X-Men, Days of Future Past:
In the not-too-distant future, the world has become a war-torn dystopia, where mutants and their human allies are on the verge of extinction due to Sentinels, advanced machines which can adapt to a mutant's powers to be able to effectively kill them. The Sentinels have nearly succeeded in doing so, as they have nearly wiped the entire race off the face of the planet, as well as, in the process, destroy countless human lives and demolish cities. The few remaining X-Men (Wolverine, Kitty Pryde, Iceman, Storm, Professor Xavier, Magneto, Warpath, Blink, Sunspot, Bishop, and Colossus) have banded together, and constantly must move from place-to-place to avoid the unstoppable Sentinels. How do they do this? They utilize a new-found ability to create wormholes in time and space and travel through these holes to warn their past selves days before a Sentinel attack happens. Xavier and Magneto hatch a plan to send Xavier back to the 70's to warn his past self of the dystopian future and explain the way to prevent it: stop the assassination of Bolivar Trask, the creator of the Sentinel program, by Mystique, as this killing makes mutantkind look dangerous and convinces the government to follow through on Trask's proposal to create these weapons. However, Kitty Pryde says there's a possibility that Xavier can't mentally sustain the journey as "if the mind stretches too far, it snaps". Wolverine opts to go, as he has taken so much physical and mental damage through his long, miserable, and seemingly endless existence, that he believes he can survive the journey. Arriving in 1973, he must convince the young, depressed, and uncooperative young Xavier and his friend Hank McCoy (Beast) to help him rewrite history. He must also convince Xavier and his (at the time) most hated enemy Erik Lehnsherr (Magneto) to join forces against a common foe. However, stopping Mystique may prove more complicated than they once thought, as both Xavier and Erik have grown distant from her, and she appears to be going down a dark path, and is inadvertently bringing the whole world down with her.
I was genuinely surprised by how thoroughly entertaining and well-made this film was. Brett Ratner made a mediocre mess out of X-Men: The Last Stand, and Gavin Hood didn't fare much better when he made X-Men Origins: Wolverine, but Matthew Vaughn (X-Men: First Class), James Mangold (The Wolverine), and Singer have been able to return the series to it's former glory. Singer, being an experienced director, is able to bring back the feeling of the first two films, which he also helmed. The movie also features a huge cast of many fan favorites. Hugh Jackman is, of course, excellent as Wolverine, aka "Logan". That's no surprise, considering he is considered the definitive actor to play the character. Jennifer Lawrence was good as Mystique/Raven Darkholme. Although she does a great job, I don't really feel like Mystique needs to be such a big character. If you look back to the first three films, she's more like a supporting character, not a main one. She doesn't even speak that much. But here, they play her up as this major character who left a big impact on Xavier (which is weird, considering Xavier doesn't seem to care much for her in the first three films), which I think is entirely due to Jennifer Lawrence's level of popularity. However this film does show her grow closer to the Mystique that Rebecca Romijn portrayed in the first few movies, so that was interesting. James McAvoy is great as the young Charles Xavier. In this movie, he's not the fun, charming guy from First Class. Instead, he's a broken man who hides in his mansion and takes high doses of a drug that controls his powers. Michael Fassbender gives a more sinister portrayal of the younger Magneto than we saw in First Class. We saw him do some horrific things in that installment, but here he seems more openly malicious than before, a sure sign that he will grow into the villainous mutant we saw in the first two films. Peter Dinklage is, as always, great as Bolivar Trask. While not portrayed as completely evil, he is quite amoral and manipulative, and has an extreme disdain for mutants. An interesting choice was to portray him as a man corrupted by power who possesses questionable beliefs rather than just a power-hungry villain. Halle Berry has a small supporting role as the Storm of the future. Nicholas Hoult reprises his role as the younger Hank McCoy/Beast, and shows more of Beast's animalistic tendencies, but also captures his intellectualism perfectly. I especially like how the filmmakers chose to keep he and Mystique's on-and-off romance more of a subtle thing rather than make it major story point like in First Class. Anna Paquin, Ellen Page, and Shawn Ashmore all reprise their roles as Marie/Rogue, Kitty Pryde, and Bobby Drake/Iceman, respectively. Omar Sy appears in a supporting role as Bishop, an energy-absorbing mutant freedom fighter from the future. Daniel Cudmore has a minor role as Colossus, the gigantic metallic mutant muscleman. (A lot of alliteration in this review.) Evan Peters (American Horror Story) has a cool part as Peter Maximoff/Quicksilver. He's pretty funny, and although his part is relatively small, he's memorable and I'm glad to hear he'll be in the next film. There's also a cool sequence where the camera slows down to a point where the entire scene is almost completely still, and shows Quicksilver taking his time doing things at a normal pace, just to illustrate how much he can do in such a short time span. Fan Bingbing, Adan Canto, and Booboo Stewart appear in minor roles as Blink, Sunspot, and Warpath, respectively, younger mutants from the future. Josh Helman has a supporting role as a young William Stryker, the man who is Wolverine's main antagonist and main villain of X2: X-Men United. Lucas Till briefly reprises his role as Alex Summers, aka Havoc, from First Class, now a soldier in Vietnam. Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen are unsurprisingly fantastic as older Xavier and older Magneto, respectively. Famke Janssen, James Marsden, and Kelsey Grammar all appear in cameo roles as characters from previous films, which I won't give away for those of you who haven't seen the film. Singer himself makes a cameo as an amateur photographer during a scene in Paris. Comic book writers Len Wein and Chris Claremont cameo in the film as congressmen.
