Review of X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) by Gamed2Long — 25 May 2014

This is probably the best X-men film to date. Finally the X-men franchise is living up to its potential. The plot is complex. Characters have agendas and motives that overlap or conflict at times and are authentic. It is an ensemble film where key characters are dynamic. At last what X-men should be.

The good.

The plot within itself makes sense. Its really easy to mess that up in things involving time travel.

The action sequences are pretty amazing. No one character is too powerful in comparison to others. The scenes set in the future manages to show a bleak abysmal world, but still evoke warmth between the onscreen characters. Including new characters you've never met who fit in seamlessly. And it adds to the rushed desperate feel of it. Scenes in the past manage to convey the feeling of the period aside just from a bunch of funky clothes. Characters are shown as fragile as well as being powerful.

The bad.

One apparent plot hole Charles Xavier is alive in this bleak future, yet when Wolverine is flashing back the rest of the dark phoenix ark from X3 clearly happened. One of the great things about this film is they get a chance to re-do that mess. I feel like they should have gone one way or the other on that. Or come up with a workaround. Things don't have to have happened exactly as we saw in X-3. In this future they obviously didn't. Maybe a deleted scene will explain it.

Similarly as warm and re-assuring as it is to see the original X1 cast at the end of the film, it would have been a golden opportunity to re-cast a character or two as I hope they do going forward.

Also, and I found this rather weird, Jennifer Lawrence emotes more and has more texture when she is Mystique. When you see her without all the blue makeup her face looks a tad airbrushed and she is not very expressive. I really do not know how they managed that one.

Also anyone who is expecting anything more than a bit part from Storm. Sorry. Not in this movie.

The verdict. At last we have moved past the period where creating a superhero movie meant cramming it up the wazoo with special effects. They should try to tell the best story they can, and add effects to heighten the experience. That is what this film does.

It also gets a bonus point for giving them the ability to reboot the franchise to a higher expectation going forward.