to the original X-men trilogy was nice. But most importantly, the older timeline is still remembered by Logan; so the previous timeline we saw still holds some meaning.

The good: Great humor - especially with Wolverine. Great action. The young versions of the heroes were handled very well - like making Young Charles a drunk / druggie, so he has something to overcome if he wants to save the mutants. They did a good job with building the characters of the three key heroes - Mystique, Xavier, and Magneto. The chemistry between Fassbender and McAvoy was great just like in "X-men: First Class", and I liked how even though they reconcile, Magneto still decides to do things his own way and act as the villain.

The bad: very formulaic story with tons of exposition. Like Young Charles not wanting to help Logan and then agreeing after a 10 second shot of Raven's picture. Or the X-men in real time being attacked right when Logan is about to succeed in his mission. The plot was incredibly predictable and everything is done by the Hollywood formula. Also, some of the character decisions (primarily Magneto) were pretty stupid - if he had just talked to Mystique after they stopped the assassination, there would be no point for the escalation that followed.

Overall though a very solid entry in the superhero genre and the X-men series.