(Semi-Spoilers Ahead) One thing that pissed me off is that they address the fact that Magneto's mutant allies such as Banshee, Angel, and Azazel, are all dead, as they were experimented on by Trask and the government, but they never once mention where Sebastian Shaw's girlfriend Emma Frost (January Jones), or Xavier's love interest Moira MacTaggert (Rose Byrne) went after First Class, I hope they address this in the next film. (Spoilers End)
The writing by Simon Kinberg is really clever and inventive for a superhero film, and adapting one of the most beloved Marvel comics storylines is no easy task, but he delivered. Bryan Singer's direction is incredible, especially after not make a film in the series since 2003. The special effects are amazing. In particular, the Sentinels seamlessly blend into the real-life sets and environments, and their design was original, but also faithful to the comics.The action sequences, such as the chaotic fight in Paris, the Pentagon break-in (which encompasses Quicksilver's cool slow-motion scene), and the showdown at the White House, are all well-shot and executed, and the CG looked amazing. Even the costume designs were great, and those I usually don't even really notice until the second time I watch a film. The post-credits scene is similar to Avengers, where only people who know their comics will understand it, but if you do understand it, it will get you extremely excited to see the new movie, set for release in May 2016. This film is full of cool little details, like how in the opening Fox logo, the music briefly turns into the main X-Men theme, and the "X" in Fox briefly stays on screen when the rest of the logo fades away. It's the little things like that that really show how much effort the filmmakers put into this movie. X-Men: Days of Future Past is astonishing considering how this May has been filled with mostly crap movies. The story, writing, acting, and special effects are all pretty fucking exceptional, and Singer is able to bring it all together to create possibly the best movie of the summer so far. And best of all, it's fresh and new (the only time I've seen a superhero film incorporate time-travel and alternate timelines), something I can't say about too many blockbusters these days. 4.5/5 stars.
(Image: Wikipedia)(SPOILER SEGMENT): In the film's climax, Xavier successfully rewrites history and gets the Sentinel program cancelled, which creates a butterfly effect where everything in the film universe's timeline is changed. X-Men, X2, X-Men: The Last Stand, X-Men Origins: Wolverine and The Wolverine are now technically non-canon, but that doesn't make them any less enjoyable. It was an unexpectedly happy ending, and I was satisfied. In the post-credits scene (which takes place in ancient Egypt), a crowd of thousands is shown praying and chanting to a robed figure standing atop a dune of sand. This figure appears to be an incredibly powerful mutant, as he is easily levitating hundreds of blocks, packing them into large chunks, and stacking them together within seconds, forming pyramids. The camera pans slowly to reveal the figure is a teenage boy, with very pale skin and blue lips, and four horsemen can be seen behind him in the background. If you know your comics, then you can recognize this young man as En Sabah Nur (here played by Brendan Peeder), more commonly known as Apocalypse, a thousands-of-years-old mutant with God-like powers who is seemingly immortal. This got me excited to see what the filmmakers do with the next film, titled X-Men: Apocalypse, which will be set in the 1980's, and feature more of the First Class cast as well as Quicksilver. (END OF SPOILERS)
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