By Brett Blake X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST is the seventh installment since the franchise was launched back in July of 2000 with director Bryan Singer’s first entry. It would be perfectly reasonable to think (and perhaps even to expect) that - at such a pace - audiences and filmmakers alike would begin to experience burnout. Indeed, the series has come close to being run into the ground before (the negative critical reception to 2006’s X-MEN: THE LAST STAND and 2009’s X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE did almost kill the franchise), but it sprung back from the brink with 2011’s X-MEN: FIRST CLASS and 2013’s THE WOLVERINE. Now, Bryan Singer has returned, and DAYS OF FUTURE PAST continues to build upon the progress made by both of its immediate predecessors; while it’s not a perfect film, it gets far more right than it gets wrong. We open in an apocalyptic near-future where much of humanity and mutant-kind have been wiped out (in vaguely TERMINATORish fashion) by the Sentinels, machines engineered for the express purpose of killing mutants. The remnants of the original flavor X-Men (chiefly Patrick Stewart’s Professor Xavier - miraculously raised from the dead without explanation - and Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine) formulate a time travel plan to go back to the 1970s and stop Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) from assassinating Sentinel-creator/industrialist Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage), an event which plants the seeds for the destructive future with which they are faced. So, back to 1973 goes Wolverine, where he enlists young Xavier (James McAvoy) and young Magneto (Michael Fassbender) to help him stop Trask’s murder at Mystique’s hands. Time travel plots, at their worst, can often be too convoluted for their own good, getting into the business of paradoxes and alternate realities to such a degree as to become confusing, head-scratching endeavors. DAYS OF FUTURE PAST wisely avoids the clunky mechanics of time travel, choosing instead to use it as a means to allow two different eras of X-Men to interact with each other, and it is indeed a great pleasure to see Wolverine interacting with young Charles Xavier, or to see the contrast between old, regretful Magneto (a returning Ian McKellan) and his younger, fiery counterpart in the 1970s. On the surface, the movie is still kind of "The Wolverine Show,” as he’s involved in nearly every key scene, but on a narrative level, the story belongs to the young versions of Xavier, Magneto, and Mystique; their shared history (and future history, if you will) weights heavily on the events which unfold around them, and the trio form the emotional backbone of the movie. The acting is uniformly excellent. James McAvoy gives the performance of the film as the lost and angry young Charles Xavier, a man struggling to determine what - if anything - in his life is worth fighting for. His journey is truly effective - even moving - and it grounds the story in a great way. Fassbender channels even more righteous anger than he brought to FIRST CLASS, and he’s a commanding counterpoint to the work McAvoy does. Lawrence’s Mystique has been fore-grounded in this film (which is appropriate, given that she’s become a megastar since FIRST CLASS thanks to the HUNGER GAMES franchise and her Oscar win for SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK), and she gets some meaty material to play with. Hugh Jackman delivers what might be his most charming iteration of Wolverine this time out, and while the performance lacks much of the depth that we saw in last summer’s THE WOLVERINE, the filmmakers compensate for this by positioning the character as young Xavier’s support and conscience, which is an interesting subversion of his "loner/badass" character type. From an action standpoint, Bryan Singer has made evolutionary leaps in the way he stages the setpieces. Apart from the masterful Superman-saves-the-place scene from 2006’s SUPERMAN RETURNS, most of Singer’s action has been functional, but not particularly eye-popping. With DAYS OF FUTURE PAST, however, he creates several distinct and dynamic sequences, from the opening battle against the Sentinels (which showcases the powers of several new mutants in pretty neat ways), to the Magneto jail-break sequence (which introduces Evan Peters’ Quicksilver in a hugely-entertaining way, and which plays like something out of a superhero-infused OCEAN’S ELEVEN), the action here is far-and-away the best of the series. On a technical level, the movie is certainly accomplished. The production design for the future sequence has a dark, grim quality that pervades every location, while the 1973 side of the story is bright and colorful; along with the cinematography and costume design, the art direction embraces some of the kitschier elements of ‘70s culture, but never in a goofy or distracting way. The editing is also great, particularly in the third act, which intercuts between conflicts in the two different time periods. The movie is not without flaws, certainly. Given that we’re dealing with a very large cast of characters, it was inevitable that some of them would get the short end of the stick (that’s going to read like a horrible pun in a few seconds; I apologize in advance…). That’s certainly true for a few of the side mutant characters in both the future and ‘70s portions of the film, but the one character that really falls victim to this is Peter Dinklage’s villain, Trask. Dinklage himself is actually great as the character (he plays it very real, not like just some stock comic book villain), but the script never finds a way to make Trask a proactive and compelling antagonist; one gets the feeling some of Trask’s material landed on the cutting room floor. Additionally, the choices that several of the characters make at the climax are questionable ones given what we know about them and what they’ve been through. I’m dancing around spoilers, obviously, and it doesn’t torpedo the story or damage any character arcs, but its definitely noticeable in the way the script tries to massage certain characters into a particular action, regardless of whether or not that action is something the character as we know him/her would really do. All that being said, the movie exists as an extremely satisfying journey, one that concludes the story of the Patrick Stewart/Ian McKellan era of the X-Men in an appropriate and emotional way, while also foreshadowing an interesting and exciting future for the James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, and Jennifer Lawrence era (and yes, Hugh Jackman will probably be along for that ride, too). X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST is second only to FIRST CLASS as the best of the series thus far.
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